The suspicion. The horror. The acceptance.

Shoes, that is.

A spotted a kid’s pair a few weeks ago while shopping, and while I’m pretty sure my mom didn’t let me wear jelly shoes when I was a kid because they were impractical, since Abby can’t walk yet I figured there was no reason not to get them for her. What can I say, aren’t parents suppose to live vicariously through their children?

Alas, they were out of Abby’s size, so I waited a week and went back. Nada. So, like the devoted mom that I have become, I went to every other kid’s store in the mall in search of jelly shoes until I found a pair in her size. I preferred the clear ones that had first caught my eye, but Abby seems to approve of these.

Litte toes in little shoes.

This being my first “official” Mother’s Day as a mother, I really wasn’t sure what I expected from it.

Ever since Abby was born, I certainly think alot about being a mother and what the experience means to me. There’s a part of me that really wants to capture the emotions that I feel, perhaps so that I can define them, or perhaps just so that I can reflect on them at a later date when Abby is a older or whenever our next child adds his or her stamp to it. But, so far I haven’t been able to find the right words. Try as I might, they seem to lurk just below the surface, teasing me with their presence and then darting back into the fog before I can gather them up. I feel as if the words that I do have may do motherhood an injustice, that they will merely brush the surface of things without getting down to what really matters the most. Because how do you put into words things like the overwhelming joy you get from watching your child figure something out for the first time, why a look from her can send you into a fit of laugher, or how she can break your heart every single day because it just becomes overloaded with Love for her?

Perhaps words just aren’t the right medium. But, since words are all I know, I keep chasing them.

And since words are what I know, and Mother’s Day is what is now, it was pretty easy to find essays and articles leading up to today on what I might expect from Mother’s Day, a.k.a. How to Celebrate Being a Mom. Or, I guess more precisely, how I should be celebrated as a mom. Some were very heartfelt, others a little more lighthearted. None quite summed up my thoughts on motherhood, but they did make for interesting reading I suppose. Many suggested that I could/should have asked for a day off today – a day to do whatever it was that my heart desired. But when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I was doing what I wanted: if it wasn’t for Abigail, I wouldn’t be celebrated today (I would still, of course, be celebrating my mother), so it kind of made sense to me that I would spend the day with her.

While I might not yet be able to adaquately sum up my experience as a mother, this is certainly the first year that I really noticed all of the Mother’s Day advertising and all of the gifts that they try to get you to buy to commemorate motherhood. And I did get gifts this morning, although, as with Abby’s birth, I didn’t “expect” anything.

I already got the greatest gift.

Cheesy, I know. But also true.

While you, my few readers and friends/family, are probably aware that Abby wears cloth diapers, there are two facts that most people who know us are not aware of. I figured it was time to fess up.

1. We wash Abby’s diapers ourselves.

True, we started out with a diaper service, which was perfect during those first few sleepless weeks. But, as the weeks went along and Abby grew longer, the diaper sizes did not – go longer, that is. They went wider, and when she was about five months old, they started leaking out on an almost daily basis. Investigating our options with the diaper service led us to two choices: go up another size (which would have added width as well, something we already had a bit too much extra of in the size she was in), or switch to the much thicker “overnight” diapers as they were touted to be longer.

In the end, we went for the thicker diapers but soon discovered that the promised length was marginal at best. So we still had a leaky-diapered five-month old, whose butt was now too bit to fit into pants intended for twelve-month olds. Not the outcome we were hoping for.

So, I started doing some reading. I already knew that there were alot of options out there for diapers, so I was pretty sure we could find something that would work for Abby. I was more concerned with figuring out the other little details: What was it really like to wash your own diapers? How often did you have to wash them? How did you deal with … you know … the poop?

Thankfully, there are quite a few people willing to share their experiences on the first two. And there are alot of things out there to help out with the last. Like biodegradable diaper liners that you just have to flip into and flush down the toilet. A win-win situation!

So, with that figured out, we moved onto the next task: which of the many diapers available would work best? And that’s where confession #2 comes in …

2. I actually prefer prefolds.

This one came as a bit of a surprise even to me. With the multitude of cloth diapers available (and there is a multitude!) we ended up at the plain, and some would say “old fashioned”, rectangles. We do have a few of the others that look a bit snazzier, but since any cloth diaper uses a cover and therefore is only visible while being changed, we went by form alone and the “boring” prefolds ended up being the slimest (and most versatile) diaper I found.

It’s been a two-month adventure with cloth diapering to match our seven month adventure with babying.

There’s something about cameras that make babies (and pets) immediately gravitate towards them.

When I’m feeding her, she reaches her hand up to play with my hair, entwining her fingers in it, twirling it, weaving her fingers in and out, smiling up at me with a twinkle in her eyes.

When I’m lying on the floor next to her reading to her, she reaches out and grabs a handful and YANKS on it, giggling, not letting go. When I finally extradite my hair, more than a few strands remain locked in her grasp.

Now I guess I’ll have to change that to broccoli-face. And broccoli hands … and broccoli hair …

After Abby was born, I had a bit of an identity crisis. I was now a “mom” and that label seemed to come with much more baggage than I had ever thought it would. It kind of reminded me of one of my favourite quotes as a teenager:

“This life has been a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received instructions on where to go, and what to do”.¹

I had no idea where to go, or what to do. Everything about being a parent makes you feel like a failure. After muddling my way (with much help from Charles) through the first few weeks, I figured out (although not quite quickly enough) not to read any more parenting books, or at least to take the ones I did read with a grain of salt, because every book tells you that you are doing it wrong. It doesn’t matter what “it” is (sleeping, feeding, dressing) you are definitely doing it wrong. And other people, well-meaning as they might be, generally do not make it easier by offering unsolicted advice. In the light of the day, I could stand by my/our decisions, but in the middle of the night, it was much, much easier to second-guess what I was doing. After all, I was just guessing for the most part. Guessing what she wanted. Guessing what she needed. ‘Cuz babies don’t have instructions.

On top of the stress of ruining our baby’s life by doing something as monsterous as feeding her when she was hungry (i.e. on demand), there was the fact that none of my clothes fit. Maternity clothes were too big. My regular clothes were too small. I could count on one finger the number of pants that fit. Another two fingers covered the number of skirts I could wear. I wanted to be a good homemaker (dinner on the table, laundry clean, house generally tidy) and a good wife (not looking as if I rotated through the same outfit every three days) but I wasn’t feeling good about myself as a person.

“Judge me all you want, just keep the verdict to yourself”.²

The problem arises when you are the one judging yourself. Internalizing all of those judgements just magnifies them. And in the two things that mattered most to me, my baby and my marriage, I judged myself as failing.

The good news is, I finally gave myself a reprieve. Crisis averted. The bad news is that, while all my pants and skirts fit now, my shirts still don’t fit. Darn breastfeeding boobs.

¹ Courtesy of the epitome of teen angst, miss Angela Chase.

² Courtesty of a cigarette ad, although I try to ignore that fact.

What am I passionate about?

Hmm … well, it kinda depends on when you ask me.

Fifteen or so years ago I would have answered “U2″. I devoured every book, news article, and shred of even remotely related piece of information I could find on them, owned every studio album they put out, and collected all the singles I could lay my hands on (oh, those lovely years of 100% disposible income).

Nine years ago I would have answered “my stories”. After separating my stories onto their own site to give them their own voice, I self-published two volumes of the collected stories, and devoted an entire day each week to story writing (oh, those lovely years of making my own schedule).

Five years ago I would have said “snowboarding and kayaking”. I took the lessons, bought the gear, and spent evenings and weekends either on the slopes or on the waves. Even hitting my head (in both sports) did little to dampen my interest.

Now? Now, I’m most passionate about seemingly little things, like putting Abby in cloth diapers. There are other things that I love, like knitting and pugs (and knitting things for pugs), but I don’t know if I would say that I am necessarily “passionate” about them. But cloth diapers definitely fall into the “passionate” category for me. Even before we decided to have a child, I knew that I wanted to use cloth diapers. The more I read, the more determined I was. I never really even considered disposible diapers. Perhaps that’s why I don’t find cloth diapers to be the inconvenience that others suppose them to be.

Or perhaps it is just another instance of my “fierce independence” (a.k.a. “stubbornness”) showing through.

How do you put a value on a person?

My value as a blogger? Probably not high given my frequency (which as we know is infrequent).

My value as a maid is definitely zilch. I’m pretty good at making messes, not so good at cleaning them up, particularly when baking – I’m a catastrophe then. Cooking is only marginally better. Luckily we have a housekeeper who comes in every two weeks to set our house in order.

Facebook tells me that I have 96 friends, so I guess 96 people value me as a friend, or at least want to use me to pad their friends list.

This site sets my Twitter value at $24. That’ll buy you about four Venti Chai Lattes and two lemon loafs, with a bit of change to spare. Or one very nice skein of yarn.

Some people might set my value by how much money I make, but right now I make no money. Actually now all I do is spend money (groceries, bills, baby), so does that assign me a negative value? On Judgement Day, will I be handed a bill showing my balance owing?

How about my value as a mother? As a wife? As a daughter, sister, sister-in-law? As a friend? There are so many ways you can compartmentalize your value and come up seemingly lacking by looking at only one segment.

There is a quote by Michel de Montaigne: “The value of life is not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long yet very little.”

I like that way best.