I haven’t posted Instagrams here in forever. And there were some other photos missing, too. Sometimes my pictures do not make it anywhere besides their monthly folder on my computer. I really should pay more attention.

Our house is sick again. Still? Again? I’ve lost track. Both Noah and I had a stomach virus yesterday. Why do we always get stomach viruses on the same day? Like we did in February? It’s torturous. And Preston is teething (top canines, tooth #15 and #16) again and oh, yesterday, it was not fun.

I was sick and up with Preston on Sunday night, and in the morning Noah decided to stay home and do the driving and take care of Preston. By the time he got home from doing the school run, he had to run to the bathroom. WONDERFUL.

I felt bad for Noah having to take the day off work to take care of things for me, as he’s taken exactly ONE sick day for himself since starting his job a year ago, and about a million for me. If I remember right, he took a day off two weeks ago for me, too. He just got a new boss, so I feel really horrid for making him make a bad first impression, but he is a really hard worker and cares about his job, and I’m sure she’ll see that in time. And also, it turned out that he was sick, too, so technically it was a sick day for him.

We laid on separate couches and watched 8 Friends episodes (together), 2 Bones episodes (together), 3 Beverly Hills, 90210 episodes (me, while he napped), last night’s Bachelorette, 3 Boy Meets World episodes (him, before I got up). Plus Preston watched 2 Backyardigans episodes and Liliana watched an Angelina Ballerina episode. TV is the best medicine. And babysitter.

a friend of mine, who also grew up in Terrace, was here on May Long with her family. we got to hang out. it was rad. these are our four oldest. (she also has a little girl, and Noah had left with a desperately-needs-a-nap Preston.)

My hips and glutes are also SO SORE. I forgot to stretch after the race on Sunday and HOW DUMB IS THAT?! You’d think I’d know to do that by now. Oh well. There were a lot of hills, too, and hills are not my friend.

Did I mention that I went on a field trip with 32 kids five and under, and 29 parents? To the zoo? I like the zoo, but I’m not a huge fan of field trips. We went on a bus, and I felt claustrophobic because (a) there were 60 people crammed into a bus and (b) I was stuck there. I didn’t have a vehicle and I had to take everything I needed for the morning in a backpack – lunch, diapers, random kid stuff. I don’t like not being in control. I like having freedom. And I’m a whiner. (But you knew that last one.)

Here’s to a vomit-free Tuesday.

So. We ran.

Kami and I met up in the Lawson Mall parking lot and her parents drove us to the starting line. We stood there with 1034 of our closest friends, waiting for the race to start. It was 8am. The 3900 marathon/half-marathon runners had left a half-hour earlier.

We had a plan. We had a goal time and we had a planned pace. We were going to run 10x1s (run 10 minutes, walk one minute, repeat as necessary)(side note: I love the little slogans on the back of race shirts) and we were aiming for a time of 1:10:00, with a pace of seven minutes per kilometre. In reality, I just wanted to get to the finish line in once piece, but goals are good and so we set them.

The gun went off and we … walked until we finally hit the starting line, at which time we wove in and out of the walkers who were ahead of us and shouldn’t have been. We started on a downward slope. It felt like we were running slow, but Kami said we were faster than our planned pace, at 6:30/km. She then realized her watch was set wonky and we were actually running quite a bit slower than our planned pace, which I was quite thankful for, as a slow start felt nice. We soon sped up.

We saw our first kilometre marker. One. Oh look! There’s Chris’s house! Hi, Chris-who’s-not-there-because-she’s-in-England! Two. Hello, Lululemon aid station with all the beautiful people. Three. I had to take off my very thin hoodie because I was already roasting, even though it was only 8am and there was a chilly breeze. Four. This is a never-ending hill, isn’t it? Five. Half-way! Six. Hi, Kami’s friend Christie! Seven. Turn-about and double-back, heading toward the finish. Eight. Now I’m running further than I have since the 2009 QCM. Nine. WHY IS THERE A STEEP HILL RIGHT AT THE END?! Oh! Let’s sprint! Ten. We did it! We made it! I haz a nap nao?

Time: 1:09:45. We beat our goal!!

Did I mention that Kami drove by herself from Regina last night just to run with me? At my pace? And coach me along the way? And then she drove home today? I have incredible friends.

after. photo by Kami’s mom.

We saw my family as we crossed the finish line. They waved. They cheered. We walked through the pizza fumes of the finish area (neither of us were hungry, much less for pizza) and met my family and Kami’s parents just outside the participant fence. Noah asked me why I didn’t get him any pizza. The girls stole my juice cup. Preston took off. It felt so good to be DONE.

It was “easier” than I thought it would be, but it was hard. Good hard. I wasn’t at all nervous about it until I heard the countdown to the gun going off at the start. I put the nervousness away, though, and just focused on running. Looking forward to the walk minutes. Counting down the kilometres. I’m so glad we did it.

We’ve already planned to do it again next year.

*~*

My Canadian Family post this week: Never Lost a Soother Again with the Pacifier Place

*~*

I love flash mobs. They make me happy. I could watch them all day. My sister works in this airport, but unfortunately wasn’t there when this was done. It is rad.

click here if you cannot see the video

*~*

Bethany posted this on FB and I quite like it. I like that people do these things and film them and put them on the internet. It’s using the good side of the internet. I’m sure those people who danced down the aisle started something. And the dancing Jews crack me up.

click here if you cannot see the video

*~*

Sometimes I like to shock Noah. Sometimes I’ll read something sports-related on Twitter and bring it up pretending I know what I’m talking about, to make him think that I’ve all of a sudden become a sports fan (I haven’t). He put this song on when I picked him up from work yesterday and while he was finding the song in Rdio, I glanced over.

Him: “This band is …”
Me: “First Aid Kit?”
Him: *dumbfounded stare* “How did you know?”
Me: “I saw you put it on.”
Him: “For a second there I was going to be really impressed.”

I try. I pretend. And I like this song.

click here if you cannot see the video

*~*

Most of the time Twitter accounts are real people with their own words. Once in a while someone starts a Twitter account pretending to be someone/something and they totally nail it. Noah showed me this @HonestToddler feed and goodness, it is hilarious. It’s as if a toddler is tweeting. It’s as if this kid is a mix between Liliana and Preston. You need to check it out.

*~*

If you know my dear friend Schmutzie, then you know that she is a stellar iphoneographer. She recently started posting MarbleCam images to Instagram and they are so neat. So I got the app. (It’s free!) Because Schmutzie finds all the cool photography apps.

photo credit: elan morgan. used with permission.

*~*

That’s it. Happy Saturday. Kami and I finally run that 10k tomorrow morning, the one I’ve been talking about forever. Wish us luck. Or just wish me luck. She could run a 10k in her sleep.

It’s funny, this internet world. I could tell you I live anywhere I want to tell you I live, and you wouldn’t question it because I’ve never met most of you in real life and how would you know if I was telling the truth or not? Maybe I just babysit these kids I call mine, and take family photos with them, and how creepy is that? Maybe this is all pretend and maybe none of it is real. How much can you tell about a person, the true person, who they really are, from some words and some pictures? From the bit of a person’s life they decide to share with you?

I went on a field trip with Liliana’s class today — to the zoo with 32 kids five and under — and another mom said something about my missing a kid. She was referring to Kesler, my not-my-kid whose mom had the day off. I said something about missing another kid, too, as she was at school. The other mom said, “Oh, [Kesler's] older sister?”

It’s funny. I’ve seen this lady before and after preschool four days a week since September. We chat, we drop off or pick up our kids, and we go our separate ways. We don’t really know anything about each other. She had no idea I had another kid.

At Liliana’s ballet, I sit with other parents for 45 minutes and I assume most of them assume that Liliana is my only child, as I never have my other two with me at ballet. Whenever I am out with just Preston, I constantly get asked — after it’s established that YES he has red hair, YES he gets it from both sides of the family, and YES I love it — if he is my only child. Whereafter learning I have an almost-11-year-old they tell me I look like I’m still in high school, too young to have three kids.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this. Maybe I’m avoiding sleep because I’m self-destructive and I can’t sleep in tomorrow. Maybe I’m torturing myself over an unanswered text message. Maybe it just feels weird to write so sporadically when I used to write so often. Maybe I just have a case of verbal diarrhea and you guys are the unwitting targets. Maybe I’m just waiting for Preston to wake up because I don’t like it when he wakes up five minutes after I fall asleep. I don’t know.

Do you ever keep yourself up at night following stupid rabbit trails? Ones you should probably stay away from? Do you stay up reading, not paying attention to the time because the book your face is glued to is just too good and who cares if you’re a total bear in the morning because you are done that book and no longer in suspense? Do you go from your Instagram app to your Facebook app to your Twitter app to your Pinterest app and round and round again and realize that you are quite lame because nobody has updated anything in the last 23 seconds and maybe that’s a hint that you should just GO TO SLEEP ALREADY?

Yeah. Me neither.

I’d decided to go with two gardening methods and see how they work together. The Back to Eden method I talked about previously, and square-foot gardening.

There is a place in town that I can get free mulch from, but they are only open for pick-up on Fridays. Since Noah was mowing the lawn on Saturday, I told him to dump the clippings in the garden. And then I texted Russ to see if he was mowing his lawn any time soon, and he’d just done it, so I took Preston for a little visit with his Big Papi and went dumpster diving for grass clippings. And then I put it on Facebook that I was looking for grass clippings, because I have no pride. It got me two more bags of clippings, though, enough to be ready to plant my first bit. Our landlord had tilled the garden earlier in the week, because he is rad.

The girls were my “cart guards”. Kaylie saw someone touching one of the plants on our cart, so she took it upon herself to guard it from then on. Liliana ran back and forth between me to Kaylie, handing plants off. They actually were helpful. Until we got to the till and they took 10 years to pick their treats and Liliana got her hand caught in the ice cream freezer door and there was screaming and I couldn’t get to her because there were people blocking my way and, you know, it was a typical shopping trip.

We brought our loot home and started planning where we would plant it. I used a couple square-foot gardening sites for reference: this one and this one and this one. The second link is really neat, and lets you drag and drop vegetables into a grid. The only problem is that the grid is too small for my 16×30-foot garden, so I drew up something in an excel spreadsheet. Because I’m nerdy like that.

click to enlarge

Each square is a square-foot, and the number under each vegetable name is the number of plants that, according to the links above, fit into a square foot. Some plants, like green onions and carrots, can fit 16 plants in one square foot. Some plants, like tomatoes, need four square feet per plant.

The guy on the Back to Eden video was right. A rake is pretty much the only garden tool I need.

I spread out the clippings from Noah, ran (drove) to Russ’s place to get his, and spread them as well.

I decided to let it dry out for a day or so and started planting in the little garden behind the garage.

I figured it would make a great herb garden, and planted basil, chives, and parsley. I know nothing about growing herbs, so I thought I should start small.

That purple shovel? It was what I used to dig the holes. I’m classy like that. When I talked to our landlord at church on Sunday, he asked me about the garden and asked if I’d found his gardening tools (we share a two-car garage with them). I told him no, I hadn’t, as I didn’t want to go through his stuff. He said to go right ahead. Until that conversation, though, the purple shovel was my BFF.

The girls were very excited to help with the planting.

We dug holes

poured in some water

put the plant in

and (gently) packed dirt around it.

I kind of wish my soil was this soft:

I did the first couple, and then Kaylie got the hang of it and did the rest.

We finished up and were happy with how it was looking

until Noah came out and told me there was a frost warning for that night. *sigh* I’d seen a pin a while back about covering plants when the frost comes, and so I decided to try it out. Sometimes I hate Pinterest, and sometimes I really love it. This was one of the love it times. I actually loved it again on Sunday when I was looking for a dessert to make and found a lemony thingy that was so good I wanted to eat the entire pan myself.

Anyway. The frost. I only had one milk jug, so I cut the bottom off and put it on one of the plants.

And then I got creative with the others.

I have no idea if there actually was frost or not, but either way, I was READY.

Sunday I started on the main garden. The plan was to have 18 four-foot “boxes”. That is probably more than I need, but I have a couple friends who could probably use the extra space that I can’t.

I started with the front of the garden, using sticks to mark the four-foot boxes, with a one-foot walkway between and around each box.

Then, when I was ready to plant in the first box, I measured off the sixteen one-foot areas with a mark in the mulch.

Since peas are a nine-plants-per-square-foot kind of vegetable, I made nine little holes in the mulch, planted the peas, and covered the holes.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I only planted the peas on Sunday, as it was kind of a busy day, but the kids kept me company outside. They love being outside so much.

Monday I had hoped to plant the rest of what I’d planned. I got most of it done. My legs were toast that morning from my Sunday run, and when Noah called us in for dinner after about five hours on my knees in the dirt, I decided I was done for the day.

I (with the girls’ help) planted green peppers, chili peppers, green onions, red onions, carrots, beets, kale, cucumbers, pumpkins, and zucchinis. I’m waiting on the tomatoes until June, so for right now they’re sitting on my kitchen counter.

I planted all the seeds directly into the mulch, but with the already-growing plants, I put them in the dirt and then covered them when they were planted. I think that next year I’ll start my own plants, but didn’t want to take that on this year yet.

It was scheduled to rain on Monday night, which was perfect timing now that most everything is planted.

I decided to use the other half of the herb garden for little mini gardens for the girls. I gave them some seeds, taught them how to plant them, and I’m hoping that they grow well. They are VERY excited to see the plants start to come up.

Liliana’s garden is on the left, Kaylie’s on the right.

The other thing that happened Monday I didn’t notice until I got into my (really hot) shower that night. I got a sunburn. I’m completely okay with being burned because you can only get burned when there is SUN, and I like the sun.

I’m liking this gardening thing. Now I just hope that everything grows.

Not awesome:

This cough/sinus infection I’ve had for six weeks now. Kaylie had a two-month-long cough that she shared with the rest of us. I’m at about a month and a half. Add to that intense sinus congestion. And to that my right ear has been plugged for going on for days now. The sound of my own voice ringing inside my head? Not awesome. The doc said it was fluid build-up, and gave me some drops, and this morning the other ear started to feel the same way. It’s so irritating, I cannot even tell you.

Vomit Lake. I finally gave in to Noah’s demands and went to see a doctor yesterday. Got some drugs, blah blah blah, and I had Liliana, Preston, and Kesler with me. Not 10 minutes after we left the clinic, Liliana said that she had an ear infection and that she wanted a sucker. I didn’t take her overly seriously, as she asks to go to the doctor nearly every day because she wants the sucker she gets afterward.

When we were on our way to pick Kaylie up from school, she started crying, saying her ear hurt and she had to see a doctor. She didn’t say anything about a sucker. I figured I should take her seriously. Noah took her in to the clinic and she was diagnosed with an ear infection. She came home and told us she had a stomach ache. And then she vomited on Noah’s pillow. We were up most of the night with her. Poor kid.

I got a text this morning from Liliana’s quote unquote boyfriend’s mom (the boy calls Liliana his girlfriend)(preschoolers are adorable) and she said that her son had it as well.

I’m supposed to be running a 10k in 9 days. This whole sickness thing has really put a damper on my training. The furthest I’ve run in training is 7.5k. I was hoping to run 8k yesterday or today but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m hoping to feel up to it later today, as I want to attempt the race route on Sunday. I’m trying to have the IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN attitude, doing my best to stay away from the JUST GIVE UP YOU’RE TOO SICK attitude.

Most vanity license plates. My brother has one of these, and it MAKES SENSE. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but it is grammatically correct and not missing any vowels. This guy?

What’s he going for here? He hates HIs? He hates HIGHs? He’s saying HI to the hater h8er? Because in that case, he needs a comma. Most vanity plates SHOULD NOT BE.

Awesome:

Noah’s work schedule changed. On a normal day, I drive Noah to work, I come home, I drive to Kaylie’s school, I drive to Liliana’s school, I come home, I drive to Liliana’s school, I come home, I drive to Kaylie’s school, I come home, I drive to Noah’s work, I come home. By the time we all are home, it’s about 5pm and everyone’s hungry. It’s near impossible to make dinner after I get Kaylie and before I get Noah and there’s only time to make something quick when we all get home and the kids are grumpy and hungry.

Noah just got a new boss and he worked out that he will go to work an hour earlier and be off an hour earlier. This means I need to be up an hour earlier, which kind of sucks, but going straight from Kaylie’s school to Noah’s work and having everyone home by 4pm is quite rad. And I have time to make dinner before everyone starts melting down.

Adding to that, Noah took today off to be home and take care of everyone. He drove Kaylie to school this morning and took Preston to his work to do a couple things he needed to do (he’s all responsible like that), leaving Liliana and me home to feel sorry for ourselves lay around and watch TV.

I get to go to BlissDom. I have a ticket, I have a roommate, some of my very favorite people have confirmed they are going, and I am just a wee bit excited.

The kids’ sleeping room is going well. Better than expected, actually. Preston is sleeping better and the girls usually don’t wake up when he cries. I love having my and Noah’s room to ourselves again. We can turn on lights! And speak above a whisper! And use alarm clocks without fear!

Internet people are awesome. (Well, the ones I know, anyway.) They just are. And I am thankful for them.

We’re on the brink of a three-day weekend. I have never needed a three-day weekend as much as I do right now.

What things in your week were awesome or not awesome?

Yesterday, as we were driving home after picking up Noah, she told us something that had happened at school that day. And then I flipped out a little bit. She told us of an incident at school that classified as sexual harassment. I was livid, asking her questions, getting all the details. Noah had to step in and tell her that I was not mad at her. No! I wasn’t mad at her! I told her that, and then explained that what was said to her was not okay and that I was really glad that she told us.

Once I got all the details from her, I told Kaylie that I’d go with her in the morning to talk to her teacher. I did, and her teacher reacted exactly as I’d hoped she would — she took it seriously. Mrs. B told Kaylie and me her plan of action and I left, satisfied that the incident would be dealt with.

I got a call from the principal just before I left to pick Kaylie up after school. He told me how it was dealt with and I was very impressed. When Kaylie got in the van, she was happy and bouncy. I liked her school before this happened, but I like it even more now.

I told Kaylie that if anything like that ever happens again (I like to think it won’t, but I’m not that naive), she needs to tell me. She needs to tell someone. I also told her that it’s important to remember things exactly as they happened. That it’s important to tell the truth, and not to improvise or make up details she can’t remember.

I want my girls to know that it is not okay for someone to touch them when they do not want to be touched. It is not okay for someone to threaten to touch them. It is not okay for someone to talk about touching them, even if that person is supposedly joking. It’s not okay.

I want my girls to know that their bodies are their own. Nobody else has the right to touch them without their approval. Nobody else has the right to threaten them. I want them to know that they have rights and they have people who will make sure that those rights are honored. That they have people who will be on their side no matter what.

Sometimes I want to wrap my kids in bubble wrap and put them in a padded room, to keep them safe. I know this is not realistic. I know they will get hurt and I know that bad things will probably happen to them. I also know that I will go all Angry Mom on anyone that hurts or tries to hurt one of my babies.

I didn’t start asking Noah to do MD photos until 2009, but I found photos of me and the girls before then, starting only at 2005, somewhere around May-ish. Before then, I don’t have a digital copy of a photo of me and Kaylie, and my scanner is broken. So. Anyway.

Oh! Before I show you the photos of me and the kids over the years, in keeping with the MD theme, I’ll show you a couple of me and my mom. The first is a photo that my Aunt Jane sent me, which I also posted here. The second –of me, my mom, and my sister Erica — is from last summer, when I went to BC for my Opa’s funeral.

1983:

2011:

photo by Chelsey Poelman

And now, the photos of me and the kids. We did photos again this year and … it didn’t go awesome. Getting three kids to look in the general direction of the camera is harder than you’d think. I didn’t even care about smiling. Just LOOK AT THE CAMERA. It’s all good, though. I never expect perfect photos when it comes to kids. And plus, reality is much better.

2005:

photo by my mom (I think)

2006:

photo by Randee Armstrong

2007:

I’d just given birth. Not that you can tell or anything. (HA!)

2008:

photo by Teresa Braam

2009:

photo by Noah (and all the one ones following) (two-year-olds are fun!)

2010:

this is one of my very favourite photos. i love the contrast the red roses give.

2011:

2012:

take one. Preston is not impressed with the whole sitting down thing. and he was sticking that gun in his mouth the very wrong way.

while Preston walked around, I got some photos done with each of the girls, just in case the whole me-and-three-kids thing didn’t work out. i really like this one of me and Kaylie, but it would be a lot better without Liliana’s photobomb.

that’s better

this kid. so much stress, so much laughter.

i bribed him with a bit of nursing and he finally came over for a photo. he’s such a goober.

take four thousand one hundred and fifty-two. this is the best we’re gonna get.

There is usually a gift for moms at church on Mother’s Day, which is a kind gesture, but how does it make the childless mother feel? What about when they make all the moms stand? How does that make the childless mother feel?

Both my kids came home super-stoked on their last day of school this week because each of them had a gift for me that they’d made. Now don’t get me wrong, I love these gifts, and anything my kids make me, but what of little A in Liliana’s class who does not have a mom? Maybe she just made something for her grandma? I’m willing to bet that, in a room full of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, it came up that A’s mom died, and I bet it made her sad.

I don’t know. I don’t know the right answer. I just hate seeing people hurting, especially if it is avoidable.

I’ve seen things about No Mother’s Day all around the blogging world lately, and saw Christy Turlington Burns on the Today show Friday morning. Here is a video to explain No Mother’s Day:

And here is a little more of a closer view:

The purpose of Every Mother Counts‘ No Mother’s Day is to raise awareness for maternal mortality. By raising awareness, the hope is that people will step forward to support efforts to lower maternal mortality rates all over the world, thereby lowering the maternal and child morality rates. It is a proven fact that children who have a mother are more likely to survive their first two years of life.

Noah, always showing me things he thinks I’ll be interested in, forwarded me this article that talks about that talks about the State of the World’s Mothers. The latter talks about countries that value women and provide the best pregnancy/maternity care and benefits, and countries that do not value women and do nor provide anything close to adequate care for mothers or children.

When I gave birth to each of my three babies, I had a skilled doctor (or three, when I had Kaylie), I had at least one nurse around almost all the time, and I had a huge, clean room in which to birth my baby. If I’d wanted, I could have had a home birth and been cared for by one or two midwives (like my super-amazing sister-in-law did). Both options are free and both options are a thousand times safer than the conditions in which many women of the world give birth. After giving birth, I had the right to an entire year off work while getting paid 55% of my regular wage. Some employers (none I’ve had) even top-up the government’s 55%, some up to 100% of an employee’s regular wage.

Ninety-nine percent of the 360,000 women who die annually while trying to bring their children into the world did not have it as good as I did. That means that, annually, the children of 360,000 women are left motherless.

So, this Mother’s Day, I am going to be thankful for my mom, and for my kids, who make me a mother. And I am going to find out what I can do to help the motherless, the childless, and those who do not have access to the healthcare and benefits that I do. Because that is what we’re here for, right? To help each other? To make sure everyone has a right to life? To seeing their children born? To having a mother throughout their childhood and beyond? To not being hurt unnecessarily by exclusionary holidays?

Like I said, I don’t know what the right answer is. I really don’t.