"I know a girl who just had a baby.."

Hi Friends,

Anyone who has ever had a baby can most likely relate to the following comment:

"I know a girl who just had a baby. You guys should hang out, you can be 'Mum Friends'"

While people make these comments with the best of intentions, I can't help but feel a little put off by the implication that comes along with them. Let's just suppose I turn the tables and say "Hey _____, I know a girl. She has a job. You guys should hang out, you can be 'Work Friends'". Nevermind that her idea of a good time is a $400 mani/pedi followed by a gluten-free, vegan, low-cal no-carb $35 salad, and yours is checking out the ball game from the nose bleeds and grabbing a $4 slice of greasy stadium pizza. You both work, therefore you will make great friends.

That being said, as a (stay-at-home) mum, I feel it is important to have friends who are mums, because there are some facets of mummyhood that only those on the "inside" can understand and/or sympathize with. However, these friends would ideally be people who you would want to hang out with regardless of their mum status. A friend who happens to be a mum vs. a Mum Friend.

I spend a good chunk of the day strolling the streets and frequenting local parks, libraries and early years centres and I will admit, I get excited when I see someone else pull up with a stroller. I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting people to chat with (and potentially make friends with). However, as the overwhelming chaos of new mummyhood settles down and K enters into toddlerhood, I've come to realize that simply giving birth to a tiny human does not make you and I automatic blood sisters (as society would have us believe).

I know it may come as bit of a shock to some, but all types of people reproduce. 

Gasp! I know, unbelieveable right?

So Shelley, over in HR, with the glasses and her strange cat obsession... yeah, she could have a baby in nine months. Will having a baby strapped into that stroller (vs. the 2 cats she usually pushes around) make her any less weird? Maybe... but maybe not.

However, as a mum, I also realize that making concessions comes with the territory. So, for example, when I'm at the early years centre and Shelley wheels up, I will smile and make small talk because K is having a fun time at the water table with Calico. The conversation is unlikely to continue when K loses interest and b-lines for the building blocks. However, next week when we see them again, I may ask her how Cal's doctor's appointment went and if they figured out where that rash came from (my guess, the cats). So I suppose one could say we would be 'Mum Friends'.

Friends, only because we are mums.

While this type of friendship is better than no adult interaction, it is unlikely to be a very fulfilling friendship. I would be unlikely to go to Shelley for advice or opinions on anything outside the realm of the early years centre. Shelley is not going to help me feel any less lonely during naptime on Tuesday afternoons, nor is she going to provide advice or perspective on my constant flip-flopping between wanting to stay at home with K and wanting to rejoin the workforce.

Like all friendships, a friendship with another mum takes time to develop. Sometimes you hit it off, sometimes not. The one advantage is that you have your tiny humans as an icebreaker, and also an easy escape if things aren't going well.

So while the gesture of introducing me to the newest mum on your block is much appreciated, just remember that we mums are people first, and like most people we become friends with people, not statuses.

Until next time my friends!

- A

K- "Hey mum, how about her (points to iPhone screen)? She looks pretty cool..."
Me- "She does seem pretty cool, doesn't she?  ;) haha"

Dirt vs. Toddler

Hi Friends,

Welcome to Fall!

It's official, it has arrived. Fall has always been my favourite season. As a little girl, I loved the back-to-school excitement that came with fall. As a teen, I loved the back-to-school shopping that came with back-to-school, that came with fall. As a university student, I loved the cool weather that somehow necessitated unecessary back-to-school shopping, that came with back-to-school, that came with fall. Now as a mum, I love... not having to slip and slop a bottle of sunscreen on my wriggly toddler every time we leave the house. Oh! and Pumpkin Spice Lattes (controversial colouring and all... since I'm pretty sure the insane amount of sugar will kill me first).

It's the simple things.

This fall, while enjoying the simple things, I'm making sure to not ignore the complex. I find the more time I spend with K, the more I realize how overwhelming the complex things in life can be for our little guys. Just this morning, after noticing that there were more food particles on the floor than on our breakfast plates, I busted out the broom and dustpan. K and I went to town for about 10 minutes, sweeping, scooping, spilling, sweeping, scooping, spilling, sweeping... Hey! Where are you going with the dustpan you little wiener? We weren't very efficient, but we had fun. When K had moved on to bigger and better things, I decided to grab the vacuum out of the closet and make an honest attempt at floor hygiene. I turned it on VRROOOMM, K took off. Nervously peeking out from around the corner I could see that while he was interested, he was clearly overwhelmed. Two things came to mind: 1) It does seem like an unnecessary amount of noise to accomplish the same task as the gentle swish, swish of the broom and 2) I really need to vacuum more.

While vacuums and brooms share a similar goal, there are times when one just makes more sense than the other. For instance, sweeping the shag carpet under our dining table just doesn't fly (don't even get D started on the fact that we have a shag carpet under our table). Recognizing that I had encountered a teachable moment,  I shut off the vacuum and coaxed K out of his room (I may or may not have bribed him with a cookie). First, I let him play with the cord, and then the little clips on the dirt canister, and then finally I showed him the on/off switch (he loves switches more than cookies). He flicked it on... VRROOOOMM but this time he didn't run away, he looked up at me and smiled (such a smug little grin). Then he proceeded to turn it off and on and off and on, fifty-two million times. I was proud of K and I was proud of me. I could've just continued vacuuming, leaving him to cower in the door way and/or retreat into the safety of his bedroom, or I could've shut er' down and called it day (surely I'll have some K-free time sometime in the next few months.. right?). But I didn't. I chose the teachable path (and maybe, just maybe, I'll get a 2 year old vacuuming prodigy out of it.. fingers crossed haha). 

But in all seriousness, the complex things in life can be noisy and fast, and sometimes just downright scary. While there may be slower, quieter, safer-seeming alternatives, it's our job as parents to equip our little guys with the skills needed to forge through the world with confidence. We need to not only recognize these complex moments, objects, relationships, and events, but demonstrate how to break them down into approachable, achievable pieces so that in life our little people will be able to do the same. Today may have just been the simple battle of dirt vs. man, but tomorrow it could be interacting with a bully on the playground, in ten years it could be navigating public transit alone, in twenty years it could negotiating world peace. The thing is, we don't know where life will take our kids. What we do know is that, while we won't be with them all the way, we are with them now. So while you enjoy those simple things, make sure to also make the most of those fleeting (teacheable) moments fellow mums (and dads).

Until next time my friends,

-A

K and the Shark

A Marriage of Firsts

Hi Friends,

Today is K's 18 month birthday. It's hard to believe that I've had an entire year and a half to hug and kiss and s(mother) him!

On Saturday, K, D and I were delighted to participate in the wedding of two of our closest friends. At just 18 months, K made his wedding party debut and, despite the chilly weather, marched that wedding aisle like a pro. Those 20ft of footsteps filled me with a mummy-pride that I can't even describe! Now I know why my mum always cheered and cried and clapped and celebrated so loudly at seemingly unimpressive milestones. As a mum, every "first" feels like an Olympic gold medal performance. While sometimes I feel that K hasn't changed one bit since we brought him home from the hospital, moments like this...

Walking down the aisle like a big boy!

make me realize that our teeny tiny little guy is, in fact, growing into such the little man.

As exciting as the afternoon was, with D as the MC (master of ceremonies, or "master corporal" as he preferred to be called) and myself a bridesmaid, Saturday also brought about another important first for our family, K's first sleepover sans parents!

With K at his Nana and Poppa's house and D and I on the dance floor, it's a toss up for who had the better Saturday evening. However, based on the number of adult beverages and late night tacos consumed on our end, I think it's safe to say that K probably had the better Sunday morning.

Good times with Great Friends (photo cred. J Fob)

With sleepover #1 in the books, I can't wait to get back into a date night routine with D. As parents to a toddler it has been too easy to let our alone-time fall by the wayside. However, watching the bride and groom's first dance on Saturday reminded me that it's important to have moments like that, moments when you're so captivated by your partner that everyone else in the room disappears. However, a disappearing audience is generally not advisable (nor possible) when your audience is 18 months old, which is why we will be prioritizing arrangements for some toddler-free time. 

It may have taken us a year and a half to get there, but D and I are finally ready to loosen up the parent reigns a little, tiny bit. I know some of my mum friends are probably shaking their heads right now thinking, my goodness how could you have gone so long without a night alone? But I would imagine that for every one of those mums, there's another one thinking, my goodness I can't even imagine leaving my little one overnight yet. So like all things mummy, I've done what feels right for me and D and K, and I would advise everyone else to do the same!

Until next time my friends,

-A

The best part of sleepovers without Mummy...
next day hugs! (photo cred. J Fob)

An Heir and a Spare

Hi Friends,

This week's announcement that Will and Kate are expecting Baby #2 left me feeling kind of blah. While I'm super excited to witness Kate, once again, transform into the classiest, most stylish baby bump-sporting mum-to-be, I can't help but feel a smidge of jealousy at the speed with which her and Will got that second baby "on board".

Now that K is 1 1/2, I've been getting a lot of "So when is the next one coming?", "Are you planning on another one soon?", "I think K wants a baby brother or sister, you should get on it.". I overheard an old man at Pizza Hut the other day straight up tell D "He's old enough now, I think it's about time for another." I sat in the booth a few tables away thinking to myself. "For real old man?"

Who says that?! Let alone to a stranger.

What frustrates me the most about these comments, is not that people are making them (although that is annoying)... but that we completely agree! Unfortunately yelling "We're trying!" into their faces is not an socially acceptable reply to their comments (although I think it should be).

Maybe it will come as a shock to some people that we have, indeed, thought about expanding our family. No, strike that, we have been trying to expand our family. We were lucky with K, we didn't have to try very hard at all. I think we took for granted the complexity that is baby-making. Now six months in, I'm beginning to resent the feelings my past self had regarding getting pregnant. I've come to the realization that it's not always the "walk in the park" my mother warned me about in high school. However, in her defense, with 4 under 5, I'm pretty sure she just had to think about being pregnant and it happened for her and my dad (we WERE conceived via telepathy, right guys?).

Anyway, I have a new appreciation for anyone who has struggled or is struggling with the baby-making process. While I can't speak for the male part of the equation, as the female player I am constantly managing different types of guilt. On top of the initial guilt I feel each month for not getting pregnant, I have had the added guilt for not staying pregnant, and most of all as a mum to a happy, healthy little boy, a special guilt for feeling guilty at all. Should I really being feeling anything but happy and thankful that I already have the most perfect little boy to hug and kiss and (s)mother?

One look at K and the answer is clear, definitely not. I'm not going to lie, the last few months have been hard and really took a toll on my identity as a sucessful stay at home mum (isn't stay-at-home mum synonmous with productive baby-making machine?). However, watching K grow and change into the sweetest little boy, I've come to realize that my success as an at-home mum is not tied to the number of babies in my care or my uterus having a no-vacancy sign. Succeeding as a mum (of any type) is about raising happy children and judging by the smile on my little man's face (as he eats his grilled cheese sandwich) I think I'm doing all right.

Baby-making can be tough. Please keep this in mind when contemplating a seemingly harmless comment, as you never really know where the other person is at. Trust me, your comment will never ever be the "ah ha" moment someone needs to start thinking about family planning... ever. That being said, for all those Nosey Nellies out there... with K we have our "heir", the "spare" will come along when he/she is meant to, but for now I'm wholeheartedly enjoying my 1 1/2 year old.

Until next time my friends,

-A

Mummy and "The Heir" visiting her and Daddy's Alma Mater

Til Death Do Us Part.

Hi Friends,

I've been on a crazy book reading bender the last few weeks. I'm not sure if Facebook has lowered my entertainment threshold significantly, or if they really were the "best books I've read in forever", but I just couldn't put them down! D attempted to keep up, but the 20 minutes he could dedicate to pleasure reading every night before bed, couldn't hold a candle to the 2hrs I got during K's naps, and the "just 3...0 more pages..." I could justify each night, that took me into the wee hours of the morning (it was nothing 3 cups of coffee couldn't deal with the next day).

Anyway, the most recent book I crushed was "Water for Elephants". I'm not sure why I put off reading this book for so long. I don't know if I was turned off by the circus setting or maybe I just couldn't understand how watering elephants could be that enthralling, but whatever the reason, I was so incredibly wrong (never judge a book by it's cover). What an amazing piece of writing! Now, for the first time ever, I will be able to be that person who complains about how the movie doesn't stack up in any way to the book (obviously because my previous prejudices also prevented me from watching the movie). Bring it on Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson, I look forward to our movie date this evening!

That being said, today's post is inspired by a topic that was brought to my attention in this book. Widowhood. While happily reading along, I came to the stark realization that barring some freak accident where we're both killed together, at some point in the (hopefully distant, distant) future, either D or myself will be widowed (sad face). The widower in the book, while sad that he was without his life partner, was happy that she had passed away before him so that she didn't have to be the one consumed by loneliness, a failing body and the mundaness of 93 year old existence.

How incredibly sad.

So I broached the subject with D.

Me: "D, I'm scared of when you or I die. If you die first, I'll be so lonely, I don't know what I would do. I can't imagine what life would be like. How would I fall asleep without your sweaty, boiler of a body rubbing up next to me? Who would scrub the tub clean? Who would calm me down when I'm about to lose it on the Purolator people who can't find the package I came to pick up? Who would come in every night, give me a kiss and ask me how my day was? Or if I die first, I don't want to think of how sad and lonely you may be. It's horrible either way."

D: "I don't think of it that way. I would like to think that when one of us dies, the other will still have so much in their life to live for, to enjoy. Family, friends, hobbies and the memories of the years we had together."

K: "Up!" (at the garage door opening).

Me: (Looking back at our perfect little man) Yeah, you're right.

End of conversation.

D and I are not scared of talking about death, it actually comes up quite frequently in conversation. For example, we both want to be buried. We want our headstones to be minimal and natural looking (D wants a carved tree stump, but I may veto that for a proper rock). We would like to donate any of our usable parts to save a life (or 8). And if that's not an option, than donating our bodies to a cadaver lab for science/teaching would be our plan B. We've discussed at great lengths who we would want to raise K, heaven forbid we go sooner rather than later (and together).

Our comfort with discussing death, has no doubt come from our fields of work. Working in healthcare has exposed us to the entire lifecycle, including death, and it has given us the vernacular to talk freely about it. People die. We all die.

So this conversation was not weird, it did not catch D off guard, and he didn't miss a beat with his reply to me. He's great like that, he knew just what to say to bring me out of my book-induced frenzy and back to reality.

So when the time comes and at death do us part, I greedily hope to go first, because he seems to have a good handle on life and I think he would make the best widower. Besides, he knows that I don't make time for shredding our confidential information pages and he would spin in his grave knowing that on top of being a widow, I'm lackadaisically making myself vulnerable to identity theft!

Until next time friends!

-A

Happy Grandparent's Day!

Hello Friends,

As most of you (probably don't) know, today is Grandparent's Day! So today's post will be inspired by all those people who were able to raise their children to an age where they could (and did) reproduce.

I was lucky enough to grow up with 4 grandparents, and three great grandparents. A special shout out to my one great-grandma who is now into her 90s and is still going strong (I hope I get some of those genes!). My Grandma and Grandpa M (Granny and Gramps as they would become known) lived on the farm with us, so we got to see them daily (whether they liked it or not... haha), and my Grandma and Grandpa B lived 15 min away, so while we didn't see them daily, we saw them pretty often as well. Needless to say, I was very close with them all!

What I find so fascinating about grandparents, is that they are people with very interesting, very unique lives and prior to becoming grandparents they were children and teenagers and parents themselves.

Wild, I know!

As a child, and even more so as an adult, I would marvel at the little snippets of life, love and loss that were unearthed about these mysterious, yet completly familiar individuals. Sometimes, I would try to place myself there, to live inside their stories, to understand how the family tree arrived at my leaf. I would try to walk alongside that nervous 10 year old girl, having left the only life she's ever known in Poland, en route to a family she's never met, surrounded by a language she doesn't understand. "Your name is Jane now, not Johanna". Or I would stand tall behind that brave 15 year old boy who, after having lost his own father at 5, would stand up to the man who terrorized the better part of his childhood. I would laugh with the young woman who, after a few adult beverages, would think it hilarious to pull a pair of pantyhose over her head (I'm definitely cut from the same cloth). Or I would beam with pride at the young man who, after finding the woman of his dreams, would love her 3 young girls as if they were his own without a second thought.

It seems so wild that the paths of these four people would cross and that their branches would converge at me (and my sisters of course). Earlier today, while examining my three grey hairs in the mirror, I couldn't help but notice my grandparents looking back at me. The way my nose turns up at the end, or how my forehead wrinkes when I think too hard (thankfully that doesn't happen too often), or my hair that can never decide whether it wants to be curly or straight (so it usually picks an awkward frizzy state, thanks grandma), or my blue eye/brown hair combo (I've been told this is exotic... I'll take it).  Having lost 3 of my 4 grandparents before the rise of instagram and 24/7 access to cameras, these fleeting moments are particularly special, since I can't flip through 4235 selfies of us on my computer (Granny, we really need to take more selfies together).

Now, with the birth of K, D and I have made 4 new grandparents, 5 great-grandparents and 1 great-great-grandma! At 1 1/2, it's already obvious how much he loves them (and has them wrapped around his little toddler finger) and they, him. I know that through the years, like every other grandparent in history, they will share little bits of themselves with K, that will transcend their shared DNA. These moments and memories filled with cookies (and spinach), and hugs and stories from the past, will live on in K and hopefully be there to comfort, console and encourage him on his journey through this crazy ride called life!

I encourage you all to let your grandparents know how much you love them (today and everyday). Happy Grandparent's Day everyone!

Until next time my friends,

-A

Granny and 2 of her 6 great-grandbabies