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mama-nicky day

Hey blog, long time no post. Not to be like “I’m so busy” but like… I’m so busy! Working full time plus parenting full time plus trying to get through the daycare licensing process (I honestly feel like every week I get another phone call or email with 350,000 forms to fill out, documents to provide, policies to develop, etc etc. It’s a lot!). One bright light though is I don’t work Fridays anymore.

This is a plan I put into (slow) motion last spring. At the time I was feeling extremely overwhelmed by the demands of working 45 hours a week doing child care and being a parent to my own kids; Gwen had recently started speech therapy at school again and I was struggling to find the time to do it with her, as well as her home reading, plus her spelling, every day*. It was honestly only about 30 minutes of work total, but it was impossible for me to do it while the daycare kids were still here, then after I finished work I had to make dinner, then after dinner was bath & bed time. Her homework started getting pushed until after dinner but that then pushed back her bath and bedtime until later than was suitable for her. It was a struggle, I was drained and burnt out and so exhausted that a lot of days I would fall asleep even before Gwen and Nicky did.

ANYWAY. I came to a decision that I needed to focus less of my energy on work and more on myself and my own family. Of course I couldn’t just tell my current clients I was cutting my hours without also cutting their fees (which I couldn’t afford to do), so I had to wait until they left for group daycares/preschools. Which, eventually, they did! One family left at the end of the summer and another on Halloween, and when looking for new clients I cut the number of days I had available a week from five to four (Monday-Thursday) and the number of hours per day from nine and a half to nine (8-5). Instead of 45 hours of week, I’ve decreased it to 36 and it’s already such a relief.

Since Gwen is at school on Fridays after we drop her off I get to spend the day with just Nicky, something I haven’t had a huge opportunity to do. It’s only been 4 weeks (Fridays off started November 1st) but we’ve spent each Friday differently. The first, we spent the day shopping for birthday presents for his sisters. The second Friday was Gwen’s birthday and a day off school for her. Sym has no class on Fridays already, so I had Taylor take the day off as well and we spent a day of family fun at Science World (and also getting criminal record checks for my license application but that’s another story) and had a joint birthday party for both girls that evening. Last week it was pouring with rain all morning but we put on our waterproofs and explored the beach & Seawall together. Today I had planned for more exploring, maybe Science World again (it has dinosaurs ie Nicky’s favourite) or the “castle” playground in Stanley Park (his other favourite) but Nicky has an unfortunate stomach bug today so we just took a short walk to get some fresh air and now we’re sticking close to home. I’m just happy though, to have the chance to spend this time with him one-on-one; I always felt guilty about not taking a proper maternity leave when he was born and this feels like making up for lost time.




*Obviously Taylor and even Symphony were also involved in doing this work with Gwen but their schedules didn’t really allow for the work to get done by an appropriate time either.

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on minimalism

a rainbow in my cloudy sky of an apartment

Gwen has been away this week visiting Taylor’s moms and her cousins and I’ve noticed two things since she’s been gone: Nicky has been sleeping in every day and I have been doing half as many loads of laundry as I normally do. I can understand the former; Gwen is a very early riser and tends to wake everyone else up, but the latter??? Does she really wear that many clothes in a week???

I’ve been thinking a lot about laundry lately because it’s a frequent topic of discussion in the Minimalist Moms facebook group I mostly joined for lols (the group is a wild west mess of a place with something like 100,000 members, no post moderation and just a minimalist approach to moderation in general from the modmin team which leads to INCESSANT DRAMA in every post). I’d say a significant percentage of the group wants to minimalize their/their children’s wardrobes but there seems to be a disconnect about clothes washing? Theoretically it’s just a choice between washing more clothes less frequently or washing fewer clothes more frequently but I see a lot of comments asking WHEN will the laundry be DONE??? Tragically… never.

I don’t really consider myself a minimalist because I honestly try to never put myself in a box like that but I do have to admit that:

  • painting my whole apartment the same light grey (with the exception of the white powder room & hallway and the off-white in the kid’s bedrooms)
  • my carefully curated selection of decorative objects that are all white or were something found in nature, artfully arranged on shelves and windowsills
  • my constant donating of bags of clothing and housewares
  • my even more constant decluttering in general
  • living in a multi-family dwelling instead of a SFH and not owning a car, although those are less “choices” than “financial requirements”

… make a bit of a case for it haha. I know for me this all stems from the ten years of my apartment being painted an eclectic variety of bright colours with the playroom mural and kid art everywhere. It was so visually cluttered and just started giving me anxiety. I guess if I HAD to call myself a minimalist I’d say for me it’s really more of an ~aesthetic minimalism~ because I just want a nice-looking (to me!), peaceful environment, which is kind of looked down on for being superficial but seeing as how I’ve changed my space to better serve my mental health it’s really not, you know? I’ve also come to believe that a less visually stimulating space is better for child development so really it’s a business decision as well.

I kind of feel that minimalism can definitely mean different things to different people and subscribing to one set of beliefs about it doesn’t necessarily invalidate another’s set of beliefs about it, something I think some of the facebook minimalist moms should try to understand! The amount of posts that have descended into vicious name-calling because a homeschooling mom-of-seven takes offense to a person who’s chosen to be one-and-done saying they’ve minimalized their carbon footprint by only having one child is NEXT LEVEL and honestly kind of depressing they way people refuse to consider other people’s choices as valid.

Anyway. This post went in a completely different direction than I thought it would, and I’m not sure of my point? I guess this is just what I’ve been thinking about lately, and also… I should probably leave that group.

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routines

Will 2019 be the year I finish painting the playroom? STAY TUNED…

shark

Now that winter break is over we are all slowly getting back into our daily routines. While I don’t typically like to have my kids over-scheduled in a lot of activities I DO try to stick to a schedule for meals, naps, and bedtimes. It’s especially important for my work week as I have to fit morning snack, lunch and afternoon nap for Nicky and the daycare kids all into the five-hour block of time between getting back from dropping Gwen at school and leaving to pick her up. In order to make it work we have to have morning snack at 9:30, right when we get back, and the kids have developed their OWN routine from there:

  • 9:30- 9:45 morning snack
  • 9:45-9:50 help me move the couch (see below)
  • 9:50-??? listen to Baby Shark and run around in a circle

They do this EVERY DAY and honestly… I don’t even find Baby Shark that annoying anymore. Oh and re: the couch, I don’t want the kids playing in the “living room” part of our living area because they always jump on the couch and throw all the cushions on the floor (annoying) and one time a toy was thrown by someone running through the living room and it SMASHED our tv so…. Anyway we push the couch forward to the entertainment stand (there needs to be a shorter word for this…) which pretty much eliminates the living room as a play area and makes the playroom huge with more room for running, playing and dumping out all the toys.

dough

Before Christmas my friend gave me a little jar of sourdough starter, which I promptly put in the fridge and forgot about. If you keep them on the counter they need to be fed every twelve hours but in the fridge you can let them go a week, two weeks or… a month? I’ve heard conflicting things from different people and websites, and of course there is my own personal experience of just leaving it for a month. Yesterday I FINALLY pulled it out and was like… is it alive? is it dead? WHO CAN SAY. I figured I’d feed it some to find out, and then I forgot to put it back in my fridge. This morning I have to say YES, it is alive and ALL OVER THE COUNTER. I transferred it to a bigger jar and popped it back in the fridge but HONESTLY I should start using it to make bread. Sourdough bread is actually one of my FAVES so it makes sense. If anyone has and tips, tricks, techniques, recipes or advice please let me know and REST ASSURED I’m going to set an alarm on my phone to remind me to feed Li’l Yeasty… weekly? Bi-monthly? Something-ly.

skin

Over the winter break, especially the last week when I was sick (I literally got a cough/lost my voice on New Year’s Day and I’m still not better) I definitely started slacking in the skincare routine department. SHAMEFUL in these times I know. I needed to get a new nighttime moisturizer so I decided to jumpstart my return to skincare by getting a TON of tiny products from Sephora. I wanted to try the Herbivore Pink Cloud moisturizer but I didn’t want to buy a full size jar in case I didn’t like it, so I got a set of small Herbivore products and THEN because I’d never used any of my Rewards points (I have literally never ordered anything from Sephora because the entire time I’ve been regularly buying stuff there it’s been three blocks from my house) so I got every (free) tiny product I could. I ended up with a bunch of new masks, moisturizers, cleansers, serums and facial oils, and a bunch of lip colour for some reason. SO be on the look out for a lot of well-hydrated selfies from me in the months ahead.

dishes

Last week we got a new dishwasher! You might recall we tried to replace our old, third-hand one a year ago but the new one we bought at the time turned out to be contaminated with mold and returning it was an extremely huge hassle that took honestly months. MONTHS! After Christmas we decided to give it another try with a different dishwasher from a different retailer and HONESTLY it turned out great. We were really anxious about something else going wrong so we weirdly kept it a secret? We just didn’t want to jinx it! But in the end we got a brand new dishwasher that had the look and all the features that I wanted/needed delivered, installed and the old one hauled away in a week and a half.

With our old machine we had to completely pre-wash everything before putting it in (you might ask “why put them in at all then?” and the answer is DAYCARE REGULATIONS). So we all got into the habit of leaving our dirty dishes in the sink/on the counter until there was enough to justify filling the sink with water. It was frustrating for me because I ended up washing up after everyone’s snacks and drinks all day long (I’m talking about people over the age of sixteen here) . With the new machine everyone can just put their dishes in it right away and wow. WOW. What a difference! We are all still getting used to this new routine but I sincerely hope “putting dishes in the dishwasher” remains a fun novelty activity my kids are happy to keep doing, haha.

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contentedness

the busiest body

I’ve been taking medication for my degenerative disc disease for a week now and it’s honestly amazing how much of a difference it’s made already. It’s such a relief to get up in the morning and be able to just… get up. Easily, and with (almost) no pain. It’s incredible! I have an appointment to see the pain management specialist on Saturday afternoon for an information session, after which I can get a steroid injection into the ol’spine right away if I choose (I probably will choose).

On Monday Gwen was off school, and I serendipitously had a surprise day off work. I absolutely relish these opportunities to spend a weekday just me & the kids; it’s no secret that my dream would be to trade my work-at-home-mom life for a stay-at-home-mom one, so any chance to pretend that’s the case is a treat. We didn’t do anything special, just ran a few errands before lunch and then had a lazy afternoon at home. Nicky napped, I made fresh pasta, and Gwen took a long-overdue bath. It was exactly the day I wanted.

Days like that used to make me feel sort of desperate and sad, like it doesn’t happen often so I would always know it was just a one off, but somehow it doesn’t feel like that anymore. I’m feeling satisfied and at peace with work, something that pretty much corresponds exactly with how many kids I’m looking after who scream all day (which right now is zero). So while I still dream of being able to quit my job and focus solely on my own kids, working feels a little less like work lately, and a lot more like fun ❤️

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back in action/back inaction

Last fall (on Gwen’s birthday actually) I got up bright and early and went over to the hospital to have an MRI to try and discover the cause of my chronic and persistent back pain. This was right around the time when our family doctor was moving to a new office, and I guess in the confusion the staff at the old clinic missed calling me about the results. I finally saw my doctor yesterday morning and it turns out I have degenerative disc disease.

This is actually a really common ailment that a lot of people have, especially older people, but it’s something I’ve actually been dealing with since I injured my back at 18, over two decades ago. Since then I’m been living with pain that has continued to worsen, and is now at the point where it’s negatively affecting almost every aspect of my life (for example, I can’t lean forward far enough over the sink to properly brush my teeth so I had TWO cavities at my last dentist appointment!). At the time when I originally hurt my back the doctor I saw was INCREDIBLY dismissive of me and since then I’ve been anxious about seeking help and reluctant to do so. Like I’ve tried things to get some relief, but I never knew the cause or the name of what was hurting me.

Now that I have a diagnosis and a treatment plan I actually feel really positively about it, and hopeful that I can finally a start living more normally & comfortably in my own body. It’s a relief just knowing, you know? Although it is becoming a little frustrating having all these unrelated health problems that each on their own would be manageable, but combined tend to ruin my life. Anyway, I’ve started medication for the pain and my doctor is referring me to both the spine clinic and a pain management specialist, so things are already looking up.

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sick day essentials

Ringing in my favourite season with a gross cold isn’t exactly my ideal situation, but I’ve been making the best of a bad time with some tried-and-true pick-me-ups…

Keep your toes warm with soft, comfy bison down socks.

I don’t have a real fireplace but even a fake one gives the impression of coziness so why not fake it ’til you make it?

Cinnamon + honey, tea + whiskey.

Vegetable soup doesn’t really need a recipe but just in case.

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The Ordinary Vitamin C Suspension 30% in Silicone: A First Impression

Before you think I’ve suddenly become some kind of fancy beauty blogger that gets sent products for review REST ASSURED, I ordered a different product and was sent this one by mistake. I received my order last Friday, so I’ve only been using it for a few days and can’t speak to it’s efficacy in reducing the signs of aging, but I wanted to share my experience with it so far for anyone who was considering trying this product.

Although I haven’t tried the Vitamin C Suspension 23% + HA Spheres 2% (because… they sent me this instead? haha), many of the complaints I’ve read about that product is the gritty texture, poor absorbency, greasiness, inability to use in the morning due to the aforementioned poor absorbency & greasiness, and difficulty dispensing the proper amount leading to wasted product. In my opinion this new suspension neatly sidesteps these problems. It’s a medium-weight white cream that comes packaged in a tube. The consistency is thick enough that it’s easy to dispense only the small, pea-sized amount I want to apply with no product wasted, yet light enough that I can easily smooth it over my face. There is a little texture too it, but it’s very fine rather than gritty, so it’s not unpleasant. There is a light prickling/tingling sensation when the product is first applied applied, which is to be expected. It absorbs quickly and has a matte finish with no greasiness at all and therefore can be easily used in a morning routine, which is great because I’m definitely lazier about skincare at night than in the morning!

The Ordinary Vitamin C Suspension 30% in Silicone, $6.80/£5.80 for 30mL

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make the most of it: goals for 2017


notebook // pen // tablecloth

This year I really want to get shit done. I had a lot of things I wanted to accomplish in 2016 and well, I didn’t accomplish any of them. I think I had a pretty good excuse though, as I was kind of distracted by being pregnant all year, and all my self-care and nesting energy went into that.

Get into some sort of shape. I KNOW I KNOW A TOTAL CLICHE. But this isn’t actually a new-years-lose-weight resolution, this is actually a post-pregnancy lose weight resolution. It was just unfortunately postponed by my c-section recovery, and then the discovery that at some point in the last few years of being pregnant, being sick with an autoimmune disease and being pregnant again, I threw out all my workout clothes. When decluttering goes wrong, y’all. So I had to get all new stuff and by the time it arrived it was full holiday season and I couldn’t find the time to get started, and now it’s resolution season at the gym which makes me disinclined to go because it’s gonna be so busy! I’ve figured out that the only time I can possibly go to the gym is Monday and Friday mornings at like… 6:30. I am in NO WAY a morning person so my ACTUAL fitness goal is training my body to get out of bed at 6 so I can get to the gym, work out, get home & shower in time to start work at 8. Then the other days I can work out at home I guess? My idea is to set an alarm for an earlier time each week and slowly ease myself into it, so this week I have it set for 6:45. Tuesday I managed to get up that early, but Wednesday I stayed in bed and dozed off until my regular alarm went off at seven and today to my hame I snoozed it until like… 8. IN MY DEFENSE Gwen woke me up at 3 on Wednesday morning and I woke myself up at 5 today so I was extra tired! Honestly I feel like this is my life rn…

I can’t not work and I’m not willing to give up time with my family so I’m going to have to sacrifice some sleep if I want to make this happen. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Finish the half-done home decor projects around the house. The kitchen backsplash is half-tiled. The bathroom is half-painted. My side of the office is where unwanted furniture goes to die and the hallway has no storage so there are always bins and boxes piled in it.

Start some new home decor projects. I want to repaint the living room, dining room, hallway and half-bath. I should probably repaint the entryway (it’s the first room I painted in like… 2007? and it’s looking rough). I’ve never painted my bedroom at all in TEN YEARS and it looks just godawful, and I really want to get a headboard for my bed. I have windows that need curtains and closets I’ve taken the doors off that also need curtains.

Replace busted and/or janky furniture and appliances. Did you know I’ve never ever bought a desk for myself? It’s true. Before Taylor I shared a computer with Sym’s dad and he picked out & bought the desk. After we separated I had no desk for a while, and then had a hand-me-down desk from Sym’s room. The desk I have now I found in the trash (really). So yeah. A decent desk would be nice. We also need a new couch (ours has become basically unsittable) and the dishwasher hasn’t worked properly in years. YEARS.

Keep on top of like… basic housework. Fun fact: having a baby DRASTICALLY increases the amount AND frequency of laundry and dishes you have to do, and also cuts into the time you have to do them. It can quickly build up and spiral out of control, leaving me with even less time to do anything else. I’ve committed to getting back into using my to-do lists. I got out of the habit of making them last year but HONESTLY it help me a lot. I need to have a physical list to remind me of what I’m doing, the satisfaction of crossing things off as I complete them, and no option for things like “sit in front of Netflix for three hours while scrolling through instagram” :X I have a new notebook and pen and I’m doing monthly lists of large or irregular project as well as daily lists of everyday things. I also find it useful to break my most hated chores up into teeny-tiny daily increments; for example I don’t necessarily have the time or inclination to clean the whole of both bathrooms in one day, but cleaning one type of fixture a day is totally doable.

Reorganize & declutter. The kitchen cabinets. The bathroom cabinets & shelves. Almost every closet in the house but ESPECIALLY my craft closet. Our storage room! The entryway! It’s basically all a mess and needs serious looking into.

I know none of this follows the typical blogger new year goal list of mindfulness and personal growth (maybe that is the real cliche…), but after the total wash of last year I need to make practical choices. Maybe if I accomplish all this next year I will have goals that are more abstract (but probably not).

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shark bait hoo ha ha

00-bokeh-tree

01-bw-cat

02-nicky

03-new-ornaments
I swear I bought a new ornament this year that isn’t a deer.

04-bare-lighted-christmas-tree
A few years ago I bought a large wicker basket to use in lieu of a tree skirt. I really liked it; tree skirts are a pita imo; always getting mussed up by pets and kids and sucked into the vacuum cleaner. However, the basket somehow vanished from my storage room after just one Christmas so I had to go buy a new one this week because fuck a tree skirt, honestly. I needed something at least 21″ in diameter to accommodate the tree stand and all I could find was one that was one miserable inch too small, and this fricking enormous one, oops.

05-gwen

06-shelf-with-small-toys

08-gwen-picking-her-nose-at-the-door
Tried to get a nice picture of her with our Christmas wreath…

07-wreath-bird

09-serums
All I care about right now is my skincare regimen. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

10-shark-nicky
This is just beyond. I mean come on.

11-shark-nicky
Shark-shaped baby sleeping bag from AliExpress.

12-pomegranates

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I hate it with my life

This post contains my raw and crabby feelings about my c section; you may have different feelings about your c section and this post is not intended in anyway to invalidate your feelings.

after-delivery-1

after-delivery-2
Not exactly the meet-cute I’d hoped for. Photos by Taylor Laramie.

I hate my c section. I hate it with my life.

I know that due to his fetal tachycardia it was the best thing to ensure Nicky was delivered safe & sound, whole and healthy, but I hate it. I hated it from the minute the on-call obstetrician told me it might be necessary if his heart rate didn’t normalize. I was scared of having surgery and afraid the recovery would be a nightmare. I didn’t want to do it and I cried “no, no, no” during my contractions. When someone (a nurse? the doctor? who can remember) asked me what I was saying “no” about I cried “this whole situation! I don’t want to do this!”

I don’t feel guilty, or disappointed in my body, or like I have somehow failed by having a c section. I mean… there wasn’t anything that my body could have done. I think if we’d had a couple more hours I could have delivered vaginally. I was 5cm dilated and I have my “proven pelvis” (a phrase I will never not find funny) thing going for me so I truly think if Nicky wasn’t in distress I would have pushed him out just like I did both the girls, but we didn’t have a couple more hours. When I think back to that night in the hospital it seems like such a long evening but really it was only a few hours: I arrived at 8pm, spent an hour walking around, spent another hour being monitored, and then my water was broken, I laboured for a while, I was taken to the operating room and prepped for surgery. Nicky was born just after midnight, so there were really only two hours between “you might need a c section” and “it’s a boy!”

I just feel… angry? Angry and frustrated. Now that I’ve had a variety of birth experiences I think I can say this one is my least fave. And the recovery is the worst! I honestly wasn’t even going to write this post about my dumb feelings but last night after my shower I noticed one end of my incision was a little open (just like.. a couple millimeters) and inflamed-looking and when I was patting the area dry it… well not to put to fine a point on it, it oozed. It’s gross! I hate it! And now I gotta worry about what if it’s getting infected? Is the whole thing gonna open up like a zipper and all my guts spill out? Ugh! (ftr I don’t think this is going to happen, it already looks less swollen/red and has mostly stopped weeping today but STILL).

But I mean, even before this latest fun development the recovery has sucked, and it’s not even as bad as I thought it would be. It’s still bad enough though. The first couple of days in the hospital when I couldn’t even sit up on my own, like I needed to raise the back of the bed up and then pull myself up the rest of the way before I could even lift my baby out of his little cot. The gas pains in my shoulders, feeling like I was gonna burst open every time I coughed or laughed or went to the bathroom or tried to lie on my side, my abdomen hurting inside and out. I still can’t stand the feeling of anything around my waist, like even my maternity leggings are too binding and I kind of wish I’d had the baby in the summer instead (like, that he had been DUE in the summer, not that he was a super-preemie) so I could just wear flowy dresses and not fuck with pants at all. I can safely say I would 100% prefer to have all the worst pain of delivering a baby BEFORE the baby is born, rather than for weeks and weeks afterwards when I’m also trying to look after a baby. Like if this wasn’t our last baby, if I was to have another I would for sure try for a VBAC because this? This sucks. Zero stars, would not recommend to a friend.

Some people would say the only important thing is that I had my baby, and he’s fine. I know I’ve been guilty of saying it myself in the past and to anyone who I might have said that to, I APOLOGIZE. Because like DUH obviously I’m thrilled to have my baby here and healthy! I was able to come home and bring him with me after just two days in the hospital. That’s amazing, I’m so lucky! But that doesn’t mean I have to also be thrilled with being in pain every day, and with the memories of the fear I felt going into surgery, and this whole stupid thing. The baby is important, but I’m important too, and my feelings matter.

Another frustrating aspect to having a c section is it’s sent all my carefully-laid plans for my return to work into a tailspin. After you have a c section you cant lift anything heavier than your baby for six weeks, and you know what is heavier than my baby? All the daycare kids. I’m pretty confident that I will be able to do most things with them (playing toys and games, preparing their food, regular daycare activities like story and song time) but what I CAN’T do is lift them into and out of their high chairs at mealtimes, and into and out of their cribs at nap time. Thankfully Taylor is going to be able to help me out in the mornings and Sym in the afternoons, but like… it’s going to be hard and it’s going to be complicated. But I am just going to have to do it and get through it. Like the c section itself, I guess.