Lessons: Careful What You Wish For

When I was pregnant I had many "when you're older" conversations with my belly.  These consisted of things I wanted him to experience, things I wanted to do with him, things he'd be allowed to have, etc.  Because I was fairly certain he would be an only child I thought about extracurricular activities.  Would he like to join a sports team at a park?  Maybe he'd prefer some sort of martial arts.  Or dance.  Or chess!  Then I thought about how I'd react to these preferences, if there were any I'd object to.  Some women eat pickles and ice cream, I talked to my growing abdomen, to each her own.

I Have Failed

Across the street from where I live there is a little house.  An older lady lives there with what appears to be her teenage son.  I sometimes see a girl but mostly just the mother and son.

Keeping Afloat

I can't say I'm the most positive person around, my wife likes calling me a debbie downer.  It's funny because, despite her accusation, I make great efforts to stay positive and not dwell on myself.  But right now I need to vent a little.  Maybe a l not.  I'm only human, I have feelings and emotions and pains.

For the past two or three weeks... maybe a month, I've not been well and the only thing keeping me going forward is knowing it could be worse.  And it looks like life is on a mission to make that as painfully obvious as possible right now.  I have two friends that have lost husbands, one with a daughter the same age as Nicholas.  One friend who was in the hospital for almost a week due to strong contractions and, basically, premature labour.  She's only 26 weeks along and very young and scared.  Someone who miscarried at 30 weeks due to shitty doctors (not in the US, no possibility for suing).  I could go on with what is going on around me and I do feel for these people and I know full well their situations are far worse than mine.

But I still have mine.

Unsolicited Advice

Part of being a parent is getting unsolicited advice.  I have come to accept that and, as a parent, I have several responses that I use for such advice:

“Oh, that sounds interesting. I’ll look into it.”

“Thanks, but that doesn’t really align with my parenting style.”

And an oldie, but works:

“Thanks...”

Pictures of Nicholas

When Nicholas was born we used to take him to Kiddie Kandids every month to get monthly, professional pictures of him.  Our goal was to get yearly pictures after that.  Well, things didn't quite work out and my next experience at a photo studio (Target) was a pretty bad one.  It has always been really hard for him to focus and follow directions and look where you are trying to get him to look.  We now know why but at the time it just felt like studio pictures were out of the question.  Ever since then I have wanted to hire a professional photographer to take pictures of him outdoors, where he is the most comfortable and the most himself.  With the wedding in December we hired a photographer to do some engagement/family photos as well as the ceremony.  They got some amazing pictures of him!  Here are some of my favourites:

Back! Again...

Back in November I had written a rather lengthy post but did not publish it because it was late and I wanted to give it one more read through for grammar and what not.  Well, life happened and I never went back to it.  In retrospect, it seems senseless now and I may tell that story at a later date or in a series of posts later on.  Life has happened and so lets get caught up.

A Year Later...

*dusts off dust and cobwebs... watches spiders run*

It has been a little over a year since the last post and there are various reasons for that.  Mostly, I was convinced my last post was around potty training time and that 'catching up' would be too monuments.  Turns out last post was about destruction.  So let me start by updating that.

Momma Vs Mom: No, It's Not The Same Person

I've mentioned Mom (aka Mommy #2 sometimes) before but I have never really explained how things work.  Mostly because no one has ever asked and it's too complicated for me to try to explain without any prompting.  However, it has been brought to my attention that people may be confused so here it is: Who is Mom, who is Momma, and how the heck does a child get this?