This is what our living room and children look like after a typical weekday.
Well, it's coming on Mother's Day weekend. I feel like I've experienced the entire range of emotions regarding my being a mother in this past year, going from an incredibly low time just one year ago where it felt like our entire world was completely out of control, and that motherhood was the hardest and most stressful occupation I could imagine, to my day to day now where I just can't get my head around how lucky I am to be able to love and take care of such amazing kids (can still be a difficult and stressful occupation, let's not kid ourselves). I miss my Queen Bee of a Grandmother, Grammy Sweeney. I also feel deeply for my friends who are moms who've lost children, and for our friends who wish so badly that they could be mothers. It's not an easy time for a lot of people. As a celebration of mothers however, I'm lucky to know and to have known so many wonderful ones.
*fast forward a few days*
My misgivings aside, I had the most spectacular Mother's Day this year. You'll have to pardon my gushing, but man, Tim is stellar. He and Edie worked in secret for weeks on a scrap book for me to show me how much they love me. Aptly titled 'Mommy's F Words', the scrap book is a collection of pictures of me and the girls with F word themes, forest, furry friends, family, food...It is amazing. And highly appropriate given the potty-mouth which I've developed over the last year, an on-going joke between Tim and I. Thankfully sleep, good health and overall well-being has made it a whole lot easier to be less angry all of the time. Thank goodness. And hey, what an amazing family I have!
My other Mother's Day present was competing in a try-a-triathalon. It was a shorter version of the real-deal, it being a 200m swim, 6k bike and 2k run, and thank goodness for that! Edie asked me if I won when I was finished and I told her yes, for me, as I wasn't sure that when I was getting my butt kicked in the pool that I would survive to finish. But I did, and it really wasn't so bad. I even had some gas left in the tank when I was done. I'm now working on training for the real deal with a friend of mine. I'm glad to be getting back into shape, and I'm glad I've got some mom perspective...There's no where to go but up from here! The girls are helping out by yelling at me from the stroller to go faster on our runs and by weighing more everyday which makes the push that much harder. Tim's being a dear by letting me get out to the pool a few times a week. Biking will come with budget committee approval. Day by day things are coming together.
I've thought of a few differences between Saskatoon and Brisbane recently (if you're interested in some similarities, I've listed a couple two posts back). 1) This takes me a bit by surprise still, you can't throw biological litter out in the yard and expect it to be snatched up in Saskatoon. In Brisbane Edie lost a cheese stick, a cracker and numerous other snacks within minutes of having dropped them, the cheese stick having been snatched by a Magpie within seconds of her throwing it down on the ground in a fit of rage (Magpie helps mother teach lesson). Australia's crazy survival of the fittest to the extreme mode made me lazy I think...I left an apple core on the lawn the other day expecting it to be gone by the next, I eventually had to go back and get it a week later. And I looked like a litter bug.
2) I can't vouch for how stylish Brisbane is on the whole especially in super-chic Australia, but I'll take a leap and say that it's got a leg up on Saskatoon (shocker). What's making me think this? The fact that it would appear that if you live in this city you automatically own a pair of Huskies Athletics jogging pants and you wear them. Anywhere and everywhere. Anytime and perhaps in some cases, all of the time. Now I've loved many a pair of jogging pants too well, and I fully admit that I have no style, but even I'm a bit bummed out by the sheer number of Huskies sweats that are worn out in this city on a daily basis. It's oddly depressing that people don't seem to think that they need to break out of sweat-clothes in public (I can't believe I just said that). Don't get me started on Roughriders gear.
It's been a very lovely Spring so far, we've got a new fence up in our back yard to separate our children from the high-strung huskies next door (there are 3, and one of them chews on a 5lb weight like a bone- yikes!), and have a few raised beds in for the veggies that we're growing this summer. The girls are so happy to be spending time outside without snow clothes. We had our first campfire in our fire-pit tonight, if it's not obvious, we really, really, really like it here, sweats culture and all.
We've also discovered audio-books from the library. I went out on a limb and signed out a copy of Little House on the Prairie last week thinking/knowing that it would probably only be appreciated by me...But no, I turned it on in the car today on a Deedee Mama car-ride, and guess who's hooked? I'm so in love with my kids. My husband too, even though he makes fun of me for things like listening to Little House on the Prairie audio-books.
Hope that this post finds you all well.
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| May 20, 2012 |
