Hello, Monday

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I’ll be completely honest – I was actually looking forward to waking up this morning. The Daylight Savings change kicked my butt yesterday, and since today is my first Monday off since January, I welcomed this morning with open arms!

I finished my contract at the university on Friday, so today marks the start of getting things back to normal. No more 6 a.m. alarm clocks! No more rushing to get Isla fed, dressed and out the door! I can now go back to being a stay-at-home mom, something that I now realize that I actually enjoyed. I missed Isla’s antics – both the hilarious and the hair-pulling ones. I get to take in a lot more of this every morning:Sunrises

Working for the past 9 weeks has been good; Kyle and I have managed to pay off a good chunk of our new (to us) truck and at the rate we’re going, we should hopefully have it paid by the end of the year. Working did, however, have some negative effects.

Isla regressed a little bit in the potty training, and me heading back to work definitely had something to do with it. She went from lazy mornings to “get up and go” ones, we cut out her afternoon nap (which needed to be done anyway), and the rules she had to follow were always changing – Grandma’s House rules are always the best ones, afterall.

I’m taking this first week of “Back to Normalcy” to do just that – to not do anything too outgoing, but to instead just get things back to normal. I’ve gone back to handing out treats for potty time success. We had a wonderfully warm weekend and Isla was a star, so I’m hoping I can keep it going.

I really do appreciate going back to work, don’t get me wrong, but I think that perhaps just for now, being a working mom just isn’t for me. I’ll eventually go back to hating Mondays, but for today, I’m welcoming it with open arms.

{Day in the Life} 01/22/15

5:40 am: Kyle leaves for work and I roll over for 20 more minutes of eyes-closed time before my alarm goes off. It’s his “Friday” and I’m a little jealous.

6 am: My alarm goes off, but I hit swipe the snooze button and lay in bed for 10 more minutes.

6:10 am: My alarm goes off again, and I peel myself out from underneath the covers, climb over my Snoogle and hop in the shower.

6:50 am: I let the dogs outside and hope they stay quiet so Isla can sleep a little longer. Generally, if she wakes up any earlier than 7am it’s going to be a loooong day for her. I pour myself a bowl of cereal and get Isla’s breakfast ready for her when she wakes up.

7:10 am: Isla wakes up so I sit her on the potty, then get her breakfast made (an Eggo waffle with peanut butter & jam, a clementine, and milk). I finish my cereal and get Isla’s clothes ready and pull meat out to defrost for dinner while she’s finishing her breakfast. I also throw a quick lunch together for myself to take to work, and feed the dogs.

7:30 am: Isla declares she’s done her breakfast, so I get her out of her booster seat and get force her into the bathroom to brush her teeth and hair. This morning she’s being more difficult than usual, but I manage to get her teeth brushed, as well as her hair after a slight hissy fit. (She HATES having her hair brushed but I can usually quickly run a brush through without incident it if she’s distracted.) After that I get her dressed.

7:45 am: I let the dogs out to go to the bathroom before I head out the door. While they’re out doing their thing, I make my coffee and make sure my lunch is all ready to go.

7:55 am: I let the dogs in and close the curtains on the front window so Campbell stays off the couch, and then tell Isla it’s time to go. She’s on an “I DO IT” kick right now, and she insists on walking down the stairs while holding onto the handrail. It takes forever, but she eventually gets down the stairs and I get her loaded into the car.

8:10 am: I drop Isla off at my MIL’s for the day. I’m pretty fortunate that she “signed up” to watch Isla during the day while I’m working for a few weeks, and Isla is a lucky girl to get to spend the day at Grandma’s House.

8:20 am: I arrive at work and get to my office. I tuck my lunch away in the fridge in the lunchroom and fire on my computer. It did an update yesterday when I left, so it takes FOREVER to boot up this morning. When it finally does I check my emails – nothing! Life is grand when you’re an auxiliary worker.

My office. Of course that's Isla as my desktop background ;)

My office. Of course that’s Isla as my desktop background ;)

9:00 am: I’m waiting for edits to come back on a project I’m working on, so I make a few notes for one I’ll be starting next week.

9:30(ish) am: I notice a bunch of people/students filing out of the adjacent building and I wonder what the heck is going on. Fire alarm? Who knows. I don’t think much of it, except to take a picture because, WEIRD.

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9:45(ish) am: The fire alarm starts going off in our building and scares the crap out of me. Apparently everyone was informed of the drill/test, but the email was sent two months ago so I obviously missed it. I’m pretty sure I haven’t been involved in a fire drill since high school, so I just follow everyone else outside and wait. Eventually we’re allowed back in the building.

10 – 11:30 am: I do some more research for the project I’m working on, but am not finding anything overly helpful. We’re (myself and other person in the department) are waiting for someone in the department the project is focused on to be available to chat with, so as it turns out, we won’t be moving forward until next week.

12 – 1 pm: LUNCHTIME! I’m generally pretty hungry by the time my lunch break rolls around, even though I have a mid-morning snack around 10. (It was grapes today.) I’m certain I’ve hit the, “MUST EAT EVERYTHING” stage of pregnancy, because I feel like I’m always hungry. Anyway, I walked across campus to have lunch with some friends who work in various departments at the university. It was so nice and sunny outside! On my way back to my office I stopped and said “Hello” to the therapy dogs; they visit the campus every Thursday for pets and cuddles and to help boost people’s spirits. (It works! Dogs melt my heart )

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L-R: A lone coyote (statue!) on top of one of the buildings on campus // Belly rubs // My office building (I’m the 3rd and 4th windows from the left on the 2nd floor!)

 1 pm: I’m back in the office and already craving junk food. Clearly a salad, yogurt and a clementine was not enough. There’s another clementine sitting on my desk but all I really want is a bag of Miss Vicki’s Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar chips from the vending machine. It looks like I probably have enough change in my wallet to buy a bag, but self control gets the better of me. It’s hard to be healthy, yo. (Especially since I devoured some Cheezies yesterday afternoon.)

1:15 pm: I start some brainstorming for images and infographic ideas for the project I’m working on.

3:10 pm: Caved.
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3:45 pm: My boss stops by my office and asks what I’m working on, and I had just finished my brainstorming. I let her know and she said we’ll get together for a meeting with our web developer and a web designer to see what we can come up with.

4:30 pm: I’m done work for the day, so I shut down my computer, lock up my office, and go pick up Isla from my MIL’s. She had a fun day of dancing, swimming, and Play-Dohing, but she’s super tired from not napping at all and so I spend the drive home obnoxiously singing Taylor Swift trying to keep her awake. It works, but she’s not happy about it.

5:20 pm: I start making dinner. Nothing too terribly special, just Shake & Bake pork chops, a Lipton Sidekick pasta mix and some steamed carrots.

6:20 pm: Kyle arrives home from work, so we all sit down for dinner. I realize that I forgot to add butter to the pasta, thus why it tastes off. Oops. After dinner we relax and digest for a bit before I toss Isla in the bathtub.

7:30 pm: Isla’s in the bath so I call my mom to see if she can still watch Isla on Saturday. We start to whine to one another about our various aching body parts, and figure we should probably stop and save it all for our trip to Vancouver at the end of March.

7:50 pm: Isla’s all done in the bath, so I get her PJ’s on and dry her hair. After that she goes and gives Kyle a hug and a kiss goodnight and chooses a book for bedtime. Tonight it’s “That’s Not My Puppy,” which is great because it’s short and easy to read.

8:10 pm: Isla’s tucked away in bed, so Kyle and I park our rears on the couch for some “quality” television. We end up watching the end of Braveheart and the beginning of Tombstone.

10 pm: It’s bedtime for me because I have to get up and go to work in the morning. Kyle thought pretty hard about staying up and watching Tombstone (it was on until midnight), but since he’s watching Isla while I’m at work, he figured it would be better if he came to bed too so he’s not too tired and can keep up with our little hurricane!

That pretty much sums up my Thursday! Pretty exciting stuff, no? ;)

What are some highlights from your day on Thursday?

Moments of Motherhood: On growing up in a small town

It’s no secret that I grew up in a small town. While I often longed for the opportunity to live in the city, I’m glad that my parents raised me where they did. There’s a lot a pros and cons to small town living vs. the big city, and in this week’s Moments of Motherhood column, I share my thoughts.

Here’s a snippet:

I grew up in a small town. With a population of around 1,800, it was your typical village; there were no stoplights, all is quiet after 6 p.m., and practically everyone knew your name, or at least who your parents were. It was hard to get into trouble, but I managed to do just that on a couple of occasions. Once high school graduation came and went, I up and left for the big city of Kamloops and never looked back. 

Okay, so the never looking back part may not be true. I still enjoy visiting my hometown, especially in the summer when everything is so green and growing. I don’t resent the size of the town where I grew up but when it comes to where I want to raise my own children, there’s a big Venn diagram of pros, cons and otherwise for both the city and the country. [continue reading…]