I have a feeling, that like my last blog, I will write about procrastinating more than anything else.
So... would that really be procrastinating? Perhaps it's more of an aversion than procrastination. An aversion to what, I don't know, but it's there.
But that's beside the point.
I just spent 15 minutes cleaning up the inbox for an email account I haven't used full-time for 6 years. The last time I cleaned it up was probably in 2007. I had 4058 unread messages, most of them spam. Made me happy - yet again - that I moved over to Gmail when I did.
I wish I spent my time procrastinating more efficiently. Instead, I start reading gossip blogs and I'm sucked in for half an hour. I used to spend that half hour at places like NOTCOT or The Canadian Design Resource. Or, if I was in the mood for a bit of randomness, I'd click the 'Stumble' button on my toolbar for a while, looking for something - perhaps educational - to spend some time with.
I feel like I'm burning through brain cells like there's no tomorrow. I need to rectify this. Only question is, how?
Hrm... I guess this is where I should proclaim that I will avoid the cesspool of gossip blogs I visit every day and start moving back to the good side of the internet to keep my brain from turning to mush and leaking out my ears. But I'm a procrastinator - guess which choice will win.
Life
Things have been crazy lately - Keith gone for a week, Maddy growing so fast, my computer dying twice, doctor's appointments, yardwork... so, of course, I've put off a few things, like this blog.
Every time I think I should post something, 'life' happens. Right now, we're dealing with our daughter's sleep issues by using the Ferber method to help both her and us get a good night of sleep for the first time in almost 8 months. There's also the ongoing battle to organize the laundry room, our filing system and our finances. I'm still working on a plan to make some extra money this winter so I don't have to work full-time. And yet, life continues to roll on.
I have a pile of coupons that have to be clipped for our monthly shopping expedition next week, there's a pile of envelopes sitting beside my computer waiting to be opened (no bills, though, thankfully), and I know there's a million other things that I have to do to try to stay sane. Yet, I keep putting a lot of that stuff off, leaving me feeling very overwhelmed.
And no matter how many times I try to get organized, I fail. I don't know if it's a lack of knowledge about how to organize properly or if it's just laziness and cutting corners, but something has to be done so things aren't constantly being put aside, to do another day.
Perhaps today's the day I get organized. A girl can dream, can't she?
Every time I think I should post something, 'life' happens. Right now, we're dealing with our daughter's sleep issues by using the Ferber method to help both her and us get a good night of sleep for the first time in almost 8 months. There's also the ongoing battle to organize the laundry room, our filing system and our finances. I'm still working on a plan to make some extra money this winter so I don't have to work full-time. And yet, life continues to roll on.
I have a pile of coupons that have to be clipped for our monthly shopping expedition next week, there's a pile of envelopes sitting beside my computer waiting to be opened (no bills, though, thankfully), and I know there's a million other things that I have to do to try to stay sane. Yet, I keep putting a lot of that stuff off, leaving me feeling very overwhelmed.
And no matter how many times I try to get organized, I fail. I don't know if it's a lack of knowledge about how to organize properly or if it's just laziness and cutting corners, but something has to be done so things aren't constantly being put aside, to do another day.
Perhaps today's the day I get organized. A girl can dream, can't she?
At the very worst, she'll hate bagpipes
Pretty much since we brought our daughter home, we've played music for her while she sleeps. Well, not music, per se... it's more like a playlist of nature sounds. Rain, waves, forests... that kind of thing. It was an attempt to try to soothe her while she slept with white noise that wasn't annoying.
She's got her own iPod, too. Really, it's my old 2GB iPod, but that's beside the point.
I've been noticing over the last week or so that the playlist I've got for her to sleep to just isn't cutting it anymore. Like most people, she's quite possibly bored of what she's been forced to listen to for the last 6 or so months every time she's been put to bed. So I've started a search, yet again, for nature sounds to create yet another playlist.
I haven't been playing music for her that much outside of bedtime, which I regret. I have tons of kids music available for her, but don't do anything with it. I wonder if it's because I'm not interested in hearing how the wheels on the bus went round and round over and over again. I do have a playlist (mainly pre-1970 Disney songs) on my current iPod for her to listen to in the car, but that's becoming rarer and rarer.
So I've decided to make her a real music playlist - no kids stuff. Songs I like (and her dad, too, because he's going to have to listen to this too). I think with her rapid development over the last few weeks (sitting, teeth x 2, crawling, standing{!!}, chattering) it's time to start treating her more like a real person than just a baby. I mean, we've never talked baby-talk to her, but I think she's way more aware now of everything around her than she's ever been before.
First song to go on the playlist? Jump Around by House of Pain. It's in a Telus commercial on almost every Canadian channel right now and Maddy LOVES it. I don't know if it's the pygmy goats are what attracts her or the song, but anytime she hears it (it's also in the Bridgestone Tires Super Bowl ad) she stops what she's doing and gets quite excited. So it's a start.
And really, she's got a mom (and grandfather) who are quite eclectic in their music selections. It wouldn't hurt to start introducing her to different musical choices. Her dad likes more classical music than I do, so I'll leave it up to him to introduce her to that. I see no problem at all in letting your kids listen to music - any music, not just Dora and Barney - from an early age. The least it will do is teach them a bit of rhythm an appreciation of music and the last time I checked, those weren't bad things.
She's got her own iPod, too. Really, it's my old 2GB iPod, but that's beside the point.
I've been noticing over the last week or so that the playlist I've got for her to sleep to just isn't cutting it anymore. Like most people, she's quite possibly bored of what she's been forced to listen to for the last 6 or so months every time she's been put to bed. So I've started a search, yet again, for nature sounds to create yet another playlist.
I haven't been playing music for her that much outside of bedtime, which I regret. I have tons of kids music available for her, but don't do anything with it. I wonder if it's because I'm not interested in hearing how the wheels on the bus went round and round over and over again. I do have a playlist (mainly pre-1970 Disney songs) on my current iPod for her to listen to in the car, but that's becoming rarer and rarer.
So I've decided to make her a real music playlist - no kids stuff. Songs I like (and her dad, too, because he's going to have to listen to this too). I think with her rapid development over the last few weeks (sitting, teeth x 2, crawling, standing{!!}, chattering) it's time to start treating her more like a real person than just a baby. I mean, we've never talked baby-talk to her, but I think she's way more aware now of everything around her than she's ever been before.
First song to go on the playlist? Jump Around by House of Pain. It's in a Telus commercial on almost every Canadian channel right now and Maddy LOVES it. I don't know if it's the pygmy goats are what attracts her or the song, but anytime she hears it (it's also in the Bridgestone Tires Super Bowl ad) she stops what she's doing and gets quite excited. So it's a start.
And really, she's got a mom (and grandfather) who are quite eclectic in their music selections. It wouldn't hurt to start introducing her to different musical choices. Her dad likes more classical music than I do, so I'll leave it up to him to introduce her to that. I see no problem at all in letting your kids listen to music - any music, not just Dora and Barney - from an early age. The least it will do is teach them a bit of rhythm an appreciation of music and the last time I checked, those weren't bad things.
Moderately overwhelmed
It's been a busy week with my sister visiting and a public health nurse appointment for our daughter and bloodwork for me and Keith going out of town. And now it's Saturday evening, Maddy's having her last nap of the day and I'm puttering about, trying to keep my slowly-eroding momentum going so I can stay up until 9pm or so.
I hate being this tired and exhausted. It seems like it will never end, that I'll never have energy again. I'm fed up with wanting to sleep - not nap - at 3pm every day. I don't remember the last time I slept for more than 3 hours at a time - it may have been a year ago. Long story, short - I'm on meds that aren't working and I don't know if they ever will.
But on a much (hopefully) happier note, I'm in the process of figuring out how I can legitimately stay at home with our daughter once I (hopefully) quit my job come December. Realistically, I will still probably work, but it will be part-time. There is no way, logistically, for me to work full-time - if I were to get a full-time job, I would have to get 2 because I'd have to pay for daycare. Keith's shifts are such that don't allow for one parent to be home taking care of Maddy while the other works. It just won't work. I did not have Maddy to let someone else raise her, at a cost to our family, both financially and personally.
But that whole can of worms is for another day.
I've mentioned previously that I was starting to get into crafts lately. Well, I'm seriously - like, dead - thinking of making this interest in crafts a sort-of, half-assed, maybe-kinda line of income. I know it's incredibly risky, but it's not like I've already quit my job and sunk what little savings I have into this idea. It's something that I'm going to work on, taking time and money into consideration, before I make an absolute final decision. Should I actually do this - this attempt to sell what I think people might want for knick-knacks - I want to do it right. And successfully.
So that's where I've been for a while. My mind's been full and would love a break from everything for a bit, but life just won't let me. May as well put it to good use, I guess.
I hate being this tired and exhausted. It seems like it will never end, that I'll never have energy again. I'm fed up with wanting to sleep - not nap - at 3pm every day. I don't remember the last time I slept for more than 3 hours at a time - it may have been a year ago. Long story, short - I'm on meds that aren't working and I don't know if they ever will.
But on a much (hopefully) happier note, I'm in the process of figuring out how I can legitimately stay at home with our daughter once I (hopefully) quit my job come December. Realistically, I will still probably work, but it will be part-time. There is no way, logistically, for me to work full-time - if I were to get a full-time job, I would have to get 2 because I'd have to pay for daycare. Keith's shifts are such that don't allow for one parent to be home taking care of Maddy while the other works. It just won't work. I did not have Maddy to let someone else raise her, at a cost to our family, both financially and personally.
But that whole can of worms is for another day.
I've mentioned previously that I was starting to get into crafts lately. Well, I'm seriously - like, dead - thinking of making this interest in crafts a sort-of, half-assed, maybe-kinda line of income. I know it's incredibly risky, but it's not like I've already quit my job and sunk what little savings I have into this idea. It's something that I'm going to work on, taking time and money into consideration, before I make an absolute final decision. Should I actually do this - this attempt to sell what I think people might want for knick-knacks - I want to do it right. And successfully.
So that's where I've been for a while. My mind's been full and would love a break from everything for a bit, but life just won't let me. May as well put it to good use, I guess.
Chroma
I've been thinking about colour a lot lately. There's a couple of craft-like projects I've been tossing around in my head for the last few days. It's all part of my desire to not go back to work in December - I'm determined to find something, anything, to do from home that will bring in enough funds to keep me from having to go to work, at least from going back full-time.
Anyhoo, colour. A couple of jobs ago, I would ravenously scour the internet for colour ideas for ads. I tried to avoid the typical red-yellow-blue-blah-blah-blah... I loved searching through the Pantone pallet to find just the right colour for an ad. I became a devotee of kuler, Adobe's web app for colour development. I also knew, however, that no matter how wonderful colours looked in an ad looked on screen, by the time they hit the newsprint, the colour ended up muddied or washed out. (Needless to say, I've never worked at a high-end newspaper.)
Now, I'm trying to figure out ways to get my hands on as many paint sample chips as I can without raising suspicion. I have plans for these chips and I want to make sure I have all the colours on hand once I get going on my next (first?) project. Perhaps I'll rope my sister into helping me gather the chips next week when she's visiting :)
Anyhoo, colour. A couple of jobs ago, I would ravenously scour the internet for colour ideas for ads. I tried to avoid the typical red-yellow-blue-blah-blah-blah... I loved searching through the Pantone pallet to find just the right colour for an ad. I became a devotee of kuler, Adobe's web app for colour development. I also knew, however, that no matter how wonderful colours looked in an ad looked on screen, by the time they hit the newsprint, the colour ended up muddied or washed out. (Needless to say, I've never worked at a high-end newspaper.)
Now, I'm trying to figure out ways to get my hands on as many paint sample chips as I can without raising suspicion. I have plans for these chips and I want to make sure I have all the colours on hand once I get going on my next (first?) project. Perhaps I'll rope my sister into helping me gather the chips next week when she's visiting :)
To sleep, perchance to dream...
I know that all parents tend to gloss over the bad parts of child-rearing and like to over-embelish their children's accomplishments. I understand that; what gets me is when I'm trying to solve an issue with our daughter all I find is 'My child's perfect - what's wrong with yours/you?'.
I'm the first to admit that not attending pre-natal classes was perhaps a mistake. However, I was not going to attend a class where it was drilled into parents-to-be that if you did not follow their 'rules', you were a bad parent. I did a lot of research before our daughter was born, both virtual and personal. I read books and talked to moms about potential issues. I was rarely told negative stories, except when it came to delivery stories. For some reason, women seem to love playing the 'one-up' game with this aspect of pregnancy more than anything else.
Our daughter has major sleep issues. She can sleep during the day with virtually no problems. True, she does wake up on occasion, but we can usually get her back down fairly easily. At night, though, we seem to be losing the battle. I don't know what we did - it might be the darkness of her room or a hatred of the blankets we put on her. It's more likely that this sleep problem began when she was 3 days old.
Maddy was born with a not-quite-severe case of jaundice. It was something that was regularly monitored in the hospital, but it never got out of hand while we were in there. In fact, we were kept in an extra day because of it and the issues I was having with breastfeeding (I can't, physically). She also lost a fair bit of weight right off the bat, too - 5% is the norm, 10% is high risk; Maddy rose from 7% to 9% in just a couple of days after coming home from the hospital. I attribute this to the lack of food she was getting - I couldn't breastfeed, but was still trying, as well as supplementing her with formula (5 ml a feeling at that point).
The first Public Health nurse who visited our house the day after I got out of the hospital had a slightly-less-than-perfect bedside manner. I felt like I was being criticized over everything, especially about the breasfeeding. I was on Domperidone to help bring my milk in, but it wasn't working. Maddy had lost almost a pound by the nurse's first visit and their solution was to feed - and wake - her every 2 hours. They wanted me to feed her, even if she was sound asleep, at 7am, 9am, 11am, etc.
I thought it was ridiculous. My mom thought it was ridiculous. Our doctor, when we saw him for Maddy's first checkup 2 weeks later, thought it was ridiculous, but the damage, in my mind, was already done.
Within a week of the first nurse's visit, we had 3 more visits, all by different nurses. I had to go over our story for every single one of them - apparently, they don't read their files (or, in a more conspiracy-theory line of thought, they want to see if they can catch new moms up in their stories to see if they're following orders). Every time, they weighed Maddy, clucked over the lack of weight gain and lectured me on breastfeeding. By this time it was very apparent I wasn't going to be able to, but I, being a stubborn Scot, was determined to keep trying. This lead to massive bouts of stress for both Maddy and I.
We were now up to a 3-hour waking/feeding schedule. I wasn't supposed to let her sleep if it was her time to eat. It would routinely take over an hour to feed her, and by the end of it, she wasn't ready to sleep at all. I was lucky if she would sleep for 30 minutes. We had a lot of rough, rough days in her first month but we made it through. Somehow.
By March, I was at the end of my rope. We bought The Baby Whisperer for help. It did, at first, mainly by pointing out that swaddling was the way to go. I should have known this from the get go, but Maddy certainly didn't enjoy being swaddled in the hospital, so I stopped doing it once we got home. I'm coinvinced now that Maddy's a hot sleeper - she kicks off any blankets we put on her now and hates being hot - and the warmed layers of blankets they swaddled her with in the hospital turned her against swaddling.
The more I read The Baby Whisperer, the more I got confused. I would read ahead to see what we should expect in the next stage of Maddy's life and she'd contradict - at least in my mind - what she'd said previously. I got more and more frustrated with the book and finally stopped using it as a reference when she suggested a very contradictory feeding/napping schedule for when Maddy turned 4 months old.
Instead, I turned to my mom and the internet. I've always found BabyCentre Canada to be the best resource for me. (I've also used Health Canada on a regular basis, too.) I researched sleep issues and behavioural issues to see if there was a solution for us. I know that every baby is different, but with enough parents putting their experiences out there for the world to read, perhaps you can cobble together a few and it matches yours.
Every few weeks, I start my search on possible solutions over again. At this point, today, Maddy's not sleeping through the night. Not even close. I hate hearing about other parents and their wonderful children who sleep straight from 7pm to 7am. I call bullshit on that. I also call bullshit on parents who treat my child's problems as though they were conscious decisions on my part. I'm sure that not every parent is perfect, even if they think they are. I know that portraying yourself as the perfect parent and your child as an angel sent from above is the thing to do, but come on... all you're doing is making people like me, people who are good parents with minor-ish issues, second-guess ourselves and question our parenting.
I've lived in fear for the last 7 months, worrying that someone somewhere is going to take a look at my daughter and her eczema (definitely inherited from both of us) or her cradle cap or find out about her sleep patterns, and call the authorities. I know that we're good parents, she's a very happy baby (very much into blowing raspberries right now) and she's healthy. She eats like a horse and loves to move and play. She climbs and smiles and likes to laugh and has songs she likes and yes, we let her watch TV, but try to keep it to a minimum. She's a good baby. She just has a sleeping problem.
I'm the first to admit that not attending pre-natal classes was perhaps a mistake. However, I was not going to attend a class where it was drilled into parents-to-be that if you did not follow their 'rules', you were a bad parent. I did a lot of research before our daughter was born, both virtual and personal. I read books and talked to moms about potential issues. I was rarely told negative stories, except when it came to delivery stories. For some reason, women seem to love playing the 'one-up' game with this aspect of pregnancy more than anything else.
Our daughter has major sleep issues. She can sleep during the day with virtually no problems. True, she does wake up on occasion, but we can usually get her back down fairly easily. At night, though, we seem to be losing the battle. I don't know what we did - it might be the darkness of her room or a hatred of the blankets we put on her. It's more likely that this sleep problem began when she was 3 days old.
Maddy was born with a not-quite-severe case of jaundice. It was something that was regularly monitored in the hospital, but it never got out of hand while we were in there. In fact, we were kept in an extra day because of it and the issues I was having with breastfeeding (I can't, physically). She also lost a fair bit of weight right off the bat, too - 5% is the norm, 10% is high risk; Maddy rose from 7% to 9% in just a couple of days after coming home from the hospital. I attribute this to the lack of food she was getting - I couldn't breastfeed, but was still trying, as well as supplementing her with formula (5 ml a feeling at that point).
The first Public Health nurse who visited our house the day after I got out of the hospital had a slightly-less-than-perfect bedside manner. I felt like I was being criticized over everything, especially about the breasfeeding. I was on Domperidone to help bring my milk in, but it wasn't working. Maddy had lost almost a pound by the nurse's first visit and their solution was to feed - and wake - her every 2 hours. They wanted me to feed her, even if she was sound asleep, at 7am, 9am, 11am, etc.
I thought it was ridiculous. My mom thought it was ridiculous. Our doctor, when we saw him for Maddy's first checkup 2 weeks later, thought it was ridiculous, but the damage, in my mind, was already done.
Within a week of the first nurse's visit, we had 3 more visits, all by different nurses. I had to go over our story for every single one of them - apparently, they don't read their files (or, in a more conspiracy-theory line of thought, they want to see if they can catch new moms up in their stories to see if they're following orders). Every time, they weighed Maddy, clucked over the lack of weight gain and lectured me on breastfeeding. By this time it was very apparent I wasn't going to be able to, but I, being a stubborn Scot, was determined to keep trying. This lead to massive bouts of stress for both Maddy and I.
We were now up to a 3-hour waking/feeding schedule. I wasn't supposed to let her sleep if it was her time to eat. It would routinely take over an hour to feed her, and by the end of it, she wasn't ready to sleep at all. I was lucky if she would sleep for 30 minutes. We had a lot of rough, rough days in her first month but we made it through. Somehow.
By March, I was at the end of my rope. We bought The Baby Whisperer for help. It did, at first, mainly by pointing out that swaddling was the way to go. I should have known this from the get go, but Maddy certainly didn't enjoy being swaddled in the hospital, so I stopped doing it once we got home. I'm coinvinced now that Maddy's a hot sleeper - she kicks off any blankets we put on her now and hates being hot - and the warmed layers of blankets they swaddled her with in the hospital turned her against swaddling.
The more I read The Baby Whisperer, the more I got confused. I would read ahead to see what we should expect in the next stage of Maddy's life and she'd contradict - at least in my mind - what she'd said previously. I got more and more frustrated with the book and finally stopped using it as a reference when she suggested a very contradictory feeding/napping schedule for when Maddy turned 4 months old.
Instead, I turned to my mom and the internet. I've always found BabyCentre Canada to be the best resource for me. (I've also used Health Canada on a regular basis, too.) I researched sleep issues and behavioural issues to see if there was a solution for us. I know that every baby is different, but with enough parents putting their experiences out there for the world to read, perhaps you can cobble together a few and it matches yours.
Every few weeks, I start my search on possible solutions over again. At this point, today, Maddy's not sleeping through the night. Not even close. I hate hearing about other parents and their wonderful children who sleep straight from 7pm to 7am. I call bullshit on that. I also call bullshit on parents who treat my child's problems as though they were conscious decisions on my part. I'm sure that not every parent is perfect, even if they think they are. I know that portraying yourself as the perfect parent and your child as an angel sent from above is the thing to do, but come on... all you're doing is making people like me, people who are good parents with minor-ish issues, second-guess ourselves and question our parenting.
I've lived in fear for the last 7 months, worrying that someone somewhere is going to take a look at my daughter and her eczema (definitely inherited from both of us) or her cradle cap or find out about her sleep patterns, and call the authorities. I know that we're good parents, she's a very happy baby (very much into blowing raspberries right now) and she's healthy. She eats like a horse and loves to move and play. She climbs and smiles and likes to laugh and has songs she likes and yes, we let her watch TV, but try to keep it to a minimum. She's a good baby. She just has a sleeping problem.
Well, son of a...
Find of the day - Brian Williams (he of NBC Nightly News) has an indie rock blog.
WTF?!
After just a few moments of poking around, Mr. Williams is now my #2 when it comes to recommending new indie music (CBC3 being #1, of course). It doesn't hurt when on the front page of his site, he's got Great Lake Swimmers plastered all over the place. Mmm... Great Lake Swimmers.
So now, in addition to his work on the Nightly News and his appearances on Sesame Street (my daughter's favourite is his reporting on the Mine-itis epidemic), Brian Williams is an indie music proponent. Awesome :)
WTF?!
After just a few moments of poking around, Mr. Williams is now my #2 when it comes to recommending new indie music (CBC3 being #1, of course). It doesn't hurt when on the front page of his site, he's got Great Lake Swimmers plastered all over the place. Mmm... Great Lake Swimmers.
So now, in addition to his work on the Nightly News and his appearances on Sesame Street (my daughter's favourite is his reporting on the Mine-itis epidemic), Brian Williams is an indie music proponent. Awesome :)
Ooooh, crafty
Since I had our daughter in January, things have changed a lot. The usual changes - sleep, priorities, general organization of the house - were guaranteed to happen.
The one thing I didn't expect was an overwhelming desire to start crafting. And not simple crafts, either.
I've already pressed several flowers from our gardens to do shadow boxes. I'm planning on clipping fern and tree leaves to do a series of 'paintings' - basically just pressing the leaves into paint and then pressing them onto canvases. I'm going to start collecting paint chips (free!) to do some sort of collage. I've to a bunch of little wooden decorations (mainly animals) to colour for magnets, wall decorations or general knick-knacks.
There's still a couple of cross-stitch projects I need to finish that I started before she was born. There's a quilt I want to do this fall. I have a box of foam flowers and panels I've had sitting in a bag for months collecting dust.
One thing I will not do is scrapbooking. I don't understand it. I don't see the need to spend so much money on paper and little paper decorations for pages that hold one photo. When I was growing up, scrapbooking was something we did in school and all it involved was cutting out an article from the newspaper and taping it into the book with a little summary we wrote beside it. That's it. None of this fancy-schmancy lettering and stamps and cutters for us, oh no. All we had was lightly drawn lines so our summaries were written on somewhat straight lines. That and tape that dried out and yellowed within a year.
I don't begrudge scrapbookers. Everyone needs a creative outlet, but scrapbooking is not mine. No way, no how. I'll stick with my clumsy attempts at kitchy little things instead.
The one thing I didn't expect was an overwhelming desire to start crafting. And not simple crafts, either.
I've already pressed several flowers from our gardens to do shadow boxes. I'm planning on clipping fern and tree leaves to do a series of 'paintings' - basically just pressing the leaves into paint and then pressing them onto canvases. I'm going to start collecting paint chips (free!) to do some sort of collage. I've to a bunch of little wooden decorations (mainly animals) to colour for magnets, wall decorations or general knick-knacks.
There's still a couple of cross-stitch projects I need to finish that I started before she was born. There's a quilt I want to do this fall. I have a box of foam flowers and panels I've had sitting in a bag for months collecting dust.
One thing I will not do is scrapbooking. I don't understand it. I don't see the need to spend so much money on paper and little paper decorations for pages that hold one photo. When I was growing up, scrapbooking was something we did in school and all it involved was cutting out an article from the newspaper and taping it into the book with a little summary we wrote beside it. That's it. None of this fancy-schmancy lettering and stamps and cutters for us, oh no. All we had was lightly drawn lines so our summaries were written on somewhat straight lines. That and tape that dried out and yellowed within a year.
I don't begrudge scrapbookers. Everyone needs a creative outlet, but scrapbooking is not mine. No way, no how. I'll stick with my clumsy attempts at kitchy little things instead.
Sabbath
Ah, Sunday.
These days, it's just another day, taking care of our daughter, trying to keep some kind of semblance of normalcy.
I remember when I was younger where Sundays were actual distinguishable days from the rest of the week. Even with Sunday shopping becoming prevalent when I was a teenager, Sundays just had a different feel than the rest of the week. Perhaps it was because there was nothing on TV so we were forced to find something else to do, like read or - heaven forbid! - clean our rooms. Maybe it was because Sunday meant the last day before school started again for another week.
I liked Sundays as a kid. Sundays were much more relaxed and more often than not, meant a trip to our grandparents'. If we didn't go to our grandparents, we stayed home, and depending on our age, went to the school playground half a block away. If the weather wasn't cooperating, we stayed in our rooms and played or read our newly checked-out library books. Sunday dinner usually meant a roast with gravy, followed by The Wonderful World of Disney on CBC. Bath and bed shortly after, depending on our age.
These days, I can't distinguish Sunday from any other day other than the fact that Sesame Street isn't on at the usual 8am for our daughter to watch. Well, that and the fact that most - not all - stores aren't open until noon and close at either 5 or 6pm, but we rarely shop on Sundays anyway.
I want to return to the old days, where Sundays were different from the rest of the week. Where we could relax and not feel guilty about it. Not a day people use to catch up on the chores they've put off during the week. I guess, for lack of a better argument, I'm advocating using Sunday as a day of rest, as in, of all things, the Bible. I'm one of the last people to advocate for anything referenced in the Bible, but I guess anything is possible.
My plans for today include playing with our daughter, going for a walk and relaxing as much as one can with a 7-month old. It's a decent day out today (19ºC today, perhaps some showers later) so we should probably take advantage of it, rather than just wasting yet another day inside staring at a screen.
These days, it's just another day, taking care of our daughter, trying to keep some kind of semblance of normalcy.
I remember when I was younger where Sundays were actual distinguishable days from the rest of the week. Even with Sunday shopping becoming prevalent when I was a teenager, Sundays just had a different feel than the rest of the week. Perhaps it was because there was nothing on TV so we were forced to find something else to do, like read or - heaven forbid! - clean our rooms. Maybe it was because Sunday meant the last day before school started again for another week.
I liked Sundays as a kid. Sundays were much more relaxed and more often than not, meant a trip to our grandparents'. If we didn't go to our grandparents, we stayed home, and depending on our age, went to the school playground half a block away. If the weather wasn't cooperating, we stayed in our rooms and played or read our newly checked-out library books. Sunday dinner usually meant a roast with gravy, followed by The Wonderful World of Disney on CBC. Bath and bed shortly after, depending on our age.
These days, I can't distinguish Sunday from any other day other than the fact that Sesame Street isn't on at the usual 8am for our daughter to watch. Well, that and the fact that most - not all - stores aren't open until noon and close at either 5 or 6pm, but we rarely shop on Sundays anyway.
I want to return to the old days, where Sundays were different from the rest of the week. Where we could relax and not feel guilty about it. Not a day people use to catch up on the chores they've put off during the week. I guess, for lack of a better argument, I'm advocating using Sunday as a day of rest, as in, of all things, the Bible. I'm one of the last people to advocate for anything referenced in the Bible, but I guess anything is possible.
My plans for today include playing with our daughter, going for a walk and relaxing as much as one can with a 7-month old. It's a decent day out today (19ºC today, perhaps some showers later) so we should probably take advantage of it, rather than just wasting yet another day inside staring at a screen.
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