2006 Year in Review

What an exciting and life altering year it has been! This was the single most stressful and joyful year of my life, here are the highlights...

January:

Made stupid New Year's resolutions I had absolutely no intention of keeping:
- cut out caffeine (sans chocolate, I'm not giving up chocolate)
hahahahaha, this lasted until a week after Tristan was born, and then, um, not so much
- grow my hair out
This was the only resolution I actual kept, and it was an odd one at best
- stop procrastinating so much
I think the universe just heard the "procrastinating" part, because this is worse than ever
- work out at least 3 times per week
I don't think I exercised 3 times THIS YEAR, let alone in a week

We found out that our baby jellybean was going to be A BOY *gasp* I was secretly terrified.

And on the last day of the month we took possession of our house! I don't think Nick and I could have waited another day to get away from my parents.

FEBRUARY

We kicked off the month by dog-sitting for two American Eskimo Dogs (Sam & Indy) for a whopping 10 days. Have now decided I hate dogs and will never own one of these disgusting creatures. At least cats have the decency to shit in a box and not make you pick it up while other people can see you.

The rest of the month was a blur of getting the house set up and preparing for the wedding.

MARCH

Holy shit we got married!

My poor Timmy died of acute renal failure. Truly one of the worst experiences I have had to just watch the life slowly slip out of her. I still miss her...

And since I have no self control we adopted Rowan two days later. Why on earth did we get a siamese?

APRIL

We bought our lot in High River! And I learned my lesson not to casually mention anything to my husband, because a comment like "Maybe we should look at High River?" means you will have bought a house there within 24 hours.

I finished work mid-month and could not have been happier! My co-workers threw me a wonderful baby shower before I left, and we celebrated with brunch at the Palliser that weekend.

MAY

Back to work! My parents went to Nashville for a conference so I held down the fort at their office. I learned that an Accounting Software company truly is as boring as you would expect.

Nick adopted Chloe from his friend Jordan. She promptly peed on our bed that night, proving to us that yes, we are stupid for having pets. Rowan was smitten though, and they were so cute cuddling together.

Some of my friends hosted a Blessingway for me to prepare me for my impending labour... I don't know if it "prepared" me, or scared the living crap out of me.

JUNE

I spent the first half of the month bitching about being pregnant...

And then our baby boy arrived! All 8 lbs 14 oz and 22 inches of him. Looking back at pictures of him I can't believe he ever looked that small. I loved labour, I know people hate me for saying that, but I did. What an incredibly experience.

I spent the last half of the month bitching about sleep deprivation.

JULY

I turned 24 and left Tristan with a sitter (my mom) for the first time. Most stressful 3 hours of my life.

Tristan decided to rebel against co-sleeping and decided her preferred his crib. Good for baby and daddy, not good for lazy mommy that doesn't want to get up to nurse.

My sister took me to see "Phantom of the Opera" for the second time. I could see it every month and not get bored!

Rowan went MIA and was presumably eaten by the friendly neighborhood coyotes.

AUGUST

Went to Sicamous on our first family vacation (Thanks again, Eldon!) Tristan was a dream the whole trip and we discovered just how much we really needed a break.

We welcomed Milo to our family! (In case you're counting we're now on cat #4 of 2006)

SEPTEMBER

I hit my mommy stride and really started to enjoy this whole crazy experience. (this is my way of saying I did shit all)

OCTOBER

I left the pagan group I had been a member of for the past five years to form a new one. As this path develops I can say that it is really a part of my life's work. It's incredibly, really.

I swallowed my pride and reconnected with an old friend and have been thankful everyday since then. She is such an inspiration and a gift!

Tristan celebrated his first Halloween dressed as a very fierce (and cute) leopard. We carved lots of pumpkins and fun was had by all.

NOVEMBER

Tristan got his first tooth!

In an act of complete stupidity, I adopted a third cat (that makes cat #5 of 2006). Charlie is roughly the size of 2 cats, so it was doubly stupid.

DECEMBER

Tristan had his first trip to the hospital and reminded me of why I HATE hospitals.

Nick's brother came to visit and we celebrated our first Christmas of the year. I remembered why I love the fact that he lives in Victoria. We'll go visit them when we've forgotten why they annoy us.

Celebrated Yule with the Sunlit Hearth and had our second turkey dinner of the month. Oddly enough with all of this eating I got down to my pre-pregnancy size. Woohoo!

Tristan had his first Christmas and was completely spoiled rotten. It was our first Christmas as a family and it was wonderful. I can't wait for next year when Tristan really knows what's going on!

....

And that, folks, was my year! And what a year it was!

I have a firm belief that New Year's Eve should be spent how you want to spend the rest of your year, so our night is going to be spent with good friends, good food, and lots of wine!!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Christmas Hangover

It's always so hard to believe with all of the hoopla of the holidays that it's done... well, not quite, still New Year's to conquer. But Yule and Christmas are over. Now my home is just a disaster of shredded paper, presents strewn about, and a fridge jam packed with leftovers. It was a really good day though. Tristan had a blast on his first Christmas and was thoroughly spoiled. His favorite gift was a Fisher Price animal train from his Auntie Jenny (it's my favorite too because it works for harassing the kitties as well). I tried to give the cats away to various family members, but they were all re-gifted back (dammit).

I now have in my possession a Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer, and Nick bought me various kitchen gadgets so I am all set to start the New Year with a growing waist line from all of the baking I intend to do. Nick is drinking far too much coffee because he's fallen in love with his Cuisinart coffee maker.

Here are the highlights of the day:

Tristan opening gifts





Wearing the crown from his Christmas cracker



And finally, he crashed on Grandpa's lap after all of the excitement

I have issues...

Just for fun, I put Charlie in the jolly jumper this morning. Good times, good times...





And on that note, I hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas full of fun, laughter, family and friends.

We're off to my mom's tonight to celebrate with family and a few strays, and tomorrow I'm hosting the big turkey day. Should be fun!

The "Because I haven't updated in awhile, and Kim is complaining she's bored" post

So, oh my god, it's Christmas in a matter of DAYS! I don't feel ready for it! I should feel ready though - the groceries are bought, the gifts are done and wrapped, the only thing left to do is put the finishing touches on the housecleaning. So why don't I feel prepared? Every year I set such unrealistic expectations of myself for Christmas that are never achievable - I will bake 12 different kinds of cookies, make stuffing from scratch, hand make all of my gifts. My reality is more like - my mother in law paid someone to do the baking, Nick refuses to eat anything other than stove top, and most of the gifts came from Winners. But you know what? It'll be great! I did achieve one of my goals, an Organic Free Range Turkey for dinner, dooce would be horrified!

In other totally unrelated and possibly irrelevant news, Nick and I finally watched "The Secret" the other night, and everybody should see it! It'll change your life. A positive outlook can make a world of difference.

And so, with that, I am retreating to go cross stitch my boy's Christmas stocking which will hopefully be done by the time he leaves home for college.

Sometimes procrastinating is a good thing

I have had clothes sitting in my basement for months that I needed to take to charity. I had resigned myself to the fact that my pre-pregnancy clothes would never fit again, and to avoid depression I was going to get rid of them.

WELL, good thing they're still sitting there because I'm a size 6 again! Okay, so the size 4's are still a no-go... but half of my clothes will fit me again!

Of course, I will still hang on to the size 8's because we are quickly approaching Christmas and New Year's and there's gonna be a whole lot of eating going on.

Tristan, Month 6 Newsletter

Dear Tristan,

I know I say this every month, but I can't believe you're 6 months old! It seems like such a milestone, 6 months...wow...



Already you have two teeth, and it looks like the third and fourth aren't far off because you have been crabby, crabby, crabby lately and chewing on EVERYTHING!

You already seem to think you're a teenager because you stay up until 10 or 11 o'clock and then sleep in late. Didn't anybody ever tell you the early bird catches the worm? Obviously you'd rather be a night owl. You already scream and talk back to me like a teenage boy, too... I think I've got my work cut out for me!



You are doing so good on the crawling front and I just know you are going to have it completely mastered before Christmas. As I type this you are sliding yourself around on the floor commando style, anything to keep moving! Milo tries to entice you to crawl to him, wagging his tail back and force, you have figured out if you just grab it and pull you get the desired effect anyway - so why bother?



You have become an eating machine. I think we spend 80% of your waking hours feeding you...our routine is pretty much boob, food, 1/2 hour break, then start the cycle all over again. At least I don't have to wonder what we do in our free time, we barely have any!



This was also an exciting month because you got to meet your Uncle Luke, Auntie Anna, and cousin Lara for the first time. You and Lara were just absolutely smitten with each other, you had nothing but smiles for your only cousin. You had fun playing and cuddling with your Uncle Luke, too, he didn't seem to want to put you down! It was a whirlwind visit, but it was nice, and I hope we can take you out to Victoria to visit them this summer.



You are loving going to playgroups, and laugh and flirt with the other babies. You seem to have your eye on Hannah now, but your interest is so fleeting that it will probably change by next week.

I cannot wait to celebrate your first in just under 2 weeks! Despite my best intentions you are getting spoiled rotten this year! But you deserve it, you are just an absolute doll. We went to Daddy's company Christmas party on the weekend and you were smiling and laughing at Santa. I, however, was not happy with the "quality" of Santa, so we went off to the mall last night. You weren't quite as excited this time around though (guess the magic wore off after the first experience?) Thankfully your Nana was there to get you to crack a smile!





I already can't wait to write next month's newsletter and relay all of the Christmas adventures! Happy 6 month birthday, baby!

Love,
Momma

Funkmaster

I've been in a bit of a funk lately. I just love that word "funk". It was my junior high English teacher Mr. Worthington that coined the phrase for me. He always used to say that my BF Naomi and I were "in a funk" because we had to walk everywhere as slow as possibly.... really it was just so we could delay getting to class for as long as possible, 'cause like, only total losers got there early.

So anyway, yes, I'm in a funk. Tristan is teething and is being a little fuss pot, which really just wrecks my day in general. And because he is cranky and doesn't want me to leave his line of sight the laundry is behind... and once the laundry is behind the rest of the house just kind of falls apart from there. And since I quite possibly suffer from OCD, the house being messy drives me batty and making me very, very stressed.

And so, that brings me to today. I hope I make some headway today. I showered with some yummy gingerbread spice shower gel and lotion (seemed like a good idea, now I just smell like a cookie), got myself dressed, and I am ready to face the day. And darn it, I will get stuff done! Even if it means Tristan screams half the day - I will make it out of this funk!

Charles in Charge

Poor Charlie hasn't gotten much airtime on the blog, I wonder if he feels neglected? No worries, he gets plenty of love and cuddles around the house.

There has certainly been an adjustment period for us all. Chloe & Milo still don't quite know what to think of him, after all, he's a big bruiser of a cat being 20 lbs and all. That and he doesn't quite know how to play gently. The poor guy just wants friends! It seems even in the feline world nobody wants to be friends with the fat kid.



Nick seems pleased that he finally has his own cat. Charlie has decided that Nick is his human, despite the fact I'm the one that feeds him and cleans up his shit (how is THAT for loyalty?) Charlie sits and howls at the door when Nick leaves for work until I come and grab him and bring him back to bed... he's quite the big baby when he wants to be.



You can certainly tell that he was a stray. He has an odd obsession with sleeping in paper bags, not playing, just sleeping. I know that to a certain degree all cats do this, but trust me, it's weird.



He's also got this strange habit of nibbling on toes and elbows. If you're brushing your teeth he'll sit there and nibble on your big toe, or when I'm putting on my mascara he sits on the bathroom counter and nibbles my elbow. Issues man, issues...

Charlie's a good boy though. He certainly makes the house seem smaller with his overwhelming girth. Some days I regret the decision to have three critters in the house, I am constantly saying "Holy crap, I have three cats!" But they're all lovely. Our niece Lara on the weekend said "There's a ton of cats here! It's the cat house!" From the mouths of babes, eh?

Anyway, life trudges on... I long for the days when I just had my baby girl, Timmy. She was quiet, snuggly, and tidy. Now I had three hellions that wreck my carpet, piss on my bed, and make an unbelievable mess of the litter. *sigh* I did it to myself, I have only me to blame...

On religion...

I have just started reading a fabulous book about Spiritual Mentoring by Judy Harrow and it had this passage that I just had to share.

"Historically, people have constructed a wide variety of myth systems and theologies - the bases for many different religions - then related to these facts about Deity, testable observations that can be, at least theoretically, at least relatively, proven true or false. When processes or things are observable and testable, reasonable people can compare their observations, replicate each others' experiments and agree on the results. That's science.

But religion isn't science. We can't test and replicate our experiences of Deity because the sacred is ultimately beyond human comprehension and description. Both honesty and humility compel us to admit that our knowledge of Deity is necessarily limited.

What glimpses we may get are also inevitably filtered through lenses such as culture, class, gender, etc., each introducing its own distortion. Denying these constraints and taking our speculations as literal fact can cause great harm.

...

Modern transportation and communication - most recently the Internet - have made it impossible to live in isolation. If we can truly accept that no one culture and no one mythos holds a monopoly on Sacred Truth, we can learn to live together in peace. Failing that, the culture wars will continue."

Tomorrow is another day

It's early, 5:00am early, but my schedule is all out of whack from spending Sunday night in the hospital with Tristan. I hate hospitals. In less than 24 hours, it will be the anniversary of my father's death. 11 years.... it seems like a long time. I can still remember going to the hospital with my mother to collect his things. It seemed so cruel, his belongings shoved into a kraft paper envelope labeled "CARPICK, Jeffrey", unceremoniously shoved across the counter by the nurse at the desk. A life, reduced to an envelope of clothing and a wedding ring.

Officially my father died of pneumonia. What actually happened was after suffering from severe diabetes for the last 15 years, his body decided that it finally needed to rest. He had endured experimental surgeries and drugs, been sent to dozens of specialists who all said they just didn't know what to do. On the night of December 5, 1995, my sister came home and found my father in diabetic shock. She called the ambulance and the paramedics said, "Don't worry, he'll be fine." Obviously not... his liver failed and he succumbed to his disease.

Excuse me if I seem bitter when others say, "He's too young to die" and the person in question is in their 60's. My father was 43 years old. His daughters were only 13 and 15, and he predeceased both of his parents. He never saw his children graduate, get married, and have families of their own.

I miss him.... those words just don't even begin to describe it. He's been gone for so long that some days I wonder if he was ever really here. So many stories and memories that now it seems impossible to separate myth from man. I still feel his presence with me sometimes, and it brings me peace.

In the end though, tomorrow is just another day. We are not marked by how and when we die, but how we lived. Perhaps someday I will be able to look beyond this awful anniversary, but 11 years feels like such a short time ago, and then at the same times feels a lifetime away...