Happy Birthday Zo-Zo!

And just because I love this photo of all 3 of my pups, here’s one more:

Our morning started the same as usual today, the dogs woke up really early and I let them out into the backyard. Then I went back to bed to get back under the warm covers. Steve got up a few minutes later to let the dogs back in. Moose ran in the room and jumped on me like he hasn’t seen me in a month. He does this exact thing every single morning. Steve came back to bed and Moose went and snuggled with him for a few minutes. Suddenly Steve starts freaking out and jumps up – he found a tick crawling on his arm! A TICK!! It hadn’t eaten yet as it was still small and it hadn’t bitten him. He squashed it in the sink and washed it down the drain but he was really freaked out. He had a bad experience when he was a kid and was bitten by a tick. I hate ticks too so it made me feel a little uneasy that it was in our bed! I’m almost certain it must have come inside attached to Moose’s long fur. He loves to rummage around at the back of the yard in the bushes, which is a great place for those nasty ticks to hang out.

So being all grossed out by this tick, we did a major clean of the entire house right then. Zoey was already lying in the laundry basket of clean clothes I had brought up the night before and forgot to put away, so Steve took the whole basket down to the laundry room so they could be re-washed. Then the bed was stripped and all our blankets/sheets and the dogs blankets, pigs blankets, couch throw blankets, etc from all over the house were put in the laundry. Suddenly I had like 8 loads of laundry to do. Steve put all the dogs in the tub and bathed them, then he meticulously checked each one all over to make sure they didn’t have any ticks. Meanwhile I vacuumed and dusted every room in the house, including the stairs and laundry room.  Every room that is except for Ava’s as she was still sound asleep in bed. It was such an accomplishment though having the whole house cleaned so quickly and so early in the morning!

Norman the pig is sound asleep already buried under a couple of his blankets. It’s crucial to be quiet while he’s sleeping as even so much as opening the fridge or rustling a bag of popcorn then that’s it! He’ll pop right up and start squealing until I give him something else to eat. And trust me, he does not need more to eat tonight. This little big piggy has been happily munching on the grass outside for hours and hours the last several days. Now that the weather has finally smartened up, he’s been wanting to spend more time in the backyard. However, when he waddles back into the house, he is so bloated – he actually looks pregnant!! Oh piggy. And all that grass gives him nasty pig farts. Nasty I tell ya! He sure knows how to clear a room fast.

Harriet, our newest hedgehog, has also buried herself under her blankets but she’ll be up soon to have her dinner.

I walk through the living room that is lit up by a red glow in the far corner – it’s the heat lamp for our little chicks: Nuna and Lydia. They are 3 and a half weeks now and getting big indeed. It’s amazing how fast they grow. They look like miniature chickens now but they look quite awkward as well. Those awkward teenage weeks I guess…. It will soon be time to introduce them to our full grown chicken, Drumstick. Afterall that’s why we got them, so she would have friends. Her buddy Popcorn was killed by a weasel in our backyard a couple months ago :(

On the other side of the living room is our special needs duck, Lotto, who is nestled all down on her blanket, with her beak tucked under one wing.

The dogs are all in our room already, happy to have gone to bed already. Zoey is on her own bed next to my side of the bed. Angus is lying on a blanket on the floor by the closet (but he’ll wind up in our bed sometime during the night), and Moose is lying right in the middle of our bed, of course.

The baby monitor is on my bedside table and shows that Ava is sound asleep in her crib. I can hear the sound of the ocean coming from her sound machine. Brings back memories from when I was living with my parents when they had waterfront property. I actually went to sleep every night hearing the waves for real. Wow, do I ever miss that.

And the only creature that is actually stirring – it is a mouse! Our geriatric mouse, Snowflake, who resides in our office,  is awake and running in her wheel.

Now it’s time to jump in bed and watch one of the shows we’ve recorded on the DVR. This is the only time we have to catch up on shows each night – once everyone/ everything else is asleep. We’re lucky though if we manage to stay up a whole hour.

Sweet dreams!

- large bibs. I had no idea how many bibs we’d go through once Ava started eating solids. FYI: I would hardly call what she’s eating SOLIDS right now. Purees and oatmeal cereal are far from being solid, which is why we go through so many bibs. Anyway, thanks to my Mum who made us a whole bunch of lovely large bibs!!

- Annoying musical toys with – believe it or not – even more annoying voices. How can I love an annoying toy? Easy, my baby loves it. Which means while she is in her highchair throwing a fit cause I can’t be holding her every second, if I give her said toy, then she is delighted. For about 3-4 minutes tops. But it is really freaking amazing how much I can now get done in the 3-4 minutes!! Love those toys!!! The most annoying of all is her fisher price remote control. Steve and I know all the words to all the annoying little sayings and songs it plays. And even more annoying, we catch ourselves humming or even singing out loud the songs at various times throughout the day. What??

- These nifty little bottle things made by Sassy that are actually meant for purees. I thought these were just going to sit in the cupboard forever and never get used but they have turned out to be a staple in the diaper bag. Whenever we go out for dinner I make sure I bring a pouch of baby food puree and one of these bottle things. Squirt the puree in, hand the bottle to Ava and she happily sucks away at it for a good 10 minutes or so until she finishes it. She has her dinner and there is no mess!! No worrying about bringing bowls and spoons and multiple cloths to clean her face, hands and hair (cause she is so quick she manages to stick her whole hand in her mouth then swipe it across her face and through her hair leaving a trail of sticky fruit). Yes these Sassy bottles are fab.

- Robeez shoes. Ava hates having socks on and manages to get them off within seconds. Well, being how it’s been SO cold here, she needs to wear socks. Period. She is great at taking shoes off too, and then her socks. But the Robeez shoes are ones that she has a lot of trouble getting off. Ha!! My sister gave us a couple pairs of these and Ava wears them all the time!

- Another food related item: Kidsme Feeders. They have a silicone end on them where you can put a piece of food inside and then the baby just sucks on it. Little bits of food disperse through the holes. I love this so much more than those weird net ones – way easier to clean. I also love how I can put a pacifier clip onto it and attach it to her shirt so she can’t throw it. We put banana (Ava’s favorite!), sweet potato, and I’ve put chunks of frozen purees in there too – seems to help when she is teething.

I know there are so many more things but I’ll save them for another post :)

- no more snow on the ground. Finally it looks like Spring might be on the way! It’s been a very long cold bitter winter here. (or maybe I’m just bitter). I’m going to say this again: I miss living in California!

- Avocado. As in I am seriously obsessed with it right now. I am ashamed of myself that I *thought* I did not like it my entire life up until a few years ago. Maybe it was the texture and color that threw me off, I don’t know. All I know is I never tried it but was convinced I detested it. To the point where I would order California Rolls without the avocado, or I’d take it out. What a waste!!! The funny thing, it took a monkey to get me to try it. Good old Bennie, the little Capuchin I trained. He LOVED avocado, so I’d make him a treat sometimes: mashed avocado with diced tomatoes mixed in. One day, I licked the fork after making it. I was hooked. So I owe my mother an apology. She always told me how good avocado was and that I should try it. Sorry Mum!! I should have listened to you!  Wow, that was a really long blurb about avocado.

- Our video baby monitor. I have it on my bedside table and I wake up numerous times during the night just to check it. I usually stare at it waiting to see her flinch or move a foot or something just so I know she is ok. Sure, she often sleeps all the way through the night now but I still don’t. Thank goodness for this monitor though cause if we didn’t have it, I’d probably be camping out on the floor of her room every night.

- Zumba. For the Wii. Total awesomeness. The time flies by and it’s FUN. And I actually feel like I’m getting a good workout. I’m so tired and worn out after, it’s great!

- Physique 57. This is an exercise program on 4 DVD’s. It’s TOUGH. Really tough. I asked Steve to do it with me last week and he reluctantly said ok. He thought it was going to be some silly wimpy workout. Was he ever surprised!!! We were both cursing the TV while doing the workout as we couldn’t even keep up with the slowest person doing the exercises. You know the one – the one person who is on the far left of the screen who is doing all the moves the easiest as possible. The one they tell you to follow if you’re a beginner. We couldn’t even keep up with that one!!

- A couple new shows that are out: Red Widow and Bates Motel.

- The last 30 minutes before I fall asleep when I get into bed and snuggle with Steve and the puppies while we watch a show on TV. Usually I don’t make it 30 minutes. Usually I don’t even make it 10 minutes.

- And tonight I loved loved LOVED when Ava fell asleep in my arms. This has not happened in quite a long time. (quite a long time meaning like 4 months or so).

Check out Homeketeers – we will be having a daily giveaway starting today until summer! Woo!! We have some awesome companies lined up!

Also, my Technique classes have started again!! You can get Techniques 101 for FREE here

Techniques 102 and 103 will be coming in a few weeks. I will also be starting some beginner’s photography classes soon. Email me if you have any questions: jessacs (at) gmail.com

Actually it’s one of our Flemish Giant Rabbits “Munroe” but he might as well be the Easter bunny. He weighs more than Ava does!

Munroe is very used to being photographed with kids as he is one of our star animals in our shows. Everyone loves him, he’s a great bunny. Believe it or not, Ava is not the youngest child to have her photo with him. Last week, a tiny little baby who was only a couple weeks old had his photo beside Munroe!

Ava just loves all the animals we have here, and thank goodness for that! She’s got her own little zoo here of about 75 animals! The hedgehogs still scare her though…

But look!! The Easter Bunny did come and left Ava some pretty nifty things for her to find this morning. Poor baby is sick with a cold but I think she perked up a little when she saw her new stuff. Check out those vtech toys – looks like the bunny discovered the great sale that Toys R Us had going recently- buy 1 vtech toy, get one free!! And that blue Easter basket? That was mine when I was little! My mum made that for me and I found it last year at my parents house while I was visiting. Now it is passed on to Ava :)

Stanley-man, you will be dearly missed. He has left behind 8 daughters though for us to love and remember him by. Hopefully they will be as sweet as their daddy and delight people as much as he did. The girls are 3 months old now so we will start them in shows soon. 8 daughters and table #8 was Stanley’s table at the wedding. :)

In other news, my online classes will be starting in the next couple weeks. If you’d like to join please email me. I have gotten many many emails and I have not responded to all yet, so if you haven’t yet heard from me, you will! I promise! Things have just been very hectic around here.

We have all been sick, on and off. There always seems to be something around here. It seems there is an endless amount of cleaning, dishes and laundry that has to be done. Something is wrong with our dryer so we’ve been without for almost 2 months now. There are more important things (like bills) that take priority over that so fixing the dryer will just have to wait for now. It is afterall more of a luxury as the clothes will dry on their own if they are hung up. I have to admit I do not miss the dryer as much as I thought I would. I’m even looking forward to the nicer weather so we can put up a small clothesline in our backyard.

We mostly use cloth diapers for Ava and we use cloth wipes for everything. Those are the best things ever! We now have a small supply of them in every room as they come in handy for everything. But since we have a lot of them, it means a lot of them in the laundry and I’m running out of places to hang them to dry. So they get hung all over the place, thankfully they dry quite quick. Here is a tutorial I did on how to make these awesome cloth wipes here. We have gone papertowel-less now in the house too. I’m so happy we did this as it was such a huge waste of money and waste in general using paper towels. It’s SO much better for the environment to not use paper towels too. We use larger cloth wipes and crocheted dish cloths in the kitchen now.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

So I quickly get up, fly across the room to open the door so said dog does not scratch again – heaven forbid the baby gets woken up! I then follow the dog (and by now it’s usually all 3 dogs – once I open that door, the others are like “what? we’re going out?? yay!!!!”) to let them into the backyard. Then I’m standing around in the kitchen waiting for the dogs to come back in. There is always one that lingers outside (usually Angus) and as I’m standing at the door trying to entice him back inside in my loudest most stern whisper (so I don’t wake all the neighbors), he just stands there across the yard staring at me. He knows. He knows I want him to come back in, and he knows I won’t go out there to get him. So he takes his time and sniffs every inch of the grass. I even go grab a bag of dog treats and desperately wave it and shake it at the door fiercely whispering for him to come for a “treat!!!”, throwing all my animal training principals right out. But at 3:00am and severely sleep deprived, there is a certain degree of desperation involved here. He does not come in. So guess what desperation makes me do now? Yes I run out into the backyard in the dark, in my bare feet, hoping that I don’t step in something such as dog or pig poop, and then of course Angus decides now is a great time to bolt right past me back into the house. Luckily I never did step in anything and I did run into the yard in the dark on many occasions.

I get all the dogs quietly back into our room, close the door, settle myself back into bed and close my eyes. 4:00 rolls around way too fast and the baby is awake again. I feed her, get her back to sleep and as I’m falling asleep, something is up with one of the dogs again. Now this mostly only happened on warm nights, there were several nights when they only woke me up once, but there were several nights when they woke me up 3 times. On an average night, twice, and this other time was usually because they wanted a drink. So there I go, following them to the kitchen, making sure to tiptoe past the sleeping pig in the living room. Back to the bedroom and to bed again. Baby is awake around 5:30-6. This time I’m so exhausted I end up letting her sleep beside me in the bed. Then BEEEEEEEP WHAM BLOOOP BEEEEEP – OMG what the heck is that???? Ava and I both jolt ourselves awake to the horrific loud sounds going off in the room. It’s the new ringtone that Steve has his phone’s alarm clock set as. It’s awful. It scared the crap out of both me and the baby. Steve didn’t even wake up. I had to shake him to get him to turn it off. Then the darn thing went off again 30 minutes later. But the best part of it all: when Steve finally wakes up after pressing snooze for an hour and a half. He yawns and says to me…. “I’m SO tired!”. Seriously. It was everything I could do to not throw the pillow on his face.

After a couple months of that, she did start to sleep better throughout the night, then we moved her out of our room into her own room in her crib! A big step. For me that is. She was fine being in her own room, I was the one who had issues with it. I missed having her in our room and I became obsessed with watching her on our video baby monitor (best thing ever!). But I adjusted to it and she started sleeping almost all the way through the night. I admit, it was pretty awesome. But then we all got sick and she was up again several times throughout the night. The dogs however are mostly sleeping all through the night now.

Speaking of sleep, I managed to actually get a pretty good sleep last night. I woke up really early but feeling rather rested. Ava was still sound asleep, Steve was asleep and the dogs were all asleep. I got this great idea of getting up and having some time to myself in a quiet house. Time to actually eat breakfast as usually I’m feeding Ava at the same time so I need to wolf down my cereal or she tries to grab it. The sun was shining, it was a great morning.

I tiptoed out of the room but the dogs were on to me. They dashed out behind me, waking Norman up in the living room. I followed all 4 of them into the kitchen to let them out and….totally forgot that due to the frigid temperature outside that we brought all 6 of the flemish giant rabbits inside – who had taken over our kitchen. What a mess we walked in to! There were rabbit pellets and dumped food dishes all over. The dogs and pig thought this was great – a smorgasbord for breakfast!!! Woohoo!!! So there I was ushering them all out the backdoor as they were trying to hoover as much crap down their throats on the way.

6 Flemish Giant rabbits – all between 15 and 20 pounds each. That’s a lot of rabbit and a lot of mess. Instead of getting my quiet time to eat breakfast, I got quiet time to clean the entire kitchen. Including washing the floor by hand. Oh joy. As soon as I was done, guess what? The baby was awake. Good timing little one.

Ava with the giant bunnies. 5 of them are exactly 1 month older than she is! Also Ava with Norman – he is a big pig now – over 60 pounds and still growing.