Reflections

I have been away from the blog for a while; not by choice. Life has been so busy that I've hardly had time to scratch my nose. I took my diamond engagement ring off before my trip to Eastern Europe and finally found a moment this week to retreive it from the drawer and put it back on. Work is good, and life is good, but I'm struggling to make them work together!

As has become an annual tradition we spent Thanksgiving at my Uncle's cottage near Perry sound. We cooked, we chatted over glasses of wine and snuggled under big warm blankets with adult contemporary playing in the background. We went for long boat rides along the gorgeous Group of Seven-esqe shore.

But my favourite moment of all was stuffing the turkey with my daughter. It was traditionally done my Grandma, but when she passed away the responsiblity fell to me, and it is one I cherish. As my daughter knelt on the chair next to me getting dressing everywhere except in the bird, I could feel my Grandmother smiling, watching her 3 year old namesake learning her secret recipe. For a few moments time stood still and I forgot about the emails piling up on my blackberry and the exhaustion from nights on end of fitful sleep (courtesy of my son who has decided that night wakings are fun all over again).

What are your favourite traditions?

If only I had sponsors to thank....

Guess what folks....BIG NEWS! I received a Liebster award from the wonderful and talented Keira at The Bennett House blog. Check out her post about the blogs she selected for the award here.

I am most excited about this because it means I have at least 1 follower who isn't a blood relative or childhood friend. Thank you Keira! I am so honoured. This award has really renewed my steam to improve my blog. My two goals are to update my header (I guess this means I need to learn HTML!!!) into something a bit less pedestrian and to take a photography class so that my photos aren't so dark and yellow.

I was trying to describe the Liebster awards to my husband this morning over breakfast. When I told him that it's an award that bloggers give to other bloggers, he said "so it's like the SAG awards", which I thought made the Liebsters sound very impressive...after all, aren't the SAGS and Golden Globes leading indicators for the Oscars??....ok, maybe I'm reading into this a bit too much. Either way I am tickled pink!

For those of you who don't know, the Liebster Blog Award is given to bloggers who have under 200 followers to try to help increase traffic to their blog. Recipients get to give awards to five other bloggers who have under 200 followers, and tell readers five things about themselves.

So here are five things about myself:

1) I married my university sweetheart.

When I was leaving my hometown of Vancouver for Carleton University, my mom confided that was worried that I would fall in love and never come back home...well turns out her mother's intuition was spot on (though I do go back home quite often!); Brian and I have now been together about 15 years and married for almost 5 years! He is an engineer and is very scientific and logical in his approach. I, in comparison, am far more artsy, spiritual, and sentimental. This results in a beautiful tension in our relationship that keeps us both on our toes. We have wonderful, rich debates about everything from my Craigs List purchases to Rob Ford's approach to transit. Tangent story: For our first Valentine's Day together in Ottawa, Brian took me skating on the Rideau Canal. We are celebrating a belated Valentine's Day tonight and I am suprising him with a skate on the rink at Withrow Park before dinner at Libretto Pizzaria. Fun!).

2) I have two amazing kids, a 2.5 year old daughter and a 6 month old son.

My daughter was a challenging birth and a collicky infant, but is now a life-loving happy-go-lucky little girl. My son's birth was a supernatural experience with midwives, and so far he has been calm and easy. The days and nights with our kids are long but the years are short. They are the light of my life. They have taught me to be patient and to live in the moment, two virtues that do not come naturally to me. I am more inclined to mutitask and always think of what's next.

3) I grew up in groovy Vancouver.

My parents still live in the house I grew up in, though they have just completed a major renovation. There are a number of elements they designed into their house that I absolutely love. I am headed out there next week and plan to blog a lot about their house. ...maybe I'll even convince my mom to do a guest blog! My favourite things about Vancouver are mornings at the Granville Island market, dinners at Brix restaurant, walking in Pacific Spirit Park's Sword Fern Trail, roller blading the Stanley Park Sea Wall, and watching sunsets from my brother's balcony overlooking English Bay. Vancouver is hands down the most naturally spectacular city from my perspective.

4) The TTC wants to expropriate my house!

We live on the Danforth and our home is directly above the Bloor-Danforth subway line. In 2010 the TTC (our local transit authority) tried to partially expropriate about 10 properties on our street and fully demolish 2 homes. Over the year that followed, my neighbors and I fought this will all our might. We spent late nights doing engineering analysis and early mornings writing press releases and collecting signatures. Days were spent meeting with decision makers at City Hall. In the end, Council unanimously decided to indefinitely defer the project, so for the time being, our house is safe! This experience made us realize how much we love our house and our neighbors....a good outcome indeed.

5) I've never met a deal I didn't like!

My mom is an avid shopper of garage sales, thrift stores, and all retail sales, so I come by it naturally. We rarely pay full price for anything. Even my wedding dress came from a consignment shop in New Westminster (just outside Vancouver).

..and five blogs that I would like to give Liebster awards to:

I STILL HAVE TO DECIDE....stay tuned!!!!

This magnificant mess

Do you ever feel like you can never get ahead of the mess of children?

Every night I head to bed with the main floor cleaned and organized for the day ahead. ...and a mere 15 minutes into the start of the next day, it looks I've had 30 two year olds rampage my house. I guess my 2 year old is 'efficient' at creating mess. We're out the door most days early in the morning, so I barely have time to brush my teeth, let along do any clean up, until nap time in the afternoon. But it is so satisfying when at 3pm I get to enjoy a clean living room again....and then my daughter wakes up and we start the cycle all over again!...I think I hear her now.

Dare to share

When I was about 9 weeks pregnant with my first child, I confided my news to a friend. After congratulating me, her first question was what daycares I was on the waitlist for.

My first response was that she was insane, given that I was barely pregnant.

My next response was to call all the daycares in my area and get on waitlists (turns out I was the insane one!).

But as I thought more about it, I realized that daycare wasn't going to work for us once I was back at work. My work hours were long and unpredictable, while my husband's work is outside the city and he is constantly held hostage by traffic.

So we started thinking about getting a nanny. But when we looked at the economics, it was going to be almost double the cost of putting our daughter in daycare....so then we thought about a nanny share, which turned out to be the perfect solution for us.

We share our nanny with another family, which has worked brilliantly. Our daughter now has a "BFF" and the cost is comparable with daycare.

If you are considering a nanny share, please get in touch, as we have thought through and been through all of the issues that arise from taxes and T4s to how to deal with family vacations, sick kids, food, and cost splitting.

Isn't it funny how child care is something almost every parent has to figure out, yet it feels like we're all figuring it out for the first time?

Morning traditions

Every morning after I drag myself downstairs I take a few glorious minutes to myself and lovingly prepare a skim latte in a large bone china Wedgewood mug (Eternity pattern, which is now discontinued...but still available on Replacements.com). It feels so indulgent. CBC Radio One's Metro Morning with Matt Galloway plays from my IPad in the background. I press the espresso down with all my might and am forever trying to create the perfect topping of rich milk foam.

Recently my daughter has started asking for her own 'coffee'. So with any extra milk I steam, I prepare her a special 'coffee' --- steamed milk with a touch of PC hot chocoate powder in it, served in one of the bone china demi-tasse mugs that came with my dish set* (otherwise these mugs rarely get used, since they aren't a practical size).

This is a tradition with my daughter that I cherish. Hopefully when she is old enough to drink real coffee, she will still think I'm cool enough to hang out with.

* I registered for Duchess White china - it is a class pattern carried at William Ashley, and about half the price of most of the Wedgewood bone china white sets. ...the problem was that I lusted over the Wedgewood Eternity mugs...so I ordered a set of them in additon to my set. No regrets on the Duchess White though - it is simple, elegant, and an equally worthy vessel for mac and cheese as beef wellington.

A Griswald family portrait

I was struggling with what to give my parents for Christmas this year. They don't need more 'stuff', but of course I still wanted to give them something special....and so I decided to give them a 'family portrait' photo shoot. We used the wife of a former colleague of mine, Jessica Brydson. She did an excellent job of keeping the shots natural and authentic looking, and was very reasonably priced. I can't believe we got good shots, given that we had 2 kids to contend with!


We decided to do our photo shoot at Evergreen Brickworks, which has plenty of urban and natural backgrounds to choose from.