A Day of Thanksgiving

I believe I am a very thankful person. I appreciate the life we have, the friends, the family, my incredible hubby and my precious daughter. The allergy scare that we experienced the Sunday of Thanksgiving, around noon, has made me sit back and relish just how lucky we are.

So Sunday, I was making dessert (yummy, yummy Black Bottom Dessert) to take to my family's Thanksgiving Dinner at my brothers. My little helper had just had her lunch and was getting ready for her nap. She had been helping my make the dessert in the morning, so the step stool that she had been standing on to supervise was still in its place waiting for her return. She came to see how I was progressing on dessert and decided while there to taste what mommy had made. When I saw her licking the beater's I wasn't worried - only contained butter, icing sugar, eggs and vanilla. It was as I was finishing the clean up, and I heard her start to cough a lot that I realized there was something going on. By the time I turned to look at her (2-3 minutes tops) she was starting to break out in hives and was starting to have problems breathing.

Needless to say the next few minutes are a bit of a blur - I ran to get the Benadryl to give her as she wasn't to the point where I needed to administer her Epi-pen. I tried to get her to take the Benadryl, which didn't work and then then the vomiting started. Okay - get it out of your system that is good was all I could think. Still once that was done you could tell she was still having problems breathing. So at this point I called my hubby, told him what was happening and that I was taking her to the hospital. I wasn't playing around with this.

As we were leaving she seemed better, though kept scratching at her neck because it was itchy and bugging her (hives). On the way to the hospital, the vomit started again (remember I am pregnant and in an enclosed space) and this one dwarfed the first, but she got everything out of her system that time. By the time we got to the hospital (which thankfully wasn't busy at all) she seemed a thousand times better. Still, we were there, might as well get her checked.

I am truly thankful that we have a leading class Children's Hospital in our town. Our doctor, the staff and most of the nurses at the hospital were great - though stumped by what had caused this. Considering she seemed back to normal by the time we got in and got checked out! I figured we were being labelled as overprotective parents until . . .well the one look the nurse gave me as I ate a Larabar while we waited, told the whole story.

You know when you meet someone who you can just tell doesn't like you, even if you have never met that person before. Well that was the sense I got from this nurse yesterday.

You have to remember, all this took place over the lunch hour, so guess who didn't get to eat - 28 weeks pregnant and not eating (not even thinking about the Gestational Diabetes aspect) just don't go together. To me the Larabar was a saviour at the bottom of my purse.

Thing is, there are no peanuts anywhere in our house and I am diligent about reading labels and making sure that the things she is eating are peanut and nut free (even though we have to troubles with other nuts). Yes I know that things happen and peanuts can get in even where they aren't supposed to but that wasn't the case yesterday. And no I wasn't eating a Larabar while making the dessert, which brings us back to the end of our visit to the ER. The doctor had cleared us to leave, was going to send a referral to the allergist we had seen a year ago when this all started, when she came back and closed the curtain, which I thought was weird but somehow knew what was coming.

Only at the end of our visit did she ask about the "granola bar" I was eating. I told her I don't keep the kind with peanuts in our house and this one contained almonds and cashews. I know those sneaky peanuts could be in there too, but the point is, I wasn't eating anything, ANYTHING, when all this went down. And while I ate this, did you notice it having an adverse affect on my child? NO! Also, I haven't had a Larabar in weeks and the last time was probably in the car while running errands. Once again, a closed in space and no ill affects then?

The doctor went on about Cross contamination and how we have to be extra careful, especially when dealing with an allergy like this one. I know she is just doing her job but after all this, it just made me angry!

First and foremost, if you are going to question my parenting - do it when we get there or when you see me eating the dreaded granola bar. At least give me the chance to defend myself instead of allowing me to feel that I have been judged and convicted without a proper trial! Okay that may be a little overdramatic but still, I already felt guilty enough about what had happened and was racking my brain to try to figure out what could have caused it without the additional judgement being place on me.

We may never know what caused yesterday's attack. What I will take from this is that we will continue to be diligent about what Sophie eats, we have too. I have also spent enough time worrying about what that doctor and nurse think I might have done or caused. I am the one who know's what was happening in our house, when it happened. For the love of my child and the fact that she is perfectly fine today - I am truly thankful!

My Baby is Turning 2!

I know, I know. She isn't a baby anymore! She is a toddler and every day, more and more an active, outgoing, fun loving, independent, stubborn, creative, engineer in training, people person! Such a big little girl! So many times a day I look at her and what she is doing and see my husband in her - there is no doubt she has his engineering brain! But then every now and then, more on the now these days, I see some of me popping out in her - she is definitely a people person and I know where she got that from!

Everyday is an adventure and as we move closer to 2,I am terrified of what is yet to come. I think this is because I see more and more the range of emotions that she is just learning she has and has to control. Of course everything is "MINE", and if she doesn't get her way, total meltdown is only a tantrum away. Now I know there are ways to control these - if she is tired or hungry, the meltdown will be on a grander scale! Yet, I also know that these are just a part of her learning and growing. She will eventually grow out of these too, just not anytime soon!

I guess part of my fear stems from being able to keep up with her once the new baby is here. I have never been one to just go with the flow - I am a planner and need to have all the information in front of me. NO SURPRISES! I guess this too will teach me more about patience while at the same time LOVE. I love my daughter with all my heart and know that I will love both equally, I just want to make sure that Sophie knows it.

So as we move closer to 2, which I am finding a harder transition than her turning 1 I will treasure each moment (even the tantrums) and continue to love her more and more each day. Some days it will test my patience to the extreme but I know that we will come out on top.

Lifes Twists and Turns

So, I know it has been a long while since I last blogged. Life has taken some crazy turns in the past weeks and well, my brain wasn't really in the writing mode! Also, every time I sat down to write I would be interrupted to go and "play" or some other reason!

What's been going on? Well for starters, my child is back to her old ways of waking up at night, needing mommy and a bottle to get back to sleep. Chock it up to teeth, having a cold that lasted forever, trying to sort out how to get her to fall asleep on her own, going away to the cottage for a week, food issues and not wanting to eat these days - you name it, we have run the gambit! I do have to say though that while she has been driving me crazy at nights, she is a great napper now. Down around 12:30generally and out for 2 to 2 1/2hours some days. It is lovely to have a child that is finally so predictable in this area.

Still I wonder how I got to this point. My child is now 21 months old, we are pregnant with our second - due late December, and I am still at home. The last part seems to be the most surprising to people. Why? I was always the go-go-go person. Had two jobs, maybe more, volunteered, did lots of stuff. But honestly I can say that the most rewarding job I have ever had is being a mom.

Staying home well that was because I wanted out of fundraising and just couldn't put my child in daycare. (Kudos to all the moms I know who do work! It just wasn't the right choice for us).I am fortunate to have a husband who has a very good job that allows me to stay home and raise our child. Still I struggle with making sure she is properly stimulated and is on the appropriate "learning curve" versus the crap that needs to be done around the house. If I could just focus on her as my only task I would love it! There is no shortage of things we can do - in and out of the house! It is how do I fit in the laundry, dishes, and general day to day, let alone now start try to clean out the office which will become Sophie's bedroom?

Babysitter - says it in one word. Our next door neighbour is 16 and Sophie just loves her. So I have taken the bull by the horns last week and when we can am bringing her in to babysit, just so that I can get some stuff done around the house this summer - especially in the office. There is nothing like the prospect of having another child to kick your butt in high gear to get those things done around the house that you may have been procrastinating on - just ask my hubby, he has been a machine getting the house painted after 6 years, the cedars in our backyard removed, the garden shed cleaned out along with the garage. Now if I could just get him to focus on the office with me for a day . . . Well a girl can dream can't she!

Cheating on my House!

I feel like I am cheating on my house. I also feel like I am being buried alive by all the stuff in my house! I know that I need to really make a concerted effort to start going through things and getting rid of some of this stuff and organize the rest, but how do you do that with a toddler?

I am truly struggling with this these days. I have so many little projects started but nothing finished that it is beginning to drive me crazy. I feel that all I do each day is the bare minimum to get us through the day - laundry (maybe one load, two if we are having a good day), dishes, cleaning up toys, maybe get the bathroom clean, make meals. I have great plans each morning - today I am going bake something yummy for my family, or I am going to sort through the clothes in the office and get them packed away or I am going dust my bedroom. Still none of it gets done.

The one reason for all of this is the time I spent at the gym from January to April -2 hours a day, 3 days a week. By the time I would get to the gym and then home it was time for lunch and then naps (I can't seem to give up my afternoon nap no matter how hard I try). My workouts would seriously kick my butt so that I would need them. Now I think it is just a habit. I don't regret this though - I lost 19 inches overall and feel really good. Now I haven't been to the gym in a week so I need to figure out how to fit it back into my schedule this week but still . . . Part of me thinks I need some time with my home!

So starting tomorrow I am somehow going to knock one TO DO off my list. Start slowly and take it one day at a time. Rome wasn't built in a day and we certainly didn't accumulate all this stuff over night so we will take our time and see what we can get done! Wish me luck!

All Done!

These are two words my daughter is very good at saying these days - ALL DONE! We use it at dinner time generally to tell us when she is finished eating. But we have started using it at other times - like when we are playing, reading stories, or at the end of bath time.

She says it with such fervor - ALLLL Done! ALLL Done! It makes us laugh each time she says it. We did teach her the sign language for all done - waving your hands to the sides and this did work for a long time, but we always said the words too just so she would learn it eventually. Well that day came - the signing stopped and the words came, eagerly.

So ALLL Done! works at the end of dinner or when mommy has had a long day and she is ALLLL Done! All done will also be monumental for me on Wednesday as I have my last and final training session. I will be ALLLLL Done! And I feel somewhat guilty saying this but I am looking forward to being done.

Why? Well, simply, I need a change in programs and what I am doing. I also think I need a little more flexibility in when I go to the gym. Since January, I have been going 3 days a week, sometimes less, sometimes more, still 3 days a week at 9:00 in the morning. That was the best time for us and really helped to establish a good routine. In fact, at least 5 out of 7 days a week we are out of the house by 9:00 a.m. I am looking forward to next week when I can choose to go or not go.

The thing that worries me though is falling off the wagon and continuously making excuses not to go - oh the laundry needs to be done, the house needs to be cleaned, we had a rough night of sleep - even as I write them they all sound lame. Even in the last 3 weeks, with bad nights of sleep, I have gotten my butt in gear and gone. But will the "pressure" to go disappear when my trainer does? I think because I am aware of this worry, I will be cognizant of making sure that doesn't happen. I still plan on trying to keep a pretty similar schedule - there by 9ish - but if we want to go to playgroup we will have a better chance of getting there with more than 1/2 hour left!

All in all, I am looking forward to the change that is coming. I will be developing my own program. I have done a lot of learning about my body - mostly about the hurts - I have patella femoral syndrome in my left knee and possibly a leftover car accident injury (shoulder) from 14 years ago. I have also spent a lot of time listening (to my trainer), asking questions, reading and learning in the past 4 months and for the first time in a long time I am excited about the possibilities that lay ahead. I can see the changes that have taken place in my body - my calf muscles are a lot closer to being the same size again! And I look forward to continuing my fitness journey. But sshhhh! Don't tell my trainer but between you and I, I don't plan on going near the chest press machine any time soon! Somehow I don't think it will miss me either :)

Daddy's Sanity Time

So my hubby and I were talking yesterday about what we had going on today. I had an extra training session at the gym, bright and early but that was the only thing I had going on. He says to me "okay, well I will watch Sophie in the morning if you can watch her in the afternoon." I say "Okay, what are you going to do?" "Oh just stuff." "Oh that's good" and trying to be an interested and supportive wife I ask "What stuff?" To this I don't get much of a response.

Should I be suspicious - not really. It is either racing related or racing related. It just drives me crazy because if I wasn't interested in what he was doing I wouldn't have asked. Still he won't say. So as I am heading to bed - early, we had a rough night the night before - I ask again just to see if he would tell me and well frankly I have worked up several scenarios in my head (of which I know none are correct) but I just need to know. He finally says "I just need some daddy sanity time."

He couldn't have given me that answer two hours before? I completely understand the need to have some time on your own and as he didn't go racing on Wednesday night because he wasn't feeling well, he had missed out on his weekly night off! I don't know why he hesitated in telling me. Was he embarrassed in asking for time off? The worst part was, he felt like he needed to justify to me why he needed the afternoon to himself. Now that I stop and think about it, I have heard interesting statements like this over the last week "You know I do a lot around here." "I take over when I get home you know."

It makes me wonder what I said or did to bring this on. I know that he does a lot around here, especially with Sophie and I try to remember to thank him for this. I usually get some smart alec response like "yeah, yeah I know" but I still try to say it so he knows.

Anyway, Sophie is totally all about daddy these days so when he comes home from work all she wants to do is play with him and hang out. I know it hasn't helped with the weather being so crappy this week. She loves being outside and we haven't been able to spend as much time outside during the day as we would like. Usually by the time daddy is home it has cleared a little or the rain has stopped and he is the lucky one who gets to take her outside to play. Meanwhile, it is not like I am inside eating bonbons - I am inside making dinner, cleaning up the house, doing laundry - all the things I haven't gotten too because I have been taking care of our child all day.

Each day, parenting brings new challenges big and small. The thing that I have realized is that it is important to not take any of it personally and to take each day, one day at a time, learning from the current challenge and moving forward. And on that note, I had better go - it sounds like bedtime isn't going so well. I will go and see if I can lend a hand.

Giggles and Hugs

I have been struggling lately with what to write. It isn't that I don't have things to write about, I do. I think the problem is that I have too many things running through my brain these days. I wish I had a computer attached to my brain for my wake ups with Sophie - the pieces I write at 3 a.m. are so eloquent and so well put together - and then when I sit down to pen something (can you still call it that), my mind goes blank!

Even now I struggle. Still, my brain keeps coming back to the fun of our morning so lets start there. We went to play with a friend so that his mom can have some "me" time for her and her youngest! The morning didn't start off the best - when you need to drive across town and can't leave because your car seat is in another car. OOPS!

Hubby came home and we fixed the situation relatively quickly and we were soon on our way. I was a little apprehensive - I wasn't sure how our little friend would be with us staying and his mom and sibling leaving. Needless to say, I worried for nothing - he was fine and we had a great time playing. We read some stories, played with trucks, trains, dumptrucks, balls. We had a game of follow the leader around the island kitchen which developed into a game of chase and topped everything off with snack for the toddlers and tea for the mommy!

But I have to say the best part of the day was watching the toddlers play. These two have played well together in the past so it really wasn't a surprise. Then the giggles started - each toddler would look at the other and then put their hands over their mouths and start laughing - WHY? - just because! Then they decided to walk around the island holding hands! Ohhhhh! So cute. And then there were hugs.

I love watching my daughter play with other kids. On the weekend she was surrounded and doted upon by her older cousins (12/9/8/7). They were so good with her and I was so happy to watch the elation on her face as they played with her. I grew up being the youngest of seven cousins and siblings. I remember never feeling left out or lonely when we would get together for family gatherings, so I am sure it is similar to what my toddler experienced on the weekend. These are the moments that make for incredible memories that last us a lifetime! Though next time - I need to remember to take my camera!