brendan and i are doing this marriage course just as some relationship maintenance. it's been fun, but also challenging at times. chores turned into a big fight, which is why we've instituted our 20-minutes a day cleaning routine. i'm happy to say that's actually working pretty well.

this week it used this illustration of rhinos and hedgehogs to show different styles of dealing with conflict. my first instinct was to think i was a rhino, but the more i thought about it, the more i realized i'm a hedgehog. i'm just a hedgehog who can articulate myself well when the coast is clear, which makes me seem more like a rhino. AND because i can be hotheaded sometimes.

it got me thinking about growing up – how inward i was. i rarely felt safe talking about my feelings, and as a result i didn't do it. it wasn't that the people in my life were unsafe, it was because of my own internal process. i can talk freely and confidently about things after the fact, but if i'm still processing something, it's not a topic of conversation. i guard myself pretty securely.

achy

when we were in greece, we did a LOT of walking and after about a week or so, my calves were so sore! they'd gotten all tight and ached when i walked. i would try to stretch them out in the evenings. 

on saturday, my calf muscles started feeling tight and sore again, but this time it wasn't from excessive walking, because i've been getting little to no exercise lately (not even my stationary bike, sadly). since them, it's spread to my arms, neck and wrists. i reluctantly tried googling it, since googling medical stuff can often make one worry, and the one likely thing i read was that it could be caused by inactivity. my dad also suggested it could be caused by dehydration. for a week or two i was working really hard at drinking lots of water, but i've quickly slipped out of that habit. actually, my calves have been less sore today, it's mostly my arms and wrists. 

lifting my growing toddler is a challenge because he's getting heavy and my sore wrists feel weak under the weight of him :S

gifting

i don't remember the last time i knitted. in recent years i've been crocheting more and more, and knitting less. one of the things i like about crocheting is that it's easier to correct mistakes. with knitting, it often requires pulling out lots of rows.

my mom asked for an infinity scarf for christmas, so i'm making her one. she asked for it to be colourful with brown in it. that almost seems like a contradiction. colourful yet brown. in recent years, my mom has become a bit rusty with receiving gifts. she expressed dissatisfaction rather than gratitude. it's discouraging. so i'm bracing myself for her to not be overly appreciative of this handmade gift. it'll probably end up not colourful enough, or not brown enough, or not infinity enough or too infinity :S

to summarize

stiching • mending • chatting

hangouts with b • the hunger games

christmas shopping • grocery shopping on budget

landlording • house-keeping • la caisse

dusting

this evening i went to a norwex party at my sister's house. it was nice because i was able to take eamon with me to play with the kids. norwex is a natural cleaning supplies company. i was fairly impressed with the products.

the party was, for the most part, the first time i've hung out with my sister's friends. joy is good natured and handles being teased well, and they teased her a lot. the thing i found surprising, is that they teased her about how infrequently she cleans her house. this is shocking because joy is the most into cleaning of all the people i know. not only does she love cleaning (has said she prefers cleaning to parenting), she's really diligent about it. the on-going joke is that joy only cleans every two weeks. it felt a little like i was in a bizarre reality. two weeks is pretty regularly, and she'd already said she cleans her bathroom every day. anyway, at one point, during the mopping demonstration, i asked something about her floors, and her one friend said to me "she only cleans every two weeks" and to that i said "she cleans SIGNIFICANTLY more often than i do". which embarrassed the woman a great deal. i told joy later "we lived on main street for nearly 4 years and didn't mop once".

i felt i couldn't be honest in the group about how brendan and i are just learning to do more than the necessities. up until now we've only done the stuff we had to do, like empty the dishwasher so we could put more dishes in. and i'm proud of us for expanding our cleaning routine.

i don't know how working mothers have time for things like housework. how do they do it?!? it guess they just prioritize it. i prioritize other things.

i've expressed interest in hosting a party. partly because i thought i'd get a gift bag for signing up, and i didn't. but it's a fun excuse to have friends over. except, since it's this lady's business, i'd really encourage friends who are interested in buying, rather than just hanging out.

message me if you're interested in coming! it'll probably be in january.

amused

so i'm hooked on the show "jane the virgin" on netflix. i'm actually really impressed that i haven't been binge watching it at every opportunity, but i want to make it last. it's so funny. i get that it's very soap opera-esque, but it's just a fun watch. it regularly shocks me with plot twists. 

i also like that it's gotten me back into hand-crafts. i haven't been doing hand-crafts in a while, i guess i've just been too busy or too tired or something. but there's something really light about this show that makes me feel capable of getting back into making stuff. 

it's kind of a refreshing change that it's a highly entertaining show without having to push the envelop or be really sexually explicit. it's funny and well crafted. it reminds me of amelie, with the observational narrating. good stuff :)

don't get your back up

years after my highschool boyfriend and i broke up, sarah harmer released a song that described the end of our relationship exactly. i could've written every line. it's like she was spying on us. years later, i told him about the similarity of our break-up and that song.

every time i hear it, i remember those late nights talking in my blue jetta, desperately wanting to go home to sleep, while him badgering me about something or other. it makes me wonder if it reminds him too. but i suppose he'd probably remember it very differently than i do.

mail ordered

to my complete relief, last night was the complete opposite from the night before. YAY!

anyway...

recently i bumped into new acquaintance/friend in shoppers. she was picking up a package, and before thinking about it, i said "what is it?" then noticed the box said "well.ca" on it, and realized it might have been something extremely personal! oops! she thought about it and said vitamins. later on i got thinking about well.ca and i've never ordered anything from there, so i wondered if it offered anything my local drug store did not. so i went to the site and checked it out. before i knew it, i'd ordered $100 worth of stuff! to be fair, i bought a melissa+doug piano for eamon on sale for christmas from his great-nana (she always just gives him cash). i got my packages yesterday, and i'm very pleased! they even had seventh generation training pants! seventh generation is my favourite kind of disposable diapers, and they don't sell them at loblaws anymore.

we made the switch to disposal diapers when we moved. during the summer we found that eamon was peeing through is diapers and clothes within 10 minutes of getting a fresh set. so we decided we'd just pack up his cloth diapers, hoping that he'd soon be on his way to underpants anyway.

i also bought patchouli bar soap :) i love patchouli. it reminds me of having dreads. i wish i could find patchouli scented hair spray, but bar soap might be the next best thing.  

parenting-fail

so last night was a complete gong show over at our place. i feel emotionally hung-over. 

it's not that i got a spotty night of sleep, which was basically a series of cat naps between chaotic episodes, it was the trauma of letting my kid cry thinking he would settle himself, and only cluing much later than he was in pain. about 5 or 6 hours into the night with him crying unconsolably, i noticed eamon grabbing at his foot, and realized that he was probably having growing pains. i used to get them frequently when i was a kid, always at night. 

i'm troubled by our response. i'm troubled about the pressure we felt because we had to get up to go to work in the morning. i'm troubled that i got to work late (that always starts my day off badly). i'm troubled that brendan and i were snappy with each other. i'm troubled that i felt unloving towards eamon this morning. he's just a little kid, and it's external factors (such as work, and neighbours) that caused my negative feelings and response. 

there are times when i feel so ill-prepared and un-motherly that i question my suitability for this venture. my drive into work this morning consisted of me mentally begging for a quick recovery and to feel okay again. for balanced to be restored and to not feel buried in an avalanche of woes. 

divide and conqure

i am not a naturally disciplined person. it generally requires a lot of effort, and well, self-discipline for me to do anything consistently. this week brendan and i implimented a 20-minutes a day cleaning routine where we both set aside 20 minutes to clean/tidy our house. like all new things, i feel really good about this approach.

also, like all new things, this new approach interfered with the new thing i started last week (my stationary bike).

i honestly don't know how other people do it. managing lots of different things. HOW DO YOU DO IT!?!

this evening i tidied the surfaces in our bedroom and actually unpacked a box that has been sitting waiting since august. there's another two in here waiting to be dealt with. tomorrow perhaps!

out

there is a chunk of time after having a baby when activities outside of your home becomes lower in priority. eventually a balance is found between your new kid and other stuff. that chunk of time is different for everyone, and there are a lot of factors. i found i was just getting my equilibrium back when i returned to work, which set me off balance yet again. it was like starting over. but now that i've completed a year as a working mom (with varying degrees of success), and am feeling more settled after moving, i feel like i'm shifting away from navel gazing and back towards the bigger picture.

so... hey! how's it going? what's going on? what's happenin'?

actually, now that i think of it, brendan's job situation also delayed my sense of balance. so basically, it was a year of lots and lots of change. 

with this shift of space, time, energy and freedom, brendan and i have decided to go out more often and have recruited my dad as our 'after bedtime babysitter'. we're able to maintain our routine with eamon, but then can go out because my dad is reading on our couch. unfortunately, he was also barfing on our couch. he's had a chest infection, which combined with his sensitive gag reflex, he's been "bringing up" every evening like clockwork from coughing. i've never had to leave a barf bucket with a babysitter before. he made good use of it. oh dear :S

all that said, our saturday evening outing was really fun and uncomplicated. 

shark bike

a number of months ago, my mom offered me a stationary bike. she said she got it from a friend, and hasn't been using it. i was definitely interested and said i'd take it when we move. so when brendan picked it up, i was surprised to see how vintage it is. it's a very, very old stationary bike. but it works! at least it does on certain settings. i am not someone who likes to exert myself, so thankfully it works best on the lower settings that don't make me have to push myself too much. it's been a few weeks since i've been outside cycling at lunch. partly because my bike was in the back of my car when it was in the shop for 2+ weeks, but also because of the weather. so this week i started using my stationary bike after eamon is in bed. i'm very pleased because i've set it up in the kitchen where i can watch stuff on brendan's computer. i like to watch colbert with b sometimes, so i thought i'd watch him on the late show while i cycle. it's easy to waste a half hour watching comedians on youtube. often times i'm tired by the time eamon is in bed, but cycling energizes me and changes my tiredness from fatigue to sleepy, cozy tiredness. 

now the big mystery is how long can i keep this up before i start coming up with excuses to not do it. i hope i'm able to adopt this as life-style thing. it really couldn't be more convenient. AND the fact that i do it right after putting eamon to bed, it's not like i'm in the middle of something. if all goes well, i may eventually upgrade to a modern stationary bike. at least this way i haven't wasted money, but instead can try this approach out on my vintage bike. 

goat and about

on sunday, eamon and i went downtown to complete some errands. after quickly popping into one store, i decided we should walk down to vandervoorts and decided to leave the stroller in the car and just let eamon walk. other than frequently having to keep him on track, he did very well and really enjoyed himself. it was kind of refreshing to walk beside him and sometimes walk holding hands, instead of pushing a stroller. on the way, i decided we should go for a date to the goat to share a muffin after vandervoorts. i can't remember being at the goat with eamon before, it's very possible that that was his first time there. we sat at a table by the window, me with my tea and him with a mason jar of milk. it was the sweetest. i really had a lovely time with him. it gave me a taste of the next phase we're transitioning into. there were some dogs outside on the sidewalk playing while we were there. he kept saying "puppy, puppy", and i said "that's right, how many puppies are there?" and he said "two!", which surprised me. he's really developing quickly. 

all this to say... i don't know if it's our new neighbourhood, or the season, or our current phase of life, or our work/daycare routine, it's probably a combination of all those things, but we haven't been venturing out as much as i'd like to. saturdays are taken up by chores with a pause for a nap in the middle. maybe i should skip grocery shopping some saturday mornings and take him to the goat instead. although, it might be busy there. or not, would the goat be busy by 9:00 am on a saturday?

now that we're down to just one car, i have less freedom than before. because we're sharing a car means i can't just come and go as i please. but i think it's important to keep doing fun things. life is too short to let logistics get in the way of living. 

fresh start with all hallow's eve

when i was around 6, my parents decided they did not want us trick or treating anymore because of halloween's association with "evil". in recent years, since my sister has started taking her kids trick or treating, they've significantly relaxed about it. it's actually never came up that it's something they used to be against. this kind of bothers me because i missed out on a fun childhood experience, while they seem oblivious that i might be disappointed about that. 

anyway, in recent years i've been participating in the "halloween harvest" which collects food for the food drive, and that's been nice. it started help re-introduce me to halloween. but this year, was the first time that eamon was old enough to trick or treat, and i had a super fun time :) he was so excited and got really into it. i'd never heard him say "bag" before, but he was very insistent on carrying the bag, and kept saying "bag, bag" if we tried to help him carry it.

it's really nice that halloween has been redeemed for me, and i look forward to many years taking him around and meeting neighbours. 

plus, after brain storming costume ideas for several months, we were really happy with the little aviator costume we came up with. we're 3 for 3 on costumes :)