Happy New Years

Today I remember all the things I am thankful for once again.  This year had been full of some downs but many ups.  Every day I am lucky and thanful to be in this world living my dream with the people I love.
Hightlights are naturally Jacob being born first and foremost.  Also our trip to FL in Jan. (our last single time together as a family of 3!), Adam's class afloat reunion on Port's Island in June, moving onto Blew Horizon, extended maternity leave, helping one of my best friends find the wedding dress of her dreams..... and many many more. 
As I attempt to bake sausage rolls in the galley oven, for the NYE party we are going to in a few hours, I am reflecting on all the things i've learned in 2011.  One of them is that my oven does not get hotter than to 250 F, (you need a good 400 bake sausage rolls- and most things I bake!)
In reflection;
Buying cheap green tea is not worth it
Huggies diapers work best for girls while pampers work best for boys
Somehow there is the same little amount of room in the bed with kids no matter if you have a king or a full
Yet again I AM SUPERWOMAN- I went through 6 hrs of labor (fyi that tops any other super power by far)
It is possible to survive and be relatively sane if you get up everyday at 3am 
If left alone on Blew Horizon while underway I can sail solo and will survive
It is possible to take Blew Horizon out in 18-22 knots but not advisable or comfortable
I like spinning! (still hate running)
How to make fitted sheets (still working on that one)
Santa will still come even if there is no chimney and all that is left for him is a nutrigrain bar

HAPPY NEW YEARS from our family to yours!

Weather Windows

Well its been a funny Christmas holiday as far as the weather is concerned.  Usually we are very lucky in Bermuda and have beautiful days both Christmas and New Years.  However we have had a cold front come through this holiday that has really messed around with our boating plans.

Marley taking us through Two Rock Passage

Jacob smooth sailing

Marley safe at anchor in the Harbor 

Christmas eve was 18-22, Christmas Day even worse, then it calmed down for Boxing Day and the next day, picked back up again yesterday and then back down today.  Tomorrow is supposed to be gorgeous as well and of course these days are back to working days before the weekend when i'm sure the weather will plan to act up again ruining our time off with daddy and boating weather!

Jacob snuggled with Julie on our way back from Adam's site

Thankfully we did make it out to Adam's spot the day after boxing day and wished him a Merry Christmas.  Julie, Abbie and Mark all jumped in but I opted for manning the boat while they swam as I am a chicken and do not tolerate cold well! Sea surface temperature is a little less than 70 and at about two miles out in deep dark blue water its even colder than that!

It was a good ride out though and we were glad we seized the moment when we did. I wonder sometimes if Adam hadn't had died how much deep sea boating we would have ever actually done.  It seems a shame it took that to send us out there.  However on the positive side, he has already opened our horizons and taught us so much in only a year of his absence..... and I know he will continue to.  R.I.P. Adam- we love you always.

Post Christmas

This was the first year Marley really grasped the concept of Christmas (the commercialized santa side that is) so naturally after almost two days of being handed present after present every two seconds 'post Christmas becomes quite a letdown. We arrive at people's houses or someone will swing by and Marley will promptly ask, "Where is my present?"  Now four days post Christmas this has subsided but it did really upset me as selfishness is very out of character for my baby girl.
This Christmas was very family oriented which was nice.  My brother was down from Canada and Mark's sister is now living here although her husband is still stuck in Brazil.  We had Christmas day lunch/ dinner at my parents house after a cruise in the morning bringing Blew Horizon back to Dockyard.
My family is exactly like a never ending episode of Modern Family mixed with Brothers and Sisters.  We have all the main crew, plenty of drama, and with a good sense of humor life is a blast!
Jay and Gloria remind me most of my cousins.  He is Bermudian and a regular 'hard guy' and she is from Columbia.  Their dynamics are about the same as Jay and Gloria on the ABC hit.  At family gathering like his parent's annual Boxing Day dinner she is often lost in translation through a joke or fussing over one thing or another while her husband (just as Jay would) stands by and watches with a laugh or creates even more of a situation without her realizing.  I guess Mark and I would be like Claire and Phill although our children aren't old enough so they have their own roles in our family.  My brother is naturally Mitchell.  Hilarious! Kitty on Brothers and Sisters is my mum to a T! Slightly overbearing but with the best of intentions.  I could go on but everyone has their place and as this blog continues i'm sure you will all get a better of picture of my "Real World".  Luckily they all watch and love the show which makes good conversation as we reflect on how much we are like them all.
I have Marley home from school this week and we are out and busy.  I am really enjoying having her home and desperately wish I didn't have to send her back to school next week. However I know she is missing her friends because they are all she talks about.  She sounds like a teenager already! We spend the mornings lounging around the boat, sometimes we take a walk around Dockyard or go and visit Daddy and work.  Then we usually drive East to do a load of laundry and visit with either set of grandparents.  We try to get home before 5, cook dinner, play with Daddy once he is home and then the evening bedtime routine sets in. Life couldn't be better.  (Well maybe more boating....)

Marley at the Aquarium (BAMZ)

Christmas Eve

Sorry this post is a little late after my last. Understandably, its been a little hectic around here with Christmas coming.  I also went to Philly for a long weekend with my ace girl to find her perfect wedding dress. She is gonna look like a princess!! We were thankfully able to take Blew Horizon out for Christmas and here is the little jingle I worked on while we were out..... MERRY CHRISTMAS to all...

The stockings were hung over the nav station with care. Mommy's, Daddy's and Jacob's were there. As the days grew close I had to run to the store for Marley would not stop her chatter, there was none for her and that's what was the matter!
We sailed Sat afternoon with winds of 18-20 to arrive in town with last min shoppers of plently. A quick lunch with friends and our eyes scouring trends, we sent the kids off with the parents of Jen! Donkey's, sheep and story of Christmas we got done shopping before they even missed us. 
Back to the boat and a quick Robin Hood before dinner and all the prepping we could. For who would arrive tonight down the mast? But St. Nick and his 9 reindeer really fast!
With the kiddies to bed and the boat all a dark. We left carrots, a note and a nutrigrain bar, out on the table just under the mast and got to our wrapping, the last of the last. 
To bed by midnight the two of us went but it was more like sleeping through a storm  in a tent. Away from the dock it can be quite uneasy especially when it gets really breezy.  Christmas morning came fast and the Christmas day roast but that will all be told in a later post. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Sleeplessness

This is actually from Wed. night/ Thurs early am.... plenty of dramas since then, as it goes round here but literally too exhausted to post.  Perhaps I will end up doing what I did for this one which was write it on my blackberry at 4:30 in the am and then e-mailing it to myself to copy and paste days later when I have the time.  Feeling a little overwhelmed this week, perhaps it is my upcoming trip, the restless baby I have or Christmas just around the corner... in any case sleeplessness is the condition!
My heart is racing, my eyes are burning, my back aching, I'm rocking furiously, and patting him methodically and just when I think the only thing left in me to do is scream I look down into the face of the little boy tightly clutched in my arms; quiet peaceful with closed eyes.
Could it be he's finally gone back to sleep? Since Jacob wakes at 4:00am but does not scream or cry just litghtly fusses and coos I have decided not to feed him anymore when he wakes at this time. I don't want to get him in the habit of waking for an unecessary feed in the middle of the night. 
All of this is requiring disipline I fear my sleeplessness does not allow me the strength I need. At bedtime I should be more vigalant about keeping him awake until at least 10pm and making sure his last feed is big enough to hold him through the night.  When he wakes at 4am I also need to rush to his bassinett less for the littlest whimper or cough. He needs to learn to self soothe better but my problem is at 4:00am when the wind has been howling all night crashing things across the deck allowing only for a light sleep- a little whimper from the bassinett next to the bed sounds like a fierce cry for help that I could never ignore. Its the sound that doesn't fit in with all the other creaks, moans and howls and because of this requires imediate attention.
So how does it end? There is no rocking or highback chair with a footstool to fall asleep in. Once I've stopped the patting and the rocking I can't put him down for he'll wake again. The simple solution for the next two hours before the alarm goes off is snuggle him close and gently try to lay myself flat and pray that his paci doesn't fall out or if it does he can find his thumb and just give me a few more hours of sleep!

Crashed

Well on the drive home from picking Marley up from school I had a great topic idea and thought out dialogue for tonight's post... Hoses and Hormones.... I was going to explain the frustration of running out of water mid-shower to have to then in your towel and soapy hair run up the companion way onto the dock to turn the hose on and fill up the tanks when living on a boat.  I was also going to discuss the fact that my baby is ONLY 4 months old.... sometimes it feels like he has been here forever already.  Its hard to remember what life was like before him but then I recall as my body is still recovering from 9 months of creating him and then 6 hours of labour.  I think with your second especially it is very easy to forget that not long ago the latest bundle of joy just arrived! The signs are there though, my hair is still falling out, my body is still stretched and misshaped, overall I still feel and look like I had a baby!
However, tonight is going to be an early one; Jacob has not continued sleeping through the night and with the holidays approaching we are all exhausted!  I promise to revise this site soon; was rejected from Adspace so I need to really examine what is required out of blogging.... night time reading "Mom Blogging for Dummies" however tonight I don't think i'll make it past the introduction!

Weekends on a boat

First of all highlights from the week!
Most recent- for the last two nights Jacob has slept through the night!!! Please Please let this stick.... going to bed at 10pm and waking up at 6:00am with no feeding interruptions in between is all I want for Christmas! :)
Secondly, Marley was a STAR in her Christmas Concert.  She truly stole the show and had us all cracking up. Videos to be posted to facebook soon.
Finally, Mark and I had a successful date night for the first time in probably over a year and a half.  Our last one was the summer before last on our anniversary.

We live in paradise!

This weekend (Sunday night) I realised I had not driven my car since Wed! Thursday night Grammy and Popop picked up Marley and brought her home and on Friday Jacob and I took the ferry into town to Marley's concert where we met daddy on the Scout (the work boat), on Saturday oh no wait.... Saturday we drove the car to pick up our Christmas tree (the last Cedar Tree for sale on the island and def the runt of the litter). Either way, the point is we finally spent some time actually behaving like we lived on a boat!  On Friday we had the tender in town for Marley's concert and the weather couldn't have cooperated  more for a beautiful moonlight cruise home after a celebratory dinner with the family.
On Saturday after our decorating errands Mark and I had our first date night where we took the tender into Flatts for a wonderful dinner and then home again.  Although we should really have 1) taken part in the boat parade or 2) at least gone to see the boat parade by boat; we had decided on this weekend weeks ago and were determined to spend some time just the two of us.  It just happened that it was the biggest boating weekend of the winter as it was the Bermuda boat parade and that it was a perfect weather weekend.  Really we should have taken Blew Horizon out and anchored off somewhere with the kids but i'm glad we finally took time for us, it was well over due.  Don't worry my steady followers, all jokes aside, we are not expecting anymore for a while.  Having an almost 3 yr old and a baby on a boat is plenty for now!
Yesterday we also decided to take the boat in to visit with Nana and Pa before a beautiful tribute to Adam and others who have died.  There is a World Wide Candle Lighting that takes place for children who have died and will never be forgotten.  Friends of Mark's family who also lost a son the month before Adam invited us round along with another family who recently lost a son to take part in this event.  If there are any readers following this who have lost or know someone who has lost a child it is a beautiful ceremony and worth reading about if you don't know about it already. 
The ride back along north shore home was a little different than the calm weekend cruises we had experienced.  The wind had picked up a bit and the wind direction was not in our favour for a smooth ride home.  With a worn out toddler on one knee and a zonked baby on the other I clutched them for dear life while holding my food against the cabin door to keep it from slamming back and forth.  Mark at the helm, kept glancing over and asking if I was ok, all I could do was grind my teeth and smile and give him the one thumb up, after all this is what its all about; riding the seas both rough and calm because as a very famous person once said; "You can never cross the sea, unless you have the courage to loose sight of the shore".

Play at home mom

Learned this phrase while reading other blogs.... totally me!
Yesterday Marley had a fever so we stayed home and oh boy was it ever a PAHM day! I don't know if she's like Mark or what it is but when my girl is sick you wouldn't really know it.  She has moments of wimpery sickness but other than that she is bouncing off the walls! Poor Jacob is still a little sniffly too so I'm not sure he appreciated his "in your face" sister running around all day but still it was great to have them both home.  If only I could be a full time SAHM and home school them... maybe one day.

We made wrapping paper.  Really easy to do.  We get the old newspaper rolls from the Royal Gazette and then we just make a mess with acrylic paint.  We tried out a foot painting idea I got from my new fav. website! Using foot prints to make Christmas trees.  SO cute.
Today Marley is back at school and Jacob and I had a little Christmas photo shoot of our own.  Cost saving ideas; using the duvet and bed chair to prop him up.  Dressed him in Marley's old santa costume add a lil favorite teddy and wham! Move over Anne Geddes!

I am really enjoying being home and finding creative ways to cut costs but still being creative and fun with my kids.
Favorite websites for this;
http://www.pinterest.com
http://www.emoo.com
http://www.shutterfly.com

Got a resource book from my brother for my birthday; "Mom Blogging for Dummies" so hopefully will be updating and improving this space soon. Stay tuned!

Luck of the draw

I have only given myself 20mins. of computer time tonight. I am exhausted because Jacob was up all night with his new cold but also because I have a new internet site obsession.  It is this site that a friend got me hooked on and I could literally spend all night on it.  Not a good idea when you have a newborn who is testy about sleeping through the night as is... like they always say SLEEP WHEN THE BABY SLEEPS!  That seems impossible because these days the only solid sleep he seems to get is in the car.  Enough about sleep anyway,
yesterday I broke down and got myself a new jogger stroller.  Well not brand new- from E-Moo of-course! (Bermuda e-bay site)  After I bought it I could have kicked myself, the lady killed me with her sad story of not being able to go home for Christmas... so I bought it with all 3 tires deflated! As I drove away I thought to myself... well done you just bought someone else's crap, isn't this what you were trying to replace already?! Luckily when I went to the gas station to pump up the tires the nice man who felt the need to assist me (I guess I didn't look like I knew what I was doing) was really impressed with it.  Granted he had never seen a jogger stroller before and was amazed that they made strollers with brakes now and everything.  In any case he got me excited about it and by the next morning the tires were still inflated so all in all a good $50 spent!
As luck would have it, today I was also informed by a ferry worker that my missing wheel which I was sure found its fate at the bottom of Hamilton Harbour was sitting in the ticket office waiting to be collected.  Just yesterday I made contact with someone who was selling a board on e-moo.  As my luck goes when we went to retrieve the wheel, it had been lost in the ticket office somewhere... so apparently it wasn't ment to be with that one!
The wind has settled after a windy weekend and start to the week so hopefully tomorrow we will start putting up lights for the annual Dockyard light competition. :)
Sweet dreams xoxo

Weeks flying by

Can't believe it almost been a week since my last post.  I guess its that time of year and WE ARE EXPECTING AGAIN!!!!
Yes thats right...
Christmas will be here again. LOL, sorry wish I could claim that for my own but saw that joke on someone's facebook a while back and it cracked me up. :) Nothing like a little holiday cheer!
This weekend we attempted to get ready for Christmas.  We didn't get all that far.  Thats one thing about living on a boat.  You end up putting seasonal things like winter clothes and Christmas decorations in different places of storage and trying to remember where all those places are can be quite a challenge!
Luckily we found the Christmas decorations but left them at nana's because they didn't fit with all of us in the car.  We also went to buy a Cedar Tree which is our version of a Christmas tree for the boat.  However they were all out.  Finally we started talking about how we were going to decorate the boat for the Dockyard Lights Competition but didn't buy any lights or anything.  A good friend recommended a solution to the lost goods issue... to send yourself an e-card dated the first week of Dec. and writing a personal message inside telling you where you have stored your Christmas decorations.  Pure Genius! Hopefully I can remember that idea by the end of this Christmas! I anticipate this week will be full of holiday festivities and the usual stress of trying to decorate and wrap before the time hits.
Last week I spent most of the week driving.  I have always heard people say thats how you feel when you have kids but I really did! Luckily Marley did not get sick this week in the car... we have new car ride rules for the morning... windows down, NO reading, and lots of singing! The tire went flat on the jogger stroller on Thursday and even when we have tried to reinflate it, it will not hold air.  There were also alot of airport runs.... Grammy and PopPop arrived back from VA on Wed. and Auntie Abbie arrived back from her trip to Brazil on Thurs.  My car also got fixed by Tuesday which is great :)  This week I have decided to buy a new jogger if I can find one reasonable on e-moo but for tomorrow I am going to try and do the morning commute with the other pram!  This week is also Marley's Christmas concert which I can't wait to see because we have been hearing about it for almost a month now.  I'm sure I know the whole routine already but i'm still so excited to see it!