2012, A few words: Part Two

Dear 2012:

I reached out to you earlier, and I've been waiting things out a bit before getting back to you. I wanted to let January take its course, you know, I didn't want to be pushy. Having considered the previous year's chaos and realizing that too many decisions were made in haste, I wanted to take things slow.

Mostly, I was just afraid. Nervous to take any decisive steps for fear that I'd choose the wrong path. There is so much wonderful freedom that comes with the position we find ourselves in, but with this freedom comes the sometimes suffocating pressure of knowing that our family needs to move forward (and also needs those basic life sustaining goods, like rent and food). 2012, I'm not asking for any special favours, really, I'm not. But I am asking for good push in the right direction and just a little support. We can do the rest.

I don't want to focus on last year anymore. I'm letting it go. We are settling in to our new surroundings in Canada (and having moved in with my mum, some of these surroundings are more familiar than others), we are tentatively planting some roots. We are tentative not because we're not sure we want to stay, but because we are--or at least, I am--a bit nervous about the steps we take. But we are stepping nonetheless.

I made an enormously deep step last week: I applied to midwifery school.

Yes, you read that correctly. I am making yet another massive change. That's the usual thing to do after a year like mine, right? This is a radical decision and I am terrified. I am mostly terrified that others will judge me making another bad decision. I'm worried they won't stand behind me as I move toward a path that I've wanted so dearly for so many years. I hear in my head all the second-guessing about money and careers and won't you just get a job already and stop going to school? Yes, I've been in school for what feels like a zillion years. Yes, it would be awesome to work and provide for my family today, right now. No, I don't think I'm being selfish. And yes, maybe I'll help deliver your baby one day. I'd love to!

Now that last one sounds awesome. Because the one thing that doesn't terrify me is the opportunity to be a midwife. I will be a good midwife. It will be hard work, but I can do hard.

When I wrote my list last year, becoming a midwife came only after having more children (which is still in the works, but later). I added it to my list but I never made a big deal out of it. It wasn't the right time to talk about it because I knew I'd be looking for other work and I feared someone finding my blog and thinking to themselves, who wants to hire this wannabe midwife for our decidedly un-midwife type job? Not us! I wanted to shout from every corner of this blog that after twelve years of dreaming about midwifery school, I was going to do it. Instead I remained (almost) silent. Of course I still talked the ears off of my friends about it, some of whom spent a very long time helping me craft an midwifery school application that I hope will land me an interview (thank you from the bottom of my midwife-loving heart, by the way), but I tried to keep my big ideas away from this blog.

Not anymore. 2012, this is where you come in. I need that push I mentioned earlier. We are trying our best to choose our steps wisely, Matt is now looking for his own new job, I'm working part-time from home and spending the rest of time with The Children. We are slowly moving towards, well, moving (out of my mum's house, that is). Matt and I carefully considered what is best for our future and we decided, in the spirit of this freedom we find ourselves navigating, that our little family was going to make me a midwife. I am grateful. I am relieved.

And I really hope I get an interview.


Yours sincerely,
with love and kindness,
and fingers crossed,
danielle

Scenes from my weekend (and some missing scenes)

 

This weekend was a good kind of busy. By Friday night the entire house was ready for exhausted, though my mum and stepfather did find the energy to pack for the holiday they were leaving for the next morning. Did you catch that? We have my mum's house all to ourselves for an entire week!* 

Don't even get me started on all the things that are going down this week in honour of our new found freedom. All I will say for now is that I kicked off their holiday by inviting eight friends over for dinner yesterday. It was the second meeting for our cookbook club, and I'll tell you all about it in a few days. I should at the very least offer you some photos from our amazing afternoon of cooking, eating, and talking with our mouths full, but I didn't get any photos! I was too busy ensuring there were enough forks for everyone and that I didn't burn the toasted baguettes again (I did, by the way, burn them). I'll give you the details soon, and maybe my friend Amanda will share a few photos with me to share with you here.

The rest of our weekend was made up of much smaller events, though just as important. Alyce and I started making her valentines for class next week (and no one is more surprised than me that I got this process started almost two weeks before the big day). There were baths, drawing sessions, and not enough naps. (Speaking of naps, I need this card.) But one of my favourite things about the weekend was taking Alyce to see her first 3D movie. There is nothing like sitting next to your favourite four year old, popcorn and smarties balanced on her lap, oversized glasses on her face, to brighten your day. She has seen Beauty and the Beast at least a dozen times at home, but this was special. My favourite part was watching her reach out her hands in front of her, trying to catch the images that flew in front of her face. No wait, my favourite part was listening to her belt out the songs mid-movie. I was prepared to make a scene if someone asked her to stop singing. No one did, obviously, because what kind of monster would step on the joy of a little girl singing about true love?

Hope your weekend was filled with events, big and small. Any suggestions for how we should celebrate our much emptier house?

*Don't get me wrong. We love them. But sometimes things feel just a bit crowded. You understand.

Food on Thursdays: I can't seem to plan a meal to save my life

Dinner

Thursday

hot dogs/veggie dogs

raw veggies and hummus

Friday-Shabbat
buttermilk chicken (roasted)

kale salad

roasted sweet potato frites

Saturday

steak

mixed greens and roasted tomatoes

Sunday

Cookbook club! (More on that later…)

Monday

Egg pasta (parm, butter, fried egg)

roasted veggies

Tuesday

wild rice and roasted mushrooms

mixed greens with goat cheese and nuts

Wednesday

Dinner out at friend’s house

I love to eat so much. I don't even have the words to describe how much I like to eat. I also love to cook and bake and daydream about food. There are worse things in the world to love.

But regardless of how my heart soars at the thought of preparing wonderful food, I find dinner time very stressful, and not in the good "how can I time the pizza dough with roasting veggies in the oven and make the sure the cake cools in time" kind of way. First, I am part of a family of extremely picky eaters. Fifty percent of us have very particular tastes and this makes it so hard to come up with ideas for dinner. Matt has traveled leagues from our early days of him not eating vegetables (including onions and garlic), fruit, soups, sauces, fish, or casseroles of any kind, and I am grateful for his growth in this department (the man loves his roasted veggies). Alyce, not so much. At lunch time we give her the food we know she'll love (peanut butter sandwiches, mac and cheese, yogurt), but we refuse to cater our dinners to her limited taste. I'm committed to this but I still want her to enjoy our food, so it can make dinner planning frustrating. Second, for someone who loves cooking and eating a meal together as a family, I feel a lot of pressure around dinner time, and I'm the kind of person who, when feeling pressured, prefers to hide over taking charge of the moment. And then I order pizza. Oh, how I love pizza.

I wish I could take charge. This is me taking charge.

I've tried menu planning before and not had much success. In part it's because I'm most comfortable with the kind of cooking that involves seeing what fresh ingredients are in the fridge and going with it. I hope we can progress back to that, but for now I need to admit defeat and accept that this process doesn't work well for us right now. I will consider this menu plan a success if we stick to it five out of seven nights. Everyone needs some wiggle room.

Here's how this plan came together: Matt and I came up with a giant list of foods that the two of us enjoy together, and came up with 15 meat and fish dishes, 9 pasta and veggie options, and 10 side dishes (personally I could have come up with a list of choices the size of Mark Bitmans How to Cook Everything, but I'll take baby steps here). Since we usually leave room for a couple of nights that we fend for ourselves, I expect this list will get us through a month of dinners, with some of our favourites repeating each week (hands up if you think Matt requests steak at least twice a week). As for Alyce, there is something in each of these meals that she can eat (foods I know she likes even if she claims that day to be allergic to it). As for what she doesn't eat, I'll just have to trust that she gets enough of at breakfast and dinner.

Wish us luck!

P.S. I found some inspiration here. 

P.P.S. Unrelated: Can I just tell you how much I love knowing that someone found my blog by typing "picture of woman upside down breastfeeding" into a Google search? My work here is done.

When they form a gang

Find the rest at here. Thank you Amber Dusick, for illustrating my life.

Our routines since we all returned to Canada have been all over the place. Our home routines have always seemed a bit different than most, but that's mostly because our lives were shaped by both the freedoms and limitations of academic life. Matt could stay home with them in the morning while I worked, then we'd switch places in the afternoon. It was a gift to be able to work around an academic schedule, where our work could be slipped in between classes and other obligations (at times it was also a curse, as anyone who works from home can tell you). Things are much the same now, though we don't have actual jobs to work around yet. But like before, we take turns giving the other one space to get some work done, whether it's looking for jobs, working part-time, or simply getting some well-earned alone time. Things will change a bit now that I'm staying home with them more often.

But I'm straying from my actual point here, and it is this: whatever the routine, Matt and I each spend a lot of time alone with both kids during the week, and I'm fairly certain the two of them plan out how best to gang up on the one of us. I expect that it's usually Alyce doing the scheming, but I should really give Shira more credit (because I'm pretty sure her wild pleas for attention are often just about distracting me from the goings on in the next room). However the plans are hatched, it has become evident that the two have learned to work together, as a team, to make us run harder, faster, and in more circles, around the games they play. Sometimes it's truly irritating, but mostly it's just hilarious.

But don't tell them I said that.

Any of you more seasoned parents more than one child have any advice for me?

New routines

Alyce asked me yesterday if any of the Grand River ducks would like some of her stickers. I told her if they didn't want some of her stickers then they were cruel, soul-less creatures. Actually, I told her that we can't litter stickers in the river, but I wanted to say the other thing. It was a mild and un-January like day, and since we had some time between appointments in the afternoon (a doctor and a swim class), we took advantage of the opportunity to take a walk by the river.

This week is my first real welcome back to staying home with The Children during the day. I am doing some contract work that I can work on in the evenings and I've sent Matt out to find a job. I know from experience that looking for work takes a lot of time and energy, so I've given Matt the space to spend the days doing all the things one does to find work (researching positions, making contacts, submitting applications). He did that for me while he stayed home with Alyce and Shira, so now it is my turn. I have a good feeling about him, as though a really amazing opportunity is going to open up. He deserves it.

Isn't it strange trying to figure out if it's best to work and pay for daycare, or have one parent stay home with your children? Daycare is so much money (and difficult to find at all if you didn't get your name on a list years before), never mind the maneuvering to find care for Alyce before and after kindergarten on the days she's in school. Honestly, it makes my brain hurt. I know a lot parents both work because in addition to the income they enjoy the work they do (but I imagine it is still hard for  a parent to know that they're bringing home only a few hundred dollars after daycare costs). I know that one day this will be the case for Matt and I, but for the time being I'm going to stay home with these two while Matt works. I must admit: I love staying home with them. Even on days, like yesterday, when Alyce tried my patience and argued with me approximately 439 times, it was good to be here.

Today is a school day, so it's an even softer welcome back to home week for me. Shira is happy to be my sidekick, and even accepted my invitation for a hair cut (see her before and after pictures above). She is over the moon that my boobs I am home with her again and we're redeveloping a routine. So far today it involves a little cleaning, some cooking, trying on every hat and mitten in the house, and, this afternoon, a trip to return our library books. But for the time being, she naps.

Please keep it between us that Shira is sleeping with Alyce's unicorn.

Breaking news in Canadian Immigration

This handsome American is now, very officially, a permanent resident of Canada! I repeat, he is a permanent resident. Last week we received the documents, headed to the border, and re-entered Canada as two Canada--loving residents. This means three things:

1. The handsome face can now start working.

2. He is now required, by law, to listen to the CBC.

And most importantly,

3. I filled out the forms correctly. All 37 pages. Take that, forms.

Because then you'll never miss these

Are you on Instagram for iPhone or iPad? I'm probably the millionth person to say this, but it's amazing. Instagram lets you steal parts of your day and share them with others: good parts, hard parts, or any parts you like. You can follow me @mostdaysiwin.

P.S. Since we're talking about following, you can also find me on Pinterest. If you need an invite to Pinterest, send me an email and I'll forward one your way.