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Earlier today, Sean took Flora took a spontaneous trip to visit our friends Jason and Amanda and their six month-old son Thomas. They live a couple hours away so Sean and Flora are spending the night. She and I have never been separated for this long before, and never overnight. Judging from the phone calls I’ve had with Sean, it’s been harder on me than it has been on her.

During the first phone call, I could hear her babbling with Jason and Thomas while Sean told me he packed everything she needed and that everything was just fine. Once I told him that I planned to spend some of my free evening cleaning the tub, I received a verbal honey-do list of chores to do during my evening to myself. (Which interestingly enough, almost all involved poop: litter box cleaning, emptying the diaper pail and walking the dog. No one shits in our tub yet so cleaning the tub was a poop-free zone.) The second phone call was me calling to check in. I spoke to Jason as Sean was putting Flora to bed. I was worried because I do the whole bedtime routine unless I’m out of the house as I still nurse Flora right before I put her to bed for the night. Jason reported that he didn’t hear any screaming through the monitor and that she had had lots of fun all afternoon and into the evening. Jason said he saw Sean go up with a book so that meant that Sean remembered the book I read to her at bedtime. I heard him address Mr. Bunny while on the phone with me earlier so I knew she had the soft toy she sleeps with. Like he said, he had everything they needed and everything was just fine.

I just talked to Sean a few minutes ago and after some fussing, Flora finally settled and went to sleep. Considering she is sleeping in a playpen at someone else’s house and her mummy wasn’t there to help put her to bed, it doesn’t sound like she did too badly. I’m happy that she wasn’t being cranky for Sean, but sad because it felt like I was being left out of the fun. I am proud of both of them, but am looking forward to their return home tomorrow. The house is very quiet and I miss them both terribly. I do think this trip was good for all of us, and I hope Sean does it again while he’s off. It would just be nice if he did it on a weekend so I could sleep in the next morning!

So, where did the last few weeks go? I can’t believe July is more than half-over. We’ve been busy in the Mitchell household, but not uncomfortably so. We all adjusted to my being back at work without any major issues. I was amazed at how while lots had changed at the office while I was gone, it ultimately is “same stuff, different day”. Parenthood has really put my work life into perspective. It’s a lot easier to leave the worries and petty office dramas at the office when there is a small person at home who picks up on your bad moods and reflects them back at you. I’d rather have a happy baby during the precious few hours I get to spend with her between my arrival home and her bed time. It’s a lot easier to come home happy though – I really look forward to seeing Sean and Flora on the deck playing outside when I walk up the driveway or watching the two of them interact while Flora eats her dinner, or whatever they’re doing when I come home. I think Sean is really enjoying his time at home with her, and I hope that he will gain some of the same perspective I did when I returned to work. I feel kind of bad actually that I wasn’t able to compartmentalize a little better when it was just Sean and I. It’s not like I was a work-obsessed corporate zombie before Flora was born, but I spent a lot more time worrying about work-related stuff than I do now.

In other news, Flora has moved up from her infant car seat to a (much bigger) toddler/child car seat. Not because of her weight (her weigh-in at the doctor yesterday put her at 19 pounds, 12 ounces), but because she was getting too tall for the seat and it looked like it was getting uncomfortable. So we picked up a new seat that will sit both rear-facing and forward-facing (see this link on rear facing car seats) and with some outside help, got it installed into our car. I’ve been calling her new seat “the command centre” because it is huge (since she’ll be able to use it well into her toddler years) and looks kind of like an office chair for your car, complete with cup holder. Flora looks more comfortable in this seat and the buckles are easier to work with so she gets strapped in faster.

What else has happened around here? We’ve spent several weekends and a few days around Canada Day visiting family and friends. Flora got to have her first boat ride and dip into Lake Ontario courtesy of her Grandma Faye and Grampy Doug. I don’t think she was too impressed with her lifejacket, but she did enjoy the water, sand and boat. Next up will be swimming at Auntie Kyla’s!

I cannot believe that this child is turning one in one month and two weeks time! This really was the Fastest. Year. Ever.

This upcoming Monday, after 289 days at home, I go back to work. My share of the parental leave is over and Sean will be taking over as the stay-at-home parent role. People keep asking me “How do you feel?” and “Are you ready? or “Do you think Sean is up to the task of staying home with Flora?”

Those are really big questions. And they don’t have easy, one-word answers.

I have mixed feelings about going back to work. On the whole, I’m excited to be joining the world at large again. I’m looking forward to seeing my colleagues. Back in April, I treated myself to a new work wardrobe using the money from my tax return, and I’m looking forward to putting it in action. (I watched a lot of What Not to Wear during the early days of constant nursing and I decided that I was going to try and dress a little better. I suppose I’m trying to defy the “slummy mummy” stereotype.) I’m also looking forward to going out for lunch again. I work in an area which has a great variety of restaurants offering takeout meals of varying prices and I’ve missed more than a few of my favourites. I’m even excited about the work itself, if you can believe it. For the first little while at least, it’ll probably be fun as I get back into the groove. However like most office drones, I’ll know I’ve settled in when I start complaining about stupid stuff along with everyone else.

While I’m generally happy about returning to work, I’m sad that I won’t be able to be with Flora all day. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much I have enjoyed being a stay-at-home mum. We have our little routines down pat, and I know I’m going to miss them when we’re separated from each other. I know that I’m now joining the world of “working parents” (in quotes because I know stay-at-home parents work too): I will now always be stretching and compromising to accommodate everything and everyone in my life, and there will never be enough time. I just hope that I can manage the challenges with grace, flexibility and humour. I also hope that I pay attention during the good times so that I can remember that they do exist, and replicate them when things get tough.

Despite the fears and anxieties that I’m sure all mums get when they’re leaving their babies to return to work, I feel ready to return. I just hope I still feel ready when I don’t have complete control over how Flora spends her day. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering that just because Sean does things differently than I do, doesn’t mean he is doing them wrong. I’m working on that. I trust Sean and I know that the two of them will enjoy their time together. I’m proud of Sean for taking parental leave. I feel thankful – and lucky – knowing that during my first couple of months back at work, Flora will be spending most of her time with her daddy. It will be so good for both of them, and they will have so much fun. I can’t wait to see the pictures and video of the tomfoolery they get into together.

So yes. A lot of big feelings. It’s a big situation – I think they’re justified.

Yesterday, I read a blog post from the good women at Lunapads about an article written by Katie Roiphe called “Get Your Kid Off Your Facebook Page“. Ms Roiphe doesn’t think women should use their Facebook profile picture to show off pictures of their kids because it means that they are hiding behind their children. She then states:

“The choice may seem trivial, but the whole idea behind Facebook is to create a social persona, an image of who you are projected into hundreds of bedrooms and cafes and offices across the country. Why would that image be of someone else, however closely bound they are to your life, genetically and otherwise? The choice seems to constitute a retreat to an older form of identity, to a time when women were called Mrs. John Smith, to a time when fresh scrubbed Vassar girls were losing their minds amidst vacuum cleaners and sandboxes. Which is not to say that I don’t understand the temptation to put a photograph of your beautiful child on Facebook, because I do. After all, it frees you of the burden of looking halfway decent for a picture, and of the whole excruciating business of being yourself.” (emphasis mine)

In the first emphasized sentence, I understand where she’s coming from. If my Facebook page (or any other online profile) is to be my little portal to the rest of the world and completely devoted to me and my life, well, shouldn’t the picture be of me? Or at least have me in it? The second emphasized sentence however, made me angry. It perpetuates the stereotype that mothers of young children are barely functioning, poorly-dressed zombies who can only talk about their children’s achievements. I don’t know a single mother who lives up to this stereotype, and most of the mums I know are first-time mums of babies – prime candidates.

As one of those first-time mums, I can’t speak for more experienced mothers but I am the first to admit that new mums spend a lot of time talking about their babies. I’m sure I’ve overshared with the wrong people, but I do generally try to keep the baby talk to a minimum among people who are not all that interested in it. I get that *my* baby isn’t the biggest thing in *your* life. But when you spend virtually all your time with your child for months on end (I know many women don’t have this luxury and I’m thankful for Canada’s employment laws), well there’s not always a lot else for me to initiate a conversation about. I was shocked at how small my world became when my daughter was first born. I just wasn’t doing much else outside of mothering. And the stuff I *was* doing (napping, doing housework and catching up with what was on TV or going on online) wasn’t usually worth starting a conversation over.  Also, keep in mind that it takes a minimum of two people to have a conversation. You’re welcome to change the subject, or even ask me to tone it down. I would not be offended, and would probably love to talk about something else anyway.

Back to the subject at hand. All of the above reasoning for my less-than-stellar conversation skills can apply to why I’m putting pictures of my kid on my Facebook page (or Flickr, or Twitter, or this website). I’m taking a lot more pictures of her right now than I am of myself. I take most of the pictures in our family and right now, most of the pictures I’m taking are of my daughter. And when I want to show my friends how she is growing and changing, Facebook is an easy tool to do that. My friends check Facebook, but don’t always visit this website or any other social site I frequent.

I agree with Ms Roiphe that you shouldn’t hide behind your children. I don’t think using your Facebook profile photo to show off a cute kid picture is always proof that that is what a mother is doing. I decided a long time ago (before Flora was born) that my Facebook photo would always have me as the main picture. In part because I didn’t want people to think I didn’t exist without my husband, but mostly because I wanted people to know it was *my* profile when they searched my name, especially since I hyphenated it after I got married. Now when I post a new picture, I often use one of Flora and I, not because I’m hiding behind her, but because there just aren’t that many pictures of the two of us together and I want to show them off. Those pictures make me happy, which I think is a great thing to share with my friends, Facebook or otherwise. If someone else wants to show a picture of just their kid alone because it makes them happy, I say go to town.

Naturally this article doesn’t mention the dads putting up pictures of their babies as their profile picture. Because of course, they’re not hiding behind their children, they’re just showing off a cute kid. My husband has used pictures of Flora alone as his profile picture. She was brand new and it was the fastest way to get her picture out to a lot of people. Now he has a picture of the two of them together, and I imagine it’s for the same reason I chose mine – it makes him happy.

Another interesting site somewhat related to this subject is The 30 Standard Facebook Profile Photo Styles. Mr. O’Neill sums up the various styles succintly. One could certainly analyze each of these picture styles to death to find out what each user is hiding, avoiding or showing off. Personally, I think I’ll just say “what a great new picture” and not overthink it too much.

Oh, and by the way, are formal at-home dinner parties really that common in the parents-of-young-children age group? The dinner party seems like such a go-to example to dump on parents and their child-rearing abilities and yet I don’t think I’ve ever been to one. I have people over and we eat, but it’s not the big hairy deal everyone makes it out to be.

At the end of April, I was planning to write several posts about my experiences mothering my daughter over these last eight months. They were going to lead up to some flowery thoughts on Mother’s Day. They were going to be a lovely reminder of what I was doing and how I felt about things going on in Flora’s, Sean’s and my life as a new family.

However, mothering a young baby does not always lend itself to writing thoughtful, poignant, loving tributes to the various facets of motherhood in a timely fashion. There are just so many other things to do, like raise the kid. I’ve been spending my time mothering instead of writing about mothering. This is probably not a bad thing. Even now, as I sit here trying to write something, I feel like I’m going all over the place. There is so much I want to say, and it’s hard to rein in all these big thoughts to tell the story the way I want to.

Growing up, and well into my twenties, I never expected to have kids. If someone had told me at fifteen, or twenty, or even twenty-five, that I would spend my thirtieth birthday sitting on my deck with close friends, nearly 39 weeks pregnant, waiting to find out if I was going to be induced later that week, I would have laughed at them. It’s just not something I ever expected I would do. Yet here we are. (There are several cliches that describe this perfectly, but I’ll leave you to use the one that you prefer.)

Some people like to say that “if I’d known I would love having a child so much, I would have had one sooner”. I don’t feel that way. If I had a baby earlier in my life, I would never have had Flora. I would have had another baby, and while I’m sure he or she would be a wonderful person, he or she wouldn’t be Flora. She has taught me so much already, and I’m not sure that I would have been ready to learn from another baby from another, younger time. I can only hope that I can teach Flora all the things she needs to know to live safely and happily as a citizen of the world. I know we will continue to teach each other for the rest of our lives.

The weekend I first told my parents that Sean and I were expecting, I told my mother that I still wanted to be the same person I was before I had the baby. I still wanted to like dirty jokes, loud music, silly movies, a couple glasses of wine now and again and all the other stuff I enjoyed before the Baby would turn my life upside down. I was terrified that I would lose myself and only be regarded as a Mommy. My mom quickly set me straight and told me that I would still be the same person. She talked me down from more than a few worrisome points, and I am grateful to her for that. The best mothering advice she gave me is that “common sense goes a long way”. And it does.

I knew I would love my baby unconditionally, but I didn’t know how physical that bond would be. At the beginning, Flora would cry and I would leak milk, soaking whatever I was wearing. Watching her nurse filled me with awe and pride that  I could provide my child the sustenance she needed to grow and thrive. It still does, even though I’m not her sole source of food anymore. The amount of time I’ve spent holding her, comforting her, breathing her baby smell in. I never expected to be smelling her so much, whether to enjoy a freshly-bathed baby ready for bed, or to sniff for a dirty bum.

It really is a visceral connection. I know our connection will change as we get older. I just hope that I can remember all these awe-inspiring, life-changing, huge, loving feelings for the rest of my days. And that I can find the right words to describe them to her.

Flora started taking swimming lessons at the beginning of April. A couple of weeks ago, CityNews came and filmed some of the lessons to do a segment on babies and swimming. This is the article that resulted from that. Flora and I made the lead photo, which I am ridiculously proud of. We also show up in this video segment.

I’ve been telling everyone, but Grandma Faye and Grandma Janet are especially tickled – they haven’t seen Flora swim yet, so this was a really fun way for them to see it.

Flora has had an exciting couple of weeks. She’s eating lots of different pureed foods now and we’re introducing more as we see that she’s not reacting to what she’s already eating. She likes most of it, but it usually takes a couple tries of a food before she stops making a WTF face and spitting out half of each bite. She even did that with applesauce (today’s introduction). That surprised me as I thought she’d like the sweetness after carrots and peas. Maybe it was a texture thing.

Flora is also getting the hang of sitting up. She can’t pull herself into a sitting position herself yet, but if you sit her up and let go, she can sit for several minutes before she gets tired and tips over. The tipping over is adorable, but being able to sit up will really open up her toy options so I look forward to her being able to do it completely independently.

I have to say that six-month old babies are way more fun than newborns. Flora babbles lots and is starting to squawk and squeal, which is always good for a smile. She doesn’t fall asleep instantly in the stroller or wrap anymore – she needs to see what is going on. Girlfriend doesn’t miss a trick.

Anymore of this talk, and I’m going to be laying the “my baby is the best baby ever” stuff on a little too thick. I better stop and just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Flora’s first Christmas went reasonably well. Sean brought Flora and I down to his mum’s on the 17th to spend some pre-Christmas time with her and my parents. He had to go home on the 18th and finish his work week. The extra visiting time was great, but we were very happy to see Sean when he finally got back to his mum’s on the 24th.

As usual, we split our Christmas celebration between Sean’s mum’s and my sister’s place. Christmas Eve must have been hard on Flora because she spent most of the evening crying her little heart out. None of us could figure out what was bugging her, and it made me cry to see her in such distress. It was probably a combination of gas pains and too much stuff going on. Being passed around from person to person for comfort probably didn’t help either. She finally fell asleep and we went back to Sean’s mum’s.

Christmas Day was much better. Her Christmas outfit from Grandma Janet was a big hit. Flora liked to chew on the fur trim and ended up getting some gravy on it when Daddy and Grampy Doug were sneaking gravy into her mouth (as sneaky as feeding her at the Christmas dinner table can get). I didn’t think she should be having that gravy, but she seemed to like it, so I guess she’ll like her condiments when the time comes! Grandma Faye gave her a Christmas outfit too. We didn’t get it until Christmas Day, I wondered if I should be changing her outfit halfway through so that both outfits would be worn. We didn’t end up doing that, but I did put the outfit on her on the 27th after we got home. Naturally, every time I tried to take a picture, she got cranky.

Despite everyone telling us that they weren’t going to get Flora much for Christmas (since she’s so little and won’t remember it), she got spoiled with many gifts. I don’t even want to list it out because it’s a little embarrassing (and I don’t want to unintentionally slight someone by forgetting something). Flora is lucky to have so many people who love her. Sean and I got spoiled too. My mom picked up a video camera for Sean and I, which was quite a surprise (she said she got a good deal when she went to the States on Black Friday). We’re still getting the hang of it, but it’s quite a neat little toy. It will be great to use to share video online of Flora doing interesting things.

We came home on Boxing Day, and after over a week away, I was glad to get home. Sean is off until January 2nd, and the three of us have just been hanging out and relaxing. It’s been a great end to a very exciting year.

Flora was baptized back on November 9th. She slept through most of the service, but naturally started making noise during the moment of silence, so I had to step out of the church to settle her. I felt bad changing her diaper in the front seat of the car with the door open in early November, but I suppose that got me to change it faster.

My sister is a very proud auntie and godmother.

Flora and I stayed for a couple of days to visit with family after Sean left to go home. He was supposed to work, but ended up with a nasty cold so it was a good thing we didn’t see him for a few days. If I can avoid being sick this winter, that would be great. And it would be fabulous for Flora. We took lots of pictures, particularly on my mom’s spiffy new red couch.

This is Sean feeding Flora for the first time. This picture was taken last night. We bought a breast pump on Saturday, and I think I’ve mostly gotten the hang of using it. I’ve only spilled a couple of times and gotten breastmilk in the motor once.

Flora took the bottle without issue, which really surprised me. I’ve heard so many horror stories about babies refusing bottles when they are breastfed and having to try a zillion different bottle/nipple combinations to get the bottle near their little mouths.

Let’s hope this lasts – I plan to pump a bunch and have a stockpile on hand in the freezer. That way, I can leave the house on my own for longer than a couple of hours once in a while. I don’t envision Sean taking over the night feedings any time soon – he rarely wakes up when the baby cries at night. However, if I ask him to help out at night (which I try not to do too often), he usually does without issue. I usually ask for help with the early morning feed – he changes her and brings her to me so I can feed her in bed. It’s a nice family moment since all three of us are mostly asleep until it’s time for Sean to get ready for work.

These pictures are from some tomfoolery Flora and I got into today. I swear, when her eyes get all googly, I think she is half-Muppet.

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