When she was bad
she was horrid … still so very cute.

When I was a kid, my hair curled like Abby’s. Then over time it started straightening out … until I hit puberty, when it started curling again …. until I had Abby, when it lost most all of its curl again.

Will Abby keep the curls she stole from me? Hard to say at this point. But at least I know there was no mixup at the hospital.

At first we assumed she thought that “Honey” was the word for dog, but we quickly realized she actually knew the words “pug” and “doggie” and “Paco”, and could apply the first two correctly, she just chose not to use Paco’s name. She could say Paco, she just didn’t call him that. Slowly, she started to use Paco’s name and now rhymes both names off with no effort (although she does say that Honey is a “bad boy” sometimes).

The cats, however, are not so lucky. Abby still, more often than not, refers to Logan and Bailey as “Bailey” and “More Bailey”, which is almost even more amusing than the pug naming as it seems that she can recognize that they are not the same cat – which is a feat in itself since most of our family and friends have to use the collar colour to figure out which is which – but for some reason she still calls them almost the same name. Again, she can say Logan, so it isn’t that.

Same window, different cats. Really, if she called them both “Bailey” it would make more sense.

Although we skipped our usual trek to the tree farm to cut our own tree and instead opted for a pre-cut one, we continued our tradition of the 12 days of Starbucks (and even stretched it to 13 14 15 days), and Abby joined in this year with her own little steamed milk. We had family visit us, and we visited family. We took both kids to the festival of lights – this time Abby actually even seemed to enjoy it, and Evelyn at least stayed awake for it. We hung mistletoe (“kissletoe”) and stood under it every chance we got.

Abby seranaded us for days with her rendition of Jingle Bells. We ate chestnuts. We drank eggnog. Evelyn seemed to enjoy her first Christmas, particularly the lights on our tree. Charles bought me another little baby bird to celebrate the addition of Evelyn to our family.

Charles also continued his tradition of buying me a garden gnome, although he insists that it was just a coincidence that he bought me a gnome last year as well, and that two years in a row does not a tradition make. While last year’s gnome (the white one below) certainly is unique, it is a gnome by name, so I think it counts. Maybe he’s just afraid that he has started something he doesn’t really want to finish. Or I guess more precisely something he’s afraid that I will never finish. My gnome count may be at three, but my “garden ornament” count is much (much) higher.

Maybe “Santa” will bring me another gnome next year. Three years in a row must make a tradition, right?

When we finally did buy the house, I mentioned this to Charles and he said “But we need the cupboard space”. He was right, and yet I still plotted the demise of those cupboards for four and a half years. I tried to figure out what we could store in the basement to lessen our kitchen storage needs, but most things that went down just came back up eventually. I tried to thin out our kitchen requirements entirely, but that too was unsuccessful. I’m pretty sure I investigated the idea of a pantry on the wall beside our bay window, but the space is not very deep so no standard pantry would fit. I finally resigned myself to waiting for whenever we fully remodel our kitchen (although functional, some parts of it ain’t pretty. Thankfully the yellow stove went away the day we moved in).

A few weeks ago, Charles mentioned a “crazy” idea he had about buying a pantry to put against the free wall and tearing down the hanging cupboards. I don’t think he had even finished his sentence before I jumped in with my response (“YES!”) and no more than an hour passed before I was online to see what I could find. The odd size of the space and the busy-ness of Christmas delayed the plan for a few weeks, but on New Years Eve we finally bought a pantry that (mostly) fit, and I woke up to banging on New Years Day as Charles hammered it together. By noon the pantry was up and secured to the wall and the cupboards were down.

And then there was LIGHT!

For the past two days, we’ve marvelled at why we didn’t do it earlier. Perhaps 2012 is the year of getting things done.

We’re finding with Abby that we’re viewing things through a new set of eyes all the time now – hers. When choosing a paint colour for the living room/dining room, we ended up switching to a different primer that was no-VOC and a different paint that was low-VOC to help keep the fumes down while we worked. We’ve always been very careful about putting pesticides on the lawn because of the pugs, but now that Abby also shares that space, it makes even more sense. Even garbage day takes on a new meaning when you see how excited Abby gets about the “big trucks” stopping in front of our house.

Most years we go see the Christmas light displays at the local park, mostly for the apple cider since the displays themselves don’t actually change year to year. Last year Abby still wasn’t too interested in them, but this year she has been pointing out Christmas lights on houses in the neighbourhood so I think she’s going to be really excited to see the light displays. And maybe that will make them feel a little more magical to us as well.

Sure, you aren’t due for another week, but I had it in my head that you were coming this week and that’s not looking very likely from where I am sitting. I can’t tell if you are just being stubborn – you squirm often enough that I would have thought you would want out of your cramped quarters sooner rather than later – or if you just aren’t ready to make your entrance yet. Perhaps you are a perfectionist like me and want to make sure everything is ready for your arrival. So let me assure you that it is: the car seat is installed, the bassinet is waiting for you, your diapers are prepped, and your big sister keeps asking if you have come out yet. She even has a pair of shoes picked out for you to wear when you arrive (they’re pink, just to warn you. This may make for interesting photos if you turn out to be a boy – not that boys can’t wear pink).

Or maybe you were just waiting for me to sit down and relax since I was still rushing around earlier in the week, trying to cross everything off my four to-do lists before you came (yes, I had four lists. You’ll learn that I’m a list maker). So today I took a two hour nap, read a book, and aside from the brief foray into home decorating/undecorating, I’ve been taking it easy. And yet, no signs of you.

If you are hung up on the idea of me being fully rested before you come, you might have a long wait – did I mention that you have an older sister, two crazy cats and two insane pugs?

So, on that note, please don’t wait too much longer: the longer you wait, the bigger you are going to get. Your dad has already guessed that you are going to be 10lbs, 2oz and, as much as I am aware that you are not going to be a wee baby (your sister was 9lbs, 8oz) 10lbs just won’t do.

All my love,
Momma

Motherhood, as I’ve discovered, is a bit of a larger no-man’s land unless you are a sucker for punishment. No matter how you feed, diaper, or clothe your child, where/when/how you let them sleep, or what methods you use to discipline (or not) your little one, someone will silently – or not so silently – judge your choices. Again, you can avoid the subject online but you can’t just avoid showing your child in public, and that mere presence of a child seems to provide the opening for people to share their opinions, whether solicited or (more likely) not.

So what exactly possessed me to read an article entitled “Moms with Tattoos” a few days ago I will never know (I think it was something in the link to it about “Will your tattoos affect how other moms look at you on the playgound?”), but read it I did. Clearly I am a sucker for punishment after all. As it turns out, I guess they weren’t feeling as edgy as they tried to make themselves out to be since the article was about as flighty as a butterfly – and never came close to answering whether or not my tattoos will prevent other moms from letting their kids play with Abby. I guess I should be thankful that most of the moms I know also have tattoos, so I never have to worry about them dropping me the second an ink line peeks out from under my clothing.

The only remotely interesting point in the article was when one mom wondered whether the fact that she had tattoos would make her daughter want tattoos. Charles and I have joked more than once that Abby will likely hate tattoos just because we have them, which makes us wonder what form her teenage rebellion will come in (not even two and the teenage angst is being imagined already!).

Maybe she’ll join a convent.

Denial
There was very, very strong denial at the beginning. Possibly because I thought we were on the same page, and so all this seemed to come out of left field, but soon the little hints began to add up and I began to suspect that there was something more to his off-hand “jokes” and comments.

Anger
Anger is perhaps a strong word for the emotion I felt, but my feelings were certainly far from happiness as my denial turned to disbelief. There was shock. There was displeasure. And I was definitely vexed. But as all of those wore off, I was mostly just confused. How did we get here? What had changed?

Bargaining
I’ll admit it. I tried to shape the conversations, and perhaps do a bit of convincing of my own, but it soon became clear that the decision was made in his head and that there was no bargaining to be had.

Depression
Again, depression is too strong of a term for my stint in this stage. Perhaps woefulness or glumness would cover it a bit more precisely, as I started to realize that this was a reality – I had given it a good fight, but the fight was taking too much out of me. I had to give in to avoid being consumed.

Acceptance
So, Yes, I have finally accepted that we are getting a mini-van.

Except, that last one isn’t totally true. I’m trying to accept it, I really am, but there’s a little part of me that feels like he will change his mind when the time comes. Now, if we actually had the mini-van I think I could accept it (it’d be hard not to, what with it sitting in our driveway and all), but until the moment that the keys are handed over, a small part of me will always hold out hope.

So I guess it’s not actually that melodramatic to say that a small part of me – that hope – will die when we get a minivan

It took three or four weeks, working weekends and evenings, but we’ve truly enjoyed our fence for the past two years, so it was definitely worth the sweat and blood (yes there was blood – I was briefly banned from using a hammer).

The pictures below don’t fully capture the work, and definitely do not capture the length of our fence. But they do show some of the fruits of our labour.

(There was also the new laminate floor that Charles installed in our basement when I was about eight months pregnant. That change, however, was not initiated by us but was in response to one of our cats taking offense to the carpet that had previously covered it.)

Surprisingly, this year we decided to continue the “Tracy pregnant = start home improvements!” trend by building Abby a swingset. But, not just something that could be thrown up in a matter of a few hours. Noooooo. Little did I know when I agreed that a swingset would be a good idea, that monkey bars were also part of the package. And if you have swings and monkey bars, you need something to bridge the two – and not just a slide platform, but a little fort. With climbing wall. And sandbox. And all of this comes in two tidy cardboard packages, delivered to your door.

The instructions said it would take two people eight to ten hours to build the playset. And although I’m kind of 1.5 people right now, since we do have Abby to contend with Charles was pretty much left on his own for this one while I entertained the small child. And waved from the window occasionally. I also helped hold some pieces at one point.

Again, the pictures below do not seem to truly capture the work. At least this time there was no blood.

I would say that it probably did get finished within the sixteen to twenty hours quoted in the instructions, and with the exception of the sandbox (as we need to buy sand and figure out how to cover it so that the neighbourhood cats don’t use it as a large litter box) it has received the approval of Abby.

Wheeeeeeee.

Abby: “Ewww.”
Me: “Ugh, those are gross.”
Charles: “Cool.”

What is really scary is that they are just shells – which means that even bigger versions crawled out of them.

And are somewhere in our yard.