We've taken on a lot, and somehow managed to stay in tact. Living life now as a family of 4!

***I wrote this post about a year ago. I was in the midst of trying to reconnect with 7 women who were very good friends who had babies and who I needed to step back from while I was dealing with my own terrible time. Reconnecting has been hard, necessary work and I have learned a lot. The biggest revelation for me was that they felt excluded from my life, whereas from my end of things it felt like my world just got smaller and smaller until there was almost nothing left. It didn't feel like there was anything going on in my world that someone could be excluded from, I was such a depressed mess. So I wrote this, thinking maybe it would explain that a bit more. I never actually sent this to any of them, or published it before now, but I've been re-reading it and I think it's still good and still says what I was trying to say. A few weeks ago I said I thought I was stuck because this is hard stuff to think about and write about. There is more to it as well, but this is a star...

It has been grey here for the past week. This is not my favorite weather. I would way rather -25 and sunny than -10 and grey, but the bonus to cloudy skies is warmer weather, which means it has been perfect for skating! Even more perfect, for the first time in almost 10 years, the annual skating trail on the rivers of Winnipeg stretches almost to our house! The end of the trail is about 3 blocks away, so Rudi and I have been skating daily. Yesterday, we did the whole trail! That's a grand total of 15kms on skates! I was so sweaty by the end that I had to change all of my clothes. I worked as hard as if I had run the distance, but bonus, skating is non-impact and so doesn't hurt my knees. I love skating, but it is a bit of production with the stroller. First, we walk down to the river access point at Arlington St. Then we have to tackle the stairs. Going down isn't so bad, but hauling the stroller back up those steps after skating 15kms is not just a little worko...

I thought my insomnia was related to stress about infertility, but this week has put a huge hole in that theory. We have had a rough couple of days over here. My insomnia manifests itself in 2 main ways - trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. Staying asleep is a non-issue these days because I do actually wake up to feed Rudi, which I don't mind at all. What I do mind is not being able to go back to sleep afterwards. A few nights ago it was really bad. It took FOREVER to get to sleep. My hearing was super-sonic. I could hear every twitch in the entire neighborhood, it seemed, even through my earplugs. My brain was on hyper-drive with all kinds of nonsense: what kind of rags to put in the downstairs bathroom, what kind of solid food to give Rudi next, if we should give hostess gifts to all the people we're going to be staying with on our trip to Vancouver Island (have I mentioned that we're going on a trip? For over a month?), what I need to pack for said trip and so...

My sunroom looks out over a small city playground. During afternoon nap/cuddle time, I see the usual things out there: if it's not too cold, there are kids playing. The school bus waits till it's time to pick up kids at the school a few blocks away. There are the inevitable tantrums about when it's time to leave, and the neighborhood dogs enjoy catch in the small field. But by far my favourite thing to watch from up in the sunroom are the parkour boys. One of them is doing flips off a boulder right now, as I type. He's maybe 15 years old (and I often wonder why he isn't in school), has skinny legs encased in tight jeans, a camera mounted on a small tripod and his creativity and wits about him as he transforms the park and its implements into his own personal jungle gym. Today he was focused on the picnic tables and one of the smaller boulders. He did back flips and front flips, sideways flips and jumps. For the backflip, he stands on the rock, balanced and tense...

There are two main ways I can tell what kind of day I'm having. First, how often I open the fridge and the pantry looking for something to snack on and/or how often I stuff my gob with questionable food choices. For example, today I ate 4 squares of dark lindt chocolate after lunch because it was there. We keep these bars around for a little 'stopper' after supper, and it is one of my favourite rituals of the day. Most of the time I'm not tempted by the chocolate at other times of day, but on days where I'm struggling to feel settled....oh man. watch out. Yesterday it was yogurt and two tablespoons of peanut butter from the jar. I have also been known to eat nutella straight from the jar, eat cookies compulsively, and basically devour any sweet carb in the house. Before the holidays Rudi and I were in a good rhythm and my snacking was under control - I didn't feel the need to eat all day. But today...hoo-boy, it's been a doozy. At least I ate some frui...

I've fallen off the writing bandwagon. I haven't just been neglecting my blog, but also my plan to write every day seriously fell by the wayside in December. Partly it was the fault of these awesome Christmas stockings I made! Here are some pictures! The making of the stockings wasn't hard, per se, but I did have to rip stitches on every single one because I messed up the attachment of the white cuffs on all three of them in different ways. So that was a bit of a pain. But as my sister said 'I'd expect nothing less' and it's so true. When you don't know what you're doing and your guide is what you can remember from home ec in junior high (over 20 years ago!!!!!!), well, it's amazing I didn't have to make 6 stockings!  Rudi helped, obviously. He wasn't very grabby yet so I could do a little sewing with him on my lap, but I think that only lasted for about 5 minutes.  Ta-da! Here they are! Of course, I finished them on December 2...

As one does at this time of year, I've been reflecting. So much has happened in the past year. On the Dec 27th we had Tara and her family over for supper. School and work gets busy so we hadn't seen them in a while and it, as always, was so good to see how much they all love Rudi. During their visit I realized it was exactly a year before, on Dec 27th, 2016 that we saw the tiny flicker of a heartbeat on the ultrasound that made it feel a little more real that we were, with Tara's help, having a baby! Then that got me thinking about 2016 and how brutally hard it was. It included several IVF attempts, including the last one that didn't work and that sent me into a tailspin I'm still working my way out of. It was a year of searching and not finding (until the very end). 2017 was a year of rebuilding and repairing and anticipating. We watched Rudi grow from a peanut sized little flicker to a real baby and cried such intense tears of joy when he arrived and was our...