J&M got Maui'd!

 Maggie cut my hair a couple of days ago. This time it was not as traumatic as before, but it did take a couple of hours to complete. A couple of differences include having it done in an actual bath tub, which makes cleaning a lot easier, and.. more practice? Well, I was able to while away my time by watching YouTube videos, so it was not so monotonous for me. Also, the haircut itself was not bad! At least I do not look like Shaggy anymore.

We went to see an otolaryngologist to take a look at Elsy and find out if her nose bleeds can be stopped. Apparently she has a blood vessel near the skin, so he planned to cauterize the area to prevent it from bleeding. He took out a long stick and told her that he is going to stick this stick up her nose. He told me that, "This is going to ess tee eye en gee." A moment later, Elsy started to cry and did not want the procedure to continue. The doctor then looked a little surprised and remarked. "I guess she can spell." We got through the procedure after a little bit of convincing with Elsy. I hope that this does the trick. Maybe I should have done something like this when I was younger..

 I have not posted here in a while. We have been busy as you may have guessed. SYS's early arrival derailed our plans and the whole pandemic situation complicated everything, making 2020 both a blessing and an.. interesting time. The first month was a little worrisome, but after we got over that dangerous time, things were able to clam down a bit. It helped that we had some experience, an understanding child, and some assistance from grandparents. SYS has pretty much caught up with her cohort in size and development, with some caveats, but we do not worry about the child at all, in fact, are quite thankful that the name we chose was more appropriate than expected. Perhaps "Smiley" would have been more accurate, but I'll take calm and quiet any day. EYS is in virtual school now and live has returned to some semblance of normality, although from the children's eyes, this has always been "normal".

I do not know what happened with this post. I must have lost it during the confusion around the delivery. I had a whole thing written out and posted, but it is now vapor-post now. I honestly do not remember what I was talking about except for maybe mentioning that it was better that we had gone to the hospital earlier because of the complications that we discovered while there? I do not know. I will post a more detailed debrief at some point in time. Once we have all the details that is.

So we are having a baby in a pandemic. This was obviously not planned this way but here we are. Also, we were expecting her to show up in a month, but here we are. Oh hello! Welcome to the real world Cowgirl! It wasn't always like this. We could see other people without masks before. Don't worry, things will get back to normal before you know it...

I don't know what happened with this posting. I uploaded it (I thought) and now it is gone. In any case, today is Serena's birthday. I should have named her Surena, but in the rush during and after the delivery I went with Maggie's spelling instead. Oh well, I will have more input when the next kid comes around..

My lawn is in constant need of de-weeding. One of the largest culprits is the lowly dandelion. Our neighborhood and ravine are covered by them and it is a constant struggle to keep them at bay on my property. The garden areas seem to do quite fine actually, probably due to the competition from the other plants, but the grassy areas are usually overrun by these invaders. Each day for the past week I would pull out a dozen or so plants. I usually just pull out the ones that have flowered. They are much easier to see. However, I know there are more, and each day I would see up to a dozen more flowers appear that need beheading. Granted, given that the areas around us look like they are dandelion lawns it seems like a small price to pay, it is still annoying to do, considering that there are at least a dozen other weeds that have invaded my back yard that I need to control, and I have to figure out what are weeds and what are not!

I found a robin's egg on the driveway yesterday morning. It had a small hole so I could see that there was yolk inside and no chick. I do not know how the egg got down there but there is a robin's nest over one of our outdoor lights so I figured that something had knocked it out somehow. How it survived the fall with such a small hole confounded me. I showed Elsy the egg, and how sad it was to be on the ground, and she proceeded to step on the egg and stomp on it. I was quite shocked that she would do such a thing! I asked her why she did it and she gave me some non-nonsensical answer. Well, what do you expect from a four year old? Still, I thought she was the gentle type but.. maybe she has some mean streak? In any case, I reviewed my camera footage and found out that the egg did not in fact get blown out of the nest. A robin flew into the nest, picked up the egg, and brought it down into the ground where it looked like it was taking sips from the yolk. It was a strange sight

So after many hints and suggestions and preparation, Maggie finally went and cut my hair tonight. I did not particularly want to have my hair cut at home, but I was using more shampoo than normal and the tops of my ears were disappearing. Also, my physically isolating hair style was bugging her. In any case, two hours later and I now have a new 'do!

With the lack of extracurricular activities, the warming weather, and the gardener not showing up, my parents and I spent some time this weekend cleaning up the yard. They raked and bagged the leaves while I trimmed the trees and hedges.i found some of the vines that bothered me last year. They're much easier to pull out at this time of the year but all of the plants have started to bud and sprout. I give it another week before the entire garden will pop with colour..

So my parents are staying over at our place for the week while some renovations are taking place at their house. The timing was not very good, but I guess it could have been worse. Actually, I should not say that. If a lock down is declared before construction is complete, that would mean that they will be here a lot longer than a week.. (which means that we won't have to cook either..) The next two weeks are key really. If we can nip this virus in the bud, we should be able to keep cases from exploding, but I'm pretty sure that we need to maintain social distancing for the rest of the summer..

So with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, March break has become a full three week affair. However, none of us here are affected by the school closings so this was pretty much a non-issue. In fact, most of the closures have not really affected me much as I was already working from home, and we were planning on keeping Elsy away from daycare until this whole thing blew over. Still, things will get worse before they get better, and we have number two to worry about..

So I got a call in the middle of the meeting I was running from daycare telling me that Elsy had a fever and I had to pick her up. Oh goody. I was not too surprised, as Elsy was complaining of being cold in the morning. I never took her temperature though. Her forehead felt normally warm. In any case, I had to rush out after the meeting to pick her up and the afternoon was a bit of a loss. Let her veg on the couch and watch television while I took the time to do some chores and finally toss out the tree that's been in our living room for over a month. It was much lighter than before, now that it was tinder dry, but it was also extremely stiff and needles were flying off of it with every step I took. I needed to get it out of the house ASAP. Those needles were actually painful if stepped on, or grabbed, or.. anything now that they were bone dry. (Tree pickup day was the next morning, and I had forgotten - so it was lucky that I tossed the tree that night.) The next day was spent

I had planned to put the Christmas tree out this weekend as it was starting to look a little dry and brown. I was able to remove all the decorations and lights, but the weather had made putting the tree out a little annoying so I left it in the house until less wet and icy conditions come about. Oh, did I not mention that we had a Christmas tree? Like.. a real tree that you had to water and the like? Must've slipped my mind. Anyhoo, the whole experience was not as bad as I thought it would be. I was surprised how cheap the tree was (we purchased it from Ikea), and the fact that the tree fit inside my car surprised me quite a bit. I never noticed the smell, but apparently my mom enjoyed it. Getting the tree set up and decorated as not as enjoyable, and even the take down so far has not been as onerous as I had expected. The pines on the ground were barely an issue and clean up so far has been quite cathartic. The whole ordeal has left me not dreading next year's tree chores.