Dear Violet

Dear Violet,

You are one year old! I don't know when that happened, but it's true, so for your first birthday I've written you this little letter.   I'm writing it while you take your morning nap in your crib. This has probably only happened 7 times in the last year.  Usually I nap in the bed beside you, but I'm not actually all that tired today, so this is a test and I hope that you pass.

Suddenly in the last month or two, you've become a person with a sense of humor, who knows how to make us laugh.  You do this by clapping at Dr. Phil's jokes or when everyone on Family Feud starts clapping, you clap along as well and you point at Everything asking "That?" We always tell you what it is that you find so interesting. Even if you've asked 35 times already.  Your Dad and I find it endlessly cute that you've now taken to pronouncing "That?!" with a lady's Southern belle drawl.  Thaaiiaat? Yup. cute explosion.  Now your Dad and I even go around saying "Thaaaiiat." We're hooked.

You are a bit of an early walker and even though it means you already have two little chips in your teeth, we're very happy that we no longer have to carry you from room to room. That reminds me, I have an appointment with the chiropractor on Wednesday.

You play hide and seek and you love it when we chase you.  You give kisses and hugs.  You hug the cat so tightly that her eyes bug out, but she lets you do it, and even purrs. 

You love salmon with garlic and onions, peas, watermelon and oranges.

You are constantly picking old crumbs up off the floor and eating them. This makes me crazy.  I try to poke around in your mouth to fish out old, fallen peas, but you won't open up.  If you do open up, you then proceed to chomp on my finger with a variety of your 8 teeth.  For some reason, I'm guessing just to torture me, you've now started to pick up fake, invisible crumbs and wait until I'm watching and then you put the fake, invisible crumb in your mouth.  This seems unreasonable.

You love when you discover that the door to the land of the bathtub, cat food, cat litter and endless bottles filled with goo is open. You make a beeline for that magical room, but I or your dada always beat you to it and when we close the door you cry and cry as though unicorns have died.  We distract you by opening the fridge door (also magical!) and then you are ok.

I slammed the bedroom door into your head the other day when I was on the phone with Clearblue.  I also had Hydro Quebec on the other line.  I ran into the hallway to grab a receipt out of my bag and then when I pushed the bedroom door open, lo and behold, you were right behind it.  You fell to your bum and cried like I'd never heard you cry. I whimpered "Oh my God!" dropped the phone and picked you up and held you close while a big red line developed on your forehead.  It reminded me that I should probably slow down a bit.  That even though things are hectic and chaotic I don’t need to be getting all frantic and opening doors on my sweet child’s forehead.  Lesson learned. 

You like toys, you really do,  but mostly you like remote controls (or as Daddy calls it "the magic stick that makes the people in the box come to life"), cell phones, anything in the fridge (oooo! Glass jars!), mail, garbage, shampoo bottles, dirty laundry, the cup of water on my nightstand (tipped over 3 times and counting), kindles and dirty shoes best.  You've touched those dirty shoes so many times, I don't even think to wash your hands after anymore.  Just building up that immunity, right?

Today someone came to take our car away because we are moving to Vancouver in two weeks and we want it to be there when we arrive.  I opened my computer for 1 minute to go on their website when I looked around at you.  You were flinging around the sopping wet morning diaper that I had just taken off of you.  You were literally swinging and circling it around your head as though it were a lasso.  My jaw dropped and I shouted "no, Violet" and you held out your hands and shrugged, looked at me like "what? YOU left it right here.  This is on you, mama."

Something that I wasn’t expecting is that already, at 1 year old, you are the most hilarious person I know.  There are some people, like me, who really enjoy being funny and try so very hard to be funny, and there are others who are just funny.  You’re like that. Not even trying, but always winning at humor.   You seem to know how hilarious and silly it is that when the song for the weather report during the news comes on, you start dancing.  You look at us with a huge grin and bop and bop.

You go to bed at 8 and you come into our bed whenever you cry out for us, which can be anywhere from 12-3am.  I nurse you and you fall back asleep quickly. This can happen anywhere from 1-3 times a night until you wake up for the morning around 6:30am. We really like sharing our bed with you and especially like seeing your smiling face first thing in the morning.  We're not sure how long this will go on for, but for now, we are all happy with the arrangement.

I'm still nursing you 5-6 times a day total and two weeks ago started introducing organic whole milk. You thought it was water, but when you realized it wasn't you let it all dribble out down your chin, abandoned the bottle and came straight for the tap. I'm clearly going to be breastfeeding you Forever. It's going to get embarrassing at some point when you're 12 or 13.

You don't say many words, but you know what many things are. If I ask where your chair is you point to it.  You also know flower, trees, dog, cat, ball, blankie, bunny, teddy bear, bath, eat, water, nose, head, hand, foot, hair, duck, hug and kiss.  This is all very exciting to me.

I looked at you this morning and realized I am the happiest I've ever been in my life.   Motherhood is no joke,  it has change me.  Sometimes I still miss my wild self.   Heck, sometimes I just miss playing candy crush on the toilet, but I had years and years of that and I wouldn't go back.   I wake up happy and I go to bed grateful because of you, Violet.  Thank you for choosing me as your Mama.  I hope to do my very best for the rest of my life to teach you all the things that I believe to be important: Kindness, gentleness, patience, joyfulness, courage and how to laugh and laugh and laugh. Thanks for being the squishiest, little love. I am the luckiest person who gets to be with you every day. Love you Forever. 

9 months of Violet

I really can't believe my little girl is 9 months old.  That's as long as the time she spent growing in my tummy and That felt like an eternity, but this, her infancy, is passing in the blink of an eye.  Suddenly I have a baby who is truly no longer a newborn.  I, also, have changed and (I'd like to think) grown so much in such a short amount of time.

I've been trying to write this blog post for about 5 months now.  Ever since the last update.  I wanted this to be a monthly thing.  I guess I don't consider the blog sensible work, even though I get a tremendous amount of joy from working on it.  It's just that now, in my life, there is a box labeled "Things that must get done or Tasha is going to go cuckoo" and update the blog isn't in that box, so it gets pushed aside.  Honestly, the only reason I am able to write these words is because Erik is currently napping with Violet. I might have 30 more seconds or 30 more minutes. One never knows with a baby. hurry. type! type! ( Believe it or not, it's next to impossible to get anything accomplished on a laptop when you have a gremlin tugging at your pant legs.)

Violet is, as you could probably imagine, the light of my life.  She's an active little thing and sooo mobile for a 9 month old.  I feel like it was so long ago now that I was trying to keep her from doing face plants every time she pulled up on a piece of furniture (which is one of her favorite things ever). Now she's cruising along furniture as though she's a professional furniture driver.  Been doing it all her life.  Making stops on occasion to eat the cat, or fondle an electrical outlet.  Maybe try to pick up a tiny rock to ingest, or pick the lock on the safe to find the lifetime supply of baby wipes, which she, for some reason, loves to eat. The other day for the very first time she stood by herself for 5 seconds and then a couple of days after that we were playing in the grass (which she isn't a fan of) and she had juuuust enough displeasure with it that she stood up from a crouch position on her own. It felt like she was performing magic. It just can't be real, can it? Who's holding the strings??  And then yesterday, another first:  clapping! and since yesterday she's clapped about eight hundred times. I feel like baby animals burst out of my heart every time she claps.

What else? She has 8 teeth, still nurses around 5-7 times a day and is starting to enjoy food morsels more and more, but she doesn't like being fed baby food with a spoon. She wants bits of real food and she wants to feed herself.  Let's see, she's been on 4 airplane trips in 9 months, has touched the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and still loves sleeping in bed with us.  We put her down in her crib at night between 7 and 7:30 and she'll sleep on her own until the witching hours but ultimately cries out for us, and since we share a room with her anyways, end up bringing her into our bed.  Yes, it's an easier way to get more sleep, but Erik and I also genuinely love the snuggles.

She's also really beginning to be a little chatter-head now.  It's like consonant discovery land up in here.  baba, dada, yaya, kaka and a teensy bit of mama.  I love her obscure, native language. It may sound dull to you, but it's the most incredible thing watching her discover her voice.

Listen, maybe you're reading this and you don't have kids and you think, ugh,  boring!  and I'm telling you, if or when you have a baby, you will get it.  I'm guilty of thinking kids (aside from my nieces) were pretty boring most of the time, but when it's Yours and you get to watch them learn and grow... That, to me, is one of the very best experiences of my life. I feel I could do it again and again. (maybe).

But I don't know, IS this boring to y'all?  I honestly don't have the perspective to tell.  When I was pregnant I devoured reading stuff like this. I still do (in my 30 seconds of free time).  I know it's crazy but I walk around and count how many pregnant ladies i see.  (13 this afternoon!) They are sooooo beautiful and I feel so envious of them.  For one, because pregnancy is such a beautiful, mysterious, magical experience, and people treat you maybe a bit nicer than they used to and holy crap you have a tiny, invisible being that you created with someone else growing inside of you and 2, because about-to-be first time mothers are so innocent. Because they have NO idea how hard their lives are about to become.  At least I didn't know. I mean, I knew, but I couldn't know. It's a motherhood secret.  You can't know it till you're in it, so why bother explaining.  If someone says it isn't hard, I'm suspicious.  One of my favorite bloggers recently wrote a list of 10 things she learned in the first year of her child's life and number 10 was that motherhood is easier than she expected.  Her husband is on the road 6 months out of 12 and she works a full time job from home while raising her baby. I thought I loved her. Now, I'm just suspicious of her. I think I'll unsubscribe.

I had but the teeny tiniest idea of what being a parent was actually, truly going to be like and honestly it has been Verrry different than I expected.  Sure, I knew I was going to be tired, and yeah, I knew I was going to worry,  but I didn't know hoooooow  tired and how worried and how all consumingALLLLLLCONSUMINGallconsuming parenthood would be.    I know it's not something you're supposed to say but for a few months there, the pretty tough winter months, I really felt nostalgic for the leisures and freedoms of my pre-baby life.   I love Violet to the most distant galaxy and back and I would do it exactly the same in a heartbeat, but If I could, I would send a whisper to my childless self and say "Getting shit accomplished is so easy right now, so go and get your shit accomplished."  I'm sorry for swearing.  I don't like to swear, but it's true.  The great irony (and I mean true irony, not like that Alanis Morrisette song 'Isn't it ironic', whose chorus lyrics aren't actually ironic at all, but just unfortunate) is that I get so much more done now that I have so much less time.  How does that saying go?  "If you want something done, ask a busy person" ? Well it's true.  No, I'm not writing a book or producing a movie or really even leaving the house more than once a day, but I get an insane amount of sensible work done.  Much more than my lazy self ever did before this little love-cub came along.

And yet now, sometimes, and often, I feel like I'm ready to really start thinking about a little brother or sister for Violet but other times I feel like I couldn't possibly manage it all.  It's still a very confusing concept in my head and I haven't quite sorted out why I want another baby so badly so soon-ly.  Maybe I'm just a bit nuts.   I can't quite figure out why I want to do the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, again, and with a toddler in tow.  I wish I had an answer for you. Actually I wish I had an answer for myself and I can say I honestly think about this every single day, and I have since Violet was born.  Yup. I think maybe I'm just nuts.  I know it's going to come down to what is meant to be, that's how it was with Violet, and that's how my whole life has been, so I'm not sure why I want to "reason" this one out.  Maybe I just won't.  Speaking words of wisdom: Let it Be.

Thanks for making it this far! You win a hundred points.

Three-quarters of a year into my motherhood journey and I still have no idea what I'm doing most of the time, but I am becoming more confident in the type of mother I want to be, (and am), and It is truly getting easier and more enjoyable every single day.  Violet is my best little friend and the fact that I (God-willing, please, please, please!) get to spend the rest of my lifetime with her and her Daddy makes me feel like one of my purposes in life is being fulfilled.

It's not perfect, nothing ever is, but it is real and thought-provoking and fills me up with a joy I've never known and takes me deeper into the best and maybe more importantly, worst parts of my heart, than ever before. I see more clearly than I ever have, and I love her more than she will ever know.

Love to you,
tasha

Baby Violet: The Fourth Month

Baby Violet turned 4 months old last Sunday. That's one-third of a year! Wowza. How is it that even though every day feels 80 hours long, 4 months have flown by in a heartbeat? I feel like Erik and I are constantly saying to each other "She's getting so big!"  And even though we are so excited whenever she learns a new skill, we kind of want her to stay all itty bitty.  Violet is a completely different person than she was a few months ago. I know this because the second she goes to bed at night I get on my computer and stare at all the photos and videos I have of her. (Clearly, I can't get enough). But, yeah, she's really grown from a suckling baby blob into a little infant who sits and rolls and plays fetch.  (wait. no not that last one.)

In my last couple of posts I wrote about Violet's First Two and a Half Months and Erik shared his version of her birth story and it's so cool to look back and see how much has changed and how much she's grown since then.

Lately she spends the majority of her waking hours either sucking on her (or our) hands or trying to put any and every toy in her mouth.  She wants to be sitting up constantly but can't quite balance on her own yet.  Tummy time on her play mat is a pretty big hit and I can usually leave her down there long enough to make a cup of coffee, or have a pee, which is pretty exciting for everyone.

She's constantly cooing and babbling now.  In the early morning hours (like 5am early) she lays in the middle of the bed with us and looks at my face and scratches my eyeballs with her fingernails and just coos and mmmms and ahhhs, just letting me know that If I feel like playing, she's good to go on that.  I usually just try to 'play asleep' with my eyes open just enough to see her, but she thinks they are closed. She'll stare and babble and then eventually copy me and close her eyes and fall back asleep. I feel proud of myself and my motherhood skillz in moments like these.

She's losing a lot of her hair and it has turned from dark brown to golden red.  Her eyes are the most deep chocolatey brown.  (As an aside, I thought all babies were born with blue eyes and when she came out her eyes were black. Right after she was born I kept asking the nurses and my doula if she could see. Is my baby blind? Are her eyes supposed to be black?!)

The absolute best part of this last month has been hearing Violet's laugh for the first time. It's like hearing a hundred angels singing.  I had to work incredibly harder for it.  Probably harder than I've worked at most of my jobs.  I make ridiculous faces at her and sing the most hyper, bizarre songs (think of the middle section of Bohemian Rhapsody with the following lyrics "there's a poopy in your diaper, I can smell it, let's check it out! Oh my goodness, why is it green?! Let's clean this up, Bob!")

Anyway, point is, I made my baby laugh and I will try a million more times over the next 60 years because there is no sweeter sound.

I've been breastfeeding for 4 months straight now and it's crazy to think that that's all a baby needs to grow. She's almost 14 lbs now (she was 8 lbs at birth), and around the 50th percentile in weight.  It's been an intense breastfeeding journey, and I've loved it even though it's been super hard at times.  I can't believe in less than 2 months she'll get to have her first taste of real food.  I'm thinking it'll be avocado.  I ate my first avocado when I was 21 years old and missed out on so many good years I could have shared with avocado. I don't want to do Violet that injustice.

Anyhow, I know a million jillion people have had babies before me and this might be a boring topic to some, but, to me, it is the most fascinating and rewarding thing I've ever experienced so far.  So thanks for sticking it out with me and humouring my gaga-over-baby-ness.   Her and Erik are honestly the best things that have ever happened to me and I am so grateful to get to share every day with them.  Enjoy winter, y'all and see you next month.