2011

Wow. Nearly 6 months since I last posted here. That's pretty lame. I have to admit that although blogging more regularly is one of my New Year's resolutions, I don't feel particularly inspired. I will give it a try for the next few weeks and see how it goes. As far as updates go, there are plenty!

1. We moved! In September we moved into Arbour Lake - a neighbourhood just 10 minutes down the road from where we were before. It's a real house with a garage and a backyard and so far, we love it. It fuelled a major existential crisis when we bought it (see #2) but so far we're enjoying it. I can walk with Paisley to the library, the YMCA and all the shops I could ever need. People are friendly and decorate their house for Halloween/Christmas etc. and there is a private lake 5 minutes away that has ice-fishing, skating, swimming, kayaking and scuba diving. Brian can walk to the train which means he has cut a bus out of his commute and although it isn't shorter, it is easier. We are really looking forward to the summer so we can enjoy the yard, have people over for BBQs and meet all the little kids around.

2. The decision to move was an ugly one. We knew we needed more space and wanted out of the condo. We had this idea of who we are as a family, and unfortunately it had a hard time holding up to reality. What we wanted was an inner city house within a short commute (or hey, walking distance!) from Brian's work. We wanted to not need a car and to have a local corner market and coffee shop. We wanted a stoop where we could sit and say hello to neighbours and a school nearby for when Paisley is older. The big problem was that we also didn't have $2 million in the bank. Sigh. So, that left us with the same urban dilemma that faces thousands of young families. Rent at an exorbitant rate (if we could even find what we wanted that is) close to the core, or move out to the burbs. After much analyzing, discussing and tears, we headed further out of the city. We felt like we were abandoning some principles along the way and that never feels very good but we also knew that we would benefit a lot from the things that the suburbs could offer us, like say, affordable housing.

3. When we bought the house, we knew it would need a new kitchen. The house isn't old and in fact the kitchen looked quite nice but there was no room for a kitchen table. Weird. A four-bedroom family home and you couldn't put a good-sized table anywhere. The house had been on the market for awhile and was already significantly less than the other house on the market so we went for it, on the condition that we would remodel the main level. Fast forward 3 months and you have a haggard couple on the verge of divorce in a half-finished kitchen, washing dishes in the upstairs bathroom, drowning in mounting debt and losing faith that life will ever get better. Fast forward to now and all is well. The kitchen is mostly done and while the bills are not yet paid, they are no longer growing. We managed to finish just before Christmas and are really happy with the results. The emotional scars will heal in time. Right?

4. I'm pregnant! We found out the same week we bought the house (elation!) and I had all kinds of complications the week we moved (stress!) but now everything seems perfect (trend?). The official due date is May 1st but due date has ceased to mean much. I have a bicornuate uterus, which essentially means that rather than having one big pear-shaped uterus, I have a heart-shaped uterus with two individual horns. I always knew this was the case but nobody had ever really made a big deal out of it. My doc thinks that having a baby may have made the condition more pronounced and now says it is the reason I had a hard time conceiving before Paisley was born, it's why she was born early and it's why this one will likely be early too. So - between that and the diabetes I will be having a baby sometime in late March to mid April. Let's hope no earlier. (Or god forbid, later.)

5. Paisley is nearly three and deserves her own post (more like 50 posts but let's get real), so I'll get on that. Short story is that she is awesome. Really funny, talking like crazy and the joy of my life.

6. I quit work. Again. From the time Paisley was about 6 months old until this summer I had been working part-time from home. I was writing for magazines and websites and newsletters and all sorts of things. I actually really enjoyed the work but not the schedule. I was getting up at 5:00am before Paisley awoke, writing for a few hours and then writing again during her naps or after she went to bed. To make matters worse, I would calculate my hours at the end of a long, exhausting, stressful week and find that I had put in 8 hours. All that stress for only 8 hours!? It just wasn't worth it. So, when the chance came to take a break over the summer I did. And I never looked back. I thought I would miss it but I don't. Not even a little bit.

7. Paisley is in a day home on Wednesdays and I am really enjoying having one day to myself. I love being a Mom but as she gets older it becomes harder on her to drag her around for errands and appointments. I have had a ton of appointments with this pregnancy and it didn't seem fair to take her with me all the time. So this way, I schedule everything for Wednesday's and she gets to play with her new little friends at the day home.

Ok, that's it for now. To anyone still optimistic enough to have me on their RSS feed, thank you. And wow, you're a really positive person.