My apologies

It's been a while since I've blogged. I'm sorry (for anyone who misses me, that is!)

I'm not just having one of those days... or weeks... But one of those months. Can't seem to get my shit together. Can't seem to get caught up. A million things to do. And very little time to do them. Blah...

So anyway. My apologies again, and hopefully new blogs will follow soon.

Stay tuned folks!

The things I say.

Things I have said today thus far:

• Come here sweetie. Let me smell your bum.
• What have you done??
• Can we not play on the toilet today?
• Man, your teeth are sharp.
• Stairs are not for biting, sweetie.
• Look at you! You're brushing your teeth! Oh... wait. Okay, you're actually just putting your toothbrush in the shoe. That's cool, too.
• How about you don't put your fingers in there, m'kay?
• If I have to watch Murray and Sam and Jeff and the blue one once more... I might lose it. You don't want Mommy to lose it, do you?

That is all.

This isn't really a Mama post...

...but it was on my mind. So there you go. A "not so" Mama post in the Not the Only Mama blog. Enjoy!

Whenever I get a bit glum, I have to try and remember to step back for a moment and think about what really, truly matters in life and all the good I've got going for me.

So that's what I'm going to do right now.

It's like Oprah always says. (Yes, I'm quoting Oprah. I love her.) Anyway. As Oprah says... You have a choice. You can either be a victim and feel all sorry for yourself. Or you can learn from it, move on, and be a better person. (I'm paraphrasing here... but you get the idea).

Therefore... without further adieu -

Hez's List of Things She's Grateful For:

• When I was sad today and reached out to my family, you know what happened? My brother called me right away, my Mom called me right away, my Dad emailed me, my husband hugged me and made me cabbage rolls for dinner and my daughter smiled her 3-toothed grin at me. I'm a lucky gal.
• My body is fit and healthy. Enough so to carry me through an 18km run on Sunday. And again through a nice little 5k tonight.
• I have a nice home. An amazing family. I live in a cute little community. I have fantastic friends. (Really - why was I glum again??)
• Did I mention the cabbage rolls? (They were really good).
• I won FOUR free coffees during Roll Up the Rim this year. If that doesn't deserve a big, ol' "Woot!" I don't know what does.
• Coffee in general needs to be on this list. Very grateful for the java.
• Wine also deserves a special place on this list. Mmm... wine...
• My daughter regularly walks up to me and shoots her arms straight up in the air, indicating she'd like me to pick her up. Melts my heart every time.
• My in-laws are fantastic.
• I'm basically surrounded by love.

My cup runneth over, yo.

Aaaahhh... I feel much better now. Thank you for obliging me.

Depression? Or just a case of the Mondays?

I wonder if other Moms of toddlers deal with this. Or if I'm just weird.

Here's the thing.

Anna's 14 and a half months old. So it's not like I'm brand, spankin' new to the Mom thing. (I'm not "seasoned", but she's not a 2 week old little buttertart anymore...) And yet, even though I've gotten into the groove of the Mom thing, I still find myself slightly depressed now and again.

Can you get postpartum depression 14 months after having your baby?

Actually, I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm depressed. But I have these moments where I fluctuate between: "I freakin' love my life! I'm so lucky to be home with my baby and watch her grow!" and "What the heck am I doing? Why do I feel so lonely and down?"

I think part of it is not having friends or acquaintances to interact with on a daily basis. I mean - I see people on a daily basis. But talking to the lady at the Metro check-out just ain't the same as having a discussion with a friend. Or a coworker you really like. Or a Mommy buddy you used to hang out with.

I'm also trying to juggle taking care of Anna full-time with working freelance, training for a half marathon, working out, trying to lose weight, keeping the house tidy, my constant battle with laundry and fitting in conference calls and meetings with the folks in the outside world.

Not to mention the fact that I'm always worrying about whether or not Anna's getting enough interaction with other babies, if she has enough opportunity to learn, etc. etc.

But mostly - it's the lonely thing.

I'm a social gal. I'm just not used to not having friends/family to talk with or spend time with. When Andrew comes home from work, I descend on him and instantly start asking him a billion questions, just so we can chat. (Poor guy doesn't know what's hit him sometimes).

I always feel busy. Yet I also feel down at times. The answer isn't going back to work full time, because I really don't want that. But I'm sort of at a loss as to how to turn this whole thing around and start feeling better again.

Anywho. Sorry for the Monday morning pity party... I just felt like I needed to unload.

Do any of you guys ever feel this way? What have you done to fix it? Am I just suffering a case of the winter blahs? Or do I really need to make some kind of a change in order to be 100% happy again?

I don't know.

But I do know this: Anna's napping. It's time for me to make another coffee and curl up on the couch for a bit. (This is the part where I totally love my life.)

I have no forking idea what to call this post

This is sort of related to the food thing...

Question for seasoned Mamas with older kids: At what age do kids normally use utensils?

Let me give you the back story. Anna's 14 months old and she still can't feed herself with a spoon or fork. If we put food on the spoon for her, she can direct it to her mouth. But then she hands it back to us to put food on it for her.

We sort of practice with her - but not regularly. Do they sort of just pick this skill up when they're older? Or should she know how by now?

Let me know if my baby is normal, please.

(Just kidding).

On a side note - I haven't forgotten all your awesome topic suggestions. I'll be doing some much better blogs soon. I've just had a bit of an all-over-the-place week. Any of you guys ever feel like you never have enough time to do things for yourself - like write? But then, when you look back on the day, you can't figure out why you didn't have time??

Welcome to my world.

The food issue

So nobody wanted to touch the vaccination thing, eh? I don't blame you.

Then again, I'm sort of having trouble finding motivation to continue writing every day with all this radio silence, ladies! (I'm wagging my finger right now).

Am I sort of just talking to myself? If I am, that's totally okay. I can look back on these posts when/if I have a second kid to remind me of everything... But if you're out there and are on the fence about commenting - I bet other Moms would love to hear your perspective.

Okay. On with the food.

Finding enough variety when it comes to feeding your kid is an on-going challenge for me. Anna's staples are crackers and hummus, toast and cream cheese, bananas, pears, yogurt, oatmeal and goldfish. I constantly worry that she's getting enough of all the food groups.

At dinner time, I try to sneak some veggies into her meals, but she is not interested, thank you very much. On the other hand, give her meat and she goes to town. She LOVES her meat (even pork. Who knew you could eat pork with just 3 teeth?)

When I asked my fellow Mom friends for some food ideas, here's what they said:

• Ritz crackers with cream cheese is a fave for G&W. They also like Mandarin orange segments, grated apple, cheerios, mini rice cakes, blueberries, shredded cheese, bread sticks, minigo
• Does Anna like tomato sauce and pasta? I can hide any veggies in lasagna or on a piece of pizza. Also one book I have suggests sneaking stuff in muffins or even smoothies.
• One of my coworkers made the brownie recipe from this site and added carrots and squash to the mix - deelish!

There were also some great tips in the comment section from the post I wrote about Anna bringing scurvy back.

Of course, after writing that, I decided to try giving her some veggie sticks (like cucumber) and she loves them. She actually wants to snack on cucumber every day now. This kid. Who knows what's going through her little noggin.

Someone also asked when I'm going to let Anna have her first taste of chocolate. Since she had a birthday in February and there just can NOT be a birthday without chocolate cake in our house, she's already had a taste of the crack. Mind you, she had her one taste and that was it. Her reaction wasn't like she was SO into it that she couldn't believe she had stumbled upon this glorious, glorious food (I don't know if she's my kid.) So I haven't offered her any more.

If she's willing to snack on hummus, why offer her chocolate, right? It's not like she wants junk and I'm just being a meanie by not giving it to her. She actually doesn't want it. (Again - don't know if she's really my kid.)

Same with liquids. I'd be interested to know what you guys give your kids to drink. Since Anna's not breastfeeding anymore, she has a lot of water. (She loves water, so juice is a no-go for her in our house). I give her milk at least once a day, but not as regularly as I used to. I think she has a bit of a sensitivity to milk (even though she LOVES it). So all she gets is water - and lots of it. Which is great. But should she be getting more milk? How much is enough, really?

Anyway. I'm not sure if this helps. I hope there's some good info for all you Moms also struggling with the food thing in your house.

Oh - here's one more link. It's to a page about baby finger foods from Wholesome Baby Foods. Some good ideas.

Good luck fellow Mamas. May the veggie and legumes force be with you.

Vaccinations. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Thanks for the topic ideas ladies! I promise to address them all soon.

However, I'm going to need to do a bit of research on post-baby birth control and second pregnancies as I don't have much experience with either one. (Unless you count being too damn tired and busy to have sex birth control??)

Anyway - something sparked my interest from the last commenter (who had some really great topic ideas - thank you!)

That is - vaccinations. Also known as: a topic that I like to avoid, along with religion and politics, whenever I'm conversing with someone I don't know really well. But - since we're not face to face right now, and I can't see you wagging your finger at me, I feel it's okay to tackle this topic here.

When it comes to vaccinations, it seems to me that the thing to do these days is delay them. But I have to admit - I don't really know why. (Other than the study that says some vaccinations can be linked to autism). I'm not well-versed in all of the vaccination debate. I admit it. Yet - I did read an article while pregnant that pretty much refuted that study.

So, I sort of figured - who am I to tell a doctor with a ga-gillion years of schooling and studying that I know more than him when it comes to vaccinations and the health of the next generation?

I trust my doctor. I don't think he has a hidden agenda. I think he's doing what he knows to be right. And, since I don't know more than him, I'm going with what he says.

Anna's had all her vaccinations so far.

In fact, when I was pregnant, I had the H1N1 vaccination. (Gasp!!)

The thing is - I was told that I was high-risk and my unborn baby could get really sick if I didn't get vaccinated. Then I was told by many very passionate people that I could be doing a SHIT load of harm to my baby by getting the vaccination.

You're damned if you do.

Anyway - does this make my decision right? Does it make it wrong? No. Who the eff knows what's right, really? It's like the whole car-seat thing again. You're told one thing... so you do it. Until one day when they find some new research and you start doing something different.

I don't think we've really reached that point in society where it's clear to everyone that vaccinations are harmful. So - Anna gets them. I actually think we're lucky to live in a country where the vaccinations are readily available to us and our children have a shot (no pun intended) at a healthy life, free of many serious health problems.

But that's just my opinion.

I'm not saying I'm right or wrong. It's just the way we decided to go on the whole vaccination thing.

What about you guys?

What's next?

Okay, I'm not ashamed to admit that I need help.

I could use some more material for the blog right now. (I'm kind of caught up in work lately... it's killin' me. But the fam has to eat this month, you know?) So here's where I call on the silent Mamas out there reading this.

Is there anything you want to know about? Anything you want me to share about my own experiences that might help you right now? Maybe there's something you remember about your baby when he/she was wee... something you look back on and think "Man I wish I had known that" and want to share it with all the other Moms.

You get to pick the next topic. It could be about sharing our birth stories. It could be about our best tips on finding balance in our busy Mommy lives. It could be an extended version of the post-baby coochie care post. It could even just be a venting session about how bad the Wiggles are. (They're horrible. Horrid.)

So, what do you want to read about ladies? It's in your hands. If you ask for it, I will deliver.

Of course, I'll probably find some way to put a cute Anna twist on it.

My kid crapped on the floor this morning

Do I really need to go into any more detail for you to get an idea of how awesome my day started off? I do? Okay. Well, you asked for it... here's my daily poop story:

After her breakfast, Anna needed to be changed. So, we took her diaper and jammies off and let her roam around naked (for only about 2 minutes) while we picked out her clothes for the day.

She was carrying something around in her hands and dropped it on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her crouching down to - what I assumed was - pick it up. She stayed crouched in a little baby squat for a minute, then grabbed her thing-a-ma-jig and walked away.

I didn't think anything of it. Until I glanced back in the general direction of where she had been crouching and saw a wee turd on the floor.

Yes. My child crouched down and crapped out a log onto our hardwood floor.

So, my day started out by picking up human feces.

How did your day start out?

(PS: I later walked by that same area and stepped in a pile of pee. I hadn't noticed it earlier. Awesome!!)