A New Day Has Come

I still remember the day that I first took her to them. It was very cold and very bright. It was January 2009 and my beautiful baby was 11 months old. I can still conjure up with acute accuracy the emotions I was feeling leaving my love - my heart and soul - alone with a room full of strangers for the very first time.  I was deeply sad and anxious and more than a little bit lost without her attached to my body, where she'd been safely snuggled every single day since the moment she was conceived. It was hard.

Today is hot and very bright. It's June 2012 and my beautiful baby is four and half years old. The acute emotions I'm feeling today are not that much different from those I felt three and half years ago. My baby has grown. She's been out of my arms for some time now and embraced during the week by a whole separate family. One that has loved her and nurtured her and prepared her for today, probably much better than her father and I could ever have hoped to do on our own. It's still hard. 

Today is Bella's last day at Down Town Kids Academy, the daycare where she's been enrolled in full time care for the last three and half years. Next Wednesday, after a much needed reprieve and rest, she will start the full time summer kindergarten program at her new school. 

Just like we did on that cold, bright day back in 2009, I will walk with her to her new beginning. I will hold her close and kiss her face and tell her how proud I am of her. She'll cling to me for a while and I'll let her, for a while. And then it will be time to let her go. She might cry. I will for sure. But I'll walk out into the summer day with a smile, knowing my big girl is more than ready to walk her next steps and that she will thrive, that she will blossom, that there is no looking back now. 

Thank you DTKA Family, for your love, support, kindness and friendship. We will never forget you. 

Two of Hearts

I've been thinking a lot about my daughter these days. An awful lot. Not just about her, but about us. About us, as in her and I. About us as in me and her and her father. Us. As in the three of us and a dog. Because in less than 20 weeks 'us' as we know it now it is going to change.

Before I got pregnant with Baby2, I could literally cry at the thought of having another child in the house and stealing that spotlight away from my girl. I struggled with the big question that I'm sure most, if not all, parents struggle with at some point before having a second child - Can I love them as much as I love her? Not will I, because of course I want to, I will try to, I need to, but CAN I? Because honestly I could not imagine, before I was pregnant again, that I could/would ever love anything as much as I love her, in the way that I love her.

Since becoming pregnant and having the pregnancy progress to a point where I'm pretty confident that there will be a happy, healthy baby at the finish line, my doubts about it have disappeared and in there place are certainties that seem as though they should have been obvious all along. 

I will probably never love anyone the same way, maybe even the same amount, that I love Bella. My love for her is just like her, it's just like us. It's unique, it's powerful, it's ever-changing and ever-growing. There is no way that this love, our love, could ever be diminished, or duplicated, by our new addition.

Neither will my love for our new baby be diminished, or duplicated, by my love for Bella. Rather it will be, in fact it already is, a love all unto itself. As unique and powerful, ever-changing and ever-growing, as the love for my first daughter. Just different. I have had the opportunity to love Bella as my only child and as my first child and that is incredibly special. That's a special layer that I will only ever have with "us" as we know it now.

This new one will be the baby in the family. The last child. The little brother or sister. And that is something special that I will only ever love about him or her. All the incredible traits and character that I'm discovering as my daughter grows, I will now get to discover and love about my second born. Probably not the same things, maybe not even the same amount of things - maybe less, maybe more. But love there will be, more than enough, more than I have now. Twice as much. Two of hearts. Love squared and then some.

This morning I was lying in bed, cuddled up around my beautiful daughter, tickling her back and awash in my love for her. At the same time my new baby was waking up, tickling me from the inside. And with every kick and flip and jab, my heart swelled and grew. My love multiplied.

Oops. I Did It Again.

Sorry for the recent radio silence, friends. I've been wanting to at least post about my Bella turning four (FOUR!) years old and put up the last set of pictures of her in the white chair. The thing is? She will NOT SIT for pictures in the white chair. No way, no how. She is definitively and absolutely DONE with PICTURES IN THE WHITE CHAIR. (Sound out the all caps in a determined four-year-old voice for best effect.)

Hmph.

And the problem with that is? She's totally old enough now to make that call. I won't lie and say it doesn't break my heart into 17 million pieces, because it does it so does it hurts and I cry and I want to grab her and stuff her inside my shirt and not let her exercise that damn freewill and keep her as my baby forever, but that's not very rational or logical now is it?

So instead? I've been spending the last four months or so growing one of these:

Baby2 at 13 weeks.

Baby2 at 13 weeks, 6 days.

AHA! Take that grown-kid-freewill-exercising Bella! You don't want any more chair photos? I will merely create another small human who will have no choice to but to pose for me for at least another 3.5 years. Of course they also won't sleep more than two hours at time, require a great deal of personal attention and will  shit on me a lot. Literally.

*HEART ATTACK*

Anyhoo. That's what's up. I'm in my 16th week now and my due date (for what those are worth) is September 21. Some people will recognize that date because it also happens to be my birthday. FREAKY RIGHT? I KNOW.

 It's pretty exciting stuff but in light of what happened last summer I've been incredibly nervous to share this news on any public forum.  I'm still not sure it's the best move but like most things in this life sometimes you just have to breathe deeply and leap. And given the length and extent of the symptoms I've been experiencing this time around, I'm feeling pretty certain that this kid intends on making a very healthy and happy appearance in around six more months.

Because I risk coming off as a whiny ungrateful loser, I'll spare you the specifics on how sick this pregnancy has been making me. Actually fuck it, it's my pregnancy and I'll whine if I want to.

The day I reached the six week mark (on the dot) I woke up thinking I had the worst stomach flu ever. Then it lasted for eight weeks. WITHOUT GOING AWAY AT ALL. At seven weeks I called my doctor sobbing from my office and begging for relief claiming that I was surely going to die. She prescribed me Diclectin immediately and I ran not walked to her office to collect it. I've been taking it four times a day ever since and though it's allowed me to get up and drag my ass to work (in fact I've only missed one day of work thus far, that very first day when I thought I had the flu, stupid me). It did not curb the nausea and it only mildly reduced the vomiting. I have done some spectacular puking. Highlights include, three times on my street one morning in front of a construction crew. Once in a garbage can at the Dufferin Mall. And once in someone's recycling bin on garbage day. (Sorry neighbour).

Gladly, thankfully, blissfully, miraculously, amazingly, somewhere around 14 weeks the nausea started to subside. It's been getting steadily better, though I continue to throw up usually in the morning but at other random times as well. The puking is not fun, but it's no longer preceded and followed by the relentless, endless, pitiless nausea that I experienced in the first trimester. I'll take random barfing over that special brand of hell any day.

Besides, I've been having some really fun symptoms as well. Ever since I stopped feeling nauseous (a week ago), I'm really enjoying food in that OMGthisisthebestthingI'veevertasted pregnancy kind of way. I still have several aversions, but anything that's on the okay list with my hormones is tasting pretty fucking great. I'm also feeling the baby move all the time now. This is much earlier than I ever felt it with Bella.

And there's this, the funnest of all the symptoms:

Bump at 15 weeks.

And by funnest, I mean fattest. I gained 50lbs with Bella and I'm pretty sure I'm setting, if not surpassing, that pace this time around. I'm definitely showing way more. A friend described second pregnancies as "blowing up a balloon that's already been inflated at some point". Yes. That.

Pretty sure this 15 week bump is the same size as my 20 week bump from last time around. I know I'm going to have a hell of a fight on my hands to get back into shape after this baby is born but you know what? I'll deal with it when the time comes. For now I'm going to stop being hard on myself. Do my best to eat as healthy as possible without denying myself the simple delectable pleasure that pregnant eating can be. My doc has advised that I refrain from working out (I have had some bleeding which has now completely stopped), but I can't and I won't unless I see a return of the bleed. I really need the exercise for my physical and mental well-being. 

This will be my last pregnancy. I'm about 95% sure. Crown is 2179% sure. I refuse to take any of it for granted and want to share it and savour every minute of it. It's given me a hell of a time so far but I'm already so beyond in love with my bump and my wee baby. Beyond, beyond, beyond. 

Lullaby

I think there is no more fitting example of what life is like as a working parent than the fact that it has taken me three full years to produce and publish the movie you'll see below.

I started it just after Bella's first birthday and I set what I thought at the time was a ridiculously generous goal for myself; to have it completed by the time she turned two. I thought it would be a nice, sweet gift to her (and me) and we could snuggle up together and watch it and marvel at just how much she, we, had grown and changed in just one year.

On Monday my baby, the one that you'll watch transform from tiny blob to pretty babe in the movie below, is going to turn four years old.

Four.

I've always said that at four I would stop taking her 'white chair' birthday photos that I took once per month for her first two years and then every six months after that. When I made the decision that four years would be long enough I honestly believed we had an eternity until then.

But I blinked and here we are.

Once we take her final pictures I want to make a movie showing all the chair shots in sequence from first to last and today when I went to source out some of the early photos I came across an unfinished movie from her first year. It was almost done, so close, yet somehow I never found the spare, quiet moments I required to give it the finishing touches.

Until today. Home sick with Bella, laptop with me on the couch, I finally got the chance. It's not perfect and you'll have to forgive my singing at the end, but it's done.

She and I had our moment together this morning, snuggled up and watching it after all. I cried a lot and indeed I marveled at how much she, we, have both grown and changed.


Music Credit: Lullaby; The Dixie Chicks

This weekend Bella and I will shoot her last chair photos. I hope it won't be another four years before I can put together the complete sequence. But I'm not holding myself to any goals this time. Because it all happens. Like it or not, it all just keeps on happening.

PS. The song this video is set to was played at the end of every single prenatal yoga class I went to while I was pregnant with Bella. To this day I can't hear it without being flooded by the memories of what it felt like to lie still in that dark room, holding my growing belly and dreaming about the days to come. Four years of those days have passed already but I'm still dreaming. And I still love this song.

And So This Is (Was) Christmas

I've been describing 2011 as a worthy adversary. Every one of the incredible highs that my family and I experienced this year was met and matched with a difficult low. We were challenged on just about every level in 2011. Emotionally, physically, financially.

I can't say I've ever lived a year that hasn't been a mix of ups and downs. That's just the nature of this life, isn't it? But in 2011 the lows were just a little lower, the tears came from slightly deeper in the soul. Then again the laughs? They came from a little deeper in the belly. Sighs of relief were breathed a little louder. Hugs were held a little longer, a little tighter. Because you know what? For every time I was knocked down, I managed to get up again. Stronger somehow with the knowledge of just how much we can survive, my awesome family and I.

We closed out the year with a month of celebrating. The Christmas season arrived with its fair share of the usual holiday stresses but our home was full of joy. Even the last few days of the year, spent shut in and nursing my beautiful girl through a terrible illness, were warm and lovely and safe. We hunkered down, snuggled in and plowed through it together, all the while reminded again and again just how lucky, how blessed, we really are.

Yes, a worthy adversary indeed, 2011. I believe we'll call it a draw.

Here are the snapshots from Christmas 2011, a fitting celebration to end this wild ride of a year. It was the perfect way to say farewell, to clear the palate and move forward with eyes and hearts open wide, ready to take on whatever may come in 2012.

These two handsome creatures lived on my mantle and made me smile every day.

Also on the mantle, how jolly is this little trio?

Put a berry on it.

Nobody loved our tree this year more than Moet.

Even the doorknobs were in on the festivities. 

Presents!

More presents!

Snuggles!

More snuggles!

Feasting continues on boxing day - our first Christmas dinner in the new house.

Beautiful even after being horribly sick for five straight days. We spent our last day of 2011 hunkered down at the hospital.

But this one's got a fighter's spirit like the rest of us. Bounced back enough to enjoy tacos and giggles on NYE.

Happy New Year from me and mine to all of you and yours.