Honest Scrap Award

Thanks for longtime friend and Moments of Clarity blogger Mundanemomma for giving me the Honest Scrap Award.

Here are the rules:

#1. Brag about the award.

Well, why be original when you can misquote actress Sally Field – ‘You like me, you really like me.’

#2. Include the name of the person who gave the award to you and link back to that blogger.

Her penname is Mundanemomma at Moments of Clarity

#3. Choose a selection of blogs that you find brilliant in honest content.
#4. Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with this award.
Humes Party of three

Fighting off Frumpy
Lady Mama

#5. List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

1. I don’t like to talk about myself. I think if you read my blog, you’ll glean a lot of information about me from it but I don’t like to provide information in this sort of forum. However, I like to read about others.

2. I am a journalist and an editor. I have written, assigned and read many stories about cyber crime, bullying, stalking, and predators. As such, I particularly don’t like posting info or pictures about my little guy. Facebook, particularly since it has changed its privacy policies, frightens me. Too much info people!

3. I really want to be a non-working stay-at-home mom. However, I am willing to freelance edit and write and stay at home.

4. My brother once called me untrusting and I was offended. Unfortunately, he is correct. However, not trusting people has saved me – and my family – more than once.

5. I am fiercely loyal and have high moral standards for myself.

6. I am directionally challenged and have no idea how to get to places I used to live. GPS was created for me.

7. I am a strong person.

8. Motherhood is the best job anyone can have.

9. I have a stepdaughter who brings great joy and happiness – and comic relief – to my life. I am lucky that she wasn’t one of THOSE teenagers who I wanted to lock in the basement and not release until she was 20. Actually, she went to the basement by choice and she will be 20 this year. Time flies.

10. I am a good listener and secret keeper.

Almost Over

This has felt like an exceptionally long week. I woke up today thinking it was Friday.

Unfortunately, I was wrong and Thursday dragged by as much as the three days that preceded it. All day long I thought my work week was almost done and all day long I had to keep reminding myself that I do indeed have to get up tomorrow and face another day.

The lengthy week likely felt even longer because of yesterday’s three-hour morning commute. By the time Wednesday was done, I had spent more than four hours in the car.

Today’s weather, while much improved, caused a bit of stress because the radio announcers kept saying the roads were covered in black ice and snow squalls were likely.

I never hit either, thankfully, but people were like we were so while we were all safe, it was another long, stressful drive.

But if my week felt lengthy, I couldn’t imagine how it felt to be my friend CM, who had to return to work after being off for a year’s maternity leave.

It has been more than a month since my own return but I remember that week well.

Our long week is almost over. Thank goodness.

Ideas, Ideas, Everywhere

I haven’t been sleeping well the past month.

To be completely truthful, I am dreading going back to work. I am lucky in that I really do love my job. It allows me to be as creative as I want. However, I finally got my dream job - being a mother - and I really want to do that full time or at least most of the time.

So while I am grateful to the women’s movement, which allows us to decide if we want to stay home or to have a career instead, I am also sickened that I have to go back, and have to go back already. (Where did that year go?)

Money. It’s the root of all evil.

However, not sleeping isn’t all bad.

I spend hours in the dark coming up with ideas for online features for work. I have the idea, I have the sources, I have the links, I have the graphics and I have the writers in mind

I am an idea machine.

And I have other ideas as well. Hopefully everything will work out.

Extended Maternity Leave

Our maternity leave should be longer.

While I appreciate I won’t get any sympathy from the likes of my mom, who had to quit her job when she was pregnant with my older brother; those from Holland who get only six weeks of maternity leave; or those from the States who get an equally short time to spend with their newborns, I still think Canadians should get a longer maternity leave.

Particularly now that doctors, healthcare workers and moms have returned to the idea that “breast is best.”

“They” say that you should breastfeed your baby until he is one year old. Wonderful. I agree.

However, if you are as unfortunate as I and you have to return to work, how can you feed on demand until your child is one when you have to go back when your child is one?

Should you quit breastfeeding cold turkey? Pump at work? Or, as I am attempting to do, wean prior to the first birthday?

My best friend JM, who has been doing daycare for years and who has two children of her own, said I don’t have to worry about weaning my son from his daily feeds prior to going back to work. She told me babies, or toddlers as he will be in a couple short weeks, are clever creatures.

He is not going to look to daycare provider, LC, for breast milk. And he won’t miss it because I am not there tempting him with it. She said I should be more concerned about weaning him at night, not for his sake but for my own.

While that did put my mind at ease, I still want to help my son learn to fall asleep on his own, without nursing. I want to make his transition to daycare as easy and stress-free as possible - for him anyway.

So if my maternity leave was say ... two years or even a year and a half, I could nurse until he was one and have him weaned before having to head back to work.

Year Of Love

It’s been almost a year since our little guy has joined our family. A year of love.

My maternity leave is coming to a close and my heart is breaking at the thought of leaving my little guy, missing his first moments and watching his discoveries.

What fun it has been. From the moment he was laid near my face to now, sitting on my lap, trying to get the keyboard to do his own writing, my world has revolved around my baby boy blue.

I have less than a month to soak in every aspect of this wonderful little guy who is showing he is as strong willed as the rest of the family, who can do things by himself, but who isn’t afraid to ask for help and is always willing to provide wonderful hugs.

His laughter is contagious, his happiness shines in his eyes and even his ‘Oh-my-goodness-my-life-is-tough’-head-on-the-ground-I-am-so-upset pose is awfully cute.

So while I am grudgingly going back to work, I have to wonder how anything can be as important as motherhood. Or as exciting.