I can’t believe Little Miss is two months old! Okay, no, that’s not true. I can totally believe it. I don’t feel like the time has flown, I feel like the time has been jam packed with… life. It feels like years since I gave birth, honestly!
At the beginning of September, we celebrated Cub’s third birthday. His party was a huge success in its simplicity. I actually had wanted to go to Vancouver so my Mom could throw Cub a party, that’s how much I didn’t think I could pull off any kind of celebration worthy of my little man turning three. But guess what? Three year olds don’t need much. He wanted an Iron Man/Thomas Train cake. I had assumed that he’d change his mind a bunch of times, but he never waivered from this request. I didn’t quite know how I was going to achieve this, and had fully intended to pay someone to do it until I realized: we own Iron Man and Thomas the Train. Now to combine them into a cake:
The fact that the trains moved was my coup de grâce: shout out to my Mom for letting me buy Cub the battery-powered train on her dime.
We had a breakfast birthday party. Papa made pancakes, we had two of Cub’s buds and their parents over, and the boys played while the adults had a pretty decently uninterrupted meal! The boys dug into the presents themselves while we ate, which was certainly not how I had envisioned present time, but it meant we grow ups got to drink our coffee… hot!
My Dad came to visit us for ten days shortly after Cub’s birthday. He’s never been out to visit without my Mom, and it was only his second time taking an airplane without her since they got married over three decades ago. Thankfully, he made it! (Look how happy Cub is to see him!)
My Dad is a super awesome handyman, motivated by a life-long refusal to pay someone else to do something he can do himself for cheaper. Since we just moved into our new place and my “honey-do” list was severely neglected due to a hectic work schedule and new baby, I definitely put Grandpops to work. (Luckily, he likes saving his kids money as much as saving himself money.)
First, he repaired our washer. Yes, I was cloth diapering with a broken washing machine. I got to go to a Laundromat for the first time in my entire life!
Thanks to perseverance, a good understanding of moving parts (which he failed to pass down to me) and the fact that people make YouTube videos about EVERYTHING, my Dad had my washer up and running without so much as a trip to the hardware store by day two of his visit. (He had brought tools in his suitcase, along with gifts for the kids and his most recent garden harvest. His checked luggage was so empty on the way home he barely had enough to pad the bottle of PST-free alcohol he picked up.) I think we exhausted him.
My Dad is not, of course, only good for general household repairs (although he fixed things I didn’t even know were broken). He’s also an awesome Pop Pops. Cub’s favourite Pop Pops activity is playing Candy Crush. Luckily my Dad is equally obsessed with it.
With Little Miss Cub, my Dad helped me have some baby-free time for blogging by rocking her, jiggling her, singing to her and letting her suck on his knuckle. We watched The Grand Budapest Hotel with him carrying her like this, with closed captioning to compensate for the screaming baby. (She has a witching hour between about 8:30 and 10:30 pm where she does a lot of crying.) It was such a good movie!
It was truly excellent having my Dad visit. There’s something so, so special about watching your parents with your kids, no? I love how, when my Dad reads a story aloud, he always reads the title and author… and sometimes the publisher for good measure.
Oh—and perhaps the most exciting part of his visit was when we spotted Steven Harper at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. (I’m not a very good paparazzo.)
I think I’ve mentioned before that Cub didn’t start preschool this September because the one closest to us required he be fully potty trained. (I double checked, no diapers or training pants allowed!) It’s been a blessing in disguise in some ways, leaving our schedule more flexible and, though I know some days it doesn’t feel this way, it is giving me precious extra time with my boy before our lives are dominated by his school calendar. I did sign him up for one un-parented play school class called Lil’ Bookworms.
I was holding my breath, expecting him to refuse to participate. The morning of the first class, while we were playing with his action figures (an activity for which I seem to lack the requisite skills), I decided we would act out a Bookworms class. All the “guys” sat in a circle. I elected one of them “teacher” (it was Burnie, the fireman, whose punny name is courtesy of my father). Bernie read them all a story. Cub thought it was the greatest thing ever and we had to replay it multiple times. When I told him he was going to real Lil’ Bookworms class, he was psyched. (Keep in mind that his usual reaction to leaving the house is, “No! I stay here!”) I was happy to see the class involved a variety of activities, since you can’t really read stories to three year olds for an hour and a half: they had an obstacle course, crafts and stories. And he didn’t care when I left him there and he was happy when I picked him up.
So I suppose this post is supposed to be about the baby who’s asleep in my arms right now. With Cub, I wrote in his baby book (which was just a daily agenda) so many details of his development. Now when I sit down to jot a few notes about our day in Little Miss Cub’s book, I am hard pressed to say anything except “We saw Steven Harper!” I don’t have the time to pay attention to the minutiae of my baby’s every waking moment, but I’m getting the big stuff, like her first time really smiling at me. (She was in the Huggaloops while I was peeing….) And that’s basically my life right now: Peeing with a baby strapped to my chest and a preschooler yelling at me to find his Captain America Lego figure.
And then, in each spare moment that I’m not keeping the house in semi-order or caring for the Cubs, I’m working on this blogness. (Blog Business- you heard it here first.) I have started back working for Funky Fluff, Lil’ Monkey Cheeks and Öko Créations, and my blog really is taking off in terms of paid opportunities (which I thank you for supporting!!). Back in Montreal, with Cub in day care, this would’ve been a cakewalk. But alas I’m a true WAHM now… And it’s crazy busy, but I love it. For all the grief my overactive brain has caused me in my life with my anxiety disorder and OCD, it also makes me pretty darn good at managing stay-at-home Momming and Mommy Blogging. I’m mindful of respecting my limits, but thankfully when I am blogging or doing social media I’m happy to be doing it. What started as a hobby and creative outlet is now a legitimate business!
And on that note, if you’ve actually read this far, I must again thank YOU, because people reading my stuff is the only way this whole whirlwind of a life I’ve got going on can be possible. I love to try new products, I love to share my opinion in an irreverent and self-deprecating way, I love to make cheesy puns and over share and help Mamas figure out how to cloth diaper… And I love that I can do it while being home with my kids! Even if, by the weekend, I just want to be alone… which doesn’t happen, even at night: 
Leave a Reply