Don't sweat the small stuff

So I read that book ages ago and it really transformed my life, and I think I need to read it again...Lately life is just passing me by and I am starting to wonder if it will ever get easier...I think the answer is no, but that is OK. One page out of the book mentioned that your 'inbox is always going to be full'...which is key. Even on your death bed you are going to have a to-do list the size of Toledo and none of that will matter anymore. I always rush from one thing to the other, my days are pretty jam packed...let's talk about today for instance:

5:30 - troy wakes - alarm wakes me - arg
6:00 - baby wakes - arg arg
6:15 - nurse finn
6:30 - desperately try to convince finn he is still sleepy..doesn't work
6:45 - workout (love the 10 min trainer)
7:00 - eat & feed the clifford
7:15 - shower
7:30 - feed finn
8:00 - clean up house - try and tidy things to normalcy
9:00 - feed finn and put him for a nap - yay
9:05 - try and be a good dog owner and play with cliff for 15 min
9:20 - work work work
10:00 - play with finn - living room dance party - he loves maestro fresh wes..don't we all?
10:45 - run errands to store and bank
12:00 - feed finn and nap
12:05 - work work work
1:00 - play time - thank god for the jolly jumper
1:15 - call folks - skype them to see finn
3:00 - try and put finn for a nap...NOT successful
3:45 - just tell finn he is going to have to stay awake now until bedtime
4:00 - feed finn
4:30 - make supper
5:00 - eat gross supper - where did I go wrong in the recipie?
5:30 - more food for finn - unending gut!
6:30 - start bed time routine
7:15 - try to put finn to bed...wouldn't stop grabbing my hair...arg...arg...arg
7:45 - baby still screaming...
8:00 - time to go to work...sigh
8:50 - writing to you fine folks

So my question is this...how do I find time for a life and fun? This is what I have been grappling with for a few weeks. When do I have fun with Troy? Enjoy a book? Re-do my bathroom? So much to do and so little time! So I have finally figured it out...instead of running all day and waiting until finn sleeps to enjoy myself I realize I just have to enjoy all the small things that happen all day long - the giggles from dancing to electric avenue, the look on Clifford's face as he gallops around my legs, the few minutes I get to talk to troy..to make sure he knows I love him, and the 5 brownies I consummed today (don't be a hater)...Life is what is happening right now and I am going to relax, enjoy it and live it to the fullest. Such a cliche, but when you get it, it makes so much sense...so on that note, I am going to stop working for tonight and watch some retarded chick flick while troy is away on business and eat the rest of the brownies! yay me!

I really do love my mom

Ok so big bad on my part..my mom read my last blog post...AHHH! I really had no idea she would and it really didn't seem to enter my mind while I write that she might be offended. I blog to get out my frustrations and give a true and real portrayal of my life as a new mom..not to hurt my moms' feelings...which I did.

I have to just put this out there once and for all...I LOVE my mom (and dad too :), she is a wonderful mom, she stayed home with me when I was a kid, she is gentle and kind and so generous and she loves me and my whole family so much. She would do anything for me which includes staying with me during that fateful week to help me out so that I could do a lot of work which was more then I could ask for.

So mom, if you ever read this again (which I am sure you never will :), I love you and I want to thank you for all you have every sacrificed and done for me. You rock!...but sometimes you get on my nerves :) Love you!

Just Walking Away...

This is a quasi serious subject so I will try to make it light and goofy and hopefully no one will think I am crazy or call child services on me. I just had one of those weeks...you know, the ones where you are like - hmmm if I could just walk away from this life, what would it be like? As I walk Clifford down the street, I run the numbers of my savings account in my head and wonder...could I make it to cuba? Just me and Clifford, on a beach, working at a surf shop, throwing the ball to my trusty dog? Of corse the idea is absurd...but trust me, every mom (and I found out dad too) has had it at one point. No matter how serious or not serious you are...you have that thought. Let me back track on my week and you will see that really I had reason to want to run screaming down the street.

First thing - my parents came to town...I love my parents...but my mom and I had quite a few altercations regarding my parenting skills. You should do this Kelly. Oh Finn loves it when I do this. You should really bath him before bed Kelly. Don’t put him to bed Kelly - I want to play with him. I think your parenting ‘ideas’ are a little weird Kelly. We didn’t do that with our babies...need I go on?

Then Mothers Day happened...my first Mothers Day...not what I was envisioning my day to be like, but at least I did get a card and a plant near the end of the day. I guess my expectations of being waited on were a little high, but it was quite depressing.

Thirdly, I got a visit from Aunt Flo this week...first time since Finn was born. My hormones were out of control and my mother felt the need to tell me this every 10 min. Gee you sure are crabby Kelly...this isn’t the Kelly I know and love...sigh...

Next on the list is my husbands work schedule...always the bain of my existence as he gets calls all day and all night, works late almost always and this week worked more then usual. Normally he is my rock, my shoulder to cry on when my ‘rents get on my nerves, but he was GONE all week. Plus I was still mad at him for my non-mothers day hoopla...second sigh...

Finally the piece de resistance was that Saturday we were going to celebrate my birthday with my folks - get a cake - Troy would make my fav supper - all golden right? Wrong...the day started with my mother acting like a baby and us have a huge row over my parenting skills...I basically lost my shit on her. Next Troy was miserable and sick and could barely talk to me which made the dinner crap-tastic. Then Finn decides to scream before bed and for an hour so our dinner was delayed greatly and things just didn’t taste very good after that. I did get a cake, but I was so worked up and annoyed by the week that it was really something I just wanted to end so that I could go to bed.

I think you get the gist as to why I wanted to RUN...not walk away from my life this week. We all have those bad ones and they truly suck. Try to take some ‘serenity now’ moments, take some private time to breathe & never..I mean never...invite your parents to come up for 9 days straight!

Point the pee pee down

Ok a very simple entry and a very simple solution which would have been helpful for me day one after I gave birth...but no one was inclined to tell me. It’s easy...if you have a boy, when you are changing diapers...point the pee pee down. There, done.

Sometimes you just have to hate your husband

This is a hard one to write as I don’t want people to think my husband is evil, or that he is lazy or retarded. It is actually on the contrary that I write this. You see, before I had Finn I would see women who had kids treat their husband like crap and be like - ohh what a bitch, I’d never say those things to Troy. But again, NOW I understand why.

I truly believe there is something called a ‘bitch’ hormone that lies dormant until such day as you pop out a kid. Then all of a sudden you are a raging devil woman. Sometimes things fly out of my mouth and I am like ‘have I been overtaken by Satan?’ I do honestly feel awful for Troy as I say things that are clearly off side but I truly cannot help myself.


This past weekend I had to work and so Troy had Finn all Sunday. He is a truly great dad - totally in love with le bebe and really does a great job in taking care of him. Well apparently that doesn’t matter to me anymore. I kept finding myself nit picking on little things, constantly telling him he is doing things wrong, and secretly listening in on what he is doing just in case I catch him slip up. What has happened to me?!

I think I figured it out though...it really boils down to me pining for the day that Troy will sit back after a full day with the kid and say ‘ gee honey, you truly are overworked...I had no idea this was so hard...you cleaned the house AND made dinner AND took care of the baby and you are still awake? You are truly a super woman and I never fully appreciated you until now...’ Yup, I think that is all we want from them on a day to day basis and then we might be able to sedate the hormone that is turning us into chicks with spinning heads...is that too much to ask?

A trip to the mall...aka a trip to hell

So now that I have a kid, I can no longer take a trip to the mall lightly. There needs to be preparation... bags packed, emergency diapers, receiving blankets, food for me, food for baby...it is a big hot mess. So I still can’t figure out what made me think that a trip to Barrie was a good idea at 5:30 pm last Wednesday night.

First issue...the time...This is when Finn is most fickle and it takes just the slightest mis-step to annoy him...so when he started screaming louder then I have ever heard him on the way there, I should have turned around. Second issue...lack of preparation means I forgot something important...receiving blankets...shit...Again, I don’t know why I didn’t turn around...I was just determined to not be ruled by my kid - I wanted to get to that stupid mall and shop god dammit!

Ok, so it started with the scream, then he tired himself out so much he fell asleep...bonus...but then he awoke right when we got to babies r us...yay. He was pretty good in this store, but I developed quite the arm strain carrying the stupid car seat around as it now weighs 10 tonnes (or so it feels like). There must be some super technology that someone can develop to make these items less bulky, but I digress...I guess finding a cure for penile malfunction is more important...

On my way out to the car I noticed some jack ass parked so close to me I couldn’t get Finn into his docking station so I had to covertly place him beside me in the front while I drove to another parking spot that gave me more room. Did I mention it is blizzard-y outside? Oh, ok that paints a prettier picture.

When we get to the mall I went directly to the mommy area to feed him, which I did, and which he then proceeded to barf all over me. No biggie I’ll grab a blankie...opps forgot them...I guess stiff paper towels will have to do.

Next we headed to the gap while Finn was blissfully full, so I figured I could get some clothes shopping in. Nope...he decides to empty his bowels instead. So I grabbed some jeans and hightailed it to the change room where I balanced Finn on a bench to wipe poop off his ass. All clean, but now Mr. Miserable will NOT go back in his car seat. I succumb to the crying and lay him on my coat on the floor of the gap...not winning mommy of the year here am I?

He then proceeds to poop two more times, during the corse of our stay in the gap I get to place all these stinky diapers in my purse for safe keeping...yay. Upon leaving the store he still won’t get into the car seat so I have to then carry him around with one arm while I push the stroller with the other and maneuver throughout the stores without killing anyone.

So when I finally conceded to take him home it was past his bedtime, I still haven’t eaten supper and I am so tired I can barely shuffle. I get home and warm up his dinner and start the bedtime routine only to have him decide he will not go to sleep, so I spent the next 2.5 hours going up and down the stairs, rocking him to sleep when finally at 11 pm I decide to let him cry it out while I inhale my lovely gourmet dinner of cheerios. By 11:30 I am in bed wondering what the hell I was thinking and decide to never leave the house again...

The 5 second dinner

One of the best things anyone ever told us when I were pregnant was to stock the freezer with as many meals as possible before you pop the kid out. This was so key to our survival in the first few weeks - it totally saved us! It is impossible to believe how a little being can monopolize your day in such that you basically feed them, clothe them and then burp them and by this time it is 4 pm...WTF? So when you make a meal while prego, make enough for 6 meals and freeze the rest...done like dinner.

The other thing is that really and honestly, those meals that are so nicely prepared are to be ingested in 5 seconds flat. Hmmm, strange fact but much to my dismay and surprise, Finn didn’t like to sit in his bouncer chair for more then 10 minutes...imagine that. This makes it pretty hard to have a nice meal with your hubby let alone time for you to actually eat lunch or breakfast during the day. I can’t even count how many times I shoved a muffin in my trap over the sink while balancing Finn in the other, crumbs flying and Finn winging himself in my face.


Around 2 or 3 months it got easier to co-ordinate a happy fed baby right before we ate...but many times we still sit there during dinner holding a soother in Finn’s mouth while we tried to feed ourselves. So now we have the pleasure of having a nice and relaxing 10 second meal - hoo ray!

Whoa that is a lot of poop

Breast feeding has been such a learning experience for me in every way. I’ll touch more in the subject later but this was a very interesting fact I learned early on which might be of interest to some. I attended Dr. Newmans’ fabu clinic in A-dot and while I was there some chick mentioned that breast fed babies don’t always poop a lot. One woman's kid - a poop record breaker - didn’t have a dump for 31 days! Apparently one of the perks of breast milk is that it is absorbed really well into the babies body and sometimes it is all used up which negates the need for the little wonder to do a pooper.

Finn tested this theory and at around 2 months just stopped pooping. At first I was alarmed but remembered this poop record breaker so I just sat back and waiting. One day, two days, three days...ok starting to worry...four days...five days...please kid poop already...six days and then on fateful day seven we experienced the poopinator. When I say there was a lot of shite, I mean there was a LOT of shite. All down the leg, all up the back, all over mommy (good times) and all over almost every surface of the change table. So if your kiddie decides to absorb most of the good old breast milk and stops pooping..better start preparing for the poopinator to emerge and keep them off the white couch...

The Swaddle Saved my life

Until I was in the hospital hours after labour I had no idea how ‘the swaddle’ would change my life. The nurses parlayed the technique and we began to wrap Finn like a hot dog...mmm hot dogs...We fell out of the habit soon after we got home as we were struggling to remember a thousand things at once and we thought he was growing too big for it...boy was I wrong. One fateful day as I was whining to a girlfriend that he wasn’t sleeping in his bassinet very well, she asked if I had used the swaddle she gave me as a shower gift. “Um, no” I sheepishly replied as I had forgotten all about the swaddle tucked in my drawer. They are created by a company called ‘swaddle me’ and that was the changing day in my life (a la Dr. Phil). We began to swaddle and he started to really sleep well in his crib on his own - hoo ray! I mean look at how happy this mom & baby is :)


As Finn grew (at 2 months he looked as tall as a 2 year old), we knew our days were numbered on the swaddle. Then we took a trip and forgot it - how the hell did that happen Troy...I say that to my husband as he took it out the luggage and didn’t put it back in - AHHHH! So we jimmy rigged a blanket and some pins to wrap him up toasty and lasted the weekend. We eventually found they made a larger size swaddle - eureka! - and are still wrapping him like a sausage every night and every nap. He sleeps 10 hours a night normally but his teeny toes are starting to touch the ends of the blanket and it makes me sweat. Should I just cut a hole in the bottom, or resort to duct tape (ok joking child services...). We are going to start the swaddle wean in the next few weeks. Leave one arm out, then the other for a week each and see how it turns out...but to all you new moms out there - remember this...the swaddle will change your life!

Don’t be a hero

As most of you new moms do, I attended a birthing class pre-babe as I wanted to make sure I was prepared for giving birth in every way. I wanted a natural birth. I wanted to sit there with my hubby and do my breathing in all the groovy positions, and bring this little baby into the world gracefully and magically.

What I didn’t realize was that there is no class in the world that would have prepared me for what I was to experience and apparently I had an amazing birth. The nurses said I was born to have kids and that I should have 12 kids...I was a super hero at birth! A super hero who wanted her toe nails pulled off because that would be less painful then squeezing out this baby.

I started labour at midnight and went from 2 to 9 cms in an hour and a half. I had my baby in a record 4.5 hours...sounds dreamy right? Wrong. It was so ingrained in my head that natural is better and that epidurals are not necessary, and that I should be a woman and claim what is mine in this world...the ability to bear children (AHHH, light shining down from the heavens). I can’t stress this enough to all you folks out there who thinks that you are going to ‘try’ it naturally...DON’T BE A HERO. Get the epidural, take the drugs...do whatever you can to stop the pain...trust me on this.

Motherhood - the largest secret club in the world

So anyone who isn’t a mom should really just stop reading because yes you will say that you know new moms have no time and that things are going to be hard. That no sleep is going to be sucky and all that jazz. But let me tell you that I thought all these things too and strangely I still didn’t seem to believe a word of it. I thought..hmmm I am sure it is hard, but I can handle it. I mean how bad can waking through the night be? I’ll be off work and I’ll be able to sleep when he sleeps during the day so I am thinking that a lot of new moms are wimps and it would be something I can handle. Heck, I even said I was going back to work after a month!

My friend coined this term for me while I chatted with her post baby...motherhood is the greatest secret club in the world. It is SO true in so many ways. For one, you will never understand sleep deprivation until you have to go through it. You will never know the fear and anxiety you have when you lay your kid down to sleep and pray they give you 2 hours of sleep. You will never understand why it takes an entire day to feed, change and put a baby to sleep while you still are sitting in your pjs. No, I can not explain this to any non-mom, you just have to wait until you pop out a little bebe and then and only then will you be a part of the club and you will sit there covered in baby puke while you watch other people have a life as you certainly do not and you will say...I really had no idea.

A little tidbit about me...

So ok, before any granola moms out there take a look at this and start berating me with hate emails about how motherhood is a ‘gift from god’ and breast feeding is a natural wonder...I have to say a few things. I LOVE my son, he is the light of my life and I look forward to every moment I spend with him. However, sometimes life isn’t fun and you have a bad day and you just want to vent and tell the world that you aren’t a bad mom - you just had a ‘moment’. That is what this is all about. A little spot in the world where I can tell my story and the stories of others in order to shed some light onto the myth of mommyhood and how it has transformed my life for better and for sometimes worse.

To start I have to say that I never really thought I had a mothering bone in my body. I liked babies...well the thought of babies really. I had a picture in my head of strolling down the street in my lovely ensemble that screams ‘I am a Yummy Mummy!’, with my expensive designer stroller, matching cool diaper bag, oh and my lovely 74 pound golden doodle dog prancing along my side. In real life, the image is of me barreling down the street with gym pants on, a diaper bag which although it is awesome, it won’t stay up on my shoulder as the strap is too short, and giant Clifford pulling me all over creation trying to get attention from strangers by jumping on them while I try to keep my designer stroller upright. Notice that I haven’t mentioned Finn yet, my little boy, as he is blissfully asleep in the stroller as per usual which is the only thing in my ‘vision’ that turned out to be true.

I’m going to skip the chit chat as we all know that when you have a kid you don’t have time to pee some days let alone form a cohesive sentence. What a great segway into my first story...