Today's "Balmoral Bollocks"

Queen Elizabeth II was the first (and until 2006, the only) female member of the royal family to serve in the armed forces. She served as a mechanic in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during WWII.

"Oh dear. Looks like your insurance isn't going to cover this..."

My Royal Secret...

I think a lot of people hold interests that they don't really like to share with others for one reason or another. So I don't care what anyone says or thinks about me.... I have always been obsessed with the British monarchy. It may have to do with the fact that I am, in fact, a subject of Her Majesty's realm... I retain citizenship in Canada. Or maybe because of the history and tradition... I love that. Or maybe I just want to be a FREAKIN' PRINCESS! Whatever the reason, I love everything to do with the ol' house of Windsor. I've even seen The Queen more times than I can count (the movie, not HRH.)

So it goes without saying that I'm jazzed for Prince William's upcoming wedding in a month. I have been in my effing GLORY with all the media fodder available to me. Like a pig in slop! Just today there was a Yahoo.com article regarding the royal wave... and I just kept thinking... "above the pearls, below the crown." He he.

I've always wanted to visit England on holiday (there I go with the lingo.) And this would have been THE time to do so. But unless I win the lottery I don't see it happening. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to DVR the whole thing.

So anyway, point of the post is this: the wedding is one month from today and I thought it might be fun, at least for me, to post a little bit about those crazy royals everyday. Trivia, thoughts, etc. So today's Royal tidbit is:

Queen Elizabeth II was made a Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1951. That's right, she's an honorary OB-GYN. How'd you like to get a pap from Her Royal Highness???  "Oh dear, where did I leave my solid gold speculum?"

Finally...

Just this morning, I finally received an email from my clinicals instructor letting me know that I've been accepted into a clinical. It's about darn time! I'm not trying to get my hopes up, but this might be the first step in moving on with our lives. I'm so excited.

My wish is that after my three week clinical is over, that the hospital might hire me on full-time. That's the scenario that I keep hearing happens to other students who have done their clinical through MATC. I'm hoping that I have the same fortune. But I'm still trying to not get my hopes up too high.

About 210 days ago (give or take), I set forth on a "300 day plan." The goals of the plan were to get back to work, get back on a strong financial footing, and get our own place. But everything needed to happen in that order. I had hoped to get back to work in February, not April. So I'm two months behind on the plan. But I'm still happy things are moving in the right direction, finally.

Big Step For Little Leilani

There have been some milestones along the path of Leilani's life that have held a lot of significance for me and others that I feel are no big deal. But this step, to me, was huge.

Mike and I have been talking about when Leilani should move from sleeping in her crib to sleeping in a toddler bed. We know that the general idea is to move a child to out of a crib as soon as they outgrow it, they can climb out of it, or generally around age two. But the other night while I was busy working on something, Mike was bored. He disappeared for a while into Leilani's room and I assumed the two of them were just playing. Then Mike walks into our room holding a support piece from Leilani's crib. What?!? Turns out he was halfway done with removing the front of Leilani's crib. So I just went with it.

I was a little perplexed as to how this would work out. Leilani is after all only 19 months old. Is she really ready for this step? I was concerned that she'd just roll out of bed onto the floor in the middle of the night and all hell would break loose. We didn't have a safety rail to stop that from happening, so after we put her down for bed, my eyes and ears were glued to the baby monitor. I couldn't sleep all night. I was waking up every half hour. Thankfully, she managed to stay on the bed all night and in the morning she just got up, crawled out of bed, and started playing with her toys. It was amazing to see.

I immediately went out and bought a safety rail in the morning.

It's been four nights now, and everything has gone smoothly. No night walking, no confusion, no problems at all.

I am so proud of my BIG girl!

Quiet Time For Lacey

Mike had a hockey game tonight and he surprised me at the last minute by taking Leilani with him. So now I'm home alone for four(!!!) hours in complete peace and quiet. I love Leilani to pieces, but I'm not embarrassed to admit that this tranquility is wonderful.

Aaahhh...

A Small Milestone

With Leilani's communication delays comes other developmental delays that one might not think about. It's hard to teach Leilani to do things that she should be learning because she doesn't understand what we're trying to communicate to her, for example, potty training. But today we saw a nice little milestone that happened completely organically.

She was sitting in her feeding chair in the living room with a plate of cut-up chicken nuggets and her sippy cup (which we gave to her in a futile hope that she may actually use it and not scream for her bottle). I had also accidentally left a fork on the plate. When Mike and I glanced over to her eating a few minutes later, she was mastering that fork and drinking from her sippie like a champ and with no complaint.

This may sound like things that any 19 month old can and should be doing at their age. But teaching Leilani to do these things has been a challenge because she doesn't seem to understand what we're trying to get across to her. She has been reluctant to learn how to use utensils and hates to drink milk from anything but her bottle. So to see this happen all on it's own and without any influence from me or Mike was incredible. This was huge.