The Hardest Thing

My little girl is sick right now. She has a fever and a cold and she is so sad. She is not sleeping well which does not help the matter.

The hardest thing is trying to soothe her and calm her. She doesn’t understand why her Mommy and Daddy can’t take away her pain and she looks at us with such confusion because we can’t make her feel better. She cries and cries and all we can do is cuddle her and give her something to drink.

The second hardest thing is wiping her nose.

Struggling

As most of you know, I have returned to work this week. It is a struggle in many ways that I didn’t think would be possible. I had imagined myself crying at my desk at lunch, unable to cope with the fact that I am not with my baby. I do not cry at work and I know that she is having fun playing at daycare (so much fun in fact, that they are having trouble getting her to nap).

My problem is that I don’t find the joy in my job that I have in raising my baby. I don’t care about, what I think of as, the trivial day-to-day details. Right now, I simply cannot imagine doing this day in, day out for the next 20 years. My goals for the year? They aren’t to carry out this mission or that objective for the company but to make sure that my little girl is happy and healthy.

The other problem is that we cannot afford for me to quit my job so I must go.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can manage to immerse myself properly in work so that the days stop inching by and the evenings stop racing forward?

Visiting Daycare

Yesterday, I took my baby to visit daycare for the first time. We were there for an hour. She LOVED it there and I didn’t have any doubt. She loves babies and kids. When we are out and she sees one you can hear a little “hi there” come from her over and over. I have a good feeling about the daycare provider – she seems capable and comforting. She is right in the middle of the ages of the kids there so she will fit right in development wise and all the other kids are so adorable!

All that being said, I still felt like bawling while we were there.

A New Chapter Begins

Time becomes such a strange thing as you get older. I can’t comprehend how much has changed since this time last year, yet time has gone by way too fast!

Last year we had a fondue New Year’s Eve for just the 2 of us. It was a nice and quiet New Year’s and just what we needed. We were both way too tired to have anyone over and entertain because we never got more than 2 hours of sleep at a time. And this was if we were lucky!

On this day last year, I was struggling to recover from my c section and starting to get restless. I had some minor setbacks the week before and was ordered to do less, which was hard because I wasn’t doing much. My baby was still too small to be able to breast feed so I had a tedious routine every 3 hours: wake baby, feed baby, pump, change diaper, sterilize the equipment at least twice a day and it was really starting to get to me. Luckily when we were able to transition to full breast feeding, she took to it awesomely.

My husband went to our annual late Christmas with his Dad and we decided that the baby and I would stay home because it was too much work for him to haul us and all of our equipment around. Not only did he have to carry the baby and all the standard stuff when you have a new baby such as a pile of diapers, sleepers, blankets, cloths, etc, but we had to bring all the pumping equipment and ensure it remained sterilized because of her compromised immune system due to being near term. And I would have to have a place where I could pump in privacy. The only room on the main floor of my brother in law’s house with a door was their tiny bathroom and I didn’t want to pump in there and I wasn’t cleared by the doctor to go up and down stairs yet (my husband was very insistent on following all the doctor’s recovery orders).

Even though we were tired and our house was definitely not festive, it was a wonderful start to a year. We didn’t know what to expect but our little girl has managed to give us the most magical year. Now, my year at home with her is drawing to a close way to quickly and a new chapter of my life is about to begin. I am going to learn how to adjust to being a working Mom. It will be hard to balance everything out and give my little girl all the attention she deserves but I am sure that between my husband and I, we will find the balance we need to raise our daughter together so that she turns into a happy and confident toddler who is sure of herself and our love for her.

 

One Year Ago Today

One year ago today:

• I was a few days short of being 8 months pregnant
• I slept in, not knowing it was the last time to do so for a looooooong time
• I woke up slowly, and I read while still in bed
• I didn’t feel well
• I read a lot, did some knitting, and watched some TV, had a lot of “me” time
• I didn’t feel like eating
• I had plans to go Christmas shopping that night with my Mom
• I received my first order of cloth diapers
• I didn’t understand what it meant to completely give yourself to someone else
• I had plans to get a Christmas tree over the weekend
• My hands were so swollen I had dimples on my knuckles like a baby and I had to wear wrist guards to prevent carpal tunnel
• I tried to help my husband get our new bathroom sink installed and working
• I went to Don’s Photo to pick up some photos to give to my Dad the next day when he came to visit
• I have a wonderful Christmas season of being pregnant ahead of me
• I ate a yogurt for supper at 9:00 at night
• I went to bed early
• I had no clue that when I woke up the next morning my whole life would be forever changed for the better by the arrival of the sweetest little girl

Something Weird Happened Downtown

We can only speculate the whys of what happened but something doesn’t sit right…

I am a proud volunteer of the Manitoba Theatre Centre. I carpool with another volunteer and we parked in Impark lot on Market right next to Don Pedro’s. Not the big one at the end of the street but smaller one right next to the restaurant. There was another usher at the pay terminal (what is the name of this?) and her credit card was stuck. I ran back to the car where the other usher was waiting and told her to go ahead and tell them what was going on and that we’d be late because I was going to stay with the other usher until she got her card out. A guy came by and asked if we needed help and we said that her card was stuck in the machine. He tried to pull it out as well and couldn’t get it out.

And then the weirdness started. This guy starts talking about the “yellow coats” which are the foot police that patrol the area. He said that they don’t let him help people out at the machines. Then he asked us if we had money for shelter. The fellow usher was trying to call Impark and was having bad luck. We were both trying to get the card out while the guy stood back. Two more cars came into the lot and as they came up we told them that there was a card stuck in the machine and we were trying to get it out. The man who just arrived told us that he saw it happen 2 weeks ago. I tried calling Impark to see if I could get through because we were really late and I was really cold. Just as I was calling the man who had just arrived started to try to get it out. Right when I got through to someone he did something really fast and got the card out! He did something like turn the cancel button and pull the card at the same time?

When he did that, the guy who had stood back because of the “yellow” coats told my fellow usher that her card would work now because she had it in upside down. Really? Because I was standing right next to the machine and it looked like she had put it in the correct way. It was the standard way you put your credit card into everything. Well, the usher didn’t have enough change on her so she had to use her credit card again and it worked! Went in and out no problem. By this point the guy was long gone. I paid my way and we went off to the theatre.

The other usher talked to the House Manager while she was there and the House Manager was immediately suspicious and was going to report this to the police. She has heard of things happening like this before.

The only conclusion we could come to is that it is some sort of scam to get her credit card. This guy popped out of nowhere, wouldn’t do anything while the police were near, was very convinced that the card would not get stuck again, and disappeared pretty fast once the card was out.

What do you guys think?

My best advice to totally avoid this sort of situation is to always make sure you have a bunch of toonies and loonies when you are heading downtown just in case you can’t find parking on the street.

Guest Blog Post

Chasing after an active baby, listing new items, getting ready for my black friday – cyber monday sale, going from no snow to waaaay too much snow, and writing a guest blog post! It’s been a great week! Please go and check it out.

Confidence: Part 1

I’ve been thinking a lot about confidence and what it means to me. Why I am thinking about this will be in another post. Right now I have to discuss something that is more current to every day life here in Winnipeg.

Winter driving.

(via robtrent)

I hate it. At least when the roads are not plowed or sanded.

I have many stories of sliding around on ice, one most notably on the bridge from Academy to Route 90 where all the cars slowed down to let me get control of the car again. To tell them in great detail would probably be pretty boring. But just know that I hate it, I hate losing control, I hate not knowing what the car in front of me will do, and not knowing if I have the space to handle it.

After years of scoffing them, we got winter tires put on our car last year. My husband convinced me that we needed to get them. Somehow, these tires have given me the confidence to be a smart winter driver. The “grippiness” of them allows me to drive the speed limit (when it is reasonable to do so). I no longer have people passing me assuming I am an old lady driving the car, hunched over at the wheel. I no longer get out of my car exhausted just from a simple drive home.

Isn’t it strange that something so easy makes a world of difference to my confidence?

How do you feel about winter driving?

The Unsuccessful Relaunch of a Canadian Icon

Does anyone else out there remember this?

Sometimes, I really miss Eatons.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Last year, when I was pregnant, I was sitting at my desk at work and I was suddenly overcome with the NEED to eat chocolate zucchini cake. I had not had a pregnancy craving before this, in fact most of my pregnancy was about aversions to formerly beloved food. I started crying because I didn’t crave just any cake but the cake that I had at my Great Grandma’s house when I was a kid. My Great Grandma actually stayed alive until I was 19 so I was very lucky to have her in my life so long. Since she is gone, I was worried how I would get the cake. My Grandma was in the hospital on what we thought was her deathbed (she’s since made a 100% recovery!), so I would have been able to get the recipe from her.

I was so worked up about this, I called my mom crying. And she told me that SHE was the one who made the cake for my Grandma and she had the recipe! Well being at work, I thought she couldn’t get it for me but she heard how upset I was, so she found it online. Here is the only food that I craved for most of my pregnancy.

I went to the grocery store on my way home to pick up the ingredients that I didn’t have on hand and when I walked in the door, I baked the cake. I didn’t sit down, didn’t relax, didn’t nap, didn’t watch tv. I made the cake and waited for it bake. I topped it off with a simple chocolate butter cream frosting. I can’t share the recipe with you because I just throw ingredients together randomly and it never turns out the same twice.

When I bit into that cake last year for the first time in way too many years, a flood of memories came back to me of spending time on my Great Grandma’s farm. I don’ t know now if I was craving the cake, or the memories.