We spent Easter visiting our famlies. The advantage of marrying your high school sweetheart is that it’s easy to visit both sides of the family during holidays. My parents and Sean’s mum live about 35 minutes apart, and since we all get along (our mums actually worked together when we were small), Sean’s mum usually comes down for family dinners.
The pictures really tell the story best though. The weather was perfect for taking colourful, vibrant pictures outside.
Flora and Sean’s mum check out the new abacus.
My stepdad makes my sister’s dogs sit for their treats (Leia and Flora are cropped out, but they’re sitting too.)
Say hello to the Easter Duck. My mother picked this costume up for next to nothing at a thrift shop. I’m hoping it makes it to Halloween. The tail is a little dinosaur-esque and it makes me giggle.
First go at my sister’s piano. We may have to invest someday.
That duck (stolen from the bathroom) got me soaked and taking it away caused a mini-meltdown.
Flora discovers that yardwork sucks, especially when your lawnmower only blows bubbles.
Flora is really starting to get attached to her dollies/babies. I can’t believe how early that starts.
Fun was had by all. It’s going to be a great spring!
hellomelissa.net is a personal website for me, Melissa Price-Mitchell. I’ve maintained a website in some shape or form since 1999. I’ve been writing online about the interesting and not-so-interesting things in my life since 2000. Previous domain names this site ran under include geeksuperstar.org, searchingforhappy.net and searchingforhappy.vox.com (no hyperlinks included because all these sites are defunct).
I am open to writing and receiving guest posts. Contact me and we can work something out.
If you want to get a feel for who I am and how I write (and if you would enjoy it), you can visit my Best Of page. This page contains links to some of my favourite posts in 16+ years of writing on the site.
I don’t do sponsored/compensated posts or giveaways on hellomelissa.net at this time. (Are those even a thing anymore?) Any review posts I’ve done are on items I’ve purchased and enjoyed using and wanted to pass along in a friend-to-friend way.
About me
Picture taken in March 2015
I am a lot of things to a lot of people: wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, employee, and that woman you may have seen walking down the street somewhere. I live in a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my husband Sean, our daughter Flora, and Kevin the cat.
Now that everyone but my mother has a Facebook account, people I actually know read the site once in awhile. It makes me glad that I never decided to post under a pseudonym and rant about them, or write about things I wouldn’t want someone asking me about. My rule for posting is that if I’m not embarrassed for my mum to read it, it’s fair game for anyone else. You can find and follow me on other social sites I frequent by clicking the social icons in the sidebar.
In closing…
Welcome to hellomelissa.net. To cover my ass, here is a statement about the content you will find here:
I am more than my job and employment status, and I’m sure you are too. My content is my own, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any employer I have. The reverse also applies, but as long as neither party makes the other party look bad intentionally, I don’t think we’ll have any problems around here.
Flora turned six months old yesterday! Watching a baby grow really lets a person see how quickly time can pass. September feels like a lifetime ago, yet the time has gone so quickly. I think Sean and I have adjusted to parenthood pretty well. We have our little routines and rituals and we all get along most of the time. I think we’re a happy little family. We’ve been lucky that Flora has been an easy baby – no colic, naps well most of the time and gives us lots of smiles. The smiles make me think we’re doing something right.
Speaking of smiles, she is starting to ham it up for the camera now, getting excited and smiling instead of just making WTF faces. I got a few great smiley pictures of her yesterday, where I normally only get one where she is in halfway between smiling and serious. It’s not a toothy grin yet though – Flora doesn’t have any teeth, but she is chewing, drooling and sucking on her hands all the time, so teeth are probably imminent. However, my mum tells me that I didn’t have any teeth until I was over a year old, so Flora’s teeth could take their time too. As long as I don’t discover her tooth by receiving a bite on the boob, I’ll be happy.
I’m still breastfeeding, but Flora started on cereal almost two weeks ago. She is slurping it up like a champ, and I plan to start introducing vegetables by the end of next week. I’m amazed – and proud – that breastfeeding went so well for us. She was exclusively breastfed until we started cereal. When I was pregnant, I had hoped to nurse for about six months. Now I plan to do it for as long as I am able and she is interested. I do go back to work in mid-June though, so that may put a kink in my supply. I don’t want to pump at the office. I’m not embarrassed to do it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to take enough time to pump enough milk to make it worth my time. By that point (she’ll be nine months old), she’ll be eating lots of solids and if I can nurse in the morning and at night, I think we can make it work. If I have to supplement with formula during the day, that’s what I’ll do, but I do admit that I will be disappointed – I like her being an all-booby baby. It astounds me that I was able to provide her the nourishment and nutrition she needed to more than double her birth weight in under six months. Now, if she could only stop taking that nourishment and nutrition at 3AM, we’d be all set.
Flora’s been trying to sit up for a couple weeks now. If we pull her up by her hands and position her, she can hold it on her own for about 5-10 seconds before she tips over. I’m looking forward to when she can finally sit on her own because she’s got some toys that she’d enjoy a lot more sitting up.
She’s very observant and doesn’t miss a trick. She’s starting to get chatty – mostly “ba”, vowel sounds and the occasional “mah, mah MAH!” when she is frustrated. She also continues to blow lots of raspberries and has varied up her technique to include raspberries that sound like either purring or farts. (My kid makes fart jokes already! Awesome!) She’s not quite laughing yet, but she makes noises and smiles at laugh-inducing moments so I think she is really trying.
She’s starting to stay awake when we go out in the stroller so it will be nice when I visit both my and Sean’s offices. The last time I visited, she slept through the entire thing and no one saw her eyes. We’re looking forward to visiting both places when it warms up a bit.
I may be a little biased, but Flora seems to be shaping up into a good kid. I think we’re going to keep her.
I can hear her waking up from her morning nap so I will leave you with a video I made yesterday to commemorate her six-month half-birthday.
My mum and mother-in-law are coming up on Sunday to visit Flora and I (they’d visit Sean too, but he is out of town this weekend). I need to get a bunch of things done before they get here. I’m putting this list online to ensure I shame myself into completing all the jobs. Some of these things don’t really need to be done before they get here, but I figure if I add them to the list, there’s a chance they’ll get done too.
wash dishes
clean up living room
wrap Christmas presents so the mums can take them to their homes, since we celebrate Christmas down there (in progress)
Finish writing thank you notes (getting there) (done and mailed!)
Finish baby laundry (almost done – it’s in the dryer! just need to put it away when it is done)
Start Sean’s and my laundry (in progress, but probably won’t get put away until tomorrow or Monday. I am okay with this)
Put duvet cover back on bed
clean bathroom
vacuum/mop kitchen/living room floor (this may be pushing it a bit)
And, oh yeah, take care of Flora. I’ve probably bitten off more than I can chew with this list, but if I get the first three jobs done before the mums show up, that will be okay.
The severe thunderstorms that are supposed to be coming our way are taking their sweet time getting here. We have clouds but they aren’t really storm clouds yet. It rained for a few minutes about an hour ago, but nothing else yet. We have a tornado watch too, which is unusual for this area, but the extreme heat and humidity have really thrown the weather for a loop this weekend.
I’m just relieved that we put in the air conditioning in the house after we moved in. I didn’t want to spend the money, but Sean insisted, and I’m glad that we did, especially this year. I find I’ve been more sensitive to the heat thanks to Skeletor. I went out to get my lunch on Friday, and by the time I got back to the office, my feet were all swollen up. I ended up putting the Yellow Pages under my desk and my feet shrunk down again after resting on that for awhile. We shall see if that continues to work.
In other Skeletor-related news, she now has a nursery mostly set up. Both of the grandmas (Sean’s mum and my mum) came up and painted the room and put up the border that Sean picked. Sean and I got the crib put together (which took longer than one would think), and things are starting to look pretty spiffy in there. No pictures yet because we don’t have a mattress or bedding and I’d like to do the documenting after things are done. I did try to take a picture of the grandmas in the room showing off their hard work, but my mom told us to wait until she could hold the baby and sit in the rocking chair with it. Fair enough.
I’m finally starting to look pregnant and not just fat, which is a relief. I’m starting to wear more maternity clothes, including some that Sean’s mum made for me – again, no pictures yet. I really need to start documenting this. Last week, I wore an empire-waisted top that I bought last summer (read: it’s not a maternity shirt), and a guy ended up giving me his seat on the subway! That was the first time that’s happened, and I really appreciated it. I don’t expect it to happen too much, but as long as I’m not falling over or fainting, I’m not bothered by it. I know I’m not an invalid and I shouldn’t get any more special treatment than anyone else, but gestures like that are awfully nice.
Skeletor is kicking and squirming regularly now. Sean finally felt her kick last week, which was such a nice moment. He kept asking her to kick for him and she wouldn’t. One day at work, I had been busy and hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I stopped for a minute and felt a few big kicks or punches (I really can’t tell them apart yet), and I looked down and said “All right, we’ll go and eat! Now what do you want?” I haven’t worked out a “one kick means yes, two kicks mean no” system yet, but we’ll see what happens.
So to make a long story short, Skeletor is behaving and incubating properly, and preparations are well under way. I can’t believe how quickly the second trimester has went. I imagine the third one won’t go as fast, but since it’s summer, it might – summer always seems to go by so quickly. Or maybe summer will go quickly, and it will just be me who is slow, and waddling and swollen and awkward. We shall see.
Flora and Sean’s mum check out the new abacus.
