Roger…

Today would have been Roger’s birthday.

I miss him everyday. I don’t think that there is a day that goes by that he doesn’t pop into my head. Somedays it is just in passing, others it makes tear come.

This weekend is Thanksgiving and I am making a traditional supper again, just like the one I made a few weeks before he left us. I just wish that he was here to share with us. He woud have been so much in love with Xavier and Colin. It makes me sad that Colin will never have any memories of his Pops, Xavier however still has many, which is so surprising to me and makes me feel so happy.

I miss him so much.

7 years…

Simon and I have been married for 7 years today. Our wedding day seems to be so close, yet so far but I have trouble thinking that it has already been 7 years.

I wanted May 8th because Miguel (my first step-dad) died on May 8th a few years before. I wanted the day to have good memories and never wanted it to be a forgotten or overlooked day…

On my wedding day, I`had a medieval style dress, and wore my “doc marten” sandals underneath. My dad got a limo that brought us to the court house and then we went to the bar were Roger (my step-dad) was working (well not that day of course) the bar was ours and we drank, danced, opened gifts and had a lot of fun until it was time to go to the restaurant. Roger arranged for an hour long horse and carriage ride through Old-Montreal to get to the restaurant and by the time we arrived our guest were all waiting for us. We chose “L’auberge St-Gabriel” in old Montreal which is the oldest auberge in North America (1754) and had the banquet room on the second floor with a buffet supper (french cuisine) that turned out to be amazing…

After, we went out with a few friends to a bar on the main (st-Laurent) and had Martinis and a lot of fun…

wow… 7 years ago….

So, happy anniversary to me and my love. I love you Simon and I always will…

you truly are my “perfect friend”

I’m Sad….

After supper, Xavier and Simon found Nelson (our older cat) on the stairs outside with something wrong with his leg.

I choose Nelson when he was about a week old. He still had his eyes mostly closed and wasn’t yet able to walk. We brought him home about 3 months later when he had been weaned from his mom. I was 13.

He became very attached to me and me to him, he slept with me every night and was always not too far. He was also Roger’s favorite also and we used to “fight” over who was his “parent”…

Over the years he was just part of the family, my little sidekick, my “gros nanou”…

In his first year we almost lost him a few times due to recurrent bladder stones and he went through surgery three times. We weren’t able to find a food that agreed with him and finally after the third time we finally found the right food and kept him on that….
When I moved in with Simon, he came with me. he became our cat… Xavier was born, then Colin… Nelson saw it all… he wasn’t close to the kids but would come running if they would cry… He would be around my feet looking at me like he was saying “What’s wrong” and would nuzzle a bit…

Simon brought him up the stairs and put him on the ground to see what exactly was wrong, I was thinking a broken or sprained limb at first but he tried to walk and both of his legs dragged behind him. He was paralysed.

I called the Vet and went straight away, knowing very well deep inside that he wouldn’t be coming back. We knew well enough that we let Xavier and Colin say bye and we told them straight away that there where good chances that he wouldn’t be coming back.

I got to the vet and waited for quite an bit being that they were full but had told me to come when I had called. When I went in she checked to see the extent and though we thought that it may have been that he had not landed well during a fall she explained that it was more likely an embulism. Pretty much he had a stroke of the spinal cord. She explained that we could try anticoagulants and wait 24-48 hours but with his pre-existing cardiac problems, his age and the fact that there was no pulse at all in his hind legs and they were as cold as ice, that it would probably not be fair to him. I had to agree with her. I don’t think it is ever in my right to choose the time of death of another being, but I also didn’t want him to suffer and I knew that it was the right thing to do… as hard as it was…

I stayed with him and brought him home after. My mom will be burying him up at my uncles place this weekend along side our dog and another of our dear cats.

Nelson was 15 years old, was still in great shape,was still as loving and cuddly and as handsome as he has always been, he slept with us each night nest to our heads and would groom me often. Today, he stayed next to me all day and even let Colin cuddle and pet him…

Xavier is sad and wants Nelson to come back but understands that he is dead.It seems that he told Simon that Nelson is with his Pops. Though I don’t beleive in such, I still can understand the comfort it brings…

I will miss him…

Sweet little man…

It has been a bit over a year since my dad died and for the last few weeks Xavier has been talking about him more and more… he talks about what they used to do together an what his Pops liked doing… he also remembers the funeral and talks about that also…
A few days ago he asked to have a picture of his Pops to put next to his bed… and we will be doing that soon together…

I still have trouble believing that he is gone. Even though Xavier didn’t get to know him long, I am so happy that he remembers him… It makes me sad that Colin will only remember him through our words and pictures…

I miss him so much…

Another Change…

Like I said the other day in the post about changes that I am starting to make in my life I mentioned the meal plans… I have been making meal plans each week so that I don’t have to go to the store as much… I can try to save a bit of money…. I know what we can eat and that we have everything for those meals, we waste less and it just makes my life a bit easier and less of a hassle…

Well… last week I was checking out some really cool vegetarian and Vegan blogs and got some good ideas for meals… Something that I have wanted to do for a long time is eat a more vegetarian diet… I don’t want to become vegetarian because… well.. I like meat! and I just love the BBQ season that is coming…. however, I would like to eat a lot less meat so that I get more whole grains and veggies in my diet and I happen to do that more when I cook less meat…

One little problem is that Simon doesn’t eat Tofu… won’t even try it anymore… It is not a “Taste thing” but a “texture thing” (at least that is what he says ) but I think it is more of a “mental” thing cause I grated some tofu into a soup and he ate it and then when he found out that there was Tofu in it he wouldn’t eat it anymore…

Anyways… this week is a veggie week in my meal plan and I want to try new meals and get more ideas (also great to get the kids to try more things) After this week I want to make each week have more veggie meals then meat based meals…and I want to try something new at least once a week…
Anyways… I need some good ideas….What’s your Fav meal?

BTW… these are the meals for the week in our home…

• Veggie Burgers
• Vege Pate (prolly in a wrap with a sauce, sprouts and grilled veggies)
• Grilled Veggie pressed sandwiches
• Pizza with veggies, sun dried tomatoes etc…
• Chile
• Toasted Pitas with a bean dip
• Stir Fry with Peanut sauce

ttc….

(Trying to Conceive) for those who may not know what that means
Over the last few months, since I got my cycles back we have been ttc but without really ttc… just having the attitude… “Hey if it happens, it happens”… it hasn’t happened…

I have been taking my temp every morning, something that I do while ttc or not… so I have been really seeing my cycles and the last two cycles I have started getting sad when AF (Aunt Flo) arrived… I think I really want it now… I would love to have another baby… I miss having a newborn and I really do love the age difference between the boys… if I got pregnant this cycle there would be exactly the same difference in age between them….

It is crazy when this feeling hits… the need and want to be pregnant again, to have a new child, it completely consumes you…

The same happened to me when I was ttc Colin… it took ten months and each month I thought about it more and more… until this feeling came and then I thought about it everyday… I was ready… and I was ready now! It took two cycles after that and I conceived Colin.

It has hit me again…. I really want another now, For the first time in a long time I calculated when the child would be born if I had concieved last cycle. It would have been a Halloween baby… I was sad that I got AF, I was surprised that my LP was very short…
I really want to have the feeling of a little one in me again.

My family i not done growing yet….

I still have a lot more love to give….

Forgot about this…

I completely forgot to talk about my night out!

I left on Saturday just before 6 while the Kids were eating supper…. both of them came and said goodbye to me and both had big smiles on their faces…. no tears, no “I want go wit’ you!!”…. just kisses and waves….
I got to where I was meeting Isabelle at the same time as she was pulling in and our converstation started…

I was only able to get the reservations to the retaurant for 8pm so we had two hours to kill… No Prob!… we went to Cactus (a cool Resto-bar) and had two beers and talked, and talked and talked…. heading out just before 8 and into the restaurant a few doors down… the restaurant we went to was the same that we went to the last time (and first time) we went out together at my Birthday last July… A little thai place that is always full and the food (and price) is amazing…
Both of us ordered “à la carte” starting with soup , spring rolls, a main dish of shrimp, onions and green pepper in a sweet and spicy sauce served with rice, and jasmine tea and lychees for dessert…

We left the restaurant at 10:30… We pretty much had one converstation that lasted from 6pm to 10:30 pm interupted only by bathroom breaks and talking the the waitress to order and say thanks when she bought our food….

It really did feel good…

However, I did make one big mistake….

Getting ready for the niht I had the bright idea to put a non-nursing bra on… It is the right size but my body is just not used to it anymore… and by 10pm I was starting to be uncomfortable, by 10:30 it was reallly starting to hurt, by the time I got home I was knew I had a blocked duct…. Xavier was still awake when I got home…. I nursed him right away but was in pain the whole time… I put heat on it, massaged it, took something for the pain and went to get Colin and brought him into our bed and got him to nurse a few times… I had chills and was in a lot of pain during the night and I tried to nurse often and massage as much as I could stand…. in the morning the pain had shifted but was still very much there…. All day Sunday I repeated the massaging, the frequent nursings and the heat…. Sunday night it was better, Monday morning even better and by monday night the pain was gone…..

It will be a long time before I risk using one of those things again….

A few Ramblings…..

Well… the holidays are officially over for us…

Sob…. Simon went back to work this morning… It felt really good having him here for almost two weeks…

The week before new years was taken to lounge around and be lazy all day for a few days which just made me relax and got a lot of stress out finally… Colin is growing up so fast and changing so much… over the holidays we have seen a remarkable change… he went from baby to toddler completely… We have almost no more need for the gate at the top of the stairs because he goes down them with no problem… Keeping the gate open also makes it great when we both (Simon and I) wan to do things on different floors…. now the kids can just freely go between us which also means that they play more knowing that they can get to us whenever they want to…. It feels now that the gate is shifting from being a safety device to a way to restrict movement which doesn’t feel right…. I just can’t believe that this time has come so fast….

Colin has also been eating everything lately and trying everything!! Recently we found out he LOVES black olives, escargots and Wakame (Seaweed Salad with spicy Chile-Sesame dressing)
Colin can also get on a chair and sit at the table with us which is another big change… hre are some pics of how big he is now…

Eating Wakame (note the green tinged tongue)

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New Years also brought old friends…

New years eve we made the gingerbread house that we had put off for a few weeks… Not that we didn’t have the time to do it but we didn’t take the time to do it… When we did got to it though we had a lot of fun and Xavier showed off his talents… It was great!

We had two friends come over for new years eve… Yan, a good friend of ours and who has taken a kind of “godfather” role for Xavier and Martine, a childhood friend of Simon’s that has become a good friend of mine… Martine has been in Equador for some time now for her thesis and found love there, so she is now just visiting to to turn in her thesis in and see family… She is one of those friends that you can’t not love… she is sweet, fun, honest and you just feel comfortable with her… one of those people that you don’t feel the need to entertain them all of the time… you can just be yourself…. So, it was great when we found out that the stay would be a bit longer then we expected… it will be sad for all of us to see her go tomorrow…

Here are some more pics…

Martine and Colin in the Ellaroo

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And well…. here are some more pics to share…. (I feel I have neglected Xavier in this post )

Xavier with the Hobberman ball….

And IN the Hobberman ball

and to finish….

a self portrait….

X-mas 2005

Well X-mas has come and gone and it was really not that bad… My mom and Alain arrived at about 6pm, my dad arrived at about 7:30, we all talked, laughed and there was no tension at all.. I think the situation was a bit awkward for Alain when my dad arrived but they hit it off pretty fast and the awkwardness left quickly… Xavier, before going to bed, wanted to leave cookies and milk out like in the Santa Story… so Simon helped him do that… The kids went to bed by about 8:30 and then our super started….
We had an entrée of cheese and freshly baked bread (I made 3 loaves of sourdough) , Lobster and escargots and then fondue with a side of my spinach salad with Maggi dressing (garlic, maggi, oil, vinegar, pepper) bean sprouts and cashews…
By the time that we were done we were too full for dessert… (I had made an Apple Crumble)
My dad went to bed first, then Simon and I, then my mom and Alain. Before going to bed Alain places the half eaten Cookies and empty glass of milk, left out by Xavier next to the tree so that he would see it in the morning.
In the morning, Colin woke first and we stayed in bed until Xavier woke up and came into the room… then we quickly headed out to see the presents under the tree…
One of the presents, the Thomas Train, was set up under the tree by Simon the night before, and that got Xavier’s attention more then the other presents. We all sat down, coffee in hand, to watch them open their presents and Xavier wasn’t even ready to start, happily playing with his Thomas Train. We asked him to look at the presents and to give them to the person to whom they belonged… It was very surprising when he got to a present that had my name on it… examined it a few seconds and then said…
“dats… um…dis is for mi-si-sa (Melissa)” and handed me the present… We all couldn’t believe it… he recognized my name!! He also recognized his name and Colin’s name… and the presents that didn’t have a name he knew were for Simon…
I love the way that my kids open presents… unlike other kids that I know that just rip into them, Xavier takes the time to open each present slowly and gently, plays a bit with the new toy and then goes to the next present. Sometimes, he didn’t even want to go to the next present to busy playing with the ones he opened previously.
The kids got tons of toys from us, clothes from my mom and grandma. Simon got cologne, a 1.2 Kilo container of Cashews, 2 DVD’s (that he bought as a present from me ), Chocolates, 2 shirts and a sweater. I bought my mom her Pajama (every year we buy each other Pajamas). I got my pajama, chocolates, a “Roll O Puzzle”and a Sony Flash 1GB MP3 player that Simon won at work…
X-mas day was a lazy day, my Dad left first, then my mom and Alain, needing to get ready for their trip to see his family in “Les Iles de la Madelaine”
We ate the leftover fondue from the night before like we do every year… the kids got to have fondue also which was a hit with Xavier for at least 20 minutes…
I made escargots for myself and Colin wanted some and loved them… so he ate at least 4 of them… Simon and Xavier wouldn’t even taste…
By 10pm we were ready to go to bed and decided to tape the 6 feet Under episode…
Well…here are some pics…

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BTW… this is a great article about Santa and how to keep the magic of Santa without Lying… and this is what we have decided to do…
However, as much as we talk about the story of Santa, Xavier is convinced that Santa exists… so I feel good that we are not lying to him and he is the one using his imagination…

The day of the eve…

Well… it’s the 24th today and we are having our traditional Fondue supper tonight. Simon’s Mom and Sister won’t be here for the first time in a few years because of work schedules but will be here new years day instead. So originally it would have been just my mom and her new boyfriend… however… this week my dad called me (biological dad) and asked what our plans were inquiring if we were going away or not… So I invited him too… I don’t think my mom was too happy but she didn’t say anything, she was about to but I interrupted her saying that I didn’t think she would mind especially since she had invited him in the past when we used to do this fondue supper at her house… I really don’t think that she as a problem with it herself but I think it will make her new boyfriend a bit uncomfortable. Honestly, I don’t care at all… and I think that she knows that that is not a valid excuse for me… especially since I rather that he not even be here (of course she doesn’t know that)…
It will be weird though having both my mom and dad here though… it is not often that I have seen them together, especially for more then just a few minutes.
But, with my Dad here I have some real help in the kitchen… My dad is a professional cook and makes the most amazing food… nothing fancy but very tasty… he has worked in lodges, restaurants, bars…doing short order stuff and more…
I used to think that my mom was the best cook and she is pretty good but everything that she makes has the same flavour… it’s not like it’s bland or anything… she has always been good on giving foods great taste and she makes the best Spaghetti sauce… but all of her other food is always “a la mexicaine” which is good for a few things but after a while you get tired of the same flavours and spices and her spices are also old and taste it… I mean I think that some of the spices in her kitchen are older then me!
Anyways…it’s been a while now that she doesn’t help at all when she comes over anyways… she will make drinks and she makes an amazing Caesar but she’d rather drink them and she does.. and wine and a few tokes and well just isn’t able to help anymore…
Anyway… we are broke this year but the kids are getting tons of presents… I went bargain shopping at a local thrift store… they get toy donations all year long but only take the toys out before x-mas so there are tons and they are really cheap…They put out new toys on Tuesdays and Fridays which happened to be the days that I brought Xavier to daycare..
Here are some things that picked up…

Puzzles: 25 cents each ,
Puzzle Book with 6 puzzles (block pieces) 1$
3 Playmobile construction trucks with people 3$,
Playmobil Pirate ship +all of the pieces +pieces for other sets (a BIG bag) 4$,
Cabbage Patch baby that goes in the Bath 2$,
Cloth Big top circus with wooden animals and pieces 75 cents
Two different themed (same company) Train sets with all of their pieces 2$ each
One Battery operated Thomas train set 3$ (had a pull back and go Thomas in the bag too)
A Rain stick .75 cents
A Vintage Fisher Price Circus Train 1$
Hot Wheels grand stand and track 1$
PlayDough Dentist set (you make the teeth and then be the dentist) 2$
Big Bag of Playdough Toys (Deserted Island theme) 3$
Fisher Price Plane 1$
Hobberan sphere 1$
Musical instruments (vintage Fisher price stuff) 2$
View Master with slides 1$
2 String Puppets 2$

And more!!!!

So, the boys are getting one “new’ gift each and the rest is all stuff that I got there, and there are even too many things that there are gifts for other occasions also…

Well… I need to get the house clean… Happy holidays for those who celebrate in the days to come… I’ll have pics tomorrow….