3 hours until showtime...

I'm up in the middle of the night. Again.

6:00 AM will come around soon enough. Time to wake Chance up, feed him breakfast, and drop him off at Mrs. G's. The New Routine.

It will be hard not being there to rub his back when he's sleepy and kiss his owwies when he falls down. I will miss sunny afternoons chasing him around the house, playing hide and go seek. And I think I will miss my naps, cups of tea when I feel like it, curling up with the kitty when Chance is asleep. It will be easy letting someone else change the diapers. I worry that Chance will feel hurt that I am gone from him for 85% of his day.

We are officially done with breastfeeding as of 3 days ago or so. There were no tears for either of us, it was just something that neither one of us wanted to continue doing. After cutting out the morning feedings, it felt strange doing it every 24 hours at bedtime. I can't even remember the last time I nursed him properly, maybe in Regina before we travelled home.

Chance received a parcel on the Greyhound Bus this weekend. It was a pumpkin grown in Meadow Lake, just for him. He was very impressed and tried to pick it up, but I think the pumpkin is heavier than he is! He was satisfied with just rolling it around for a while, until he got distracted and then we sequestered the pumpkin into the basement where it is cool and it will keep until Halloween. Thanks Grampa and Grandma Demmans.
























For supper we ate a ham with scalloped potatoes and glazed carrots. We invited a friend over for dinner, he is a bachelor so a big Sunday meal is always a treat. We were supposed to have Ayla and her parents over, but with Chance and I being sick, we didn't want to risk passing it on to another baby. We postponed to next Sunday. After Cam and I got the kitchen cleaned up, we put a couple of containers of the ham stock to cool on the counter. We put Chance to bed and I started putting his lunch bag together. I reached into the cupboard and BLAMMO! his sippy cup bombed off the shelf and right into the container of stock on the cupboard below. The cupboard doors, the backsplash, the crockpot waiting for tomorrow's meal, the floor, the wall, ME, everything was covered in warm, greasy, gelatinous ham stock. GROSS. The floor is still oily feeling. Cam washed it twice, I mopped with hot water and then with lemon juice. What a dramatic close to the evening.

The festivities side tracked me from checking whether our timer is set correctly, so I have now set it to go off at 6 AM, so will check in the morning whether I remember how to use it to get our slow cooker to go off or not. We have an insane slow cooker. Recipes that say cook for 5 hours on high of 10 hours on low mean cook on low for 4 hours unless you want a hockey puck for dinner . When I was at my sister's house she made the most amazing tender beef (chuck!) roast for dinner in her slow cooker. I got a tougher fattier roast this time. If it turns out the same as it has in the past I might try begging, borrowing or stealing another slow cooker, to see if that makes a difference. Jen pointed out that she used farm beef, not store beef, which is leaner these days. The roasts I have produced from that slow cooker are perfectly fine...it's just the one that Jen served me last week opened my eyes to what we have been missing.

Well, I've killed 20 minutes. I should probably go back to bed.