learning activities

It has been a long time again since I have blogged, despite my stern resolution to keep up with it regularly.  I guess life is just taking me over.  I am busy and happy and things are going really well for us at the moment.

I have weaned Emma successfully, and it was much easier than I thought it would be.  All I had to do is wear turtlenecks constantly for about one week.  She could not undress me and other than the minor inconvenience of boiling from excessive heat at night, it was pretty tolerable.  Long live the turtleneck, world’s best weaning adjunct.

Work is good, the new town is easy to get around in, and it is summer, which makes everything lovely and pleasant.  We have a short season up north but in this short season things manage to grow, so I have planted kale, tomatoes, yellow peppers, zucchini, onions, potatoes, rhubarb and herbs – parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, lovage.  I enjoy the garden immensely.  The City has sent us as a gift a whole crew of ladies that replenished the top soil, and cleaned out the old weeds, repositioned a whole bunch of plants, and added to my meager gardening skills immensely.  The garden is gorgeous at the moment.  I am really impressed by how hospitable and appreciative of our work the City of New Town has been.  We do provide a much needed service but still, they did not have to do all this…it is so nice to be treated like a Queen, haha.

Also, I have started doing a lot of Montessori activities with Emma.  I wanted her badly in a Montessori type of school from the age of 2.5 years old, she is not yet there, but I know that it won’t happen.  We are very isolated and no such establishment is available here in our little town.  I am therefore doing it at home.  I am reading blogs of moms that are doing Montessori at home, and following books on the subject.  Every night I prepare five activities for her to do the next day if she is interested (she always is), they are on a separate tray each, and prettily presented.  They usually include pouring (water, rice, etc), transferring (with spoon, tongs, fork), fine motor skills, arts (drawing, colouring, watercolour, etc), grouping and sorting (by colour or shape) and also language (cards, books, etc).  I will be teaching her at home every morning from 7 to 9:30 or so whatever she seems interested in at that moment.  She sometimes shows interest in the piano (other than just banging on it, which she does constantly) so I will be including some music in as well.  At the moment she is more into drums, imagine that.  Noise and rhythm class, I guess…

She is doing very well in her swimming class.  She progressed from where I dreaded going (because mine was the only child screaming for the entire half an hour) to floating by herself with the belt, and lying on her back without any protest, swimming with the belt through a tunnel, and sliding off a really tall slide.  I have also registered her in a soccer class, and have no idea how that is going because MrH is taking her, but she is enjoying herself and that is what matters. 

I am quite keen on education, starting as early as possible.  I know that there  are people who say to leave the kid be a kid, but I don’t think that learning new things every day and getting better and better at something in any way subtracts from life.  Quite the opposite:  she used to be a lot more bored before I started with the teaching.  She enjoys the small accomplishments of every day, and likes to practice her skills.  I am not pushing her, but encouraging her to concentrate and to pay attention.  Her mood has improved a lot and she is more cooperative since the Montessori activities.  She is also more manageable in public, with fewer, less intense tantrums. 

The nice thing about parenting is that it is a topic of such intense interest for everyone, that one can easily find written material on all aspects of it, and wonderful ideas.  I am not very crafty though, and the schooling style that I went to included mostly abstract thinking and very little hands on.  This is why for me the Montessori approach, with beautiful tangible demonstrations of everything, from a cube or a sphere to a hundred units or the sandpaper letters and numbers is so different and a bit difficult…especially when I look at the felt or paper origami that other mothers publish on pintrest… I feel very non-crafty.   I get around it by buying a lot of the materials already made, which makes it fairly expensive.  I would say that so far, for the infant and toddler materials, I have spent about 500 $, including printing fees for printing out free cards that I am getting off the internet, and dollar store materials that are for home made activities.  It is not too bad, considering that it is spread over two years.  It also includes the books that she gets.  There are really no other toys other than a play kitchen in the basement which does not get used much yet, but I expect will be popular in the next year, in particular in winter when we cannot bike.

How much do you guys spend on toys and educational materials?  I am quite curious.  Is there a limit? Are they getting used?  And also, if your kids have outgrown them, do you keep them for the next kid, and if so how many bins of stuff can one keep?  I have decided to keep just the learning materials, and not many other toys. 

I am however going to do a cleanup this week and perhaps bring some of the older toys to the office.  We have too much. 

spa life

I am trying to lose weight.  I am always trying to lose weight.  I have one of those bodies that burns very efficiently, and as a result I don't need much food to stay pleasantly plump.  It gets worse as time goes on. 

Whenever I am on holidays, even if it is only for a few days, and even if it involves Easter with all its goodies, I seem to lose weight.  I am much more aware of what I put in my body, and despite not exercising ('cause I am not exercising on holidays, you know), I come home a few pounds lighter.  I think that the feeling of being spoiled, and free of worries, is very important.

Which is why I have decided to adopt a pseudo-spa attitude at home.  I have my water with mint leaves or with lemon juice squeezed in.  I have my moment of stretching on the grass during the day, or of floating in the pool after my swim.  I take Emma to the babysitter one hour prior to work, and use that hour to myself, mostly for exercise, but I am thinking that I will take a bit of time to just read a book, something mindless, while laying on the grass and smelling the ants.  Or something like that.

This kind of thinking is what makes me lose weight.  The basic premise is that I am fabulous, and because I am so fabulous I am not going to endanger my fabulous silouhette with sugar or carbs or eating too much.  I strive for a flat (i.e. mostly empty) stomach that will match my great relaxed attitude and go very well with a floaty summery dress.  And with this attitude usually comes great cooking as well, because I try to make everything taste special, not to mention that being so hungry all the time all I want to do is read recipes...hehehe.

I am currently weighing myself often, and am at 162 lb (my height is 5ft9in)-metric 1.75cm/72kg.  I would love to go down to 148 lb, which was my weight for a long time in university, and even afterwards, before having children.  But most importantly, I would like to feel like I am skinny-fit.  And that is a feeling only loosely related to the weight. 

We have a long weekend coming up, I want to see how I do about the fabulous skinny fit me emerging from the cocoon.

That, and I have to start weaning Emma.  Always on the to-do list.

toddler days

Before I had a child, and before I even thought of having children, I thought I was going to be one of those people who spanks their children when they are unruly or "spoiled".  I thought that a quick swat on the bum seemed like an effective way to stop a tantrum and restore order and obedience in the household.  HA.

As soon as I had Emma, not only I felt that the whole concept was absurd, but I also realized that the swat-on-the-bum-as-peace-solution was a figment of someone's imagination.  Someone without children.  You try to do that to a 2 year old in tantrum mode.  In particular to a sensitive one, who will think that the world as she knows it has turned on its head, and will be desperate and scared and as a result cry even harder.  It does not work!

We have at least two daily episodes of meltdown, some days worse than others.  Yesterday we were riding my bike (I have a pink bike seat for her on the steering axel) and we went to the food shop to buy salad.  (God forbid that I run out of salad, who knows what my internal rabbits will feed on).  I got into the store and put her in a cart that looks like a car, I mean with a steering wheel and everything.  It is quite cute actually.  We went around the shop a few times for her amusement, and she ate one of the bananas that I had not paid for yet...ahem...then she wanted back in.  I put her back in.  Then out again.  Then back in.  It was such a fun game.  What made it even better was trying to pay for the salad at the same time and explaining about the extra banana, i.e. improvising the banana's weight with another similar banana. 

In the end, when it was time to leave, she did not want to go.  She screamed and kicked and I had to lift her up, then she hit her fingers onto the door trying to run back in, then some random old lady asked me if I needed help, then some other random passers-by started wondering if they should involve the Ministry of Children and Families, etc.  You know, the usual.  (You know what I mean if you have a 2 year old). 

I have a lot of patience, but sometimes she wears me out.  I don't know if my waiting it out strategy is the best way to deal with her meltdowns.  I try to ignore them as much as I can, and to give her love and acceptance and hugs when she calms down.  I try to ask her persistently to put back objects, stop throwing sand, not draw on the walls, etc, many times, until she stops.  I try to wear her out.  I am playing the "my patience is older than your patience" game.  Is that what I am supposed to do? Who knows.  Please recommend books.  I need to learn.  I need a guru.

update from New Town

We have moved.  It was difficult, but not as difficult as I had initially anticipated.  The new house is bigger, and a lot newer, which is a pleasure.  I am also enjoying discovering our new town, which is even further North and colder, but smaller and friendlier.  Work is quite enjoyable as well, but of course I miss my old patients and especially I miss my friends.  Overall, other than losing my dehydrator and the paddle attachment of the Kitchen aid ice cream maker (which I have only found out today after I had already made the ice cream mixture), all seems to be in order in this new environment of ours.

I have to stop breastfeeding Emma soon.  I really don't know how to do it.  She is all over my boobs all the time.  In the mornings, when she is half asleep, she sucks for about half an hour at a time.  She enjoys it so much, and it helps her calm down and feel cuddled and warm, which is why I am so reluctant to stop it.  It feels like I would be rejecting her, although, as my psychologist used to say years ago, there is a difference between refusal and rejection.  I am refusing her the breast, true, but I am not rejecting her, and I love her just as much.

The problem is that I don't really know how to comfortably deal with Emma's anger outbursts.  She has a mind of her own by now, and if I make her angry, I am in trouble.  She can cry and throw herself on the floor and make a scene for a good hour at a time, and it is very hard impossible to distract her at this time.  I miss the volatile mind of the young toddler, who can be bought shamelessly with a cookie.  At this age, it takes an elephant to distract them.

Any advice from the rest of you who have been there and survived is greatly appreciated.  That is, if anybody still reads my blog.

laughing hurts!

I was told that I should not be lifting the 30 lb that my daughter weighs until six weeks after the operation.  However, a few times I had to help her on and off chairs or beds, and I can honestly say that although it hurt a little, it did not hurt nearly as much as coughing, sneezing, and especially laughing!  And we laugh a lot around here.  My mother and I have a humour-filled intimacy, where we laugh at all things to do with body functions, situations, and all sorts of things.  Laughter is definitely a family value that stands for so many things: a way to unite in front of adversity in a country where we did not understand much at first, a way to explore the new and not have it be so threatening, and now a way to say to each other that we belong in this little group, that we are accepted, that we can be vulnerable and make jokes about ourselves.

I noticed that the same is true about my old friends that come from Romania:  we do laugh a lot, a lot more than I laugh with my Canadian-born friends.   Same with my Italian friend.  It might be cultural, I don't know, but I suspect latin people value humour intensely.  I won't comment about other cultures, as I honestly have only observational perspective, not an insider's position, but I can say at this point that if I am going to develop an incisional hernia, it won't be because of lifting Emma prior to the prescribed 6 weeks, but because I cannot help but laugh at so many things...

one more insult? I don't think so...

The fertility centre that I have been attending so far is splitting into four physicians that I like, that are all moving to a new centre, and one physician that is staying behind, that I did not have a good encounter with during my egg retrieval.  Not much choice in terms of where I want to go next, obviously.  However, to transfer the two frozen embryos to the new lab, I was just told by the old clinic that it would cost 500$.  It used to be 300$ when the clinic was under old ownership.  The new owner (i.e. the doctor I don't like much) increased the price to 500$.

I am all for paying to cover the costs.  I understand that one must buy liquid nitrogen, and that there are tanks and shipment fees and administrative fees, and although I don't have much choice in the matter, I guess I will have to supply the funds for transferring my embryos.  And, as an IVF patient, I am used to paying enormous sums of money for things that others don't have to pay a cent for.  I realize that life is not fair and that it is only so much I, as an individual, can fight the system.  But, I have a sneaky suspicion that in this case I am being overcharged.  So, I phoned and let the old clinic know that I am intending to make a complain to the College of Physicians in order to have a bigger and better dog investigate the ethics of the whole shebang.

Within minutes the doctor that now owns the clinic phoned me and said that the fees are still 300$, and that the receptionist was wrongly advised, and that nobody is trying to make money off the whole affair.  I don't know what to believe now.  I have sufficient experience with running a medical practice to know that something is not too clear here.  And I am not in the business of complaining, this would be a first.  But at least I hope that the new owners are not going to be making money off us, the patients, who are already being cheated on by nature and more or less abandoned by the government who is not spending a cent on our treatment.  Darn it if I am going to let one more insult add to the litany.

lots of time on my hands

I decided that lying down is a better idea than standing up or sitting, as I suspect it was the increased vertical activity that caused the infection (fluids tend to pool around the incision more easily when standing up).  So today I have a lot of time on my hands to sit and do nothing.  I might get started on my taxes.  Except that all of my papers are back home, while I am sitting here in Vancouver, so even that won't work.

I am reading blogs of infant and toddler loss.  I don't know why I am drawn towards these sad stories, is it because I am trying to find out how a baby might die, in order to avoid it, is it because I want to know how one survives such an ordeal in order to be prepared in case it happens to me... hard to know.   In any case, over the past week, forced to confront my own flesh-and-bloodness again, and the fragility of life and health, I am more appreciative of what this present moment is bringing me: a happy, thriving toddler, a healthy husband, a healthy mother, a healthy father, a healthy brother.  It can all be taken away so fast.  And one day it will.  Just not today, which is why I need to enjoy today while it lasts.