I made it through my third week. It seemed harder this week for some reason. I just was bone tired. Anne seemed to be realising that this is “for real” and has reacted in kind: hanging onto my ankles in the mornings, weeping, clinging tenaciously to my neck at all times. I want to give her time but I need to get ready and out the door as well. And then in the evenings, she’s wound up because she’s so happy that I’m home. We play for a while. If we have time after supper (and I skip her bathtime), I take her to the playground so we get some fun in before bedtime.
I’m not feeling very noble or brave tonight. Most of the time I say things like “This is just the sacrifice I have to make for my family” and “It’ll be worth it” and “How wonderful that we have the opportunity to have Brian home with her” and “Other families do it every day.”
But right now, I don’t give a crap.
I see her at the end of the day and I well up with tears. I miss her smell all day long.
To be honest, I am achy and tired and missing my girl. I miss a million small things every day like waking her up from her nap and giving her lunch and playing on the floor and getting groceries together and going for walks. I’m so scared that I’ll lose the bond I have with her. I’m frightened it will never be the same again; but I realise that it’s always like that and I’ll have those thoughts a million times in her life as she grows up.
So I leave at 7:30 in the morning, take the bus to the SkyTrain and then take the SkyTrain for 20 minutes to downtown. I go to my cubicle (no more corner office) and work my butt off until 4 o’clock. I rarely take lunches. It’s a busy environment. In a way that’s exhausting but in another way, it’s good as it makes the days pass quickly. I see no kindred spirits but we’ll see. And then I SkyTrain it home where Brian and Anne are waiting for me at the station. We go home and I try to cram an entire days worth of love into two and a half hours before she goes to bed.
I’m so thankful that she’s still breastfeeding. We have our special time in the mornings and at night. I have also taken to nursing her in the middle of the night again if she wakes up. I started that up again when we moved as I felt she was getting uprooted from so much. We moved, Brian was home more, she was missing my parents so much and then I went back to work AND she was teething all four of her molars. Poor wee girl. We both needed those nighttime nurses. So it’s been a month now and I think I’ll have to start getting her back to sleeping through the night again.
Tonight, Brian and Anne met me at the library. I picked up a couple of new books. Then we went to the mall for Indian food. Yay for naan and butter chicken.
Anne is really growing up now. I can’t believe how fast that “baby” stage went. It seems like in less than two weeks, she’s gone from that baby look to a toddler look. She loves to walk and play. She is saying so many words. Yesterday, she handed my mum something and said “here you go” like it was nothing. One of her new favourite things is to press the radio button on my alarm clock. She turns on the radio and then she wiggles like she’s dancing. She’ll move her head back and forth and wiggle her bum while we sing “We’re dancin’…we’re dancin’….” Her favourite song is “The Little Green Frog” and she is learning to sing along. She’ll clap with me and then try to stick her tongue out at the right time. When I say the last word “Ah” she sings along “Aaaahhhhh”. She’s got a very friendly heart. At the playground, she waves to everyone and wants to say “Hiiiiii”. She’s all over the place especially in this big firetruck. Our playground has two sections – one for the school kids and one for the preschool kids (so they don’t get run over). She is usually the youngest there. She saw this big kid howling into the pretend siren (it looks like one of those phonograph horns) of the fire truck where was steering the wheel. She scampered over the seat, stood at the horn and put her little mouth to it and went “doot doot doot doot” like it was a siren, just copied him like anything. She’s also getting independent, testing her limits and boundaries, learning how to behave.
I long for weekends and they’re over too quickly. Being Mummy is my only calling right now and yet I am gone from her life for 40 hours a week (not counting commuting time). How asinine is that?
Anyway…
Brian started school again this week. He’s taking two classes.
I bought a new iPod this week. I picked it up at a last-minute auction on eBay for just $90. It’s a Nano. Quite excited to figure all of that out. I want to listen to sermons while SkyTraining. I usually read if I get a seat, but I only get a seat about 50% of the time. Otherwise, I stand, try to maintain my balance around hair-pin turns and sudden stops while gripping a slimy pole.
In other news, I went off of birth control. We’re using “other methods” for a couple of months but are going to start trying again soon. If I’d known babies were this much fun, I’d have gotten started a lot earlier. So now we’re just going to have a little sister or brother for Anne soon. She’s such a social girl, we need another kid in the house.
AND then I get another year at home with Anne and the new baby.
