I could get used to that!

I guess Elle wanted to make up for waking up at 6:15am yesterday and then not letting me have a nap - she slept 10 hours straight!!


I went to bed 3 hours after her, but I still got 7 hours straight sleep.  I haven't had that long of a stretch at all since she was born.  It was awesome!!!

She's had this annoying night cough, which has been why she hasn't napped very well.  She doesn't cough at all during the day, only as she is falling asleep at night, sometimes it can take her up to an hour to fall asleep and the coughing to stop.

She didn't wake up until 5:45am to eat, and then it took her a good hour to fall back asleep, but then she (and I) slept until 8am!

I could get used to that!!

PDF Forms

I love PDF forms.

Actually, I should clarify, I like some PDF forms.

Through this visa process I've come across three.

1. The worst.  It's just plain and simple, a form with blanks which you have to print and fill in by hand.  I had to do two of these.
2. A little better.  You can type in your answers, BUT you cannot save it, so once you've filled it in you want to print it out right away lest your stupid and annoying computer chooses to "not respond" TWICE when you've filled it in completely and are almost ready to print. This happened to me with the actual visa application form.  I filled it in, and closed the laptop to come back to it, and the program shut down on me when I re-opened!  Blah!
3. The BEST!  You can type in your answers and save it to the computer to come back to, to finish, to print, etc.  You can do this for passports... I love it!!

Actually #2 might be worse than #1.  At least if you make a mistake on the first one you can just reprint that page... you don't loose EVERYTHING.

Third time lucky, the application is completed and printing as we speak!

I just want to nap

Elle has been drastically reducing her normal afternoon nap of 2.5-3.5 hour nap to (sometimes) an hour.

Yesterday it was only a half hour. It has me pretty grumpy.

I'm lucky to have Conor around to take care of Finn while Elle and I nap. Finn doesn't usually nap anymore, but generally has at least an hour "quiet time" in his room.

But I take so long to fall asleep at nap time that unless Elle sleeps for longer than an hour, I get nothing.

Right now I'm at my Mom's, Elle slept for about an hour and then no matter how hard I tried I could NOT get her back to sleep. As I was trying I could hear Finn singing away in the other room.

Guess who I can't hear now, and who I assume is sleeping even though he hasn't napped in probably a week?

Ugh - if I can't nap I would much rather be awake with Finn than Elle. That way I could lay on the couch while he played, or read books to him or something.

Now I'm just left with a grumpy baby who wants to nap but won't.

Shy?

Finnian never really played shy as a baby.  If he cried for someone else, it had nothing to do with me being gone or anything, he just cried because he would have cried anyways.

I thought Elle was the same, I've never seen her play shy with anyone, especially not her Grandparents.

Tonight there was a surprise birthday party for one of my uncles at another uncles house.  Conor and Finnian stayed home while Elle and I went to the party.

As soon as I got there, my mom took Elle and I went and sat down to relax!

I looked over at Elle, and she wasn't looking at me, and no one was looking at her, but she had this terrified little look on her face, and a big pout forming, and big doe-y eyes.  It broke my heart!  But she didn't start crying, so I just let her stay with Grandma.  She had that look on her face for a few minutes, and then Mom took her into the kitchen with her, and next thing I hear was her SOBBING!

My uncle said Hi to her and she just broke down!  She didn't stop until she was back in my arms.

It's kinda nice to know she needs me... but kind of annoying too! haha.  I'm hoping it was more because we were at a different house with a lot of people she didn't really know.

Later on when she saw my niece Morgan she was happy and smiley... maybe she missed Finn!

More snow!

I didn't think I'd be seeing this again for a few years! And to think I was just out yesterday in a thin coat.

I give up

On facebook... just for Lent, that is :)

I did it last year, and it was actually great, facebook CAN be a great way to stay in touch, but it can also be a great way to be distracted from other things, and to get annoyed at people!  And to ANNOY people as well :) haha

So I've set my notifications to email me if anyone private messages me or writes on my wall... otherwise bye bye!

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On another note, night training is going very well so far!  The first night was annoying because I wanted to make sure Finn knew that he wasn't wearing a diaper, so Conor told him that if he had to go pee to call Daddy and he would take him.  This resulted in Finn "needing" to pee 3 times in the first hour!

And each time he would say 'Finn a big boy going in potty.  Finn not wear diaper.  If Finn have to go pee say 'daddy, Finn need to go pee' and daddy will take Finn to go pee"

Haha, anyways, that was only the first night, and the last two nights have been better and completely dry!

Night Training

Today I went out and bought plastic sheets for Finn's bed, and night training will commence tonight!

The last couple days he hasn't worn a diaper for nap time.  And I think he's only has two or three wet diapers in the morning since the first week of potty training.  One was actually in the night and the other one or two were still warm, so I'm pretty sure he peed in them after waking up.

I'm not too worried, I think he'll do great... right now at least.  Conor isn't really looking forward to it because half the time he is in bed with Finn at some point in the night, and he doesn't want to get peed on!

I had bought Finn training underwear (basically just thicker underwear), when I first started potty training him.  But his thighs are actually kinda small so the pee would go right through the leg holes when he was standing up... regular underwear would actually keep more pee "in" than on the floor.  I know I could have tried a smaller size I guess, but didn't want to waste the money, and he ended up not really needing it anyways.  But I saved them because I think they will be better for night time.  Since he'll be laying down hopefully it will just help absorb a little bit, better than nothing!

Wish us luck!

Looking back

Before I wrote Elle's 7 month update I looked back to read what Finnian was up to at this age. It turns out that, not only Finn was doing similar things as Elle (not that I was surprised, kids are basically the same at this age), but I was doing similar things then too.

Meaning right now I'm working on our visas to Australia and preparing to move, and when Finn was Elle's age I was working on our ITALIAN visas and preparing to move!

Yesterday Conor got his official offer of Employment! I got our documents certified today so I can send off our things for our Australian and Italian police checks tomorrow.

Then in the next few weeks, after the school in Melbourne has sent off our nomination, I will finish and send in our visa application. Then medical exams and chest X-rays. And then we wait and see!

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Wanna know some differences and similarities between Finn and Elle at this age?

• Finn could roll from back to front, Elle can roll front to back

• Both getting close to sitting up all by themselves (pretty much can sit up, but need pillows around, just in case)

• Finn was eating a lot of solids, Elle is getting there!

• Finn was gassy and teething at night which resulted in little sleep, Elle is teething but still doing well in the sleep department. We've actually had two nights in a row where she has only woken up twice in the night to eat and slept in until at least 7am. Although she didn't have a good afternoon nap yesterday.

• Both love(d) bath time, especially after being switched to a bath ring.

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I think that's about it - I love this blog as a personal journal that I can look back on! And it's a great way for us is to keep everyone updated as we travel the globe!

Bedtime mischief

Finn has started the excuse game.

Excuses that keep him from having to go asleep.

I think it's mostly on nights when he just can't sleep. He has started to cry out numerous times saying he has to poo or pee.

The most annoying part though is that he refuses to use the downstairs toilet! So we have to bring him upstairs, and then he's sees that everyone is still awake and in the living room, which I'm sure doesn't help.

Elle, on the other hand, had a good sleep last night! She only woke up twice to eat, and the first time was just as I was going to bed, so she only woke me up once, after a 5 HOUR STRETCH!!! Sooo nice :)

Elle - 7 months old

The biggest thing to write about is how close she is to sitting up on her own... and she loves it! She likes to sit up and have a few toys to play with.

Still not really liking food, but the other day I mixed breast milk with her rice cereal instead of water, and while she still gagged and tried not to close her mouth, she ended up eating it all (the whole tablespoon of it!) - actually I started writing this a week or so ago and since then she's really taken a turn for the better with food. Not sure if it was adding the breastmilk that made the difference, or if she just needed a bit more time, but she's eating with a bit more gusto now.  She still doesn't really seem to LIKE anything she's eating, but she eats it and continues opening her mouth for more when offered, so it's going well!

Still hasn't rolled over... probably because I don't put her down much. She doesn't really like floor time, especially now that she is almost sitting up. And the times when I put her down there's usually not a good spot to put her except the jolly jumper, bumbo, or her little rocking chair.

I'll have to start trying a little harder.

Haha, I have NO idea what Finn was doing in the background!  It looks like some kind of dance.

She LOVES patty-cake!  Well, she loves it when I sing it, at night before bed while I'm changing her she starts getting really sad and angry because she just wants to eat and sleep already, so I have to sing to her while I change her or else she gets into hysterics (and not the laughing kind!)

Finn is being so good with her lately.  He went through a patch of not wanting her to have any toys, his toys, her toys, she wasn't allowed any.  But when I started making it a thing to get him to be a big helper he is so much better now.  He will even let her chew on his duplo, so long as he chooses which one, and he knows she likes the window the best :)  The other day she was crying and crying and he ran and got her one of her toys!  It was precious.

Elle in her bath ring

We've also discovered that Elle LOVES to watch Finnian dance and jump.  She smiles so big and starts giggling, it's adorable. So whenever she is sad we ask Finn to come and dance for her, and sometimes even if he just hears her crying he will go over and start dancing saying "yay baby Elle"... I love these two!

So I had actually forgotten to take her picture until just before bed time, so I got the area all set up and undressed her before putting on her pjs and she started smiling so big.  She loves being naked!  She grabbed her toes and then before I knew it she was sooooo close to rolling over.  I let her keep at it for 5 minutes, and she is so close, but not quite there.  I really wanted to be able to say she rolled over, but it's cold in our room and I didn't want her naked for too long, so hopefully she'll roll over in the next few days.

Elle in a new dress from Australia that Finnian's Godmother Clare sent  :)

 I also hope to announce some teeth soon, because she is teething like crazy.   Pink cheek, yelling while gnawing on toys, drooling like you just poured a glass of water on her!  We will see.

Relaxing Sunday

Last night we had a birthday party at home... just low key, because Conor hates his birthday!  I made a cake though, and I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  All of the other cakes I have made, Conor's mom has decorated... but this one I was determined to decorate myself!  Generally I start, and then ask her for a little help, and then just ask her to do the whole thing... but this time I did it myself.  It wasn't perfect, but it was A LOT better than my last attempts!

Anyways, what are we up to this week?

• Conor is waiting for the first printing of his thesis to be done.  He has to do up a 5 page summary and send it off to Rome.  The committee will meet at the end of the month and decide whether he can go ahead and defend it... or if he needs to make changes.  If he has to make any, than he will do that right away and then have 7 copies printed and send those to Rome for his readers to read so that he can defend in June at some point.
• Conor has Spanish class on Tuesday, so we won't be doing anything that day.
• Wednesday I have an appointment with a notary to have our documents certified.  Tomorrow I have to figure out what exactly I need done though.  Probably the main page of all 4 of our passports, all of our birth certificates, our marriage certificate, and that should be all.  But I may need more than one of some of those.  I know I need all of that for the visa application, but I also need them to get our Italian and Australian Police checks, although I think the Australians just need a COPY of the certified document, which will save me some $$$
• Thursday I have to go to the bank and get international money orders to pay for the Australian and Italian police checks.
• At some point we have to get our Canadian police checks
• After the bank on Thursday I will go to my moms with the kids for the day, and stay there for dinner while Conor has choir practice (we decided that only Conor will be in choir this time, because it's too stressful for us with the kids if we are both in the choir)
• Friday, no plans... keep working on filling in our Australian Visa.

After I get the police checks done than it's really just a waiting game until Conor's employer finishes up our nomination for permanent residency.

Have a good week!

Pictures

I haven't really been blogging lately.  Conor has been working hard on getting his thesis finalized (his initial copy is getting printed as we speak) so he can send it in next week.  Which means he has the GOOD computer with all of the pictures on it.

So because my last ... okay I just went back to see my last months of posts and it's been almost all talk and no pictures!!  Okay, here we go, hold onto your hats!

I just realized that most of the pictures are of Elle sitting up, because that's her new thing, and it's so cute!

Uncle Evan's old baby hat

Her rainbow bright outfit.

We have to have "passport size" photos to include with our Australian Visa application, and the health exams and chest xrays.  So I thought we would just take some downstairs and crop them and print them.  In the end I wasn't satisfied with any of them, so I scanned our passport pictures and just printed those out!

Conor holding Elle up so I could get her headshot

He's such a big boy!

Grabbing at her toes!  It LOOKS like she's gearing up to roll over... but it's not happening yet!

I didn't want to take down our tree, so we took off the Christmas decorations and Finnian helped me make Valentines decorations

She's naked here... poor girl has a bad diaper rash so I let her go nekkid for a bit (hoping she wouldn't pee on my bed!)

Propped her up in the crib so Finn and I could play on my bed.

Good timing!

First, you know how I mentioned I have to get police checks for Italy and I wasn't sure what to do.  I HAD found two places online through the Australian Immigration website and by emailing the Italian Consulate in Vancouver that basically just told me an address and phone number of some place it Italy.  I was not looking forward to figuring it all out.  But my good friend Helen who is in Rome right now emailed me to tell me that she just recently helped out an Australian in getting an Italian police check, and while she was doing some research on his behalf she came across a forum of Canadians talking about getting Italian Police Checks.  I briefly looked at it and it looks like this forum gives me EVERYTHING I need to know for getting it done. Including a mock letter that I pretty much just have to fill in the blanks with my personal details.

You have no idea how relieved this makes me feel - thanks Helen!!!

Second, I had just been lamenting the fact that I had gotten my eyes tested a few months ago only to see a Groupon for $65 which would get you your eye exam AND $200 towards a pair of prescription eye glasses a few days later!  I was pretty bummed because I really need new glasses.  I wear contacts everyday... mostly because I just really do prefer contacts to glasses, but also because I hate my glasses.  And they are at least 10 years old, because I've never had a new pair since knowing Conor!

I opened up my email today to find a message from my sister-in-law telling me about a "first pair free" giveaway that clearlycontacts.ca was doing, today only!  You get a pair of frames (basically all that they sell were available, except a few weren't part of the deal), and free basic lenses (would have to pay a bit to get scratch proof, etc), and all you had to pay was shipping!  I started browsing right away, and as soon as Conor woke up I made him come look and help me decide on a pair and then I ordered some, only $13 for the shipping!  Even if they aren't the best, for the amount of time that I will wear them, and just having them incase I ever need to drive without my contacts for whatever reason, it's so worth it.

Now I know I haven't actually applied for or gotten the italian police checks, or gotten the glasses YET, I was pretty happy with the timing of these two things!

The ball is rolling

The kids passports came in the mail today!  I was a little surprised that they came so quickly.  When I got the slip in the mail that there was something at the post office for them I was afraid that their pictures had been rejected or something and that I would have to jump through some hoops, but they were all good.

Either way it actually doesn't seem like anything is quite as urgent as I at first made it out to be.  The reason I wanted the passports right away was so we could go an do our medical exams.  You have to go to a registered "panel doctor" for these, there's one in Burnaby and one in Vancouver.  I called the Burnaby office today just to find out if I needed to make an appointment, find out the costs and other info.  It was more expensive than I had anticipated, but thankfully they alleviated my fears of the kids having to get blood drawn.  I knew it would not be fun for Finn, but they don't need blood taken OR chest xrays, so that is good.  Just a little check up with the doctor for them.  She also advised that we don't go in until the day we actually send in our application to Australia.  I guess it only takes about a week from the time we see the doctor for the immigration department to get the information, and if we aren't even applying for another month or so than it will just be sitting on some ones desk somewhere and that leaves potential for it to be misplaced or something.

Right now we are waiting for the school to send us an official job offer for Conor to sign, and then they will "nomitate" Conor for employment with the immigration department.  That could take about a month, so after that we will send in our stuff.

We also need police checks, and from the looks of it, that WILL take 4-6 weeks for the Canadian and Australian ones. I don't even want to think about the Italian one... but that's my job, so I guess I'll have to figure it out! So we will go in and get the Canadian ones done in the next week, as well as send in the stuff for the Australian one next week hopefully.

Ugh, so much to do! I just keep having this feeling that I'm going to forget something and it's going to delay the process, so I find myself reading the same sections in the booklet over and over again and re-writing the same lists over and over again to make sure I get it all right.

Bad things come in 3s

Okay, maybe not BAD things exactly.  But silly, blonde-moment things.  And it's not even noon yet... so there could be a lot more "bad" things before I hit the hay tonight.

Number 1:  I almost left the house in my slippers!!  I NEVER go barefoot/sock-footed in the house.  In the summer I always wear flip flops around the house, and in the winter I always wear my slippers.  I OFTEN leave the house in the summer wearing my flip-flops when I intended to wear proper shoes, but it's usually not a big deal.  But wearing slippers to the mall?  Not cool!

Number 3:  (I'll get to the whopper of the day, number 2, after this one).  I ordered Conor a double-double at Tim Hortons today, he wasn't impressed (especially because it followed my big second blonde-moment).  The problem is that Tim Hortons has recently added an even LARGER cup to their menu, and renamed the smaller cups.  Conor used to always get a large one-and-one.  But now what was the large is classified as a medium.  Same size and price as the old large, but a different name.  But it threw me off, and suddenly I couldn't remember if he drank it with one-and-one or double-double.

Number 2:  We got up early to head into Surrey today to renew mine and Conor's passport.  They expire May next year and even though the Australian visa we are applying for only requires the passport to be valid for at least 6 months, I didn't want the hassle of having to renew our passports from Australia next year already.  Yesterday we went to Superstore and got our pictures done, and got our guarator to sign it, etc.  We got there and I told the lady that checks over everything before you sit down why we were renewing and she told me to write a letter stating why we needed to renew even though our passport was still valid for over a year.

  So I started writing the letter.  I said that our passports were still valid for over a year, and then went to write in brackets the expiry date, May 2013.  But then something didn't seem right.  I checked our passports and sure enough they are valid until May 2014!!!  They are valid for just over 2 years... we don't need to renew, and they definitely would not have renewed them for us.

  Waste of a day, waste of stressing over nothing, waste of the money for the passport photos.  But I could NOT for the life of me figure out why I thought our passports expired next year, and why we needed to renew.  I  mean, I make mistakes, but not THAT big of a mistake.

  Then I figured it out.  All along I have been assuming that we would apply for a Temporary Long-stay sponsored visa to Australia.  These are valid for up to 4 years, and since we had committed to at least 5 years at the school in Melbourne I figured we would definitely got for the full 4 year visa.  Generally the visa people require your passport to be valid for 6 months beyond your visa expiration.  Therefore we needed to renew our visas.

  BUT this week the school in Melbourne mentioned the option of applying for a permanent residence visa instead.  I hadn't even thought of that as an option, so informed them that we thought a temporary one might suit us better right now.  Looking into it though, the permanent visa is a MUCH better option, and that's what we have decided to go for!

  So there you go... I hope bad things only come in 3s though.  I told Conor not to let me drive today though, just in case!!

My mind is kind of exploding

But in a good way.

I really like filling out forms. Reading all the fine print and filling in the forms.  I am so lame.  But I know Conor really likes this about me!

We are finally starting the process of applying for our visas to Australia, and thus, my mind is exploding.  I'm trying to figure out the best timeline of what to do and when, and it's a little bit complicated.

First we have to figure out exactly WHAT visa to apply for.  It's between two different visas. One is more long-term and one isn't AS long-term.  One costs more, one costs less.  One probably has a longer processing time, one has a shorter processing time.  One gives us perks like being able use the public healthcare system, the other ones means we have to buy private coverage.

Second, we need to get chest X-rays, medical exams and police checks (for any country we have lived in the past 10 years!)  There are some difficulties surround this one because, technically, you don't need to do this unless they request it after you apply for the visa... but that just makes the whole process longer... so I'm thinking we should just go ahead.  But then you have to pay for it whether you end of needing it or not.  Also, you need your passport in order to get the chest xray and medical exam, but the kids ones are processing right now (and the passport place has the kids birth certificates as well, so we don't even have ID for them!)

Third... actually I guess this should be first... Conor and I have to renew our passports.  But because our passports are valid for more than a year they might give us a hard time, because they don't like doing that.

Anyways, I've had a good look over both visa possibilities now, and I have a little schedule for what I need to do and when, so my head is intact... for now!