Father & Daughter

"There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself." -John Gregory Brown

10 Sounds that Drive Me Bonkers

Best thing about Mondays? Listicles!  This week, the Listmaster has asked for a list of ten sounds that drive us bonkers.  This was easy, because as it turns out, there are plenty of sounds that drive me bonkers.  Also, I just really like the word bonkers.

1. Whining
2.  SOMEBODY (ahem!) snoring when I myself can't sleep.
3.  The high-pitched buzzing of old TVs and computer monitors.
4.  Family Guy playing in the background while I'm trying to write or read Monday Listicles posts.  Guess what's on at this very moment???
5.  The voice of Map in Dora the Explorer.
6.  Mosquitos buzzing in my ear.
7.  A garburator with a foreign object lodged in it.
8.  Caillou. See number 1 above.
9.  CERTAIN PEOPLE (again, ahem!) saying "Huh?" in response to every. single. thing. I say to them.
10.  Pretty much any noise made while I am trying to a) sleep or b) concentrate. I'm persnickety like that.

Looking Forward

1. Share one good thing you're looking forward to.

 



  

Well, obviously:

I am beyond excited to meet this little man. 

But. My doctor (who I see weekly, at this stage) keeps asking me how ready I am to have this baby, like she's expecting me to be tearing my hair out by now. 

My strategy this time around is to just go with the flow.  I made the mistake of trying to steer the river when I was pregnant with Lilah, or at the very least, of fretting and fussing about where the river was taking me. 

Granted, I was more than a week overdue in the middle of a rare Vancouver heatwave and puffed up like a blowfish, but all of my futile flailing meant that I did not enjoy my last couple of weeks of solitude the way I now wish I had.

Now I see this time before baby comes as a precious gift.  He will get here, and our joy will be the same whether he comes tomorrow or three weeks from now.  But these are our last days as a family of three; Lilah's last days as an only child; my last paid vacation days. And I want to savour them. 

I want to spend time with my girl. I want to sit in the rocker in the baby's room and daydream about what it will be like to hold him.  I want to carefully pack and repack my hospital bag until it contains just the right combination of things to surround myself with during labour and things for after his arrival. 

Just as Lilah did, this baby will come when he is good and ready.  So for now, I will sit back, let nature take its course, and let the river take me where it will.

Don’t try to steer the river.

~~Deepak Chopra

July So Far

Find me on Instagram @Lilahbility

 

 

 

Great Expectations

“That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.” ― Lev Grossman

I think it's safe to say that this very same quote could be applied to parenthood.

Sure, I had high expectations for myself as a mother.  Didn't we all, before we became parents?

Turns out mine were fairly lofty, given my experience in working with kids and my knowledge of child development.  Today I'm over at Greta's place talking about the great expectations I brought to motherhood from my professional role as a speech-language pathologist.

Greta lives it up in Kansas, g-funk style, and looks after her four kids, all while wearing her sassy pants.  Now that's one busy mama! She's funky, she's fun, and she just threw a rainbow-themed party for two of her girls, one of whom just turned three.  Great minds think alike.  Come visit me over at GFunkified!

A Walk Down Birthday Memory Lane

Well, we all know my kid turned three at the beginning of the month. I've mentioned it maybe a few times now.  I truly enjoy the party planning and baking that comes with birthdays (but at the same time I have to admit that I'm a little bit glad we each only have one a per year). So when Robbie suggested a birthday listicle in honour of her daughter turning nine, I was all over it.  Bring on the nostalgia!

Also, I'm a total sucker for party themes, so each year we pick one and run with it.

First birthday party: Teddy Bear Picnic

Second birthday party: The Year of Elmo

Third birthday: Rainbows

And here's to many, many more!!!

Thanks

Thanks to a really terrible toothache and general gum pain and inflammation, I am almost a week late with this post.


Thanks to Captain Awesome, a.k.a. the Hubs, we now have a fully-functioning master bathroom that only needs a few more finishing touches.


Thanks to my vacation days and Canada's maternity leave policy, Tuesday was my last day of work for over a year!


Thanks to the roofers banging about on my roof, I feel like the ceiling could collapse on me at any time and I am having trouble hearing myself think.


Thanks to today's unexpected rain, the banging started at 6 am this morning.


Thanks to my raging hormones and incessant pain in my mouth, I have been reduced to tears at the tiniest little thing this week.


Thanks to summer finally having arrived in Vancouver, I have been able to bust out the cute summer outfits I've had squirrelled away for Lilah for ages.


Thanks to my ever-expanding girth, I have very few cute outfits I fit into myself these days.


Thanks to Mr. Dyson's brilliant advertising campaign, superior engineering, an eager Dyson salesman, and the Hubs' sudden and uncharacteristic desire to spend buckets of money on a recent impromptu shopping trip, we are now the proud owners of a brand new, extremely expensive vacuum cleaner that is touted never to lose suction.  I'll report back and let you know if it was worth it.

Now go visit the listmaster to find out who else is giving thanks!

Young Love, Recyled

I posted these photos on a Wordless Wednesday in July last year, when these two were completely enamored of each other:

They're still great friends, but their relationship has changed a little.  Now Lilah has taken to telling him she's the mommy and he's the baby and she gives him timeouts but refuses to give him hugs and kisses when it's time to say goodbye.  Not sure what that says about my parenting...?

All of a Sudden...

All of a sudden, she has these long. lean limbs.  And when she stretches out in the bath, her length covers most of it.

All of a sudden, she has lost most of her baby fat.


All of a sudden, she uses sophisticated language, peppering her sentences with words like "actually," "because," and "almost."


All of a sudden, she can talk about what happened yesterday or what is going to happen tomorrow.


All of a sudden, she wants to dress herself, brush her own teeth, and make her own breakfast.


All of a sudden, she is a skilled negotiator.  Bargaining is her tool, and a combination of cuteness and manipulation is her currency.


All of a sudden, I'm supposed to refer to her as a "preschooler" rather than a toddler.


All of a sudden, she gets out of bed in the morning and opens her door on her own, padding down the hallway to startle me from my deep sleep.  Gone are the toddler's cries to be retrieved from her bed.


All of a sudden, she asks me questions to which I don't know the answers.

All of a sudden, she is gentle and motherly towards babies and toddlers.


All of a sudden, she is all girl.

Spying on a fairy princess

All of a sudden, I'm going to have another baby and she won't be the tiny one anymore.

Now We Are Three

We held Lilah's third birthday party on the weekend at our nearest playground that also includes a spray park. She got to share it with one of her besties whose birthday happens to be exactly one week after hers, and it seems a good time was had by all. 

The birthday boy and girl

Thankfully, summer arrived in Vancouver just in time for the party.

This is the face she always makes when cold water is involved.

Lilah's daycare provider (who I basically think of as the woman who looks after my kid while I am away from home playing with other people's kids)

I remembered to slather my kid with sunscreen repeatedly but of course forgot to do myself the same favour.  Result: burnt preggers.

Photo by Captain Canada of Schwartz Chronicles fame.

The candles would not stay lit in the breeze, so we had to pretend.  Here's what Lilah thought of that:

Also taken by Captain Canada

But I'm pretty sure she did like the rainbow cupcakes I made. I've been dreaming of these babies for months!

Phew, I'd forgotten what a lot of work throwing a large birthday party is, but I think we pulled it off!

Things I Will Miss and Things I Won't

This week we are drawing our inspiration from the great Nora Ephron and writing a list of things we will miss and things we won't.  Of course what comes to mind is not things about life in general - I'm not ready to go there yet - but rather about growing a new life inside my own body. 

Yep, that's right.  Another pregnancy post. 

I plan on making this my last.  (Pregnancy, that is.  I can't promise anything on the post front.  Gotta milk it while it lasts!)  So there are certainly things I will miss.

But I'll start with things I won't miss and get the griping out of the way first:

Unless you are one of those lucky Natalie Portman types, everything gets fat.  And by everything, I mean everything.  Including the parts of you you never expected to get fat. (Ahem, lady bits.)

That shortness of breath; something I have never experienced at any other time in my life.

The fear of miscarriage.

Morning sickness, obviously.

Thought you were done with pads and panty liners since Aunt Flo won't be showing her face for a while? Think again, suckah! You're going to need to keep a stash of panty liners with you at all times.  Your oven may have a bun in it, but that won't stop it from automatically switching into...ummm... "self-cleaning" mode.

Getting up off the couch is a huge production involving a whole lot of grunting and upper body rocking to build up enough momentum.  Gravity and inertia are conspiring against me, making it easier just to stay on the couch.

Which leads me to the subject of weight gain, again. Blerg.  My doctor isn't loving the numbers either.

Early morning wakings caused by paralyzing leg cramps.

Round ligament pain.

Double whammy: simultaneous occurence of the above two items caused by attempting to roll over in bed. 

Ninja kicks to the diaphragm, bladder, intestines, and various other vital organs.

The fact that everyone and their dog feels entitled to comment on your changing body.  When else in life is that considered socially acceptable?  Most people are generous, and a few are overly honest, but it still catches me off guard every time.

The difficulty of choosing names.  The Hubs and I have very different ideas about names for babies.  So far, we haven't found anything we really agree on.

The hormonal roller coaster.

Swollen feet and ankles.

Things I will miss:

That beautiful little plus sign on a pregnancy test.

The unbelievable feeling of having created life. 

The second trimester - that honeymoon period of pregnancy, when you have a cute bump and maternity clothes fit well, but you're not yet feeling swollen and whalish.  I already miss it dearly.

Daydreaming and speculating about who this little person will be.

Lilah hugging and kissing my bump, sharing her stickers with the baby by sticking them all over my belly, and attempting to feed him through my belly button.

The reassuring feeling of baby squirming and constant motion from within. (Ninja kicks aside.)

The look on the Hubs' face when he found out he was going to have a son.

Having boobs.

Feeling fat last nine months but the joy of becoming a mom lasts forever. -Nikki Dalton

Wordless Wednesday: Three

Today, she is three.

Happy birthday to the one who made me a mama.