Yellow

June will be black.

Pink

We have decided to join into An Offering of Love's 2011 Color Photography Project. The month of April was the color pink.

I find this extremely ironic because as soon as April ended Jackson was diagnosed with pink eye.

Bye Bye

Jackson has started telling us when he's ready for bed. It's AWESOME! We'll be doing our bedtime routine of a bottle and books when all of a sudden he'll say "bye bye" and start waving. At first we were completely confused about what he was doing but now when he does this we put him in his crib and tell him good night. Then the whole time we are walking out of the room he lays in his crib waving and whispering bye bye. When we close the door we don't hear a peep from him until morning. I have to repeat myself and say it's AWESOME!

Crazy Boy with the Crazy Hair. Bub Bye

As a baby Jackson had the craziest hair. It would always be sticking up on end and for a while he was sporting a full on mohawk. As he's gotten older and his hair longer it's started to fall. There are those off days though if he sleeps on it just so or if his hair hasn't completely dried from the night before, a bit of the old Jackson crazy hair comes out to play.

Best Weekend

I had the best weekend!! The weather was actually pretty good most of the weekend and we took full advantage by taking Jackson to the park many many times.

The last time he was at the park he was 8 months old or so. The park adventure mostly consisted of the swing. Now that he's walking the park has become this whole new world of fun. He runs around, looks over and under things, is obsessed with the slide and points excitedly up in the air and says his own version of airplane.

I can't wait until next weekend when we can go back again.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Moving 2.0

Let me set the stage. We moved to Toronto in September and decided to rent a house for a year. It is by no means our dream house but it had an outdoor space for Campbell and a couple other items that were on our must list so here we are.

Cut to the beginning of February and our landlord knocks on our door as we are about to head out for Jackson's birthday party. He explains he'd like to talk to us and we agree on a day for him to return. Whenever your landlord wants to speak with you it can never be good and when he came back around a couple days later carrying a bottle of wine I knew we were screwed.

So apparently, our landlord had gotten a permit the year before to do work on our house but because of the market decided to rent it out instead. When going to renew the permit he was told no and he would need to start work by the end of June or lose the permit. So basically us living here was a huge problem.

However, our landlord, aka Daddy Warbucks also owns the house next door and has asked if we would be willing to move one house over. After looking at the house (which is nicer than ours), haggling on the rent and listing out a few other items we wanted it was all set.

So there you have it, our second move within a year. But this time it will only be a few feet to the east rather than thousands of miles north.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Ketchup

Let me start off by saying no we are not dead, yes I still have my arms and fingers and no my computer has not been infected with some horrible virus. My initial reaction is to say we've been busy but when I read stories like A Story of Two Moms that excuse just comes off as incredibly lame so I will make no excuses.

So much has happened in the time I last wrote:
- Jackson had his first birthday
- We had a house full of grandparents come for a visit
- We experienced a month of sickness
- We found out we are moving...again
- Jackson is a running and "talking" machine

With so much to catch up on and being that horrible blogger that I am I've challenged myself to post everyday for the month of April to get back in the swing of things. So until tomorrow here is a recent picture of Jackson. He's starting to look like an actual kid!

Rants and Confessions

Rant: Before having Jackson I never noticed how lazy people are. Now I see it everyday. What irritates me most is when able bodied, seemingly healthy people push the little handicap button to open the doors instead of god forbid actually having to manually pull/push on the door itself. The other thing that chaps my ass is when people go out of their way just to take an elevator down one flight when the stairs or an escalator are nearby. Amy just rolls her eyes everytime I bring this up and basically just tells me to get over it because it's really not impacting me that people are doing this. Well now I can officially say I have been affected!!

Every morning Jackson and I have to take an elevator down from the outdoors to the subway.I have to use the elevator because I have Jackson in a stoller and I look like a pack mule with all the bags I'm having to carry. Well yesterday I'm pushing Jackson in his stroller (outdoors) and am heading to the elevator which has just arrived at ground level. Five able bodied women pile in the elevator leaving no room for me, Jackson or the stroller. As Jackson and I stand there in the cold staring in disbelief one of the women hits the "Close Door" button on the elevator!! Normally I would have been irritated. But the fact that these women had no problem leaving a baby outside in the cold so they didn't have to walk down a flight of stairs left me enraged. I'm sure people around me must have thought I was an idiot but I don't care. I could tell by how they were avoiding eye contact with me that they heard me yelling at them about how ashamed they should all be feeling.

Confession: I hear it all the time, "My kid loves going to daycare". Most of the time I think that these parents are 80% totally right and 20% saying it to mask guilt of having to take their kid to daycare. Well I can 100% say that Jackson LOVES going to daycare. It's gotten to the point where he basically hurts my feelings everyday. Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful to not be one of those parents who has to leave hearing their child's cries in the background. The drop off is not my problem, it's when I pick him up that he tears my heart out, stomps on it a little bit and hands it back to me.

It used to be that when I picked him up I got the biggest of smiles and he would crawl over to me as fast as possible. Now when he sees me I get a half grin and he might reach out for me to pick him up. Once in my arms though he pushes me away and tries to get back to his teachers. When he realizes we're leaving the room he starts to cry because he doesn't want to leave. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that he loves "going to school" but is it too much to ask for him to not love it that much??

Walking Machine

Check out that swagger!!

Bittersweet

I feel as though the first year of Jackson’s life was all about holding on. Holding on to my sanity, trying to hold on to my friendships as I changed and became a mother but mostly about holding on to this sweet little boy as he cried, fed and slept. I got a call from daycare yesterday telling me that Jackson had taken a bit of a spill while practicing his walking skills and got a nasty scrape down his back. He’s fine, no harm done. But this event and his quickly approaching first birthday makes me realize that the next year of his life will be a theme of learning to let go.

I’ve (half) joked that when Jackson started standing and eventually ventured off with his first steps that I should start pushing him down so that he would never learn to walk or gain the tools needed to achieve some independence from me. But he cannot be stopped, and as he’s learned new skills I’ve also learned that I have to slowly loosen my grip. In order for him to learn, I have to let him fall, get hurt, basically become a big boy. But I’m finding this so hard because as all these changes are happening my instinct is to tighten my grip on him instead of releasing some of the control, anxiety and heartache I feel. I'm focused on the tears he will shed when he falls down or the time he no longer turns to me to be nursed, instead of revealing into the person he is becoming.

Jackson is developing this amazing, mischievous personality and everyday I witness his curiosity and wonder at the world around him. The way he says kitty and ball make me smile; when he takes a few tentative steps towards my open arms I am so proud. Every day he continues to explore that world and everyday I share in his enjoyment but along with this enjoyment is a little twinge of sadness of a time we are leaving behind.

Pumping Stress

It really is true what they say about not knowing how good you have it until it’s gone (or something like that). I didn’t realize how lucky I was at my previous job when it came to providing me with a place to pump. I sometimes even got irritated because my little place was a server closet that had a free standing desk loaded up with equipment and a chair in it. Every morning when I came in I would unlock the door to my little room that had the dimmest of lights and let as much of the heat out as possible so that when I had to go in there it didn’t feel like I was in some sort of sweat lodge. Looking back now I miss my little place so very very much.

I don’t know if it’s just my new company or if because maternity leave in Canada is 12 months that companies don’t really know how to handle mothers who need a place to pump at work but I feel like they are severely ill equipped to handle my needs. Before taking this job I made it clear that I needed a place throughout the day to pump. My offices are pretty open and the only places that have a lock on the door is the HR office and one conference room that has ¾ of the window frosted. I was told I could use the HR office to pump when needed.

I have never been so frustrated and brought to tears more often about pumping than I have since working here. The HR lady who said to “just ask” when I needed her office is always “busy” and can’t leave or when she can it’s 4:00 in the afternoon and I can’t wait that long. When it comes to the conference room it’s ALWAYS booked so that’s not an option either. One day it got so bad that I actually had totake the subway to Amy’s work and pump in her office (which has a video camera in it by the way so I’m sure someone somewhere had a very eventful day.)

I know I don’t have that much longer to go but this is just making an already difficult “job” all the more difficult. It sucks having to constantly stress and plan where I’m going to go that day and how many times I’m actually going to be able to pump. And the even bigger stress of how will I get enough ounces to feed Jackson at daycare the next day when most days I only get one opportunity to sneak into a room for 15 min. I’m thinking I’ll only have to do about 4 more weeks of this and then Jackson will have passed his first birthday and will hopefully be on cow’s milk during daycare. How soon and how did some of you start transitioning your little one to cow’s milk?

Major Milestones

This week has been both a challenge and amazing. I want to focus on the amazing right now and might write another post about the challenges another time. There is just too much goodness to talk about and I don’t want to taint or overshadow it with gloom.

We decided since Jackson is creeping up on the BIG #1 (sob, tear) that we would try weaning him off his pureed “baby” foods that I send to daycare. Every morning I pack 3- 4oz bottles of breast milk and three containers of homemade baby food for Jackson to enjoy throughout the day. He’s been eating some of the food provided at daycare like the other “big kids” in his class (12-18 month olds) but has mostly been eating what I’ve sent. I thought that over the next few weeks we would slowly taper off on the food I bring and get him full time on the “big boy” daycare provided food. Well my plan lasted a whole two days. Jackson is an eating machine! No more baby food for him thank you very much. He is on full time table and finger foods. There are some meals where he will have 2-3 servings. It’s like a flip has been switched and he’s now totally getting it. Food he used to hate, he now eats with vigour. I’m so excited for this change not only does it open up a whole new world for him but it also is one less thing I have to do every morning. It also makes me sad because it’s just another step away from babyhood.

Speaking of steps, Jackson officially started walking yesterday!! When I picked him up from daycare one of his teachers had a HUGE smile on her face and told Jackson to show me what he can do. I crouched down and reached out my arms and with the biggest and proudest grin on both our faces he took about 4 steps into my out reached hands. It was so nice to see everyone’s excitement over this major milestone. Heads were poking out from all sorts of doors to watch him toddle a few steps forward. I’ll try and capture is on video. Part of me wants to push him over so that he never walks and can stay a baby forever!

Now this one I’m scared to put in writing for fear of jinxing the whole thing but I’ll throw caution to the wind and say Jackson’s had two AMAZING nights of sleep. This means I’ve had two AMAZING nights of sleep! For the past two nights Jackson has gone to bed at 7:30ish, woken up at 11:30 where I feed him and then I head off to bed. Normally he will wake up again during the night but for the past two nights he has slept through until 6:30. What?!? What?!? Now I’m not going to lie the first night there was some crying on his part at 2:00 but I stuck to my guns and didn’t run in there. After 15min, there was quiet and that was the last I heard from him. Last night there wasn’t a peep. I NEVER thought we would get to this long of a stretch but there you have it. I’m hoping that we eventually get to cut out the 11:30 feeding but for now I’ll take this and enjoy it.

Who would have guessed 2011 would start out by being so eventful?