Baby C's Shower #2!

On August 23rd, baby C was showered again with gifts from family! This time around, Aleksys Mom and Aunt threw the shower for baby at the Lambeth lawn bowling centre with Aleksy's side of the family (along with my sister and Mom!). It was the same spot as my bridal shower and is really a great shower spot with lots of space, a kitchen with fridge and oven for food prep and the big windows show the bowling green! After this shower, we are so set for baby. We just spent our babies r us gift cards on the last few items and we now have everything we need for baby! Except diapers... but the (man) diaper party is coming up Sept 12!

I got a couple uses out of this dress during my pregnancy! It's not a maternity dress but still fits me appropriately in the front with the big ol' belly! I wore it to Aleksy's aunts wedding in Rhode Island back in June and it was still good for my August 23rd shower... I'm not gonna lie, I'm really looking forward to fitting into normal clothes again.

This was taken in the backyard just before leaving for the 1pm shower!

My Mom and Aleksy's Gran at the shower. You can see in this picture the rubber ducky centre pieces and truffles which were on all the tables. You can also see my special rubber ducky necklace that Aleksy's Mom and Aunt brought for me to wear! This way, when I gave hugs, we squeaked.

Baby bingo! In this little bag was a lot of Hersheys kisses, which were used as bingo markers and also for everyone to take home! And the little rubber ducky pictures were on each bag and they were all different pictures a draw was done later at the shower for a prize for the person who had the rubber ducky drawn.


















And the food!!! The food was delish with sandwiches and roll ups, quinoa salad, BLT potato salad, mini quiche, veggies, fruit, mousse (chocolate banana which was amazing!), my most favourite peanut butter brownie squares, and cheesecake! We took home some cheesecake, PB squares and they are long gone now. Although I haven't had any cravings this pregnancy, I have been treating myself and baby to extra treats!

Me and my sister! My sister and Mom came to both showers. Steph ran the Bingo game and helped me to write what gifts were given to me on the cards... such a huge help!

After both showers, we have all the things we need for baby: car seat, stroller, playpen, clothes, blankets, our baby bjorn, playmat & exersaucer, baby bath tub, the vibrating chair, and so much more. Feeling so good about baby coming!

We are so lucky to have had so much help from our family and friends!

Yoga Time!

For the past couple months I have been squeezing in a yoga session once a week into my routine. I am usually not a huge yogi but I have been informed that the stretching is really good for pregnancy and is good prep for labour so I am trying to keep up with it so my joints don't get rusty.

The reason I am not a huge yogi is because I am more of a gym girl and I feel like I missed a work out when I do yoga instead of something that makes me sweat and challenges my body. But because I don't go to the gym every day (I go usually about 3 times a week), it gives me something active to do on a no-gym day. Even at 33 weeks, I can still d lots of of my gym classes... this week I did boot camp and my step class. Just some modifications for abs and the laying down exercises. The big change at the gym is I can definitely no longer run on the treadmill... it feels like I have bricks in the lower region of my tummy when I try. But it feels good to keep working out even if there's lots of differences from what I used to be able to do!

I did an 8 week session through re birth centre last time around, which I liked because there was 15 minutes before each class where someone came to talk to the class about a topic (like birth photography, tree of life, placenta pills, and also some things that apply to me like keeping things positive instead of stressing over crazy labour stories). But re birth was a bit pricey at $120 for 8 sessions. I was going to sign up for it again, but Chels suggested I go to yoga shack, which I went to today for the first time. And I'm glad I did because I got 40 days for $40... way more reasonable than re birth! And now I have unlimited yoga to take me until baby comes (only 46 days until my due date)!

Baby C's Shower #1!

Sunday August 9th was baby C's shower with my side of the family and close friends! My sister, Steph organized the whole thing from the sailboat/nautical theme to the decorations to the food (with a little help from my awesome friends for the food!). It's a weird feeling having a shower thrown for you. It feels a little something like "come hang out for a couple hours and don't forget your present": makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. But I have really amazing family and friends and almost everyone was able to make it despite summer busyness (with the exception of some of my social work friends who live in the GTA and some work friends) and everyone was way too kind with their gifts for baby C. He got seriously spoiled and I am feeling so prepared for baby! Plus, Aleksy's Mom and Aunt are throwing another shower later this month with Aleksy's side of the family, which will make me feel even more prepared... Baby doesn't even know how lucky he is yet to get to meet all the awesome people we know!

I bought this pink dress end of May/early June as a potential dress for Aleksy's Aunt's wedding. I bought 2 dresses because these days, I am never sure what is going to fit me and what isn't. Lucky for me this dress still fit for my August shower! But seriously, just barely. I think if I tried it on this weekend, I would find that it no longer fits because everything gets so short in the front (because its non-maternity... maternity clothes can be pretty frumpy).

Aleksy took this picture before the shower!

The shower was to start at 1pm so I showed up a bit early around 1230 in case of early guests. Actually, most people come to showers a bit late... everyone seemed to arrive at once between 1:10-1:20pm.

Before everyone arrived, I took a picture with the cute nautical decorations and my sister (who also decorated herself nautically with navy and white and striped shoes!). The banner behind us says "It's a Boy" with some sailboats and anchors and you can see the sailboat on the dining room table behind us. This sailboat was for us to keep and will go in baby's room!

There was so much awesome food and desserts prepped for the shower. My sister bought enough appetizers and finger foods to feed an army, my friends helped with fruit & veggie trays and Chels made pinwheels (which are my speciality and Steph thought Chels had made them for my parties!). And of course, Tabi being as awesome as she is made these watercolour nautical shortbread cookies that say "Baby Chwiecko"

But Tabi doesn't mess around when she bakes... she goes big! So I also had chocolate and vanilla cake pops (with the sailboats on top), red velvet cupcakes (my fave), and chocolate and regular shortbread shaped into nautical shapes.

I took what was left of these home and they are long gone... baby wanted them!

Aleksy, me and baby C got so many thoughtful gifts from everyone. And everyone got us such practical gifts! We now have lots of clothes for baby (before the shower we only had a few onesies) in lots of sizes, our car seat & stroller and highchair! Plus we got lots from our registry so what we have to buy for baby before his born is next to nothing now... thank goodness because baby stuff adds up so quickly!

This is my aunt and my cousin displaying the little ice cube baby that was for one of the games. The first person to free the baby from the ice cube was the winner! I now have a lot of little babies because I thought they were fun and took them home! I really enjoyed hearing Kenny talk about going to the store to buy these babies and that 4 other people had bought little plastic babies that same day!

We also played the game where everyone had to write as many boy names with every letter of the alphabet within a minute, and a game where everyone had to guess how big my tummy was with a piece of string (Annette got it almost exactly!).

The delicious DQ ice cream cake! The top says " Ahoy, it's a boy!" with a blue sailboat! There was no shortage of dessert...

Tabi also made these amazing favours for everyone: shortbread cookies with a paint your own sailboat.. you just dip the paintbrush in water and use the colours on the chocolate shortbread piece to paint! And its all edible. I don't know how she comes up with these things...

Aleksy and I are super excited about baby's new wheels! My Dad and his girlfriend were way too generous to get us our stroller, the Citi Mini GT! Baby's gonna be rolling in style and it's super lightweight, folds the easiest and turns into a jogger (you just lock the front wheel!). Feeling so prepped for baby! 

Civic Holiday Weekend

We had a packed weekend for the civic holiday long weekend with lots of summery plans.

On Friday night, we headed to the ribfest in Victoria Park. We didn't go to ribfest last year (or any festival in Vic park), so we wanted to make it to at least one this year and ribfest is usually a good one to hit! We were meeting Chels and Warren there and because they were running a bit behind us and we were hungry, we got some meat skewer starters before our rib suppers from the philippine bbq! So delish... we know our filipino friends make the best bbq, so...

Choosing a rib place is the hardest. There was a man who randomly came up to us to explain that all the ribs came from the same place and the difference was in the sauces. We picked our place based on the combos and the fact that the Silver Bullet had corn bread (we really like our corn bread). I had ribs and pulled pork and Aleksy wanted a bit of all the meats and had ribs, pulled pork, and chicken. We shared the corn bread, beans and coleslaw. I learned my lesson this year that I really cant eat a full dinner to myself and we'd be better off to share and save $20! It cost us about $45 for everything and we had meat to bring home!

One of the best kiosks at the ribfest was the sweet baby rays one. Free stuff is always the best and they had a wheel where you could spin to win either full bottles of sweet baby rays or little sample cups. I initially won a bottle by spinning the wheel, then at the end of the night when they were shutting down, they were getting rid of all the full bottles so we both scored 2 bottles each!!

On Saturday, Aleksy and I were bound and determined to have a beach day. We didn't go to the beach at all last year with the exception of our separate bachelor/bachelorette parties so we couldn't miss this year! We packed up our picnic lunch and headed to Ipperwash on Saturday... we got there around 1pm and had a couple hours of good, sunny beach time.

We noticed that Ipperwash beach sand space was a lot less than the last time we were there (I think that was 2 years ago!). The tide left minimal space for sand and you can see that that left us really close to the people beside us.

Beach sandwiches always are tastier than home sandwiches! This is Aleksy having his mea sandwich while I stuck with good ol PB and J because I am supposed to avoid cold cuts and I already had cold cuts twice in the week!

<--- pregnant beaching... my tummy's so big! Only 2 months to go!


After a couple hours of sitting on the beach and awkwardly tying to lay on the beach (which I gave up on and decided pregnant ladies are only meant to sit at the beach), we got a couple pregnant beach pictures in, then it became super windy and rainy. The sunny weather only lasted about 2 hours. We tried to hold off but when I got the goosebumps, it was no longer enjoyable and it was time to leave... and go for ice cream! We went right over to our regular ice cream spot at Ipperwash then headed home and had BBQ for supper and watched a movie (it was the True Story movie with Jonah Hill and James Franco).

On Sunday, we headed to Stoney Creek for an overnight date with our friends at their new place! Their backyard set up is amazing for a summer night. We spent Sunday evening in the backyard having BBQ for supper and a campfire (with smores... needless to say). This is the hammock in the backyard, which the girls were swinging on.

Cadence loves hanging out with the big girls, Serena and Natalia!

Our plan for Monday was to go out on a day adventure to either the reptile zoo in Hamilton or the African Lion Safari. We chose the Reptile zoo because it was a bit cloudy that morning and because of the savings! Andzelika had 2 for 1 admission coupons for everyone, which meant we only paid $14 with taxes to get in.

It was definitely worth while. First, we went around and looked at all the snakes, geckos, and other reptiles around the zoo. They also have an alligator and a crocodile. Then we went to a show where this lady took out a few of the reptiles, told us about them and let us touch them!

Here's Serena, Natalia, Cadence, and Chels touching one of the reptiles (I don't remember what he was... but I remember his name was Freud).

Everyone sitting round during the show... except Warren and Cadence who were taking a break because a 1 years old's attention span is not too long.... plus it was super sweaty hot inside the reptile zoo!

Contrary to me, Aleksy was more apprehensive to touch the snakes and reptiles. In real life, I scream and run really fast from gardener snakes that are on our lawn (this indeed happened last week), but when they are contained like this, I am totally game to touch anything.

You can see Aleksy really enjoyed touching the massive snake (which the lady pulled out of a big plastic tote with clasps... weird)... I also had to convince him to touch it.

After the reptile zoo, we headed back to London... it was a pretty jam packed, fun long weekend!

Our July Rachel Weekend!

Last weekend, we had my niece Rachel for a full weekend, Friday to Sunday! Before the weekend, we had set out some ideas of what we were going to do on the weekend because we wanted to load her full of fun things to do. We were watching Rachel while my sister and Kenny were out at the boat with Mom and Paul. On Friday, Rachel came over around supper time, and we ordered some pizza, got some snacks and watched and movie. And by movie I mean that Rachel brought her favourite Spongebob shows and insisted we watch them because they are the best. So Aleksy and I (half) watched Spongebob with Rachel.

Not only did Aleksy and I plan for things to do with Rachel, she also told me that Saturday was "girls day" because Aleksy was out at Rock the Park and it was just Rachel and I. She brought all her nail polishes (she has a lot) and wanted to do manicures. The girl has a lot of nail polishes... more than me!

Before we got our nails all prettied up, we had some homemade pancakes for breakfast (mine and Aleksy's weekend go-to breakfast!) and then we went garage saling in our neighbourhood where Rachel scored some new stuffies.

It was just after lunch that Rachel and I painted our finger and toe nails before heading out to the movies! Complete with sparkles and all...

There were 2 options that I gave to Rachel for movies to watch on our "girls day": Minions and Inside Out. It was an easy choice for Rachel because she had already seen the Minions movie so we went for an afternoon Inside Out movie! This is the one I wanted to see way more so I'm glad my sister had taken Rachel to see Minions earlier in the week!We were originally going to go to the movies in the evening after the park but because it was a 30 degree hot hot day, we decided to watch the movie in the cool theatre and go to the park in the evening...

<---- this is our movie selfie. Rachel makes pretty faces for pictures. The beauty of rainbow cinemas is for under $25, we got admission to the movies, Rachel's kids snack pack compete with popcorn, pop, and candy and I had a large drink! If it was Silvercity, $25 would be admission alone...

The movie ended around 5pm and we had lots to snack on during the movie, so we weren't exactly hungry for supper yet... so we headed to Gibbons park first to feed the ducks!

As you can see, Rachel was very excited to feed the ducks. They get aggressive and hissy when they see bread, so we went to a safe area where there was not too too many ducks and geese (its the geese that are scary!).

After the bread ran out (pretty quickly because Rachel was really excited about feeding the ducks), she played on the playground for a while at Gibbons. Then we had some McDonalds for supper before heading home for the evening. When we got home, we played some soccer outside then watched Big Hero before calling it a night!

On Sunday the 19th, our big plans for the day included celebrating our little Cadence's 1st birthday!! Before heading to Chels and Warren's we had some breakfast, hit up the park in our subdivision... because Rachel would never let the weekend pass without doing that... After realizing that we forgot to tell Rachel to pack a swimsuit, we went to Wal Mart to pick out one because we knew Rachel would be very sad if the other kids were playing in the "cold tub" and she couldn't. We also got pool noodles for Rachel and Andzelika's girls because swimming's just not the same without pool noodles. Rachel chose the colour to match her nail polish!

Rachel loved the water and stayed in there until it was time for supper and cake and presents! It was a super hot day!

Cadence with her birthday cake... no utensils needed. Although her birthday is actually beginning of June, we celebrated in July because the initially scheduled birthday got cancelled because Cadence was exposed to (but never got!) scabies.... yup. Scabie baby.

But Cadence got to space her cake loving out with a birthday that she had in June, and in July!

I decided I should also get double the cake, so I had 2 big pieces... because... why not, i'm pregnant! No drinking so I make up for it in cake...

Boat Weekend!

This weekend, Aleksy and I went up to the boat for some sailing. We just got back a few hours ago! Maneuvering around the sailboat is not as easy as it seems when almost 7 months pregnant. In confined spaces, you surprisingly use a lot of core muscles to get around. We headed up to Whitby bright and early Saturday morning and got there for about 10:30am. We decided not to do the usual Friday-Sunday full weekend since my sleeping patterns are somewhat unusual these days (with a body pillow, no sleeping on my back, waking up to pee and all those fun pregnant things) and I knew it would be a difficult sleep for me so we got one more day of sleep at home and drove up ourselves on Saturday (we usually just tag along in the car with my Mom and Paul). 

Saturday was great sailing weather... just the right amount of wind to get a speed of around 6 knots with lots of breeze so it wasn't too hot. We were out on the lake for about 5 hours. It was really sunny and I now have some lobster thighs.

Pregnant boating: one of the biggest differences in the usual boat weekend was the lack of drinking (for me!). What's usually a weekend with lots of palm bays & banana martinis, sometimes as early as 9am, was not the case this weekend. This was my "special, fun" drink for the weekend: Dr. Pepper! After the day out of sailing, we had some steak & veggies on the bbq for supper and some drinks and while Aleksy and Paul were out for longer, I called it a night before 11pm! The sun took a lot out of me!

Today, we had a pancake and sausage breakfast that was held at the marina then visited with Paul's Mom. She knitted our baby some adorable things! A few hours later we are now home and plan to call it an early night to catch up on sleep... I missed my body pillow last night.

Summertime Things

I feel like our weekends have been really busy since summer started, but can't put my finger exactly on what we've been doing. I guess maybe a lot of baby prep has taken our time.. like furniture shopping, registering etc. But it is just the beginning of summer and there are lots more summer days to come. Here's what we've been up to since the nice weather has arrived:

On June 13th, Brooklyn and I went out for the Big Sister's fishing day and BBQ! This was our 2nd time around participating in this event since it's something different that we wouldn't do on our own and includes lunch. It's at a lake near Dorchester and the club that owns the lake volunteers to provide the day for matches at Big Brothers Big Sisters.

This is the first catch of the day... the fish was taken off the hook before we got the picture and Brooklyn or I weren't about to touch the fish, so someone held it out for us. We're the kinda fishers that don't touch the fish... or the worms (at all.).

And another catch! We both caught at least 2 fish each (granted, it was a stocked trout lake) so I think we're pretty good, successful fisherwomen. After you catch the fish, you send them back swimming in the lake (and in our case, we hope that we didn't hurt them with the hook).
Then we had our hotdogs an hamburgers and headed back after lunch.

On the same day, after fishing, Aleksy and I had an 80s party to attend! It is an annual party that one of my teammates holds. This is a picture of some of his crazy decorations. His whole house was absolutely covered with 80s props and decorations like this table here. It was crazy the amount of 80s stuff he has... it was a really impressive setup!

Prior to leaving for the party on the Saturday, we watched the movie "16 candles" to get us into the 80s spirit!

We had hit up the thrift stores earlier in the week and found our attire at the east end Salvation Army: I bought a number of options including a one piece jumpsuit, a dress complete with shoulder pads, and some fluorescent items. Aleksy got an old school jumpsuit & a fun floral hat from Ardene.

This was my final product of thrown together fluorescent clothing & fishnet stockings. I even found a scrunchy at Ardene...

You know its a good party when my 23 week pregnant self didn't consider leaving until 1am! My usual bedtime is more like 10pm. It's hard work making a baby.

This was our Canada Day project: baby's room. The painting is now complete with a navy blue accent wall (which Aleksy is starting in this picture) and the rest of the room gray. I'm really excited to get all the other decor up... for now we have the crib & dresser set up and the room painted. A good start when entering the third trimester.