krisalis

Alexander came to the hospital yesterday afternoon to meet sister Suzanna.

Me: “Would you like to hold baby sister Suzanna?”

Alexander: “No. I not hold her. Baby sister is too heavy. I wanna look at the roof.”

Welcome to the world
Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Suzanna Mary, born this morning Nov 29 2009, 7lb9oz, 20 inches long.

And to answer the question that everyone seems to want to know: she has fuzzy dark blonde/light brown hair under that hat.

Just A Trifle
Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Directions for a Really Easy Version:
Line the base of your trifle dish with slices of angel food cake, about 2-3cm thick.
Drizzle around half a cup of sherry over the angel food base.
Make jello from a packet. Pour that over the cake base.
Add a packet of frozen cherries (or other fruit, fresh or frozen).
Let this all set in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Open a tin of custard and distribute that over the top.
Whip up some cream and put that on top of the custard. Decorate as desired.
Done!

Thankful
Originally uploaded by krisalis.

I am thankful for my family, my friends, a healthy pregnancy, and a job I really like most of the time. Life is good.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

The Belly Burn has almost fully healed now. So yay for that. In case anyone else reading this is as unfortunate as to inflict such an injury on themselves, here’s a quick run down on what seemed to work towards a speedy recovery for me.

• lots of ice applied to the injured area directly after the accident, followed by lots of Neosporin (antiseptic, antibacterial cream).
  

• applying these Curad ScarAway treatment sheets that my mum gave me. Essentially, they are like very fancy band-aids that seem to somehow wick away the weepiness of the burn wound and encourage new skin growth underneath. Magic.
  

• now that the skin is closed over again, I’ve been applying Mederma to the scar tissue area in an attempt to minimize the potential for scarring.
  

I’ve pretty much made a full recovery now, so the belly is once again fully accessible for fetal monitoring type activities should they be required once I go into labour (it’s got to happen eventually, right? Right? RIGHT. I’m glad we’ve established that.). You hear that baby? I’m ready. As ready as I’m going to ever be.

Bump Watch 2.0
Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Week 39. Arg.

Mark, my mum and my dad have all had things to say about my blurb on musicals, each pointing out important performances that I had overlooked.

Mark pointed out that I overlooked ‘West Side Story’, and he’s right. I absolutely should have included it.

My first exposure to ‘West Side Story’ was when I watched the movie as a kid. Sometime around the same time, we also started listening to the soundtrack at home. I had a particular liking for ‘Officer Krupke‘ and ‘America‘. I watched the film again as a teenager, around the time that we read ‘Romeo and Juliet’ for English at school, and suddenly had a whole new appreciation for the storyline. I finally got to see a live performance of ‘West Side Story’ when Mark got us tickets to a show in Milan during our honeymoon. The tickets were a surprise addition to an already fantastic trip, and we thoroughly enjoyed our evening at the Teatro alla Scala. [Aside: I also partially attribute the fact that we saw a musical sung in English whilst in Milan towards my thought process that Les Mis would be in English too, even though we were in Berlin. West Side set a precedent in my mind. Heh.]

Here’s what I wrote about our night at West Side Story at the time:

We went to see West Side Story at the Teatro in Milano. There were subtitles build into the seat backs to help people understand what was being sung on stage. The elderly Italian gentleman seated on my left also contributed some audio assistance by singing along with the songs that he knew, and several of the ones he didn’t know too.

Then there’s ‘Buddy’, which my mum pointed out that I had overlooked. I remember really, really enjoying this musical. As in, getting up out of my seat to dance to “Great Balls of Fire” in the middle of the theater, despite being way-too-cool to engage in this type of activity normally because I was a teenager, enjoyment. We listened to Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and The Big Bopper’s songs on repeat in the car for months and months after the show. Apparently I also saw Buddy with Mark when we lived in Singapore. I believe him, but I can’t recall much if anything about the performance. Oops.

And finally ‘Mamma Mia’, which my dad noted as MIA. I saw this for the first time in late December 2001 with all the family during a trip to London. It was ace. Best part about the ‘Mamma Mia’ performance in my opinion was sitting next to my Nan, and watching/listening to her get transported away with the songs and the story until she couldn’t hold herself back any more and finally started dancing in her seat and singing softly along with the music.

For the record I have also seen:
Phantom of the Opera – I do not get what all the fuss is about with this musical. Meh.
Miss Saigon – It was enjoyable enough, but not anywhere near as good as, say, Les Mis.
A Chorus Line – One Singular Sensation is right. That’s really the only good song in the whole show.
Chicago – It was good. I liked both the theatrical production I saw in Singapore, and also the movie. I mean, the movie has Catherine Zeta Jones in it. What’s not to like?

I think that covers it.

Strawberry Girl
Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Alexander earned a treat for successful potty poopage for the 2nd day in a row. He chose a Strawberry Shortcake doll (he calls her ‘strawberry girl’), who he immediately put to work on his job site in the sandpit, supervising the backhoe and excavator. Nice.

It’s been a busy Saturday round these parts.

Mark and Alexander let me sleep in this morning, which is a rare and precious treat indeed, particularly this late in my pregnancy. Then they brought me a cup of tea when I woke up and fed me apple pancakes. So nice!

After breakfast, Mark took Rosie out for a walk while Alexander and I played with trucks at the house. Then we all got into the car and headed out to run some errands. While we were out and about, Alexander actually told us that he needed to go poop and he actually went in the potty of the shop we happened to be in. I was SO PLEASED! Seriously. It felt like a major parenting victory! AND he hit the target at home too today. It’s ludicrous how happy this progress makes me.

We had a quick lunch at Thundercloud and then came home for A-train nap time. I tackled the weekly HEB shop while Alexander slept. After nap time, Alexander and I went to a neighbourhood birthday party for a couple of his playground buddies, while Mark took care of some stuff around the house and did a Costco run. Alexander had a blast at the party, running around and playing with the other kiddos, and I enjoyed watching him race about at warp speed.

Naturally, Alexander did not want to leave the party when it came time to head for home, and it took all my parental powers of persuasion to get him back to the house. Then once we were home he didn’t want to eat dinner. Then once he had eaten dinner, he didn’t want to get out his highchair to have a bath. Then once he was in the bath he didn’t want to get out. And once he was out the bath, he didn’t want to put on his pajamas or brush his teeth or read a story or go to bed. You get the picture.

Now Alexander is in bed (and hopefully asleep), I’m installed on the sofa watching an old episode of The Mentalist and eating leftover lasagna, while Mark is prepping to do some serious chili cooking in the kitchen, in an attempt to build up some freezer supplies ahead of baby’s arrival.

Today has been a nice slice of family life.

Some snapshots of the baby’s room. Not fabulous quality, since they were taken using my cell phone, but you’ll get the general idea.

Butterfly mobile hung over the changing table. Andrea may recognise the little sock monkey sitting in the corner.

Reclining glider/rocking chair. This was my favourite place to nurse Alexander. Guess I should be getting ready to spend some serious blocks of time here again in the near future!

Crib.