0nc3Aga1n

Ruth Olive Williams Cartwright Craig born July 19, 1911 died September 20, 2009. I knew her as Nana Ruth and she has always been a fixture in my life. I remember when we were kids she would come for weekend visits when we lived in Dartmouth and then Shearwater, she worked on the military base in Halifax at the Statacona I think it was called. She used to go to dances quite a bit too, formal ones with the long gowns, she loved to dance.

She used to bring us kids treats on occasion, one of my brothers got a jar of pickles, the other chocolate sauce and I always got fruit cocktail. Strange gifts when you think about it, but we certainly thought it was great.

Nana Ruth was a no nonsense kind of person and you better use your manner too, or you would be lectured. I know we all got our share of lectures and when I was older with kids of my own they got lectures too.

When she retired she moved back to New Brunswick to the home she had used as a summer home. It is a big old house and I’m told some people think it is haunted, my mom included. I know we’ve heard some strange noises there. I love that place, it reminds me so much of my childhood. We went there every summer when we were kids. I can still remember waking up mornings in the summer to the smell of omelets or french toast, because nana believed in a big breakfast. There was always way more food than I was able to eat, my dad and brothers were usually able to clean it up though.

Nana loved to garden and she had a huge garden which she kept up well into her eighties. She was in the garden more than she was in the house during the warmer months. She taught me lots about growing things and I’m sure there was a lot more that she never got around to telling me. I know I could never get anything to grow as big or as bountiful as she could.

I think I may have inherited my love of reading from her, I know she introduced me to Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. I read all the Perry Masons which I borrowed from her and so many others. She had books in every room in the house wrapped in plastic to protect them when they weren’t being read. The smoke from the wood stove tended to coat everything in the place. She loved to tell stories too, usually with a moral to them which is probably why she liked being a Sunday school teacher.  I remember her once telling me that she had started to write a book years ago but never finished. Funny but I had tried to write a book when I was younger, I never finished it either.

I have so many memories of Nana but one of my favourites is when we took her picking apples at one of those U-Pick places. The general idea was you walked in and picked your apples and then they would pick you up in a wagon with your harvest. When they saw nana they insisted that she take the wagon down to get the apples. Not sure she understood what all the fuss was about, she was in her eighties at the time. The best apples, according to nana, were high in the tree where she couldn’t reach so she would knock them out with her cane and we would pick them up when they hit the ground. It was so funny watching her knock the apples out of the trees.

Nana Ruth used to come for supper on Sundays back before my work schedule changed and I actually had Sundays off. I am glad of the time we had together because now instead of a lot of regret I have a whole lot of memories to cherish. What a wonderful woman she was. Nana Ruth had been sick for a few years now, not sure if it was alzheimers or dementia but she hasn’t really known who most of us were for quite awhile now.

Will I remember her forever? To borrow a phrase from Nana “I should shay so.”

It’s been awhile since I posted here. Cali is now six months old and trying to crawl. She is curious about so many things now and her personality is really starting to be apparent. She has a really good sense of humour, she loves to laugh. Baby giggles have to be the sweetest sound ever, I should be taping this for later.

I think the deer have been eating my swiss chard, the whole top was taken off a couple of them. I do have cucumber, tomatoes, and green peppers coming up nicely though. I haven’t had much time in the garden at all but it seems to be doing pretty good with all the neglect.

My niece gets married this Saturday coming, my oldest daughter is her maid of honour so she will be home for a couple days. I can’t wait, the husband has to go get her Wednesday. He enjoys the time they get to spend together on the drive, its a three and a half hour drive. My husband is giving the bride away and my son is an usher. The baby and I will provide moral support and help with the food and such.

My PC is in the shop, the motherboard was fried. I am getting the ram upgraded to two gigabytes which should help. It is already a lot faster than this laptop. Hopefully I will get it back by Wednesday too.  Once I get it back I want to get the pictures on it all copied to disk and reformat the partitions and give windows a little more space and install just one linux distro that way I can have a lot more space for pictures and such.

I was talking to my oldest daughter today, she is missing her baby sister. She is staying in Moncton (which is three hours away) to work for the summer. She will be home for a visit in July as there is a wedding she is in and then hopefully for her birthday at the end of August. It is so strange not having her home for the summer. I just got used to her living in the dorm for most of the year and now she has an apartment. I remember bringing her home from the hospital, I’m sure it was just yesterday, where did the time go? When I think of her having her own place it makes me a little sad, like she has flown the nest. I’m happy for her too and I know she will have a lot of fun getting things for the apartment and being all grown up.

My son is not in any hurry to grow up and move away from what I can see, although he seems to think he doesn’t need parental permission for much these days. It just may be time to reign that boy in. It is so hard to know what 17 year olds are up to these days. Trying to keep track of him can be difficult even though he has a cell phone (something I never thought I would agree to).

I keep thinking it would be nice for me to go back to work to help with bills and stuff but the husband thinks I should stay home with the baby until she starts school, not really sure how that is going to resolve itself yet. I love being home with her but feel guilty for not helping bring money in. Not to mention I actually like my job. Although even if I go back to work not sure I can keep that job as the hours are kind of bad sometimes.

My computer has died, not sure what has happened I know at post it gives one long, long beep and doesn’t boot. I’ll have to look up the Tagar site and see if there is any information on post beeps to see if I can figure out what the problem is. Other than that I may dust it out and see if that helps and if not take it to someone who might be able to fix it. I am using the son’s laptop at the moment, I am not crazy about it even though it gets better modem speed than my PC it seems so slow in other ways it drives me crazy.

The baby is growing so fast it is unbelievable. She started solid foods last week, she really likes rice cereal but not so crazy about sweet potatoes. She has decided she likes the baby in the mirror and tried to kiss her today. She was laughing and trying to touch the baby. I read that she will be eight months old before she realizes that she IS the baby.

She has a lot of fun in the tub now, she likes to splash and grab the face cloth and cup. She has learned to grab everything, she always liked hair but now she grabs everything within reach. It is a lot of fun trying to feed her with her tugging on the spoon. When she goes some place new you can see her scoping things out to see what she can reach.

She has decided being on her tummy isn’t so bad for a little while and she is trying to crawl. She manages to go in circles and backwards so far. It does tend to annoy her when her toys are in front of her though.

She is drooling like crazy and has a few teeth poking through but not all the way in yet. She also likes to bite now, of course, and puts everything in her mouth. Well, sometimes her aim is a little off and she manages to get stuff in her eye instead and then she gets mad because she is sure someone else did it of course.

She took her first step when her big sister was home a month ago. She was actually putting her feet flat on the floor, but has since started walking on her toes so she will have to come back down off them before she really starts to walk. She doesn’t want to sit most of the time, she wants to stand up.

She has a big sense of humour and loves to laugh. She recognizes her dad and I and smiles when she sees either of us. This makes her dad feel really special when he gets home from work. I have noticed that I just have to make certain faces or sounds at her and she starts to laugh. She does recognize a few other people that she sees regularly like her big brother and nanny. She smiles when she talks to her big sister on the phone. She sings all the time too, and loves to listen to music.

I took her to the doctor a week ago and she weighed 16-1/2 pounds and is 26 inches tall. She seems really tall for only five months old.

We generally have a lot of fun as she is a pretty happy baby. Today she was a little fussy and didn’t want to go to sleep but that might be her teeth bothering her.

Every spring for years I have gone looking for Jack in the Pulpits, it is one of my signs that spring is really here. They grow down back in my yard in the woods. I transplanted a Jack in the Pulpit up closer to my house a couple years ago, mostly to see if it was possible (it is), and yesterday I took the baby out in a snugli (wearable baby) for a walk around the yard and she got to see her first Jack in the Pulpit. This means she is officially part of a family tradition.

Today the baby went to her first party, it was a Harry Potter birthday party. The kids made potions and planted mandrake root (mexican hat plants), transfigured and played quidditch. The baby mostly watched as she was a little young to be handling this stuff or to go to school for that matter. She did however wear a robe and bring home a mandrake root as well as some Bernie Bott’s every flavour jelly beans and some other candy.

She had her four month doctor’s appointment on Wednesday and she is growing really well. She now weighs 14 lbs 10 oz. and is 25-1/2 inches long. She has a cold so she skipped her needle for now and will go back for it later.

She is now trying to stand all the time, never mind sitting at all. She loves to play in her exersaucer and to cuddle. She sings and  babbles and occasionally hollers, the other day she was mad as she thought I was taking to long getting her bottle and she screeched, it stopped her right up - I don’t think she realized she could be that loud, it made me laugh. Her feet go like she is trying to stomp them when she isn’t getting what she wants so I think she is going to have a bit of a temper when she is older (hard to say where she gets that).  She likes to pretend that she is riding a bicycle when she is sitting on my lap, she gets so intent its hilarious. I really think it is a whole lot more fun raising a child after you have already got a few grown up, you know what to expect to an extent and you don’t sweat the small stuff so much.

Well the oldest daughter and her boyfriend are headed back home. I decided not to go for the drive as I think it is a bit much for the baby and I wanted to keep an eye on my son who had friends over last night. 

The bridal shower was a lot of fun Friday, there was plenty of food (which always makes me happy) and the company was good (also makes me happy). We even managed to make my niece blush, which was no easy feat.

The baptism went well too, we took lots of pictures. Unfortunately the battery died in my video recorder which is weird as I had charged it not long ago. I think the battery was left in the camera though and that might explain it. The baby was good for pretty near the whole thing, she started to fuss a little bit and then the priest poured water over her head which she thought was fun. She looked like she wanted to go for a swim in the font and the candle was a great attraction as well.

The baby was good enough to take a nap with her dad this afternoon so I went for a walk around the yard looking to see which flowers were blooming. I found wild trilliums, bluets and daffodils in bloom. It was nice to see lots of things coming up, the chives are sprawling all over the place. I saw lots of columbine getting ready to bloom and the Hostas are coming up nicely. I have a white bleeding heart that has buds all over it even though it is just tiny. I planted a pink one last year too, but something found it tasty enough to eat it to the ground. The Forsythia is in full bloom and has been for the last week or more.

This is a busy week, I have my nephew and niece after school this week until their mom gets home. we have a bridal shower for one of my nieces on Friday and the baby is being christened on Saturday. On Sunday we will be driving my daughter and her boyfriend home which is a three and a half hour trip each way. It was a nice trip up to get them though as the weather was really sunny. My oldest daughter and her boyfriend are visiting for the week as the older two children are to be godparents for their younger sister.

I took the baby for the drive so we got a chance to see how she does on car trips. She slept most of the way, waking up only when we stopped. I was concerned that she might get car sick but so far so good. We are hoping to take her camping some this summer, which we avoided with the other two. I worried so much about schedules with the older two, always trying to have them fed and in bed at a certain time. As they got older I really enjoyed summer because we skipped bedtimes, we stayed outside frequently until it was dark. I would mow lawns while the kids played. We would sit up watching movies and eating popcorn or reading a book together. It’s funny that is the stuff I remember the most, and the times I enjoyed the most. We have read all the Harry Potters, most of them together with me reading out loud to the two of them, I can’t wait to do it again with the baby. I am trying to find Dr. Seuss books, a friend and I used to find them at yard sales. We competed to see who could get them first. I had given most of them away after my older two outgrew them, but I find them so much fun to read. So now I am hunting for them again.

Not sure I have a lot to write about but what the hey - thoughts are free. I am married with three children the older two are 19 (daughter) and 16  (son) the youngest is almost four months (daughter), hence the title of the blog - 0nc3Aga1n. It seems like I am doing the family scene for a second time.

When I first found out I was expecting another baby to say I was upset is an understatement, now that she is here I can’t imagine life without her. She is truly a blessing, although if you had told me I would feel that way a few months ago I would have looked at you like you had three heads.

It seems to me that I enjoy my time with her more than I did with the first two. With the older two I was so worried about messing up or messing them up. Now its kind of been there, done that, and I know in the end it generally works out alright. I don’t panic if she doesn’t eat exactly every four hours, I know she will tell me if she is hungry.

I have been through tattoos and piercings and having my child write about me on the internet. It all seems pretty trivial in hindsight, although at the time it was pretty upsetting. My older two have grown into fairly decent people despite my parenting skills or lack thereof. According to my oldest I am the person she will model her parenting after, high praise indeed as far as I am concerned. Especially when you consider she is the one who wrote all the bad stuff about me on the internet.

This time I want to enjoy watching this child grow instead of rushing around trying to do everything “right.” One thing I have learned is that they grow up and move out way to fast. I wasn’t ready to have an empty nest, so I guess things do really happen for a reason.

My husband and older children have been hyped about the baby since they first found out we were expecting. And the whole pregnancy was a family thing which was really different. The older kids were vigilant about making sure I was careful and didn’t do anything that could hurt the baby. That was amusing for the most part, although finding out that I shouldn’t eat French fries was a little upsetting as I love the things. The kids helped pick out their little sisters name and then we ran it by dad.

As well as a husband and three kids I have two dogs (lab - terrier mixes) and two cats. The oldest of the critters is our cat Tigger a orange marmalade tomcat who is a major baby. He likes to snuggle and expects to be patted while he eats. Then there is Trinity, the mother dog and her daughter Scruffy  (Alexandria is her real name) they are fairly mild mannered although Trinity can be a little grouchy at times. Jasmine or Jaz as I call her is the newest pet in the house she is almost a year old, she was a feral cat that we got from the animal shelter. Jaz doesn’t like to be picked up at all, but if you lay on the bed she is there quick as can be, hoping for some serious cuddling.