typealice

There’s little I hate more than apartment hunting. Job hunting trumps it, but not by much.

We moved into our current place in December, and thought it was going to be long term. We signed an eight-month lease, bringing us up to August 1. This winter was FREEZING. We’re in a 105 year old house with really, really old windows that even with plastic on them still are so drafty that we quickly realized that wearing sweaters and slippers would keep us warmer than upping the thermostat. We were spending $250/month in electric heat and our thermostat was at 15 degrees for the entire winter and early spring. Top that up with nicotine-oozing walls and no parking spot (with a street-parking ban on all winter), this place was quickly realized as NOT A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE. I can’t wait to get out of here.

Every day I scour craigslist and kijiji hoping to find somewhere suitable. I plan to flyer the neighbourhood that I want to live in. We’ve looked at one place so far, far out of our price range, and have two more places lined up for tomorrow. I work in one part of the city, Ash goes to day care in another part of the city (I walk him there in the mornings and then walk back to work) and Clive works in another part of the city, over a toll bridge, so we have to find some kind of happy medium as far as location. Not to mention I want an affordable apartment with hardwood floors, lots of storage, a backyard, two or three bedrooms, washer and dryer or hookups with good windows and cheap utilities.

It is never, ever fun. We’ve got six weeks left in this apartment regardless. It’s slightly stressful. Then a big move, with hopefully a better transition for Ash than last time, who spent three weeks straight crying. And now that I’m working full time, I won’t be there to hug and nurse him as much as I did last time. It was seriously brutal.

He basically looked like this every single day. And for those of you who’ve met my kid, you know he NEVER cries.

***

It’s interesting to see how much energy children require- I thought that going back to work and being on my feet and talking to the public would be far more exhausting than lazing around the house with Ash, but on the days where I have him all to myself, I almost always pass out as I nurse him to sleep. The other day I put him down just after 7pm, and it wasn’t until 7:41 that I woke up without even realizing I was even tired enough to fall asleep let alone sleep for forty minutes, Ash wasn’t even latched on anymore- something that rarely goes unnoticed. On my workdays I can come home and if there’s not a lot of housework to do in the evenings, I can easily put in a couple more hours of sewing or web updates or whatever… but then suddenly it’s after 10pm and I still need to at least cut fabric for two pouches that have been custom ordered- like tonight- and I don’t even know where the time went.

Working moms have an interesting lifestyle. I really actually like my life a lot now, now that I’ve found that balance. Tomorrow is my first Wednesday with Ash since last week I had it off but was feverish and puking so he went to daycare anyway. Can’t wait.

Dear Ash,

You’re 21 months old today and I love you and YOU LOVE ME. Do you know how I know that? It’s because you told me so! Music to my ears, kiddo, it was pretty much the best thing I’ve heard since your first giggle. You were riding on your tricycle around the house and you stopped in front of the kitchen door and said, “love you!” Oh my. It was magic.

Let’s get the yucky stuff out of the way, shall we? You started day care this month, a brand new day care that only has a few children and therefore quite a lot of attention from your teacher, Christina. First, I’ll say that you really seem to like it there. Now, I know I’m not there all day long with you, but you’re never sad when I leave you (outside of the one morning when I sat and nursed you causing you to be a little more clingy than usual), and when I ask you if you want to go to school you say an enthusiastic “yes!” Christina is nice and gentle and you guys do things like play with trucks and cars, go outside for walks in the stroller, paint and have circle time and do crafts.

Saying that, I miss you incredibly and have been having a hard time not seeing you. You’re still so young, and even though people have been encouraging me and telling me it’s okay for both of us to be apart for so many days of the week, I really feel as though I’m going against all of my instincts to have you there as often as you are. This is especially hard for me because I have parented you so fully on instinct- more than any advice I’ve been given or books I’ve read- it’s all been sensing what you need and giving it to you in the best of my ability. Having you in an atmosphere of a day care this much screams to me that I’m making the wrong decision- that this is not how it’s meant to be, regardless of your apparent happiness at being there and playing with friends. I’m your parent, I’m the most important person in your life, and we need to spend as much time together as possible while you’re still this young. I’ll worry about you spending more time away from me when you’re 10, 20, 30, but right now you’re not even two years old.
Here is our family on your first day of day care:

And here’s you, with your bag full of extra clothes and diapers:

After this month at day care, and doing our budget, I spoke with your father and my boss at work and we came to an agreement that I can stay home an extra day with you (Wednesdays), and that makes me feel so much better. It literally feels like 100lbs has been lifted off of me. So your weeks look like this:

Sunday: Family day with mom and dad
Monday: Mom and Ash day
Tuesday: Day care
Wednesday: Mom and Ash day
Thursday: Day care
Friday: Day care
Saturday: Dad and Ash day

I hope it’s a good balance for everyone. I especially love the fact that you get to spend a full day with your dad, because up until this point it’s pretty much only been an hour or two each morning and dinnertime with him. He started working a second job when you were just three months old, so you haven’t been able to spend a great amount of quality time with him. He’s been taking you fishing every day, where you get to play with a rod and reel and once you get bored with that, you like throwing rocks into the water.

Your dad picks you up from day care at 6pm and when you come into the house you run to greet me, and your first words are always, “milk? Milk?” which is nice for both of us- we get to cuddle and I ask you questions and you always nod and say a very muffled “mmmhmm.” I love that you want that intimate time between us as soon as you see me. We’re reconnecting after many hours of being apart.

I watch you whenever I have a spare moment at work, as your day care has a webcam into your room, and I can see you sleeping on the cot or eating your snacks.

Speaking of sleeping. Ash, there’s not a lot that I feel guilty about as far as being a mother- I don’t feel that I’ve made many mistakes as far as the choices I’ve made regarding bringing you up this far. Except for this: I’ve swaddled you pretty much since you were born. It’s normal for younger babies, fresh out of the womb, to be swaddled because it gives them comfort and calms them down. You never grew out of that desire to be tightly wrapped up, so I never pushed you otherwise. That’s not saying that we haven’t tried; on many, many occasions I’d try to put you down without swaddling you (we used a piece of jersey fabric, reinforced with a bandana for the past year or so, since receiving blankets no longer fit around you), but your arms wouldn’t stop moving- you would lay there and nurse and nurse and flail and flail and you just couldn’t calm down. As soon as I wrapped you up (just your arms, not your legs), you’d be out- often without even needing to nurse again! So I went with it, even though I knew it wasn’t normal practice, even though it was embarrassing to admit or to let others see. I had your babysitters swaddle you for your naps before day care started. I never told your day care about the swaddling, because I didn’t want this to continue any longer. For the first week, the teacher had to walk you around and hold you until you fell asleep, I watched her on the webcam struggling with your 26-27 pounds and your flails, but eventually you’d pass out and she’d put you down on your cot and that’d be it.

It only took a week, Ash- and you were done with needing to be walked around to fall asleep and you were DONE with needing to be swaddled for naps and bedtime with us. PHEW!!!!!! We haven’t looked back, and I’ve even put away your swaddle blanket for safe keeping.

At the end of last month you could easily count to two, and at the end of this month you can count to eight perfectly… when you get to eight, you go back down to seven for some reason, but at least all of your numbers are there and in the right order- there’s no “1-2-5-6-4” here. I didn’t even know you COULD count until one morning when you said “one two” and then I said “two” and then you said “three” and then I repeated that number and then we followed that pattern until you reached “eight” and I hadn’t even ever heard you SAY the number eight before, but there it was- clear as day- right after seven. Your brains, kid, they never cease to amaze me. You pick up on things so amazingly fast.

You are learning new songs at school, you will say the missing words or letters that I leave out of the alphabet or books or songs when I say them to you. You’ve started saying “mmhmm!” and “okay” and you’re practicing with the way real sentences sound. You have a LOT of words, but your sentences are still fairly restricted to four or sometimes five words at once, so you’ll put a bunch of mumbled sounds before the real words so it resembles a full sentence but isn’t actually one. It’s pretty cute.

You’re still sleeping with us, and I have to admit that nursing and co-sleeping this long tend to be frowned upon by some people, but they’re two of my favorite things about being a parent. I find them especially important now that I’m working and I don’t see you as often. This is the first month that I’ve felt some pressure from people to get you off the boob (I know you’re cringing as an adult reading about BREASTFEEDING, OH MY GOD), but you’re not ready yet and neither am I. My goal has always been at least two years, and that’s still three months away. Anything more than that I’ll be happy with, but you’re not showing any signs of wanting to stop. Sleeping beside you, especially with your strong demands to “CUDDLE!” (as you say) is just wonderful. I know there will be some day that you will want to sleep in your own bed, in your own room, and I’m totally okay with that, but I will definitely miss you and so I cherish each night that you choose to stay beside me.

Night nursing has always been once every two hours, which a lot of moms raise their eyebrows at when I tell them while I’m working, but it’s never bothered me that much, and now that day care tires you out more than I was able to when I was home, there are some nights when you only wake once or twice! We are both getting a lot more uninterrupted sleep now, and I really appreciate that. So thanks.

On Mondays we go to the playground with friends of ours. You love going up the stairs and down the slides. This most recent Monday we met up with our friends Jessica (mom) and Frances (baby) and played for a while.

You found some buttercups and I asked if you wanted to give one to Frances. As we sat there in that grass I taught you about buttercups- that if you hold them up under someone’s chin, they shine yellow- which is supposed to mean that they like butter- the same way my mother taught me. It was an extremely special moment for me.

There’s nothing I wish for more than to be able to teach you EVERYTHING myself, every single day, but I’m happy that you’re thriving without me there all the time anyway. It does strike me as a bit odd when you come home singing a new song that I haven’t taught you, but I’m happy you’re learning that song however. For now, we have buttercups together, even if you don’t remember that sunny June day where you first heard their tall tale.

I know I say it every month, but you mean more to me than anything else in my entire life. Every day is the most amazing day until I go to sleep the next day and realize that THAT was the best day. You keep thing interesting and so full of love I sometimes can’t even believe it myself.

I love you so much.

Love,
Mama

I’ve been very upfront and frank with my boss about missing my child and how little this job actually brings in after Clive’s lost wages from not being able to work as often now that he’s responsible for Ash every Saturday and on Thursday evenings, and so she knew that I was having a hard time working as many hours as I am. Also, I’ve made it clear that I have another blog on which I speak about this kind of thing a lot, and because I am so google-able, I’m sure she also reads this site, so, hi, April!.

Now, whether or now I’ll feel balanced with this solution is to be determined, here’s what we’ve come up with: first, it starts with a pretty significant raise that was my employer’s idea. It makes a lot of difference at month end and will definitely ease the financial strain a little bit. I wasn’t expecting it, considering I am technically just a retail clerk and the store has been open for two months. I appreciate the raise a lot, and especially because it WILL make a difference in the quality of my family’s life. I believe I deserve it, because I’ve taken on a lot of responsibility and my skill set really matches her needs.

Second up, she’s approved my idea to take Wednesdays off each week. This means Ash will only be in day care for three days a week, home with me for three days a week and home with Clive for one day a week. It means he gets quality time alone with Clive, a family day with both of us (most Sundays of each month, though Clive sometimes has to work all day) and two days alone with me, which is fantastic, and honestly, it sounds pretty much perfect.

Third, because the raise is great but I still need to make X amount of money to make this entire thing worth it, I’m going to be working some evenings doing website work. It gives me my missing hours and it saves her 1. having to hire someone else to do the updates and/or 2. paying out the ass for website work, which, if you don’t know, I generally charge $50-$75/hr for web development. I get to stay at home and work while Ash sleeps in the evening and because it’s pretty mindless photo editing/stock updating/product adding, it means that I can still watch my shows (most recently is So You Think You Can Dance, yay!) and relax.

Like I said, I’m not sure if this is the answer, but I feel like 100lbs has been lifted off of me, knowing that I can spend more time with my kid in a relaxed environment in the middle of the week- rather than say, a Tuesday where I’ve just spent two full days with him and honestly need a little bit of a break.

Fingers crossed that this is the harmony I’ve been looking for.

Ash’s day care room is a rectangular shape, with one full wall a window. The room is very sunny and Ash can see the cars and trucks whizzing by, both wonderful features.

Today, as Clive was getting out of our car to pick him up at the end of the day, Ash spotted him and RAN, full speed towards him.

Smuck right into the glass.

Like a little baby bird, a silence-causing THUWMP. Followed by a nosebleed and screeching and sobbing and my little munchie not being able to even catch his breath because he was crying so hard.

Poor little guy!! If I knew it didn’t hurt so bad, I would find it even funnier than I already do. I think I’ll have to talk to the day care and ask them to put up some stickers or something so that it doesn’t happen to other children; hopefully Ash has learned his lesson.

I wish someone would slap me and tell me that my young child NEEDS me right now, and to take him out of day care full time and get me to stop working. I wish people would stop telling me that “he needs to spend time away from me/home” because you know what? He’s not 10, he’s not 20, he’s not 30– he’s not even two years old and I’m still the number one person in his life. I have more to offer him than a day care with a ratio of 6:1, regardless of an indoor sandbox and circle time.

I wish I had some way to bring in the same amount of money a week so that I could continue to just barely cover expenses, put Ash in day care for one day a week because he does enjoy it so much, and spend the rest of (at least) the summer with him.

I miss him so much. Today I saw him for a little over two hours in total, and most of that was getting us ready for school/work and eating supper and bedtime stuff. I look at him and how quickly he’s changing and seeing how his sense of humor is developing and his facial expressions are changing and his language is exploding and I feel like I don’t even know him anymore. I miss our days together, even though I don’t miss being a stay at home mom at all, if that makes sense.

I love my job, I love talking to the people I talk to and taking in a pay cheque, regardless of how small it is, I love taking a lunch break and getting out of the house to do something more than run errands. But my son! I just can’t bare it. He’s not eating what we would like him to eat. Eighteen months of ECing has done nothing to prepare him for day care – he comes home with a poopy diaper every day. He has scrapes and no one knows why. He had a bandage on his thumb today for the world’s smallest cut. In some ways I love that he has a little life outside of me, I just wish that it wasn’t such a big life.

I’ve been working for two months and I still don’t know if it was the right decision or not. This is the most difficult part of parenthood, by far. I’ll take sleepless nights over crying almost every day.

What do I do?!!?!?!?!?

Ash’s daycare comes with a 24hr a day webcam so that we can check in on him. It’s a great feature and I love seeing him whenever I want to. The other day I saw him playing in the “water feature” (I think it’s just a big square bucket thing), and I get to see the day care teacher walk him around to go to sleep and I get to see him eating and pushing the cars around. He loves day care, as I knew he would, and he sleeps much better now that he’s there, but I still miss him a lot and wish that I could offer the same kind of stimulation by having him home with me.

I also love my job, even if it is retail, and I get to talk to lots and lots of people very day with very similar outlooks to mine, and it’s refreshing and inspiring.

But I often feel like quitting and continuing to spend my days with my young son, and I feel guilty about that AND guilty about going to work, so I don’t know how to win. He’s just so young and I wish we had more money so this wasn’t a necessity, but it is and that’s all there is to it.

A father came into the store the other day and started to talk to me about how he raised his (now adult) son, and he said that he was never too busy for him. If his child wanted to read a book, toss a ball, or just hang out, it was never “in a minute” “maybe tomorrow” “some other time, okay?” it was always him making the time for him.

How wonderful would that feel, growing up? To know that you are the most important person, because in all reality you really ARE the most important person to your parents, and never feel like a bother. We always felt annoying or in the way or a burden by my step father when we were growing up and it was miserable. We were all plagued with such poor self esteem as children I’m surprised that we’re as successful as we are today. In some ways I’m even surprised that all three of us all made it out alive… there were some dangerous times in there and we could have made some bad choices.

I am scared of regretting going back to work for a measly $150/week (seriously, that is how much I’m making due to Ash’s day care costs) and missing this incredible time in his life. We learned yesterday that Ash could count to ten, rotating numbers with us, and I had never even heard him say the word “eight” but there it was, clear as day, right after the word “seven.” We taught him that, not a day care teacher, but there are many things that she’ll be teaching him that we aren’t- like that he plays with homemade play doh- something I’ve been wanting to do but haven’t had the chance to make yet. I am jealous that he gets to have these first experiences with someone else other than me.

I dream about keeping him at home, maybe taking care of another child too (even though I know I wouldn’t like it), and offering the same kinds of activities that they have at day care, taking him for swimming lessons and trips to the library, but I just know I’d be as distracted as I was when I was with him- he was my priority, but there was laundry to do and email to check and dishes to wash. We can’t afford classes so our days were filled with a lot of the same things and I just didn’t feel like I was able to give him everything that he needed to really flourish. He’s super, super smart- more advanced than any of his friends his age- but I still didn’t believe that I was giving him everything I could.

Ah, the neverending conflict.

Anyway, I had a hard time finishing the conversation with the dad about his son because the guilt was overwhelming me and I wanted to cry. I’ve always been confident in the decisions I’ve had to make about raising Ash the way I have, I’ve rarely had waivered in my choices, but this one is a doozy. Avoiding plastic, organic vegetarianism, extended breastfeeing etc have all been no brainers, but this one taunts me on a daily basis. I don’t know what the right answer is.

We’ve been home from our two-week trip to Ontario for five days now and I haven’t had one iota of a second to sit down and actually write about it in the way it deserves. It was a great trip.

We flew to Toronto on April 25, Ash was absolutely fine on the plane thanks to the boob, and we spent the first couple of days with Clive’s parents. Actually, the first afternoon we were there, we left Ash with Clive’s mother and took off shopping- something I was looking forward to doing for a long time, since I hate shopping with Ash now that he’s far more than just a lump in a stroller or sling.

We spent the first week of our vacation with Clive’s sister in London, where I pretty much decided that having one child was going to be enough for me. They have a 4.5 year old, a 2.5 year old and a two-week old and it was overwhelming- even though they’re all well behaved children. I just didn’t like the lifestyle, I guess. If I do have another child, it probably wont be until Ash is around four years old… one child is SO easy. That’s all I’m sayin.

We got to see old friends of ours from when we lived in London and that was great. We’ve changed a lot since our child-free days (even though I spent the majority of my pregnancy in London), and our friends there have grown up a lot too- getting engaged, pregnant, buying houses etc.

We went to the Toronto Zoo one Saturday. Clive and his family have visited a lot, but I’ve never been. Ash slept through a lot of it (never wake a napping baby, regardless of zebras and hippos!) but woke up after about an hour and was able to see lots and lots of animals.

The next day we went to a baby shower for our friends Marc and Nicole, who after five years of trying to have a baby got pregnant with their desired sex, a girl!

One of my favorite parts of the trip was going to Kincardine, Ontario to finally meet the woman who shaped my parenting style more than anyone else, Ashley. We spent the night on her farm, a bon fire that night and then standard farm life in the morning- feeding the chickens and goats, collecting eggs, transplanting, working in the garden, tending to the children, and eating seriously wonderful and homemade food.

The next day I was tattooed by her husband, Scott for a couple of hours, and I got my favorite symbol in the whole world, an anchor, on my foot. It hurt like a bitch, especially around the toes. My body has made me forget that pain already, and I’m already planning my next one. Foot tattoos definitely require a week of being able to not be on your feet because of swelling and pain, and I have been wearing shoes this week and I kind of wish I didn’t have to because of the scabs that have been coming off and possibly damaging the tattoo during the critical healing process.

The last week of our visit was spent shopping and visiting with friends. We saw nearly everyone we wanted to see with a few important exceptions that I still wish we’d have been able to make time for.

Overall it was a really great trip. I am glad to be home, in my own kitchen and not eating restaurant food. Most importantly, we have our king sized bed back and it’s wonderful.

(sorry for the lack of updates lately, btw)

Perhaps.

This pretty much sums ‘er up:

Last night I won first prize on Deal or No Deal (arcade version)!

(The trip’s going great. Ash was fine on the plane and he’s getting along super well with his cousins who’ve got more toys than Ash will ever own in his entire life combined. We miss our king sized bed.)

Only three more sleeps until we leave for a two-week vacation to Ontario. It’ll be our first real visit there (except for a 22-hour layover on our way to Cuba last November) since Ash was still inside of me. I’m looking forward to visiting.

It’ll be our third big trip since Ash was born (we went to GA when Ash was eight months old and to Cuba when he was 13 months old, and I guess it kind of counts, a week in the sticks when we got married when he was 10.5 months old) so we’re pretty good travellers, but this is the longest we’ll have been away and definitely the most uprooted trip we’ve been on considering we don’t have a solid home base on this trip. We’ll be doing a lot of visiting with friends and back and forth between Mississauga where Clive’s mom is and London where Clive’s sister is and I’ve got to admit I’m pretty nervous about keeping nap schedules in tact in order to avoid as many toddler meltdowns as possible. Especially now that Ash has moved onto full temper tantrums where his body goes limp when we try to pick him up and/or kickkickkicks us away from him if he’s upset. Time to read some new parenting books, I think.

We’ve got plans to go to the Toronto Zoo as a huge family (cousins etc included), which I think will be the best part of the trip, an adult (+newborn) Thai food night out, a night over at my never-before-met-but-still-awesome Mommy friend’s house, Ashley and then a tattoo session by her super-talented and overbooked husband, Scott, something I’ve been looking forward to for months and months. It’s only my second tattoo, even with my body modification littered past, and will be my biggest and most painful. I’m extremely, extremly excited.

Hopefully we’ll see old friends in London, Niagara and Toronto- I’m really hoping we get to see Shannon and Caitlin’s new digs, which look AMAZING. I’m so jealous! We have a baby shower to go to, and I am realllly excited to see my friend Nicole again, and her long awaited baby belly!

Ash will be the main focus of a lot of people, which means lots of free babysitting so that Clive and I can have some alone time and maybe have a dinner out and lots of shopping, even if we don’t buy anything.

This’ll probably be my last entry before leaving because I still have a lot of sewing and stuff to do before we go, and there just aren’t enough hours in the day, especially now that I’m working for eight of them.