The Life of a Mom

I originally titled this post "The Life of a SAHM."  But then I realized that working moms probably have the exact same problem, it's just not an "all day long" problem, it's an "everyday after work" problem.

Maybe some moms don't have this "problem" at all.  If you don't... well, I don't want to hear from you!  (I kid).

So, anybody with children, especially very mobile children, has probably made the observation that it is incredibly hard to keep the house tidy (nevermind clean) when you are home all day.  This might seem counter-intuitive, because if you're home all day, you have all day to tidy and clean.  But seriously, a toddler makes messes much faster than you can clean them up.  At least MY toddler does!  And I don't really have any desire to be walking from one room to another putting things in their proper places ALL DAY LONG.  I would literally never be able to do anything else.

Probably one of our biggest problems is that we have an open concept house, and Noah is allowed to go anywhere.  Sure, we gate off the stairs so he can't sneak downstairs while I'm cooking or showering.  But other than that, there is no good way to keep him contained, and there never has been.  He's been opening doors and walking through them since he was 12 months old, so things are constantly ending up where they don't belong.  I always have random items, like stethoscopes, play dishes, play food, magnetic letters, and puzzles pieces in all the bedrooms and bathrooms (almost everyday when I'm in the shower Noah brings me a bowl of cut up wooden fruit and says "Here you go, Mommy!").  And things like toothpaste, tooth brushes, salad tongs, potato mashers, and mixing bowls end up on my living room couches.  (Yes, those things are kept in drawers, but our drawers and counters are arranged so that it's no possible to install those latch thingies.  I tried.  I guess all our counters jut out too far.)

There aren't many things I miss about being childless.  But a house that stays tidy for more than 2 minutes is definitely one of them!  Even when my entire house is clean I feel like it isn't because it's so hard for it to stay tidy.

Today I had one of those days where I was cleaning, tidying, and doing laundry all day long, but I felt like I was walking on a treadmill - as in, I was doing these things, but felt like I wasn't moving forward because there were so many things still left to do!  Vacuuming the whole house, cleaning both full bathrooms, washing the floors, stripping beds, washing/drying/folding 5 loads of laundry, unloading dishwasher, loading it back up, feeding the child several times, and constantly putting things back where they belong.

I am not even really complaining.  I'm just stating facts.  I am actually thankful.  Noah is much more obedient than he was 8-10 months ago, and doesn't touch the things that he really shouldn't touch.  So it's not like he's scattering the vitamins and medications from my bedside table throughout the house.  He's not pulling clothes out of our drawers (like he did A LOT from about 9 to 15 months).  If the lower kitchen cupboards are unlocked, it's not like I end up with unopened salad dressing and BBQ sauce bottles in the bathroom.  He doesn't go in the fridge because he knows he's not allowed, so I no longer get bags of bloody ground beef lifted onto my duvet cover.  But in the interests of encouraging toddler creativity and independent play, unless he can hurt himself, break something, or end up wasting a lot of money (like dumping out a 500 count bottle of digestive enzymes), he is allowed to have access to most of the stuff in our house.  Besides, there's not really a lot of places we can hide these things, since we can't lock our drawers (he would figure out the locks, anyway, even if we could).

But man, I really do wish that I had a magic wand... I would walk into each room, wave it, and everything would fly to the room it belongs in, and settle in its proper place.  That sounds glorious.

Okay, off to fold my 5th and final load of laundry.  And watch TV.  Before I collapse into bed.

The daily grind can be just that - a grind.  But since everyday is filled with multiple spontaneous hugs, kisses, and "Wuv you Mommy"'s from this adorable kid...

It sure is worth it:)

Single Parenting - Almost Complete

My four full days of single parenting is almost over.  Justin will be home in the morning. 

It really hasn't been that bad.  It's gone a lot better than I thought it would.  It's actually been kind of nice in some ways.  I haven't had to clean up after or cook for Justin.  Thats been nice.  I've also been able to do a lot of things that I don't normally do because I try to be home for the short periods of time when Justin is actually home (an hour here, an hour there...).  Being home for an hour here and an hour there basically makes it so that I can't do anything, since we live in a small town and most of my friends, my family, and almost every store I would go to is 25 minutes away.  I've been able to go run errands I wouldn't normally be able to run, and we've had dinner with my parents twice.  They love this, of course. 

While it has gone well, I am very glad that it's almost over.  I feel like my nerves are fraying.  I am sick of not having any help or moral support.  Unfortunately tomorrow we are busy all day long with a celebration for my grandparents' 60th anniversary.  Then Monday it's back to the regular schedule.  I feel like I need a proper weekend with my husband home.  Actually, at this point I almost feel like I need to go out and do something for myself, by myself, and leave Noah at home.  I never do that, and I almost never have the desire to do that.  But doing everything 100% by myself has gotten mentally exhausting.  And Noah's teething and toddlerhood have been raring their ugly heads during the past 4 days.

The next adventure?  We're putting a fence in.  The posts are being put in tomorrow morning before church, and then on Monday we have friends coming to put the actual fence and gates up.  The wood is sitting in my driveway right now.  Yet another big project I have had to coordinate and deal with on my own.

I'm so glad I normally have a good, supportive husband living with me.  It's much better than doing it all alone.

Single Parenting

I am about to have my first real taste of single parenting.

My husband is off to OFSAA, the track and field provincial finals.  He is going to be gone for four full days, from early Wednesday morning to late Saturday night.  He is going to be 7 hours away.  For four full days.

I'm not thrilled.

We have had entire days where Justin was never around when Noah was awake, not even for half an hour.  We've also had days where Justin wasn't around at all while I was awake.  But we have never had four days in a row of it.

It's not like I can't handle it.  I am a stay at home mom, and I do 95% of Noah's caregiving, anyway.  But there are things I am definitely going to miss while Justin is gone:

-Usually in a 4 day period Justin will have time on 1 or 2 of those days to take Noah outside or downstairs to play, just the two of them, for about an hour.  During that time I sometimes get to lie on my bed, completely relaxed, and watch TV.  Uninterrupted.

-When Justin is home and not busy coaching or training clients, I can get him to play with Noah while I do things like cook dinner, clean up from dinner, fold laundry, or vacuum the house.  I can do these things with Noah around, but its a heck of a lot easier when he is happily occupied playing with his Dad.
-I'll miss the structure of dinnertime.  I will probably have a hard time finding the motivation to cook a real dinner when its just me and Noah.  I will probably gather healthy good together for Noah, and end up eating Kraft Dinner myself.

-Bathtime is not always Noah's favourite time of the day.  Today, for example, he had his Selsun stuff on for 15 minutes, and right before we needed to rinse it off and give him a bath, he decided to have a complete meltdown.  Screaming.  Neither of us had any clue why.  We hadn't even done anything.  I ended up having to get in the tub with him clinging to me like a baby monkey, while Justin did crazy antics, like making bath toys balance on his head and then fall off, complete with sound effects, in order to make Noah laugh.  Neither of those tactics would have been successful by themselves.  But obviously I can't be in the tub with him holding him and be outside the tub doing silly stunts.  Since Noah seems to be in a I-Hate-Bathtime phase, and we are currently in the middle of a 35 degree heat wave (read: mid 90s) and he needs a bath to cool him down and wash off his sweat and sunscreen, plus we're doing the Selsun therapy which needs to be washed off every night, I will really miss my husband's help during that time.

-I am going to miss hanging out with my husband in the evenings after Noah goes to bed!  Justin is almost always home during bedtime and afterward, these days.  I'll miss him in the evenings.  Hanging out alone isn't as much fun.


I'm hoping that things will be good.  I'm hoping we will find things to do to keep us busy so we won't miss Justin's presence so much.  I'm hoping bathtime will go smoothly.  I'm hoping Justin being gone will actually give me freedom to go into town a couple of times, since I normally need to avoid doing that so that we're home when Justin is home (otherwise how will Noah see his Dad?).  I'm hoping I will go to bed earlier, since there won't be anyone to hang out with in the evening.

I'm hoping the next four days will be a positive experience, and that I won't be frazzled and ticked off.

14 Months Old

Better late than never, right? 


At 14 months old, here is where Noah is at:

-He weighs about 21.5lbs.  He was 22lbs even with his clothes and shoes on, carrying my big pile of keys (I wasn't about to pry them out of his fingers and have a tantrum on my hands in the middle of the doctor's office).  This is just under 50th percentile, according to WHO chart for breastfed babies.

-He is about 32.5 inches tall, 98th percentile, according to WHO chart for breastfed babies.

-He's between the 10th and 25th percentile for weight-for-length, according to the WHO chart for breastfed babies.

-His head measures 19.9 inches around.  Over 100th percentile, according to the WHO chart for breastfed babies.  Massive.  But it's not wide, it's deep, so it doesn't actually look like he has a giant noggin.

-He is just about to move into size 4 diapers 100% of the time.  He still fits size 3 Pampers Cruisers really well, but he is too tall for other size 3 diapers (even though they fit his waist well).

-He still breastfeeds on demand, which is usually around 10 times a day.

-75% of his nutrition still comes from breastfeeding.  He is beginning to want to eat more solids more often.  I let him lead the way.

-He will still eat purees if there are no "solid" solids in sight.  I have a whole bunch of jarred baby food to use up, so I'm still going for it.

-He loves meat and fruit.  They are his favourite.  He also really likes peanut butter sandwiches.  He does not like vegetables anymore.  Sad:(

-He still enjoys a balance of being fed and feeding himself.

-He wears 18 and 24 month clothing, depending on what it is.  Except shorts.  He wears 9 month shorts.  The little skinny-minny.

-He wears size 4 shoes.

-He has 10 teeth.  The front 8 (4 top and 4 bottom), which have been in since he was 8 months old, and now his one year molars on top are poking through his gums a fair bit.  On the bottom his gums are swollen, like he has two marbles under his gums. 

-He's been down to one nap for a month.  This nap is about an hour long, give or take a few minutes.

-He sleeps 11-11.5 hours at night, getting up to nurse once.  I have no idea when he will drop that overnight nursing.

-Did you do the math?  He only sleeps 12-12.5 hours a day.

-Bedtime is still about 8-8:30pm, despite the one nap.  I prefer to start my morning sometime past 7, and if I put him to bed earlier he does wake up earlier.

-He signs to nurse (the sign for milk), for water (waves his hand up and down), and to eat (sticks his finger in his mouth).  Those are the only signs I'm consistent with, otherwise I'm sure he'd sign more.

-He still doesn't say much verbally.  Just Dad, a little bit of Mama, uh oh, that, this...  He just started doing two animal sounds, though.  He says, "Woof woof" when he hears a dog or we ask what a dog says, and he says "Ca Ca" for what a bird says.   He totally started doing both of those on his own, though, imitating the dogs and birds that live around us.  He really is not into copying us verbally, except for those two noises now.

-I am always surprised by how much he understands.  He can follow so many instructions, even multi-step instructions like "Get your shoes so we can go outside!"  He'll run and get his shoes and then go to the door and try to go outside. 

Here are some other examples (by no means a comprehensive list):

*"Do you want to listen to music?"  He'll nod, smile, point to the iPod dock, and start dancing.

*"Do you want to go downstairs?" He'll run to the top of the stairs gate.
*"Are you hungry?" He signs to eat. "Go get in your high chair!"  He'll run over to his high chair and reach up to try and get into it.

*"Can you get Mommy's brush for her?" He will literally go to the bathroom, open the drawer, get out my brush, and bring it to me.

*"No hitting!  Gentle, Noah, gentle..."  He will start gently patting whatever he was being too rough with, be it the cats or my face or his own head. 

*He also can answer "Where's Mommy's nose?" and "Where's Mommy's belly button?" by pointing the the appropriate body part.  He'll even lift up my shirt to find my belly button.  He doesn't point to those things on himself, though.

*On his own body he points out his ears, feet, and hands when asked.

*If we tell him not to do something when we're somewhere other than home, he looks at us very seriously, nods his head, and stops what he's doing.  He also shakes his head no, when appropriate.

-He's a very sweet boy, and very cuddly and kissy.  He loves to hug other babies, our cats, and pictures of animals.

-He loves to get out our swiffers and swiffer all over our floors.  He'll swiffer the carpets, couches, and coffee tables too.  He also imitates me cleaning by rubbing cloths on the floor and tables.

-He loves to play outside.  A little over a month ago he was still not a big fan of it, but now he loves it.  He would spend most of his day outside if he could.  The weather hasn't been very conducive to this, though.

-He got comfortable walking on the grass just before 14 months.  I've mentioned that he is a very careful little guy, so before this it felt too unsteady for him and he would just stand still if we put him on the grass.

-He can open closet doors now, as well as regular doors.  Unwelcome development.

-I can leave the stair gates open without worrying that he will fall down the stairs.  I only use them to confine him to one floor or another, but sometimes I leave them open and he just goes up and down the stairs (without me there) to his heart's content.  He's very careful, and very quick.

-He is a lot more comfortable around strangers, now.  He sticks close to me for a little while, but then gets more adventurous.  He still doesn't smile much at strangers, but he is a lot less scared of them than he used to be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A typical day in our house is very relaxed.  Noah wakes up between 7 and 8 (usually more like between 7:15 and 7:45).  I get up with him, immediately nurse him (he's usually hungry and disgruntled, so this is the reset button), then change his bum.  Then we go out into the rest of the house and play.  I make myself breakfast at some point.  Sometimes Noah wants some, sometimes he waits until later.  After we have breakfast that's usually when I unload and reload the dishwasher.  Then I get in the shower and get ready for the day. 

Sometimes after my shower we'll have time to go outside before Justin gets home for lunch.  Sometimes not, and sometimes it's just not nice enough weather.  Actually, often it's not nice enough weather.  Sometimes this is when I throw laundry in or do some other chores. 

Justin comes home for lunch from 11:00-11:30, and we hang around with him.  Noah often gets little bites to eat during this time.  Justine leaves, and we play more.  Noah goes down for his nap sometime after 12:30.  He generally stays awake for about 5 hours in the morning.  He always nurses before his nap - always.  (He also nurses whenever he asks for it all day long, but these nursing sessions are not at the same times everyday, which is why I only mention the nursings before or after he wakes up).  He sleeps for an hour, and during this time I try to take time to myself to relax.  I make myself lunch and watch something from the PVR.  The hour goes by quickly.  Noah is always awake before I know it.  He almost always nurses immediately when he wakes up, because he's usually pretty ticked off.  It's just his personality - he's rarely happy right when he wakes up.  After nursing he's good to go.

If we are going to go do anything out of the house, like running errands, this is typically when we do it.  Occasionally I can fit errands in before nap, but I rarely have the motivation to rush around to shower and eat and get ready in time to do errands and then be home for when Justin gets home at 11.  I don't have to be there, but I think it's nice that we can all spend a little bit of time together in the middle of the day, especially since we don't see him in the morning before he goes to work.

For the rest of the afternoon it's always different.  Sometimes chores, sometimes hanging out with Justin if he gets home from work early, sometimes visiting with my Mom or Dad or a friend.  Sometimes just hanging out and doing nothing in particular.  Of course, I make dinner in the evening and clean up the kitchen and dishes immeidately afterward.

I tend to have the most motivation to do chores in the hour before I am supposed to start bedtime routine (I aim to start that at 7:30).  That's when I'll suddenly decide to catch up on laundry, vacuum the entire house, and give Noah a haircut.  And those overly ambitious nights are the nights that Noah doesn't get into bed until 8:30.  I generally aim for 8:00, but I'm often a bit later.

I almost always have my house cleaned up and tidied before I start bathing Noah.  I also wash my own face and brush my teeth before I bathe Noah.  It's just this thing I have.  I need to be ready for bed and need everything to be in its place before Noah goes to bed.  I nurse Noah to sleep every night.  I usually cuddle and nurse him for about 20 minutes... I love holding my sleeping little baby.  I really cherish these times with him, especially since he's already 14 months.  Before I know it he won't be sleeping in my arms again - ever.

(I want to clarify that although I do nurse Noah to sleep, he can put himself to sleep, and he does that on a regular basis. If he doesn't show signs of falling asleep in the first 10-15 minutes of nursing, he goes in his crib awake, and is usually asleep within about 5 minutes).

After I put him in his crib, I do whatever little things need to be done, like finishing cleaning up the bathroom after his bath, or put away the things he threw around the house as I was wrangling him into the bathtub.  Then I collapse on my bed and watch TV.  Justin is usually around by then, with no more clients to train, so we hang out and watch TV until I feel tired enough to sleep.


So that's my day!  Sounds nice, doesn't it?  I love spending all my time with Noah, cooking, cleaning, and playing.  It's not amazing every single day, but it's pretty darn close:)

Bullets on Friday

-Noah is sick.  Again.  Another cold.  His 10th illness in 13 months of life.  Or rather, in less than 10 months, since the first time he got sick he was 3.5 months old.  Seriously, my child and I both have the worst immune systems ever.

-Noah slept over 12.5 hours last night, just getting up to nurse once at 5am.  I did not sleep nearly as well, and by 7:45am I was starting to worry he was dead.  When I checked on him he was just sitting up in his crib, so obviously not dead.

-I think Noah had an allergic reaction to taco seasoning.  A couple of nights ago we had tacos for dinner and he ate cheese, tomatoes, and taco meat.  His chin broke out in hives and his little patches of eczema, which were almost completely cleared up at his diaper change before dinner, flared up bright red again.  He eats cheese, tomatoes, and ground beef on a fairly regular basis (cheese is almost everyday).  Taco seasoning was the new thing.  I'm skeptical though, because he's had chilli before on many occasions.  Chilli seasoning and taco seasoning have almost the same ingredients.  I guess we'll see next time we have tacos.  I will admit that we checked on him about 5 times between putting him to bed and going to bed ourselves.  We never do this, but again, we were worried he would stop breathing.

-I'm babysitting Aubrey right now.  Is it wrong that I'm annoyed that she keeps trying to steal my kid's toys right out of his hands??

-Is it wrong that I think it's ridiculous that she's given chocolate milk because she won't drink regular homo milk?

-My principal has still not acknowledged my resignation in any form.  No call or email saying he got it.  Well, he must have.  Otherwise he would have called me to see what was up, since today was the deadline.  I'm fine with not having to talk to him, but I do think he is a crappy boss who doesn't handle things properly.  Not even acknowledging an employees resignation?  There are like 15 staffers at that school altogether, including all the part timers, secretaries, and custodians.  The least he could do is acknowledge my letter!  I'm so glad I'm done with that place.

-I don't know what to make for dinner tonight.  I go through this everyday.  About a month ago I made a meal plan for the week and didn't stick to it at all.  I'm ridiculous.

-I started painting my coffee tables about 3 weeks ago.  I don't even have one table done.  It would have been done, but I sanded it before applying the second coat because of the extended drying time, and for some reason some of the greyness from the sanding is still showing through the second coat.  I think that's weird.  The other two tables are only primed.  I lost my groove.  And I think my paint brush is drying up in the fridge.  I'm considering buying a new one instead of trying to clean it.  It's oil paint.  And mineral spirits smell like crapola.

-I still haven't organized Noah's closet.  Or the front hall closet, or the closet by the door.  I lost my groove there too.

-I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself for not finishing these things.  I need big chunks of baby-free time in order to do them, and I haven't gotten that at all in the past several weeks. 

-I'm tired.  And kind of cranky.

Officially Resigned

As I type this, Noah is dancing to Holla Back Girl...

Yesterday, I officially resigned from my teaching position.

Some of you really might not know I was a teacher!  It's been 15 months.  I talk a lot about being a SAHM, but I don't blog a lot about my life before being a SAHM, or what has been going on behind the scenes with my job.  Or rather, my old job.

I haven't taught since I injured myself at work on January 20, 2010.  I was 30 weeks pregnant and ended up going off on WSIB for the remainder of my pregnancy.  I blogged a lot about it back in January/February 2010. 

This didn't affect my maternity leave, which didn't start until Noah was born on March 18, 2010.  I had a full 8 weeks of paid disability leave through WSIB (which is 85% of your wages) before I went on maternity leave.  Parental leave is awesome in Canada.  You get a full year, and you're paid at 60% of your wages.  I had Noah during March break, so I was due to go back to work on March 21, 2011.

We knew I wasn't going to go back unless something drastically changed in our family situation.  Me staying at home with Noah (and any future children) is extremely important to us.  We would pretty much do anything for me not to go back, including move to a smaller house or even rent an apartment to make our cost of living lower.  So far we haven't had to move, but Justin does work basically an extra part time job on top of his more-than-full-time teaching job (he's a private Crossfit trainer).  He probably works 60-70 hours a week during the school year, and during his "summer off" he trains 32+ hours a week.

Despite knowing I would not go back, I wanted to have a little wiggle room just in case something happened.  So back in January, instead of completely resigning, I asked for the rest of the school year off (unpaid, of course), and we would revisit me coming back in September.  I did this mostly so I could have the chance to see what life would be like without the EI pay from parental leave.  My leave was granted, but I was required to give my intentions for the 2011-2012 school year by April 15.

Considering my EI pay didn't stop until March 22, that didn't give us much time at all to see what life was like with just Justin's income.  Sure, we could have just put my EI pay in a separate account and tried to live on just Justin's salary.  But he gets paid by cash and personal cheque for the private training, and it's kind of a month-by-month thing to see how much money we'll be left with each month, or if we'll have to pull some money out of savings because our expenses were higher than expected (like when we finished the laundry room floor this past month, or when Justin re-did the floor and layout in our garage/gym last weekend to make it more functional and able fit more clients at once).

All the details aside, we didn't get a good chance to see how things would go with just Justin's income, but like I said before, we would do anything for me to not go back to work.  April 15 was fast approaching, and I had to resign.

I obviously knew my decision, but I procrastinated.  A lot.  My boss and I are not exactly the best of friends.  He was not very nice to me when I was pregnant.  He gave me crap for the stupidest little things, like being 5 minutes late to the first staff meeting of the 2009-2010 school year because I was 10 weeks pregnant, live 25 minutes from work, and was throwing up all morning.  I explained it to him, but he "didn't want to hear excuses." 

He also called me "unprofessional" because I was protecting the best interests of myself and my unborn baby when signing up for extra curriculars for that year (we are required to do 100+ hours of school extra curricular activities on top of our regular teaching).  Everyone was giving me a hard time about signing up for some things that would be happening once I was off on parental leave, but these were activities I had done every year, like Track and Field in the spring, and school musicals.  And I signed up for my fair share of things that were happening while I was still working.  For example, in the fall on 2009 I was the only coach of the Cross Country team and was the sole organizer and convenor of the Cross Country meet for all the Christian Schools in a 2 hour radius around our school.  I think that's a pretty big job for an exhausted, nauseous pregnant woman (yes, I was still nauseous in my second trimester).  But I had done it the previous 2 years (I was forced to, it's not really something I desire to do), so I figured it only made sense for me to do it again since I knew what I was doing.

Anyway, I said that it was not fair to expect a pregnant woman to do 10 months worth of extra curricular activities in just 6 months, and that the person taking my maternity leave should be expected to do my entire job, not just the teaching portion of it.  It's not like I signed up for activities that were all taking place during my leave.  All my activities were evenly spaced out throughout the school year.

Apparently that is "unprofessional."

He also accused me of being the last person to arrive and the first person to leave everyday - which was COMPLETE bullsh*t.  I was there before him most days, and was always there 25 minutes before the bell rang.  And occasionally I left "early" (15 minutes after the kids were gone), but it was always for a doctor's appointment.

I should mention here that his own wife - who is a teacher at the school... figure that one out - was pregnant as well.  She was 9 weeks behind me.  She would arrive at work literally 5 minutes before the bell rang at the beginning of the day - EVERY SINGLE DAY.  And she completely missed staff meetings - which are mandatory - all the time.  Of course, this was all fine.

Furthermore, just a few days after Noah was born I received a letter in the mail from my principal informing me that the school was suffering from another redundancy, this time 50%, and my previously fulltime position was now a halftime position (I was still the most recently hired person, so was the one affected by the redundancy).  I didn't care about the redundancy, but I did care about how I was informed about it!  A letter in the mail?  They know about possible redundancies for months before a final decision is made, and it is discussed or mentioned at pretty much every staff meeting.  Yet no one thought to inform the person it would affect.  Yes, I was off on WSIB, but they had no problem calling me all the time to bug me about this, that, and the other thing.  And my principal had no problem telling me I "would have to help with report cards" (umm, like heck I would "have" to help! I only had those kids for the first 3 weeks of the term, and any grades from that time were neatly recorded in my gradebook.  Report cards are supposed to be based on the most recent and consistent behaviour and performance.  Whoever has been filling my position for the last 8 weeks of the term can do the report cards!  You're not even paying me!  WSIB is!)  So if they thought I still had responsibilities to them when they weren't even paying me, the least they could do is keep me informed about a possible redundancy that only affects MY job!

Needless to say, I was not in a hurry to have a conversation with him.  I have never liked talking to him, it has always been awkward.  So I procrastinated.

However, it was time.  This Friday is April 15, the deadline.  So I wrote a nice letter of resignation, signed it, and brought it into the school.  He was busy teaching at the time, so I left the letter on his desk in his office with a note on top saying I'm sorry I missed him.  I went and visited the grade 5/6 class, which happens to be my very first class of my own back when they were in grade 2/3.  This was the class my principal was teaching at the time, which was awkward, but I really wanted to see the kids.  I obviously have a soft spot for them.

Until I wrote this particular blog entry, I was feeling like maybe I didn't handle the situation quite right.  I thought maybe I should have waited until he was on a break and talked to him and given him my letter then.  However, after rehashing just a few of the crappy things he's said/done to me, and that was all just in 4.5 months, I don't feel bad anymore.  I wrote a very nice letter of resignation, I handed it in 4 days earlier than I had to, and I visited my old class. 

Frankly, the way he treated me while I was there, and the way he treated me while I was pregnant, I should have just emailed him.

But it's a nice weight off my shoulders!  I'm glad it's done.  So is my Mom, who was getting really sick of pretending she knew nothing whenever someone from church or the school community asked her what I would be doing.

It's official.  I am done with formal employment for who knows how long!  Probably at least a decade.  Weird.

The Walking Ill

Noah is still really sick.  He looks like someone beat him up, with his raw, red nose and his raw, red bruises under his eyes.  On Monday he had diarrhea 20 times in 24 hours and ended up with the worst diaper rash all over his bottom.  He's still having diarrhea, but not nearly that often.  He is still really congested, coughing, sneezing, and snotting.  Advil seems to actually give him a slight break from the intense snot production.  This didn't make sense to me at first, but Justin said something about how mucus and sneezing are inflammatory responses, so an anti-inflammatory could help those things.  I guess that makes sense!  I've never noticed it to be true for myself, but every single time I've given Noah Advil in the past 4 days, things have improved shortly afterward, but only for the length of time that the Advil would actually be effective for.  Interesting.

Thankfully his sleeping is still really good.  Even though he's coughing fairly frequently throughout his naps and at night, he is still not getting up to nurse until sometime after 4:30am, his normal time, and he is still sleeping until 7-7:30am.  Yesterday, Tuesday, he even had 3 naps!  Two 1 hour long naps and one 35 minute nap.  He hasn't had 3 naps in a day in ages. 

Today Noah was a little more content and active than he was in the previous 3 days.  He is walking nonstop now.  He still crawls about 25% of the time, but he is mostly walking.  He is walking across the entire house and going around corners and into different rooms and everything.  He never falls or bumps into anything, because he is a very careful kid.  He started taking steps 2 months ago, but he is so cautious that whenever he felt a little bit unbalanced, he would stop and carefully lower himself down.  If he was braver, he would have been fully walking a month ago.  Instead, he practiced a little bit everyday, and then waited until he was fully confident.  No drunken sailor walks in our house!


It has occured to me that if we hadn't decided that I am staying at home permanently, Monday would have been my first day back from maternity leave (I was due to start back after March break).  I wouldn't have been able to go.  I couldn't have abandoned Noah when he was so sick and just wanted his Mommy.  Besides that, he is pretty much refusing solids (just a couple of tablespoons at dinner), wants to comfort nurse frequently, but is only taking in about 2/3 of what he normally takes (that's an estimate, obviously, since my boobs aren't equipped with any measuring devices).  I really couldn't have left him this week, unless I wanted him to get malnourished. 

Justin and I never stop being thankful for our decision for me to stay home.  Yes, it's a struggle.  We have had to cut back on a lot, and Justin has to do a lot more training during his free time in order to make us more money so we can make ends meet.  But we wouldn't have it any other way.

Winter Blahs

How long until winter is over?  I am sick of having a couple of feet of snow in my yard and -20 temperatures outside.  I want to take Noah to the park!  I want to let him play outside!  I want to push him down the street on his trike instead of pushing him around the living room (man, he loves that thing).  I want to feel like it's no big deal to step foot out of the house.

I'm going a bit nutty these past few days.  There's nothing to DO!  Noah's naptime is right in the middle of everything I could go to: church, Mommy and Me, Baby Drop In.  My parents are on a cruise, and they're my people who I can just call and say "Are you working?  No?  Good.  I'm coming over."  They live 25 minutes away, so it's a bit of a trip, but worth it.  Everybody else I visit with has to be planned in advance.  I have two friends who live around here who I'm comfortable just calling up and getting together with (the price you pay when you go to university out of town and then move back to your hometown: all your best university friends live far away). My one friend across the street is working and busy a lot of the time, for whatever reason.  My other good friend in town (25 minutes away) is very difficult to get together with because our kids on on opposite schedules, her son sleeps a LOT, when he's sleeping you're not allowed in her house because he'll wake up (plus they cosleep and he has never napped in the crib so she has to be RIGHT THERE with him when he's napping), and she won't drive out to my house with her baby because she thinks he can't handle the car ride.

Plus Noah keeps going from perfectly happy to totally FUSSY for no reason.  It's very tiring.  And I feel bad for thinking it's tiring because I love him and I don't like to complain when I know I'm so lucky to have a baby.

AND he's not listening!!  He knows what "No" means, but he ignores it!  Or he shakes his finger back at us (which is pretty frickin funny, actually).  I don't know what I'm supposed to do about a 10 month old who doesn't listen.  I mean, he doesn't fully comprehend life, so even if he knows that "No" means he should stop, I don't think he fully gets it.

I shouldn't complain.  My life rocks, and I love it.  I just wish there was something to do.  Besides have sex (but not instead of).  Every night.  Don't ask me where this came from.  If I was childless and my husband didn't work, we'd probably be at it 3 times a day. 

10 Months Old

Here is where Noah is at at 10 months old:

-He's 31 inches tall, 100th percentile.

-He weighs 20lbs 5oz naked (after a good nursing).  That's about 35th percentile, and almost a pound gain in less than a month!

-He is 5th percentile for 'weight for length'

-His head circumference is 19 inches..

-He wears size 3 diapers during the day, and size 4 diapers at night (we just switched to size 4s the night before he turned 10 months because of night-leaking).

-He wears 18 month clothing.  His sleepers, onesies, and shirts fit perfectly, his 18 month pants are a little bit long.

-He has 8 teeth, the four top and four bottom.

-He nurses every 2 hours or so all day long (two nursings during each awake period), and once overnight.  He nurses 7-8 times in a 24 hour period.

-He has one meal of solids (mostly purees) at dinnertime, and throughout the day he might have little nibbles of what I'm eating.  I'm careful about what he has, but I don't follow a specific '3 day wait' rule anymore.

-He is obsessed with fruit.  If he sees a piece of fruit and isn't allowed to eat it, he has a little hissy fit.

-He's still constipated pretty much all the time.  We have only a couple of normal poops in a month.

-After a long break, he's starting to show a little bit of interest in the sippy cup, although he is really terrible at getting water out of it.  he chews more than sucks.  But at least it's water in there!  He seems to love the taste of water now, whereas it disgusted him a few months ago. 

-He goes to bed at 7, has one night nursing sometime after 4am, and wakes up around 7, sometimes later if he has a long awake period around 6am and ends up falling back asleep.

-He has 2 naps a day, each usually 30-40 minutes long (although sometimes he'll have an hour long nap).  He's not on a strict schedule, and his naptimes start anywhere between 10-11am, and 2:30-3:30pm.

-He stands unassisted for far longer periods of time, far more frequently.  His record is several minutes.

-He can stand up from a squatting position without holding on to anything, and can squat down slowly and gracefully from standing without holding on to anything.

-He's a much better cruiser now, and walks with his walker really well.  However, on the hardwood floors he has a tendency to let it get ahead of him and ends up looking like he's charging through the house on a rampage.

-He's been hands and knees crawling and pulling up to stand for 3 months.

-He's been climbing stairs for at least a couple of months, but he's really fast at it now.

-If he loses something under the couch he'll crawl over, lay on his tummy, peer under the couch, and reach for the object.

-He waves "Hi!" when we say "Say 'hi'!"  He lifts his arms when we say "Up!" and understands the word "No," but doesn't always listen to it (these are several months old).  These are the 3 "commands" that we can tell 100% for sure that he understands.

-He still babbles a lot and says things like Dada, Dad, dat, dis, deh, that seem like words, but I'm not sure if he is really intending them to be words.  He likes to imitate singular sounds we make like fff, sss, tthh, but not really any combinations of letters. 

-Just started babbling "Mamama" again after a long break.  I don't think he's calling me "Mama" though.
-He's still pointing a lot to things he wants or places he wants to go.

-His new fascination is with light switches.  He loves to turn lights on and off.

-He puts objects in containers and balls into the holes they're supposed to go into.

-He plays with his "talking" toys a lot more purposefully now.  Instead of mashing his hands around on things in an excited way, he carefully presses specific buttons to hear specific words and noises.  It's need to see him become so purposeful in this area.

-We have this framed print in our house that has the line from the hymn: "All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all."  Noah LOVES it, and always points to go over to it.  When we start reading it to him (we point to the words as we read them) he gets this huge adorable smile on his face, and sometimes starts giggling.  It's so cute!

-He started dropping toys off his high chair tray all the time shortly after he turned 9 months.  He would do this occasionally before but I always ignored it.  Then Daddy made a FUN GAME out of it *rolls eyes and sighs*, so I'm trying to break him of this habit.


-He loves it when I spray water in his mouth with a spray bottle.  He laughs and opens his mouth for it again and again.  His face is hilarious.  A squinty wince, with his mouth wide open... so cute.

-He's figured out how to undo the bottom of our top-of-the-stair gate, and he gets really ticked off that he can't pull it all the way open.

-His pincer grasp is about the same as last month.  Not amazing, but not bad.

-He detests the playpen (immediately starts screaming if he's put in it), and doesn't like being in his jumperoo.  So basically, he's a free man all the time.  Therefore, I can't shower unless he's sleeping.  I can't vacuum unless he's in the sling (or my husband is home).

-Diaper changes are still a big battle, but this past month he has added a freak-out everytime we lay him on the change table.  Sometimes he'll cry the entire time he's being changed.  It's ridiculous, really.

-He hugs and kisses Mommy (with a wide open slobbery mouth) all the time.  He's been kissing me for months, but this month he started kissing Daddy!  He'll only kiss his ear, though, because Daddy's face is too scratchy:)  I find that hilarious.  The few times he's tried to kiss his cheek or mouth he came away with an injured, disgusted look on his face.  It cracks us up!

-He is an enormous Mommy-suck.  He is so attached to me I can hardly even describe it.  He cannot be distracted or dissuaded if he wants his Mom, and he wants his Mom often.  After seeing any display of this Mommy-suckyness, people agree that if I were going back to work when my maternity leave is technically over in 2 months, he honestly might never recover.  I am the be-all and end-all in his life, and if I disappeared I honestly think he might will himself to die.


A typical day in our house at 10 months old might look like this:

7:00am - Wake up
7:30am - Nurse
9:30am - Nurse
10:15am - Sleep
11:00am - Wake up
11:30am - Nurse
1:30pm - Nurse
2:15pm - Sleep
3:00pm - Wake up
3:30 - Nurse
5:00 - Nurse
6:00 - Dinner (solids)
6:40 - Bath time
7:00 - Nurse and bedtime (plus 1 night feeding)

That's what a typical day MIGHT look like, but we are by no means on a schedule and the timing of things can be different everyday.  If a nap goes long, or he wants to nurse sooner or later, or he does seem to want to sleep... everyday is different.  The one basically consistent part of our day is the wake, nurse, nurse, nap, nurse, nurse, nap, nurse, nurse, dinner, bath, bedtime (with nursing).  Lately Noah has been nursing to sleep for his naps more often just because that's when his feeding happens to land.  And I'm not a nazi about not letting him fall asleep nursing.  I try to have him fall asleep in a variety of ways throughout the week so that he has "versatility."  I want him to be able to fall asleep nursing, rocking, on his own, or in the car.

Now that Noah is down to 2 short naps a day I have even less time to get things done around the house.  I use his first nap to shower (I have to finish getting ready while he's awake, usually), and his second nap I use to try and relax and eat something, since I don't have time to do that during the rest of the day.  I do most of my chores when Justin is home because it's way easier to clean my house without Noah strapped to my body or trying to climb my legs.

We seem to have had a month off from teething, which has been nice.  And it's been nice going down to 2 naps, which we did right at 9 months, even though that usually means I have less baby-free time.  It's just been a lot easier to do other things now that Noah has awake periods of at least 3 hours, and can usually stay awake (and be happy) for 4 hours or more if we're out doing something.

Noah's 10th month has been lots of fun.  It's crazy watching him grow up so quickly, and I can't believe he's going to be a year old so soon!  I should start thinking about his birthday party...

A Mom Like Me...

When I first entered Motherhood, I found it to be a very bonding experience.  I suddenly felt connected with almost every other mother out there, past and present.  Having a newborn is some crazy business that I just couldn't imagine before I actually had a baby, and once I had one I felt like I was in the loop.  And so was every other mother.

Now Noah is just 8 days away from turning 10 months old, and the more time passes the more I start to feel... isolated.  Sometimes I feel disconnected from other mothers, rather than connected to them.  And no, it's not because I'm a stay-at-home-mom.  It's because I really think that no two mothers are exactly the same, no two babies are exactly the same, and I just want another mother who's exactly like me, with a baby who's exactly like mine, to be friends with.  Someone I can relate to, and who can relate to me 100%, instead of in bits and pieces.

Going through infertility was an isolating experience, because unless you've gone through infertility, you can't imagine the emotional pain that's involved.  But, I found this big community of IFers on the internet, and whether we had suffered for 1, 2, 3, or 4 years of infertility, whether we ended up conceiving naturally, through IUI, IVF, a donor, or having a child through adoption, we all knew what the suffering felt like.  We could all empathize and connect with one another over the shared pain.

I don't necessarily always find the same to be true with motherhood.  And this is quite possibly because I'm really IN it right now.  I might feel differently once I no longer have babies and toddlers.  But for the past while I've noticed that while it may have seemed at the beginning that there were other mothers like me, as time passes, they're just not anymore. 

Somewhere out there there must be someone like me...

A mother who's gone through infertility, and will deal with that pain everytime she wants another child.

A mother who breastfeeds totally exclusively.  Whose kid has never had a bottle or cup, and didn't start solids until past 6 months.  And who wants it that way.

A mother who takes the advice that "breastmilk should be the main source of nutrition for the first year - or more - of life" seriously, and who doesn't feel the need to give her little baby 3 "solid" meals a day just because certain baby books say she should.  A mother who thinks that perhaps babies' little digestive systems haven't necessarily evolved so that they should be handling a whole lot else besides breastmilk at such a young age, considering thousands of years ago they didn't have "pureed baby food" to feed young babies.

A mother who thought cosleeping was a nice idea, but who couldn't pull it off because she just couldn't sleep with the baby in the room.

A mother who was firmly against cry-it-out, and then ended up with an 8 month old who was a terrible sleeper.  She tried everything, and was forced to use CIO.  She realized that while it may not be her first option, it works, and it doesn't make you a terrible parent.

A mother who has a child who ONLY CAT NAPS, because that's just who he is.

A mother who has a child who was impossible to schedule before 9 months old, who gave up trying, and who really doesn't care anymore, but is still diligent in watching the clock and her child for cues of hunger and fatigue.

A mother who has a child who nursed literally every hour or hour and a half until he was about 5 months old, when he moved to a 2 hour "schedule" (I use that term loosely) and is still there at almost 10 months old.  And who doesn't care.

A mother who doesn't feel the need to wean at 1 year of age just because extended breastfeeding isn't exactly the norm in North America, and who has researched and understands the incredible value of breastmilk and nursing past the age of 1.

A mother whose kid has phases of major separation and stranger anxiety that stop her from functioning like a normal stay at home mom and actually doing chores while her husband is at work.

A mother who is willing to tote her kid around on "long" drives because she thinks babies need to be used to the car, but she doesn't do it in excess and will decline an invitation if she knows that on that particular day, her baby will be cranky during the long car ride.

A mother whose kid detests the playpen, and hysterically screams the moment he's put in it.

A mother who has never left her baby for more than an hour and a half, and only on maybe 4 occasions in his 10 months of life.

A mother who hasn't been outside of her home past 7pm for her child's entire life, because bedtime is important.

A mother who chose (and was able) to put her career on hold (or possibly end it forever) and take a step down in her standard of living in order to stay home with her child(ren) because she knew that nothing could fulfill her more than being the one to take care of her babies full time, every single day.  Even though she held an extremely coveted full-time teaching position, which, where she lives, requires 5 years of university, 2 degrees, and an average of SEVEN YEARS of occasional teaching to achieve after graduation, she gave it up, because she knows that at the end of her life, she won't wish that she had worked more.  But she would wish that she spent more time with her kids.


I'm not saying my way is the only way.  But sometimes it sure would be nice if there was someone out there just like me. 

9 Months Old

At 9 months old, here is where Noah is at:

-On December 23 (9 months and 5 days) he weighed 19lbs 6oz (totally naked).  This is about the 25th percentile.

-He's 30.5 inches tall, which is about 100th percentile

-His head circumference is 19 inches (48.3cm), which is 100th percentile.

-He wears size 3 diapers.

-He wears 12 and 18 month clothing by Carter's (my yardstick).  The 12 month clothing is on the verge of being too small.  Most of the 18 month clothing is a little too big.  We're in the awkward in between stage, since he's 30.5 inches and that's the max height for 12 months and min height for 18 months.

-He has 7 teeth, but his 7th tooth has not grown very much since it popped through.

-He's a very good eater, according to everyone who watches him (they all make comments). He's accepting of so many foods, he opens his mouth well, hardly any food gets on his face... just a good eater.

-He points to everyone and everything with his tiny pointer finger.  And he "shows" you things by holding them up in your direction.  "See??  Look at my toy!!"

-His pincer grasp is getting better.  He picks things up between his thumb and forefinger, it's just not necessarily the tip of his forefinger.  He could still make improvement in this area.  But he doesn't get a ton of chance to practice, and was only presented with the opportunity about a month ago, so I can't really blame him.

-He's still exclusively breastfed (no bottles or cups) except for a dinner of solids, and the occasional snack or taste of food during the day.  Most days he doesn't need anything until dinner, though.

-He nurses usually every 2 hours during the day.  More right now, since I've trying to build my milk supply back up after having the flu for 4 days.

-He is 100% swaddle free, and has been since a few days after he turned 8 months.

-He sleeps very well at night, usually about 11 hours total.  He usually starts nursing to sleep at 7:15, although if he doesn't fall asleep I can put him in bed awake and he'll only cry for about 30 seconds before going to sleep.  He sleeps 9 to 11 hours straight (usually around 10 hours), then nurses and goes back to sleep for a bit.  If he wakes up before 4, I don't get him up to nurse, because I have found that he will STILL wake up sometime in the 4-5:30 range even if I nurse him at 3:45.  He falls back asleep very well if he wakes up in the middle of the night.  In the morning he has no consistent wake up time, but he usually does have a period of wakefulness in the 6-7am range, we don't turn on the lights or get him out of his crib until 7am, so if he wakes closer to 6 he often falls back asleep for a bit.

-Naps are still crap.  A usual day has three 30 minute naps.  We started a half-hearted attempt at nap training, but I'm not very consistent.  It's bad, I know.

-I think he may need to go down to 2 naps a day, because I'm finding it harder and harder to get him to fall asleep before the 3 hour mark.  The problem is that two half hour naps a day is not enough for any child.

-He still uses a soother every time I rock him to sleep, but if he goes to sleep on his own he spits it out (because of crying) and doesn't put it back in.  So he only needs it if I'm rocking him.

-He had his fourth haircut today.

-He had his 4th illness this past week, a stomach bug, but was over it very quickly thanks to breastfeeding.  No such luck for me.

-He's very capable, physically.  He started full-time hands-and-knees crawling and pulling up 2 months ago, so you can imagine how good he is at it now.  He's a great climber, too.

-He's getting better at cruising, but isn't amazing at it.

-He waves!

-He's back to social coughing again - A LOT.  He was doing it way back at around 5 months, but my Dad got him back into it a few weeks ago when he copied him every time he coughed.  He thinks it's hilarious.

-He's very talkative and babbles incessantly, but hasn't connected any words with any actual objects yet.  As far as we can tell, the only word he truly understands is "Up."

-This month he started making an adorable scrunchy face.  He does it often, when he's smiling, whining, whenever.  It's so cute.

-When we click our tongues he copies us, and thinks it's the greatest.

-He never goes in his jumperoo or exersaucer.  He prefers to play with the toys while standing next to it.  Whatever!

-He loves to play peekabo in the mirror, and to watch you make faces at him in the mirror.  This isn't new (he's loved the mirror for a long time), but he's just really really enjoying it this month.

-He still enjoys his jolly jumper, but we don't put him in it very often.  He jumps way too high and hard, and the spring slams shut really hard and he continues to fly past the point where he should have stopped.  It's not dangerous or anything, but sometimes he doesn't like the jolting he gets when that happens.

-He has separation and stranger anxiety, but it's not too bad at the moment.  It seems like it's really bad when he's teething.

-Bathtime hasn't been tons of fun this month.  Some days he hates the actual bath (for whatever reason), some days he's fine.  But everyday is a huge struggle getting him undressed, giving him his vitamin D, getting him dried off, lotioning him (his skin has very dry spots, so he needs to lotion) desitin-ing his bum, diapering him, and getting him dressed again.  He will flip over and bear crawl away so fast (he doesn't like the cold ceramic tile, so he bear crawls... lol).  And he's so strong now, there's really nothing we can do about it.  Justin pretty much has to pin down his upper body while I deal with the diaper.  After that I can dress him as he's sitting and standing.  But getting the diaper on is HARD.

~~~~~~~~~~

This past month has had ups and downs.  Noah reached his peak of separation anxiety this month, and I had many days (some entire weeks) where he was literally glued to me.  I couldn't even stand up without him freaking out.  As a SAHM, this gets very tiring.  I couldn't get anything done, my house was a mess, and I couldn't even go to the bathroom without bringing him with me.  Since he hardly naps, the only time I wasn't concentrating on him was at night when he was sleeping.  It got tough after several long days.

I may have connected increased separation anxiety with active teething, though.  It seems to get worse when he's actually cutting a tooth, and he cut 4 teeth in the past month, including his two front teeth (which are rather large, and I assume painful to cut).  Unfortunately none of his teeth cut at the same time, so it meant a lot of painful days for him.

Noah has also reached the lowest of valleys in napping habits.  3 naps a day, all less than 30 minutes.  This is frustrating, and I haven't been very good about nap training.  There are several reasons for this.  One, I don't enjoy listening to him cry, and oh-boy does he cry when I nap train.  Two, for the past couple of weeks (since I decided to nap train) I've had a very hard time figuring out his optimal awake time, which is key if I'm not "putting" him to sleep.  He's seemed to need awake times of at least 3 hours, but I can't fit 3 hour awake times plus 3 half hour naps PLUS the time it takes for him to fall asleep on his own into our day (3 naps means he has 4 awake times).  It seems to be a time of transition, so maybe my efforts will go better if I cut him down to 2 naps a day.

Furthermore, we both got sick again this month with the stomach flu.  I was laid up for 4 days, and today, day 6, I'm still not feeling great.  Being a nursing mom with the stomach flu really sucks.

There have also been good times this month.  Like when I connected the separation anxiety/crankiness with teething and was able to give him Motrin to avoid him being miserable all day long.  Like the seriously improved night time sleep that has given me my evenings and nights back - uninterrupted!  I've also been sleeping pretty good for the most part.  Very few nights do I lie awake for hours on end, although I do still wake up upwards of 6 times a night - and this is medicated sleep, people.  That's how bad a sleeper I am.  But not being rudely awakened by a crying baby 10 times a night is a joy that every mother should experience.  And that being your NORMAL?  It's fantastic.

There have also been GREAT times this past month.  The hugs and kisses and cuddles from my wonderful son.  The fun games of copy cat that make him smile sooo big.  Chasing after his skinny little naked body as he bear crawls out of the bathroom before bathtime so he can go out and happily play with his toys and stand naked at his baby gate.  Seeing him relax on Daddy's lap in the rocking chair by the front window, watching the snow.  Him really being so happy and well behaved after the teething was over.  Being complimented over and over on what a cute, cheerful kid he is.  Listening to Christmas music, and singing Silent Night to Noah before he goes to sleep.  Just enjoying this wonderful time of the year and being sooooooo thankful that our miracle baby is here to share it with us. 

I just can't even put into words how incredibly in love I am with Noah.  He is the perfect baby for us, the only baby for us.  I honestly can't imagine how empty our lives would be if he wasn't here.  And all the challenges and tiring days don't for a second make me wish anything was different.  He completes my life.  I had this big hole, and now it's overflowing because of this most perfect child. 

I am so full of thankfulness and love, I feel like my heart could burst.  I freakin' LOVE my kid, and I love my life, and I can't imagine things being any different.  THANK YOU God, for blessing us with Noah.


(PS - did you know a post can only have at most 20 labels, and those labels can only have a maximum of 200 characters?  I only know since I surpassed that and needed to delete some of my labels on this post.  What is the purpose of that limit?  Let people label as much as they want!!)

Separation Anxiety

(Noah is about 8 1/2 months old)

I can't remember exactly when Noah's separation anxiety started.  I think it was one of those things that gradually crept up on me.  I do know it's been going on for at least a month.

It started out with some fussing if I put him in the playpen, or if he was on the floor and I walked into the kitchen.

It has progressed to full blown, red-faced screaming as he sadly jumps in the jolly jumper while I shower with the curtain open talking and singing to him as the puddle on my floor gets bigger and bigger.  Lesson learned.  Do not attempt a shower unless he's taking one of his half hour naps.

I can't do anything.  I can't do chores.  I can't make myself something to eat.  I can't even stand up when we've been playing on the floor without him crying and trying to climb my legs.  As soon as he senses I'm about to walk away - even if it's to somewhere nearby where he can still see me - he starts crying.  And the shower thing: I was about 5 feet away from him, looking at him and talking to him, but he apparently knew that I was otherwise incapacitated and couldn't pick him up.  Because normally he loves his jolly jumper.

I do all my housework while Justin is home so he can be with Noah.  Justin isn't always enough for Noah, though.  Sometimes he just needs his Mama.  For example, after his last nap today he woke up crying, as he almost always does.  Justin went and got him and he was okay (not great).  But as soon as he saw me the big pouty lip came out and the eyes welled up and he reached for me.

Just now I went to the kitchen to check on dinner.  We have an open concept house, so I'm still visible when I'm in the kitchen.  Justin was with Noah in the living room, but Noah started whimpering and crawling after me.  When I came back I sent his wheely giraffe toy rolling across the floor to him.  He usually loves that thing, but he knocked it over, pushed it to the side, and crawled into my arms.  "I don't want no stinkin' giraffe, I want my Mama!"

Last week sometime he woke up really early from a nap (after about 20 minutes of sleep, including the time he spent in my arms).  I had just finished making a really nice lunch, and I was frustrated because so many of my meals have been interrupted by having to hold him because he's upset.  So I got Noah from his crib and put him in his jumperoo.  Clearly he could sense that I was frustrated, because he started wailing.  Justin picked him up and tried to calm him down but the wails and crocodile tears continued until I took him in my arms.  This was perhaps not an issue with separation anxiety, but instead an example of how intuitive Noah is, and how sometimes only Mommy will do.  Even when it has nothing to do with boobs.

It's not ALWAYS like this though.  I'd say 30% of the time he's happy enough without me right next to him.  But 70% is a lot of the time.  I can hardly go to the bathroom.  Noah has to come with me and sit on the floor playing with something. 

The playpen?  Forget it.  Not unless I want an automatic meltdown.

It's hard to be a SAHM in a remote little town where there's nothing to do and nowhere to go and be totally glued to your kid for his every waking minute.  And my husband is gone A LOT. 

I'm not going to lie.  About 20% of this post is flat-out complaining.  Being a SAHM is not always easy.  I'm not going to say that I'd rather be a working mom - I wouldn't.  But it's not easy to be alone all day everyday with a cranky baby who needs to be right next to you every second, especially when you don't get to see your husband - or any other adult - much (or at all) several days in a row (like last week) and the previously-mentioned baby barely naps.

The other 80% of me feels very tolerant of this behaviour.  It makes me feel loved, and important.  Noah obviously knows that I am his most important caregiver.  I nurse him all day, I put him to sleep every single time he sleeps, I bathe him every single time he has a bath.  Noah knows that without me, he'd be screwed.  He loves me.  In a funny way, I feel that the separation anxiety means that he appreciates me.

Furthermore, I am fairly certain this is not "put on."  He is literally feeling anxiety.  That's not fun!  I had bad separation anxiety when I was about 4 years old, and I remember it very vividly.  I remember being terrified when I didn't know where my mom or an adult was. One time I ran to my neighbours house panicked because I couldn't find my mom. It turned out she was just upstairs blowdrying her hair, but I was crying and yelling for her and she couldn't hear me so I was convinced she had left the house without me.

Another time we were being babysat by this woman and she left the house and went to the neighbours for some reason.  I was so scared that there was no grown up around so I ran outside and went down the driveway to find her. She ended up getting me in so much trouble and I had to sit in a chair facing the corner.  Needless to say, she never babysat us again. It still makes me feel anxious inside when I think about it! I remember how scared I was running down the driveway to find a grownup and then I got in trouble for it.

So I try not to get annoyed at Noah's separation anxiety, even though it's crippling my life. Because it's obviously very real to him, and I don't want to cause him extra anxiety by acting frustrated or ignoring his cries.  Hopefully he will get past this sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, any coping suggestions are more than welcome!

7 Months Old!!

At 7 months old, here is where Noah is at:


-Noah weighs about 18.5lbs. He was 18lbs 12oz after just eating and with his diaper and sleeper on. His sleeper weighs 5 oz, a dry size 3 diaper weighs 1oz (and his was a little wet, so add at least an ounce). So subtract 7oz there. Even if you don't include the fact that he just ate, that brings him in at, say, 18lbs 5oz. We'll stick with 18 1/2lbs. That's about the 50th percentile.

-He is 29 inches tall, still. That's 100th percentile.

-He's about 10th percentile for "weight for height."

-He wears size 3 Pampers Baby Dry diapers.

-He wears all 12 month clothing and it fits him perfectly. Hopefully we can stick at this size for longer than we were in all the other sizes, since his growth seems to have slowed down due to his age. Every other size got less than 2 months of wear, but he's been in 12 month since he was 5 months. I think we'll make it past the 2 month mark!

-He has 3 teeth - two from when he had just turned 5 months and one he got just before 6 months.

-He's basically exclusively breastfed, still. No bottles or cups. We started solids at 6 1/2 months (rice cereal, bananas, sweet potato, and pears - just a tablespoon or two at night before bed) but he got very constipated so we stopped everything but the occasional tablespoon of pears or prunes (or mixed) once a day. It took him a week and a half for his poops to get soft again (at 7 months 2 days), so we'll see how solids go from here. No rice cereal, though.

-He nurses 7 or 8 times in a 24 hour period.

-He nurses about every 2 hours during the day, sometimes a little shorter depending on how he ate last, sometimes up to 3 hours. I'm not too concerned about timing because he only eats when he's hungry and he stops when he's not.

-We don't follow any sort of Sleep, Eat, Play schedule. Noah doesn't eat huge amounts at once, because once he's not feeling hungry anymore he wants to go play. So sometimes it's sleep, play, eat, play, sometimes it's sleep, eat, play, eat, sleep.... whatever works for us.

-He's very distractable while nursing and when he's done, if he's not feeling cuddly, he literally climbs off of my lap. But sometimes he lies there and we talk to each other and laugh. I love those times.

-He loves to play with my face while he's nursing, especially my mouth. When I bite his fingers he starts giggling around my nipple and loses his latch. It's so adorable. Except when he fish-hooks my lip. Ouch!

-He is still swaddled at night and for all his naps. Since the nights are cooler now I often double wrap him, once in his swaddler and then overtop with a giant receiving blanket. This keeps him warmer and he gets out of it less easily. The swaddler or receiving blanket on their own he gets out of in about 10 seconds flat when he wants to.

-He goes to bed between 7 and 7:45, depending on when he woke up from his last nap. It's usually closer to 7. He wakes up in the morning between 6 and 6:40, but we don't allow him to get out of bed before 7 because the time change is coming up and I do NOT want to have to get up with him at 5am! We just treat early wakings like it's still nighttime until we hit 7am.

-His nighttime sleeping is all over the place at the moment. Throughout his seventh month he's had a couple of great nights where he sleeps almost 11 hours straight, and he's had terrible nights where I'm up over and over. The worst was when I was up with him no less than 15 times one night. In general I'd say he sleeps 6.5-9 hours straight overnight and gets up to nurse once or twice. Probably 3/4 of his nights he eats only once. If he eats twice it's not that he's hungry, he's just kind of struggling with sleeping.

-For most of his seventh month he had four 30 minute naps a day with awake times of about 2 hours. I'm not interested in trying to do anything about this at the moment, and especially not before the time change (when trying to make it to his 7 oclock bedtime will be like staying up until 8 oclock to his little body. He's definitely going to need that fourth nap).

-He gets a soother for all of his naps, but I try not to give it to him much during the rest of the day unless he's really cranky. For awhile I tried giving him a soother more often during the day because I thought maybe it would help him fill his sucking needs so he wouldn't need it at night, but it actually seemed to do the opposite.

-He's a master at army crawling, and has been for over a month.

-He can crawl backwards on his hands and knees, and is almost crawling forward on his hands and knees as well. He can move an arm and a leg forward together, but gets confused after that.

-He can go from a lying down position to a sitting position all on his own, and has gotten pretty smooth at it.

-He's a very good sitter (obviously, since he can even get into that position on his own). But that's old news. He's been sitting for a couple of months.

-He started "walking" holding on to my hands again. He did this at 2 months, but then stopped doing it. He's started up again.

-He objects when you take a toy away and looks for a dropped object some of the time, depending on how interested he was in the toy or the object.

-He has some very babble-y days, and some more quiet days.

-He is starting to close his mouth more the past few days. I know that sounds weird, but when your child constantly has a kind of shocked look on his face (mouth open) and then starts keeping his mouth closed, it's kind of alarming. He seems so much more grown up!

-He recently started tilting his head all the way to the side to look at us and other things. It's so silly:)

-He is getting into everything. It's fun to watch, but it really is a pain. The most annoying part is how he likes to chew on cords, and makes a beeline for them from across the room. No matter how many times I remove him from the area and distract him with a different toy, within 10 seconds he's crawling back over to the cords.

-We had to put our top of the stairs gate up and get rid of all of our "decor" because Noah is such a crazy rascal. We have an open concept house, so baby proofing is challenging. We can't just block off one room and make it baby proofed. Upstairs our kitchen/dining room/living room is all one big room. And downstairs our family room is very difficult because of our entertainment unit and various cords that we're going to have to hide somehow.

-He enjoys crawling all over my lap when we're sitting on the floor.

-He likes to grab everyone's hair, especially Daddy's since Daddy actually lets him.

-He still loves his jolly jumper, but he jumps so high now that the spring snaps shut and he doesn't really like that.

-He loves to jump in your lap.

-He still puts absolutely everything into his mouth, more so than the other babies his age that we spend time around; they look at things before they put them in their mouths. Noah just puts them straight into his mouth.

-He loves other kids. I've forgot to mention this in previous months, but he absolutely loves other kids. Babies, toddlers, whatever. He finds them so interesting to watch and play with. His cousin Elijah, who's exactly a year older than him, is not a fan of this:)

-Sometimes he's cooperative when he's being changed, sometimes he's not. I rearranged his room this month so his change table is in different spot. He no longer has a curtain hanging right beside him that he can grab, so he's not quite as squirmy there. He's probably actually more cooperative now than he was a month ago.

-He loves peekabo, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Head, and Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.

-He doesn't use his playmat ever unless he crawls onto it to chew on the toys while on his tummy.

-He almost NEVER lies on his back, except when he's sleeping.

-He slams his legs around less while he's sleeping, although he does do it. I don't have to pin his legs down after I lay him in bed very often anymore.

-He has started with the separation anxiety. What fun!


Our day is pretty much the same as it has been for the past two or three months. Noah gets up, gets his diaper changed, but isn't hungry for awhile so he doesn't eat for 30-60 minutes. We play upstairs for awhile until about 2 hours has passed, and then Noah goes down for his first nap. This is when I grab a quick shower. Since he only naps for 30 minutes I usually end up finishing getting ready with him playing on the floor of our bedroom.

For the rest of the day it's pretty much awake for 2 hours, sleep for 30 minutes. 3 or 4 naps a day, depending on if something happened to make a fourth nap too hard to fit in. Noah loves running around doing errands with me, and never fusses when we're out. He just loves seeing all the different sights and people. Still, we don't tend to run errands very often because his 18lbs plus our carseat that weighs probably 20lbs is a pain to get in and out of the van. So we only go do errands maybe once a week, if I can help it.

We have tea with Erin and Aubrey once a week (usually Wednesday) and often go visit Granny (my mom) and Grandper (my dad) if he's home in town once a week as well. We haven't been making it to church for awhile now because... well, that's a post on it's own.

Bedtime routine goes boob, solids (if he has them), bath, boob, bed. Whether he has solids or not makes no difference to how long he sleeps overnight, so if we can't fit them in without going to bed too late (since they take forever for Noah to eat) or simply because I don't want to give them to him because I have a lot of milk for Noah to drain before bedtime, then we don't worry about it. Daddy always feeds Noah his solids if he's home, but he goes back to the school to coach from 6:45-9:10 most nights, so he often isn't home for this.
Noah still loves his bath and that's always a nice time for us. After bathtime he gets swaddled up and then nurses right to sleep. Sometimes he'll pop himself off after 8 minutes, often I have to pop him off after 25 to 30 minutes. Then he goes in his crib, sleeping. If he wakes up after awhile it totally depends on him what I have to do. Sometimes he just needs a soother, sometimes he needs a cuddle while still lying down, sometimes I have to pick him up, and sometimes I actually have to rock him to sleep again.

There is no sleep training in our house because Noah doesn't have the temperament for it and it doesn't mesh with my parenting style. Plus, there are so many things that disrupt a baby's sleep (teething, milestones, growth spurts, hunger, separation anxiety, gas, constipation, throwing up, etc) I think I'd just get so frustrated whenever things didn't go perfectly because I had put so much effort into sleep training. I'd rather just go with the flow. We have great nights and we have bad nights, but most nights are somewhere in the middle. And that's okay.

I LOVE being Noah's mom. And I feel so blessed that I am a stay-at-home mom. It's not perfect. Yes, I miss adult interaction sometimes, but I do get together with people throughout the week, and my husband is home from 3 to 6:45 most evenings. And frankly, I was a teacher, so it's not like I had much adult interaction anyway! I'd much rather spend the day with my own child than with somebody else's children.

It's a lot of work being a SAHM. Your house gets a lot dirtier when you're actually there 24/7. I try to spend most of my time with Noah instead of running to household, so I actually end up doing a lot of my chores when Justin is actually home so that I don't have to leave Noah playing alone for hours while I clean the house or fold laundry. But it works for us this way. Noah gets to play with his mom or dad most of the time, Justin doesn't have to do any housework (although he does help with some things out of the goodness of his heart), and I get to spend a lot of time loving my child.

Both Justin and I are so glad I can stay home. It's a lot less money (I couldn't believe it when I calculated how much money we'd be clearing every month if I were to go back to work), but we are all a lot happier for it. I'm happier being the one who takes care of Noah (instead of someone else doing it), Justin is happier because he doesn't have to do half of the housework (he just does the "man chores" like cutting the grass and putting the garbage out to the road), and Noah is happier because he gets to be with me, in his own house, and gets to be on his own schedule in his own timing without trying to fit it in to the ideas of someone else. I couldn't imagine working and then trying to get all the household chores done in the small window of time that I'm actually home, instead of spending time with Noah. I would be extremely unhappy.

Life is great, and my sleeping is improved (although it's the sleep of the drugged). We're doing well at the 7 month mark.

It's the Week Before School, and All Through the House...

Well, I can't say we're not stirring. But this year, the only person whose routine is changing is my dear husband, Justin.

For anyone who started reading my blog more recently, I am/was an elementary school teacher (and my husband is a high school teacher and coach). I went off work in January when I was 30 weeks pregnant because I tore the cartilage in my pubic bone and could barely walk. Luckily I did this while I was AT work, teaching kindergarten gym, reaching for a little brat who was running around hitting his classmates. So I was off on WSIB until my maternity leave started when Noah was born.

Furthermore, I live in the wonderful country of Canada, where the government pays your maternity leave at 60% of your salary for a full year. Yes, it's fantastic. And if I hadn't been on WSIB for the 8 weeks before I gave birth, the government would have paid me 60% of my salary for those 8 weeks because I would have been on disability.

I can't decide whether it seems strange to me that I'm not preparing for another school year. In some ways it's weird, and in other ways it feels completely normal. All I know is that I am so thankful I'm not leaving my 5 1/2 month old while I go back to work.

I would be so depressed and stressed out having to leave Noah and start teaching again. The beginning of the school year is stressful enough without adding in leaving your baby. I would be having anxiety attacks. I would want to quit life.

I feel so blessed and grateful that I can stay home with my baby for a year - and get paid! And I am even more thankful that I can stay home with him even after that. If I didn't know I can be a stay at home mom, every week that passes in Noah's life would just make me more sad, because I'd know that soon enough I'd have to leave him. I can barely leave my baby with my own mother for an hour. And a one year old is still very much a baby in my eyes. I always said, long before I was even married, that I didn't know how I would leave my one year old with someone else and go back to work. It's wonderful to know that I don't have to.

It's not as if we're rolling in the dough over here. If we depend on Justin's salary alone we come up a few hundred dollars short every month. Gas and groceries are just so darn expensive, and there's always SOMETHING that comes up, like wedding presents, birthday presents, car servicing, etc. So his salary alone doesn't quite get us there. But it gets us very close. And he spends his "summers off" training clients to make extra money that we stash away. We're also saving every dollar of my mat leave pay that we can. Between our regular savings and the cash he makes training (about ten thousand a summer), we can make it. We have decided that we will sacrifice, pinch pennies, and pull from our savings when we need to, maybe even making our way into our line of credit (although this is unlikely to happen), so that I can stay home with our kids.

I am thrilled with this arrangement, and so is Justin (his mom went back to work when he was 6 weeks old, even though she didn't need to). But I can't decide whether I think it's weird that I won't be working again until all of our kids are in school full time. I think I'm just happy about it.

The ironic thing is that by the time our kids are all in school full time I definitely don't need to work. In about 3 years Justin will be making as much money as we were making combined before I stopped working. I'll probably go back and work part time, though. But I don't want to work fulltime until my kids are way older. Maybe not until they're out of the house. Or ever. :)

While I can't decide whether the knowledge that I won't be teaching for the next decade or so is weird, I do know that I don't miss it. I think that's a little bit strange. I don't really miss teaching. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, but I just don't miss it. I don't miss my school, I don't miss my staff, I definitely don't miss my boss. I miss the kids a little bit, but I see a lot of them at church. I think I just love being a SAHM so much that it overshadows any "missing" that might occur. Then again, when I was off on WSIB I didn't miss teaching then either. My boss had made my job so miserable I was just so happy to be out of there, even if I was in excruciating pain.

I kind of went off on a tangent here. But my main point is that I am just SO grateful that I can have the privilege of staying home with Noah (and any future children we might have). To leave him would absolutely break my heart, and to be with him all day brings me more joy than I've ever known! (Even though sometimes he drives me nuts at naptime;)