(Just a Little) Patience

I had a challenging meeting at work today. There have been a series of these meetings for a project I'm helping out on and every one of them has been challenging. In some ways I look forward to the challenging part. Sometimes I actually like the high energy debates, the emotional intensity and the passion. I'll take that over "oh, it doesn't matter to me" or "whatever" any day.

However, even with my somewhat twisted fascination of confrontation I am usually exhausted by the end of the meeting and often I feel defeated and disappointed in myself. Mostly it's because I lose my temper or I was very impatient with others. I'm a quick thinker, I like to take quick (but informed) action and I like decisions to be made sooner than later. I sometimes forget that other people may not do things quite the same way.

So, after the meeting today I started thinking about how my patience and sometimes quick temper have been tested since becoming a parent. I'll start off by admitting that I have lost my patience in a bad way twice with Baby. By bad, I mean I raised my voice (ok, I yelled...loudly) at Baby. Once when she was about 7 months old and once when she was about 16 months old. I'm not proud of either incident and I actually felt physically ill after each time. I was yelled at A LOT as a child and it is very scary to be yelled at by someone who is supposed to protect and take care of you. Anyway, those were the two worst times. I wish they hadn't happened but they did. I apologized after but somehow that still doesn't seem like enough. I'm still undecided on whether an apology actually undoes anything or makes anything better.

Anyway, even though I say that losing my cool has only happened twice....what I really mean is that those were the only times I lost it outwardly in a rather dramatic fashion. I've actually lost my patience countless times and felt downright anger towards Baby. Mostly when Baby was sleeping so poorly. Being woken up in the middle of the night for the tenth time for several weeks in a row does not bring out the best in a person. Not in me at least. Even now, I sometimes get impatient with Baby when she's daudling and I'm in a rush or she wants me to sit in THIS EXACT place RIGHT NOW for the 100th time. I sigh or the tone of my voice changes. I work at not making it too apparent to Baby by muttering under my breath a lot. She doesn't seem to notice so I think I'm fairly good at hiding it.

I work hard at doing better than hiding it though. I try to be present in every situation, every interaction that I have with Baby. This helps by keeping me from thinking too far ahead about where I need to be next or what I need to be doing next thus reducing my impatience. Instead, I slow down and enjoy what I'm doing now with no expectation of the future. What is that saying...."life is what happens when you're busing making other plans"....or something like that.

I remind myself that looking at every single flower on the way to the grocery store is actually an amazing thing to do. The world is an amazing and beautiful place and I feel I'm often too busy to stop and smell the roses so to speak. Baby reminds me of this every day. She is genuinely amazed at everything she sees, feels, hears, smells, tastes, touches. She has truly been an amazing teacher for this important lesson I'm trying to remember. I'm so grateful to her for that.

One other important thing that also pops into my mind when I'm feeling particularly annoyed, angry or impatient is that I don't to treat Baby the way I was treated by my step father. I will not let another human being go through the disrespect and fear that I went through. For me, the simple thought of what I don't want to be quite often helps me be what I really want to be. A patient, respectful, gentle parent.

Now if I can just remember all that the next time I'm sitting in another annoying meeting at work I'll be golden.

Summer Holidays

S has had most of this summer off work. While not having extra money isn't the most fun, it's been great for fitting in lots of summer fun. The weather hasn't been great but we've been fortunate enough to get out and about as much as possible when it has been nice.

We visited Alice Lake a couple of times for day trips. I'd never been there before and was pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find a small lake with no boats allowed, 2 floating docks and a roped off swimming area. There is a great beach area, lots of soft grass and picnic tables/BBQ areas at the back. It's really quite lovely, a great size, and not too crowded.

I also finally convinced S to go to Golden Ears Park for a day (she thought it would be full of red necks...which it is but that shouldn't stop anyone!). It definitely has a different vibe in terms of the amount of people and all the boats around but it's quite stunning that we can drive less than 2 hours away and feel like we're in the wilderness. Gorgeous scenery, including the drive through the park to get to the lake.

We would have loved to camp at either of these lakes but they fill up so quickly that we're not likely to get a spot. Maybe next year.

We also sped up to Kelowna for a few days to visit S's brother and sister in law. It was suitably HOT and sunny and we had a very relaxing time filled with water, family and good food.

Our most recent trip was to the west coast of Vancouver Island to camp in Tofino. It is truly one of my most favourite spots in the world (that I've seen so far). It was our first camping trip with Baby. Other than the nights being a tad chilly in the tent for S and I (Baby was warm and toasty between us) and learning that a double air mattress is clearly not large enough for all three of us, we had a great time. Baby LOVED being outside so much and seemed even more content and happy than usual. Definitely a successful trip.

We hope to squeeze in another camping trip before summer is over but we're not sure where to go. Baby and I just got our new passports in the mail this week so maybe we'll head south for a couple of nights.

I feel so incredibly fortunate to live in such a beautiful part of the world.

Go play outside!

Summer 2011

Here it is nearing the end of July and we still haven't seen more than a couple hot summer days. I can't say I'm completely disappointed but I am surprised that by this point we haven't at least started getting warmer. At least warm enough to hear one or two people complain about how hot it is. The real summer is supposed to kick in next week. We'll see.

First hot day of Summer 2011 @ the lake

I've been back at work for a few weeks now. Getting back into the swing of things has been surprisingly easy and seamless for me in terms of my actual tasks at work. I'm surprised that I was able to jump right back into some complex projects and actually use parts of my brain that I haven't used for some time. While I'm enjoying it (I have always loved what I do), I'm still not where I want to be. But if I do have to work at least I'm doing something I love. S has been home with Baby and seems to be enjoying her time off. They get up to all sorts of fun activities and projects and it's fun for me to hear about them at the end of my day. Baby is struggling somewhat with napping without me there but it's slowing coming together and she had an hour and a half yesterday with no problems.

Summer is really flying by and I have a couple of crafty projects in the hopper that I'd like to have done before the end of the year. I figured if I blogged about them then someone could remind me what I committed to when I forget all about it.

1. A fabric, stuffed alphabet. I'm going to use up all my fabric scraps to create the alphabet for baby. I'm super excited about this project and have given myself a deadline of Dec. 1 for completing the whole alphabet.
2. A treasure bean bag. I'd like to make a couple of these before we go on vacation in October. They basically consist of a small fabric bag filled with beans (or whatever you choose to use) and small treasures. There is a clear window on one side of the bag and by shaking, moving, squishing the bag you have to try and find the treasures. I'm really looking forward to creating these. I'm not sure what I'll use to stuff them. I'd like to use a natural material but I also would like something that is ok to get wet. Suggestions are welcome if you have any.

(Real) Sleep

I have debated whether to write what I'm about to write. I'm afraid it will cause everything to unravel again. But I know you are all anxiously waiting to hear how Baby's sleep has been lately and how my lack of sleep has affected my return to work recently.

Photo by: Mike Cohen

But, I'm throwing caution to the wind so here I go.

You'll remember that months ago Baby and I went on a very strict elimination diet. We had some good results quite quickly. Sleep was off/on in terms of the 30-90 minute wake ups. However, we never did get back to anything longer than a 3 hour stretch though...and even those became few and far between.

Then one day, I decided to give up caffeine again. Every night since then, Baby has slept well. And by well I mean she was only waking every 4ish hours EVERY night for 2 weeks. What the...? Really? Caffeine? REALLY? Are you kidding me (I thought to myself)?

This 'good' sleep continued for another couple of weeks or so and I decided now was a good time to try and night wean since Baby was sleeping so well. For us, night weaning was going to mean cutting out one nursing session so we would both hopefully get a 6-8 hour stretch of sleeping. I have to preface this by saying that Baby hasn't been nursing for more than maybe 1-2 minutes when waking up in the middle of the night for many months. So, anyway, Baby is 18 1/2 months old now and her language comprehension is quite good. I was able to tell her that the "milkies" were going to sleep at night and that we could nurse when it was light outside. The first two nights she tossed and turned a little bit when I told her milkies were sleeping when she woke up. No real crying but there was a little bit of fussing vocally. By the third night she was still waking up but not fussing at all to nurse. It's been 3 weeks now and Baby does not nurse between about 10:30pm and 5 or 6am. She usually only wakes once and just cuddles up. Between 8ish and 10ish she nurses a couple of times and she likes to nurse in the morning. She's still sleeping in until 8am and her behaviour hasn't changed during the day. I feel confident that she was really ready for this. I know I was. I did feel guilty when I first started thinking about night weaning but I was so desperate for sleep that I knew I'd have to try something before I went back to work. I don't think night weaning is the answer for everyone. Nor is it the answer for any time. Luckily for us though, I was ready, Baby was ready and our timing was perfect.

It is amazing to be sleeping again. Really sleeping. Sleeping and dreaming. Sleeping and feeling refreshed in the morning.

Sleep makes things feel better.

Disclaimer: I have NO idea if caffeine was actually the culprit or maybe Baby was just ready developmentally to have more sleep. Who knows. I'm taking what I can get and enjoying it.