Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Milo is Four!

How did this tiny, newborn baby...
milo is born
...turn into this adorable one year old...
milo is 1
...turn into this "cheesing" two year old...
milo is 2
...turn into this candle blowing three year old...
milo is 3
...turn into this awesome four year old?!
milo is 4
Obviously there are huge changes with each passing year, but I feel like three year old to four year old was a huge year. Milo really seems to have turned into a full blown kid this past year. Like, 'what do you mean that you're not totally interested in listening to what I'm saying and being extremely agreeable most of the time' kid. But also, 'you are so funny and creative and silly and you know so many big words and you understand so much' kid.

Some fun Milo facts that these photos make me think of:

1. Milo is still wearing his amber teething necklace. He just likes and it doesn't want to take it off. So...he's pretty much had it on non-stop since he was 8 months old.

2. Milo has never had a haircut, not even a trim. He loves his "tangly, crazy" hair.

3.  See that car hat that Milo's wearing when he turned two? He still has and wears that hat. It's finally getting a bit tight, and a lot worn, so I think we will say goodbye to it soon.

We love this big four year old so much! Happy birthday Milo!

♥elycia

Family :: Holding Hands

holding hands
I really just had to put this somewhere. Lately, when we are in the car, Olive puts her little hand out for Milo to hold it. Then she smiles and does a little happy wiggle. The evening this photo was taken, they both fell asleep holding hands. It was so sweet and I'm glad I grabbed my camera and took a photo.

I think I've mentioned it before, but being with two kids all day everyday is one of the hardest things I've done. I don't know how other people cope with it but for me it's intense. I feel really lucky that I am able to be a stay at home mom but that doesn't mean that I love every minute of it. Moments like the one captured in this photo definitely take the edge off the moments where Olive doesn't want to be bothered in the car and Milo won't keep his hands to himself. I have no idea what it's like to have a sibling and I'm realizing that it is leaving me a little confused sometimes about how to handle these (I assume) normal sibling interactions. I'm sensitive about being teased and bothered in the ways that I've observed siblings teasing and bothering each other so it's kind of a trigger for me when trying to keep both kids optimally happy. Feeling like I need to keep both kids optimally happy is a whole other thing that I have to let go of. I'm slowly trying to figure it out and trying my best to be patient with the kids and myself in the process.

This photo is lovely, as are so many parenting moments, but I also wanted to take some time to acknowledge the hard parts that don't get captured in photos. Parents out there...this is hard, and we are all doing a great job.

♥elycia

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Photos :: 5th Anniversary

I'm just going to rewind and share some 5th anniversary photos.
ivan kids
family
funny face
sleeping
This past year we were all ready to go to the park where we usually take our photos but then it just seemed too difficult to manage. I remember Olive being fussy and Milo being really tired. We decided to quickly take some photos in the backyard instead.

Milo ended up falling asleep while we were taking photos and coming down with something the next day. This is also an accurate depiction of Olive at that moment in time. She cried a lot. She was grumpy 90% of the time she was awake for the first six weeks or so and I guess she wanted to represent that in these anniversary photos. This is an accurate look at our lives at the time.

♥elycia

Monday, March 20, 2017

Olive's Birth Story

I really want to share Olive's birth story as I shared Milo's. I just don't have a mind for remembering details even from very important events so it's important for me to write this stuff down somewhere. It's been ten months since Olive joined the outside world so let's give this a go and see what I can remember from the day she was born.

I'll start by sharing a bit about my pregnancy with Olive. People tell you that every pregnancy is different and logically that makes sense, but there was always a part of me that thought my pregnancy with Olive would be pretty much the same as Milo's. Ha! They were sooo different. Just a quick summary: I felt less nauseous with Olive but threw up so much more, dealt with way more heartburn, was much more emotionally stable in that I felt very much like myself and didn't cry anymore than usual, but experienced more anxiety and, the strangest one for me, was pregnant 4 weeks and 4 days longer!

Since Milo was born at 37 weeks and 1 day I knew it was very possible that Olive could be early as well. I also understood that it was very possible that she would not be early but I never expected to end up 41 weeks and 4 days pregnant. I made sure that everything was ready early in case Olive did decide to be born as early as Milo, which lead to a feeling of, ok...I'm ready...are you coming yet? As much as my mind knew that babies come when they are ready, as the weeks went by and Olive was still happily hanging out on the inside, I started experiencing a lot of anxiety. I talked to my midwives about it but, being me, I initially downplayed how I was feeling because logically I knew that things were happening the way Olive needed them to. Once I passed my due date and was approaching 41 weeks I ended up having an actual panic attack. One of my midwives thankfully came to see me and we talked and I felt so much better but I was so worried about not being able to give birth at home, having to be induced and everything that could come along with that that I still had huge amounts of anxiety daily until Olive was born at 41 weeks and 4 days. I know, I know, it's bad for the baby, chill out Elycia...I could not.

Sharing all of that is just to say that even though I had confidence that my body knew what it was doing I also had a very hard time convincing myself of that very same thing. I didn't experience those types of feeling with Milo. I always felt sure that my body was doing what it needed to do and I was completely mentally prepared to go 10 days overdue since he was my first child. My feelings through my pregnancy with Olive was such a strange thing to go through but looking back I'm grateful to have had the experience of a baby coming earlier than expected and later than expected because I gained more understanding about what women on both sides of the spectrum go through emotionally. It's intense!

Ok, back to the birth story. Olive was born on Friday May 13th so I will just rewind now to Thursday May 12th. I was still extremely anxious about what might happen if Olive still hadn't shown up by 42 weeks, so I was looking forward to Thursday afternoon when I would be going to see my midwife for a check and a non stress test. We confirmed what everything else had told us so far, that Olive was doing fantastic and was very happy hanging out on the inside. The test gave me a lot of peace of mind because I was able to tell myself that as of right now, I had absolutely no reason to worry. I felt more relaxed than I had in a long time. That night Ivan and I did all of the things that were supposed to help Olive arrive if she was ready, including eating the spiciest Indian food I knew about.

That night I woke up much more than normal to use the bathroom and I wasn't sure if the discomfort I was feeling was from the Indian food or if labour was finally starting. Ivan had been working from home all week in case I went into labour and by about seven or eight in the morning I called my mom to ask her to come over to play with Milo just in case I was actually in labour. When I went into labour with Milo it started with my water breaking so I wasn't really sure what it was like when labour started a different way. My contractions were coming at regular intervals but I still wasn't totally convinced. I also called my midwife sometime in the morning to let her know that I thought I might be in labour. She told me that if I gave birth before five or so that she wouldn't be able to be there because she had been up all night at a birth.

During all of this I was doing things to help progress my possible labour. I bounced on an exercise ball (which I liked even though I hated it while I was in labour with Milo), kept moving and even finished a book I had been reading. You know how much book reading helps progress labour, right? Ha! I was starting to think that I was pretty sure I was in labour but the thing that confused me was that in between contractions I felt totally fine. I remembered having to concentrate the entire time I was in labour with Milo, not having any concept of time, being in my own world but this time, when I wasn't having a contraction it just felt like any other day.

Sometime before we called the midwife back my mom decided to take Milo out for a while. Our plan was to have him there for the birth if he was interested but it ended up that I didn't really love having him around while I was having contractions. I didn't want to be disturbed while I was dealing with one and turns out you can't just ask an almost three year old to give you a minute while you work through a contraction.

Finally around noon I asked Ivan to call the midwife back and start filling the birth tub because my contractions had gotten stronger. Everything still felt very manageable but I definitely noticed a change. When the midwife arrived and checked me I was already 6 cm which was finally proof enough for me that I was actually in labour. She told me that I could get in the pool whenever I wanted so once it was full I hung out in there, working through contractions without too much difficulty and then relaxing in between when I still felt totally fine.

Eventually the contractions picked up to a point where I didn't have as much of a rest in between and I remember thinking that they were much more painful than I remembered with Milo. I always described my contractions with Milo as intense instead of painful but with Olive I would definitely throw the pain word out there. I guess at that point I was going through transition and my midwife could hear that things were picking up so she came into the kitchen with Ivan and I. I had a contraction where I felt like I might be ready to start pushing so my midwife was going to check me and then call the other midwife who shows up when you're ready to push. Before she could check though I started getting another contraction and asked her to wait until it was finished before checking. Once it started I told her that I had to start pushing so she quickly sent the other midwife a message to come.

Once again to compare, when I was pushing with Milo I didn't really feel anything. I also pushed for quite a long time, more than an hour. With Olive, once I felt like I had to push, I could feel everything (EV-ERY-THING) and I remember thinking, "there is absolutely no way I am doing this for an hour!" I pushed Olive out (very loudly with open windows...our neighbours who were sitting in their backyard went inside) in one and a half contractions which took less than two minutes. I felt her slide out (which I didn't feel with Milo) so that was kind of neat. I think my water broke right before Olive came out because I remember saying that I feel like something is coming out right before she came out.

Olive May was born at 2:19 pm, 8 lbs 1 oz and 20 inches long. Olive came out alert, noisy and I was able to just hold her for a long time before cutting the cord and getting out of the pool. We were so glad that she finally decided to join us and once we were snuggled up together in bed, Milo got to meet his sister. I honestly don't remember exactly what happened when he saw her for the first time but he knew she was coming and was happy to see her.
olive born
olive squishy face
family olives birthday

I'm sure I've left out many, many details that I would have liked to remember but that's what I get for waiting so long to write this down!

Olive and Milo had very different pregnancies, labours, births and so far, are basically opposites of each other. It is so interesting and I really want to talk more about it here. We'll see!

Thanks for reading.

♥elycia

Thursday, January 5, 2017

So far...

I am typing this in the most awkward way possible with a baby sleeping on me, but I really feel like talking about something that happened today so I'm going to make it work...and hopefully keep it short because this is not easy or comfortable. I mean the part about trying to type while balancing a computer on Olive isn't easy or comfortable, I'm really happy about what I want to share.

Over the past few weeks I have donated hundreds of things. My mom is the most helpful person ever and is making it really easy for me by letting me fill up her car when she visits and dropping things off at donation centres for me. I seriously can't thank her enough.

I want to back up a little and talk about the way I'm dealing with getting rid of things. I don't think I've mentioned this yet but it would be way to hard for me to go back and check because of the previously mentioned  sleeping baby making this difficult. In the past when I have gone through things to get rid of I always felt like I needed to start with the problem areas first. The basement has lots of big things we aren't using and getting rid of them is a bit of a pain so it's hard to get motivated to do it. Also, even though I have donated tons of clothes, I still have way more than I need. Same with shoes. Add kids toys into the mix and it all just feels too overwhelming to even begin.

When I was thinking about how to start minimizing our things this time I looked around and decided to start with the things around us everyday, the things that are in our kitchen drawers that we have to move around to get to the things we actually use. I had recently organized our kitchen drawers so this was a really easy place for me to start. I could see clearly which items we hadn't used since I had organized, those things that I was hanging onto just in case. Now, it was very easy for me to pack them up. I moved onto cupboards with too many plates, cups and mugs and have been continuing through the kitchen tackling whatever little area I felt I had time for or could mentally handle in that moment.

That's been huge for me. Just dealing with what I feel like I can handle. With Olive being so little still, I can't take a day where I can focus all of my attention on clearing things out, so sneaking a few minutes here and there to add things to a donation box has been the solution. Before, I felt like I shouldn't even bother starting if I can't make a big dent in the amount of things we have but I'm so happy that I've moved past that mental block and have been slowly chipping away, seeing progress, feeling lighter and so much happier. I honestly can't believe what a difference it has made so far. My attachment to things is fading and getting rid of these non sentimental kitchen items is actually making me feel comfortable with the thought of getting rid of things I never would have considered parting with before even though they are adding no value to my life.

An example of this is something that happened today that I want to remember. I have an original Nintendo system that belonged to my Grama. Pretty cool, but also sentimental because I spent a lot of time as a kid watching my Grama play Nintendo. I know, that sounds weird but I loved watching my Grama play video games. Tonight Ivan and I were talking about things that we don't need and he asked me about my Nintendo and all the games. We've played it a few times over the years but haven't pulled it out in a really long time. My immediate response was, "I'm not ready to deal with that yet". As soon as those words came out of my mouth I realized that it wasn't true and that I was totally ready to pass that Nintendo on to someone who would be really excited about it and use it. I am still so suprised by my reaction and it shows me how far I've come in such a short time. Nintendo reminds me of my Grama but I don't need to own a Nintendo to remember her.

I really wanted to document that shift in my feelings about things because it suprised me and made me feel really good. I'm looking forward to more moments like that.

♥elycia