New Chapter.

At this very moment, I'm listening to Dolly Parton, drinking a huge cup of coffee out of my dino mug and enjoying my last morning in my Toronto apartment by myself while my fam sleeps in. I'm really gonna miss it here!
Here we go again...! New chapter.

The Story of The Littlest Poncho.

I can't believe how far I have come with crocheting! Less then a year ago it took me FOREVER to crochet anything. Then when I learned how to make Mary Jane's for babies, it opened up a whole new world. I just kept learning more and more. It went from Mary Jane's to Wooly Boots to Vintage Hats to the Weirdly Cute Teething Rattles. And then I made up my first pattern, my Baby to Toddler Leg Warmers! (I have some of these items up for auction this weekend only! Click HERE!)
Anyway, when I was at H&M in Eaton Centre a few weeks back, I saw a beautiful crocheted poncho in Adelaide's size. I squealed because it was SO cute. BUT...I couldn't decide if I wanted to spend the $40 on it. I hemmed and hawed, I decided if I still wanted it the next day, I would come back and get it. And then the most amazing thing happened! I LEARNED HOW TO MAKE THIS!! The Littlest Ponch. So, now my girl gets to be oh so stylish and I get to feel oh so awesome because now I can crochet anything! Well, maybe not anything...cardigans and sweaters look tricky!

A Bugs Life.

Six Months.

Adelaide has reached 6 months. She started off 5 lbs 13 oz and has now reached a whopping 17 pounds! Life is slowly getting crazier as she is becoming more independent. In the past month, so much has happened. It seems that when babies start to learn things, it's like a domino effect. She's becoming such a person now, full blown personality with more of an understanding on how things work. Incredible hand eye coordination. Eating food. Teething like mad (her bottom middle left tooth should make it's debut soon!) Rolling around. Sitting up. Pulling herself up to stand. Talking her own language. She's doing all the things a 6 month old should do but she has the temper of a two year old! It's the Bays/Horton temper and boy is it fierce. She can reach this crazy high pitch when she screams that make you cringe. When she first learned to scream, she thought it was funny. We did not encourage it, ever! But she still laughed. It's awful. She just wants to be heard I guess, lol.

She is SO in to music. Music anything and she just stares and takes it all in. Sometimes she'll sing with me when I sing to her. Her favourite is when Julian plays the guitar for her. I reckon she'll be very musical. There are some incredibly talented people on Julian's side! They can sing and play instruments, so you can imagine Christmas time is especially fun! You may have heard of Jodi King or Jenn Mierau and of course, lets not forget Hot Live Guys. My side of the family are the dancers. Can't really carry a tune, but LOVE music and LOVE to show off their moves.
Here, listen to Julian play Beirut for Adelaide while you finish reading!

Adelaide is starting to become independent. She likes to put her own soother in her mouth. She likes to hold her own bottle when I give her water. She grabs the spoon and tries to feed herself at meals. She's getting pretty good at feeding herself a biscuit. We're a fan of Farley's Rusks. Sometimes she'll have one mixed with breastmilk and bananas for breakfast. But she likes just eating the biscuits. They dissolve easily and they must feel great on her sore gums.

Introducing her to food is so fun! So far, she hasn't snubbed anything. She's had rice, banana, apple, pear, prune, avocado, pumpkin, peas, and sweet potato. I've also introduced her to cinnamon. I get recipes and ideas from http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/. I find it weird that in our culture we introduce the most constipated foods first. It's hard on their wee digestive systems. Bug LOVES sweet potatoes, but they also constipate her really bad. Good thing she loves prunes! I am looking forward to the next couple weeks when we're gonna start adding new things to the menu and spice it up a bit! Just because we're Canadian, doesn't mean we gotta feed her that way!

With all the changes going on in her diet and her teething roller coaster ride, she's become more susceptible to diaper rashes. So she is experiencing her first one. It sucks. The moment I noticed it I knew it was yeast related. Most diaper rashes are. It's bright red and raised. It started off patchy. So right away I upped my intake of Acidophilus to 4 capsules a day from 2 and I break open a capsule and give Adelaide the powder inside with some food or water once in the morning and once in the evening. I was using Penaten Cream at first but surprisingly that didn't work. A friend of mine got me a jar of Sudocrem and that seems to be working and giving Bug some relief. We also spend the day naked which gives us plenty of opportunities to use the potty. And at night I put her cloth diaper on really loose so moisture doesn't get trapped. Hopefully it won't be around that much longer. For more info on how to get rid of a yeast rash click HERE.

Now that Adelaide is sitting up and rolling over and pulling herself to stand I have to start baby proofing because it won't be long before she's on the go and into everything she shouldn't be. This is when things start getting really fun! lol. This is when you lose that last bit of baby weight!

Politics. The Ultimate Game.

The question of the day is...How do we get people aged 18-29 to care enough to get off their butts and go and vote?! IF there was a way of voting online, I bet you'd see more participate. People don't realize HOW interesting and sorta fun politics are. And people don't realize the power they have. I know with the Canadian system not every vote matters, but as whole, it makes a difference. So you really need everyone to participate to make it work.
I couldn't care less about either of them until my husband came along! All I knew was what I learned from my parents which is, that all politicians lie so don't bother getting involved. And also what I learned from high school which was, it's all confusing and boring anyway.
I don't know about you guys, but when we learned about the Canadian Government in high school, it was terribly boring. Just read from a text book. Half the class was asleep at their desk. How is that supposed to make it interesting and how are you supposed to learn anything. My history class...well, man, that couldn't have been any more boring. History and politics go hand in hand. It really makes both more exciting when you put them together. If we could get ALL teachers to be passionate about what they are teaching, maybe we could get the youth to pay attention and want to stay updated on world issues instead of which which pop star is next in line to get plastic surgery and I can assure you, my teachers were not passionate. I mean, my Social Studies teacher was first and foremost a gym teacher, he wore his gym clothes to class, lol, and he was not passionate or very focused when teaching us Social Studies. This has a huge influence in shaping peoples political participation.
I also think that parents should encourage their kids. Start involving your 16 year old. Stay as bias as possible. I know it'll be hard, but give them the info, help them understand it and remember, when it comes time for them to vote, they may vote differently then you, but that's okay because as we can see as you get older your ideas and thoughts could be expired and with most of the votes being from 30+ year olds, that's how we ended up with a majority Conservative Government. But ya know, it's not ALL bad. Elizabeth May got her well deserved seat!