Where are the burns of '73?

My favourite Christmas song. I was about one month old when this came out. I like the fact that I was born in a time when people had such great haircuts and amazing sideburns.



Merry Christmas

Bam! What was that? A year gone by that's what.

If you know Leon, you can tell by his glassy eyes and lack of a big smile in this photo that he's starting to be sick. It was taken last week, just at the beginning of a big virus. Poor guy! He's feeling much better now, but there was at least a week of crying and moaning and flopping his head woefully on my shoulder because he was exhausted and couldn't sleep from pain or congestion or what have you. It was heart breaking not being able to just make him feel all better. The best I could do was console him as much as possible and clean his nose and dose him with baby tylenol. Little champ.

You know, usually I am hoochy coochying on the christmas-cheery type stuff at this time of the year. This year, not so much. With Leon being sick and the weather being icky and well, let's face it, being locked to my son's not very forgiving schedule, I have opted out of a lot of celebrating type behavior. I haven't even watched the Grinch or Charlie Brown Christmas or Christmas Story or Christmas Vacation. I haven't baked cookies or had cocktails. I haven't made cards or even bought any.

I did decorate my little tree and I did wrap presents, which I love doing. I think I like wrapping presents more than I like getting them!

It's been hard to do the usual holiday cheer because I'm not a very "roll with it" type mom. Some moms can just carry on with their lives and keep on trucking, but I must admit to my regular life being somewhat on hold while I do the mom job. I guess I like to focus on one thing at a time. It stresses me out to try to do too much at once. Mothering takes up most of my time and energy.

I'm guessing that I will chill out as Leon gets older and more independent. Probably next Christmas will be more fun as he will be interested. I bet after that, Christmas will be ten times more fun seeing it through his eyes. This year, I think he'll appreciate tearing up wrapping paper but that's about all he will really register.

At any rate, December is hurtling by at a blinding speed and then the year will wrap up and it will all begin anew and I'll be sitting around blinking, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Take a second to send Leon some good sleeping vibes would you? It's been a rough week sleep-wise for all of us. Snot, you are evil. You block the nose and awaketh the sleeping eye with thy mucous-y ill will. That's my old timey rant against snot.

I have a little time left before retiring to bed. Maybe I'll try to sneak in some sort of holiday moment. A sip of amaretto. I'd eat a chocolate if there was one in the house. (note to self: rectify the no chocolate in the house situation.) Maybe I'll just lay back and chill and try to gather my wits about me and just absorb a little more December before it runs away laughing into the winter sunset.

Do you already rock?

Man it's cold. "Hot gazoobies!" as either Boots or Bruno used to say, I can't remember which, in Gordon Korman's great book: Beware the Fish. I LOVED his novels when I was 10 years old. I might even like to reread that series. I still have them and will give them to Leon to try out, even though cars will be flying and food will be in the form of pills and we will all wear silver spandex pants suits by the time he can read.

We'd been wondering what to do for Leon this Christmas. The dude has a billion toys already. I remembered we had some left over credit at a toy store and realized we could use it to buy toys to donate instead of piling more in our house. I'm really happy that even though neither of us has income right now, we are still in the position to give. (Budgeting software people. It works wonders. It's amazing how much you can save when you follow a budget.) Leon is so young, he'd be happy to just have a box wrapped in paper with more paper inside. I feel like there really isn't a single thing any of us need here in our family. We are lucky. I will feel much better giving to families that really need it. It breaks my heart to think of children in very poor families missing out on simple things like food and toys. If you already donate, then you rock. If you hadn't thought of it, please do.

Snow, snow, snow. Me-ow!

Right. It's snowing. Christmas tree is going up. I've been wondering when I was going to feel it was the right time...it's been such a grey, rainy fall.

But I woke up late last night and checked out the window and there was the thinnest, tiniest layer of snow on the ground and it was all I needed for the Christmas groove to click in. So fa la la la la, la la, la, la.

Our tree is about as big as Charlie Brown's but that's okay. I'll have to put it up high anyway so Leon doesn't dive into it like a kitten. He reminds me a lot of a cat actually. He loves shiny things. He immediately notices anything new in a room and beelines for it to put it in his mouth. He likes to climb everything. If he starts to meow, I may be consulting a medium to see about past cat lives or something...

So I went from groaning at the Christmas displays in stores being up too early, to being full on ready to ho ho ho. Bring it on Christmas gods. Let it snow.

Roll out the carols?

Yep, yep. I'm 37 years old now. Reckon I best be windin' down for old-timer life now.
I went ahead and turned 37 recently. I thought, what the heck, might as well age another year. I'm putting on years like I'm putting on pounds lately. The sticky notes my therapist made me place around my house reminding me of good things about me that don't have to do with appearance or age have softened the blow. They really do work!

I've been admiring Leon. He is swell, I tell ya. I've been thinking how lucky I am to be able to stay at home with him while he is growing up. We accepted living with low finances, but not everyone has that choice. I can't imagine in the States where moms have to go back to work after a couple months! How horrible! I can't even imagine after a year! They are still such young young babies. I've noticed, through Leon, how at around 9 months, he's started to learn something new everyday. I can see him growing right in front of me and I feel really lucky that I don't have to miss out on that. I'm super aware of how he will only be an infant and a toddler once and it will go by so quick and I just want to absorb it and be there for as much of it as I can. It's tough some days, being with a baby full-time, but honestly, I wouldn't give it up for a trillion dollars.

I have way strong mom empathy now, so that when I see other children, I worry about them too. I saw a baby in a restaurant who was hungry and I was all tense until I saw the mother nurse her. If I see babies with really young, rough looking parents, I worry like crazy about them. My heart bleeds for any baby that needs anything. I could lay awake gritting my teeth at night worrying about babies who don't have good parents and are neglected or scared or hungry or anything bad. It's emotionally exhausting. How terrible that anything bad ever happens. I want to swoop up all the babies of the world up and make sure every one of them is happy.

Leon is sleeping pretty good recently. It's lucky. When we ran out of tools to help him to sleep, we had to dabble in letting him cry, but I couldn't ever stomach it for more than a few minutes and ended up quitting it. He's getting better at it on his own. I have no idea what will happen when we don't nurse anymore, but I'll face that when we get there. I'm happy to nurse him, even if it's 3am, because that won't last forever either. However, I'm thankful I'm not nursing him 5 or 6 times a night anymore!

So December approaches and I heard my first Christmas carol on the radio yesterday. Can you believe it? Christmas. Aye yai yai. I'll haul out our wee tree soon and put it somewhere high up and decorate it to honor the winter wonders and we'll see what this winter has to bring. I have a icky feeling it's going to be a rainy winter so I'm gunning for some snow, but we'll see how I feel about that when I'm cooped up in our apartment watching a snow storm rage outside.

My computer battery is about to die and my eyelids are heavy. So 37. Yeah! Let's see how it turns out for me. Rock and roll.

Toot Toot.

I was thinking last night, in bed, how I tend to write about all the things I do wrong or poorly and rarely write about what I've done well. I'm not one to toot my own horn, if you will. I decided that I would break that habit and talk about a few things that I am proud of doing with Leon, since that is my biggest responsibility to date and I've been pretty hard on myself about it so far. You know what I was thinking though? Even though it's been hard, really really hard at times, and I sure ain't perfect, on the whole, I've done a good job with this guy.

I'm gonna go even further to say (so if he reads this one day, he won't think his mom was nothing but a whiner) some of the things I'm proud of specifically.

1. Despite a lot of obstacles, including current some current ones, I am still breastfeeding at 9 months. I've felt from the start it was important and even though there's a million times I've had good reason to stop, I haven't.

2. I've made sure that L has lots of time to play and move around. I try not to bundle him up and stick him in a stroller or car seat for too long. It has meant less freedom for me to do things, but I can see the progress he makes everyday from his play and I'm glad I give that to him.

3. Although it's been really tough to sleep so poorly, I got up and did my job of putting him back to sleep countless times for 8 months. Conversely, when I could see it was time that he could start to learn to sleep on his own, I have gritted my teeth and let him a cry a little so he doesn't always need his parents doing it for him. It was something I never wanted to have to do, but admitted it was needed when I saw it was so. I still use it sparingly and always try to make sure he's a happy, clean, full baby before putting him to bed.

4. Learned to ask for help when I needed it so L could benefit from a happier mom.

5. Forced myself to let go of control so that he could be in the care of his father and grandparents sometimes and benefit from their knowledge and style of parenting and care giving.

6. Actively show him new things, teach him words and try everyday, to help him learn something no matter how small.

7. I've learned to wake up everyday and be a mother, no matter how I'm feeling and what I might rather be doing.

8. I've gone from being so depressed some days, that I could barely function, to having months now, where I do my best everyday for Leon.

9. I let him show me who he is and try to encourage what he wants to be and do. Before he was born, I used to think that kids should just integrate into their parents lives, but I see now that a baby needs his own little world to be supported. When he's older, we can show him our world, but now, I feel good that I have let go of some of my own desires and habits to make room for Leon to show us what he needs and likes.

10. I love him a lot and would indeed fight a bear with one hand tied behind my back, on his behalf, if needed.

So none of these things are a judgment on parents who don't do things as I do. The biggest thing I've learned about parenting is that everyone must do what they feel is right. Deep down, we all feel we know best and I think a lot of things, everyone agrees are the "right" thing to do, but there's lots of gray areas too that we all have to work out for ourselves. That's my little disclaimer.

So thanks for allowing me to indulge in some patting of my own back. My therapist would be proud of me!

Keep it in the family...at your own risk.

Wow. Last week, a miracle: Leon slept through an entire night. It only happened once, but now we know it's possible. He's been sleeping better in general and this has produced a much rosier mood in me. Plus, he's becoming so entertaining; Babbling and crawling and standing. We introduced his potty to him this week and managed to get him to use it 4 times. I have a determination to get him used to his potty early on. Determination about baby related things have a tendency to fly gracefully out the window, but one must have goals all the same.

To change topics rather abruptly: I was walking down the outdoor trail behind our place when a rather unhinged, old dude biked by saying: "Keep it in the family?! How do you keep it in the family when they want to kill you?"
I thought to myself: good question, but someone else yelled out: "Ha ha! The crazies are out today!". I don't think the guy was out of earshot to this rude woman who seconds earlier had been whinging about how students should have access to healthy foods at reasonable prices in a fakey concerned about "big" issues way. The man she was with was clearly bored to death during her bland tirade. All of a sudden, an albeit crazy guy bikes by, clearly concerned about a murderous family either for himself or someone else and all her PC bullshit flies less than gracefully out the window and her inner bully comes blaring out like an air horn. I've always found it incredibly useless and mean to point out to a crazy stranger that they are crazy. Beside, who am I to judge? He asked a very valid question. I guess most of us just wouldn't shout the question publicly while riding down a path. Maybe that's our problem more than his.

I felt like shouting back at her:"HA HA! The bitchy bullies are out today!", but I didn't. Minus ten points for me.

To jump topics again. Back to Leon. He is crawling like heck these days. However, he is more interested in standing. In one week he went from shakily pulling himself up and flinging himself backward, constantly playing the trust game with us, to being able to stand up and crouch back down again all by himself without falling. This little dude loves physical activity. My guess is he is going to be a jock! A little athlete dude. We'll see. He's damn cute and that is the truth.

I am trying to repeat certain phrases a lot that I want him to learn and one that I can't stop exclaiming is:"BIG HUG" and then giving him one. I do it about 40 times a day because he is just so hugable. Also: "BIG KISS" and then giving him one on his chubby cheeks. He smells good too. We use Burt's Bees Honey Baby Wash which makes him smell like a honeycomb. Also, I don't know who he got it from, but he has the most amazing colour of blue eyes. Like a lake at dusk. Deep pools of blue. He's a charmer. I am smitten.

I've had to write this blog in little bursts throughout the day so it's probably rather disjointed. A thunderstorm has just begun. In October? Seems weird. Erg, I hope it doesn't wake Leon. We may have to do some rocking and lullabying tonight if it gets too crazy. Better go ready myself. Thanks for reading!

Happy Thanksgiving (it was!)

Unstoppable forces o' nature mi'lads and mi'ladies

So thanks to the supportive comments of my aunt on that last depressed post. Low really feels low when it happens, but I'm not always there. It's a real roller coaster ride. Lately, I've been managing better. My therapist gave me a list of negative thinking patterns associated with depression and out of 13, I do every single one of them every single day. Just having them pointed out helped. I'm more aware when I'm saying or doing something that it's the negative way of seeing things and not the only way of seeing things.

Therapy talk aside...

The season sure is changing quick. The leaves have nearly all turned colour. And just tonight, I was looking out the kitchen window for a bit of head space, when I noticed the geese flying in formation. At our last place, in our little shack on the river, I was very attuned to season changes from the earliest moments. Autumn was cemented and fully in force when the geese all took leave from the river. It was a front row seat from our living room with the patio doors out onto the water. I miss that view. It caught me off guard when I looked out tonight, in the middle of the city, with the apartment buildings and cars and traffic lights, to be reminded of the signs of nature as a flock of geese flew high up in the pink and red sunset. I don't notice the natural world now, like I did back at the old place.

What I do notice is Leon. He has two teeth jauntily jutting forth from his bottom gums. He officially went from commando style dragging to full fledged, cruising around crawling about a week ago. His obsession now is standing. He jams his head into either T or I and uses us as a cushy ledge to push against to raise himself up to standing. Once up, he exclaims triumphantly, twists around, crouches down and starts all over again. We went from playing in one place on a mat, to needing some serious baby-proofing, in the blink of an eye.

He's eating 3 solid meals a day now too, in addition to nursing. Today he had lentils, hummus, squash, zucchini, yam and some omelet. He's eating better than I am! Our freezer is full of little cubes of vegetables for him. I personally can't wait till he can chew anything and eat all sorts of new stuff.

Thanksgiving is nearly here... I can't believe how each day seems to go by slowly, yet the months are hurtling past somehow. Before I know it, Christmas will be here and then in January, L will be a year old. Too insane. This time last year, I was glowing skinned and shiny haired, with L doing karate kicks into my ribs inside me. I was wondering how it would all turn out. I played mahjong and dominoes and scrabble with T every night and watched movies and read during the day and knew my life was going to change, but I just couldn't comprehend how. I tried to know, but now I know for real and I know there's sooo much more to know ahead of me too. One year later, everything is different than it ever was my whole life before L and it will always be this new way. The new way of having a child and ALWAYS thinking of them, always always, always.

Seasons, cycles, growth and change: Unstoppable forces of nature y'all. Whether witnessed first hand, or through a window, it's a roller coaster round and round, up and down.

Down on the corner....fna fa na nan na

This made me happy.

Miserable fat bastard

Do you ever have the feeling that there is absolutely nothing you want to do and you have no idea what to do with yourself and everything you try makes you miserable? Is that what being depressed is? Or is that just what being a dumb jerk is? Maybe I'm both.
I honestly don't know where that last post came from. I woke up the next day feeling like life was excruciating and being a mother was the hardest thing on earth.

I do have help, but when I get a break, I don't know what to do with myself to feel better. When I don't have help, I wish I did. And so on and so on in a tornado of self-defeat.

Why is mothering so hard? Why is it so hard for me, is the real question. I don't handle responsibility well. It's very stressful to me. I'm a perfectionist who has no faith in her own abilities. That's a recipe for misery right there. I'm tired. I'm lonely and cooped up. I know some women just forge on with their lives and the baby goes along with them and that's that. For some reason, I haven't come even close to mastering this. What would free me to do so? A house (so I didn't have to sit quietly while he naps lest I wake him up)? A car (so I could go places in inclement weather or places far away)? A lobotomy (so I could chill the eff out)?

I really don't know if any of the above would make a difference. If you go back and read any old post on this blog, I'm probably talking about how hard something in my life is or how unhappy I am. Baby or before. It's pitiful and sad. I would love to be happier. I would love to know how to do that. What a waste it is, to drag yourself through every day, missing what's good about it and only feeling what's bad. What a shame that I have such an awesome little son that I can't truly enjoy because I'm such a miserable bastard. A miserable fat bastard as the English say...

Poor kid, you are probably thinking. Well he would be, if he were stuck with me all the time. But he's not. He has grandparents and a happy dad and a mom who tries her damnedest most of the time. I've heard it said that most moms are best during a certain time of their child's life. For example; really good at mothering a teenager or a toddler or an infant. I think I'll be best at having a school age child. I think that's when my skills will come in the most handy.

I'm not really shining forth on the infant stage. It's tough man. It's tough. I find myself envying the age-ed. Retired old people who slowly do their thing. It's warped and misinformed I know. I just have this idyllic vision of a life where you just putter around and no one needs you for anything really. It sounds terrible doesn't it? I know for a fact some of those people would tell me I was a retard for not enjoying my life in the full swing of things.

Honestly, I don't know how to be happy. No matter where I am, or what I'm doing, this blog is a testament to the fact that I simply don't know how to be happy.

Prison break!

I am slow to adapt. It's taken me nearly 7 months to adjust to certain things about having a baby:

1. Sleep. You don't get much. Period. The end.

For a long time I kept hoping this would change. Oh, maybe tonight is the night!! Yeah right. There are some parents who smugly proclaim: Oh, my baby slept through the night starting at 2 seconds old. He sleeps 23 hours at a time. Yeah? Good for you jerk, is what I have to say to that.
Really though, acceptance has been a big factor in mood alteration on this topic. It's less frustrating if you just accept.

2. Help-take it. Don't feel guilty.

This is how parenting is bearable. With help! Friends, family, cartoons. Every day, a person needs even just a little bit of help, and by help, that can simply mean company, a phone call, dropping off a bag of cookies...

Bigger help is important too. Time off. One hour even. It makes a huge difference.

3. Live the way you want. Whether that's following a schedule or not.

Me? I loves me a schedule and thankfully, so does Leon. I tried to challenge this for a long time. I kept feeling it was too rigid and we should be able to be more adventurous and spontaneous. Phooey. We wake, eat, sleep and play on schedule and if it gets knocked off kilter, no one here is happy. So if that means the only time I have to do anything is a one and a half hour window between 2 and 3:30, so be it. I am so much happier after accepting this and ceasing to push Leon and I into doing more than we can handle.

4. A special place. Get one. Mine is the bathroom. It's an oasis. Even if I just go in for a pee, it's a moment alone to gather myself.

There is a window in my bathroom that looks out onto sky and trees. It never ceases to calm me and help me collect my thoughts. In the early morning, the leaves blow gently in the dawn light. At night, stars peek through the leaves and the moon shines if it's the right time of night. In the afternoon, blue sky beams above the trees. No matter how withered or outside myself or tired I feel, I look out that window and my shoulders relax, my head clears and I take a deep breath and think: The world is big and life is larger than this moment.

I especially love this window at night. I wake up numerous times with Leon still. We nurse, I rock him to sleep and then I go pee. In bed, I always feel like: good lord, do I seriously have to be awake right now? When I get to the bathroom though, I look out the window, the leaves may be blowing or they may be still, the sky may be speckled with stars or it may be clouded an opaque navy blue, either way, I think to myself: What a lovely night. How nice to be here noticing how calm and quiet the night is. And then I go back to bed, knowing that it's not all for naught. This is a capsule in time, my life right now, but things will change. Things will expand.

5. Leon. He is awesome.

Everyday he grows a bit and everyday it's rewarding to see him do his thing. I'm excited for each new thing he has to learn or discover and it pivots me forward. It takes a while for this to kick in. At first, babies just lay around and don't do a whole heck of a lot, but then all of a sudden, they start blossoming into giant, vibrant flowers of humanity and it's pretty groovy to help them get there.

Sometimes I wonder if this is how prisoners cope. It sounds terrible to equate the two, but I wonder. This going day by day, moment by moment way of life...finding small things to focus on and looking toward the future...also, the whole, having a small window to view a piece of the world with. Luckily, my window doesn't have bars on it and I am not incarcerated. I just have a baby that slows down life and brings in the scope of things for a while. I didn't know how to dig it at first, but I think I'm starting to get it now.

6 month triumph (not the band)

6 months baby yeah! I so mega did it and I am so impressed with myself. Honestly, 2 months ago, 3 months ago, I didn't know if I would make it breastfeeding all the way to 6 months, but as of today, I have officially done it. In your face milk supply and various other obstacles! From here on in, any extra time I do is icing on the breast milk cake. "Ew!", you say. Don't knock it till you've tried it.

So that milestone is reached. Realistically, I have another 6 to go, but I don't think they'll be as challenging.

Sleep however... well, ladies and gentlebens, that's a whole other kettle of stinky, stinky fish. Man oh man does L ever not sleep good. I mean up every hour, all night, every night.

When you are that sleep deprived and frustrated and despairing, it would be lying to say that, even if just for a moment, the thought of packaging up the baby to send to Santa Claus to be raised as a toy making elf doesn't start to seem like an inevitability if something doesn't give. Of course neither T or I would ever, ever do that, or anything even close, but a primal part of our brains, that is gunning for our own survival does suggest the option to us at 4am after 13 attempts to get L to sleep only to have him wake the second we put him down each time. In short, dude is not good at sleeping. Don't think we haven't tried every scientific, unscientific or downright kooky solution we've come across. I can only pray (another result of a sleepless brain) that he will grow out of this very very soon.

Were you wondering if having a baby would cramp your style at all? Hah! Heck yes it will. It will double-dog cramp your friggin style. And then some. I dream of the day when I can have a long shower, or watch a tv show, or go see a movie. Drawing or sewing seem like a very distant mist on the horizon across the ocean on another planet.

L, you are lucky you are so cute and smart and squishy and warm and good smelling! If babies weren't so appealing, we'd all drop them off at the nearest church doorstep by the 1st month!

I'm so shocked Monsterteeth! Babies are God's gift from the whispers of angels! Raising a baby is a joyful privilege from baby jesus!!

Yes, but it also sucks a whole lot at least half of the time and will challenge your inner strength and energy reserves like a marathon in a war...(note: some people actually do all 3. Some people have babies while moving across countries during a war. My Oma for example. This humbles me and blows my mind. Humans do what we must do I guess.)

It's hard to remember that, when you are exhausted, staring bleary eyed at the little human that kept you up all night. All you want to do is sleep, but he wants you to hold him and play and keep him happy and feed him and stop him from crying and you wonder how you are ever going to get through another day, but you do and you go to bed and you know you won't sleep more than an hour at a time again that night, so you resign yourself to it and you get through it and in between those tough hours, night and day, your baby flashes a smile or giggles or just smells really good and you remember that it really is amazing and awesome that he was born and is there in front of you growing and being a little tiny person.

As my other grandmother, (who did a year and a half long no sleep marathon with her first child all on her own) reminded me, I am lucky to have the help of my own grandparents. They have been seeing our raggedy ass mugs( T and I) and L's perfect, cherub cheeked, alabaster mug nearly every day lately. All hail my parents for the degree of relief they provide. I highly recommend buying your self some good parents if you haven't already got some!

It is due to their aid that I am able to type this right now. I'm even going to watch a movie! I am so stoked! It's like Christmas!

L, you are 6 months old today. You make us tired, but you are the most beautiful, charming baby so we forgive you. Happy 6 monthiversary little dude.

Who you calling space trash?

You know when you can't fall asleep at night because you are thinking: What if I have to hurl myself through a wall of fire while holding my son...will I be able to protect him? Will my hair burn off? If I have to drop him out the window in a pulley made of sheets while I am on fire, will I be able to do it?

Oh, you don't think such things?

Last night it was space trash. I started worrying about all the space trash in orbit and wondering what happens if it gets knocked out of orbit and goes hurtling to the far reaches of the universe, upsetting the delicate balance of all things with a horrible chain reaction of mass destruction?

2 nights ago, it was the CERN large hadron collider in Switzerland. I mean, should people be accelerating particles like that?

It used to be only things related to Leon that would keep me awake. I have a graphic imagination and there are many horrifying scenarios of misfortunes and accidents to be keeping a lady up at night.

Now, it would seem, my brain is opting for some more obtuse examples of worrisome tableaux, if you will.

That, paralleled with a dear son nursing every hour and a half through the night, makes for a rather tense, bleary eyed woman of the world. I mean, really, do I need to be worrying about what Swiss scientists are doing with their sub-atomic particles? It's like being in an airplane and convincing yourself that unless you continue to use your own personal sheer will power to keep the plane in the air, the whole damn thing will nosedive in a fiery, horrible crash ( I do this by the way). Meanwhile, other, more sensible people are on planes getting liquored up and reading vanity fair and snoring and drooling on the stranger seated beside them.

It doesn't end there. My dreams taunt me also. I dream about hateful airplane rides all the time. They are always very scary, always exaggerated in the amount of take offs and landings required and always involve lots of banking and diving and swerving and listing and all those other flight related words. I wake up with my fists clenched and my teeth grinding. Again, the more well balanced gentry would be using bedtime to relax.

Sigh. I really do tire of the endless capacity of my brain to find things to worry about in explicit detail. Here I am at my parents, after a night of not sleeping. The idea is they entertain L, while his ragged mother gets some sleep, but no! I'm hunched over this keyboard instead, because I was just laying in bed awake, writing this blog entry in my head anyway and would have kept repeating it over and over until it was written.

"Release me!", in the great words of the even greater named Englebert Humperdink. His parents were obviously the relaxed sort to not be worrying about giving their son such a name. Release me brain, and let me sleep again.

The unholy and the lulling.

I had a dream where I was wandering around a house, looking for the baby I had to nurse. Someone opened a door to a basement and there, at the bottom of the steps, in the creepy dark, was Gary Busey, waiting. Talk about unholy! The dream ended at that point. No way was I going to nurse Gary Busey, even if he did do a good job at playing Buddy Holly.



I wonder if any Buddy Holly songs make good lullabies. I don't know many traditional lullabies, so I just sing contemporary songs that sound relaxing. My favourite one right now is "Space Oddity". Go ahead. Try it. Sing it quietly to yourself. Makes a great lullaby doesn't it? I bet Buddy Holly's "Everyday" would make a good one too.
"Oh Yoko" works good too.







What would you sing?

Sea sick yet still docked

Wow. 320 posts. I can't believe I've written that many posts. What started as a way to get through a tortuously boring, but well paid work day has become a way to tortuously bore you, dear reader. I hope you are at least getting well paid.

I have L in a wrap on me and I'm rocking from side to side while I type this to keep him asleep. The effect on me is one of sea sickness...blech. Ever since there was a recall of that one type of baby sling that looked like a big hammock bag (that so obviously was not safe for a baby to sleep in), people, who don't know about slings, but know about the recall, look at me like I'm a monster when I go out with him in my sling. They try to peek as if to check that I am carrying a real live child and not a smothered one. Well, thanks total stranger! I would never have thought to verify the aliveness of my son without your concerned cranking of the neck in my direction.

T is playing some weird ass french music that sounds like nintendo games being played overdubbed with what sounds like "on the scene" news reporting from the front lines in french and then all that is mixed by a DJ in a club from a drug-induced dream sequence in a movie where someone is stumbling through a dark dance floor, while the room spins around them and people stick their faces in the way with maniacal expressions and grimaces and strobe lights flash and go-go girls with vampire fangs and real blood on their mouths gyrate in cages.

It has the effect of sea sickness...try it here : blech!

L is stirring. Must go walk circles to keep him in a sleep trance.

Full mit chokolaten

We are so moved in. Hell of moved in. Well, actually, the pictures are still not hung, but apart from that, the boxes have been opened, the shelves have been filled, the toys have been strewn about...it's home now.

Bonuses: we live across the street from a massive Italian grocery store that has every specialty item in the universe. Amazing sandwiches with sun dried tomatoes and artichoke and asiago pate and roasted red peppers...fresh baked stuff, fresh fish, ten trillion kinds of chocolate and cookies, a bakery, gelato...it's endless.

Drawbacks: We live across the street from a massive Italian grocery store that will make me fat and poor!

What a different life we live now. We see people. Almost everyday we talk to people.



We see shops and long tree-lined streets with sidewalks and everything.



Back where we were, sidewalks were often a privilege not a right, as in, maybe there would be one on one side of the street, maybe not.

We have a bathtub instead of just a shower so we can give L his baths which he loves.



We have cement floors that don't creak every time you blink and wake up the baby that you just spent one hour trying to get to sleep. We have a big sunny kitchen that is a pleasure to sit in and have a morning tea and bowl of cereal or a lunchtime sandwich or an evening bowl of rice and vegetables.

There are big trees outside of all of our windows and even the sound of traffic isn't that different from the sound of waves after a while.

L is growing up. He's trying to talk and sit up on his own and has succeeded in getting his foot in his mouth after a month of trying everyday! His dad makes him laugh, sometimes just at the mere sight of him, but often, because of his ability to dance and smile and talk like a crazy man. L likes the crazy a lot.

He is a mellow, happy dude who enjoys a good walk, a good nap, and a good foot in the mouth.



Everyone has been helpful like crazy already and we are glad we picked up stakes and braved the 7 levels of hell that is moving house. Now then, next time I move, I swear to jeebus that I will torch everything I own and start all over. But the next time I move better not be for quite a while...like, when I'm 60 maybe?

If you'd asked me 10 years ago, would I be moving back to my hometown ever, I'd have emphatically replied that such an occurrence would only be post-head injury or in the midst of feverish insanity. Well 10 years ago I was 26 and 26 years olds are stoopid. So whatever. Life right? It's a kooky kooky ride mama.

Who knows where we will end up and when, but right now, we are here and so it is.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, smell ya later.

Adapting to change is something I am not very good at historically. Laying in bed a few nights ago, I calculated that I've moved about 15 times in the past 16 years. Each time, I go through a wistful longing for what I must leave behind, always in an overly dramatic fashion.

Of all the places I've lived, I'd say this is the one I should feel the most
bittersweet regret about.

The past few evenings, after getting L to sleep, I'd lie on the couch as the sun sets and just quietly listen to the outside. Here is what I heard each time: A red wing blackbird with it's nest on our roof, chirping, a mother duck calling out to it's ducklings that nest near our wall by the river edge, waves of the river rolling over the currents, the occasional airplane passing high above and other than that...silence. That, my friends, is something I should be expecting to pine over, after I leave it behind.

However, instead of worrying if I've made a grave error in deciding to move, which is what I usually do, I just feel ready this time. Maybe, after 15 tries, I'm getting better at it. Maybe, I'm too sleep-deprived to care? Maybe, I'm just so looking forward to life being a little more convenient and having friends and family closer by for us and for L to grow up with and know these people, that all the sensitive sentimentality I usually feel, is just not getting any ice time.

So back to civilization, back to neighbours and the centre of town, back to Ontari-ari-o we go.

Bye-bye river, bye-bye quiet, bye-bye taking 12 buses and trains to get anywhere, bye-bye social isolation and bye-bye freezing our friggin asses off in the winter. Bye-bye to this little white shack on the water. 'Twas nice knowing you, you served me well, but smell ya later.

We have a new phone number, a new address and they roll delightfully off the tongue. I've purged a good deal of wordly possesions and plan on purging even more. Fresh start, fresh walls and all that hopefull jazz.

The Avett Brothers say: "When you run make sure you run to something and not away from..." True dat! Word.

I've been drinking the most awful smoothy while typing this. We're trying to use up what's left in the fridge. You're picturing a smoothy made from old apples and relish and hotdog buns? Well, it's not that bad. It has almond milk and thawed mangoes and peaches and strawberries...sounds ok so far, but then I added some hemp powder for protein and fibre. Hemp powder sort of congeals after it sits for a while and turns things brownish green and stays grainy like fine sand. Mmmm. Makes you want to go have a smoothy huh? I should have just ate some cold pizza like I was tempted to.

Anyway, one more day here. Tomorrow it's me and L on the train together for 6 hours, annoying the crap out of all the snooty snoots in first class (I splurged). Wish us luck.

Now I go dump this evil in a glass and get do-overs on breakfast.

Awkward Family Moments

I have not laughed so hard in so long. This site rules.

Probably could start a whole other blog on this topic...

Current songs obsessively running through head:





What are yours?

Holding hoofs on lakes of gold.

I think it's anxiety management; My brain obsessively repeats songs in my head over and over. For a month, it was Uptown Girl by Billy Joel and Mommy, Daddy You and I by Talking Heads.(Have I mentioned that already?) Lately, it's been this one from the first Pink Panther movie:



I have trouble falling asleep at night, so I've learned the art of extremely detailed fantasizing. I don't mean smutty stuff. I just mean escapism. I try to picture things in excruciating detail(temperature, wallpaper pattern, etc...)that seem relaxing. This week, it's been a ski chalet vacation a la the afforementioned original Pink Panther. The one with David Niven. I just love the whole ambiance of that movie.

They aren't very exciting fantasies, since they are meant to be relaxing I guess. Once, I imagined having a chat with Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson. We had dinner and I ordered a piece of cake for dessert. We talked about Texas and movies. They asked me if I wanted to continue the evening at an outdoor party with them, but I opted to go back to my hotel room early and have a bath and watch a movie and call it an early night. Yes, I am a boring introvert, even in my imagination.



Sometimes, I just picture weather. A cloudy sky or snow falling. Welcome, ladies and gentlemens, to the inner world of my mind. It's that uninteresting. Well what do you picture? Unicorns on lakes of gold, holding hoofs with striped elephants and chocolate covered leprechauns engaging in ultimate fighting championships? You do? That's pretty awesome actually. Good for you!

That sure as shit, would not get me to sleep at night though.

I remember the the 3 or 4th night, in the hospital, after Leon was born. We had been moved to a shared room with another couple. I was delirious from lack of sleep. Every time I would close my eyes, my brain would think of ridiculous scenarios and fevered plays on words that would crack me up. I would shut my eyes and start laughing and snorting and guffawing. Must have been annoying for the other woman.

My first tendency now, when I close my eyes, is to imagine all the possible horrors that await me as a mother. All the things I have to worry about possibly happening to the little Sasquatch. That's why I need to drown out those thoughts with very very detailed daydreams. It's called being crazy.

L is napping again at the moment. I shall go close my eyes, picture a particularly tasty bowl of ice cream and maybe a rainstorm and see if I can't get a new song in my head. Oh, that was another one that haunted me for a couple of weeks actually: New Song by Howard Jones. Probably started that exact way, by me saying: Gawd! I need a new song in my head! Not such a bad song to have combating catastrophic thinking...



Throw off your mental chains! Oooh, ooh ooh.

Will that ever come back in style I wonder? Dudes wearing big fuzzy sweaters with a belt and puffy pants rolled at the ankle? Actually, it's sort of still going strong with a certain genre of pan flute playing, "gypsy" type Quebec dudes. Swarthy ones with long curly hair who only wear sandals and have Guatemalan girl friends. These are dudes you just don't find in the rest of Canada...unless they are orginally from Quebec in the first place...

Ah crap! I missed the nap opportunity. L is up! Gotta go.

3 months, 1 week and 2 days.

Whew. I thought it was supposed to get easier around this time. HAAA HAAA HAAAA!

He gets cuter, that's for damn sure. Easier? Nuh-uh. I think I have less time now than I did at the start. I've been having troubles with breastfeeding and low supply. My goal is to inch, day by day, as close to the 6 month mark as possible. Every day, when I feed him and then pump to increase the supply and then give that to him to keep up with his demands and gear up for the next round, I think: Seriously? I keep doing this? The answer I usually come up with is: Yes. I keep doing this. At some point, it may just not be feasible any more, but I've reached, what I thought was the end of the line a few times and found a way to push through. We'll see. All I know is these days, I spend a poop of a lot of time thinking about, looking at or giving milk. Milk, milk, milk. I know the international sign for it too : squeeze your hand like you are milking a cow. Yep.

You know what though, it's only 6 months of my life. I have a bottle of Moet and Chandon that I will be cracking the heck open when that little bean gets his first piece of mushy carrot and mom's bazoombs start to ease off the frontlines. I was never much of a drinker, but I intend to chug-a-lug to mark the occasion of getting to the finish line of this breast feeding challenge.

I guess that's also about the time where I'll start dealing with the extra weight. Right now, I'm enjoying the steadfast hold my body is keeping on my post pregnancy weight no matter WHAT or how much I eat. (have you noticed how small easter cream eggs have become?) I've never been able to eat so freely in my life and not have my weight go up. It's sort of kick ass.

Leon is such a charming little buddha. His natural tendency is toward peaceful happiness. He's social and has a sparkling look in his eye of kindness and wisdom. Where is he getting it from?? Not me!

He is certain about his needs though. Hunger and tiredness can turn his humour on a dime. That, he does get from me. I'm actually choosing blogging over napping right now, which is dumb and I will regret it, but hey.

Often, Leon will look at me like he knows waaaay more than I do about everything and like he finds my naivety endearing and amusing. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?

He's a little champion and I can't wait for him to talk to hear what he's got to say.

I go now and catch tail end of nap opportunity before I get back on milk duty, not to be confused with rock and roll duty. Shout out to you Kim Mitchell.

Mercenary acts

Well, life certainly does not adhere to any rules you might want to apply. Yesterday, I gave away my cat. If you know me you know how much I loved my cat. I happen to think he was especially fantastical. However, he was also very jealous of the attention the new baby required. He would run and leap and meow and meow and MEOW all day, all night. He would stalk the baby's moving arms and legs, he would knock things from high places and he would wake the baby up CONSTANTLY!

Poor kitty. He was so spoiled by me and couldn't adjust to the change. A friend of T's offered to adopt him. So now he is with a family with 2 daughters in a house. It was heartbreaking for me. A really tough decision. I never, ever, ever thought I would give him away. In fact, while pregnant, I would lay awake sleepless for hours, worrying that the baby might be allergic to him and then what would we do? I even considered having to have a child on constant allergy pills or just vacuuming a lot rather than giving the cat away should that occur. That all changed drastically the second Leon was born. Poor kitty was no longer number 1 and never would have been again.

I hesitated to get a new cat after Hoovy, my old cat who passed on a few years ago after a long life. It took me years to get over that. Now, here I am, mourning another cat, even though he is still alive. The best I can hope is that he will be happy and well-loved in his new home. They are so lucky to get such a great cat.

And as for us, we can concentrate fully on our son without worrying about him being clawed by a cat or waken 10 times a day from his very precious and highly appreciated naps....however...still very sad.

Faut l'accepter, is what I am repeating to myself. Translation : gotta suck it up.
Makes me feel so mercenary. I keep having the inclination to call the new family and tell them all the little things they must do: litter once a day, no milk!!, likes little mice toys, rub his face like a mother cat cleaning her kittens, let him greet you in the morning by head butting you...I basically want to still take care of him. Guilt, you know. I cast him from his home. He has a new one, but maybe he won't like it.

And so on.

It's the whole grieving process all over again. No more pets. Never ever ever erver nerver. I can't even wrap this post up without it sounding like a friggin eulogy.

Sigh. Sorry Trilby.

Sasquatch, we know your legend's real.

L is accidentally watching his first hockey game. Pittsburgh VS Ottawa. We are the devil for allowing his precious brain to be sullied by the opiate of the masses. It just caught his eye and kept him happy for a bit, whereas seconds before, he had been wailing heart breakingly over a big poop he was trying to do.

We discovered a trick last night of turning on the radio, right next to his head. It helped him skip the pissy bit he usually does for a half hour before going back to sleep after each nursing session. The voices make him forget he's uncomfortable or overtired or enraged about the price of beer of whatever mysterious things make him grunt and turn his head back and forth and whimper and cry. Thank-you radio Netherlands! For boring our son to sleep! And thank you, inventor of earplugs, for allowing the BBC world service to play all night without keeping me up.

When we are lucky, he will sleep for 4 hours straight during the first sleep segment of the night. After that, it's touch and go from hour to hour. I woke up this morning pretty groggy to the sound of him straining to get out of his swaddling blanket. The sun was shining in the window and he was smiling like crazy when I got his arms free. He talked and cooed to himself and the Miro print on the wall (which he's had good conversations with since he was a newborn). I could have just plopped my earplugs back in and got another little bit of sleep, but it was hard to turn away from Mr. Bright Eyes and his wiggling feet and orchestra conductor arms.

L is teething, waaaay to early for my taste. He's also decided that crawling is beneath him and he'd prefer to just skip straight to walking. Nevermind that he can't even sit up yet or fully support his own head. He gets so mad if we don't hold him up so he can practice standing.

I set up a little play station for him to lay on his back and bat at toys but, he demanded that I hold him so he could walk around it instead. Little bean head! His head is like a perfect little navy bean...attached to sausage arms and meaty little hands and feet. Actually his feet are huge. Sasquatch is my other nickname for him. This means the song of the same name by Tenacious D is always in my head.



On that note, Sasquatch has decided that I've had enough free time.

Aw heck, one last video from the D since we're talking about awesomeness. I've got a real Jack Black thing lately it would seem....

Where does the wiener begin and the hand end?

Usually, I'm sleeping at this hour, while T takes Leon out of the bedroom to give me a bit of a rest after a night of nursing, nursing, nursing. But I've started having trouble getting back to sleep after the 5am feeding and then, by the time I do start to nod off, it's the 7am feeding. So this morning I just said: Tears in a bucket mutha fuckit, and got up.

I'm tired, but it gives me some time to eat blue and pink egg salad and have some hot tea for a change. T usually makes my tea while I'm nursing so by the time I can drink it, it's cold.

It's been a real trip so far. Recently, and quite suddenly, the wee monsieur has started to do all sorts of cool things like smile and laugh and flirt and discover his hands and feet. He tries to stand and sit up and walk. He holds toys, sort of and tries to fit both his fists in his mouth at once.

When I used to show him a story book he would gaze at the ceiling and "act" bored. Now he stares at the pages and giggles and tries to talk and pumps his chubby little legs up and down in excitement. The first time he did this, he was so excited by the drawing of the baby in the book, I thought his head was going to pop off his neck to release steam. He was ecstatically interested. These are all very, very rewarding events. People with children predicted that it would be so, around 3 months. Twas not a lie.

It's actually only been 2 and half months. Truthfully, it feels like 40 years in a way. I vaguely remember bits and pieces of the first couple of weeks. I remember eating whatever was placed in front of me without question (a lot of cookies and pizza on paper plates). I remember the strange, feeling that I was the same person as the baby. Like, when I closed my eyes, I felt like I was him. When I moved my arm, it felt like his arm. Lack of sleep the first few weeks does some very interesting things to the state of sanity.

I also remember being handed a tofu wiener in a bun and biting it and being freaked out because I couldn't tell where my hand ended and the wiener began...

It's so hard to remember taking care of L during those times. It was a blur of sleep and nursing. I guess that's why people say, eventually, you forget all the trouble and start thinking about having another one. Eventually, you can't remember the difficulty, even if you try real hard. You only see a charming, squirming, giggling chubby legged prince in front of you and think it's all good. This is why I have written myself a note saying: "Forget it lady, trust me, one is enough! Sincerely, your former self."

Another thing, and one that I don't have to write a note to remember, is to return the favours and pay back the karmic debt for all the people who offered help - Wildly appreciated help. Whether it was a card with some dollars to buy one of the millions of things you don't think you'll need but do, or whether it was coming over and bringing food or doing our dishes or playing with our pissed off cat or just calling and letting us lament or freak out or even bore you to death with the details of L's poo and burps...man, all soooo deeply appreciated.

I'm talking like it's all wrapped up and smooth sailing from here on in eh? Ha-hah, ha ha. Geez, I'm still in a daze most of the time. My hormones make me want to fight bears with my bare hands,(or just snap at my husband, in the absence of threatening bears) and, I'm pretty sure I will never have time to achieve anything that can't be done in a half hour chunk, ever again, for the rest of eternity...or at least till L starts school.

Pile on to that, the fact that we are moving 700km in less than 2 months. Wowzers. Will I be throwing stuff out so I don't have to move it? You friggin bet I will. I will be purging with no mercy; With extreme prejudice. (Have you ever noticed how every once in a while I will throw in a semi colon, sort of sheepishly. I haven't a clue how to use one properly. Sometimes, I feel I need punctuation that just isn't covered by the comma or period or colon, so I figure, heck, maybe this is one of those times to use a damn semi colon. I've read about the proper usage a million trillion times, but I don't think I've ever written a sentence that clearly fit in the demonstrated examples of semi colonoscopy. But I digress...) What was I saying? Oh yeah, throw stuff out. Lighten the load. Take a load off Annie, etc. Gonna chuck so much stuff and never look back (or ever reacquire it either).

My little chunk of time is closing in this morning. Since the weather has improved, we have been giddily taking stroller walks with L. The other day, T took L for a walk and I stayed at home to have some "me" time and I was so excited I didn't know where to begin: vacuum? dishes? pack? clean the bathroom? Oh the sweet sweet luxury of me time. Yeah, yeah I know. I should have eaten a chocolate bar, had a shower and then slept, but I'm stubborn that way. Anyway, a clean house is a greater reward than chocolate for me any day. That's another thing I remember, easily, because it's still happening: Utter chaos in the house. Entropy, I shake my fist at you second law of thermodynamics!

So I close this entry and prepare to do some dishes in the time I have left. Then a stroller walk in the early morning rain (sing it like Gordon!) and hopefully, a nap this afternoon. The days fly by when they are little chunks of time like this and yet, time stretches on endlessly when night is as day...a 24 hour, perpetual motion machine (although entropy forbids this) of nursing, sleeping, eating, smiling and hugging and singing Edelweiss and O Tannebaum (what can I say, they were the first songs I could think of to sing to L. It was right after Christmas and I had just watched Sound of Music when he was born!)

One small aside before I go: (I must admit that I have over used the full on colon in this entry. That's the real name for it by the way: Full on Colon. Ah! I just used it again!!!)Will I ever stop looking like a "for real" zombie? With the dark circles and sallow puffy skin and glazed over eyes? Entropy, you have claimed my body as well? You are an unforgiving law of thermodynamics!

Exit pig number one

I'm culling excellent children's video for Leon. I don't want him to learn about octagons any other way than through Jack Black



And, if he could only hear one version of the Three Little Pigs, let it be via Christopher Walken.

It really is like they say: So hard and so amazing at the same time.

Well, well, well. Look at me! Typing and everything. Yoga ball plus wrap carrier, equals hands-free precious minutes. It's like this y'all, wrap the baby up against you, sit on the ball and bounce. Sleepity sleep. Sleepity sleeping is what I should be doing also, but I'm so happy when the sun is out or even if it's cloudy, I'm just so happy that I am still functioning. Night time feels like the long dark time of the soul in comparison. At night, I always wish I'd slept more during the day, but if I follow the advice of "sleep when he sleeps", I would for real be doing nothing but feeding him and sleeping and as an adult human, I need just a tad bit more going on in a day than that. Else, I feel lost to the world...Like an isolated milk machine, floating in space with a baby, off in the farthest regions of the universe.

He is 31 days old now. Holy moly. Anyone who has talked to me has heard how hard it is. Sound complainy? You've probably not done it or forgot how it was, otherwise, you know what I mean.

I frequent a forum for new mothers at babycenter.com and we are all saying the same thing: Oh my god, I love my child but bloody hell!! SO HARD!! And all anyone can say that's past that point is: it will get better.

It has gotten a touch easier. The first 2 weeks are true tests of endurance both mentally and physically. Full, to the limit, grind your sorry ass into the ground tests of endurance.

Waaah, waah waah you say. Maybe. Let me say though, that after your body stops feeling like it will die from lack of sleep and shock and your breasts stop feeling like your baby has razors in his mouth and you stop wondering if you will lose your mind permanently...the body starts to settle in to the routine.

I wake every 2hours from shallow dreams of needing to feed Leon, so that I can go do it for real. It hurts less now and he looks at me and even smiles sometimes when he sees them coming. He shakes his head around and snorts in anticipation like a little pig rooting for truffles.

During the day, he wiggles his arms and legs and tries out all his facial expressions when he's not sleeping. The second he is hungry, WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH. As if he was never fed before, and never will be fed again. I guess he has no memory yet.

Piles of laundry and dust and paper plates are rounded up when we find a burst of energy. Food is of the instant variety only. I've never been less picky about food in my life. Is it edible? Great, put it in my mouth. Chew chew chew and done, moving on.

I no longer notice that my top is covered with breast milk stains, or that I'm wearing the same pajama bottoms 2 days in a row. Gross? You bet, but who cares. Eventually, I will run a brush through my hair again or maybe even glance in a mirror. Not yet.

All the things I wondered about before having a baby...Will it really be like that? Will my house be a mess? Will I find it hard to get a moment to brush my teeth? Yes, yes and yes.

At first, I needed to pivot on the thought that these difficulties would pass and he would get bigger and sleep longer and feed less. Now, I know that one set of problems probably just follows another. However, I think it's starting to sink in that having a child isn't about waiting for it to get easy. It doesn't. It's about getting used to a life of challenges and adaptation. About accepting that this is life now and y'all (by y'all I mean me) best get used to it real fast.

I like the idea of getting the hang of it though. It's for Leon. It's a much better reason than worrying about my princessy need to sleep 9 hours uninterrupted or read an entire book in one sitting or spend hours in the kitchen making food that will be eaten in 20 minutes.

After just coping and surviving each moment as it came for the first 2 weeks, I can start to breathe a little and appreciate what's happening in the moment instead of fearing and dreading it. It's still tough. On the body that is... the mind too. I fear depression setting in, simply from the taxing of my physical and mental reserves, but for now, I'm OK. So is Leon and that's what matters. We are OK.

Ramble, ramble. I'm still only getting 2 hours of sleep at a time and no more than 5 or 6 a day so forgive me if I seem retarded.

As an aside: The snow is falling in huge fluffy clumps outside, as if one big ass feather pillow is being emptied from above. The sky is the same grey/white colour as the ground. Might as well lay back on the couch, with Leon on my stomach, snoring his baby sleep snore and watch those flakes fall. Perhaps I'll close my eyes and do a little of my own snoring if I'm lucky.

Batshit mental (as in, I am feeling...)

Well bloody hell. I haven't managed to birth a human yet, but I have listed some greeting cards on my etsy site. It's about the same isn't it?

Go to my Frauwerks site to see. There's a link on the right side of my blog too.

This song has been in my head for 2 weeks now. It's my current theme song.



So I may end up in the hospital monday, getting induced because we can't wait around forever. Sucks, but a gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do.

Inhale...regroup. (strong language to follow)

So, here I am at 41 weeks. It's been an intense week of freaking out. Only today have I been able to rise to the surface long enough to start questioning where all this stress is coming from.

Two words: The medical community. Is that technically 3 words? I let them get to me either way.

I've had a really trouble-free pregnancy and here I am, toward the end, suddenly doubting my ability to have the sort of natural, normal birth I had been planning for. Why? Because by law, the midwives need to consult with the hospital at 41 weeks to make sure everything is "ok" and by 42 weeks? Oh my, all hell will break loose apparently. They will be forced to transfer my file over to the hospital, even if me and Leon are still doing fine. Never mind that a huge amount of first time mothers deliver after the 41st week. Never mind that the calculation of a birth date is a very approximate science and that although 30% of babies are born between the 39-40th week, 20% are born between weeks 37-39 and 40-42. That's a pretty high percentage for doctors to be butting in and telling you to start worrying. Why do they do this?

Even yours truly, a steadfast advocate of non-medicated, natural birth as a first option to all women, was tricked into panicking by this establishment attitude toward pregnancy as a crazy, drooling ape of a thing that must be harnessed, IV'ed and scheduled.

I've hit despair this week, by feeling that as I approached this magic brick wall time, devised by doctors, my visions of the sort of birth I could own and trust my own body with, was disintegrating before my eyes. I would be roped in and stalled up and monitored and robbed of my right to let my body and my son decide when the right time was.

Fuck that.

Seriously, it's only today, after an initial, extended, week long response of abject horror at the thought of my trust in the birth process being ripped out from under my feet by medical bureaucracy, that I snapped to my senses and said to myself: FUCK THAT!

Here is what occurred to me to get this new ball rolling. I realized that I would feel less conflicted if, for example, I started going into labour at the birthing house, with the midwife, but something went wrong, and I had to go to the hospital. That would be nature deciding that intervention was required. That I can accept. Things happen. Things can go wrong.

What I can NOT accept, is someone saying to me, well, it's the magic time that you should force this baby to come out because we say that it's taking too long. These are the same people who told me on my first ultrasound that my baby was a week older than we had calculated with the midwife because of a chart of averages of baby size and weeks. Forget that meant that I somehow got pregnant and then got my period after, according to their calculation.

I'm just saying. Doctors are not all knowing and err on the side of caution, even when that caution makes no sense and may even cause the patient more harm than help. They err on the side of caution to cover their own asses.

Now that's my rant on doctors. Yes, an inherent distrust of the medical community flavours the tea of my opinion on the topic. Will I be grateful if something goes wrong and they are able to intervene and help? Sure. There are some things doctors can be good at. Pathology. OB gyns are first and foremost surgeons, so if you need a c-section, heck, they are a good bet. If you just want to deliver you healthy baby in your own damn time without pressure, are they the best bet? No, not really.

I guess I'm blogging all this because this week, the thought of losing my belief in my right to a natural birth was a truly devastating, crushing, depressing thing. People say that what counts is bringing home a healthy baby. That sure is important. So is bringing home a healthy mom.

I know lots of women go to the hospital and are just fine with it. Lots of women even prefer having a doctor in charge and placing their trust in them. It would make these women feel more secure than taking it on themselves. I don't have any judgment on that. They would probably be scared and scarred even by being forced to go through a natural birth without the sense of security that a hospital and nurses and machines that go ping provide.

There's probably a whole big set of women that go to the hospital because it's just fine to them. No big deal. Feels natural. And that's great too.

But I'm neither of those. I haven't been able to, thus far, articulate how important it is to me to have birth that I feel connected to, that I own, that I experience fully and that I do as a team with my body and my son. It's like climbing Everest: The climb is important to the people going up, otherwise, they'd just take a helicopter.

What can I say? I'm intense about it, that's for sure. Ultimately, yes, I want a healthy child and I will do whatever it takes. I just know, that my own mental health and sense of self is deeply tied to this process. It's a big thing.

So where does that leave me now? Regrouped.

I'm brushing off the paranoia of schedules and dates. I'm brushing off the false impression that 41 weeks is late. I'm brushing off the bullshit idea that I don't have say in how this goes. Most importantly, I'm remembering that birth is a natural process that can be trusted. I can trust my body, I can trust my son's body and fuck anyone who tries to shake that out of me.

Ideally, I'll have the birth I'm hoping for. If I don't, it will be because something has gone wrong that I could not help. It won't be because I hand over my power and will. The first I can live with. The second, I can not.

So Leon, I inhale, I relax and I wait for you. I haven't feared the contractions I've had so far in preparation. I welcome them and look forward to labour starting. When you are ready, although I do hope it's soon, (I'm tired of having cocktail wieners for fingers), you and I will do this thing!

That's where it's at kitty cat.

STILL pregnant, and how!

No, I haven't given birth yet. Please everyone stop asking, I'll let you know as soon as it happens. It's just that it's getting really stressful for me right now as time ticks away. I had my heart set on a natural birth experience with the midwife. I've got 10 more days to accomplish that or else the hospital has to take over. Nothing is wrong at the moment, he's in the right position, good heartbeat etc etc...we're just waiting for labour to start. Each day I feel more pressure of losing time. I assure you that everyone will know promptly when we have news to give. Thanks very much for your concern and caring about the matter. I appreciate your excitement. Right now, I just need to stop feeling pressure about it.

2010. Year of the future...until next year.

So I realized I haven't really summed up 2009. There's a blog I read, Que Sera Sera, and the woman who writes it met a boyfriend a while ago and is now engaged. Since she met him, I've been finding the blog less interesting. She's very happy, but it doesn't always make for good reading. How unfair of me though, isn't it? My blog was much more interesting when I was slogging away in a bank, so bored and unhappy, that I was forced to observe the life going on around me and document it as an escape. Now? Pregnancy, pregnancy, pregnancy, blah, blah, blah right?

From a personal perspective, getting wrapped up in your own life is usually a good sign. Getting wrapped up in the person you love or your child...your life as a family; It's why couples with children are so intolerable often times, to people without. There's a closing in of your world. I don't think it has to mean you become a simpering idiot with nothing left in life to think about except your child's poop or your husband's favourite sandwich. I do think it makes you look around less to find external meaning or entertainment though.

When all I did was work, I had to scour through every tiny event to propel me from moment to moment. Noticing all the details, got me through the day and telling you about it made these bits of life seem more funny or more interesting than they probably were.

Documenting something while it's happening has always made the present more...well, present for me. The more photos I take during a trip, the more I remember and experience it. The act of framing and contextualizing life makes it feel more vivid and memorable. That's what this blog is for. I'd love to be altruistic and think only of the audience and ensure my posts were well-crafted and memorable each time...however, mostly, I'm just telling you how I feel, for real.

Pregnancy has been an overwhelmingly present thing for me the past 9 months. Waiting at the end of it like this is a complex mix of impatience, excitement, fear and a great deal of the ineffable.

Behind it though, still remains my individual self. Most would agree that one of the great challenges of parenting is embracing the all encompassing love and concern and focus you have on your children while retaining your sense of self and your relationship with your partner, family and friends. Your former self is a wire from the past, stretching through the present, holding you to yourself. Sometimes, people stretch it too far or maybe find it a nuisance and cut it. I won't presume to judge one way or the other. People do this even without families or children. We all know someone who has changed in way that is so distanced from how you knew them, that they might as well be a different person all together.

In a way, that even sounds appealing. There are parts of me that I would love to rise above and leave behind in the ashes. Parts that maybe some of the people I know, would find to be the main reason they relate to me.

Other parts, I'm sure, will tenaciously endure. I hope those are the parts that allow you and I to continue to relate, despite changes in circumstance between either of us.

Right now, the stretch of the near future seems like such unknown territory. It's hard to envision myself (as I currently know myself) in this future. Perhaps it will come and be as mysterious as it seems. On the other hand, maybe it will come and seem as natural as today or yesterday.

I really haven't a clue. I do intend to continue documenting it and cloistered as it may seem, I hope you continue enjoying reading about it and sharing it with me.

So 2009? Not a whole lot to list. Marriage and pregnancy. Two really big things that filled the year up like an infinitely, inflating balloon. That's an accurate description of how I physically feel right now too. Even trying to think of other things, that may have occurred this year, makes my brain jump around erratically like I'm asking it to find a pin I dropped in the grass when all my brain wants to do is go running across the field, into the horizon to see what's up ahead.

So good-bye 2009. You were eventful and flew by as much as crawled past at times. Certainly, your legacy moves me forward into 2010. Which, by the way, sounds like the most ridiculously made-up year ever. 2010? It's a joke year of science fiction movies. Are we really there? I guess we are. For at least another year, anyway. So let's see what happens. Let's see how it all turns out.

Thanks to Que Sera Sera, though, I discovered this blog today which is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. Check this out here. (myparentswereawesome.tumblr.com)

38 Weeks, 5 days...

Well Happy New Year then people.

I realized I haven't really given the full-on, straight up, no effing around view of my state. I included a skin version also because I find it doesn't really register until I see myself without a shirt on and then I say: Holy mother crapper! With clothes on, it's easy to sort of abstract the bump and just think it's a pillow.



I'm starting to feel the contractions and discomfort that are preparing me for the zero hour. So far: Bearable. So long as you relax and can move around and get in the right position. Although to say I was feeling a little grumpy might be a severe understatement. T pointed out that most of my sentances today contain a high ratio of swear words.

On a completely other topic, (thank christ, monsterteeth! You are getting hell boring!) a few people now, have mentioned not being able to leave a comment without having a blogger ID. Just to let y'all know, you can. Just select anonymous instead of any of the other options. Comments are good! They let me know you are out there.

I also wanted to renew the offer that if you would like to be updated by email, each time I post, let me know, and I can add you. That way, you don't have to check to see if it's updated. My new posts will be sent to you as soon as I publish.

Conversely, if you are on that list already and want to be removed, don't be shy to say so. Ye are not beholden to me, I do declare!

Finally, more proof that I have the cutest kitty cat in the universe.

Now excuse me, while I go hang off of the exercise ball to relieve the pressure of a human being trying to make his way very slowly through my pelvis.