the night

She’s fussing. Tired. I wrap her up in a warm blanket, cradle her against me & begin to rock.

I pace the house. Bouncing. Count my steps to pass the time. Hear her frantically sucking the soother. I’m willing her to fall sleep, so that I can sleep. Aching arms, rocking & bouncing.

Milk drunk hiccups.

She calms down, starts to settle so I try the rocking chair. Counting again, one hundred rocks aren’t enough. Maybe another hundred…

At long last, she lets go and relaxes against me. She’s out.

I look down at her through the darkness.

Angel face.

Don’t want to put her in her bed anymore. Linger a little longer holding her tight.

Finally, my own fatigue gets the better of me. I put her down.

Crawl into my own bed for as long as she will allow.

computer glitch

Maya: “Mom, I want to watch a Netflix show on the computer, but it looks black on the computer.”

Mom: “I’m trying to find you a show, Maya, but I’m having a problem with the computer. It’s slow and I think it’s frozen.”

Maya: “Oh, well I think we need a computer plumber to come and fix it then.”

Needless to say, we have had some plumbing repairs done recently. 

sorted

It wasn’t until I had a 3-year-old that I learned that elastics are people. The big ones are mommies and daddies and the little ones are babies… oh, and barrettes too. And they must all be sorted according to colour everyday.

toxins

I’ve always been a little paranoid about toxins in our environment. And it seems like so many people are getting cancer, young people. Did this always happen? Or are we just able to detect more cancers now? Or is there really more cancer because we’re all being exposed to stuff that makes us sicker?

There was the whole BPA scandal where we found out that we’d all been using plastics for years that contained a hazardous chemical. Now, we still use plastic but are told that much of it doesn’t contain BPA–at least not the stuff that we’re giving to our babies. But get THIS: I saw a Nature of Things episode the other night in which I learned that BPA was replaced with BPS in plastics. Does anyone know if BPS is any safer?

In our house, we’ve switched from plastic to glass & steel. Well sort of… as much as anyone can. We got glass lock containers instead of tupperware (but the lids are plastic). We have stainless steel water bottles & coffee mugs. But when I start thinking about all the food items in my house and what they’re packaged in, it’s mostly plastic except for some glass jars and some canned goods. But even the cans are now lined with plastic, which I think has BPA in it. It would be so difficult to avoid all the plastic. It’s everywhere.

Not to mention the whole radiation issue. There’s wi-fi everywhere you go and I LOVE LOVE LOVE my iPhone and my computer. When I’m rocking the baby to sleep, I sometimes have my ear buds in while I watch a show on netflix, it makes passing the time so much easier. Maya loves the apps and she uses our MacBook computer for all kinds of learning & entertainment. So, am I irradiating my children? Is all my technology safe?

The truth is I have no idea and there’s no definitive evidence to prove that any of this stuff is really harmful. But shouldn’t we employ the precautionary principle? It seems to me we tend to use all these products & chemicals until there is a problem, and then we start to worry. Isn’t this approach totally backwards? Shouldn’t everything be tested extensively to ensure that it’s safe before it’s marketed? I know this wouldn’t suit the capitalist model–corporations would be very angry if there was increased regulation and delays in getting products out on the market as fast as possible.

But what are we to do?

soother fingers thumb

Maya sucks her fingers. It’s a good thing because she can soothe herself and has been able to do so since she found those fingers at only a few months of age.

Maya at a few months of age

But her teeth are going to be atrocious if I can’t get her to stop. My dad sucked the same two fingers. My sister sucked hers obsessively, and she had a zillion dollars worth of dental work done to correct it (and her teeth are perfect now). Maya kind of wants to stop because she knows it’s a “big girl” thing to do… but she simply isn’t ready and still craves it. I’m working on it. Tips for helping her quit are welcome.

In the hope that Morgan wouldn’t follow in her sisters ‘finger sucking’ footsteps (and for numerous other reasons), I gave her a soother from the day she was born. I LOVE the soother. She’s not overly hooked on it and it saved my nipples from that dry, cracked, aching pain in the first weeks after she was born (I was tortured with Maya at the beginning). The soother helps people other than me calm her down and get her to sleep.  It’s so fantastic.

But this past week, Morgan has been pulling out her soother and trying eagerly to suck her thumb. In fact, she’s now practicing the thumb sucking every chance she gets.Determined to master it.

Morgan working on the thumb

I don’t think I can stop her… she’s as fixated on her thumb as her sister is on her other fingers. Whatever will I do?!

Bring on the dental bills.

Jinxed

I have clearly been too vocal about how well things were going. Right after my last post, Maya woke up with a terrible case of diarrhea. Honestly! I can’t believe it. Not only that, Morgan had been sleeping up to 8 hours a night and she went back down to 3 hour stretches last night. Maya who had been getting up at 6am slept until 8:30, but the baby woke up at 6:30–Murphy’s Law!

Maya’s newest stomach problems decided to begin at the exact time that her friend arrived for a play date, and right when the baby woke up screaming with gas pains. Maya’s anxiety over having “splat poo” as she calls it has been reborn, only much more intense this time, as she screamed hysterically that she wanted me to “make it stop” in between accidents because she couldn’t make it to the toilet on time, poor kid!

My gracious friend departed pretty quickly and I don’t blame her.  She’s 38 weeks pregnant and came with her little boy who is the same age as Maya. The morning was supposed to be a relaxing relief for her, instead she was holding my baby while I ran around helping Maya with her hysteria and clean-up. What a scene! Thank you, Universe, I am officially humbled… please forgive my hubris.

hippo candy

Sometime in December Maya got hit with a stomach bug. Not the barfing kind, but the other one, you know the ‘D-word’. She was pretty sick. Running to the toilet, having an accident in her pants in a public place (oh what fun!) and not really understanding what was going on. She even put herself to sleep for a nap when she got home… after she basically declared that she would never nap again. She was a bit freaked out by the whole thing. It passed quickly and we were all relieved.

Afterwards, I wanted to help speed her recovery so I purchased some intestinal flora for kids, you know little animal shaped vitamins with probiotics in them. The bottle had little hippos on it and Maya LOVED them. And why wouldn’t she? They taste like candy. She asked me why she was allowed to have these ‘candies’ every day, in fact twice a day without question. Afterall, I ration all her other sweets religiously. Naturally, she was perplexed by the free for all allowed by these magical ‘hippo candies’. So I explained that they would help give her “log poops” and could help prevent diarrhea.

Well somehow she got freaked out that she was going to have diarrhea every time she went to the bathroom unless she had the hippo candy in advance and she was having these anxiety attacks before every bowel movement, holding it in and frantically asking if she was going to have a healthy BM before every bathroom trip and double checking that she had taken her hippo candy. Poor kid,she became obsessed with the consistency of her poops! It was a bit of a scene. We worked hard to convince her that getting a stomach bug is actually rare, it doesn’t happen often.

Finally, after a month of more poo discussion than I ever thought I’d participate in, she is over it and has stopped asking me every day if she is going to have diarrhea and has stopped obsessing over her probiotics.

Convince me we’re normal here, what does your toddler obsess about?

cloth debate

When Maya was a baby I used cloth diapers for about 6 months. Then, we put our house up for sale and I had enough to deal with trying to keep the house immaculate for showings, and so I decided to use disposables… NEVER LOOKED BACK.

You see the switch made my life so much easier (yay!)… but it doubled our garbage (boo!). It’s kind of sickening, but I needed to do it.

Then, once daycare started, there was no choice, I had to continue with disposable diapers. I started out with Morgan using the beloved Pampers. They work so darn well! But my conscience is killing me so now, Morgan is 2 months old and I’m going to try to switch to cloth. I have all these cloth diapers from last time, it would be a shame not to use them. I used the old fashioned prefolds last time, but I also have some Mother-ease diapers that I’m excited to try out. Either way, I’ll save loads of money and garbage… as long as I can keep up with the laundry.

Wish me luck!

mall rats

The weather’s been super rainy here on the ‘wet coast’ and with two little kids, one of whom is a highly active 3-year-old, spending my days inside entertaining her while juggling the needs of my two month old isn’t exactly my idea of a good time.

We’re keeping busy by trying to organize playdates and go to activities like kindergym and gymnastics. Now that Maya isn’t napping in the afternoons, doing something in the morning isn’t really enough. The other day, I took her to a drop-in gymnastics lesson but couldn’t seem to find anyone available to play with her in the afternoon. So, without wanting to return home in the pouring (and I do mean POURING rain) I decided to brave the mall. I needed a few things and I thought at least Maya could play on those silly little kiddie rides, we can grab lunch at the food court, and there are lots of places to nurse the baby–not to mention the mecca of all toy stores for children: Toys ‘R Us.

Well, who knew that it would go SO well. I ended up wandering the mall with my two little ones for over 3 hours! There’s a part of me that thinks going to the mall for an afternoon is totally ridiculous and kind of terrible, especially since I’m from Calgary where going to the mall is the thing to do in the crummy, cold, snowy weather. I was so proud of our life here on Vancouver Island where we can be outside year round. We don’t have to get sucked into the capitalist ideology that shopping could make you happy–we live in a rainforest for goodness sake… but I give in, because Maya, Morgan and I had a fabulous time hanging out like ‘mall rats’ on a Thursday afternoon.

What do you do to keep your kiddos active on days when the weather keeps you indoors?