Mom On The Run

Sorry about the disappearing act…  I just came back from 9 days at my in-laws place in Ottawa.  I just didn’t like the idea of a post that basically says: "Hey!  My house is empty, so why don’t you stop by and steal all my stuff!", so I just kind of disappeared. I honestly don’t feel comfortable posting on the internet that I’ve headed off for "vacation" – sorry folks.  

Honey had yet another business trip to Ireland, so I thought I’d take advantage of my 2nd last week of Maternity Leave (sniff, sniff), and bring the kids up to Ottawa to spend a week with their paternal grandparents for 9 fun-filled days.  I must be a sucker for punishment ’cause I took the kids by train….  At 7 am, Fri June 20th, I loaded the kids in the car, drove to Toronto’s Union Station (an hour drive), then boarded a 5.5 hr train ride to our Nation’s capital (Ottawa).  Now that doesn’t sound so bad, except when you consider my kids are 3 and 11 months old, and I was by myself.  The 3 yr old was so excited that she didn’t sleep on the train, and the 11 month old slept for a whopping 26 min 12 sec.  Lets just say that not only was I very happy to get off the train in Ottawa, but so was the rest of the train…  ’nuff said!

Anyways – the trip went well.  Sierra slept well, ate well and played hard with her 3 cousins (aged 9,7 and 6).  Brooke ate well, but slept horribly!  SO horribly that my MIL and I attempted to put her on a sleep/nap schedule…  And guess what?  It freaking worked!  Right now she’s 90 min into an afternoon nap, and last night she only woke up once!  Yippeee!  One wake up/night is a-ok for me, I can handle that after waking up 3-4 times a night since last July.  Last night I was up 1/2 the night waiting, just waiting for her to wake up – LOL!  We’ll see how long this new sleep routine lasts, I may have spoken too soon, and tomorrow she’ll return to her old bad habits.

Anyways, I’ll have to write more about the trip in another post ’cause I have a lot of housework to do while the baby is napping in preparation for my return to work next week  (sniff, sniff), but for now I’d like to leave you with a picture of quite possibly the cutest baby ever:

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2.5 weeks ago Daddy Rob spent 15 hours in (34 C heat) putting together a swing set for Sierra and Brooke’s birthday.  This is the finished product:

The girls are on the young end for it, but we’re sure they’ll be able to enjoy it for many, many years to come. 
(PS – don’t you just love our private yard?).

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I bought the hooks for my hanging plants 53 weeks ago and immediately began nagging for them to be installed…  This weekend hubby finally finished the job!  I did the one on the right hand side, but didn’t measure the space for the screws quite right and the only way it will stay up is upside down, so hubby installed the left hand side one upside down to match.  I started to install the left hand side while he watched the kids – 5 min into it he came and relieved me from my agony, and I relieved him.  I guess there’s a reason why these kinds of things are traditionally done by men. Upside down or not – they look pretty darn good if I do say so myself!

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I’ve been tagged by MomsHomeRun… Here are the rules and my reply is just below. Tagging is easy. Just copy the following onto your post. The rules of the game are posted at the start of your blog post. In this case, I’m asking you 5 questions about running. Each player answers the 5 questions on their own blog. At the end of your post you tag 5 other people and post their names. Go to their blogs and leave a comment on their blogs telling them they’ve been tagged and to look at your blog for details. When they’ve answered the questions on their own blog, they come back to yours to tell you. Got that? OK – here is my reply:

1. How would you describe your running 10 years ago?
Ten years ago? Boy – that’s a LONG time ago! I can’t even remember what I ate for breakfast this morning! I think that 10 yrs ago I had just returned to running in order to lose the freshman "10" which had actually turned into the freshman "20". I had no idea how to ease into running to prevent injuries, so I just dove right into it ‘causing me to experience my 1st stress fracture from running. 6 weeks in a cast and 4 months later I apparently am a slow learner because I also got a fracture in my other leg (yes – bilateral fibula stress fractures acquired 5 monthas apart for all of you who are familiar with human anatomy).

2. What is your best and worst run/race experience?
Best race? It’s a tie between the Casino Niagara Marathon, as that’s where my hubby proposed to me and the PB of 1:51 I set in the Alcatel Ottawa 1/2 marathon (I must confess that I can’t remember what year that was). Worse race? The Casino Niagara Marathon – the weather was cold wet and rainy, the race course is NOT scenic and my training wasn’t quite up to par. Not only that, it was seperating me from my new-fiancee!

3. Why do you run?
Running keeps me sane. Without running I’ld be tearing my hair out. Also running provides some much needed ‘alone time’. Away from little voices calling me mommy. Running provides time to think, to find myself. (DITTO)

4. What is the best or worst piece of advice you’ve been given about running?
The best? Run 10 min walk 1 – I’ve done ALL of my races that way, even my awesome PB in the Ottawa Half-Marathon.

5. Tell us something surprising about yourself that not many people would know.
I can eat ANYTHING before running and not get an upset tummy or cramps. Wings & beer? Yep – no cramps! Big heavy McDonald’s breakfast? Yep – no cramps (though I can’t promise a tummy free from being upset).

Tagging along:
1. A Viking Running – one of my newest loyal blog readers
2. Creative Thoughts by Chelle – she’s just started running and I’m soooooo soooooo very proud of her!
3. Nicole at Much More Than A Mom – I recently found out that she’s run a 1/2 marathon
4. Jon at Chocolate Runner’s Blog – one of my longest blogosphere running friends.
5. Ben aka Silly Old Bear at Hey, You!

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In 3 more weeks I join the ranks of millions of other mommies and daddies – I will be a working parent.  No longer able to lounge around the house in my pj’s all day (hah hah – as if Stay-At-Home-Mommies get to loung around….).  Instead I will have to spend each morning hurriedly waking up kids, getting them dressed and off to daycare every morning.  Thankfully our new daycare will feed them breakfast.  Part of me is excited to be back with my co-workers and friends, and the other part of me is sad.  This very well could be my last Maternity Leave, my last opportunity to spend a year at home with my children.  We had good times going to the park, library, indoor playgrounds etc.. And we had some dark times, coping through the snowiest winter in at least a decade while Daddy Rob was in Ireland almost 50% of the time. 

All that aside I now face a big dilemma.  Weaning…  The dreaded W word.  "Baby" Brooke will turn 1 yr on the day I return to work.  We’ve enjoyed a very smooth nursing relationship over the past 11 months.  So smooth that I haven’t seen the need to force the bottle or sippy issue.  She copes quite well with daddy or Oma whenever I’ve left her for a few hours.  She’ll even allow them to rock her to sleep with minimal fuss without a drink, allowing me to play softball once a week guilt free.  At this point I basically have a few options:

1) Wean daytime feedings over the next 3 weeks to a sippy cup or bottle by simply refusing to nurse, using distraction and food to get through the day

2) Wean both daytime and night nursing cold turkey to a bottle or sippy cup using the dreaded cry-it-out (CIO) method

3) Do nothing – send her to daycare with a cup and hope that over the first few weeks she’ll adapt, continuing to nurse her whenever she and I are together, allowing Brooke to lead the weaning when the time comes.

Emotionally I’m so torn.  I enjoy nursing and feel guilty enough for having to return to work and leaving her with virtual strangers.  With Sierra, I nursed for 10 weeks after I went back to work – after that she stopped wanting to nurse as she’d gotten attached to her bottles of expressed milk that I sent to daycare for her.  I know I can do that again – only Brooke is much older than Sierra was when I returned.  A few friends and family are putting the pressure on me to wean.  Hubby wants us to head to Ireland in September sans kiddos, and that means leaving them with my MIL.  No matter what I do, by that time Brooke will have been in daycare for 10 weeks or so and should be quite accustomed to her bottle or sippy I would think (no matter which method I use to wean her daytime). One of the biggest issues is that Brooke still wakes up 2-3 times a night.  I co-sleep with her and nurse her every time she wakes up.  Generally she falls right back to sleep, and so do I.  She’s on the small side – only 17 lbs and I feel the added night time nutrition she’s been getting for the past year has helped her to get to even that size.  Her daytime eating is great – she quite often will out eat her sister, as I’ve learned to hold off nursing and offer food first. When I returned to work when Sierra was a baby, she was still waking up to nurse too.  I weaned her night time nursing to a bottle 6 weeks in, which caused a huge fight to get her back to sleep – with nursing she fell quickly back to sleep, but with the bottle I had to rock her and fight with her for over an hour to get her back to sleep – this went on every night for 3 months at which point hubby led the CIO method when I was too sick to cope (I had a kidney infection). I’m afraid my 5 min wake ups will turn to hour long fights if I try to wean. 

This is where you come in, dear internet.  What would you do if you were in my shoes?  

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Molly Maid is coming tomorrow to clean, clean, clean my house!  Yippee!  I finally cracked and said ok to a cleaning service – after tomorrow’s initial clean, they’ll be coming every other week!  Hubby has been saying we should get one for about 5 yrs, but I was always hesitant, to me it always seemed like a HUGE waste of ALOT of money.  Afterall, I can clean my house myself.  So why doesn’t he just pay me instead?  However, all that changed when I realized how much harder keeping up with two kids is than one.  That, and we moved into this much bigger house last year…  Let’s just say the dust bunnies are now dust elephants!  I go back to work in 3.5 weeks (sniff, sniff) and I don’t want to spend all of my free time cleaning, as I know I’ll be spending enough of it doing just the daily stuff like dishes, and laundry.  I’m really looking forward to coming home tomorrow afternoon to a super clean house (and yes, this means I spent an hour this evening stuffing all of my loose clutter into boxes and hiding them in closets never to be seen again until the closet is too full to put more stuff in….).

So why Molly Maid?  A friend suggested a husband wife team she has clean her house.  Truthfully that scares me for so many reasons.  First off, if I’m paying them to come into my house and clean, then I’m technically their employer, on the hook for any workplace injuries they encounter.  Secondly, I’ve heard horror stories of cleaners wanting $$ upfront, then the home owner coming home to not only no cleaning, but all of their stuff stolen – yikes!  So I thought I’d go with a reputable company.  We’ll see how well they do tomorrow.  I promise to blog and let you know if they hit every nook and cranny or not.  Has anyone ever used a cleaning service?  Did you like it?  Do you have any tips on how to maintain a decluttered house?

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