In Which My Birthdaycation Is Somewhat Interrupted By Motherhood

Tags

birthdays, motherhood, mothers, parenthood

My mother is down visiting for our birthdays (I was born the day before her birthday, possible the only time in my life I have evinced great timing) and it’s been nice.

Owl is completely enthralled with her/her Samsung tablet, and demands her constantly, leaving me free to move about the house unencumbered in a way that I have not experienced in two and a half years.

I took a couple of days off of work, which was nice because I’m just SO TIRED. Now that I am working five days a week AND the post-Christmas puppy season is at its height, I had been really scraping the bottom of the barrel for energy lately.

I’m not feeling overly rested, because Owl has taken to waking up at five forty five in the morning lately, but I have at least had time to sit and not work and not train. It’s a really nice change.

My birthday itself was not all it could have been, though.

After three straight days of Owl in the house, even my mother was beginning to get her fill of “MORE PUZZLE, NANA. WATCH DAT VIDEO, NANA!”

We planned to drop him off at daycare and have a mother daughter day shopping.

It’s not that I didn’t want Owl around on my birthday. I love him and his company. But motherhood and fun birthday celebrations don’t really go together well.

Yeah, about that…

Twenty minutes after I dropped him off, Daycare Lady called and said that Owl was crying for me and she thought he might have a fever. Since Owl NEVER cries for me at daycare and since Daycare Lady hardly ever calls to ask me to come get him, I went right out there.

So we lugged Owl to the mall with us. He seemed perfectly fine, if clingy, and the thermometer didn’t register a fever. But anyone who has tried shopping with a toddler will agree with me that it is not the same experience.

Twice I had to leave my mother in a store to guard the things we had set aside in a change room for me and carry Owl halfway across the mall to one of the TWO restrooms.

We had to interrupt our shopping for his midday nap, and then wrestle him back into coat and shoes to continue it once he woke up.

The simplest exchange between my mother and me sounded like this:

“Oh, dear, I think that looks, Owl, don’t do that, come over here please, thank you. Yes, dear, I think that it looks, Owl, don’t pull on your mother like that.”

“Yeah, it feels comfortable but the material is, no, Owl, honey, I can’t pick you up right now, Mommy needs to take this shirt off. Here, do you think I should try the, no, honey, fingers aren’t for eating.”

“Do you want me to get a larger Owl, stop that, you’re going to knock me over.”

and so on.

By the time we got home, I had a new outfit and an ottoman that would double as a toy chest for Owl, so it was ultimately a successful day, but we were so wiped that PH and I cancelled our plans to go to a movie.

Taking my exhausted mother and saying “Okay, can you put him to bed for us, thanks, bye!” seemed a little too cruel.

So instead we stayed home and went to bed early.

That’s a MOTHERHOOD birthday, that is!

The next day was my mother’s birthday, and it went better. I dropped Owl off at daycare again and he was just fine. Mum and I registered my business license at the town hall, went to Chapters, went to lunch, downloaded and played my cousin’s game Diamond Find (a fun little speed-reading choose-your-own-adventure which is filled with his quirky humour).

We organized Owl’s toy chest, and put on a load of laundry.

It was a good day.

I like this not working thing. Yes, it’s exhausting dealing with Owl all day, but it beats trying to meet people’s expectations in the real world.

Mum leaves tomorrow. Next… Disneyland!

The real world can suck it for ONE MORE WEEK.

In Which Carol Contemplates Turning 30 And Makes A Desperate Plea For Help

Tags

age, birthdays, cleaning, organization, turning 30

I am nearly thirty years old.

That’s WEIRD.

30 has never been a scary age for me. 20 freaked me out, because I always thought of myself as child-like and 20 was a decidedly ADULT age. But once I had hit that ominous level of adulthood, 30 just seemed like a minor transition.

It helps that I feel like my life is somewhat on track. At this age I hoped to be married with a child, and I am. I hoped to be a dog trainer, and I have not only trained service dogs, but have just started my OWN DOG TRAINING BUSINESS.

But I’m still leaving my 20s, and there are some things I haven’t done.

Some people make a “30 things to do before 30” list. I didn’t do that, mostly because I:

a) couldn’t think of 30 things

b) never got around to it

c) knew that I wouldn’t be able to achieve them, anyway

I would have included items such as “become a published author” and “find a hair style that doesn’t make me look fat or like I have no ears” and it’s hard to achieve the near-impossible within a limited time frame.

So then I thought I’d do a “30 posts til 30” thing, where I reflect on various aspects of my twenties, getting older, etc… but that would have had to start on Dec 30th.

But I DID make posts on those days, so maybe it still counts?

Anyway, today is a combination of New Year’s Resolution/Nearly 30 post.

I decided what I wanted for my 30th birthday. 

A CLEAN HOUSE.

And I don’t mean just a newly-scrubbed house. We’ve done that before. It just gets dirty again.

Our big problem is that we have a small house and a lot of STUFF. We also have very few ways of organizing that stuff. Hence our entire house has basically turned into a disorganized heap, with tunnels cut through it for us to be able to pass from one mess to another.

I may have some slight hoarding tendencies.

I also have difficulty with making somewhere LOOK clean. I understand the concept of CLEANING. I rub it until the dirt comes off. I can CLEAN.

But I can’t seem to make things LOOK clean.

Meanwhile, there are some people who walk into a room, rearrange a few things, and presto! The place looks immaculate. I watch and gape and am like “SHOW ME YOUR SECRETS.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be a teachable skill. When I ask people how they did their magic they just say things like “I moved some stuff”. I posted the question on message boards and got useless answers like “make it part of your routine to do certain things daily”.

So the only answer I can think of is to just get rid of the stuff that’s making my place messy.

Really, what I need are shelves and storage containers (we have limited floor space but a lot of unused wall space and a big storage area under the stairs), but we’re tapped out for money right now. My work has now cut me down to 17 hours a week, which doesn’t even really cover daycare. I’m the ONLY one with cut hours, too.

That’s so good for my self esteem.

ANYHOO,

I need to declutter and organize.

What better time to purge my life of old things but the time before my transition to age 30? Like a butterfly crawling from a cocoon I will shed the detritus of my 20s and emerge as a totally new and tidy self.

Or something.

The only thing is that this is a completely impossible and overwhelming task to contemplate, so I will have to enlist some help from friends.

I hope there’s somewhere out there who wants to go through my old clothes with me. Preferably one of those magic poof-it’s-clean folk.

If any of you have organization tips, now would be a great time to share them. 

Bobble-Head Babby Is Nearly One and I Am FLIPPING OUT

Tags

11 months, babies, birthdays, child development

I have an update on the sleeping situation, as well as the next Twilight post, coming down the pipe, but today Babby is 11 months old, so I want to talk about that.

Ahem.

ELEVEN MONTHS? WHAT THE HELL?

WHERE DID THE TIME GO??

WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO FOR HIS BIRTHDAY???

HOW CAN HE EVEN HAVE A BIRTHDAY; HE’S JUST A NEWBORN BAAAAAAAAAAAAAABY!

Good news: The sign for milk has reappeared with avengeance. Babies are strange.

He had a well-baby this past month and we discovered that he is 18 lbs, and still in the 15th percentile for weight. That’s good, it means he’s holding his own. Maybe not making any insane strides in the weight department, but growing at a normal pace.

His length is dirt-average, coming in at 50th percentile.

His massive melon head is in the 85th percentile.

That’s right: 15th, 50th, and 85th.

So basically, he has a skinny little body under a massive head. Like a lollipop. Or a bobble-head toy.

It means that one friend’s 3 month old is only 3 pounds away from surpassing my nearly-one year old, and another friend’s son has left Babby in his dust, by hitting 19 pounds at the 6 month mark.

But don’t we all wish our babies could stay small for longer? So I don’t mind.

I like him just the way he is.

But holy crap, I need to do something for his birthday, and I have no clue what to do.

If he were older, I would throw a kid-centric party at a local indoor play place, or perhaps a miniature train ride place or similar. But Babby isn’t really old enough to enjoy play grounds, and most of my B.C. friends don’t have kids, so it would mostly be a bunch of adults standing around in a place that had far too many clowns on the wall for any normal human to feel comfortable.

So then I think about throwing a more adult-centric party, because after all, isn’t this more a celebration of PH and I surviving the first year than an actual party for Babby? HE doesn’t know that he’s going to be a year old.

But some of my friends do have small children, and it seems weird to throw a first birthday that is absolutely no fun for kids.

Then there’s the matter of sheer volume of guests.

I’m the sort of person who likes to have one cohesive group of friends whom I see regularly. However, between my friends from my old work, PH’s friends from his old job, a fight between those friends from PH’s old job (resulting in half of them not speaking to the other half, and us caught in the middle), and a couple of old friends from our university days who now live out this way, we have multiple groups of friends, some of whom don’t know each other, and others who (even more awkwardly) aren’t speaking to each other. All of these friends fawn over Babby and would expect to be invited to his birthday. 

Oh, and neighbours who invited us to THEIR son’s first birthday, and are expecting us to return the favour.

Luckily, Babby never seems to get overwhelmed or overstimulated by large numbers of people. He thrives on it (how did we end up with an extrovert? HOW?). So despite the baby-book warnings of keeping parties small, Babby really wouldn’t mind a massive party.

Problem: Our living room is tiny. We had seven friends over last night and you couldn’t walk through the room comfortably once everyone was sitting down. Legs everywhere. A part with

Our complex does have a “party” room, which is really just a big empty room near the pool with a playground outside. We could reserve it for the day, open up the doors, and let everyone come to us. The kids could play in the pool or the playground, and the adults could stand around and talk.

But then that leads to awkward standing-around-and-making-conversation situations, which, as an introvert, I find exceedingly trying. I would probably spend the whole time stressing over whether everyone was having a reasonably good time, and trying to share myself around between three or four different groups of people, who would probably be standing around in odd bunches.

Or we could reserve a table at a local restaurant. Babby loves eating out, and is always well behaved. It would put a set time limit on the party (long enough to eat), and people would be able to just sit down and converse with their neighbours.

That would be good.

But that isn’t much fun for the few kiddies (average age about 4) who would probably attend, and then what about cake and presents? Would a restaurant let us bring in a separate birthday cake?

HELP, FOLKS.

HELP.

Oh, and as a separate issue, as he approaches one I am finding “Babby” to be a less and less appropriate nickname for him. I think I need to either out his real name, or adjust to a more personality-based (as opposed to age-based) handle for him. Any thoughts? Suggestions?

Grown Up

Tags

birthdays, vacations, Whistler

My last days of being 28

I’m TWENTY NINE YEARS OLD today.

I am married. I have a baby. I have a Beloved Dog and an Inexplicably Loved Cat. I have a house.

I just found out that one of my posts is going to be syndicated on BlogHer.

I don’t have a job.

All in all, I think I’m doing pretty well, eh? Better than last year.

Perfect Husband is getting baseboards installed, but he couldn’t resist giving me a “real” present, so on Wednesday I got whisked to Whistler, where we stayed at a dog friendly hotel with a fireplace  and a soaker tub (PH knows his audience) and then went on a baby-friendly sleigh ride featuring hot chocolate at the half-way mark.

It was lovely.

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Whistler is fantastically dog-friendly. Makes me wish I lived there, instead of here. We walked our Beloved Dog around town, including into the Whistler branch of PH’s company (by which I mean the company he works for; he doesn’t own a company). We got a tour of the office and half the people there had dog cookies on their desk, so it was a great day for the dog, too. We visited some shops, too – also dog-friendly!

Babby was delightfully well behaved. He smiled happily at everyone while we explored and then dozed off on the sleigh ride. Perfect Husband and I are loving Four Month Old Babby. Much less screamy.

Except at night. He made up for his angelic behaviour all day by waking up every hour all night long. C’est la vie.

The hotel room had a basket full of goodies. While I was settling Babby down with some booba, Perfect Husband looked at the price list.

“My parents never let me eat stuff out of the minibars in hotels,” I told him, “they said the stuff was always ridiculously overpriced.”

“Same here. They were right! Sixteen dollars for 375 mL of wine! The water is $1.75! The Mars bars are $1.80 each!”

We looked at the chocolate bars.

“…Guess what?” said PH.

“What?”

“We’re grown ups now.”

The chocolate was delicious.