Benefits of returning to work:
- I can wear nice clothes again. I mean, I could’ve worn my nice clothes while on mat leave, but why bother cleaning barf and dog hair off of them unecessarily?
- I can go to the washroom all by myself again, and take my time. No longer do I have to watch that the baby doesn’t fall headfirst into the bathtub while I’m on the toilet (if you saw me, I’d be sitting there leaning over holding onto the back of her pants), or listen for sickening thuds from the other room.
- Today I wrote a note with a pen and nobody was grabbing it while I was writing. Also, all the keys on this computer are intact because nobody has flicked them off with their little fingers. Yet.
- I ate a portobello sandwich with goat’s cheese on a ciabatta bun for lunch, and someone else made it for me. Disadvantage: it was $8.
- I get to ride with one of my oldest friends. Today we talked about pig slaughtering!
- If I need to buy something, I don’t have to dress two people, carry one out the door while she’ s grabbing my sunglasses off of my head and sticking them into my eyes, buckle her into the carseat, and do the same thing in reverse on the way home. I just grab my wallet and step out of my office for a minute.
- Grown-up talk.
- My mom/daycare lady gets the morning poop.
- Nora eats really well at Oma daycare so I worry a lot less about her intake on these days.
- I don’t have the dog whining at me all the damn time.
- There are some pretty fun people working here. Part of me looks forward to the office craziness and missed all of the gossip.
- They give me a substantial amount of money to be here.
Disadvantages of returning to work:
- 5:30 a.m. wake-up.
- I am expected not to smell badly.
- Public washrooms.
- There will be days when I have to work late, or even travel for short periods. I am not looking forward to those days.
- I feel like I’m handing the parenting of my child over to someone else.
- I am worried that Nora will not be happy at daycare. When I left her there last week she cried and cried, until she fell asleep.
- I have to stay awake all day long, and interacting with humans all day is exhausting. Last night I fell asleep on the couch before 9:00.
- Some colleagues are still annoying after all this time.
- Nora is tired by the time I get home, so I don’t get her at her best. She falls asleep at 7:30 so I really only see her for two and a half hours a day.
- Dear god I miss that child.
8/31/11
8/23/11
Happy Birthday to Us
Yesterday my little muffin turned one year old.
I can’t explain to you exactly why that had me feeling maudlin all week. Part of me is excited that she’s a big girl now and is becoming more and more self-sufficient, but the rest of me is worried that I’m losing the baby bit by bit. Also, the one-year mark means that all the fun is over in terms of time spent at home with Nora – in a week I have to hit the pavement and get back to work. I feel like it’s the end of it all, even though I know evenings and weekends will be just as fun as they are now, and that we’ll still have plenty of snuggles and playtime.
Another thing about the one-year birthday is that back when I had a tiny baby, like when Nora was four and five months old, it felt like one year was a million miles away. I really thought that by the time she is a year old my worries about feeding, weight gain, all of that would be solved, and I could just sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labours. Not so. Just when I think we’ve got it all figured out, something happens (gastro, teething, general malaise) and we get set back again – like walking in snow: two steps forward, one step back. She still only weighs barely 19 pounds, which I think is just fine but according to the numbers game, she’s on the small side. She has a delicate frame. It is however true that I can now feed her almost anything. The other night, at her birthday party, she kept helping herself to the basket of baguette slices on the coffee table and I think she put back half a loaf without my noticing. She was standing at the table wearing a Hawaiian lei (would not remove it) with hunks of bread hanging out of her mouth, playing her new casio keyboard. She is a funny one, my kid. On her actual birthday hubby and I took her out for lunch and ordered off the kids’ menu for the first time ever – a pita pizza with mozza and sauce, which she liked quite a lot (she ate about 1/5 of it. The dog helped herself to the remains later on).
Anyway, all to say, I guess when you’re a parent you’re never out of the woods. My new thing is making sure she doesn’t fall and hit her head too much. The other day I made a call to the emergency health line (a fabulous service if you are a parent) which went something like this:
“Hi, I’m calling about my one-year old daughter. She fell off of a cooler and hit the back of her head on the electric baseboard heater and I’m wondering if I should be worried about head injuries.”
“Okay, well, is she bleeding?”
“Well, not from her head. You see, about two hours later she was sitting in my knitting basket and as she made to get out, she smacked her face against the leg of my ironing board and bled everywhere. Now she has a fat lip and I think her gum may be cut.”
“Alright (the nurse said slowly while typing, undoubtedly a quick e-mail to Child Protective Services), does she have any bumps or bruises?”
“ Weeeelll (sigh) not from that fall. She also fell while standing at the edge of the sofa, looking at the dog. She just fell over randomly, and hit the corner of the footstool on her temple. So there is a bit of a blue bump there, yeah.”
And on and on. That was one day. Turns out, after four days of carefully watching her, that she likely doesn’t have any brain damage. My intrepid baby is a bit too fast for her slow-witted mommy, and often I will watch helplessly, slowly, as she falls and injures herself right in front of me. The cooler incident happened as I ran upstairs to get a t-shirt. I was gone thirty seconds, and had left her in the back room (the play room, full of her toys) while I bounded upstairs to change. I heard a horrible BANG and then screaming and there was the scene laid out before me: the cooler on its side, Nora laying across the hallway with her arms out to her sides and her head up against the heater, bawling. Man alive. And she doesn’t yet learn from these mistakes, because while she may not climb that particular cooler again, she climbs everything else within range. I am beginning to see some real advantages to having wall-to-wall plush carpeting in one’s home. Hardwood and laminate are not forgiving. The biggest hazard is footie pyjamas – if they don’t have rubber dots on the bottoms of the feet, they are dangerous. Forget the flame retardants in kids’ clothes, just make sure they have rubberized feet.
Nora has a few new quirks. She has decided to be a stylish lady now, and she motors around the house in her sun hat and random necklaces. Yesterday she put on one of my necklaces and draped it around the back of her neck, so hubby did it up, and she wore it all day. We went out for lunch and I didn’t realize why people were kind of giving us the side-eye. I assumed they thought me negligent for ordering my tiny baby a cheese pizza, but really I’m sure it was the large splashy beaded necklace that got their attention. The other night she was wandering around in her pjs, wearing her orange sun hat and her pink heart-shaped glasses. This was really really cute, but not as cute as when she picked up my camera and made as though she was looking through it and taking pictures (upside down). She looked like a damn tourist. Like a crazy lady tourist. I love it. The real irony of it, however, is that I bought the sunhat to use as an actual sun hat, and while she loves wearing it around, she refuses to wear it outside.
Another quirk: if Nora decides she doesn’t want to eat something, she makes like she’s dramatically barfing, then hands it to me quietly. It’s quite funny. She’ll fake-retch, then gingerly pick up the offending item (either off of her t-shirt or the tray of her highchair) and hold it out for me, as if I should now eat it. Then she will not eat another one of its kind in that meal. When Nora is finished eating, she will mechanically hand each bit of food to the dog, which waits eagerly beside the chair. They are perfect for each other because Rosie is very gentle with baby fingers in her big mouth, and Nora finds it hilarious to jam her hand down Rosie’s toothy gullet.
She got a baby dolly for her birthday. I recommended it as a gift idea to my sister-in-law and she came through with the perfect one, though it had this horrible noisemaker inside that sounded like Chewbacca and scared the crap out of Nora. It actually sounded like a baby screaming and then choking to death. So babydoll had its first surgery after Nora went to bed last night. It has a soother attached to its neck, though, which confuses Nora as she’s never had a soother of her own. She tries to suck the doll’s, which is tiny, and the resulting look on her face is like “what the hell?” Yesterday (day 2 with the dolly) she decided dolly was hungry and fed it a bottle. Sometimes via its mouth and sometimes via its eye, but still – genius right?! She likes to hug the dolly and try to wear the doll’s clothes on her own body, like the doll sock that ended up on her toe. It’s watching her do things like that that makes me realize that while she doesn’t yet talk, she is picking up on everything and understands more than we think.
Speaking of talking, we’ve had some successes in this department but also some regression. There was a time when I swore she said “asha” for the cat and “tick” for stick, but now she is focused on making O sounds. She will pucker her face dramatically and go “OOOOOOOOowwwwww” over and over. She said “atcha” again at the cat this morning (the cat’s name is Sasha) so that’s good, but right now she mostly points – points at everything. And is very very good at making herself understood by pointing. She’ll point at the patio door to go outside, so we go out, then she points at the hanging tomato basket, so we walk over to the tomatoes, then she wants to pick all the green ones. I don’t let her and the she screams. Every day. I let her pick the red ones, which she holds tightly in her hand until her grip gets so tight that she pops the tomato, and then she eats it, seeds and juice dripping everywhere.
Anyway, one year old. Fastest year on record. I have enjoyed most of it and the rest of it made me stronger. I am a different person now – more grey hair, sharper reflexes, etc. I am mother to the cutest little monkey around and I could not be more in love.
I can’t explain to you exactly why that had me feeling maudlin all week. Part of me is excited that she’s a big girl now and is becoming more and more self-sufficient, but the rest of me is worried that I’m losing the baby bit by bit. Also, the one-year mark means that all the fun is over in terms of time spent at home with Nora – in a week I have to hit the pavement and get back to work. I feel like it’s the end of it all, even though I know evenings and weekends will be just as fun as they are now, and that we’ll still have plenty of snuggles and playtime.
Another thing about the one-year birthday is that back when I had a tiny baby, like when Nora was four and five months old, it felt like one year was a million miles away. I really thought that by the time she is a year old my worries about feeding, weight gain, all of that would be solved, and I could just sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labours. Not so. Just when I think we’ve got it all figured out, something happens (gastro, teething, general malaise) and we get set back again – like walking in snow: two steps forward, one step back. She still only weighs barely 19 pounds, which I think is just fine but according to the numbers game, she’s on the small side. She has a delicate frame. It is however true that I can now feed her almost anything. The other night, at her birthday party, she kept helping herself to the basket of baguette slices on the coffee table and I think she put back half a loaf without my noticing. She was standing at the table wearing a Hawaiian lei (would not remove it) with hunks of bread hanging out of her mouth, playing her new casio keyboard. She is a funny one, my kid. On her actual birthday hubby and I took her out for lunch and ordered off the kids’ menu for the first time ever – a pita pizza with mozza and sauce, which she liked quite a lot (she ate about 1/5 of it. The dog helped herself to the remains later on).
Anyway, all to say, I guess when you’re a parent you’re never out of the woods. My new thing is making sure she doesn’t fall and hit her head too much. The other day I made a call to the emergency health line (a fabulous service if you are a parent) which went something like this:
“Hi, I’m calling about my one-year old daughter. She fell off of a cooler and hit the back of her head on the electric baseboard heater and I’m wondering if I should be worried about head injuries.”
“Okay, well, is she bleeding?”
“Well, not from her head. You see, about two hours later she was sitting in my knitting basket and as she made to get out, she smacked her face against the leg of my ironing board and bled everywhere. Now she has a fat lip and I think her gum may be cut.”
“Alright (the nurse said slowly while typing, undoubtedly a quick e-mail to Child Protective Services), does she have any bumps or bruises?”
“ Weeeelll (sigh) not from that fall. She also fell while standing at the edge of the sofa, looking at the dog. She just fell over randomly, and hit the corner of the footstool on her temple. So there is a bit of a blue bump there, yeah.”
And on and on. That was one day. Turns out, after four days of carefully watching her, that she likely doesn’t have any brain damage. My intrepid baby is a bit too fast for her slow-witted mommy, and often I will watch helplessly, slowly, as she falls and injures herself right in front of me. The cooler incident happened as I ran upstairs to get a t-shirt. I was gone thirty seconds, and had left her in the back room (the play room, full of her toys) while I bounded upstairs to change. I heard a horrible BANG and then screaming and there was the scene laid out before me: the cooler on its side, Nora laying across the hallway with her arms out to her sides and her head up against the heater, bawling. Man alive. And she doesn’t yet learn from these mistakes, because while she may not climb that particular cooler again, she climbs everything else within range. I am beginning to see some real advantages to having wall-to-wall plush carpeting in one’s home. Hardwood and laminate are not forgiving. The biggest hazard is footie pyjamas – if they don’t have rubber dots on the bottoms of the feet, they are dangerous. Forget the flame retardants in kids’ clothes, just make sure they have rubberized feet.
Nora has a few new quirks. She has decided to be a stylish lady now, and she motors around the house in her sun hat and random necklaces. Yesterday she put on one of my necklaces and draped it around the back of her neck, so hubby did it up, and she wore it all day. We went out for lunch and I didn’t realize why people were kind of giving us the side-eye. I assumed they thought me negligent for ordering my tiny baby a cheese pizza, but really I’m sure it was the large splashy beaded necklace that got their attention. The other night she was wandering around in her pjs, wearing her orange sun hat and her pink heart-shaped glasses. This was really really cute, but not as cute as when she picked up my camera and made as though she was looking through it and taking pictures (upside down). She looked like a damn tourist. Like a crazy lady tourist. I love it. The real irony of it, however, is that I bought the sunhat to use as an actual sun hat, and while she loves wearing it around, she refuses to wear it outside.
Another quirk: if Nora decides she doesn’t want to eat something, she makes like she’s dramatically barfing, then hands it to me quietly. It’s quite funny. She’ll fake-retch, then gingerly pick up the offending item (either off of her t-shirt or the tray of her highchair) and hold it out for me, as if I should now eat it. Then she will not eat another one of its kind in that meal. When Nora is finished eating, she will mechanically hand each bit of food to the dog, which waits eagerly beside the chair. They are perfect for each other because Rosie is very gentle with baby fingers in her big mouth, and Nora finds it hilarious to jam her hand down Rosie’s toothy gullet.
She got a baby dolly for her birthday. I recommended it as a gift idea to my sister-in-law and she came through with the perfect one, though it had this horrible noisemaker inside that sounded like Chewbacca and scared the crap out of Nora. It actually sounded like a baby screaming and then choking to death. So babydoll had its first surgery after Nora went to bed last night. It has a soother attached to its neck, though, which confuses Nora as she’s never had a soother of her own. She tries to suck the doll’s, which is tiny, and the resulting look on her face is like “what the hell?” Yesterday (day 2 with the dolly) she decided dolly was hungry and fed it a bottle. Sometimes via its mouth and sometimes via its eye, but still – genius right?! She likes to hug the dolly and try to wear the doll’s clothes on her own body, like the doll sock that ended up on her toe. It’s watching her do things like that that makes me realize that while she doesn’t yet talk, she is picking up on everything and understands more than we think.
Speaking of talking, we’ve had some successes in this department but also some regression. There was a time when I swore she said “asha” for the cat and “tick” for stick, but now she is focused on making O sounds. She will pucker her face dramatically and go “OOOOOOOOowwwwww” over and over. She said “atcha” again at the cat this morning (the cat’s name is Sasha) so that’s good, but right now she mostly points – points at everything. And is very very good at making herself understood by pointing. She’ll point at the patio door to go outside, so we go out, then she points at the hanging tomato basket, so we walk over to the tomatoes, then she wants to pick all the green ones. I don’t let her and the she screams. Every day. I let her pick the red ones, which she holds tightly in her hand until her grip gets so tight that she pops the tomato, and then she eats it, seeds and juice dripping everywhere.
Anyway, one year old. Fastest year on record. I have enjoyed most of it and the rest of it made me stronger. I am a different person now – more grey hair, sharper reflexes, etc. I am mother to the cutest little monkey around and I could not be more in love.
8/7/11
All Growed Up
Recently we passed a couple of minor emotional milestones in Nora's continuing progression from baby to toddler. We went to visit Sue, Nora's new daycare provider, to check out the scene and get the ball rolling on paperwork. Sue is a very nice lady from the area whose three girls I used to babysit (they are now aged 26, 29 and 33 – I didn't really babysit that last one per se, she just wasn't old enough to do it herself), and Nora seemed to enjoy being there. Sue's got some fun toys that we don't have, so now I'm off the hook a bit where that's concerned. The other kids were all pretty sweet, though man boys are rough, and I feel pretty good about bringing Nora there three days a week. She will spend Mondays with Oma and Grandpa, Tuesdays to Thursdays with Sue and the gang, and then Fridays with Oma and Grandpa again. She seemed so tiny when I brought her in there to play with the other kids but she keeps up in her way, and found her footing pretty quickly. Sue didn't foresee any problems. I will bring her one more time before heading back to work, and I'll leave her for a few hours to see how it goes. Fingers crossed.
Later on that same afternoon, my good friend came over to take some of our baby things off our hands. She is due in November and we offered up all of Nora's old equipment (the Bumbo, the carseat, the beloved Jolly Jumper, the excersaucer) for the new little guy, with the agreement that if Nora ever gets a baby brother or sister, or cousin even, we will take it back. She also took a good pile of baby clothes, and the process of going through every piece was bittersweet. It felt like so long ago that we used them, yet so recent as well. Some of them are unbelievably tiny, but others look like they still could work today (I know they won't – I bought some new sleepers last week which are already tight in the toes). My friend said she'd write my name in them all but I told her I will remember them, and I will. I will remember every single piece, fondly.
Also in the past week Nora started misbehaving. Up to now she has been a perfect sweet angel. She has a bit of a temper but it passes quickly, and she's usually fairly compliant and reasonable. Lately, however, she has decided she does not want her cereal at breakfast, and spits it out at me. I am not impressed. I reprimand her and let her know it's not acceptable behaviour but I think she thinks she is all hilarious. I hope it's not a trend. Her other misbehaviour is more of a developmental inevitability – she now climbs everything, and is FURIOUS when you pull her off. She can climb her wee chair (she has stood up on it, not a great idea) and the Rubbermaid in the kitchen, and is working on climbing the bread maker and the sofa. She is unstoppable in her determination. It would all be fine, except for the fact that she doesn't know how to get down, and is indignant when you try to teach her to go down backwards. Someday, under closed conditions (i.e. a short distance, pillows on the floor), I'm just going to let her fall to see what happens. Maybe then she'll decide for herself that going down on her tummy is a better idea.
Before supper tonight, I had a headache and lay down for 20 minutes in the hope it would pass without Tylenol. While I was upstairs, apparently Nora and her dad were in the kitchen, where her forehead just reaches the lower sill of the open window. She was hollering nonsense out the window, in the baby version of 'HEY YOU THERE! GET OFF MY LAWN!' - to nobody in particular. Hubby said all the neighbours likely heard it - wee Nora telling them what's what, loudly. Who knows, maybe she was yelling at the cat? Birds? Passing cars? She has found her voice for sure – once she learns to speak English, I'm sure I'm in for an earful. She kind of talks constantly, to me, to Rosie, to the cat, to herself…she's trying it all out for sure.
As of tomorrow I am no longer on maternity leave; I am on vacation. Technically I should be returning to work, because I took a bit of extra time at the beginning of my leave, but I just could not bear to go back just yet. I know it's only another three weeks, but every one of those days is important to me – I need to adjust the daily routine quite a lot before I can subject myself, and Nora, to the new reality. I had to take a bite out of my vacation stockpile, if only to get the landmark first birthday out of the way. Emotionally I am not prepared – either for going back to work OR for my baby to be one year old already.
Anyway, I don't want this post to become maudlin. Before I go back to work, I still look forward to time at the lake, hubby's two-week vacation, a roller derby, a party with some of my favourite people, a wee birthday party for Nora, a possible trip to Montreal with my sister-in-law, a new deck outside of my bedroom, and quality time with my babe.
I am going to wring everything out of this three weeks that I possibly can, before we all have to grow up and get moving.
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