Life with a baby, trip to Vegas and other matters

What a hectic few months it has been since the last time I posted on here. I'm not sure if anyone really notices but I thought I had better update since I actually have something to say this time! You would think that having a nine month old would give me lots to talk about, wouldn't you? The truth there is that by the time I get around to turning on the computer (usually when he is sleeping), the last thing on my mind is thinking up things to write in my blog. Mostly, I just want to sit and veg out in some mindless way but I'm trying to be more proactive so..here I am!

So what CAN I say about the past 4.5 months since the last time I posted? Well, I can say that is has been hectic and tiring and at times, endless. But I can also say that it has been exciting, amazing and really just so awesome and so much fun. I guess I knew realistically that babies change a lot during the first year but it is hard to get your mind around just how much they change until you really experience it. Somehow, Wil went from this little bundle of arms and legs that just mostly stayed in one place unless I moved him to this little man that can sit up on his own, can stand up with help, loves eating cheese and has a REALLY loud voice! How did that happen in just a few months?? More and more often, I find myself just looking at him and wondering where the past few months have gone and asking myself where I was when all of these changes were happening. The truth there is that life just happens. You get busy doing the daily day-to-day stuff that goes into raising a little one and unless you regularly take the time to step back and look for the changes, they just become a part of your daily life. Of course, that isn't to say that all of the changes have not been momentous...they definitely have...the first smile, the first laugh, the first time he rolled over and the first time he blew a raspberry while I was feeding him peas (yes, really) are all firmly imprinted in my memory. It is just that I am with him all the time so I don't really notice that he is physically changing unless someone points it out to me..which is something that has happened with alarming regularity lately!
A few weeks ago, I had a few people who hadn't seen him in a few months say to me that he didn't even look like the same child from the last time they saw him so I made a point of pulling out the pictures from when he was younger and looking. And you know...they were right! How is it possible for a human being to completely change the way they look in the short span of 4 months?! But more than that, it was a lot of fun for me to look at those pictures from the early days and see just how he has changed physically..no matter what, I think he is absolutely adorable but I might be a bit biased!
It is hard for me to think back to what life was like in the first few months after Wil was born. I think life is crazy now with having to keep up with a little one that wants to move constantly but when I think back, I know it is nothing to the nervousness, uncertainty and almost outright fear of the first few weeks! Of course, every baby is different and so are the experiences but I definitely believe that the newborn stage with be easier with the second one (no, I am NOT pregnant!) when it happens, just for having been through it before. One of my friends just recently had her first and asked me for advice and I found so many things rushing to the surface and so many things that I wanted to tell her. But in the end, I thought it might be better not to terrify her so I kept a lot of it to myself! Plus, there are just some things that you have to learn for yourself and no amount of advice from well meaning friends is going to make a lick of difference. See how wise I am now??!
Anyway, the short story is that life with a baby has been amazing and with the closer I get to going back to work, I'm trying to make every moment count. Of course there are still days when I'm tired and my temper is short but they are fewer and far in between and I just keep reminding myself to enjoy it now because this first year of spending every day with him is not going to last forever. He is an awesome little boy with a great personality and a sense of humour that is developing more every day and I can't wait to see what the next year brings as he passes that one year mark and heads for the terrible (terrific ??) twos!
Okay, I'll stop now and go on to something else!! My lovely husband and I just recently decided that we needed a vacation so we arranged (read: begged) my mom to look after Wil for us for a few days and booked ourselves a trip to Las Vegas! We had been there a few times before but I don't think I had every really appreciated the whole idea of a vacation until I considered just how much I was willing to pay for a few days of being able to sleep in! Vegas seemed like a pretty good choice to me since it was full of adults..lol! I know, my requirements are pretty slim at this point! Anyway, we dropped Wil off at my mom's and stayed until he had fallen asleep under the guise that it would be easier for him if he woke up in the morning to find my mom there to take care of him. In reality, it was probably easier on us to leave him like that and I am proud to say that I didn't sob..there were just a few tears here and there.
Once we had torn ourselves away, we drove through the night to Buffalo and embarked on our journey with an early morning flight. The flight(s) were uneventful (aside from me hurting my knee while stepping off one of the planes on to the tarmac, but that is nothing new to anyone that knows me!) and the weather was wonderfully warm forthe entire time we got there. Okay, it was hot. Damn hot. But Las Vegas is heavily air conditioned so I could deal with it. We stayed at Treasure Island for a couple reasons, the first being that it has a pirate theme and the second being that every review that we read heaped praise on the new beds they have installed during their recent renovation. And lets just say that I can confirm that it was worth every single dollar we spent on the hotel just to have a few days to sleep on that wonderful memory foam mattress. We were so impressed that we are now presently in the market for a memory foam mattress topper for our incredibly uncomfortable plain and regular mattress! Yeah, it was THAT good. There were only a few times that I woke up from a dead sleep in a panic that I had missed a diaper change, bottle feeding or crying baby but I'm happy to report that it didn't take me long to get back to sleep!!
We did a little bit of gambling when we were there but not a whole lot and for the most part, we kept to the penny slots. We saw a couple shows when we were there but for the most part, we just wandered around and took in the sights and sounds...and more than a few margaritas! In short, it was pretty heavenly although I can say that we did spend a lot of time thinking and talking about Wil but from what I understand, that is normal parental behaviour!
There were a few things though that I noticed about people in general that makes me wonder if I've been living under a rock for the past year. Maybe I just haven't travelled a lot lately but I just can't get over how...piggish..people can be! Yes, piggish..there is really no other word for it. Case in point, when it was time for us to finally leave Vegas and return to the regular world, we had an early morning flight so we headed to the airport in plenty of time. We got to the departure lounge and settled into a couple of seats to watch our fellow travellers trickle in and it wasn't long before the rest of the seats were filled too. There was a party of people that were obviously travelling together and they came and sat down near us, which was fine. Well, it was fine until one gentlemen got up, walked over to the nearby garbage can, bent over it and pressed one finger to his right nostril and blew his snot into the garbage can! Then he calmly straightened up and walked back to his seat. Umm..EWW! I was so grossed out that it took me a moment to fully comprehend that he had actually blew his nose candy all over the garbage can but when I took a look around me at my fellow travellers, the looks on their faces made it pretty clear that I hadn't imagined it. And when I had barely recovered from that, something else happened that blew that out of the water (no pun intended). This man (who was coincidentally travelling with the snot man, as I decided to call him), started coughing and then made this horrific noise as he dredged whatever it was that was sitting in his throat up into his mouth. This, of course, got everyone's attention and made sure we were all looking at him and able to witness when he sat up, bent forward and proceeded to spit whatever he had in his mouth onto the carpet in front of his seat. I swear to you now that I nearly fainted dead out. I was soooooooooooo grossed out that I couldn't help the "That's SO disgusting" that involuntarily errupted from my lips. I know the man heard me as I wasn't quiet about it but his only response was to cover the spot with his shoe and smoosh it into the carpet. Like THAT made it better! The woman next to me looked at me and said "Did that man just hawk a loogie onto the carpet?" and all I could do was just nod and I spent the rest of the time sitting there and praying that the karma gods didn't hate me enough to seat me in the same section as that group on the plane. Thankfully, Karma gave me a break and I didn't have to deal with them again. Even now, the thought of it is enough to just gross me out. Needless to say, I won't be placing anything on the floor in front of the seats in a departure lounge again since I know exactly what could be there. Gross, gross, gross. And while I can realistically understand that it could be a cultural difference that led to that behaviour (yes, I'm trying to be polite), I really don't think that it is EVER necessary to do anything that offensive in a public place. Have some respect for your fellow human beings, for crap's sake. Just plain EW.
Anyway, that is really all I have to say at the moment. Vacation was good but it was also good to get back and see how much Wil had changed in the time we were away. It sure made me appreciate all I have here and I think that was the best part of the vacation! Now I'm just hoping that the next vacation comes quickly!!

The first four months of my new life

Wow, I can hardly believe that it has been so long since the last time I blogged! I had the best of intentions after the dawning of the new year last year but, I guess, life happened and it just didn't turn out the way I expected. I'm sure most of everyone has just about given up on me ever blogging again but I felt the urge today so...here you go!



It is kind of funny to look back on that last post that I wrote at the beginning of 2007 and look at where I am now, here at the beginning of 2008. I thought, at that time, that it would be a big year for me but I had absolutely no way of knowing just how BIG it would be. Actually, I don't think that "big" even really scratches the surface of what 2007 was. Most of the people that read this blog at one time would know that I gave birth to my first child on October 19, 2007 and really, if that isn't big then I'm not sure what is!



Childbirth..hmm..now THAT was an interesting life experience! It wasn't that I didn't want to have a baby because I definitely did. There hasn't really been a time in my life that I didn't think that I would have children and my husband and I had made a decision to start trying at the beginning of 2007 so really, I shouldn't have been THAT shocked to find out at the end of January that I was pregnant. But I was..I was flabbergasted. But I have to say that I really, really enjoyed most of the entire experience of being pregnant and can honestly say that it is something that you can never really understand or appreciate fully until you have experienced it. The experience of childbirth is very much the same way..until you have been through it, you have no idea not only what it takes to get through it, but also just how much it gives back to you. It is almost like being given the membership card to a very exclusive club. I guess that would have to be the "I've pushed a very large object out of a very small hole" club or something like that...hehehe. But really, after I had my son I started to look at other mothers in a different light, knowing that most had been through a similar experience to mine and to this day, I can't help but wonder if they feel the same overwhelming and fierce pride and need to protect that I feel for my son.



But actually, to be honest, I had started looking at mothers in a different light long before the day I gave birth..it really started the day that I found out that I was pregnant. I had had a negative test result already so by the time I retook the test and it came back positive, you could have knocked me over with a feather. And my husband and I had planned on taking a shopping trip to Buffalo on the day we found out and I can honestly say that I spent the entire day wandering around and looking at mothers with their children, wondering just how in the world I was EVER going to be able to do it. And I can say that it only got worse as I got closer to my due date, almost to the point that I wanted to ask women on the street how they managed to keep it together. But now, with my four month old son sleeping in his swing beside me as I type, I realize that you just do it. You learn on your feet. You do your best and know that is all you can do. I think the best piece of advice that I was given was from my friend Kate during one of my many frantic phone calls when she told me not to worry so much because all my baby wanted me to do was to love him and didn't know any better that I didn't know what I was doing. It really has been an incredible experience and even though there have been (and still are) days when I have to ask myself what the hell I was thinking, I just have to look at my son and see him laugh and smile at me to know that it has been worth every sleepless night.



So, in light of that, here are a few things that I have learned about motherhood, and just life in general, over the past few months.

• Despite what you may think, when your friends tell you that it gets better, they are telling the truth

• You can survive on 40 minutes of sleep in a 48 hour period

• Just when you sit down for a few minutes of relaxation, that is when your baby will wake up screaming

• When people offer you help, don't be too proud to accept it

• Get an epidural

• A baby swing may just be the best thing ever invented

• Your life will never be the same as it once was but it will be better in many ways

• Your baby will eventually start sleeping for longer periods at night but it still won't feel long enough
  
• There will be times when the crying just gets to be too much and when you need to just have a few minutes of time to yourself when you think to yourself that you miss the way your life used to be. This is perfectly normal..it happens to everyone and it does NOT make you a bad mom.
  
• The big milestones of the first few months (first smile, rolling over for the first time, etc..) will always happen way before you are ready for it. It is okay to be happy and sad at the same time that your baby is growing so quickly
  
• The smallest things can be endlessly entertaining to a baby and will be a lifesaver to you and your sanity!
  
• There is absolutely nothing quite like the sound of your baby laughing or the sight of your baby smiling at you

Well, that is all that I have for now although I'm sure I'll come up with more along the way! I hope that I'll be able to be around here more often and give you a bird's eye view as Wil gets older. I've missed you guys!