kim through
   the looking glass

It’s odd. I’ve had a hard time thinking about what to blog this last week since we came back from our vacation.

We spent a week at a cottage in Kincardine, Ontario with another family - our good friends and their two kids, who are almost the exact same age as our kids.

We spent a week playing with kids, enjoying the water and sand, talking, cooking, and eating very good food.

But to me, what was most wonderful, was the tribe-like atmosphere. Other adults to talk to - about superficial things, deep things, and everything in between. Other adults to share in the childcare, to give each of us a few much-needed breaks. To hold a baby while the other was doing something else for a moment.

To be completely honest, I felt absolutely no desire to check to see if I had new blog comments, to check out a forum I’m a part of, to check and see what was happening on Facebook. I’ll admit I did, once, think about checking my email, but that’s it.

There’s nothing wrong with social media, per se, but I can see how it’s a very poor substitution for actual human interaction. Being online leaves me feeling like I’ve wasted my time; like I’ve taken a ‘break’ but haven’t really rested; like I’d like the last 20 mins/hour/evening of my life back to do things that matter.

Being in the presence of real people who share your passions and who talk back in real time … with whom you can talk at the same time as making dinner or nursing your baby or taking a walk on the beach or setting the toddler up to colour … is just so very different than the things with which we have replaced such interactions.

And, I believe, so much healthier for not only ourselves, but most of all, our children.

Sometimes I wonder: If the people who devote so much time and energy to building online communities could put half the time into developing our physical communities … what would happen?

I’m heading to my parents’ house today with Gwen to spend Christmas with my parents, sisters, and nephew. Brad will be heading our way later in the week. Needless to say, I likely won’t be blogging until after Christmas is over, so I wish you and yours a wonderfully Merry Christmas!

And I’m thiiiiis close to being four months pregnant! What a wonderful end to a whirlwind of a year!

Things started off with a trip to Mexico for my big sister Jenn’s wedding in February, our week-long New York trip, her baby born in August, finding out about our OWN baby in October (!!), celebrating our first anniversary, buying a house later that month, my grandma breaking her hip, my aunt being diagnosed with breast cancer (please continue to pray … her chemo regimen is beginning soon …), Brad finishing school for good, my big sister Becky getting a great new job, and yeah.

So I was 15 weeks on Friday - our baby now has developed taste-buds and my amniotic fluid tastes like whatever I’ve eaten =) The baby can also sense light and (since next week he/she can hear things on the outside of my body) hear what’s going on inside my body. I’ve had a couple moments in the last couple days of “was that the baby moving?” But I’m not 100% sure yet.

Here’s my belly now =) It’s definitely growing!

It’s pooching out now even when I lay down! (it would disappear when I laid down before) And my belly button is rapidly becoming more shallow! The uterus hits the belly button at about 20 weeks, and I’m almost 16, so it’s got 4 cm to go before overtaking my former umbilical cord attachment site - which, by the way, isn’t centered.

I think I’ve gained about 10 lbs now, which all the books say is a normal gain for this stage. I’m hoping to start back on my healthy eating bandwagon in the New Year now that my food aversions are mostly gone … although I still can’t even think about chicken breast!

I’ll update with Christmas pics tomorrow =)

Brad and I celebrate our first anniversary today! YAY us! I can’t believe it’s already been a year! It’s just flown by!

We took borrowed a car and drove down to the Norfolk County Fair for the afternoon and had a great time looking at the ridiculously sized squash! I’m currently yearning for my camera cord so I can share the insanity that is an 1100 lb pumpkin. We then went for a fantastic dinner at The Erie Beach Hotel (where myself and both sisters once worked - and it literally hasn’t. changed. a bit. since I worked there, almost 10 years ago!), played mini-golf, walked around town, and stayed overnight at Clonmel Estates - a huuuuge estate that I’ve wanted to stay at ever since I was a little girl! It was the perfect ending to our first year together, and the perfect beginning to the next! I think we’re going to try and visit places in only Ontario for our anniversaries - I think it would be tonnes of fun to pick a different place in Ontario every year to visit!

Crystal from The Song of My Soul tagged me again =) This time it’s for a screenshot of your desktop. So without further ado, here’s the insanity of my desktop currently (it’s been much, much worse):

Can you see the documents on the right at the bottom?

Those are all the documents I currently have open for composing my paper. Ugh.

Alright. Stick it out with me, people! Just two more days! We were supposed to come home on Saturday, but we were having such a good time, we stayed an extra day! We made sure that Dave and Lindsey didn’t mind and urged them not to change their plans on account of us!!

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So. Could I possibly be any lazier?! I’ve been staring at the many resized pictures on my desktop and dealing with my computer chugging away through the bog-downiness of having too many things on the desktop, but just haven’t had the “oomphf” (as Brad would say) to blog. I’ve been reading blogs and knitting. But not writing them. So today, I’m going to finish off the New York! series. Again, if you want to see more of our NYC pics, just click on the Flickr badge to the right and click on the “New York 2007″ photo series!

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Day Five - Wednesday

We saw too much on this day to put it with another post. Wednesday we had a doozy of a day lined up. We were going to get up early, go to the Empire State Building, down to Ground Zero, and then up to the Guggenheim. However, as I was getting my towel to shower, Dave & Lindsey came back in - the subways were down due to an apparently large storm the night before and they weren’t going to work any time soon! So, we went and got some breakfast and hung out with them for a while. We decided we’d wait to see the Guggenheim. We left for Ground Zero later than we’d hoped (the story of the week, actually - we didn’t leave “on time” the whole week!), but had plenty of time anyways.

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Phew! So our first two days in NYC are now a bit of a blur - it seems like soooooo much more than a week ago!

Let me tell you a little bit about NYC. First off, it’s big! Secondly, there’s tonnes of people! And thirdly? It’s big. If you go to this site, you’ll see a reproduction of the New York City subway map. Confused yet? The spinning thinger on the map is the station closest to where Dave and Lindsey live … at 139th & Broadway. Thankfully, the streets are at least named smart! Streets go East/West, avenues go North/South. So 42nd St and 5th Ave? Not as confusing as you’d think! To get from their apartment to Times Square (42nd St) took about 45 - 60 mins by subway. This map shows the five boroughs (Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island) really well. Basically, anything you see on movies is generally Manhattan =)

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First off, let me say that I have had an awful time getting my pics all ready to go. Flickr apparently only lets you have 200 pics able to display, so by the time I had uploaded two days worth of pics, I was over that. So I had to go through the ones I’d already uploaded, delete lots of them and then go through the remaining pics one by one to find the best ones to display in Flickr. All that to say, click here to see my photo set of our NYC trip! Also, my photo editing program decided to disappear, so I had to figure out how to use a different one to size all my pics to a good size for the blog. BUT, we’re good to go now. Warning - this is a pretty graphic intensive post, so you might want to give it time to load … on second thought, maybe it’d be better to do a few posts with fewer pics apiece?

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Well, we depart for The Big Apple tonight at 6:30, ETA NYC at 7:10 AM on Saturday morning. The bus leaves at 8:10 PM from just down the road from us - but the lady I talked to today said to be there at least an hour early as it’s expected to be quite busy (long weekend). So, we’re leaving 1.5 hours early - we can’t afford to not get on that bus!

I’ll still have internet access (bringin’ the trusty laptop) so hopefully I can keep you all updated =)

See ya on the flip side!