Hammer Time

Thanks for the awesome toy, Baba!

d is the new c

I have a cold. I’m taking loads of Vitamin D. Why is it that I used to pump myself full of Vitamin C, and now it’s all about D? I mean are all these recommendations just fads or is there real science to back up the belief that Vitamin D is going to heal me? I asked my sister about this (she tends to be in the know about this sort of thing) and she said that the reason we never took D when we were sick in the past is because the benefits were not researched or known yet. Plus, we live in Canada and I live in a rainy, cloudy climate where I don’t get very much sunlight which is what is needed for my body to produce enough Vitamin D naturally. Also, most Canadians work indoors which means that even when the sun is shining we’re often not outside to benefit from it. There’s more information on the benefits of Vitamin D here and here. That said, I couldn’t find an actual scientific/medical website that said Vitamin D is useful for prevention or treatment of the common cold. So, I’m not sure the science is in just yet, although there’s loads of speculation out there.

So fine, I’m taking the Vitamin D when I’m sick, but what about Vitamin C? Is it still beneficial? According the Mayo Clinic Website there’s no clear connection between taking Vitamin C and preventing or healing a cold. I find that pretty annoying since that’s pretty much all I did for the past 30 years or so.

So, off I go to take more D3 in the hope that it won’t turn out to be a total waste of time in the years to come!

ridiculous attention

What is it that they say about your firstborn being totally spoiled with attention? I don’t know what’s more ridiculous in these videos, Maya’s adorable little reactions, or myself and my husband with our over-the-top encouragement. Either way, it’s a good source of amusement!

Maya tries to sweep:

Maya on her rocking elephant:

And just for the record, that was Chad, not me making the elephant noises!

a new perspective

Is there anything cuter than seeing your child take her first steps? Maya has started to toddle around the house with glee and she seems totally giddy with her newfound mobility. Really, she’s been cruising for months and months, but there’s something about walking hands-free that just cracks her up. It makes us laugh too, she walks around giggling and hollering and she is so unsteady sometimes it’s hard to believe she isn’t falling down after each step. Tonight, she made a game out of darting from the bathroom (as we were getting ready for bath time) into her bedroom and waiting for me to pick her up and carry her back to the bathroom only to amble right back to her room as soon as I had set her down. Now the fun really begins!

Reminders

I feel like fate is talking to me a bit this week; giving me reminders. Seriously, I’m not trying to sound self-centred, it’s just that I’ve had a lot of ‘close calls’ recently, like a bad car accident that happened just up ahead of me or just behind me. In fact, I had one of each happen to me today-no joke. On my way home from work there was a serious rear-ender that happened about three cars behind me. I think at least four vehicles were involved. I could hear the crashing and clunking of metal and see the cars all askew on the road in my rear view mirror. Then, on my way home from a late meeting tonight, three  police cars whizzed ahead of me at high speed, and on the highway (on which I commute daily) there was some sort of accident that led them to completely block off the road for a while. Only serious accidents lead to highway closures. All of these accidents served to remind me not to rush so much as I’m busting it home to see my little girl at the end of each work day. It’s not worth it. I need to slow down and realize that five extra minutes in my car isn’t such a bad deal if I get to my destination in one piece. My mind is so busy right now, it’d be easy to have an accident. Sounds corny, but I’m gonna remember to ‘think & drive’.

walking girl

Maya was very early with crawling and cruising but she has taken her sweet time to get to this wobbly walking stage:

Such a big girl!

my brain is full

What is it about being a working mother that makes you totally unable to think like a normal person?

When I got pregnant I thought that the whole “pregnancy brain” thing was temporary. I even heard people say things like, “don’t worry, you get the brain cells back”. But seriously, it’s been over a year and THEY’RE NOT BACK! And my brain is so full from trying to remember every little thing that I have to think about in order to function at home and at work. I regularly lose my train of thought mid-conversation and I act like a person with an attention deficit disorder the way I’m so easily distracted. For instance, I make tea, or at least I try to make myself a cup of tea, about 4 times a day at work. And my classroom is connected to the kitchen so you’d think it would be a simple task but I usually manage to drink about a half a cup of tea per day (if that!) before it gets cold, or before I forget that I turned on the kettle or that I even wanted tea.

So tell me, do the brain cells come back at some point? Is this my mental state from now til my kids are 30? Man, if I had known, I would have done a lot more interesting things while my brain was still working!

adjusting

The past two weeks during which I went back to work full-time and my little girl adjusted to her new daycare have been a total emotional roller-coaster! Some days I woke up feeling so exhausted that I thought I could never actually get my feet out of bed and onto the floor. Some days while I was on my way to work I cried because she cried when I left her at daycare. Other days I thought to myself “I can totally manage this life as a working mother, it’s a good balance”. Then there were the times I felt completely trapped in a prison of sleeplessness and workaholic-ness (even though that’s not even a real word) and deprived of the time I so craved to spend with my child. Quite the ride…

However, at the end of this past week I finally started to feel like I was pulling myself together. I got to bed early, didn’t stay up all night working (a teacher’s job is never done-especially for a total perfectionist), I left work each day in time to have some QT with my girl, and I even managed to be nice to my husband all week.

I have decided that our Canadian maternity leave which lasts an entire YEAR is a wonderful, remarkable and amazing gift but makes a first-time mom respond with complete and utter shock when the magical non-reality of a 12-month honeymoon with your baby comes to a crashing halt and you suddenly have to juggle more shit in your life than you ever could have fathomed! It’s like being set up for a nervous breakdown or in my case a panic attack… or two… In short: I loved my first year of mommy-hood.

Carsick

Last weekend, we were on our way to a little girl’s birthday party just outside of the city. To get there, one has to travel on a narrow twisty road for quite some time. As usual, we were running late. So, when Maya woke up from her morning nap, we fed her a big breakfast, scurried into the car and drove a little faster than usual. Might I emphasize that I drove fast on a road with sharp windy turns… mistake number 1…

Maya has been complaining in the car quite a bit lately. She seems to shout and whine quite a bit when I’m driving and I’ve been thinking it’s just because she’s so active and she wants to get out and move around. So, when she was crying a bit on this particular drive my husband and I took turns singing songs to her and whistling, all of which we’ve discovered are helpful in soothing her (and our nerves) when she’s yelling from the backseat.

We had just turned off the main road into the subdivision where our friends live when Maya really picked up the pace on the complaining. She starting kind of moaning and groaning and we just kept on singing and telling her “we’re almost there!”. Then the groaning turned into the most awful baby vomiting sound you have ever heard. Seriously, it was nasty and I looked into my rear view mirror just in time to see her breakfast spewing out her breakfast all over her adorable party outfit and the car seat. Yum yum!  Mistake number 2: not realizing that our little girl’s complaining was due to nausea…

We pulled over and got the bulk of the mess wiped away and then continued on to our friend’s house where we got Maya and the car mostly cleaned up. That evening I spent a considerable amount of time trying to dismantle the car seat and destroy the fowl odor of vomit. But even after about an hour of scrubbing and letting it dry out overnight, it still kind of smells faintly of vomit. It’s the buckles that are the primary problem. If anyone has any tips on how to get rid of the stench, I’m welcoming suggestions from others experienced in the art of cleaning baby barf–isn’t life grand?!

Working Mom

Going back to work was as good and as bad as I expected. I rediscovered the fact that I love my job and so that was pretty great. But, man, I was tired. Getting up at 5:30 to get myself and my one-year-old girl out the door in time to drop her at daycare and get to work on time.

Maya had a difficult first few days at daycare. As I had mentioned before, we chose a small daycare at the home of a friend of mine. My husband and I chose this over a bigger daycare in the same building where I work as a teacher. I knew the people running the programs at both places and they all seemed more than competent, but I just felt overwhelmingly (and my husband agreed) that it was better for Maya to be at a house with fewer kids, than in a larger, more institutional setting (even if the larger place was in the same building as my school).  Plus, the daycare at my friend’s house is close to our house (a 5 minute drive) which meant that Maya would not have to spend an extra hour each day commuting in the car with me.

So much thought and deliberation went into my decision to choose the daycare that we did. Nevertheless, I found I was totally second guessing our decision at the last minute, and kind of panicking about whether we’d made the right choice. Now, I am feeling much much better about our decision because, after about three days of mega-crying, Maya started really enjoying daycare. She bonded with my friend who runs the program, she naps on her usual schedule, and interacts happily with all the other kids. She still cries when I drop her off but I’m told it stops shortly after I leave. That said, those first few days were rough on both of us and I cried in the car a few times on my way to work. It was really hard to pick up Maya all red-eyed and exhausted from those first trying days. Thankfully, it worked out for the best. I don’t know what I’d have done if it didn’t because the waiting lists for daycares accepting kids in Maya’s age group are long. It would have been hard to find anything else.

The holidays were a nice reprieve after three weeks of work and we’ve spent loads of quality time together as a family over the past two weeks. In two days, we’re back the grind and it’ll be months before we have a break again. I am not looking forward to expending the energy that’s required of me for the next while (it’s going to be exhausting). But, thankfully, I have a supportive husband, and a great job (with a flexible employer) and all these things make this adjustment period easier to handle. So, here we go…