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Clive has to go away on business for two weeks in May (then home for a week and then gone for another week). This is his third trip in the seven months he’s worked at this job (first to Toronto and then to Montreal), and this time he’s being sent to Augusta, Georgia. Instead of him missing out on two weeks of Ash’s life and making me a single mama for all that time, we cashed in all of Clive’s Visa Advantage points and paid $400 (flights there are EXPENSIVE DUDE) and Ash and I will be joining him on his all-expense-paid trip. He has a $60/day food allowance, rental car, free hotel room etc etc, so how could we pass that up?

It’s been far too long since Clive and I travelled anywhere. Sadly, we have to be on separate flights there and back (since his company paid for his and we’re paying for mine) and I’ll be taking Ash, of course. I’ve never travelled with an infant before, and to be honest, I’m not really looking forward to it. There are three planes each way and two stopovers. I’ve never, ever minded stopovers before but I’m kind of dreading having to entertain an eight month old who really only falls asleep well in his own bed.

But it’s warm there. Really, really warm, and I can’t wait for the heat. We plan on taking a weekend trip to Savannah and visiting the ocean. I hope our hotel has a pool. I wish I knew some mamas in GA to spend time with us. Does anyone want to meet me there and hang out with us while Clive’s at work? Pretty please?

I have recently volunteered to develop a website for an upcoming event called “Mudder’s Day”* being held here in Halifax. I attended a spoonholder’s meeting last week (thanks to Ambera for babysitting!) and when I told them that I’d like to set up a table to sell baby slings I felt immediately guilty because I was literally the only one there that wanted to make a profit. Everyone else (Katimavik, Food Not Bombs, Girl Guides, Native Friendship Centre etc) attended the meeting just to publicize their organizations and give away things or volunteer or do wonderful things for Mother Earth and the people of Halifax. I went there hoping to make a few bucks. So, when I realized they didn’t have a website, I offered my services. I was met with applause. LOTS OF APPLAUSE from probably 30 people in the room. Oh god, my face, bright red.

Immediately after I introduced myself and babbled about Attachment Parenting (and even uttered the words “poop and pee” to a roomful of non-parents and older parents, oh dear) and sling making, and was applauded for my HTML skills I told them I had to leave because it was 8pm and I’m my son’s only food source and guess what? They applauded again- and kept applauding until I left the room.

I love hippies. But they make me uncomfortable. One woman even introduced herself as someone who speaks to plants and they speak to her. Yikes.

Anyway, so I’ve been in contact with the main organizer of the event and she’s a super cute redhead who wears pants and a skirt at the same time and carries it off, and she has signed off on her emails like this (this is all just from today!):

Lots of Love, and we will talk soon!
warmly,
in solidirtity,
jayme

i will keep you in the loop for meeting times, keeping in mind your sunday freedom and monday needs.
thanks again,
big hugs,
resistance is fertile!
thanks Gillian,
jayme

can you feel my love and respect floating over to you?
i hope it the sparkles of it dapples your baby too.

ps. great full name you have!

fellow blusher,
j

still sending that love,
j

I want to be her friend.

*May 11 of this year we will celebrate not only mothers, but the original mother earth, kids, food, healers, local plants, the Common, music, and traditional cultural heritages with a full-out festival. In a few short weeks Mudder’s Day: a celebration honoring local plants, earth, and mothers will be taking over the commons.

This fun community event will be a launch into the growing season. It will be an opportunity to encourage civil participation and strengthen relationships among volunteers, non-profit groups, and the general public. It will be a space to open dialog regarding urban agriculture, community gardens, planning, community design, and to raise awareness of the existence of Freshwater Brook beneath the Common.

The festival will include:

- workshops on gardening and composting
- tables where local farmers, gardeners and community members can share
information, seeds, food, plants, etc.
- Public art installations
- A red tent hosted by the Midwifery Association
- three handmade 16′ yurts made of Nova Scotian coppiced red maple and white canvass, from Little Foot Yurts. The yurts will house workshops, music, film screenings, etc
- games for children
- live music and dancing

The event will be FREE and open to everyone and all ages.

The possibilities for participating are endless. You and your organization are invited to attend the event. However if you would like to run a workshop, have a table, sell merchandise or food, or sponsor the event in kind or in cash, please let us know in what capacity you would like to be involved.

So, come on -let’s play! Let’s show Halifax (including ourselves) that there are so many people doing great work, that the paradigm shift is happening, and that ‘alternative culture’/ social & environmental justice/ loving the land/ etc is fun, delicious, colorful and hilarious.

Photos from the past couple of days, including my birthday:

I look like I’m giving myself birthday spankings when I was actually not.

Well, it’s my 28th birthday. I’m not thrilled about turning this age, but at least we have a good day planned. Clive woke up with Ash for an hour at 5am and another hour at 7:30am so that I could have a (mostly) uninterrupted sleep. I usually take the 5 or 6am shift, so it was wonderful not having to wake up that early. When I got up I noticed a sheet of paper on the floor; it ended up being a treasure hunt to my present. First clue was in the glove compartment of the car, then the storage room, under the kitchen sink, the baby’s closet and then I found a brand new sewing machine in our closet. Yay! I’ve been using my beloved 20 year old Singer machine for years. I have always been hesitant to use new machines, but I’ve already started sewing a sling and it’s glorious and so much more quiet!

In a couple of hours we’re going to Ash’s first “swimming lesson” (the only thing that could make it better was if I could go down the water slides), then I have an hour-long massage. We’re going out for Indian food around 5pm and then back home for ice cream cake with my sister and her boyfriend.

This is my first birthday since Ash was born (obviously) and since becoming a mom my perception of Birth Days has changed dramatically. Now the reality of my own mother going through 44 hours of labour, having a record-breaking episiotomy (for that hospital) and pushing me out means so much more than it did before. I feel like she should be celebrated, not me. I see her tomorrow, and she will bring me carrot cake!

Dear Ash,

You’re seven months old today! You are one busy, busy little man. Non-stop moving, and I know this is just the beginning. You’re still not crawling regularly, just a few steps here and there, but that army crawl of yours gets you from one side of the room to another or one room to another fast enough. The other day I was cooking something, looked down at you at my feet and noticed you were occupying yourself with something, so I bent down and what did you have in your hand? A soggy piece of popcorn that’d gotten away from the night before. You were munching on it! You’re not supposed to have popcorn yet, you’ve only just started eating real foods!

Yes, you’ve officially started eating real foods and although I’m excited for you, it also breaks my heart a little because it means you’re getting older. You started with a taste of banana one afternoon while I was eating one, and you loved it. Then you tried a little bit of avocado, but I noticed your cheeks got rosy after having it. We tried it again the next day and they got rosy again, so I’ve decided to hold off on the avocado until you’re at least nine months old. It’s a shame because I really wanted that to be your main food. I was going to avoid “cereals” but then I found some whole grain barley and brown rice cereals and before I knew it I’d bought them both and they turned out to be your favorite thing to eat. I mix them with breast milk, so I’m sure that has something to do with it.

I decided a long time ago that you were going to be an organic vegetarian, so you’ve also had organic butternut squash and carrots, both of which you like. Your grandmother bought you a bottle of organic apple puree and you did not like that at all. I gave you a couple of pieces of organic pear, and you wouldn’t even swallow it. Banana is by far your favorite fruit or vegetable and you love to eat it from your mesh feeder. You make this “nom nom nom” noise for the entire time you’re snacking away. It’s adorable.

I took a picture of your first “solid” poop (which wasn’t very solid). I’ll show you it when you’re older and will not subject it to the people of the internet.

You’ve found another love: cats. We catsit a cat named Rufus for a weekend this month and you would chase him around and grab at his fur and squeel and do this heavy panting thing when you got really excited about seeing him. It made us want to adopt a cat of our own. We’re still talking about it; we’d get an older cat that’s good with children rather than a kitten (even though they’re so much cuter) because I don’t have the energy to devote to a needy kitten. I hardly have the energy for you! Until we get a cat, I’ve been pointing out cats in the street and in books to you, and you get excited. A big smile comes across your face whenever you see one.

You were babbling “mamamamaaamaaa” at the beginning of the month and then as quickly as you started you stopped. You didn’t start talking again until a few days ago, when the “mamaamaaa” (and now “baabababaaa”) started again, out of nowhere. With those noises came very spitty raspberries, often splattering my face. You stick your tongue out and blow, which is a new method because before you’d just try to blow raspberries but you wouldn’t stick your tongue out so it’d just be a lot of forceful air and not much noise. I’m not sure which method I prefer, because although I’m happy that you figured out how to do it properly, it’s a lot more messy now.

You’ve been sleeping better than every lately, and a few nights this month you’ve slept from about 11 or 12 until 5am. You’ve pushed your nap schedule from every 1.5 hours on the dot to every 2 hours (and even less frequently in the late afternoon). Part of me is happy because now it’s much easier to do things with our days, and part of me misses the frequency of the breaks I get. There was one day this month when you didn’t want to nap for over three hours and I was ready to run out of the house screaming because you were exhausted and SO WHINY, but would not sleep. I sent an email to your father saying:

“HE WILL NOT NAP.

I WILL NOT BE HERE WHEN YOU GET HOME. I WILL BE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HALIFAX HARBOUR.”

And I meant it. (Okay, I didn’t mean it, but I did feel that dramatic.) But then you napped and everything got better. It was a close one. A few of your naps have even crossed over the 45 minute mark (rare until recently) and sometimes last an hour. Right now you’re snoozing away to the sound of “Mother’s Heartbeat” from the white noise maker and have been for an hour and a half!

You’ve completely mastered sitting up, going from laying on your back or front to sitting up, going from sitting to laying and going from sitting to crawling. Good boy!

Your mobility has allowed you to learn about your surroundings. Part of me wants to get a playpen so that when I’m cooking or something and my attention isn’t fully on you I don’t have to worry about you going around and say, putting popcorn in your mouth, but the other part of me wants to let you move around and explore. You will not stop being interested in the radiators, and are constantly crawling under my desk to try to put your fingers on it. In the past couple of days you found the door stoppers and you love grabbing it and hearing the boiiiii-iiing noise. We went grocery shopping the other day and I picked up some cilantro and I spent the rest of the time in the store trying to get it away from your grabbing hands. Then when we got home, I gave you a stem with a couple of leafs to explore and I could almost see the connections being made in your brain. You were enthralled with it. You’d never seen anything like it and your LEARNING was so… apparent! It was wonderful to witness.

A couple of days ago you came down with your third or fourth cold. I’m wondering where you keep getting them from? This one likely came from the communal toys from the program we’ve started attending called “Baby’s First Books.” But anyway, it resulted in your first nursing strike. The first night you’d gag when trying to latch on, the second day you only nursed a couple of times (whereas usually it’s once every 2-2.5 hours) and that night you didn’t nurse at all. Not once. It killed me. I was sleeping in a soaking wet shirt, soaked sheets, and you had to sleep propped up on a hard pillow so that you could breathe. Luckily it didn’t last longer than about 36 hours, but I was really worried about you not wanting to eat.

Your ability to learn astounds me. You now know what “stand up please” means, and you will listen when we say “no” or “eh eh eh eh eh ehhhhh” (as another way of saying “no”). You know the sign and word for “eat” and by god, that’s the fastest thing you’ve ever learned- probably learned it the first time you saw the sign for “eat.” You are so smart.

This morning when you woke up and I took you to the potty I had to hold back the tears because this love, god, this LOVE, it is overwhelming.

Love,
Mama

I posted this exactly one month ago, but it was at the end of my very long newsletter, and not many people commented on it, so I imagine that it may have gotten overlooked. Ash turns seven months old today, so the next installment of his newsletter will come tonight, but I wanted to share this again, just in case you did miss it.

The Birth of Ash Mathias from Gillian Hyde on Vimeo.

I went to school in 2001 with a loan that paid the tuition to a shitty private collage and my living expenses for that year. The education was some of the worst I’ve ever experienced, but it did take me to Africa, it did allow me to work in the Caribbean and I’m still taking on web development projects today.

And now I don’t owe anything. I hate to think of how much interest I paid in total, but at least I don’t have to worry about anything coming out of my bank account every month anymore. Huzzah!!!!!!!

I went to school in 2001 with a loan that paid the tuition to a shitty private college and my living expenses for that year. The education was some of the worst I’ve ever experienced, but it did take me to Africa, it did allow me to work in the Caribbean and I’m still taking on web development projects today.

And now I don’t owe anything. I hate to think of how much interest I paid in total, but at least I don’t have to worry about anything coming out of my bank account every month anymore. Huzzah!!!!!!!

Ash barfed on Clive’s face this morning. I laughed my ASS off. And then ran to get the camera.

Oh man, I miss heat. Today was like +10 so Ash and I were able to just wear our hoodies and not be cold. But it’s not good enough! I want sun and surf and warm ocean water! Clive’s going to GA from May 11-24 on business and we’re going to try to go with him because I don’t want to spend two weeks alone and I don’t want him to have to miss two weeks out of Ash’s life. Tickets to Georgia are stupidly expensive though. We’re hoping that we can use Clive’s Visa Advantage points to get me the flight down there. His company has a crazy daily food allowance that’ll easily cover both of us, so it can basically be a free trip.

Last night Ash slept from 12am-5am without a nursing break. Part of me thinks I actually sleep better when it’s chopped up because I woke up super dizzy that didn’t go away for a couple of hours. I’m so used to having a choppy sleep that I don’t even care. Some moms read book after book after book about how to get their kids to sleep through the night (and some resort to terrible tactics like letting their children cry and cry and cry until they pass out exhausted), but I just accept it and figure that he’ll grow out of it some day. I feel really lucky that we get to sleep in until about 10:30 or 11am every day. One day this week we didn’t get out of bed until 11:35!

Here’s a “video” (more of a sound clip) of what Ash sounds like when he’s supposed to be sleeping. The first part is last evening when he woke up and needed to be nursed back to sleep (happens every night about 4-8 times), and the second part was this afternoon when he was concentrating on talking and not sleeping. And then he burped and I died from the cute.