Growing pains

I know I've made mistakes in the two years and eight months that I've been a mother, but I'm in a new zone now - a tricky time when it feels like the repercussions of my actions and decisions can have long-term consequences. Though he can't articulate his feelings, my Jacob is keenly aware that life is about to change for him in a major way. He's been acting up, working to rule, and crumbling into a mommy-stay-in-my-room-forever mess each night at bedtime. Making matters more difficult (there's always something, no?), I threw my lower back out a couple of days ago (perhaps early signs of labour?) and haven't been able to be myself with Jacob since then. Tonight, the pain was so bad that I couldn't handle the emotional outbursts and cuddle demands that have become the norm with my toddler as of late. I behaved badly and raised my voice at him out of desperation, believing that somehow he would mature 10 years in that instant to understand why mommy just needed to lie down right now. Of course, yelling at him only made the situation worse (obviously). For some reason, I think I decided at some point that it would be better to get him used to mommy being around less often in the few days before he becomes a big brother. It hit me all of a sudden though, that I couldn't have gotten it more wrong. When I'm recovering from major surgery with a newborn in my arms is when life will teach him the things it needs to teach him. What I need to be doing now is pushing through everything to give him as much of myself as I can. Pain or no pain, immobility or not, I'm his mommy and he needs me now more than ever. I got a grip, swallowed my pain and general inability to move as a massive pregnant woman about to burst, and knelt down at his bed to talk and hug and cuddle. That's all it took for him to become a little ball of sunshine, adorable enough to devour. He asked me to please not yell at him next time, at which point I swallowed back an ocean of tears, which erupted when I left his room and only recently subsided. Lesson learned: as a mom, always err on the side of giving too much of yourself rather than suffering the regret of not having given enough.

WAAAH.

HELLO BLOG!

It's been a while, I know.  I've been gestating a human for the past 32 weeks and also started working full time right around when said human was conceived... so I've been a much, much busier version of myself than usual.  Busier, in fact, than I've ever had the pleasure (if you can call it that) of being.

The first 28 weeks of this pregnancy went so well that the time just flew right by.  Without the strange aches, stretching, and tugging that I remember from being pregnant with Jacob (not to mention the insanely rare diagnosis of Pseudotumour Cerebri that left me wondering on a daily basis if today would be my last day living with the gift of sight), this pregnancy was a breeze.

Since then, though, things have steadily been getting tougher.  It all started with a cold.  We all get colds; they suck.  This cold, though, was ugly, and eerily tenacious.  After three weeks of continuous and unabating symptoms, it showed no signs of easing up.  My colleagues have taken to calling me "Patient X", blaming me for the gradual demise of everyone around the office over the month of February.  And they're probably right.  The virus has found a host that won't kill it (that would be me - thanks, pregnant immune system) and it's having a blast.  I'm now entering week 4 with this bug.  I'm starting to think I should give it a name.  And no, it's not an infection that can be treated with antibiotics - that much has been confirmed by several doctors.

This all would have been exhausting enough, except that my prolonged, violent coughing actually caused me to fracture a rib several days ago, launching me into a world of pain that I can only compare to what I imagine it might feel like to be impaled by the horn of an angry wild animal.  Normally, the highest caliber of pain killers and cough suppressants would take care of the situation, let me get some sleep, and gradually recover.  Of course, those are off limits to me while I'm pregnant.  Shifting in my sleep is excruciating, breathing deeply is out of the question... and I don't think I need to explain the desperate agony of coughing.  It's been character building.

Here's to hoping these issues resolve themselves over the 8 weeks I have left to go before baby is born.  It would be nice to enjoy some restful nights before what I already know is going to be an exhausting (but wonderful) year ahead.

You forgot a step, mommy.

I knew that going away to work all day would cause Jacob to grow up faster than necessary.  He's now apparently taken the disciplining duties upon himself, even when he's the one being disciplined.

He was having a before-bed tantrum tonight, so I asked him if he needed a time out.  All signs pointed to yes, so I put him in his time-out spot (a corner in his bedroom), and left the room.  I failed, however, to fully close the door behind me - which is something that's always part of the time-out drill.  Rather than pop out from behind the door after 5 seconds as he usually does, he pushed his door closed gently, from inside his room.  When I peeked in, I saw that he had gone back to his time-out spot to mull everything over (which is the whole point!).  He stood there for as much time as he needed to think, and then his little hands appeared on the side of the door to pull it back open.  He gave me a hug and a kiss and announced, "sleep!"

Don't bother calling.

This is really interesting to me.  Nearly two years ago, I went out and bought a portable phone base and three handsets for our home.

One day last year, out of the blue, we noticed that one of our handsets was missing.  After weeks of searching and countless fruitless "paging" efforts (the phone eventually died in the crevasse that it fell into, I guess, rendering the page function useless), we gave up on it.  We were down to two handsets.  It was a bit of an adjustment for a while, but we got used to the idea of it and made do.  Frustrating, but not the biggest deal.  Our house isn't that big.

About 6 months ago, I noticed that finding one of the two phones when they were ringing was mysteriously more challenging. Somehow, they were "both" always upstairs when I was in the kitchen, or they were "both" in the bedroom when I was doing the dishes.  Eventually, I put two and two together (or not, as this case implies), and discovered that the reason it was so hard to find a ringing phone in the house was because there were no longer two handsets to choose from.  We were somehow down to one.  Again, paging was of no use this time, because evidently the phone was already dead when it disappeared.  All signs point to phone suicide.  Very strange.

 Living with one phone in the house was an adjustment to say the least.  So much so that Dave brought home a phone with a cord that would sit in the kitchen until our lost phones decided to come home.  This worked reasonably well for us for a while.

Yesterday evening the phone rang.  For once, Dave and I were sitting down together, taking it easy.  Would've been nice to be able to chat with whoever was calling on one of our portable phones.  We scoured the environs to no avail.  We both quietly realized that the phone-with-the-cord was the only ringing phone we could hear.  We looked at each other and knew.  They were all gone.

Now we are getting used to the realities of single phone-with-a-cord living.  I can't say that it's easy, but it puts things in perspective.  I can see what's important now and what isn't.  I do want you to know, though, that all those times that you call and it rings 5 times only to be followed by our voicemail, I'm actually home, running frantically to reach the one phone left in my house.

Chocolate Hazelnut Memories

I was looking through pictures just now, and came across my chocolate hazelnut torte (from Wanda's Pie in the Sky cookbook) that I totally forgot to blog about back when I made it a couple of months ago.  Take a look:

Chocolate Hazelnut Torte

If I could offer you a slice, I really would, if only to watch your reaction when tasting it.  It was truly over-the-top decadent.  See all those nuts clinging to the icing on the side (and perched on top)? Those aren't regular old hazelnuts, they are chunks of praline, which I baked the day before making the cake.

Hazelnut Praline

Making this dessert was not the easiest task I've taken on.  It was the product of an entire evening's work that made use of almost every single kitchen device and baking sheet that I own.  There might have also been a desperate trip to a bar at 11:30 p.m. upon discovering that I didn't actually have any Frangelico (a hazelnut liqueur) that was called for in the recipe.  The bartender looked at me like I was entirely out of my mind, and reminded me that it was illegal to leave a bar with alcohol.  I pulled out a tiny tupperware and whispered that nobody would ever know.  Shortly thereafter, I skulked out empty-handed, ashamed at the new low to which I descended in the name of baking.  In the end, I used Kahlua instead and it was delicious.

I think the best compliment I got was that it tasted "European".  For some reason, if I've made a dessert taste European, I feel like I've struck gold.  I also learned that shortly after my grandmother and uncle Peter arrived in Canada from the Soviet Union 30 years ago, they almost started a business of their own together whipping up tortes just like this.  Apparently, their version of the torte was so good, friends and neighbors were accosting them to make more for every possible occasion.  Soon, they were receiving orders from strangers, and making a nice buck in the process.  They even went so far as to negotiate a deal with a grocery store chain, which was more than happy to bring them on as clients... but they didn't have the means to invest in a large-scale bakery that would make the project worth their time.  Sad story.  I would have loved to have cake makers in the family.  That's one family business I would gladly take over in a second.

Sitswap

Since becoming a one-income family, certain things have changed around our house.  Going out for dinner, for example, has become a lot more of a luxury (especially sushi… mmm sushi).  Clipping coupons is not unheard of, and I’ve memorized the schedule of low, medium, and peak hydro usage times for each season so as not to throw away dollars unnecessarily by doing laundry in the morning, for example, when I could just as easily do it at night.  There are other things, too, whose value I’ve been surprised to find myself questioning.  While nothing is too good for my baby, I can’t help but wonder if that “Twisting Tots” class at the local parenting centre is worth the steep price tag that comes with it.  Yes, Jacob would get to twist in the company of his little buddies, but can’t I just as easily set something like that up in my living room for free? All I would have to do is invite some of his friends over, turn on some kid-friendly tunes, and lead by example.  I’m learning the hard way that being lazy is not an option for the penny-pincher.

Something else that’s become a luxury is free time.  Yes, Jacob naps for a couple of hours during the day, but that leaves me just enough time to clean up the disaster of all disasters on the main floor of the house, which was created approximately three minutes after Jacob woke up and which had to be stepped over while it grew cancerously in every room, threatening to either trip me or get stuck to me if I wasn’t careful.  My son has a sixth sense for being able to avoid the mess he creates while simultaneously adding to it.  I suppose I could leave the mess and play scrabble online until he wakes up (and I sometimes do), but those aren’t good days.  For so many reasons.

All of this then gets me thinking about the moms out there whose one income is a lot less ample than ours is.  And about those moms out there who are going at it alone, making free time a pipe dream about as likely as a winning lottery ticket.  I have the option of asking Dave to babysit if I want a night out with the girls.  I have the option of hiring a babysitter if there is something that urgently requires my attention outside of the house.  There are others who really aren’t so lucky.  When I wasn’t a parent, I had no idea how insanely expensive childcare is.  Now I get it.

Tracey Cairns (founder of WomenAide – a charity for women who have suffered spousal abuse) has thought about those moms too, and has created a website called www.sitswap.ca, designed to ease the stress associated with finding and paying for childcare.  Essentially, it’s a site that brings together like-minded moms from the neighbourhood so that they can become friends and ultimately swap childcare favours at no cost to each other whenever the need might arise.  It’s one of those ideas that I wish I thought of myself.  More than once, I’ve caught myself sitting on my couch wishing that there was someone out of my mom acquaintances that I wouldn’t feel awkward asking to watch Jacob for a couple of hours while I ….. (fill in the blank) this afternoon.  I know I would be happy to return the favour.   I, for one, am rooting for Tracey and sitswap.ca.  It’s about time there was a childcare option out there that was dependable and that didn’t cost a small fortune.  Sitswap.ca seems primed to change the landscape of childcare in our province.  I’m sure the rest of the provinces are next in line.  Kudos, Tracey! 

Sadly,

all of my plants died, except for one. They were all thriving, growing, looking relatively happy - and then I decided it was time to transplant them outdoors to do their thing on their own. You know, set down some roots, flower, all that good stuff. My green peas are looking pretty good. I'm holding out hope for them. Everything else curled up and died. Clearly I did something terribly wrong. Maybe I spread out my love too thinly. It probably would have been a good idea to maybe focus on one plant or two. It's like a first-time mom having octuplets without help of any kind and expecting everyone to be happy. It was too ambitious. It's ok. I went out and bought some more mature plants and planted those instead. Things are looking a lot better now. I'm already snacking on chives and arugula on a regular basis, which is all I really need to be happy.

Happy Spring

Hello! I've just about awoken for the year.  Today I heard a cardinal shouting at me from the tree in my neighbours' backyard, and if that's not the alarm clock that will get me out of hibernation, I don't know what is.  Seeing a couple of robins hop about in my yard is a close second, only because they do it rather quietly.

In anticipation of the end of the March that threatened never to end, I paid a visit yesterday to my gardening place and picked up twelve seed packets.  Today, I'm happy to say, I planted them all into little pots and am officially waiting for some green to poke through.  I tried this whole planting from seed thing once before, and it promised to be such an exciting experience.  It was a few years ago in a rental apartment that Dave and I were sharing.  I watched the little tendrils peak out and then curl beautifully open, and shoot up a little before dying a slow and ugly death.  I had three little pots and threw them all out before summer even began.  I'm really hoping this time it goes better - especially because I have twelve of them.  I watered the soil this time before planting my seeds (I forgot to do that last time - rookie mistake), but otherwise, I can't say that I've done anything differently.  Perhaps the little seeds are aware that I'm a mommy now and will feel safer in my care this time around.  Let's hope.

Stuff my son says

"Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii rawawa"

(Translation: "I love you, mama")

Really?

I don't understand time.  Where is it always off to? How is it possible that my son is already a year and half old; walking, learning the alphabet, communicating his thoughts and feelings to me and everyone around him?

He likes music, that much is abundantly clear.  He knows what he wants to hear and definitely knows what he doesn't.  When a song comes on that doesn't jive with him, he will take matters into his own hands.  He'll walk right up to the stereo, reach up his little arm with his nimble little fingers, and simply turn it off.  Or sometimes, he'll even press 'next' and the offending tune will be removed and replaced with the one he was hoping for.  And then he'll dance.  I just sit there and stare when that happens, overwhelmed that my baby boy has somehow become both independent and tech savvy.

He is also computer literate - or at least he's getting there.

This morning, I found him sitting quietly on my bedroom floor, typing away on Dave's laptop, which he had somehow taken down from somewhere he shouldn't have been able to reach.  It was turned off, but he was hacking away at those keys like a pro.  Had it been on, he might have written something groundbreaking, but we'll never know, now will we.

This was good.

I once heard that when you're putting your kids to bed, you should always ask them to tell you about the best thing about the day they just had, even if it was just a moment's length.  This encourages them to think positively and it sends them to sleep with warm thoughts rather than stressful ones.  That always stuck with me, and when Jacob is old enough to share his thoughts using words, we'll definitely put that into play.  I've also decided that I could really use to adopt that practice for myself.  It's so easy to focus on all of the stressful and negative things happening to you throughout the day, that all of the good stuff practically vanishes before you can even register it.

I'll go ahead and choose the following moment as today's moment because I'm fairly sure nothing will beat it.   I was slouching on the coach wrapped in a blanket, unable to shake the night off, imagining indulgently that I was still in bed sleeping, and that Jacob was too.  That wasn't further from the truth, of course.  He was up and running (yes, he now runs!) from toy station to toy station, pawing at one mound of fun and moving on to the next.  Moments earlier, Jacob had urged me to turn on the stereo, which I did, but instead of listening to that music, he went straight for one of his own music-making toys and banged away over top of the song playing through the speakers.  Too tired to get up and turn the stereo off, I watched, dreading the noise-upon-noise I'd have to endure for the next 15 minutes or however long it would take him to tire of his synthesizer.  Somehow, though, I eventually found myself zoned out (or zoned in?) to the sound of Elvis Perkins' Ash Wednesday, as though the beautiful song was actually playing in my head, with the rest of the noise now muffled in the background.  For the few minutes that it played, I think I might have fallen asleep, all the while savouring every note like melting chocolate.  It was a short, but nourishing morsel of good that's still getting me through my day.

Stuff my son says

Gleefully, while pointing urgently at the cookie being unwrapped for him:

"KAKA!"

Questionable compliment of the day #3

Background: This one was given to me by my husband's grandfather a lifetime ago at my brother-in-law, Joel's, bar mitzvah (!!!)  Its ambiguity has kept me replaying it over and over again in my mind since then.

"NOW you look good."

here you go, bro.

It's really about time I did this.
Please check out my brother's website.  It's awesome.
http://www.elinsonphoto.com/

Questionable compliment of the day #2

Background: I received this perky compliment moments after a makeup artist completed her final touches on me  in preparation for a wedding I was going to be marching in.  I might add that I was two months pregnant at the time.

"You clean up really nicely."

Questionable compliment of the day #1

Background: I received this compliment at a BBQ last night, straight after a 3-hour drive back to town from Muskoka (and a dip in the hot tub before the commute).

"I love your hair.  I've been staring at it all night.  It's so whimsical."

Never again, The Bay. Never again.

First off, how great is that pic? Wish I could say I took it, but I didn't.

A couple of days ago, I found myself at the Bay in Yorkdale to purchase a gift for a bridal shower that I was going to attend later that day.  Since my days are pretty scheduled now that I'm a mom, I made sure to call in advance, and put the items on hold so that they wouldn't be snatched up by someone else before I got there.  I had everything figured out to minimize the amount of time I would need to spend in the store with my almost-one-year-old, who was having a bad day.  What I failed to take into consideration was the complete and utter ineptitude of each and every single staff member working there.  "Working," is rather an exaggeration, really.  More like "staring vacantly into space while striving to answer my questions using vaguely comprehensible speech".  If that's working, then they were working really, really hard.  My friend pointed out that The Bay seems to be trying to spruce up its image lately, what with "The Room" downtown and the coolification of "the blanket" that everyone can identify, but nobody actually owns... and yet walking through the Yorkdale store is like walking around in "Today's Special".  In fact, Jeff would have definitely been more helpful, and he's a mannequin.  Speaking of mannequins, I could have propped one up at the checkout counter and ventriloquized the entire (absurdly long and slow) interaction, and it might just have worked out.  It would have made it a lot more enjoyable for me, so maybe next time! No.  Never again, the Bay.  Never again.

Your love keeps lifting me

The first (and one of the only) lines in a new Chemical Brothers song that's awoken a musical obsession in me similar to the kind that used to swallow me up in high school.  It's been a while since a simple piece of music (really - it's surprisingly simple) has been able to instantly peel through my layers and end up where important things go.  So refreshing to know that I'm still vulnerable to this kind of bliss.

So long sushi?

Last night, Dave proclaimed that he would never eat fish ever again.  I've heard him say it before, but I think there was something about David Suzuki's somber voice on last night's episode of The Nature of Things that must have really affected him.  I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect me too... I just think my attachment to sushi is far greater than Dave's is, and the idea of completely cutting all fish out of my diet scares the bejesus out of me.  I love my sushi.  I mean, I really LOVE it.  My 9-month pregnancy-induced sushi hiatus was very difficult for me, and I'd rather not put myself through that again.  I will admit, however, that with every mention of the dying ocean and the possibility that 40 years from now not a single fish will be left in the vast, vast sea, and the fact that this would gradually and irreversably destroy pretty much all life on earth, I get one step closer to becoming a seafood-shunning activist.  If you really think about it, maybe it makes perfect sense that human beings ought to keep their fishing nets the hell out of the ocean.  It really is akin to taking our big blind hands and reaching deep into something that we know very little about, only to steal massive fistfuls of delicious things that may or may not disappear forever and change the face of the earth before we've even had our fill.  We're not a part of that ecosystem, so why do we eat from it? On the other hand, are we even a part of our own ecosystem anymore (besides being a menace to it)? It's really starting to seem that vegetarianism might be in the cards for me one day soon...

Princess Diaries

Because I am a contender for the "Worst Housewife in the history of Houses and Wives" award, Dave and I decided that a cleaning lady was probably a good idea.  There a few things in my world that I sit with and ponder on a daily basis (no doubt things that I should probably be doing something about rather than pondering).  One of the issues that resurfaces daily without fail is what I feel is my handicap for cleaning.  I feel very much stuck about it because frankly I'm tired of how much psychological stress it causes me.  For me, it's really boiled down to quite a simple question: would I like to admit that I suck at keeping a clean house and hire someone to help me, or should I just continue to torture myself with berating self-talk about my slothfulness in the hopes that it will eventually motivate me to change?

I was recently over at a friend's (spotless) house and she casually explained that since giving birth to her daughter, she has become anal when it comes to the cleanliness of her floors.  It was the kind of comment that wasn't really the point of whatever she was saying, but I couldn't get past it.  I asked her how I could get anal too.  Make me anal!! I want  clean floors without paying someone else to do it too! More importantly, I want to WANT to make my floors clean! Then my mind decided that I must obviously be a terrible mother for not caring what kind of floor my son crawls on all day.  I mean, I do dustbust the floor everyday to get rid of edible (and more importantly, I guess, inedible) little dangers, but wet-cleaning it? Daily? It's not in me! What would my grandmother say? When my grandmother invites us over, she always makes sure to mention that she cleaned her floor today just for us.  I don't have the heart to tell her that it's ok - she doesn't have to worry about it if it's just for us.  Then I'm racked with double-shame: first for the fact that my 89-year old grandmother washes her own floors more often that I do, and second, for not explaining to her that she can rest up today; no washing is necessary for these visitors.

So, seriously.  Am I a bad person for being bad at cleaning? I never had to do "chores" while growing up - my family had a cleaning lady that took care of all that for us.  Is this where my handicap came from, or was I born without the clean gene? I do like things to be tidy, but I don't seem to notice the progression from clean to dirty until it's too late and the project is an overwhelming mess.  Why can't I be one of those people that gets joy out of tidying up a room and moving on to the next? Better yet, why can't I be one of those people that gets joy out of keeping everything neat and tidy so that the overwhelming mess never happens in the first place?