I think the birthday party was a success. I ended up with a splitting headache, however as…

1. I stayed up until about 11:30pm the night before baking the cake (used Nigella’s buttermilk birthday cake recipe again), making hummus (from scratch because I am mental), and instructing Mark on chopping vegetables for salsa. Also I made 16 goodie bags so the adults would have some too.
2. I had little sleep, and when I did sleep I dreamt about the party being a complete disaster. I woke up at 6:30 and got up at 7am to starting the rest of the cooking – making icing for the cake (using Nigella’s recipe and the chickie is right – it was too sweet), and making lasagna, and getting all other foodstuffs ready.
3. At the same time as this Mark and I had put an offer on the house the night before, and had to leave at 4pm Saturday afternoon to go and sit with our agent and get into heavy negotiations (no we do not have a house, we didn’t end up buying it but it’s cool – it’s only worth it to me personally as a bargain buy).

Anyway, despite my aching noggin, I think everyone had a pretty good time. Few kids but lots of adults, lots of food, lovely gifts and a cake with so many candles on it we almost called the fire department. We really appreciate those who made the journey from far away places like K-W and/or brought all three kiddies including a beautiful little newborn called Talya who I haven’t blogged about yet (congrats Jamie and Jason!).

My dad used one of his Christmas toys, a fantastic new Canon digital SLR, and took some great photos. I’ve put my favourites on Flickr and you can see them in a slide show here.

Never say you can’t do something until you have searched the internet to find what you need! Hence, we have video, and yes, it can be edited online. I did this to send to Mark’s family but what the hell, put it on the blog too.

Oliver’s ear infection is beginning to subside after 5 days of antibiotic, but I think I have got whatever nastiness started it off. Even my same ear hurts. I think it’s the same ear.

Lots of changes happening all at once around here. Made the switch completely to Homo milk over the holidays. Stopped sterilising bottles and starting to use more sippy cups or normal cups. Started relaxing a bit about salt intake (though not completely) and actually allowing him a bit of sliced ham or similar. Also he really likes hamburgers which is handy on road trips. No hamburgers every day, of course. He doesn’t like road trips like he used to so going to and coming back from Ottawa was a bit hellish.

And big changes like starting day care part time in the next few days, once we pick a provider we like, and moving to full time as soon as his dad gets a job, as my own job starts in a week and a half.

So New Year, new blog look (needed a change), new stuff going on, new moves all the time (today he seems to have conquered going down the stairs without hurling himself off – actually backing down on his tummy). I am exhausted just thinking of everything. How do you people with more than one child do it?!

We knew that our stuff had arrived on the ship from England back in mid-December, but I suppose due to the holidays, the moving company only actually contacted us on the 29th to say our belongings were here and we needed to clear them through customs.

Thankfully customs was incredibly easy and despite the fact I was prepared to show them receipts for many items and had about 10 different pieces of evidence about how long I’d been out of the country, he didn’t want to see any of it and everything was stamped in a matter of minutes.

So today the moving company delivered everything to a storage unit fairly near my parents’ house. We managed to rescue Oliver’s cot out of it, but not a lot else. The movers weren’t that descriptive with their packing notes so I have no idea where my shoes are. I could really use some shoes right now. Oh well, gotta go shopping. They didn’t pack the storage unit that well either so if we want to access any of it, we’ll need to unload the whole thing and repack it. At least it appears to have arrived intact.

I start work on the 15th (I think – have talked to my new boss but things are not entirely confirmed yet) and we are interviewing home day care providers tonight and tomorrow night. Tonight’s is bilingual, she does everything in English and French, which we like the idea of. Mark has a formal interview next week for the job he’s already sort of informally interviewed for, and we think he’ll be starting that (barring him completely bombing the interview) position by the end of the month.

We’re going back to our preferred town to look at houses again tomorrow. I am so desperate to find somewhere. My criteria of needing to be walking distance to a town centre has kind of gone out the window as I won’t even be there to need it, what with working downtown Toronto. I am sticking to being in a neighbourhood, however, as I won’t live in the middle of nowhere again. This means we are actually seriously considering a bungalow that we saw before. I never thought I would live in a bungalow as I’m not yet 80 years old, but it does have it’s advantages. Living on one floor when you have a toddler (a toddler! not a baby!) is very appealing.

And for Saturday, I have to plan and pull off a birthday party for mostly adults but also a wide age range of kiddies (like 1 month to 5 years old). And I’m sick and I feel like death, have caught whatever lurgy Oliver has had and it’s like there’s a bomb in my sinuses. Fun fun.