2010 in a Nutshell (Hah!)!

New Years resolutions. Hot topic of debate. Do you make them or not? Some people swear by them and some people swear not to do them. Either way is fine but if the only reason you are not doing them is because you are afraid you will fail I think that is a cop out. I was reading an article in Alive magazine, actually it was the Editor's note, and he made a really good point that at some point in the year (if you do not want to conform to New Year's Resolutions that is) you really should go over your past year and figure out where you want to be by the end of the next year. You need to make sure you're going in the right direction and then you can make your goals that are actually achievable. We do this with our Univera business. Accountability is the key to success. So I wanted to write everything we did this past year as a review.

I'm going to start with December 31st, 2009 because it's pretty much the new year. The last day of 2009 we bought a Burgundy 2006 Ford Escape which we named R.B. aka Ron Burgundy. We love him! After getting our car stolen and borrowing Justin's parents little green truck for awhile we knew we should get a family vehicle and since all our cash was going towards buying a house we ended up financing a newer vehicle than expected. Who knew you pay cheaper monthly installments on a newer vehicle that costs more??

We spent new years eve celebrating our new purchase with the Senger family playing games, eating and laughing until we cried. Turning in at a reasonable hour of 10pm since I was 7 months pregnant and tired. New Years Day we tried the usual rope my Dad into playing games with Mom and us. We had a nice quiet dinner with them. The next week or so consisted of me looking around the house going, "I really should be packing something right now," but then feeling too tired after work and having a nap instead. It was great to wake up when Justin got home from work and then have him make me dinner. I got really un-picky about what to eat since I was just so happy I didn't have to make dinner myself.

As January continued, we went out for dinner a day early for Justin's birthday and my mom made him a delicious raspberry ganache cake. He spent his birthday at a Univera event which is another note worth mentioning. December 20th, 2009 was the day Justin signed up to be a Univera associate, a pivotal marker, setting the tone for 2010. January 15-17 we spent in Naramata at a Kundalini Yoga immersion which was amazing. It was my second one and Justin's third. It was a smaller one but that might have been what made this one so memorable, we were all able to go a little deeper and have more meaningful conversation with one another.

After the immersion we felt refreshed and renewed for the task of packing up our house which is what we spent the next two weeks on! Our house deal completed January 28th and we moved in January 30th. I spent my evenings unpacking the following week and the first weekend in February we did a couples yoga class for labour with Erin and Daryl. We also painted what we thought would be the nursery a nice buttercream yellow.

On February 11th, I finished unpacking our last two boxes and to our surprise on February 12th, the first day of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics at about 5am (4:50am to be exact) my water broke. Our sweet angel of a little boy came 3 hours later at Penticton Regional Hospital at 7:58am after much confusion, surprise, and very little pain but what I like to call my hardest workout to date. Eli was lucky to have Daddy and Auntie Erin present at birth (along with 2 nurses, an Obstetrician, a Pediatrician and my midwife Christy).

They kept us in the hospital as long as the could, trying to find things wrong with my so called premature baby but the worst they found was a mild heart murmur and a little jaundice so we were finally released February 16th. I said hi in passing to my friend Jenn who had her little Kaitlyn on February 16th. The next couple days were spent trying to get everything we needed for our little surprise! On February 20th I had my (or Eli's I guess) Baby Shower. My mom, Auntie Sue and cousin Amber threw me an amazing shower full of delicious food and spectacular, generous gifts. I think everyone was pretty excited that Eli was there so they could meet him. The rest of February was spent adjusting as I don't really remember much else from it.

In March Justin was laid off from his job at SageKey as a computer programmer which was pretty scary at first but he came home with a smile on his face. It was a really good thing for us. He was not happy at the job, the work atmosphere left something to be desired. He got to put extra time into his Univera business and spend lots of time with his son in the first few months of his life. A blessing really thanks to EI. Another blessing I forgot to mention was the Karma Krew that our friend Fateh started for us. For 40 days on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, angels would drop lovely dinners on our doorstep. Thank you again angels!

Eli's best friend Cohen was born on March 19th to our best friends Erin and Daryl. So we organized a Karma Krew meal delivery for them as well. We also tried to get as many pictures of the buddies as we could.

In April a third member was added to the crew when on April 16th Lauren was born to friends Amanda and Jeff.

In May Justin and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. My mom was in Redwater, AB visiting her sister so luckily Erin and Daryl were able to babysit Eli. We also went to our first Univera Vancouver Regional in May which was amazing! It was difficult with a newborn but we made it work. We got to meet Dr. Neil Tessler, the Naturopathic Doctor on our team and Justin got to hear Stephen Cherniske the Chief Science Office of our company speak. I heard it from the hallway with Eli who woke every time the audience clapped. We also went to a birthday party of our friend Hari Bhajhan at our friends house Sham Sunder and Pritamjot. This was really a turning point for us because we left with the energy from their beautiful home and wanted to make ours more like it. This is when we cancelled our cable tv and moved around our house. We made a yoga room and moved our tv out of our main living space (since then we've watched maybe two movies on it). May was about the time when Eli was able to hold his head up too, such a smart lil guy :) Mid-May I also started working 4 hours a week at my old job to help them out through the busy months.

In June Justin started working for a Alkaloid Networks with Jeff who was my old boss's Computer Tech Support. He started out working part time, gradually getting to full time as Jeff left on vacation. Justin started doing Univera booths at the Farmer's Markets too which was really useful in upping his confidence with product knowledge and general networking. June I spent mostly outside walking with my fellow mommies and babies. I believe June was when Eli started to roll over in every direction.

In July I took the plunge into my two year yoga teacher training program which after the first meeting I instantly knew I had made the right choice. July was also lots of visiting. Lots of friends came back to the Okanagan and we took our first BIG roadtrip. We slept in a teepee in Golden, got lost in Calgary and then camped with the Hebert family in Forestburg, AB for a few days helping Aunt Lynnette and Uncle Grant celebrate 25 years with a vow renewal and party. Then we had a brief jaunt at West Edmonton Mall and visited Baba Sue and Uncy Dave in Redwater, AB. My cousin Amber came over and made us dinner with her hubby Jason. It was a short but sweet visit. We headed home the following day and couldn't quite make it home so stayed a night in Kamloops. You could hardly call it a night actually, we slept in a room for four hours and continued home. July was when Eli learned how to sit on his own and started rocking on all fours.

By his 6 month Birthday on August 12th Eli could crawl. We also found out he loved food! He has eaten pretty much everything we've given him. He also said a few words here and there like "hi" and "I know", intentional or not, still neat! We also had more visiting! Yay summer! We also attended Eli's first Peach Fest and Eli's first PNE! The PNE trip was both fun and sad. The sad part was this is when our two ferrets went to their new home with friends Grace, Cyril and their "business": Cyd, Charlie and Cemetry. It was a sad day but we know we made the right choice. They are getting the love, attention and care they deserve now. The Okanagan Univera team hosted a really successful Univera event on Ironman weekend as well. This gave us momentum into the fall and I decided to be more involved with the business as well.

In September I decided to give free yoga classes at my house for practice in teaching which went really well half the time and the other half no one showed up. Still it was really good practice for me! Fateh was also back in town so she was able to help us be more focused in the Univera business and bring more accountability to us. We went on our first camping trip with Erin, Daryl, Cohen, Jeff, Amanda and Lauren up to Headwaters. That many babies was very interesting and loud. Also the cabin was very hot. This much closeness resulted in all the babies getting their first cold. September was around the time we all started doing Wednesday weekly baby parties alternating houses. This is also when Stephanie an Dayla joined our rag tag little group. I stopped doing my 4 hour a week shifts at work too since they were getting slow.

October was when I started my first yoga class for money with a private group of 4 women who I shared many laughs and good times with over the next two months! Eli had his first thanksgiving that we shared with both sets of Grandparents and Uncle Marcel. A dear friend of mine passed away on Thanksgiving Monday, Curtis you are missed, I think of you often! We also did a trip to Vancouver for the Taste of Health, a vegetarian food fair to show off our Univera products which was not immediately successful but was a great learning experience for us all. We did a Univera event with Justin's mom in Malakwa in October as well, it was extremely successful! Eli had his first Halloween and we a had a pumpkin photo shoot with all the babies which even got them famous on the local news. His first Halloween was spent with Grandma and Grandpa Ha and he trick or treated at Erin and Daryl's house only. But we watched Garfield Halloween and Mom and Dad ate his candy. Good times. Eli got his first tooth in October with the second one following about a week later and he was also a super crawler by then able to move wherever he wanted. He also started pulling up.

November was a busy month. The first weekend Justin went to a yoga immersion in Naramata and Eli and I had a sleepover with Grandma Ha while Grandpa was away as well. The next weekend we spent at the Univera Vancouver Regional. This trip coincided with my Birthday which was a fun day spent with our friend Tasha and we met up later with Lisa, Fateh and Pritamjot and had some yummy Mexican food. The Regional was a lot of fun but we had to travel back that night for my yoga teacher training the next morning. The trip also made us very aware of our need for a budget so we installed one immediately. I got my first Univera customer (our 10th in total though) in November too which I was very proud of. At the beginning of November Eli took his first steps too (Nov 8 to be exact!).

December I started teaching yoga classes at Lakeside Fitness which I have really been enjoying. I also got choked enough at Bell to cancel my phone when my contract is done. And I got an iPhone! I know this is a material possession and I shouldn't be so attached to it but it has seriously changed my life. I can do lesson planning any where and I can do facebook and emails and shopping lists and games all while Eli is napping on me. I spend less time on facebook too in general which is actually surprising since it is more readily available.

We did our usual December traditions of the Harris lunch in Vernon, a dinner with friends Rob and Gayle, and I did the Salvation Army Christmas Hampers Day where they hand out the hampers. I also taught a special yoga class for Prospera Credit Union.

Our first Christmas as a family was really special, Justin's brother Marcel stayed with us for 5 nights and Justin's parents for 3 and we spent Christmas Eve at our house playing games and eating pizza having a great time. Christmas was a relaxed day with movies and a ton of food at my Mom an Dad's. Eli got pleasantly spoiled but not over the top. I like a little bit of restraint at Christmas. We didn't exchange gifts with Justin's family but they bought a few gifts for Eli. My parents and us did a smaller than normal Christmas which was nice too. It was amazing having all our immediate family together. It was really special. We did a gift steal too which was fun! Eli ended up with a really good mix of clothes, books, and toys, good job and thank you to all the gift givers! Justin and I got lots of amazing things too but some of my favorites were a Fruv gift certificate which I spent immediately on boxing day, a Quinoa cookbook, and a hand drawn picture of Eli by my wonderful brother Marcel. We are a lucky family.

Eli was officially walking in December, he toddles around everywhere. He also had one of his two front teeth poke through, the other one is trying to follow. Super cranky as a result. We also got tired of going to bed really late so we installed a bedtime routine of milk, teeth brush, bath (which he officially likes now!), story and rocking and lullaby to sleep.

It's been nice having Justin off work for just over a week. And we plan on ending the year at home just the three of us with some Indian food and maybe a movie.

Ok here is the ACTUAL nutshell: New car, new house, new baby, new friends, new jobs and a new business. Wow. What will the next New year bring?

After all this I need to reflect a bit before I make any resolutions.

Christmas Break

I really only have one question or issue to discuss tonight. It's one that is really bothering me today. How come Daddy's get to take a Christmas Break from work while Mommy's are expecting to keep on exactly as normal?

I've been working my butt off today all day and I barely got enough of a break to get prepped for the yoga class I taught tonight and I am just exhausted!

Mommy's should have some sort of Christmas Break too. Couldn't we split days, you're on Christmas vacation for the first half and I get the second?

Just. So. Tired. Going to sleep now.

All he wants for Christmas are his two front teeth

I know it's a lame name, probably very over-used as well. But it's true. Upper tooth #1 reared it's ugly head sometime between bedtime and wake time. Not a particularly fun night, I'm hoping tonight is better now that it has initially poked through but we'll see. I wonder if he'll get the other before Christmas as well just to make that corny line applicable, hehe.

Other news is that he turned 10 months a week and a half ago. Still no weight stats but I did measure him with my tape measure and it read 30 inches on the dot.

AND I've been so fed up lately with being up with Eli until 11-12 at night that I started a bedtime routine. So far it's helped immensely to get him to go down for the night. He's down by 9pm (9:15 pm the first night we tried). He wakes up still two-three times (or four or five last night, geesh) but still I think we may actually be on the road to sleeping through the night. Though my cousin with a 5 year old informed me hers still doesn't which frightened me a little I must say. But yeah so every night at 8:30pm I feed, brush teeth, bathe, read a story, and rock him for about 5 minutes and he is out like a light. Amazing! I even have some time to blog now! Maybe even work on child #2 sometime, lol! I actually asked my husband last night after Eli was asleep and I had finished cleaning the house... "what did I use to do before we had Eli?" So tonight I am blogging and going to read for a bit and hit the sack early. Because he is going to sleep earlier he definitely is awake by 7am which is not a draw back if I get to sleep early too!

The actual drawback to this though: I don't get to have a life past 8pm. *sigh

My hubby and his bro are at the Winter Solstice meditation put on by our Kundalini Yoga group which also sort of functions as the holiday party and social. And I have to miss it all for the sake of routine and the better sleep of all. Oh well, I knew there would be sacrifices when it came to having children and I love being a mom, even if it means my nights out now end at 8pm and after that involve blogging, reading, and sleep. That still sounds like a pretty damn good trade off for the adorable bundle of sweetness that I get to call my child.

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays everyone! Looking forward to another amazing year for 2011!

Walk like a man...

Hello!

How do you define when your child is officially "walking"? Is it when they take their first steps on their own? Is it when the take a few (like 5) steps all at once? Or is it when they frequently take 5-6 steps in the period of a day? Or is it when they are walking on their own and no longer falling down?

Well Eli took his first step on November 8th, my dearly departed friend Curtis' birthday. And to date he is walking 5-6 steps on his own probably 10 times a day. Can I consider this walking? Do I really care? I will likely just tell him if he asks when he started walking that it was around 9-10 months. Do we really need to get into specifics with every thing? I find it tiring. All I know is that my little man is adorable, despite that fact that he just unravelled all of Daddy's toolbox string and trailed it over to where I am sitting.

Unfortunately it appears he has eczema. Just two spots on his leg but still. Poor lil' guy.

I am dealing with one major issue at the moment. Guilt about weaning. We really want to have another child and it doesn't appear that is possible for us while breastfeeding. So my plan was to replace a feeding with goat's milk, the midday one. As I read more and more about the best way to do this and everything told me I was weaning him. I didn't really even realize I was weaning him. I was only going to take away one feeding to see if I could bring back my cycle but now I read I'm weaning him? There suggestions were to add honey to milk to make it sweeter and more in line with breastmilk. And honey is only allowed after one year hence making me feel guilty about weaning him when he's not even 10 months yet! I know lots of people wean much earlier but it's onto formula which is a little different. So the question is am I depriving Eli of what he needs in order to give him a sibling sooner? It feels a little like I am.

So that's the major decision I'm dealing with right now. I tried it one day and he would absolutely not drink any of the goat's milk. It could have been the bottle too because he hates the bottle (has since about 6 months). So I was feeling like I was forcing it on him and felt terrible and decided I just wasn't ready to wean him. Me, myself was not ready to wean. Then after 2 days break, I decided to try rice milk in his sippy cup. And I even changed it to the sippy cup lid rather than the bottle like lid (which weirdly enough he would take for some reason). And he drank it! Only about an ounce or two and he tends to do this weird thing where he drinks and spits so I'm not sure how much of it he gets but he ended up going from 10:30 to about 3:30 without breastmilk which he has done before but not often. A couple times at night and maybe one or twice during the day. And he only drank an ounce or two so maybe we can do this. I'm feeling a little better just by thinking I am only taking away one feeding. I really will only do the one feeding replacement until he's a year old. That makes sense to me. Then if it's enough to get me pregnant again, it's enough. If it isn't, we'll see how I feel at a year. If I need to breastfeed to 18 months or two years, I guess we'll have closer to a 3 year gap between kids, whatever happens is meant to happen. It has to be the right time for everyone.

So I am feeling optimistic again. Also I think it's cool that he'll drink from the sippy cup lid now. He also eats lots of finger foods now. It took him quite awhile to figure them out but he totally gets it now. Our best idea was to give him chunks of fruit (which he loves!) We gave him a whole strawberry on November 14th (and many others immediately after) and he just chowed down. It's great. Feeding has gotten easier and fun again!

Now bedtime!