Unusual Occurance and Unexpected Feelings

When I walked into the baby's room Friday morning at 4am I was hit with the strongest wave of my mom's perfume. It was so strong I had to leave the room and come back in and it was still there. Hanging from the roof above the change table and the crib are large paper decoration balls and they were all moving. So there I am with a wide awake baby, strong smell of my mom and clearly something spooky going on. What did I do - well I started speaking to my mom. Asking her if she thought the baby was beautiful, did she visit often, basically crazy talk. And while I am certain I was delusional from the fact that it was 4am I would swear that I could feel her close to me. But I could only take that for so long so I got the baby and went upstairs, where I sat with all the house lights on for quite some time.

Even before this unusual occurrence I have been feeling very melancholic in regards to my mom.  I am really starting to miss my mom. I always miss her but since having the baby it comes in large waves that are sometimes difficult to weather. This weekend has been one of those waves. I'm angry because she didn't take care of herself, angry that she is missing this awesome baby and angry that I am angry. I thought I was at peace with my parental situation, which frankly sucks, but apparently I am not. Every time the baby does something cute I want to call a parent and tell them. But I don't really have a parent who would be excited for me, my stepdad tries but babies aren't his thing. I am blessed to have Aunts and Friend-Aunt's who love us and want to hear these things but it is just not the same. And so it just kind of sucks.

I think I will weather this wave and then find a way to combat them in the future. A better set of 'tools' is needed. Or I just have to make peace with the fact that I am angry at my mom, might be for a few more years and that is ok too. It is also ok to really miss her too.

Its a New Year, a New Life

It's been six weeks since our life changed forever. We welcomed our bundle of joy, a gorgeous baby girl on December 7.  The last six weeks have flown by with Christmas, holidays and family. It has been such a blessing. But as the New Year approached I began to feel more anxious. Worry set in. As I am a natural worrier this has become an issue. It is clouding the line between knowing if postpartum is setting in or if I am just having extensions of my normal issues. I am hoping for the later.

Parenting so far has been very stressful at times. The first four weeks were very difficult, not because of the sleepless nights and issues directly related to having a baby. Those I was prepared for. I knew it would be hard, I knew I would have to do the majority of it on my own and I knew there would be an adjustment. It was the worries of - am I holding the baby too much, what should we be doing when she is awake, is she feeding often enough, should I rock her to sleep, am I setting horrible patterns for later in her life, does it matter?  Those are the worries that kept me up with Dr. Google many nights. But since New Year’s, when my family went back to school and work I have been trying to follow my gut but in the sleepless night days my gut gets lost. And so the confusion and scared part of me comes out. The part I like least about myself.

So I have a quest to figure out how to keep my worries at bay. I should have started learning these tools years ago, how to not let the worries overwhelm you. Every morning I wake up and try and remind myself that it will be ok in the end. That the years of worrying about stuff has just caused acne and stress, not actually changed the outcome. That one of the worst things that can happen to a person has happened, followed by a pretty horrific sight and situation and I survived. It was hard but I survived.  

I need to not worry about the future, 6 months, 12 months, 5 years because I have no idea what that will look like. All I can do is treasure every moment of the now, be grateful for my husband, our healthy daughters and our life. 

Household Changes

I have reached the halfway point of my pregnancy and now the reality of the situation is settling in. With that reality is the ever increasing anxiety about our house, its organization and if it will be big enough for 3 adult sized people and a baby. We have finally, after much consideration, figured out the sleeping / bedroom arrangements for our bundle of joy. I am excited to have that settled and an actual place to call a nursery. We have decided on the best course of action for the rest of the house and we have begun working towards clearing out all of our 'must do' list.

But before this decision was made there was quite a bit of talk about moving to a newer house. You see we do not love our current house. Yes it is a nice size, manageable for both cleaning and upkeep. Our biggest issue is its layout (its a horrible bi-level) and the back yard, or lack of a back yard. So we began the search for newer houses in our little town. We looked at quite a few, some with huge walkout basements and the price point was crazy, especially considering we live in a small town. Even the more modest of homes were way above my comfort level.

All this made me think - why is our little 1200 square foot house not good enough? Will the extra space that a bigger, newer house provide be worth the extra expense of that house? I do not wish to be house poor again. Would I love a new house, sure I would. Do I want the extra expense, responsibility and frustration of owning a new house again? No I do not.

More importantly, in my ever increasing desire for minimalism, is getting a bigger fancier house in line with my newish way of thinking. I don't want to spend my spare time cleaning, doing maintenance and caring for a larger house. I want to spend it with my family, doing things, enjoying our new bundle of joy and our teenager. I want to be able to go to the park on a whim after work and have money for adventures.

The result of this rambling is that we are staying where we are. We will fix the house up, add extra features  and be happy with what we have. It is a lot more than some and the house is  a good little house.

Baby News

My family has had some exciting news in the last 4 months. We are pregnant. For a long time we weren't going to have additional children but we changed our mind around our anniversary in October. It seemed like a good thing to do. Now, almost at the half way point, I think we may have overshot the 'good'. The pregnancy is going well. I have been very lucky. I didn't get sick, was mostly just tired and lazy. But it has changed everything for me. From diet to household stress, everything has been amplified. To top it off there have been so many people just talking to me about the baby all the time.

I am starting to reach the point where I like being pregnant. Mostly because I no longer look fat, I look like I might be pregnant. Some of my previous issues have settled and some have been replaced with others and that is ok. I keep trying to remember I am building a baby and to take it easy. However, that is easier said than done when you put on your underwear and rip a hole in them during the day because your arse has expanded beyond the confines of the Large underwear.

My biggest issues have been as follows:

• I crave carbs right now in a way that I have never craved them before. Sure I was an apple fritter and candy junky but I limited that pretty well. I could overcome the mental cravings and just ate pretty closely to the weight watchers diet. Over the last year that has slipped a bit, but for the most part it was more veggies, salads and meats over pasta, cakes and candy. But this has changed. I need bread, cereal, bagels and french fries with gravy more than I need water. There are days (like yesterday) where it was all I could do to get through the day in order to have my fries. I know this is ok but darn if it isn't the hardest mental thing to over come - letting myself have what I want.
• Water - Pre-pregnancy I loved water. I could easily drink 200 oz of it a day. I preferred it cold but I could knock back a water bottle in record time. Now I struggle to get 100 oz of freezing cold water in a day. This is getting better but it is still such a radical shift.
• Veggies - Pre-pregnancy I loved peppers, celery, cauliflower. I loved almost all veggies cooked or raw. I had them with every meal, including breakfast. And I had a LOT of them. Now, I am lucky if I get 5 servings of fruit and veggies a day. 

Pregnancy should be enjoyed. I know it is a glorious thing that I am so lucky to get to experience. So far I have been really healthy and there seems to be no issues. My stress level is low, especially considering that there is a countdown to get a lot of stuff accomplished. I am trying not to complain too much about the small things. I notice changes but the only person I really tell is my husband and I try not to even think about the negatives because I am so lucky.

Home Organization and Minimalist Wishes

Spring is here and so begins the spring cleaning. It has been three years since we did a good spring cleaning, basically since I moved into this house. We are in desperate need of a good clean and in my opinion, a good purge.

Yesterday we began with the daughters room. We purged her closet of all of the leftover toys, clothing and stuffed animals from her childhood. Stuff she no longer wanted. It took 5 bags to goodwill, 3 bags to the garbage, and we still have stuff to purge. Her room is still full of stuff, but teenager stuff rather than child's stuff.

All of this 'stuff' we removed does make me question our materialism. It makes me wonder if we need all the stuff we buy. Sure some of it is convenient but is it stuff we enjoy owning or is it just stuff we buy to fill a void?  I have a room full of scrapbooking / card making stuff that I have collected for years and I feel guilty every time I look at it. I don't want it anymore but have no idea what to do with the thousand of dollars of stuff that is there. It takes up precious real estate in our home, a room that could be better put to use. Everywhere I look at our house I see the same issues. Books by the dozen on bookshelves never read, outdoor activity supplies for small children, hundreds of dvd's for movies never watched. How does one collect so much stuff? And more importantly - what does one do with all that stuff once it is no longer needed?

So I will begin the slow and painful process of spring cleaning with the occasional purging. I will try and get the house down to stuff we use and really enjoy, take pleasure in owning. We will keep the best of the stuff we own, get rid of those things that aren't used regularly, organize the home and generally overhaul it all.

Or I will get lazy like last year and leave it be.

Discovering Personal Style

What is your personal style? This is a question I spend a bit of time thinking about actually. I favor the British sweater-shirt-pant combo which can be switched up to the sweater-shirt-skirt or sweater-dress combos. But I realized recently that this exact combo is favored by my 85 year old grandmother and a very stylish 65 year old aunt. This made me realize that my day to day uniform is aging me. Or is it the way I am putting it together that is aging me. It is one thing to like the combo as I can make it funky but I don't. My closet consists of stuff that I don't even think my grandmother would find stylish because they are too plain, not enough sparkles and too boring.

The thing is I love clothing. Not high end fashions, but everyday clothing. I love looking at magazines, I love looking online. I am addicted to Pintrest. I love browsing stores and yet I rarely try anything new. In fact I have only purchased 2 articles of clothing this year. A new pair of workout pants and a pair of skinny grey jeans. Both purchased this week. 

I am putting together a capsule wardrobe out of what I have for the spring. Specifically April through June. I haven't decided how many items I am going to go down to because I am not certain what to weed out. Recently I was given a bunch of clothing from my sister. They were all in very good condition and quality and I am trying to put everything together with stuff I already own. During this process I realized, even the stuff I already own doesn't go together that well. It is all over the place in color and in style. It follows my uniform, however it is all from when I worked in an office everyday. Not out of a home. The clothes don't fit who I am now, at this point in my life. I haven't purchased new clothing for spring and summer in a number of years so this explains it. However I really want to make the capsule wardrobe work for me. I want to have the freedom from my clothing that people doing Project 333 rave about. I want to know everything I own looks good on me, fits my personality and flows well together. I don't want to wear my fall back color (black) everyday. I want to feel comfortable at work sitting all the time in air conditioning. I want to feel put together. 

Without the help of a personal shopper and mounds of money and a complete overhaul of everything I own, how am I going to get out of my rut? 

Grandparents

I had the best Grandparents a girl could wish for. I was loved by them, shaped by them and nurtured by them. They were arty, liberal and open minded. They believed in family, friends and a good time. The showered me with kisses. My Nana would rub my ears for hours because I loved it. For me my grandparents were my safe place, the place I felt so secure.

My Grandpa was my favorite person in the world up until the day he died. My Nana ran a very close second He could make a sandwich fit for a king, and often would late at night. He would drive anywhere to get you, take you for donut runs before bed. He was fond of slippers and PJ's at Walmart before it became the norm. There was always an apple pie in the house ready to be shared. They didn't have much but they had love.

As I drove home from dinner tonight I heard on the radio a multitude of songs from my childhood, everyone of them eliciting a memory of my grandparents. The Dirty Dancing theme song - memories of the album my Grandpa bought for me. The Bee Gee's - reminders of doing dishes after Wednesday night dinners. Phil Collins, K.D. Lang - it was like the DJ was playing the soundtrack to my childhood.

My husband and I are trying to have a baby. My worst kept secret ever. But my children won't have those grandparents. Not specifically my grandparents but they won't have grandparents even close. There will be no special days with Grandpa, no baking day's with Nana, no special regular weekday dinners with them. They won't know half of their grandparents and depending on how long the stork takes to deliver, the grandparent numbers could dwindle further. This is my heartbreaking realization and is further broken by the knowledge that the only people I want to talk to about this are gone.

And to top it off  all I want is an apple pie with ice cream.