I've been tagged by Prairie Knitwit... Sigh... Okay, 7 random things about me.

1) My favorite thing to do in the whole wide world is combine.

2) I played the alto saxophone in my junior and highschool concert, jazz and marching bands. I am also capable of playing the piano and flute.

3) I write random articles for Grainews, a prairie newspaper, on whatever strikes my fancy from a young farmer perspective.

4) I am terrified of raising a child who chooses to be wasteful, dishonest, rude, closed-minded or prejudiced.

5) My feet are swollen and my mouth hurts from my braces because I don't use the wax provided as much as I should.

6) I have a gaping hole in my life were my dad and hero used to be. I only hope he'd be proud.

7) I'm tearing up now.

Where did the time go?

I can't believe it's been over three weeks since I last posted. We're so busy with spreading fertilizer and seeding and calving that I have no clue when life will slow down again... Perhaps next November?

Our yard dried beautifully with all of that gravel. The timothy straw idea was a good one, however it is virtually impossible to get here. Any straight timothy grown here is used as feed for horses and though it is possilbe to grow it for seed, it is rarely done (and again, the straw is used as feed). We needed a more permanent solution to our mucky yard woes.

After much worry, the pastures and hay that we seeded last year seems to be nicely established and growing lush and beautiful. The cows will be happy girls to munch on that.

In other news, Jeff''s mom, dad, sister and little brother have moved here from Southeastern MB. It is so wonderful to be building our family numbers up again as we have get togethers rather than missing those who aren't there now. They moved from a square-people-round-world community and I hope that this area is as good to them as it has been to me over the years. I think they will get along well.

My Invisalign braces are no more! You'd think that would be a good thing, however I am now in porcelain traditional braces for six months! The Invisalign just couldn't make the last adjustments necessary for teeth so straight I can measure things with them. Still they were worth every penny extra as the traditional braces hurt WAY more than the Invisalign did.

The baby is kicking up a storm and when she moves, I feel like my entire body moves with her. From what I've gathered, she weighs somewhere between 3 and 4 pounds now. I'm getting entirely too close for comfort to being off work. My last day is scheduled for June 15. Too much to do, not enough time. Isn't that the way it always is? I guess that's why time flies too.

Mud Pit

Our farm yard is an absolute mud pit. Well until this afternoon that is. We just had 14 loads of gravel dumped and spread in our yard to try to build up enough of a foundation that we can actually move heavy equipment around with out sinking out of sight. Jeff has been struggling with feeding cows as the tractor is digging a ditch with the axle every time he goes to the field. It's a miracle that he hasn't caught the water or power lines yet.

It was bad enough in or house yard too. My poor car would drag and bottom out in some of the spots. We'll see how it goes when I get home as they supposedly fixed it while they were at it.

I'm starting to look forward to my maternity leave. I'm a little unsure of a whole year, but I think I just need a vacation from heavy thought. I've been so busy with loans, mortgages, line of credit reviews and a new twist to my job, helping with creating projections and budgets to support a loan application. I find when I get home I'm positively wasted.

Last weekend I had a mini burst of energy. Maybe it was nesting. And I cleaned our deck. Now, I don't just mean I swept off dead leaves (I did do that too). I wiped, took apart, washed, scrubbed and re-organized pots to be ready for flowers when the weather is right. I just wish that I could get my nesting instinct to force me to do our income taxes and CAIS come Hell or high-water!! Maybe this weekend...

Even I can be wrong sometimes!

We got our results back at the end of March that Twerp is in fact, a girl! We're pretty excited (would have been no matter which gender our baby turned out to be) and all is still going well in babyland.

I had a wonderful Saturday night this past Easter weekend. Jeff had just gone out to check on the cows, one of our mares and one of our sows who could be having babies any day now. He came bursting into the house at 8:00 PM to say that the sow was having her piglets outside and the temperature was already below freezing! We had to rush to get out to the pig pen and get her across the yard into the heated machine shop (the only building we currently have heated in the farm yard). By the time we got ourselves coordinated, our hired man, Mike, was in the pen yelling, "There's a baby in here!" I scrambled to get the wheelbarrow and get some clean straw into it and he started passing Jeff the piglets to pass to me.

At that point I had 4 piglets in the straw and I ran with them over to the shop, got them under the heater and ran back. Then, Thor (the boar) got out of the pen and we were running around the yard chasing him to try and get him back in the pen. Once he was back in, Mike found that the sow had had another piglet. I ran with that one cuddled into my arms to the shop and popped it in with the other 4. We convinced the sow with much pushing and pulling to walk/run to the shop. Got her into a make-shift pen and what seemed like forever, but was actually fairly quickly, she calmed and laid down for the babies to nurse. The hard part was that they were cold and weak by this time and were rather lethargic. Four of the five just took a little convincing to nurse, finger in mouth, switch to teat, let suck, happy as clams. The last one (probably the first one born) was a little tougher. It was so cold that when I put my finger in its mouth, it was cold. I tried holding it up in front of the heater, but it didn't do the trick. I tried rubbing it with my hands, that didn't do it. I decided that I was so over-heated that maybe if I tucked it inside my coat, but outside my overalls it might get some of my body heat, nope. Then I decided that I was so hot myself that if I put it inside my overalls, but outside my sweater it would just have to get warm. It worked! I could feel its shivering lessen and its obvious stress started to relax. When I put my finger in its mouth it wanted to suck, so I switched my finger for a teat on its momma and it started nursing. Still, I would bring it back for a little bit of warmth and then back for more milk and so on.

In that time, she had one more piglet who was a little trooper and was trying to suck from the second it hit the ground. When we went inside we figured we'd done all we could and hopefully all six would survive. Jeff went out at 11:30 PM to check on the new family and again came rushing back into the house. There were two more babies and they were cold too! Out we go again and I get counting, there were actually three more babies. This time Jeff was prepared and used a hair dryer to dry and warm them quickly on the workbench. As he'd get one perky, he'd hand it to me and I'd get it sucking. I was finally in bed for the night at 12:30 and was I ready for it after kneeling on concrete for the better part of 3 hours.

Easter morning we checked on the babies before going to church and they were all in a perfect little row of nine, either sleeping or nursing, and were warm to the touch when I put my hand on their backs. All in all, it was about the most wonderful Easter I can remember.

Strong Right Hook

I went for a doctor appointment this morning to see if he could find the baby's heartbeat (he tried once before at 12.5 weeks and nothing, so he wanted me back at 14.5 weeks). He looked for a while, and he couldn't find it at all again. I was a little stressed, but was trying to remember that it's still early. Then he started asking me scary questions like, "Did you experience morning sickness?" and "How sure are you of your dates?" He decided that he was going to try to push for an early ultrasound to make sure everything was as it should be with the little twerp. Jeff was with me at the appointment.

We stuck around for a bit and the doctor said we were to go straight down to the hospital and they would squeeze me in for an early U/S. The receptionist got me in right away for my blood test (they wanted to test the bHcg levels, just in case I couldn't get in for an U/S quite then). Then, about a half hour later, I got in for my U/S. The tech found Twerp right away. Thank Goodness!! She also noted that the doctor should go back to school b/c he was looking too low, apparently I'm carrying fairly high. Then she also said he must have been too slow to keep up with Twerp. He (I think it's a boy) was just a givin'er in there. When they finally called Jeff in and I got to see the screen too, we saw two arms, two legs, ribs and spine, a beautiful little flutter of light that was the heartbeat, and a strong right hook (Jeff was so proud). I'm a little concerned for the future if it's already hard to catch and it's relatively confined!!!! Jeff was sure to ask if she was sure there was only one, which she was.

So my day that started out scary, turned out to be wonderful!!! :)

It's finally a Manitoba winter

We've had snow since early November and only a brief cold snap at the end of November. It looks like Mother Nature is not letting us get away with a mild winter after all. We are -30 but it feels like -40 with the windchill factored in. It's amazing us Tobans stay so friendly.

I have been away from work lately more than I've been here. I worked a total of 3 and a half days since Christmas (I should have worked 9 days). I have been so sick with the cold from Hell that I am consistently surprised by how decent I feel today.

I seemed to finish with morning sickness around Christmas and didn't get a chance to enjoy that as my cold kicked in.

Last Friday (January 5) I went home from work early at 2:30 PM. I thought that the weekend would provide me with much needed rest and recovery time. By Monday morning I was much worse. Jeff could hear my wheeze from almost 10 feet away! My mum drove me into town at 10 AM to see if there was any way I could get into see my doctor. The receptionist was on some kind of power trip and informed me that there were no appointments available until the next day at 3 o'clock!! I felt as though I'd been kicked but I took the appointment out of desperation. I had to wait for a few minutes for my mum so I sat in a corner of the waiting room and began to softly sob. I just wanted someone with some medical trainging to tell me that I wasn't hurting my baby by being this sick and to listen to my chest to see if this was a bug I could beat on my own or if I needed some help.

Mum came along shortly and we left. She would have marched back in there if I had let her, but I was so upset by then that I didn't know what to do but I did know that I had no desire to throw myself on the mercy of the receptionist again. We drove to pick up Jeff where he was and he and Mum tried to reason with me that maybe I could just go to the ER (it's a small-ish community, and not likely to be busy).

The convinced me. Mum came in with me and as I started to explain my situation to the nurses, I started to blubber. Mum explained that I had tried to get into see my doctor and that I just needed some reassurance that everything would be okay. They just took me under their wings and watched over me. I felt so cared for. One has a daughter who just went through her first pregnancy and understood all of the concerns of a first-time-mommy-to-be. The other nurse came in and took all my vitals and made sure I was okay and reassured me. The only thing she didn't really mention was my lungs. She left the exam room and came back and said that they called my doctor and they would be expecting me right away.

When we got there, the receptionist coldly said, "There's nothing available right now, you'll have to wait." I took my seat. Maybe a half-hour later I got in to see my doctor. He is as wonderful as our local nurses. He listened to my chest and decided that I would definitely need some antibiotics to clear it. He reassured me that as long as I didn't have a fever that all would be fine with Baby. He also told me that even under normal circumstances, he doesn't really like to prescribe antibiotics and that that meant that I really did need them.

The interesting thing, I noticed a family in the ER when I was there and not 5 minutes after I got back to the doctor's office, that same family walked in and was told exactly what I had been told. I hope they are okay too.

I've Been Discovered!

Well my secret blog is out! I have been found by several of my friends (although I'm just guessing that "anonymous" is Amy).

I am 11 weeks pregnant today. The baby, who I now believe to be a boy, is approximately the size of a plum. I say that I believe it's a boy, but my mum also was convinced I was a boy. Boy was she wrong!!

Our farm is beginning to take shape. Actually it's a little overwhelming how large that shape is. We now have 159 cows and their accompanying royal court. Poor Jeff has 160 hormonal women around him at any given time. It sure makes me sympathize with the cows!

Christmas is just around the corner and I am just not feeling the cheer. Having so many people missing this year has just got me blue. We did go and wrangle a Christmas tree last night. It must have looked so classy, me dragging it on a calf-sleigh behind my snowmobile but having to hang on to the trunk in a somewhat awkward position to keep it on the too-small sleigh.

Tonight the plan is to tidey and vacuum the living room, put up the tree and then scrub the bathrooms (yuck).