What's New?

Oftentimes, people ask me what's new and my response is usually something related to Tim and/or Vaughn. One day my friend Alicia said after I told her what's new that that was fine, but she asked what was new with me. Me, hmmm, I haven't thought about me in a while. My life consists of the following:

I wake up in the morning, feed Vaughn and get ready to drive Tim to work. I may or may not get a shower. Usually not.

I drive thru Starbucks on the way home while Vaughn naps.

We get home, I feed Vaughn his cereal and fruit and set up his playmats and Jolly Jumper.

Vaughn plays and jolly jumps and then takes a nap.

While Vaughn sleeps I will either nap, do some stuff around the house, catch up on e-mail or have a shower - depends on the energy level.

Vaughn wakes up, has a bottle.

We usually go out and do something at this time of the day - it's a good time to visit with friends, go to the zoo, for a walk, whatever.

Come home, feed Vaughn fruit and then he goes down for a nap. If I'm lucky, he'll sleep for 2 hours.

When he wakes up, we'll play, Jolly Jump and then I feed him supper at 4:30.

At 5:30, he goes to bed and I start cooking supper.

So, my life is pretty routine, not a lot changes from day to day and not much is new. I don't know what to say to people - I spend my days taking care of my baby and my nights with Tim. I wish I had something else to say about my life, but I really don't. I don't think it's boring, every day is a new challenge with Vaughn, but I feel like I'm boring people when I tell them how he likes to smush his food all over his face and how I laughed when he wiped blueberries in his eyes until they started to sting and then he cried and then it wasn't funny anymore (for him anyway).

What's new? Nothing and everything all at once. My life has changed so very radically and I'm still trying to come to grips with it. And now soon I'll be going back to my office job and I'm in for another change. How do I juggle work, family and somehow try to maintain some sense of self in there as well? It's tricky, but millions of women do it every day, I'm no different and it's not new. However, it's new for me and I am having struggles.

My biggest struggle right now is coming to grips with the fact that someone else is going to take over raising my baby. I will not see him for the majority of the time he is awake for 5 days of the week. How on earth do I trust someone else enough, and will they cherish our son as much as we do? Gosh, this is hard, really hard.

I wish I could go back part time to start, ease myself back into this. And it sucks that I have to think about this right now. Unfortunately, child care space is at such a premium here in Calgary and places are booking months in advance. I'm starting to do interviews now, because this is one thing I'm not leaving until the last minute.

I guess there is something relatively new though - we've decided we're going to go away at Christmas. Tim has 10 days off and has never been West of Banff so we're going to go on an adventure to B.C. We're going to stop and visit Laura and anyone else that wants to see us in Vancouver and head over to the island to spend a few days with Peahead. If we have time and energy, we'll zip through Seattle for a quick hi how are you and then make our way home via Spokane. Sounds like a whirlwind trip but I won't get another chance to go that way for a while I don't think. To borrow a quote from my very favourite Broadway show, Rent, "no day but today".

What's new with you?