Monday, May 26, 2008

What's in a Name Anyway?

We had a lovely woman stop by tonight to drop off some gifts for the wee Papaya. This is one of Eric's former gym clients when he worked at a club downtown. Although we don't know her very well at all, she has taken quite a shine to Eric and by extension, the rest of us. 

Anyway, she came by, laden with gifts (yeah!) and a pie (shouldn't have it, but, yeah!). And, as she's oohing and aahing over the baby, she tells me how much she LOOOOVES the name Kaya

We have had a very positive response to the name overall, even though I was a little bit concerned that people would consider it a "made up" type of name. I had never heard it before, but one day, on my commute home from work, it just popped into my head. I mentioned it to Eric (who hated practically every name I ever suggested) who actually liked it. Regardless, it does exist in baby name guides. 

For the vast majority of my pregnancy this baby was going to be named Rachel, which was the name we had picked out should Kieran have been a girl instead of a truck/train loving boy. However,  as my second pregnancy went the on, the name started to sound tired and decidedly blah. When people would ask if we had any names picked, I would say that we were leaning towards Rachel and we often got a very lukewarm response. Even my family was iffy on the name and it just started to feel wrong, so during my 8th month of pregnancy, we made the switch to Kaya, kept Rachel as a middle name and never looked back. 

According to one baby book the name Kaya is of Scandinavian decent and means "pure". Rachel means "innocent lamb". So, yes, our daughter is named "pure, innocent lamb Lam." Even with the double, "lamb/lam" I like the gentle flow of the meaning. 

Our guest tonight is of Japanese descent and as she's telling me how much she loves the name, she leans in to me and whispers, even though there is nobody else around except the baby: "Kaya means 'mosquito net' in Japanese." 

Sweet. 



Tuesday, May 20, 2008

And I Don't Think I Have the Reciept


I think I broke the baby. 

And it was going so well too...

Don't get me wrong, the Papaya is still an excellent baby. During the day she is usually as good as gold, and cries only when necessary. She smiles all the time and is generally happy and contented. And our nights were pretty good with both us getting good five hour blocks of sleep. And then I stepped in. 

Because her 5 hour blocks of sleep occurred only when sleeping in our bed, I knew it was time to move her into her own crib, in her own room or risk waiting too long and then REALLY having a problem. The crib transition was last week... and it was going OK. 

THEN, wise mother that I am,  I decided that I needed to impose an actual bedtime and put her to bed awake. Maybe its just a coincidence, but suddenly its all gone to hell. Everything. If I put her to bed awake she cries. If I put her to bed asleep, she's awake in 5 minutes and cries. When she does fall asleep, her limit for sleep in the crib is 2 hours and then she wakes up and doesn't want to go back. I know the key is to be consistent. If she's going to sleep in her crib, and I want her to fall asleep awake, I have to work at it, but I'm weak. I keep thinking to myself...she's only 5 weeks old, why I am putting us both thru this? So, I give in and then, obviously, I'm back to square one.  And we're all tired. 

One night her wailing woke up her brother, who proceed to wake up about 3 more times after that and then was up for the day at 6:20, while Kaya was finally quite content to sleep in our bed until 8 am. Arrgh. 

Last night, it took three hours to get to sleep in her crib, she was up two hours later, two hours after that, 45 minutes after that, then 5 minutes after that and 5 minutes after that. So, at 5:45 she was back in our bed, sleeping like the proverbial baby. 

Anyway, I'm just tired. Yesterday, in the space of an hour I managed to smash an entire bottle of balsamic vinegar on the kitchen floor (beyond gross), clog the vacuum after sucking up Kieran's wayward sock and put rice in the rice cooker and then completely forget to turn it on. So, dinner was late (and dry), Eric had to take apart the vacuum to fish out the sock, and I'm still finding shards of glass and vinegar splatters in odd places in the kitchen. 

I know this will all pass and soon enough Kaya and her stupid mother will both be sleeping like babies, but in the short term...YAWN.

Monday, May 12, 2008

The Royal Papaya

Where is the time going? I'm having trouble updating this blog (obviously).  Whenever I have the time, I don't seem to have much to say and when I'm busy I have a million topics to blog about but can't make the trip down the stairs. 

Things are going quite well here in Maternity Leave World. Kaya (also now known around these parts as Kaya Papaya or more recently, the Royal Papaya) remains a dream baby. She is coming very close to possibly even sleeping through the night. Although, I suspect reality will come crashing through shortly, since we are going to move her from her cradle in our bedroom into her big, lonely crib in her almost-finished Tinkerbell bedroom. Although, when I say she's in her cradle, she sort of isn't really. The problem with having the cradle right beside our bed is that I have developed a really bad habit of, when she starts to fuss, just lifting her into the bed and thus buying an extra 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I know this is a bad habit, but as I've always said, no one makes great parenting decisions anywhere between 1 and 5 am. 

Because the Papaya is such an angel, the days don't seem as long as they did with Kieran as a newborn. Even when Kieran is not in daycare, he still takes a good three hour nap and today, they both slept for the same three hour stretch. I couldn't believe it. I took the time to make soup, and I don't know what is more alarming...that I had all the ingredients to make soup, that I had time to make soup, or the fact that I MADE SOUP. Lentil soup. With spinach. 

We also dropped into the Early Years Centre today. I hadn't set foot in the place since the ill-fated "Infant Mother Goose" class I did with Kieran when he was around three months old. (Too bad, I wasn't blogging at the time, I would have had LOTS to rant about..starting with the horrendous "Mommy Circle Time" where we had to go around the circle and say "Something that made you happy this week and something that made you sad this week." Gag.) Anyway, I figured I would start fresh because I now have a two year old to entertain. So while I'm looking at the class schedule, we go into the play area and Kieran, not surprisingly, attaches himself the the Brio Train Table. The boy is obsessed with trains. And he plays and he plays and finally after about a hour the Royal Papaya begins to fuss, and since the chances of me breastfeeding in anything resembling public is nil, I tell Kieran we had to leave...and he looks up at me, waves, and says "Bye!" and turns back to his train. When I finally put my foot down and told him we were ALL leaving,  I was treated to my first full blown two-year-old tantrum. He screamed, and kicked and wailed and finally, one of the employees from the Centre had to carry Kaya out the car while I dragged a struggling Kieran who was wailing "TRAINTRAINTRAIN" all the way to the car.  So, I guess Kieran liked the Centre. 

I also found out that there is an Early Years drop in centre at the Retirement Home on my street. Literally about a 1 minute walk from my house. So, I'm sort of pleased about that. It runs every morning and even offers some "inter-generational" programs. I feel that a class filled with Toddlers and Geriatrics  (which I doubt is the class name, but wouldn't that be sweet if it was?) will give me LOTS to blog about! 

Thursday, May 1, 2008

This Post Was Coming Sooner or Later

If you don't want to read anything about breastfeeding, then you might as well stop now. 

But, here is today's rant...I read online that the process of making breastmilk burns 1000 PER DAY. Let me take a moment to point a finger at someone (or the entire breastfeeding industry) and say: "Ummm...BULL- CRAP."

I'm sorry, but I don't believe it for a millisecond.  

Before I continue let me just pause to say I do believe 100 per cent that breastfeeding is the way to go. No question about it. However, I also think that it's far more difficult than most new mothers anticipate or than most people tell you. And that having a new baby can be such a challenge that anyone who feels it's not for them, or simply cannot handle it should not be made to feel like a failure. 

However...anyone who knows me at all will not be surprised to learn that I'm not one of those mothers who find breastfeeding magical and spend the time staring loving at my baby. I really don't like it all that much. It's boring, unbearably painful (at least for me...still) and time consuming. Instead of contemplating the miracle of life, I usually wind up watching crap on TV because either the remote control is nowhere near me or there is just nothing remotely watchable on. OR in the middle of the night, I fall asleep and wake up 2 hours later with a crick in my neck and I shuffle back to bed only to be woken up 1 hour later to do it all again. However,  I am doing considerably better this time around than I did with Kieran...which was a struggle from day one (although with him I lasted almost 3 months before officially throwing in the towel, I had been dangling the towel for most of his young life). 

THIS time, I haven't had to supplement with formula even once. And, although it's still ridiculously painful, Kaya is simply a much better "latcher" and seems to be able to go far longer between feeds than Kieran ever did. So...I'm breastfeeding to my full potential and yet, let's just say that I don't think I'm burning 1000 calories a day. If I was, say,  going for an hour jog every day, I would think after 3 weeks there would be more visible results, but to be honest, I still think I'm as shlubby as the day I came home from the hospital, which is no surprise to me. I know I'm not one of those crazy-fast metabolism people who are going to fit into their pre-maternity clothes within a week of giving birth  - but I don't want to be misled or outright lied to. 

I guess it's still early....possibly two months from now, I will put up another post saying that the 1000 calorie per day burn is NOT merely breastfeeding propaganda (and Ill post pictures to prove it!)...but somehow I doubt it. 

On the upside...my new favourite joke when trapped on the couch for 40 minutes while Kaya slowly sips her lunch while Kieran demos the house unhindered,  is to tell Eric that I'm "working out". He doesn't think that joke is nearly as funny as I do.