I have Wiiitis. What is that? You may ask...

If you follow Matthew's personal blog then you would know that he recently bought the infamous Wii. And so we've been playing Wii Sports on a daily basis which consists of several sports games, including: tennis, baseball, boxing, bowling, and golf. But it's the tennis game (the one I like most) that gave me Wiiitis. And what the heck is that, again, you may ask. Well, it's a new medical condition that I was diagnosed with by Matthew. He indicated I have Wiiitis when I started complaining of severe shoulder pain a few days ago. Initially I thought he made up this condition, but apparently he hasn't. See proof here, on this CNN article. When playing Wii, you swing the remote just like you would swing a tennis racket, and so my poor shoulder just didn't handle the sudden movements very well, and now I am in horrid pain.

So if you are planning on visiting us anytime soon to play our Wii, you're most welcome to, but be aware that you might leave with Wiiitis. And I got a really great laugh from reading about the treatment to Wiiitis on the CNN article mentioned above: Ibuprofen. Oh, that was hilarious.... I still have some good 10 shiny-orange Ibuprofen pills in our medical drawer that I got at the hospital after I delivered Natasha. They were supposed to ease the post-delivery pain, but now they have a second purpose - to cure my Wiiitis!

Today I sold Natasha's Bumbo chair. If you remember my post back from January, I mentioned how I ended up buying the Bumbo chair due to all its benefits, advantages, and numerous positive reviews I found online. Well, Natasha was 4 months old in January and she's 9 months old now, and I can honestly say that in those 5 months she has used the Bumbo maybe twice. The child hates it! Royally. And obviously I couldn't have known that she would fall into the 10-15% of babies that hate the Bumbo, but she did. So the beautiful Bumbo was sitting in our bedroom collecting dust, until today. Earlier yesterday I saw a listing on kijiji.ca from someone looking for a Bumbo for their 3-month old baby; I contacted them and they drove all the way from Brampton today to pick it up from me. Nice, eh? I bought it for $55 and sold it for $30. Not bad of a deal. We now have a useless swing and a bouncy chair, but those are going into our locker-room downstairs.

We also disposed of our Diaper Genie. If you are reading this and planning on buying your (or someone's) new arrival a Diaper Genie - DON'T!!!
The thing is useless. It's expensive to begin with, and then you have to buy refills for it practically every two weeks which is another expense. And aside from that, the thing gets filled up way too quickly, it smells, and I think it's way less complicated to just throw the diapers in the garbage and then into the disposal. Just my daily piece of advice.

I discovered something slightly freaky about the name Natasha and her date of birth. Well, I've thought about this before but never bothered to estimate or calculate any dates, until today. A little background - Matthew and I picked the name Natasha a very long time ago, way before we were even engaged, let alone married. I suggested the name because I always loved it and Matthew must have liked it too because he obviously went along with it. So we decided to name our first daughter Natasha a very very long time ago. Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that we simply chose the name because we liked the way it sounded. And she was born at a nice full-term date of September 18, 2006.

Now, once I know the birth-date, I can enter it into a conception date calculator which I entered into the Pregnancy.org calculation form. I replaced the estimated due-date of September 11 with September 18 which was the actual date she was born on along with the cycle length of 34 days (my average). And voila, the estimated date of conception is Christmas - December 25, 2005.

And now for the freaky part - I entered the name Natasha into BabyNamesWorld.com which is a website that lists thousands of baby names and their meanings, and you can see for yourself the meaning of the name Natasha - Christ's birthday.

I find this incredibly freaky, but Matthew will probably laugh it off as a coincidence and say these dates are estimations and averages, but I don't care. I still think this is way too weird to be a simple coincidence. Now, what am I going to do with this information? Nothing at all, I just find it odd.

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Edited to add: when Matthew read this post he indicated he finds this amazing and knew about this too.

Today I realized I had 4 thick defrosted pork chops on hand and wasn't too sure what to do with them. The old and infamous breaded-and-fried-on-a-pen way just doesn't excite me anymore. Besides, both Matthew and I really love experimenting with new ingredients and trying recipes we haven't had before. Anyway, knowing how much Matthew loves Indian foods, I Googled up some potential Indian recipes which use pork chops and unfortunately there weren't too many (Indian people don't eat pork much, I suppose). But I did find one really interesting recipe and happened to have most of the ingredients on hand (the ones I didn't, I substituted with what I did have), and the outcome was very delicious. All 3 of us enjoyed it. Yes, all three of us. Even little Natasha who has reached a point where she simply cannot and will not tolerate watching us eat without also having a taste of what we're having. So of course she too ate quite a bit of this delicious recipe and kept asking for more!

Indian Pork Chops

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp of butter or olive oil
• 4-5 large pork chops cut up into bite-size pieces
• 1 cup uncooked rice (I used Basmati)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup thinly grated almonds
• 1 medium onion finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
• 8 oz tomato or pizza sauce
• 1 cup water (plus)

Directions

Heat oil or butter in a large skillet over a medium heat. Add pork chops and brown on both sides (about 2-3 minutes per side). In a bowl, combine rice, raisins, almonds, onion, and curry powder. Spoon into the skillet over and around the chops. Mix. Pour in tomato or pizza sauce and water.  Mix well. Cover and simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes until rice and pork chops are tender. Add more water as needed. Serves 4-5.

Note: If you do not have a cover for the skillet, simmer on medium-low heat for about 30-40 minutes.

Monday Marvel: 
My Monday Marvel is that, surprisingly enough, Natasha slept through the night last night. She didn't even wake up once for her soother which was very surprising to us, and so when I awoke at 6:00am to the sound of Matthew's alarm clock I was a tiny bit worried when I couldn't remember getting up during the night at all. But hopefully this is a step towards some uninterrupted sleep on Natasha's part.

Monday Moan:
My Monday Moan is what Natasha did during the night, while she was sleeping. Last night, around 10pm I went to check up on her and although she was deep asleep, I could smell the by now well-known scent of a dirty-diaper. Of course I figured she pooped but seeing how peacefully asleep she was I just let her be. Oops! Apparently she awoke around 6am this morning (same as Matthew) and was lying in her crib for at least a good 30 minutes before deciding to start whining. Once the whining began, Matthew went to the nursery to check on her only to find one of her legs stuck between the bars in the crib. Ugh. And we do have a bumper, but she managed to stick her leg out in the space above the bumper. Oh, what a silly girl! Now this is what Matthew told me.

What I actually remember is Matthew waking me up abruptly at 7am asking for immediate help! Apparently Natasha must have pooped again during her sleep, and her size 2 Pampers just couldn't handle all the mess! And so it leaked; poor Natasha's back was all brown and covered in poop, and saying that she smelled would be an understatement. And did I mention she was wearing brand new pajamas (see photo)? Needless to say, I stuck her bum under the tap and washed her entire back as well. Then, we needed to change the crib sheets which smelled too. Oh, the joys of parenting...

Well, I've posted before about Natasha fearing our living-room air conditioner, but after exposing her to it for several days she has managed to overcome her fear and now it doesn't bother her at all. Which is great considering the last few days have been so hot and humid (late 20s and early 30s) that surviving our apartment during the afternoon heat is practically unimaginable. Anyway, she's overcome that just in time to develop a new fear: the shopping mall fountain. We have a shopping mall nearby which is not huge, but it's shaped like a cross with the fountain right in the centre; so in order to get from one end of the mall to another, it's essential to pass by this large (and loud) fountain. Today we were at that mall and when we passed the fountain Natasha became red-faced and quickly started sobbing and holding her hands against her ears. She had the saddest expression on her face ever! It was heart-breaking and funny at the same time. Of course we had to take her out of the stroller and calm her down very quickly, which we did. We then tried to (and this will sound somewhat evil) expose her to the fountain one more time because she does need to overcome this fear, so Matthew wheeled her past it two more times, but he was cautious: he stuck the soother in her mouth and dangled a loud rattler in front of her face to distract her. I don't know if this was a clever strategy, but we managed to pass by the fountain twice more with a calm baby!

I know I've mentioned before about relocating Natasha from the bassinet in our bedroom to the crib in her nursery, but it never actually happened. She still wakes up a couple times a night for her soother and so I didn't feel like running to her bedroom in the middle of the night, but rather reach over and stick it in her mouth without getting out of bed. Well, we finally decided to proceed with the plan and did move her into the nursery. She's now slept for 3 nights there and so far it's been going great. She still wakes up twice a night, and yes it requires me to run over there, but I think that overall all three of us are getting better sleep now. And now Matthew and I don't have to dim the lights and whisper come 8:00 PM, which is way better for us too. So this is what's been happening with that.

Aside from this, I've been trying to have Natasha eat some sorts of finger foods but it hasn't been going exceptionally well. I mean, how do you make a baby feed herself finger foods if she just wants to play with it or stare at it?? Natasha just wants to be fed from a spoon, and so I try feeding the finger foods to her because I think she's just not ready for the self-feeding part. Yesterday I grated some Mozzarella cheese for her and fed it to her from a spoon and saying that she liked it would probably be an understatement - she really loved it! I've also bought her some regular children's fruit-yogurt instead of YoBaby and she liked that better too. Some other things she likes to nibble on are rice, mashed potatoes, bread, and anything else that can be swallowed without too much chewing. And speaking of chewing, Natasha is teething with #3 and it's a bottom one!

This post is entirely dedicated to my husband Matthew because today is his very first Father's Day. And like many normal married couples we tend to have our arguments and disagreements, but overall I have to admit that my hubby is probably the best I could ask for. And I could probably go on forever outlining the many reasons as to why I married this guy and why I love being his wife, but I am going to narrow this down a few main reasons.

1. He's extremely logical. And considering I am not always logical myself (), he balances me out quite well by pointing out the non-logic in my arguments or convictions. He's also very level-headed and has an ability to place himself outside of a situation and think about different matters from a neutral perspective which really helps in decision making.   

2. He loves budgets. Matthew is a genius with numbers (including Math & science) and has an ability to budget well (no wonder he dedicated 5 years of his life to working at BMO!). Now this contributes to our marriage very well because, like any other woman, I love spending money. Or rather, overspending. And so instead of kicking me out of my habit (which is impossible), Matthew created a budgeting system for me in which I can still spend money on clothes and other stuff I need/want, but still allow us to stay above water. Nice, eh? He's also created a budget for all our other expenditures and is very strict (but fair) about it.

3. He was great during my labour. Yes, he was excellent, in fact. I've heard too many stories of husbands being too weak or watching the events occur from the sidelines, but Matthew was nothing like this. He was there for me from start to end, and not just physically there, but mentally too. He held my hand through every painful contraction; he helped me time and record them and made the decisions when I couldn't think straight. He brought me ice chips and spent 2 long nights sleeping in a chair just so he could witness the birth of his first baby daughter.

4. He couldn't care less for cars. Okay, I know this would seem "abnormal" to most people, but Matthew has zero interest in cars. Or cell phones, for that matter. And to me the biggest turn-off in the world is a guy who knows anything and everything about cars and wouldn't shut-up about it. Matthew would rather spend the time talking about books, religion, family... cars is practically never a topic of interest for him, and boy, am I grateful! 

5. He's absolutely great with house-work. I think he's even better than me with it. Matthew is really bothered by mess and clutter and disorder generally irritates him. So he takes the time to ensure the house is organized, which I know many men don't worry about. But Matthew does. He washes dishes several times a week, he cooks me delicious (mostly Indian) meals now and then, he dusts the entire house every week, takes out garbage, does shopping, and sweeps the floors. Now, how many men do that?

And on top of all that, he's gentle and is a great great father to Natasha. There are many more reasons I could list, but I wanted to list a few main ones.
Happy Father's Day, Matthew!

Well, we're back from Montreal!

Honestly speaking I have a lot of stuff to either marvel or moan about but it would turn this post into a long essay-like-post and we don't want that, do we now?  So to keep it short and to the point, all I can say is that the time away was a great break to recharge and relax, as well as have some "us" quality time. Which we did. We visited many interesting places, such as the Bio Dome, Olympic Tower, Notre Dame Basilica, and more. We also went to several different restaurants, including a French restaurant called Le Saint-Sulpice which was absolutely horrible (both food and service wise), the Keg Steakhouse and Baton Rouge which were both fantastic, and a few others. Of course we also visited the Old City, downtown Montreal, the huge underground mall, and scanned the area near our Hotel du Fort.

Oh, and we saw 2 incredibly disturbing movies:
Knocked Up - a very disturbing yet hysterically funny comedy about a girl who had a one-night-stand with a weird guy and ended up pregnant. And,
Severance - an even more disturbing horror-comedy about a group of colleagues stranded in the middle of some forest and get killed one by one (lotsa blood, very gory).

Besides that, Natasha did very well at my parents. They kept her on the same schedule we do at home and so this helped her get through the time without too much drama. She seemed happy and content every time I called my mom to check up on her (3 times a day!). However, yesterday she suddenly developed an extreme case of baby heat-rash and now her tummy, neck, and shoulders are covered in red splashes. Grr. And to top that of, she's teething with a 3rd tooth. Fun, isn't it? So that's an update on us!

Today I asked Matthew to set me up a Photoshop gallery where I can gather and display my photos that were edited in Photoshop. I have been using Photoshop for a few years now and proud to be completely self-taught. I cannot say I am an expert, or even close to it, because Photoshop is huge and has a trillion things you can do and a trillion different ways to do them, but I am proud to have learned so much on my own.

Recently I've been frequenting a Parenting forum where members create "siggies" which are photo-montages done in different graphic design software programs, all for the main purpose of displaying pictures of their families in a more extraordinary way. And I must admit that I have been hooked. I started creating siggies for members of the forum and it has really allowed me to expand my Photoshop skills even further and has become an outlet for my creativity. I have recently installed for myself a lot of new and improved fonts, actions, filters, and shapes to allow me to further enhance my pictures.

The new gallery only displays the siggies and other images I created for Natasha as I don't have permission from other individuals to use their photographs, even though I have modified them quite a bit. And time permitting, this gallery will grow and expand. I really love Photoshop.