the story of us.

 

It was summer of 2002 when one of my best friends, Rachael, mentioned to me that she knew of a guy that she wanted to set me up with. She said, “his name is Simon. He’s Christian, he’s good-looking and he snowboards.” My interest-meter to this conversation suddenly increased ten-fold. Then she said, “Too bad, I’m going away for university or I could arrange something where you could meet him.”  A little disappointed that she would bring up a potential date-able guy and then not be able to meet him, I said, “oh well, maybe I’ll meet him next summer when you’re back.”

January 2003, I was at a friend’s church when Rachael’s younger sister introduced me to her group of friends. One of the guys she pointed out was named Simon. Suddenly I had a flashback of what Rachael had said earlier in the summer and I wondered if this was the guy she was talking about. I had to find out so of course the best thing to do was walk right up to him and say, “hey, are you snowboarder Simon?” He gave me a puzzled look and said, “I snowboard if that’s what you mean.” Then I followed up with, “do you know Rachael Kaptein?” He nodded.  We chatted more and found out we both had passes to Mount Seymour which led to some awesome snowboard dates. I was positive that this was the guy Rachael had mentioned, she knew me too well, I liked this guy instantly!

Total side note but I think everyone should date on the mountain. You don’t have to worry if you look good in your outfit because everyone looks fat in a snowsuit. Plus, after you put on your helmet, goggles and neck warmer, the only thing exposed is your nose so who cares if you have no make-up on. And you sit side by side on the chairlift and don’t have to stare awkwardly across the table from each other. AND after 10 minutes on the chairlift, you get to just zip down the mountain and think of more interesting questions and topics to talk about on the next chairlift ride up.

But then Simon graduated from BCIT and moved back to Enderby. Then came the year of the Greyhound bus where once a month we took turns sitting 7-8 hours/ one way to see each other for a weekend.  

Then Simon decided to “retire-early” from Forestry and he moved out here. Hallelujah, I never wanted to get on another Greyhound bus again.

Ok now, fast forward to late November 2004. It was around 9:00pm and I had come home with my sister from kinder-gym class. My sister was the coach and I was assisting a child in the class with autism. Granted, after an hour of running around in a stinky gym with a hoard of 5 year olds, I was exhausted. The phone rang and I was glad it was Simon.  We talked for a while and then he asked me to find the “World’s best girlfriend” trophy he had given me some time ago. Puzzled, I complied and got it. He said, “Now this sounds strange but I want you to take it apart. If you carefully unscrew the trophy, it will come apart.” “Umm..OK?” I replied. I took it apart and out fell a little slip of paper that said, “Nessy, will you marry me?”. I said, “for real? Really?” Then Simon said, “I knew you wouldn’t believe me, just come downstairs to your backyard.” I replied, “What? My deck? Why? Are you here?” Simon said, “Just come downstairs!” And then I came downstairs, still in my stinky gymnastics clothes to see my awesome then-boyfriend in a tuxedo holding a bouquet of roses and on a 6 foot board in lights spelled out Nessy, will you marry me?  I can’t remember much of what he said after that, I do remember the last part though when he got down on one knee and said, “Nessy, will you step into my heart?” and he had strung together lights to make a heart on my backyard deck.  “Yes! Yes! Yes”

 

 

And Dec 17 2005 I married my soul mate.  Best decision I ever made.

 

And now, today, Dec 17 2012. 7 years together. Simon, thanks for being everything I ever wanted. Thanks for your patience with me, your constant support of everything I attempt, your thoughtfulness, your eagerness to serve and your commitment to be the best husband and dad. You are awesome.

Happily ever after doesn’t even begin to describe how blessed I feel. I just saw on the news that a lovely old couple are both turning 100 years old this week and have been married for 83 years. I hope that will be us. Praying that I will have you by my side forever and ever. AMEN!

 

The 30 step bedtime routine.

Simon always makes fun of me because the bedtime routine I've created is so ridiculously long...it's not that long. I mean it's just 30 steps...aren't all bedtime routines a series of superstitous steps that parents feel afraid to omit because they want their child to sleep through the night? Well here is what we do every night....

 

 

 

1. Tell Natallie it's time for a bath in english, chinese ("chung leung") and sign language.

2. Undress Natallie. She likes to help but usually gets her large head stuck in her shirts.

3. Take her diaper off. Ask her to throw it away.

 4.Ask her to put the garbage back after throwing the diaper away.

5.Fill the tub with water, add bubble bath for extra excitment.

6. Place Natallie in bath.

7. Wash her hair with shampoo. Make fun hair styles.

8. Ask Natallie stand up so you can wash her bum.

9. Hold Natallie in the tub and dump out the soapy water. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater (I finally know where that saying comes from!)

10. Fill with fresh water. Refine her fine motor skills in squeezing water out of her water toys.

11. When she looks adequately pruny, tell her "all done bath" in english & sign language.

12. Ask Natallie to put away each of her water toys back in the bucket. She will want to say bye to each one as she puts it away.

13. Put a towel on your lap. Put Natallie on your lap facing the tub. Dump out the water as you say, "say bye bye to the water". Natallie loves this part. She will wave and say "bye!"

14. Bundle her up in the towel and lather up in lotion.

15. Distract her with a toy so you can get her diaper and pajamas and sleep sack on. Don't even attempt to put on a PJs that don't have zippers, you will never get her to stay still long enough to do up half the buttons

16. Place her on the futon and say "it's time for books" in english & sign language.

17. Read, read, read. She will show you which ones she wants. After each book, ask her, "Do you want more books?" She will sign "more books" and choose another one.

18. After ten million books and you are so sick and tired of Wet Pet, Dry Pet, Your Pet, My Pet and Three little kittens loved to play, they had fun in the sun all day.....tell her "books are going to sleep" in english, chinese and sign language and Natallie will sign "sleep".

19. Cover the bucket of books with a blanket. Say "good night books". Natallie will be sad and signing "more books" but just keep say "books are sleeping" and she is usually OK but she will try to lift up the blanket to sneak a peak at the sleeping books.

20. Say "time to brush your teeth" in english, chinese and sign language. Natallie will sign "brush". Put a teeny tiny bit of toothpaste on the brush and give it to Natallie. She will suck off all the toothpaste and sign for "more".

21. Take the toothbrush and try to actually brush her teeth.

22. Natallie will insist on brushing the teddy's teeth too.

 

23. Ask her to turn her sleepy music on. It's hard to walk to the CD player zipped up in her sleep sack so make sure she doesn't do a face plant on the floor. Natallie will press the right button to turn the CD on.

24. Ask her to turn her lamp on. She can do it by herself.

 

25. Ask her to turn the heat on. She hasn't quite figured out the dial yet but turn it to 20 degrees.

 

26. Ask her to turn the lights out. This one she can do.

 

27. Give her the stuffed giraffe in one arm and her white teddy in the other arm.

28. Wrap her in her green blanket and then the pink blanket.

29. She will hold up her stuffed animals now. She wants you to kiss them goodnight. Kiss the giraffe, kiss the bear and then kiss her.

 

30. Say "good night, time for sleeping" in english, chinese and sign. Then turn out the lamp on your way out. Turn the baby monitor on. Green means you executed the bedtime routine perfectly and you won't hear a peep from her til at least 7:00am in the morning.

 

 

See? Simple. 30 steps but nothing to it right?

new teeth suck.

I think all parents dread new teeth. I certainly do. We had a tough night last night, usually bedtime is so easy. Maybe we are just spoiled but usually as long as we do all the steps of the bedtime routine correctly (which I will blog about later), Natallie is so happy to be put in her crib and going to sleep for the night. Last night, after I gave Natallie her beloved giraffe and bear stuffed animals, she was still clinging onto me. I left her 10 minutes but then couldn't stand the crying so I went back in to calm her down. As long as I was holding her she was fine but as soon as I inched towards the crib, she was in tears. I tried getting Simon to try and it was the same thing. She was just a clingly koala. We gave her some Tylonel and put her in her crib. We had to listen to another 30 minutes of this until she finally fell asleep.  If you really want to hear what it sounded like, be my guest and click this video (It 20 seconds of her wailing videotaped thru the baby monitor).

100%

 

Usually I love the baby monitor, it shows me Natallie holding her giraffe and bear, all snuggled in and peacfully sleeping but yesterday, I was just staring at the baby monitor feeling sorry for Natallie. Nothing breaks a mother's heart more than listening to her child wail and knowing they just need to sleep. She was holding the railing of the crib shaking the bars and looking towards the door waiting for me to come in. I wanted to run in and make it all better. Darn teeth, why must they cause my baby so much pain? After she got tired of standing and shaking the bars, she was on her knees holding the crib bars. I was telepathetically sending her message to just go to sleep and finally, finally, the light on the monitor went from bright red to green. Green is good. Green means Natallie is finally sleeping.

So....I wrote that blog earlier today and just in case you were wondering, tonight wasn't any better, she was super happy for the whole bedtime routine until I actually put her in her crib, then it was this.......ohhh that sad sad sad face!

It was totally distracting to hear her wailing on the baby monitor all through bible study. I kept glaring at the red light above the monitor willing it to just turn green. Be green! Be green! Go to sleep baby! Be green! Tonight it was about 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes of wailing before she fell asleep. Is it teeth or can a perfectly synchronized bedtime routine fall apart for no apparent reason???

the dairy bar has officially closed.

It's a new milestone. the breastfeeding era is now over. the dairy bar has now officially closed. I've been working on cutting out the last morning feed for the past several weeks, my rule was that if Natallie asked for milk in the morning (i.e., signing milk with her pudgy hands), I didn't resist because I didn't really mind nursing her but just thought it was about time that we close the dairy bar. The morning nursing has been such a routine that it was the toughest one to get rid of...I tried replacing with a sippy cup of milk but that just made her mad so I tried bringing her into my room right away instead of staying in her room (where I usually nurse her) and distracting her by looking otu the window but that didn't really work either. I tried getting Simon to get her up and that worked for a one day but as soon as she saw me she would sign milk again. I thought I was going to be nursing her in the morning forever but then it all came down to a bowl of strawberries. Natallie has a sweet tooth (just like her mom) and I knew she would probably love to wake up to something sweet. A chocolate bar would of probably worked but that seemed slightly wrong so last week I tried going into Natallie's room with a bowl of strawberries. Viola! A very happy baby who didn't sign milk anymore.  Too bad it's almost winter and strawberries aren't in season so the last few days I have been mixing up my over-priced strawberries with bananas and frozen berries. It's working....she now wakes up and eats her bowl of fruit on the bed and we look at books together. It's so cute, I love our mornings together.

It's the end of an era. She's almost a little toddler now, she knows about 15 signs, she is starting to say 'mama' and "dada" (although this could be wishful interpretation), she is insisting on eating by herself with cutlery and has got a mouth full of baby teeth, even the ones in the back that I thought they get waaay later! I catch a glimpse of them whenever she is wailing. That teddy that she plays with every morning must be shrinking! Here is 5 days old versus 15 months old.

 

 

 

So I think the next milestone is now skiing right? We'll see what happens at Big White this Christmas! Can't wait!

crazy ridiculous love.

 

Everyone knows you do silly, ridiculous things when you are in love. When Simon and I were first dating, he lived in the Okanagan and I lived in Burnaby and once a month we would take turns sitting on the Greyhound bus for 8 hours one day so we could spend 48 hours together. We would try to stay awake for as long as it was humanly possible because we knew it would be another month until we would see each other again. I remember one time, Simon picked me up at nearly midnight at the Greyhound bus station and he had a rose and a thermos of hot chocolate waiting for me.  We sat outside in the chilly night sipping the hot chocolate, and I knew I would sit on the smelly bus for another decade to spend another minute with this awesome guy.

One time, I took the Greyhound bus at midnight on Sunday knowing that I had an early morning class on Monday morning. I wasn’t able to sleep on the way back because the passenger beside me had just gone to Banff and Jasper and needed to tell me allllllllll about his trip the entire bus ride.  And when I got back at 6:30am, I had exactly 60 minutes to get myself ready for my 7:30am class at SFU. I don’t think I heard a single word the professor lectured on that day.

 When it was Simon’s turn to visit me, he was already feeling quite tired from working long 12-14 hour shifts fighting the gruelling forest fire in the Okanagan but he stayed up for our mega-date marathon anyways and the tiredness caught up with him on Sunday morning when he was *this close* to fainting during the church service.  And did I mention the time Simon went out and bought a $200 tent so he could come camping with me and my friends.  I didn’t know until later in our relationship that Simon dislikes, I mean LOATHES camping! I don’t think he has used it since that one time! Oh and we can't forget the time he put wore his bedsheets and went to a toga party just because he knew I would be there even though he hates dress-up parties (almost as much as he hates camping). Ahhh yes, we were 20 years old, young and in love. We did some ridiculously stupid things because of love.

So now happily married for almost 7 years, I now understand what it is like to be ridiculously in love with your child that you would do anything for her. When she was little it was getting up every 2 hours to feed her when she was little, lying on the floor with her for hours on the floor for ‘tummy time’ and rocking her until my arms seized up so she would fall asleep . Now it’s never being able to eat my food until it’s cold because I am too busy convincing her to eat her meal and planning her every waking moment with educational and scintillating experiences. I started bringing Natallie to the Strong Start program near my house and noticed that Natallie loves to play kitchen. We already have some pretend food at home but not the big play kitchen so I set my mind of getting Natallie a kitchen for Christmas. I have been scouring the internet comparing prices on Walmart, Target, Sears, Toyrus and Costco. I want to get her a really nice sturdy wooden one, not the big plastic kind. The one I wanted to get was almost $200, I found it was almost $100 cheaper at Walmart in the States and I was contemplating whether or not I should drive to Bellingham to get her the kitchen when I saw an ad up on Craigslist (which I also had been religiously checking every day) that was selling a brand new wooden kitchen for $100 (regular price $200), I was ecstatic when the person said it was still available. They lived in Chilliwack though, but I didn’t care. I happily drove an hour and half from my house just to get my hands on this beautiful lovely wooden kitchen. I think my husband and my sister think I’m ridiculous for driving so far but it made perfect sense to me. I can’t wait to give it to Natallie for Christmas. I can’t wait to pretend to bake a cake and have teddy bear picnics and tea parties with her. I will probably do many more ridiculous things just because I love Natallie but that’s OK, that’s just the way I like it.

Natallie's christmas present! So excited!

 

Natallie & Nala

Natallie with Rach's daughters Nala and Sienna (Kristin's daughter Alexa is there too!)

Rachael and I have been friends for over a decade and I treasure her friendship greatly. We were blessed enough to have eachother in our weddings. And now I feel even more blessed that our daughters are less than 3 months apart. Rachael's daughter's name is Nalani but we all call her Nala for short. I love how Natallie and Nala's names even sound alike, they already sound like they belong together. I hope they will be great friends when they are older! Natallie got to meet Nala the morning after she was born!

Nala 1 day old and Natallie 2 months old!

Nala just turned 1 and it was a very hungry caterpillar theme party! Such a joy to share in the celebration!

Birthday girl gets a special 1 painted on

Natallie and her best friends: Aleza & Nala

Natallie loved the bubble machine at Nala's birthday

Natallie also loved driving the black pick up truck - just like Daddy!

Very impressive home-made cake!

individual cupcakes for all the kids!

Natallie shoved the entire cupcake in her mouth in one bite

Alexa gives Nala a penguin

Natallie gives Nala hair clips and a Dr. Seuss birthday book

 

Happy birthday Nala!! Looking forward to celebrating many more occasions together!

No boob before bed

It's been 2 weeks now that (most of the time), I am able to put Natallie to sleep at night without nursing her! And she is still sleeping through the night! Yippee *insert happy dance* I only nurse her in the morning now, just once a day! Wow, what a difference compared to a year ago! The picture above was taken at the hospital when she was less than 12 hours old. It's so crazy the way God designed mothers to do this. I mean I can't believe Natallie grew inside me for 9 months, and then after a lot of pain, she came out of me all purple-faced and squishy and covered in yucky white slime. Then my boobs are her exclusive source of nourishment for the next 6 months. I remember for the first several weeks it was such a struggle to get my milk to come in. Natallie had to take some formula and she drank it in a teeny, tiny little cup. I didn't know newborns had cup-drinking skills but apparently they do! The nurses told us to do it this way so it doesn't cause "nipple-confusion". Then I took the magic milk pills that my doctor prescribed and voila, instant dairy bar and milk squirting abundantly across the room!



Simon feeding Natallie with a cup!

 Now that I'm only nursing in the mornings, it makes me think of the early days when she was nursing every 2 hours around the clock. The days where I felt like I did absoluetly nothing but feed her and stare at the puke-stains on my carpet and coutning the bumps in our popcorn ceiling. It was like time stood still. I rememer wishing that I could just get Natallie to the stage where she was not nursing during the day so I could didn't have to plan my outfits around how easily I could get my boob out. And then after that happened, I wished I could get to the point where my boob didn't have to be part of the bedtime routine so I could dare I say, go out in the evening. But now that it's happened, I kinda miss all that exclusive time I had with her. Natallie is so active that I can never get her to stay still and cuddle anymore. I miss the days where she would fall asleep in my arms after I nursed her and I could see the milk puddle in her multiple neck folds. Now when I'm nursing her in the mornings, I am taking the time to savour the moment, I play with her pudgy hands and breathe in her baby hair. Because I know that pretty soon, she won't want to nurse in the mornings either.

Now just a few more months and no more dairly bar at all....and hoping Natallie's first word will be 'mom' and not 'moooo'!