I made it

through my first 2 weeks back to work.  It went a lot better than I thought it was going to.  I didn't cry when I dropped Paxton off at day home the first day (well, I did have tears well up, but they didn't spill over so I don't think that counts as crying) and he's been really good when I drop him off in the mornings.  It actually made me a bit sad the first few days since he'd reach for the day home lady as soon as he saw her.  I was thinking, "Hey, can't you even be a little bit sad to see me go just to make me feel better?"  But I suppose I'd rather have him be happy when I leave him rather than crying since that would be harder on both of us.  I think the transition was easier because I dropped him off there for a few hours a day the week before I returned to work.  This way he was already accustomed to the kids there, to the day home lady and all the toys, so I think Paxton looks forward to going there every day.

Work itself wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.  I spent pretty much my whole first day going through the 1874 emails in my Inbox (ya, apparently my "Out of Office" notification wasn't really working while I was out, and a lot of them were mass emails that get sent out to the whole service center).  When I'd finally whittled the emails down to 78 that I wanted to keep to go through further, I discovered a different folder that had somehow regurgitated every email I've ever received since starting at Sun Life ... and I started there in November of 2006.  So you can imagine how many more emails I had to delete.  The second day was full of training modules for the new operating system we have and then I actually got a case (yay! some actual work to do) for the old system.  It was super frustrating at first because I was soooo slow at remembering how to get the information I needed, but after a few cases it's all coming back to me and I'm back on track.

I guess I was all stressed out about nothing ... story of my life.  I tend to get all worked up about something, and then it turns out to not be nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  We all (Jay, Paxton, the dogs and I) seem to be adjusting rather well to this new schedule in our lives.  Huh.  Who'd a thunk, eh?

Soundtrack of My Life

We all know someone that's a "hopeless" romantic, right?  That person who believes in true love no matter what.  Well, I wouldn't say I'm hopeless but I'm definitely a "hopeful" romantic.  I'm pretty sure that I have an oversized romantical bone somewhere in my body.  This is good, though, since I'm pretty sure that Jay's is at least 2 sizes too small. *sigh*  He can be romantic when he puts his mind to it (like suggesting we get married on our anniversary, sending me flowers at work occasionally, stuff like that) but those times are few and far between.  Case in point: while down on one knee and about to pop the question, Jay looks at me and inquires, "You ready for this?"  I know.  I'm married to Captain Romance.

Anyways. There have been random romantic happenings in my life since then; maybe not as many as I'd like, but I get by (I may read a lot of romance novels and watch a lot of chick flics to satisfy my cravings, but that's neither here nor there).  The point of this post is not how romantic or unromantic my husband is, it's about how I am ridiculously romantic.

My job requires me to stare at my computer screen for endless hours a day which leaves a lot of extra space in my brain for daydreaming.  I also get to listen to my iPod all day (which is good because I'd probably go crazy otherwise!).  And while I'm listening to music and daydreaming, I sort of have this "movie soundtrack" thing that happens.  I think to myself, "Wow, this would be a great song for ... (fill in some sort of activity)."  Here's an example: today I was listening to "Song For A Winter's Night" by Sarah McLachlan (not a traditional Christmas song, but lovely nonetheless), and I was like "This would be such a great song to have playing in the background if Jay and I were all cuddled up in front of the fireplace some night."  (Also a good song for this scenario, "Christmas Day" by Dido.)

This is where the romance part comes in.  I know that this will not happen because Jay and I rarely cuddle in front of the fireplace together, and we never just sit there with music playing in the background when we do.  There's always a movie or tv show in the background instead.  Someday maybe he'll get more romantic and I will be able to put my soundtrack skills to use ... 

Does anyone else do this?  Or is it just me?  Maybe I need to change careers and become a person who finds music for movies and tv shows?

Willpower

This is a candy bowl that belonged to Jay's Mom (or perhaps his Grandma ... either way it's one of his maternal heirlooms).  It's a treasured Chistmas decoration (note the Christmas tree on the side of it ...) and it has it's place of honour in our home each year.  However .... it is also one of the many bane's of my existence.

The first Christmas that we lived together, Jay pulled this candy bowl out of a random box that was excavated from the depths of our crawl-space.  "Fine, whatever, we'll put some of your stuff out too," is what I thought (because clearly MY decorations were far more superior to anything that Jay had lurking around from his childhood ... and CLEARLY my family is FAR more intersted in Chirstmas!  So it would follow that my decorations would be better.  Duh!).  But then he informed me that this candy dish was sooooo special and it was ALWAYS filled with the "holiday" peanut M&Ms every year (and they never ran out apparently).  This fact is also somehow interwoven with the fabric of space and time ... so if I don't keep it filled up with the holiday peanut M&Ms for the Christmas season every year, the universe is most likely going to implode and we'll all die (You're welcome!).

So the bowl has yet again made it's appearance for this festive season.  It is sitting on my kitchen island staring me down now that it has been filled with it's requisite chocolatey-peanutey- goodness.  I am attempting to resist it's siren's song (mostly because it takes 2 bags to fill the stupid thing and I'm fairly certain that eating it's entire contents in one sitting is not going to help me lose any remaining baby weight).  *sigh*  I guess we'll just have to wait and see how many times I have to refill it before Christmas actually gets here (only 28 more days as of this post!).  Any takers for a bet?

* about 2 weeks after I originally posted this, Jay broke the lid.  So I have decided that I am no longer obligated to fill the jar with M&Ms since it's defective.  I'll probably just end up buying a different one to take it's place ...

Christmas Decorations

I may have mentioned once or twice that Christmas is my very most favorite holiday (hence the countdown).  I love everything about Christmas.  I love the decorations, the music, Christmas shopping (even when the malls are ridiculously busy or Wal-Mart only has 5 out of a possible 25 cashiers working for some unknown reason), wrapping presents, giving presents, opening presents, the food, being with friends and family ... pretty much just everything that goes along with Christmas.  There is actually one thing I don't like about Christmas though: the weather.  Living on the prairies in Canada means that generally Christmas is accompanied by snow and cold (although we do get lucky occasionally here in Southern Alberta and have a Chinook for Christmas.  But then it's ugly since the grass is all brown and the 10 - 15 degree Celcius temperatures are accompanied by 70 - 90 kph winds that not only wreak havoc on one's hairdo but also sandblast everything with the sand that's been used on the icy roads.)  I firmly believe that we should get snow on December 23rd and it should melt on December 26th.  Oh I know we need the moisture for the farmers, blah, blah, blah ... but that doesn't mean that I have to like snow and -20 degree Celcius weather!  (I think I might live in the wrong part of the country/world since the temperatures fluctuate from -30 in the winter to +30 in the summer and I hate both extremes).

Anyways, that's enough ranting.  Let's get back to the love.  I was able to convince Jay to let me/help me decorate the house for Christmas yesterday.  He's usually quite adamant that we don't decorate or listen to Christmas music until December 1st, but I used the "it's the last weekend before I go back to work and it'll cheer me up" excuse along with my Bambi eyes to convince him.  Once I got him excited about decorating, there was no stopping him (yes, my darling husband will go with me to stores such as Persnikety to buy Christmas decorations (for those of you who don't know what it is, Persnikity is what I call a "Mom Store" because it's full of trinkets and things that Mom's like to decorate their houses with).  So we dragged the tree and all the decorations up from the crawl space shortly after noon and commenced to begin celebrating my favorite season.  Paxton decided he was not going to cooperate in any way shape or form and woke up from his nap about 5 minutes after we started decorating.  I was particularly happy about this since he's in the middle of another cold right now (thank you germy daycare kids) and was still tired as evidenced by the fact that he was trying to rub his eyes out of their sockets.  So I (unsuccessfully) tried to get Paxton back to sleep for an hour, finally gave up and then put him in his playpen with some toys so I could help Jay decorate.  To his credit, Paxton behaved himself quite well in the playpen and wasn't super whiney.

Unfortunately we had to take a break in our cleaning/decorating after a few hours since we were going to Jay's Dad's house for dinner.  We had Chinese food which was pretty good, but I was kind of disturbed by the lack of reaction from Jay's relatives when I discovered that the shrimp hadn't been de-veined (and I did explain to them what that meant).  Gross.  Anyways, we got home around 9:30 pm and I managed to get Paxton into bed on the first try (yay me!).  After a small discussion we decided that we should probably finish decorating since we had all the stuff out already and we don't trust our dogs 100% to not destroy everything if the mood strikes them.   Long story short: I went to bed around 1:30 am and apparently Jay came to bed around 3:30 am.  Paxton didn't respect our dedication to Christmas decorating since he woke up around 5:30 am and then wanted to be up for the day at 7 am.  Not cool.  But we did get everything done last night so now we get to enjoy our lovely decorations for the next month and a half.  And of course I took some pictures to share with everyone (see I promised the next post would be full of fluff and pictures!).

Paxton was pretty excited about the "new" stuffed animals (they're from last Christmas) 

Christmas Tree on the coffee table so Paxton (aka Mr. Grabby Hands) can't reach it 

Sign from Grammie and super cute hanging guys from Auntie Mandy (they also had to find a new home this year because of Paxton) 

My assortment of snowmen 

My Christmas Bear (still smiling even after her incident with Mo a few years ago) 

Jay's Christmas Bear 

Our stockings that Grammie made for us 

My Mom maintains that I picked out all the stuff that's on here.  I deny this, however, because there's a cat on the toe.  I really don't like cats so I highly doubt that.  Granted, I was a tennager then and probably brain-damaged so anything's possible. (love you Mom!) 

The Christmas rock garden 

Snowflake lights 

Jay's stocking from when he was little 

Super awesome Christmas balls.  They are super awesome because I had to lean over the banister into nothingness to hang them (and we have 3 pictures like this so I got to defy death multiple times) 

Icicles and snowflakes on the lights (these also had to find a new home this year) 

This is why Jay was up so much later than me 

Nativity and blocks (the blocks were also made by Grammie) 

"Angels" blocks also made by Grammie 

My favorite sign 

It's even Christmas in the bathroom! 

Also made by Grammie 

Mini Christmas tree made by Jay's Mom.  I haven't figured out where to put it yet ...

Hope you're in the Christmas mood now!  There will be more Christmas posts to come!

There's a Hole In My Cape

Wow my blog has been depressing lately.  Sorry about that, but this is not going to be any better.  I have a confession to make.  I am not SuperMom.  I am also not Super: Wife, Daughter, Friend, Sister, Employee, or any other label you can think up for me.  I'm sorry to burst any images you may have of me.  There is a hole in my cape and it doesn't go "whoosh" as I run around anymore.

I have realized after some serious contemplation that there is something fundamentally wrong with me.  I don't know how to be happy.  Sure, I can be happy on occasion like on my wedding day, when Paxton was born, anything involving Christmas ... but I am not actually a happy person.  I am pretty good at faking it most of the time, but occasionally I have a meltdown ... and today is that day.

And really, I don't have that much to complain about.  I have a beautiful son, a husband who loves me, sisters and parents who support and love me, inlaws that adore me, and friends that I can call on anytime.  But I am not happy.  I worry.  And it seems if I don't have something to worry about then I can't function.  I worry that I am not doing all I can to be the best wife, mother, friend, sister, daughter, etc.  I worry that Paxton will be the weird kid when he goes to school that gets bullied.  I worry that Paxton will be the bully.  I worry that I won't be good at my job when I go back.  I worry that we won't have enough money to cover our bills (even though we always seem to).  I worry that I am just not good/worthy enough to have what I have.  I worry that I am just not good enough.

This fear I'm sure was ingrained in me through no fault of my parents, teachers, family, friends, etc.  It must be a coping mechanism or "wall" that I've thrown up to manage my everyday life.  I just grew up always being good at stuff.  I was the smart kid and the athletic kid.  But I've never really fit in.  I also have always been the girlfriend/wife that is "Alisha." (ie, "one of the guys", understanding, likes sports, forgiving, likes video games, etc)  But we can't all be "Alisha" all the time.  I'm not always good at stuff.  And when I'm not it freaks me out.

I'm pretty sure I'm having some sort of emotional breakdown.  Maybe it's postpartum rearing it's head 11 months later.  Maybe it's all the anxiety of the unknown once I return to the workforce.  I don't know.  But I am releasing my fears and insecurities to the universe.  Hopefully this is the first step to me becoming a better, healthier wife, mom, sister, daughter, friend, etc.  Perhaps asking for help and not internalizing everything is the key.  I realize that I can't do everything on my own.

Love to anyone reading this!  (And I promise my next post will be more happy, full of fluff and pictures!)

Remind me again why I signed up for this?

That is what was going through my mind in the wee hours of the morning.  You can probably guess that I was up with Paxton (yet again), but here's the background info.

*WARNING: Whine ahead.  Please bring your own cheese.*

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a morning person.  And anything between when I go to sleep at night and when I wake up of my own free will (waking up to an alarm clock, crying baby, barking dog, etc. does not count) qualifies as morning.  I have a very short temper at these times and no one is safe.  That brings us to our current subject.

Paxton has been doing experiments on the effects of sleep deprivation lately and I am his unwilling subject.  Now I know that I was the one who wanted to have a baby, and I knew that a certain amount of sleep deprivation was part of the package.  However, I also spent the first 2 1/2 months of Paxton's life letting him "cry it out" so that he would learn to sleep through the night.  This is why I am completely baffled as to why he is suddenly having bouts of insomnia at 11 months old!  You would think that with only one nap a day he would be tired enough to sleep through the night, right? (ha ha that rhymes)  But alas, this is not always the case.  I read this blog a few weeks ago and found myself thinking, "I know exactly how you feel!  That's not how Paxton is when he goes to sleep, but I stop loving being a Mom after I put him to sleep for the night."  It's not that I don't love Paxton or that I regret having him or anything like that; I would do anything for him, like using my body as a shield to protect him from a bullet, car, or other projectile (this scenario hasn't occured yet but I'm fairly certain I would do it), cleaning up bodily fluids, being smacked in the face with various objects, or getting up multiple times during the night, but I'm pretty sure there's no "Mom Law" that says I have to like it!

Paxton had his first cold a few weeks ago and had a really bad night. However, we got him a humidifier the next day and he went back to sleeping through the night. This week has been a completely different story. Monday night he was up for a bottle at 11:30 pm and then again at 2 am, then wanted to get up for the day at 6 am. I said, "How 'bout no?" and put him back in his crib while I went back to bed and passed out (so I'm not sure if he went back to sleep or just played with his stuffed animals for the extra hour I was able to squeeze in).  Tuesday night Paxton was up at 12:30 am and we did the diaper change, bottle and cuddle routine, but this time he decided that he was ready to be awake and didn't want to go back to sleep. So at 1 am I put him back in his crib even though he was still awake and he proceeded to cry for an hour! (not normal crying either; he'd stop for a minute or two every so often so that I could just start to doze off and then he'd start crying again so I'd wake up)  And then he wanted to be up at 6 am again. (see above for my response to that notion) Then last night, Paxton was up at12:15 am. We did the whole song and dance again and I ended up putting him in his crib again while he was still awake around 12:45 am. He then proceed to cry for half an hour until I gave in and went to cuddle him again.  However, I was NOT happy about the situation and slammed his bedroom door as I entered (yes I was having a tantrum and I woke Jay up which made me feel even worse since he had to be up for work 2 hours later).  After explaining to Paxton in no uncertain terms that I was completely unimpressed with his sleep deprivation experiments he settled right down and went to sleep (I'm beginning to think that he might be like *Bill Cosby's children and he can't sleep some nights unless I get angry about my need for sleep and how he is disrupting it) until 6 am when he thought we should be up for the day again .  Not happening.  I can get up at 6 am if I get to sleep through the whole night, but not when I'm up 2 or 3 times and have to listen to Paxton crying for extended periods of time.

It's not just the fact that Paxton wakes me up during the night.  I can usually deal with the diaper change, bottle, cuddle thing since it's about a 15 minute thing and then we both go back to sleepand I've figured out how to do it while semi-conscious.  However, it's the nights when Paxton takes longer to drink his bottle, or he just wants to be held, or he inexplicably has a poopy diaper in the night so I have to turn on the light which brings us both into a state of full consciousness that are the problem.  If I'm up for more than 15 minutes my brain thinks it's time to be awake and starts thinking and pondering because really, what else could I possibly want to be doing in the middle of the night than worrying about finances, right?  This is a problem because it guarantees that I will be awake for at least an hour.  So then if Paxton wakes up 2 or 3 hours later, I will have only been asleep for 1 or 2 hours, and a night's sleep comprised of 4-6 hours of broken sleep does not a happy Alisha make.  I am so not looking forward to going back to work.  I'm not sure how I'm going to function with a schedule that includes an 8 hour work day if Paxton is doing this to me when I can barely function now without a schedule!

* p.s. if you've never seen "Bill Cosby: Himself" you should definitely look it up.  I have a whole new appreciation for it now that I'm a parent!

Paxton is 11 Months Old!

Another month has gone by and my little man is another month older (I guess that means I'm another month older as well ... and so are you!).  My life's getting more hectic by the day since I go back to work in 12 days. *sigh*  But that's a whole nother post waiting to be written.  This ones about Paxton, so here's the news.

At 11 months, Paxton:

- is walking!!!  I know you've been eagerly anticipating this news for months since I've been saying how close he was getting every month and now it's actually true!  He started walking a few days after Thanksgiving; a few steps from me to Jay and then back again.  Paxton's favorite mode of transportation is still to crawl (probably 'cuz he doesn't have as far to fall from his knees as from his feet) but it seems that he walks more and more every day.  He still has to pull himself up on something since he hasn't quite figured out how to stand up on his own yet.  This new stage is definitely more trouble as he can reach way more things.  I'm not sure what the correlation is, but since he's started walking it's like he can figure out better ways to get to things (ie he knows how to spin our coffee table to reach stuff on the other side).  Mom and Dad are having to be extra creative at hiding the remotes these days.

- has 6 teeth.  I'm not sure if he's trying to get another one or not since he's drooling, but that seems to never go away with him.  I've checked his gums a few times but I haven't felt any new nubs yet.

- thinks that balls are the best toys.  Unfortunately, so do our dogs.  I bought a mid-size plastic ball for him during the summer and it only lasted 5 minutes in the house (Mo pounced on it and it popped).  I bought a few rubber balls for Paxton a couple of days ago and he loves to play catch with them (it's so funny to watch him get all wound up and only drop it right in front of himself).  However, Mo thinks that they are fair game for him and we are constantly telling him to leave them.  I found one out in the yard this morning and one of them is MIA so I think Mo's hidden that one somewhere. *sigh*  I guess we're doomed to play with the hard plastic ones we got from Auntie Kelly since the dogs don't seem to like them as much.  I'm not a fan of getting hit in the face with them (which was the main motivating factor behind buying the new ones).  I just can't seem to convey this fact to my son.

- only has one nap a day now.  Mom is getting really good at getting a shower, loading and running the dishwasher, making lunch, etc all crammed into an hour to an hour and a half!

- is pretty much grown out of his bucket seat.  We're going to install his new "big boy" carseat this week and then the bucket seat will be no more.  It's currently sitting in our kitchen and Paxton thinks it's the greatest thing ever to sit in it.  He can't get himself out, however, so I spend a lot of my day dragging him back out.

I don't have too many pictures for this post since I did so many last month, but here are the latest ones.

The fluffiness goes away when his hair's wet.

Walking at Grandpa Chicken's house 

Paxton was "riding" the arm of the recliner.  He refused to put his leg on the other side to sit with Jay. 

Trying to get past the table to the electronics on the other side

Chillin' in the car seat 

Halloween

We had a super busy Halloween weekend and I'm pretty sure I haven't celebrated Halloween that much ever!  On Friday, Jackie came to get Paxton and myself and we all went to Sun Life to show off our super cute babies in their costumes.

Cutest Tiger I've ever seen! 

Jackie and Alexander (he's a monster) 

Jackie G and Lyndsay being "pregnant" (it's a joke that there's something in our water cooler since so many women off our team have gotten pregnant in the last year)

Paxton ended up biffing it while he had a bottle in his mouth and cut his lip on the outside and the inside.  (I thought I handled it pretty well considereing it was the first time he's been bleeding.)  Lyndsay went to find Jackie and we headed home.  Paxton's lip had stopped bleeding and he'd stopped crying by the time we got out of the building, but we thought it best to get him home.

That evening we headed over to Ryan and Kaity's house for a Halloween party.  We had a lot of fun and everyone had great costumes.  My arms were really sore the next morning though because Paxton refused to let me put him down all night!  Usually he's really happy and will go to everyone that was there, but with their costumes on he didn't recognize anyone.  He wouldn't even go to Jay!

Still cute even with a slightly swollen bottom lip 

Kim and Evan 

Ryan and Kaity as "Dog the Bounty Hunter" and his wife Beth 

I'm a surgeon 

Jay dressed up as a cheese factory worker   

Ted and Kim 

Everyone at the party

On Saturday we left Paxton with Grandpa Chicken and Grandma Roseanne while we went to Jay's "Christmas Party" at Mojo's.  They were having a dinner theater murder mystery so they decided to have everyone go to that instead of having a Christmas party this year.  I dressed up as a surgeon again and Jay wore my Drunken Clams t-shirt and went as a softball player.  (It apparently was the best idea I've ever had since Jay was pretty excited that he got to wear his sweats to the bar.)  I'm sure it would have been quite enjoyable, but we couldn't see anything from where we were sitting and the mic they were using kept cutting out, so we couldn't hear most of what was going on either.  It made it really hard to get into the whole murder mystery thing.  But the food was good (and free!) so I can't say the whole thing was bad.  After the dinner, Jay and I skipped out to go to another party at my cousin Ashley's house.  We had a good time, but couldn't stay for too long since we had to pick Paxton up from the grandparents' house (and apparently I didn't take any pictures all night).

On Sunday we just sort of hung out while we tried to recouperate from going out 2 nights in a row (we don't do that so much any more and we didn't get to bed until after midnight both nights.  I know, we're super rebellious like that.)  We finally carved our pumpkin in the afternoon.  I was adamant about getting it done since it was the first Jack-o-Lantern that we've ever done together and I also found a pretty fabulous pumpkin for carving.  I was "lucky" enough to get to clean it out, then Jay carved it while I put Paxton down for a nap.  When Paxton got up from his nap we dressed him up again and took him trick-or-treating to his 2 sets of grandparents in Lethbridge.  (We didn't bother taking him anywhere else since he's too little for candy and I'd just end up eating anything he got.)  All in all it was lots of fun and I'm excited for the years to come so I can watch how much fun Paxton will have!

The fabulous pumpkin 

I'm super excited about cleaning it out 

Mmmmm ... pumpkin guts 

Jay being all artistic 

Squeaky clean inside of the pumpkin 

I'm pretty sure this is in the "how not to carve a pumpkin" handbook 

All done! 

Spooky! 

Paxton got a new car from Grandma Roseanne and Grandpa Chicken

He likes to push it sideways most of the time, but he's figured out how to push most of the buttons already!