Is It Spring Yet?

It seems like it’s been such a very long time since I last posted some pictures and did a journal entry. We’ve had a lot of fun with Alex, but we’ve also been struck by quite a few bugs and viruses.

Both Chris and I celebrated our 40th birthdays since my last entry, and Kathy and Jenny organized a party for both of us and our cousin, Patti (who was also celebrating her birthday). The party was tons of fun and it was great to see lots of family there. Chris’ cousin, Steve and his wife, Elaine, were able to come to the party and almost everyone from my mom’s side was able to make it as well. Alex had tons of fun and he was very social and outgoing.

Within a day or two of the party, Alex got hit with a bad cold/cough bug, and Chris ended up coming down with it soon after. Taking care of one sick male is hard enough – taking care of two was an adventure, but they both started to feel better within a few days... just in time for me to start feeling under the weather. Unfortunately, my cough hit really hard and I ended up at an emerg clinic being hooked up to yucky things to help me breath, and after a few hours (and threats of getting me admitted to the hospital if things didn’t improve *yikes*), I was sent home with a bagful of meds. It took me longer to feel better, but within a week I was back on my feet and was able to breathe again.

It seems like it was only a few days later that Alex woke up in the middle of the night with the stomach flu. He was up most of that night, and almost exactly 48 hours later, both Chris and I woke up within 15 minutes of one another with the same bad stomach flu. Unfortunately, young kids seem to bounce back quicker than adults do, so both Chris and I felt utterly wrecked for a day or so.

We got past that fun little bout of the flu only to have Alex cut two teeth the next week, so he wasn’t always sleeping well, and he had a runny nose and a fever on and off. Once the teeth were in, he seemed much more settled, but he then came down with yet another cold and very mild cough, so once again he and I weren’t able to get out to our normal playgroup activities.

In the midst of all of these bugs and germs, I did manage to get away with a girlfriend of mine for a scrapbooking weekend. Chris had bought me the weekend as a gift for our anniversary (should I worry that Chris’ anniversary gift was to send me away for three days???), and my friend and I had a great time with about 45 other women at the resort. We had lots of fun, did lots of scrapbooking and enjoyed some great food.

Another fun thing we were able to do was to host our Korean playgroup, Seoul-Mates, earlier in March. Each family takes turns arranging a place to go and organizing all of the details, and we’d volunteered to organize the one for March. We booked a playroom at our local Early Years Centre, and the staff and manager of the centre were simply wonderful! We had about 12 families join us and the kids all had a great time.

My biggest stressor this past month was an issue with my leased car. To make a long story short... the dealership knew I wasn’t keen on leasing from them again as I was miffed with some of the things that they’d done (or not done) over the course of my lease. I brought my car in for the lease-end inspection and was told they’d charge me $200 for a couple of scratches they considered “excessive” but if I didn’t buy/lease another car from them, they’d charge me over $500! After countless phone calls, letters, faxes, etc. to Mazda Canada and Mazda Credit in an effort to get permission to return my car to an alternate dealership, the net result was that I still had to return the car to this problematic dealership, plus they’d been told about my complaints. So... when we took the car in to return it, the charges they wanted us to pay were now over $2000! We had to go back to Mazda Canada and Mazda Credit, and the end result was that they sent out an independent inspector who assessed our car as having no excessive damage, so we were able to return the car without having to pay anything.

Needless to say, we didn’t buy another Mazda! I ended up getting a great deal on a new Ford Fusion and I’ve had it for a few weeks now and I love it.

Our other big news for this month is that we’ve decided to enroll Alex in daycare on a part-time basis. My work is getting busy enough that it’s hard for me to do the work while Alex is napping, or in the evenings, so we’ve found a place that will take him for two partial days a week. It’s a heart wrenching decision to make, and I’m sure it’ll be hard when we take him for his first day in April, but we are confident the place will provide amazing care and we both think he’ll actually love it there as they do so many different activities. I’ll be taking Alex for a few short visits to the centre to get him used to the caregiver and other kids, but it’ll still be a tear-filled day (for me at least) when we actually drop him off to be on his own.

We’re off to Kingston this weekend to visit with Alex’s grandparents, so I will be sure to take tons of pictures and post them when I can.