Hanging out with Daddy

Adara absolutely adores her father and insists on followng him everywhere, no matter what he is doing. She has been known to hear his voice in the backyard and crawl to the screen door and cry until he comes. Incidentally, she can open the screen door now, and does all of the time, merrily taking her toys outside with her and closing the door behind.
Today at the splash park she crawled all of the way across the park, just to be close to her daddy!

Here's some strangely solemn pics of Adara from when Aunts Ruth and Carole were visiting. The water drinking in the bath is the new favourite trick.

Dumb Busy

So dumb busy,that I have no real time to blog. So dumb busy that I forgot to plan my weekend sans baby which is coming up next weekend, and now can not find a place to stay as it's the long weekend. So dumb busy, that I'm happy to have friends to stay with in the town that we were planning to go to anyways, so it's all cool. So dumb busy that I'm going to lie in the sun now.
love to all!

Visit with Jenn, Steve, Griffin and Dudley Last Weekend

New Clothes from Aunties Ruth and Carole

Here's some pics of some new clothes that arrived from the states about a month ago from the Aunties. Adara looks awesome in them, and they are super comfortable. The aunts came to visit tonight and brought a whole passel of new clothes for the wee one. Between all of her aunts and grandparents she is now definitevely way better dressed then her parents. Now if only some of our friends would have girls so we could pass on these super cute clothes! Bloody everybody is having boys! Ah well! Thanks to the Aunties for the beautiful things and the lovely visit. The mamma is well fed, well presented, well loved and contented.

Happy Nine Months Monkey 'O Mine!

Dear Adara, Happy Nine Month Birthday!
I've spent a lot of time this month thinking about you and the past nine months as I prepared to go back to work. Today, at the park, we saw two babies under 10 days old. Were you ever that small and sleepy? Small yes, sleepy, I think not!
I've thought a lot about the personality that you are developing and who you are rapidly becoming. You are charming and funny and giggly and silly, and willful and stubborn and thoughtful and empathetic and loving and easily bored and social, social, social, baby girl! You are at your happiest in a room or park or restaurant full of people. You are a people watcher extraordinaire, much like your grammy.


It's been quite a busy month for you again, I think that you must be quite exhausted. In fact, I know that you are, because you've suddenly switched to sleeping 10 or 11 hours straight through. Yippee! The effects of lots of outside play.
This month, you've become a speed crawler, got another tooth (three now and three more on the verge), learned to open the screen door to the patio and pull back the curtain on the shower if you aren't getting enough attention. You also give lovely kisses and only occasionally bite.
This month coming up, you and daddy are starting on your grand adventure without me at home all of the time. I know that you two are going to have an awesome time. If you could just remind daddy to put on his sunblock before you go out and conquer the world, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks darling!
I love you more then you can imagine and can't wait to see what this next month holds, Adara. You are my sweet bella, monkey baby, bonita!

A visit with Grammy and Poppa

My parents were here earlier this week helping Len to build his workshop and watching the babe while I got some new clothes and haircut to go back to work. Here's the visit in pics.

Life In the Fast Lane

Way back in February, I blogged about moving up to life in the medium lane as I got out in the world more and got my strength back. This week, Adara and I have officially begun our rev up back to life in the fast lane.
For Adara, this has meant a week in which she decided to throw herself bodily off of our futon (and not cry about it at all) and climb some steps. The steps happened after watching an older baby do them at the library. She got a look on her face like "Oh, I see", and then did all three steps like there was nothing to it. She was also bogeying through the park, stealing other babies pacifiers and crawling over door frames in order to follow me out to the deck. Needless to say she has opted for being very mobile!

For me, this is the last week of maternity leave. I start part time next week at my new job, and then full time the week after. I don't know what to make of this. My leave has been so up and down, filled with beautiful enlightening glorious moments, and utter dull boredom. It has been exhilarating and infuriating. As I'm writing this, it suddenly occurs to me that I could be describing any period of my life. Lif is always both exhilarating and infuriating. Why did I think that maternity leave would be different?
I've definitely come to peace with my decision to go back to work early. Len is completely psyched to try out being at home for awhile, and I've completely lost patience with the rounds of food, dishes, diapers, laundry, pick up toys, pull out toys, repeat. I think that I'll feel more enthused about it when it's not my entire day.
My mother and I have been noticing lately how all of my horoscopes in the last little while have been about taking on new jobs and new challenges and about the need for change in order to move forward. I'm not a believer in horoscopes particularly, but I do believe that on occasion the world sends you a message. Perhaps this time it's sending it to me via gossip magazines and newspapers!

Carseats...WTF?

Today Len and Adara and I took out an Autoshare car for the first time. For those of you who don't know, this is a company where you sign up, get given a magical key and the ability to pick a vehicle from on of over 300 locations across TO. You pay a flat rate that covers insurance and gas, plus km's on top.
So, today we got one booked and Len brought it home around 10:30 am with the intent of leaving after we put in the carseat, which is also new since the babe is now over 20 pounds. At 11 am, we still had the intent to leave, but not the carseat installed. Am I getting dumber or are carseats and the cars that they go in insanely complex? We ended up just doing it old school with the seat belt threaded through an impossibly small hole, as we couldn't figure out the bloody floor latch, universal latch, seat latch, bloody sky latch system! Stats say that 80% of Canadian carseats are installed wrong and now I'm pretty sure I know why. Just call me another statistic people; just another stat.

Changes

I had to make a cup of tea before I could actually sit down and write this post; I'm so wound up about so many things right now.
For those of you who don't know, I've accepted a new job and am going back to work partially the week of July 14th and full time on the 21st. Len will finish the summers paternity leave. I didn't intend to go back to work this summer, but when the right job with the perfect combination of challenges, money and reasonably family friendly came along; I had to take it. I know that it's the right decision for all of us, but I'm anxious and a little bit scared.
So, in preparation for this, Adara and I had our last breastfeed three days ago. Things had been dwindling away after Vancouver. When I came back, she was really a baby on the move and didn't want to devote the ten seconds or so that it takes to get breast milk to let down. She wanted instant or nothing! So, we'd been having occasional, not very satisfying attempts at breastfeeding. Then on saturday, we had an amazing feed. She was cuddled into me, smiling and patting away at me, happy legs kicking for a good five minutes. We felt very happy and bonded to me. Later that evening, I realized that that was it. I wanted to remember a happy end, not keep pushing her to do something that she didn't want to. And so we are finished with that, and I'm quite sad.
I'm also nervous to go back to work. I don't know if I'm as good at this as I used to be. The new job is a bigger company and people that I don't know, so it's not enough to be just good, I have to be better then I was before. I'm somewhat excited by that, and somewhat petrified.
The upside to all of this is that Len gets time to hang out with Adara and get out of the darkened theatre for a summer. The downside is that I've had to cancel some of my plans for gallivanting about the countryside. Oh well, as the phone calls and emails of the past week have told me, there are plenty of people ready and willing to come gallivanting our way instead!
So, here we are, ready to come out of our mom and baby honeymoon and rejoin the real world. If any other moms have any thoughts on this transition, I'd be glad to hear them, cause as always, I feel like we're headed into the unknown.

Attack of the Baby Monster!

Everything is Just So Funny when You're Eight Months Old...