Author: motherhoodandasideoflife

Can we just catch some zzzzzz??

motherhoodandasideoflife

sleep regressions are killers.. am i right? Or am i right???

Photo by Keira Burton on Pexels.com

I honestly do not remember going through such a harsh sleep regression with our boy; and i know, i know every kiddo is different but holy smokes this has been harsh, i feel like I’m going to be left with a very crooked spine from all the rocking trying to soothe baby girl and with bags under my eyes so big that no amount of concealer will be able to hide.

I keep trying to remember what it was like with our boy but i can’t recall ever going through this with him, as i mentioned before he had a very different temperament, much easier to settle on his own, etc. Well, this baby girl is testing all sorts of things in me, strength, patience, endurance, stamina, and even my thoughts on co-sleeping.

Right up until 4.5 months ago i was a firm believer of not sharing beds with the kiddos but guess what?? As i approach my glorious 40s, there are some things i cherish….one of them: sleep. It’s been over 4 years of not really fully sleeping – did you know a mom’s brain actually changes after having children? The changes allow for her to become acutely aware of the children’s needs, even if they are at a distance, and perhaps the reason why many women swear they can hear their kids when they are showering, or what makes mom have that ‘eye on the back of their head’ and know when the children are up to mischief.

So yeah, i have been letting baby girl sleep in our bed for at least a couple hrs, most nights, just so we can all get some shut eye and rest assured that i take all precautions when bringing her into out bed. It is so true what they say about everything changing with the second child, you become ‘softer’, more lenient, less rigid about rules and past beliefs… then again you are just so darn tired…

Until next post…

The long blurry days of COVID

motherhoodandasideoflife

Is it just me or these days just feel like a motionless and emotionless group of hours that become days that become weeks that have become months and which in a few short weeks will have become a year?

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I can’t believe it’s coming up to a year of dealing with social distancing, testing, sanitizing and also all sorts of anxious thoughts about the well being of family members and friends.

This year of isolation, stay at home orders, states of emergency, line ups has really taken a toll on most people’s psyches, and with very good reason. The other day while getting an adjustment, my chiro was telling me about a friend’s brother who after dealing with all the things that have come along with COVID, is now bedridden with anxiety and stress – a 31 year old man, firefighter, who up until a few months ago had his entire career in front of him – in short, COVID has been harsh.

And lets not even begin to talk about the parents who these days have to be parents, teachers, therapists, while also trying to maintain a job so they can provide for their families. I am lucky enough that in the thick of it i started my mat leave and the kiddo could go back to daycare.

To say it’s been a challenging year would be the understatement of not the year but the century. But i remain hopeful that soon enough, as the weather gets warmer and days get longer things will start to feel less bleak. As a species we are quite adaptable and perhaps this is just one more of the challenges to surpass.

For now i shall continue dealing with my endless days of broken sleep, infant amusement, diaper changes and social distancing.

Until next post…

… night and day…

motherhoodandasideoflife

My kids could not be any more different; and yes i know they are two different people and I’m not crazy enough to think the’d be/behave the same.. i guess i was just not expecting such a huge difference.

Our boy, our sweet little boy did offer some challenges when he was a newborn. Because he was a forceps baby, he couldn’t latch properly and without a word of a lie, his feeding routine took about an hr, between feeding from each breast and then having to pump right after for another 10 to 20 minutes. But i think that was the most we had to struggle with, from there he’d nap okay and soon enough he was falling asleep on his own and i could do things! I could cook. I could clean. I could chill.

our little girl… girl oh girl… challenge and a half! She is the definition of a demanding baby, my arms are done by the end of the day from carrying her around and there’s just no pleasing her sometimes. Feeding was not a challenge for her, she was delivered unassisted and latched to the breast almost instantaneously. But on every other front just a high high need baby, she needs to be rocked and lulled to sleep; and needs to be constantly in contact with her milk factory… me.

With her I’ve had to forgo some of my past expectations like being able to cook and clean and given myself permission to not feel bad about it; and I’m napping most days with her (only way she naps longer than 40 minutes) to try and catch up with my sleep.

And speaking of sleep, heading up to bed now before her first waking and milk maid duty kicks in.

Until next post…

may the odds be ever in your favour…

motherhoodandasideoflife

Nope, not talking about Hunger Games here, though i’m sure it definitely gets to be that fierce and competitive with very little effort.. I’m talking about kindergarten registration in a school out of your district.

photo courtesy of Memegenerator.net

Every time we drove down to the subway station we’d pass by an elementary school that both my wife and I fell in love with and fantasized about our children attending it, only to learn that because we live about 10mins north of if, well, the school is not the ‘home school’ assigned to our kiddos according to our address.

And I get it, I guess i understand the boards don’t want certain school becoming so overpopulated that they’d have to turn students away, then again, i am not sure why the disparity in ratings for schools. I mean, the curriculum is supposed to be the same taught across the board, we live in a metropolitan city which should have some sort of a standard when it comes to education… apparently not.

So here we are, dealing with kindergarten registration and having to deal with out of district applications. Why, you ask? Couple reasons actually, for starters our ‘home school’ apparently is in the process of getting demolished (to be rebuilt) and will be running out of a different building and also its rating of 2/10, yup, 2 out of 10. And while i understand some of these ratings are to be taken with a grain (or pound) of salt, it does make me wonder why such difference in ratings from school to school.

Alas, here we are, will be a few weeks still until we know if the kiddo got into one of the two schools we applied to and i shall keep you posted.

Until next post…

And we’re back

motherhoodandasideoflife

wow, I can’t believe it’s been such a long long time since my last post. March 2019 feels like such a long time ago and so much has happened since then. We have gone through a second pregnancy, our boy has gone from a toddler to a preschooler (with all the challenges that come with that), we have welcomed a baby girl to our family and we are just a few weeks away from marking one year since when this pandemic started.

image courtesy of Adobe stock.com

Oh COVID, you have changed so much and have made us changed in so many ways. Many of the changes have been for the best. We have been able to prioritize the important things in our lives and have learned just how fragile our lives are. We have learned how much we care for our loved ones and just how far we’d go to protect them.

I have decided to start writing again to have a little creative outlet and have a small break daily (hopefully) since these days are just a blur between social distancing, diaper changes, feedings, cooking and bedtime routines.

I shall try my best to keep up.

Until next post…

my love for cooking (and food)

motherhoodandasideoflife

i think right from the moment i got pregnant the one thing i kept looking forward to was cooking for our kiddo (which i do on a regular basis, even if he opts not to eat).

i grew up in a country where you have freshly made food every day. and i mean my grandma getting up at 6am to make breakfast, then would start lunch around 11, and dinner was some time between 5 and 6pm (my grandparents did a lot of my initial upbringing so most of my memories are of them with me.)

but i digress… back to my love for cooking. i’m not really sure when it started but i do remember cooking when i was fairly small; mainly for my siblings and cousins. i think one of my very first memories is from when i was around 7 years old, i was making something like a stew and getting quite upset at one of my cousins because he had chopped and diced my tomatoes, when i wanted them sliced… it’s all in the details!!!

these days cooking has become one of my stress relievers. my wife says that i usually start cooking when i get stressed and she might be right. i find there is something soothing and relaxing in getting ingredients ready, chopping, stirring, the smells in the kitchen and at the end the satisfaction of having created a dish (food) that your family will enjoy.

sometimes i get lazy and crave-y (is that a word?) and i end up making cubano sandwiches.

cubano

but even in what many people would consider a lazy dish i find joy… all the ingredients, putting them together and marrying into this great and tasty harmony of flavours. truly, you must try and make them some time.

the one bad thing about me cooking that i have to own is the fact i don’t clean after myself when i’m doing so, and i end up with a sink full of utensils and plates i’ve used while cooking. but there’s a very rational explanation for this: in my mind i’m in a professional kitchen where there’s someone cleaning up after me as i am busy creating my masterpieces ;). in reality it’s mostly my wife that ends up cleaning my mess.

until next post…

 

 

apple and oranges…(IMO)

motherhoodandasideoflife

so i’ve been reading up a bit on the college bribes scandal, and boy oh boy, the debates and conversations this has prompted.

there was an article yesterday in Today’s Parent where the author wrote and went on to say that we all do this right from the very beginning right from the moment we tell our kid wearing a mismatched outfit that they look pretty, or making a big deal over our kid’s scribbles.

and now, i wanted to play devil’s advocate because up to a certain point i think (again, I think, my opinion).. she might be right (with a couple caveats.)

I think the moment you become a parent your main goal is to try and do everything humanly possible to make sure your kid does well, has the best opportunities and if it were possible you’d fix the world so the kids would never have to go through the many harsh life experiences they are bound to go through (heartache, a failed match, a bicycle fall, etc), fortunately or not,  as a parent that is your main focus from the moment that baby arrives home from the hospital, to make sure this helpless creature makes it through the night, the weeks, the months, and so on..

Apple_and_Orange_-_they_do_not_compare.jpgso where does it go wrong? and here’s where i think it gets tricky…

for me particularly it goes wrong the moment there’s an exchange of goods (benefits/money/perks) whatever it might be. at that point it becomes a transaction and is no longer a parent looking for their kid’s best opportunity but rather a business exchange.. cost, benefit, and all that accounting terms that i’d rather not get into.

yesterday when i was telling my love about this dilemma she tended to agree more with the author than with me (how dares she!) but i get it. and see, she sided with the author because soon enough we’ll be running into tricky situation when we might have to end up using our dearest friends’ address to get our kiddo to a ‘good school’ (i intentionally used those quotation marks because who can tell nowadays what a good school is, but your parental instinct kicks in and you are going to try all possible to offer your kid the best opportunities.)

so my question was ok, then, should we just send the kiddo to the school in our district which has not so good reviews and a really low rating (2/10)??

do you see why this all becomes a tricky situation? If you had the means, and knew the right person, you’d call that person and asked if there’s a way of getting your kid to a better school, to that great summer camp, or that limited music class… MOST of you would (i won’t say all so i don’t get into as much trouble as the author of that article).. would i pay to have him attend that school? nope, that’s where i’d draw the line.

many of you would say oh you are being a hypocrite because you’d use your friends’ address (and i think i would) but let me put it into perspective, these friends are not just casual acquaintances that i see once a year or that i’d be paying to use their address (as many people do, sometimes even paying strangers in ‘good schools’ districts), these are people who (God forbid) something were to happen to us, would end up in charge of our kiddo, they’d be his legal guardians and are people who spend as much time at our place as we do at theirs. does that make it right? perhaps not..

but as i commented on the Todays Parents’ article, it’s all in the details. if you are purposely paying someone to create merits, or amend grades, or falsify scores so your kids are guaranteed acceptance to one of these elite school, that’s a very different thing in my opinion…it’s like comparing apples and oranges, yes they are both fruits but there are still substantial differences between the two.

until next post!

 

(image credit: wikepedia.org)

is it summer yet?

motherhoodandasideoflife

are you just as done with this winter as i am??

i’m badly longing for the days when i don’t have to put on 10lbs of extra clothing to protect myself from the inclement weather… and not having to wrestle the kiddo in the morning to get his jacket on.. just his jacket, he’s fine with his scarf (or shall i say neck warmer) and his hat… jacket though, he has issues with (mind you the struggle has lessened these days.)

oh this kiddo.. it was a harsh winter for him (and ME!). so we all know how it goes.. the kiddo gets into daycare and within 1.3hrs he will be sick (fine, i may be exaggerating a bit you you all know i’m right!!)

it feels like he’s been constantly sick for the past 9 months, like constantly. when i brought this up with the paediatrician, he asked ‘has he had one or two days that he gets better between these colds?’.. so of course my answer is yes, because he did get the odd ‘better’ day.. so he said yup.. that’s daycare for you… daycare kids’ colds are like little mountains ranges, and their ‘better’ days are the valleys, but guess what? there’s another peak coming right up.

oh the joy!

while these virus, viruses? virai? (whatever the plural is) manifested in him as lots of green mucous and colds and coughs… guess who got pink eye? yup.. yours truly. i never knew it was possible to get pink eye pretty much back to back to back for a total of 3 times within 6 weeks. honestly i have a new found respect for the daycare workers who i’m sure are constantly sick when they first start at these centres.

but here we are at last (and watch you me i’m jinxing it as i write this)… it’s been about 2 weeks since the last bout of cold/cough/snot… so there’s hope people! there’s hope! he’s finally gotten into a nice routine of being a happy kiddo, eating lots, getting heavier by the minute it seems, and boy does he have energy (we gotta find a way of harvest all that energy and transfer it to the parents.)

IMG_5272this is where i’ll end this post, i have so much more to write but i won’t bore people with my rambling… i will make an effort to try and post more often.

until next post!

 

he’s a traveller..

motherhoodandasideoflife

so i haven’t written in a while. It was hard for me to really believe my friends who had kids when they’d say ‘oh sorry i don’t have time’ or ‘it slipped my mind’.. but trust you me, now i can honestly say i believe it because i am right in that situation (it’s a bit crazy and overwhelming just how fast time goes by and just how much you unintentionally forget)

but back to the post…

you know what one of my first childhood memories is? my mom traveling with me, via car, going from the highlands of Ecuador to see my grandparents in the ‘middle’ region of the country and me puking my guts out… yes ma’am, that’s one of my very first memories, fun right?

i was the kind of kid who’d get extremely car sick; what’s more, i just had to think about the thought of going in a car and i’d be sick already. i bet you are thinking lol, how funny, but it’s not, not for a kid with a very strict and short fuse mother.. but i digress.

IMG_3767our kiddo is great while traveling (thus far, and hard knock on wood)… this past trip was third trip in less than two years, not bad, not bad.. hopefully he’ll get to see a lot more places than us.

i’m not going to pretend the entirety of the trip was flawless, of course not, kids are not in their environment, they are very restricted and not necessarily free to explore around which is a challenge once they are mobile (as is the case for our kiddo.)

last year he wasn’t yet crawling around when we went down to Cancun and then to Ecuador, so his anxious moments were much much easier to manage while he was strap to one of us in his carrier. this time around he’s full on mobile, so his pacifier and ipad were our best allies. this is the one time when i was very lenient about screen time and i just allowed him to watch his beloved Paw Patrol, because i’d rather him starring at the screen for an hr than listening to him scream and whine because he can’t walk around exploring (call me a bad mom if you must.)

i think that as with most things planning and preparing are key (and it doens’t hurt having someone else with you to tag team it.) i can honestly say it’s going to be a long time before i attempt another solo trip with the kiddo; when he was smaller again it was different as things are easier to manage in some respect, but until then we’ll keep bringing mamma along 🙂 and snacks, and toys, and ipads, and books…

and i say he’s a traveller because this kid did not get a single mosquito bite while on any of these trips… you know the horror stories you hear or read about the kids getting the runs, or reactions to insect bites, or refusing food, or not been able to sleep somewhere else… so far nothing… and i do say so far with a big weary smile on because i also know how quickly things turn around.

but until then we’ll try and take a couple more trips, visit a few more places, see a few more people… because as the old saying goes: We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.

until next post….

to each their own… but..

motherhoodandasideoflife

so, i’m not a hater by any means…. and i do try and apply the principle that each person is owner of their own lives and is free to live it in the best way they see fit (really getting into Dr. Wayne Dyer’s teachings, more on that at a later post).

however…

Jeans

why??? just that.. why??

do not get me wrong, i’m a huge supporter of fashion and might have even once in a while indulge in a few fashion fads myself, but this is one i just can’t seem to get.

i do have a pair of ‘distressed’ jeans… but you know what they look like? like an actual pair of jeans that are okay to be worn. not like a pair of jeans that have just been in the fight of their lives with a hungry bear.

as much as i try to understand the point of wearing pants that only cover half or a third of your quads, i just can’t (if someone would like to explain, i’m open to it).

i think i appreciate the notion of pushing ideas and out of the box thinking expressed via fashion and wanting to cause a reaction, however i’m not sure this causes the right reaction. i was walking into a pizza parlour the other day as two girls were leaving, and wouldn’t you know, one of them was wearing a pair of jeans like these (actually they seem to be even more ‘distressed’ as part of the shin area was also gone.) i did have to do a double-take to make sure i was seeing what i was seeing, just about 3/4 of the front area gone… just the actual legs showing.

and i think perhaps i am starting to date myself and getting to that point of no return of full out adulthood but am i grateful to know that ‘this too shall pass’?? you bet! (i still remember ‘unique’ shorts with the pockets showing… like c’mon! really???)

until next post!