Bluebird's Nest

A couple of people have asked me “how did you find childcare?” and “how did you know that childcare was going to treat your baby well?”. This blog post will hopefully answer some of these questions.

Research first

The first thing I did was research. You want to know about the ins and outs of licensed vs unlicensed. Unlicensed usually means that they have less kids to look after, it’s home based and it can be cheaper. If you go with unlicensed, you want to ensure that their daycare is safe, clean and well maintained.

If you go with licensed, you will have the peace of mind that the daycare will have at bare minimum a yearly inspection and the daycare is required to meet certain criteria. These establishments can be in the home or in a facility. They generally will have more kids per adult.

Ask for references in all cases whether it’s licensed or not.

More info on choosing childcare here. 

Where do I look for daycares?

You could look online (I didn’t find very many websites out there for daycares in Victoria – a possible market for daycare websites?). Or go to Usedvictoria.com. I heard that some people have had good success with usedvic, but we didn’t go this route.

I went straight to CCRR. Their mission “Victoria Child Care Resource and Referral, in partnership with the community, strives to enhance the availability and accessibility of a range of quality child care options and services to meet the needs of children, families, and child care providers.”

Here you can fill out a free online form to request all the different types of childcare that are located in Great Victoria. I believe there is also something similar for different parts of Vancouver Island.

Once you fill in the form, you will receive an email back quite quickly giving you a list of all the childcare that is in the areas you specified. And a bunch of helpful information on how to determine good daycares. All free.

Within that information you will find a lot of info pertaining to each daycare: contact info, address, hours, license type, price, what kinds of activities the children do on a typical day, training from the provider, availability, and sometimes the provider will write a small helpful write up on a day in the life at the facility. Keep in mind this info might not be completely up to date.

What do I do next?

Critique all the daycares that were sent to you. Do they watch TV? Do they have ECE training (Early Childhood Education Training), is that important to you? Do they do training to keep their skills up? Do they do a fair amount of activities, crafts, music, dance, etc…? Do they go outside? Do they do out trips?

Narrow down your search and then you must phone them. This is the most daunting part. And if you think about it, daycares during the day are usually busy tending to children, so they most likely won’t answer the phone. LEAVE A MESSAGE. Record on your sheet those that you left a message for, so you can go back later and call them again if they didn’t get back to you. It could take them several days to get back to you. Don’t get discouraged.

Ask them some questions as outlined on this document. Ask them if they have space, and if they don’t, GET ON THEIR WAITLIST if they have one. There’s no harm. The worst that’s going to happen is they are going to call you back and you already have childcare by that time and then you say “no thank you”.

Don’t be alarmed if they ask if your child is a boy or a girl. Some daycares want to have a good mix of the different genders. This is allowed.

Viewing the daycare

If they do have space, arrange to view their establishment. Take this checklist with you. You’ll want to prepare for two visits. One when there are children present to see how the provider works with the children. And then one when there are no children present (usually after hours) when you would fill in the paperwork.

Do not skip this step of viewing the establishment! I can tell you we went and viewed a licensed daycare which was located in a coop after hours. The provider looked like she hadn’t had a shower for a week. The space where the kids played was their living room on couches from the 60s. Downstairs there was a concrete play area with no windows. There was a school across the street but her backyard was only dirt and so very small. We hightailed it out of there after only about 15mins.

I was very surprised that this place passed a licensed daycare!

When you’re at the daycare you want to come prepared to ask a lot of questions. I used this sheet for the questions. Don’t worry, the provider is used to it. And by the way, the provider is also sizing you up at the same time to ensure your family is a good fit for the daycare. Best behaviour y’all!

TIP: Bring your child when he/she is fully rested and fed.

Decision time

So you’ve got all this information now gathered, you’re nervous about going back to work, leaving your baby, and now you have to make a really hard decision. Which daycare do you go with (hopefully there are a couple to chose from).

The best course at this point is to call Daycare Licensing (if you’ve chosen a licensed daycare) – 250-519-3401. This is another bonus for choosing a licensed daycare. When you call them, you can let them know that you have a few daycares you would like some more info on. They usually will put you through to the licensing officer for each daycare. This officer can then go through with you the different visits they have made, how attentive the provider has been to making fixes (if needed), and the best part is they can tell you if the establishment has had any issues. Now, for privacy reasons they can’t tell you what issues they have had. One of the drawbacks though is that if the daycare has had an issue (lets say a neighbour calls in to say that the daycare is too loud), this will show up as an issue and the licensing officer can’t tell you what the issue is so it leaves you with a sense of, is this place really ok?

I can tell you from my experience that, the place we ended up putting our wee babe was a licensed place with zero issues.

I can also tell you that I had called for 3 other places and one of the places was pretty terrible (not my coop nightmare, I didn’t even call for that one).

Lastly, make sure you call those references! I’m sure they all are going to make glowing recommendations of the daycare but it’s great to finally get a first hand recommendation. Then you get to hear how loving, kind, gentle, and fun the provider is! Almost the best part of the process IMHO.

Next steps

Let the daycare know that you’ve chosen them (and let the other daycares know you didn’t chose them) and fill in the necessary paperwork and deposit.

Start your little bean on a gradual entrance to the daycare to get them warmed up (this is also for your separation anxiety too!!). The daycare is more than likely very used to new children and new parents leaving their children so they should be very accommodating and understanding.

Final thoughts…

Finding daycare is probably one of the most difficult, emotional things a parent can go through with many ups and downs (I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have shed some tears through this experience. At one point we had everything all lined up, just needed to go sign the paperwork and then the daycare provider called me to say she was having health issues and might have to shut the daycare down. I had to start my search all over again from the beginning! So frustrating.). I’d chalk it up to planning a wedding! It’s not easy. It’s time consuming. There are set backs. But in the end if you do all the leg work, you will find yourself with a wonderful daycare, perfect for you and your child.

There is a tonne of good information located here that helped me immensely. Don’t skip reading all of it.

Good luck! You’re going to find the perfect place.

Side note

If anyone is interested in starting a side business with me on doing all this leg work for parents (save for visiting the facilities), let me know. I’ve always thought that this would be the perfect business to get going as it just takes so much time to do all the research! Imagine if you as a parent could just pay someone to look for all the daycares, set up appointments for you to go and visit, call the licensing, call references if you really didn’t want to do that, all for a small fee. How wonderful would that be!!

You read that right. I’ve got a new job!

Ok, so you might wonder, what is my old job? I am a Web Analyst (I always think it’s funny that the word anal is in my job title), and I look after one very important internal Drupal based intranet for 30,000 employees. I adore the team I’m on and my boss and I are pretty much inseparable when it comes to work. She’s my ying, I’m her yang. Bread and butter. Salt and pepper. You get the idea. So I’m going to miss her like crazy.

Why would I leave said job you might ask?

For a long long long time, ever since I took said job, I have been wanting staff. (People to learn from, to motivate and grow with, to support and encourage. I also want to branch out and see other parts of our organization.) Not from a corporate position (like where I am now) but more ministerial, more granular as they say in our lingo.

The time has come. I’m nervous, excited, stoked, scared, joyful, overwhelmed, and looking forward to what the future has to hold. I feel like a new kid on the first day of school knowing a handful of people.

Some people have already told me that I have a big role to fill and a big job ahead of me. Some people have told me that they are looking to me for the experience and knowledge that I will bring. I guess that makes me feel wanted. The peeps back in my old stomping ground tell me that there will be big shoes to fill when I leave. So does big shoes equal, big job ahead of me?

I’m hoping so.

Have you ever left the comfort of your job to branch out and try something new? Have you followed your dreams to the point of scaredom? Do you wonder what your professional future holds?

The tweenager has been is Swiss school for a while now and a few people have been asking how she is enjoying it and what it’s like for her. Additionally, I wanted her to give us a snapshot of her trip to the Jura for a week with school as this is such a unique experience for her.

Please feel free to ask your own questions in the comments below and she will happily be sure to respond toute de suite!

How long have you been going to school in Switzerland now?

I have been going to school since August 22. So about a month.

How are you liking it?

School is much different in Canada then in Switzerland, I really like school here and I think it’s better than school in Canada.

What subjects do you have?

I take music, math, science, history, religious history, drawing, sewing, German, PE…

What is your favourite and why?

My favourite subject is History, because I love stories about Greek and Egyptian mythology.

What subject do you like the least?

PE, out teacher insists we run lap after lap around the track, right now we are doing 1200 meters, 1,2 km. of non-stop running.

Have you made many friends?

Yes, in Switzerland everyone wanted to accept me into their group (especially when they heard I was Canadian).

How is school different here than in Canada?

Wow, the most striking difference between schools is class changes; in Canada all the classes are in a wing or pod of a building, FAAS (Fine Arts and Applied Skills) are in the north pod and all French immersion classes in the east pod. In Switzerland we move around a lot, PE is about a half an hour away in a stadium in the suburbs, art and music in the high school and more music, academics, and sewing are in the 4^th floor Elementary school.

Tell us about a typical day at Swiss school.

So the day starts with me not wanting to get out of bed then I get dressed, eat breakfast, and leave for school. We walk there and, take Tuesday for example, walk to the high school for music in first block then after that I go with my friends back to the normal building then we go to PE on the other side of town and then my mom comes and gets me for lunch. We go home and eat lunch for two hours, back to school for a while and home again. Usually pretty busy!

You just went on a trip to the Jura with your school. Tell us about that.

The Jura is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Imagine cows walking past your bedroom window every morning and fields stretching away and away. Here you are the one enclosed and horses and cows are grazing and having adventures totally free to go anywhere they want.

What did you like the most?

My favourite part of camp was the course d’orientation that means orientation race. We teamed up in groups of three and we got sent to different posts in about a 5km radius, it’s a race to see who can go to the 9 posts first.

Tell us about a typical day.

7:30am the teacher comes and wakes us up then puts on some good music

8:00am we eat breakfast

8:30am we brush our teeth and finish getting ready

9:00am we play ball assis

11:00am-1:00pm we leave for a walk (depending on the time we either eat a picnic of have lunch at the chalet)

4:00pm we get back

4:30pm we play more ball assis or ping pong

7:00pm we eat dinner

8:30pm we play pin pong or foose ball

9:30pm we go to bed

11:30pm we go to sleep

What was the food like?

Some times the food was really good (like paella) and some times really bad (like thai soup). It was really cool that any one who wanted to could cook.

What is the boom and what was it like?

The boom is a dance at the end of the camp where all the guys ask girls to dance and try to impress them with break dancing; it is as fun as it sounds. The boom was super fun and I even got to slow dance with my crush… They played lots of good songs in English and in French.

Tell us about the slow dancing. And don’t leave anything out.

It doesn’t matter who asks, guy or girl, you always have to say yes. My two best friends are both really pretty and lots of guys like them so they didn’t even get a chance to sit down. When you’re dancing with somebody it is okay that if at any point in the dance it gets awkward you can stop and walk away from them. In general you only slow dance for approx. 30 seconds per guy (unless later on he asks you again).

Was there any drama at camp?

Not really (besides everyone figuring out who I have a crush on).

Was there anything that happened that was not amazing?

Mmmmm… boys beating each other up but I think that’s part of the experience.

How do you think the camp changed you?

Well I think I’m a lot more fit and can walk greater distances.

Did you miss me? Even a little?

Let’s say that.

Yesterday, we got the keys to our new apartment in Vevey. I had seen photos of it and to be honest with you I was a bit nervous about it as living in the house has been amazing and from what the photos looked like, it looked SMALL.

“On the shore of Lake Geneva, Vevey is a town of images, culture and shopping. Home of the Nestlé headquarters and several museums, Vevey’s charm enticed Charlie Chaplin to spend the last 25 years of his life there.”

Let’s just say, I was really surprised and totally happy when I got to see what it’s actually like. It’s bright and twice the size than I thought it was. It has an amazing view of the mountains and the lake. The beds are great (except the tweenager is a bit worried about her bed as it’s pretty flat) and there’s plenty of room to have people spend the night in the pull out couch in the living room if they want.

Some drawbacks:

• There are 50 stairs you need to walk up to get to our place on the 4th floor. I’m definitely going to get my exercise.
• You have to pay to use the laundry and it’s in the basement. I’m not sure I know how I’m going to get the baby and the laundry down there. I guess it will be one of those experiences that you always remember.
• We don’t have a car. YIKES!!

The pros:

• It’s really close to the tweenagers school and the centre of the city so we can walk there no problem.
• It’s really close to the lake.
• It’s about an hour and a half walk to Chateau de Chillon.
• It’s a beautiful walk from Vevey to Montreaux
• It’s about a 30 seconds walk away from the hospital if anything goes wrong.
• It’s walking distance to the city of Vevey which is a beautiful lakeside town with markets, shopping, dining, etc…

All in all, I’m excited about making the final move there. Right now, we’re a bit in limbo where we’re living in Bussigny, but some of our stuff is in Vevey. This is also proving to be a problem too as my hubby has lost his glasses and we’re not sure if he left them at Hans’ house or maybe I accidentally took them to Vevey with the stuff we brought yesterday.

I’m looking forward to be in our final destination for the next 4 months. No more transitions. We can finally settle in a bit.

Speaking of the tweenager starting school tomorrow. Poor thing has her summer cut shorter than usual as Canada doesn’t go back until after Labour Day. That’s not too bad though as she gets 2 weeks off in October that Canada doesn’t get.

I’ll write more later on the initial first days of her school and how her teacher is, if there are language differences, if she made any friends, how she likes her class/school etc… I have to be honest, I’m even a little nervous for her but she’s such a good soul and she’s so strong and is easy to make friends, I’m sure she’s going to do amazing. I can’t wait to hear all about it. And I’ll be right there to drop her off and pick her up. ?

Some links:

• My Switzerland – Vevey
• Montreux Riviera
• Wikipedia – Vevey

Tonight’s blog is written from a raw place in my heart. Tonight my wee babe went for her first ever sleepover to my in-law’s place. We’re doing this as a trial for her (and me) to see how it goes and get her used to sleeping at their house as we have two upcoming weddings that we are attending and if you know anything about Swiss weddings, they go until around 4 am. No kidding.

So today has been heavy day. All day long I’ve known that around 6pm, I need to part ways with my wee babe and hand her over to her very capable grandparents. I’ve been dreading it. Not because I’m worried about them but because I’m worried about her and how much I know it’s me who can sooth her when everyone else can’t. And trust me, there are times every night that she gets fussy and it’s only me who can calm her down. So what’s she going to do? Explode? I guess in my head, I’ve maybe built it up to be something like that.

So we drop her off. Hugs, snuggles, cuddles, one last breast feed, one last smile, one last giggle. And as we leave she makes a little whine and I make a little whine, knowing that I’m not going to see her until tomorrow and knowing that she doesn’t know that or know what’s in store for her.

I miss her immediately. I don’t know why I’m feeling this way as I’ve already done this once before when my tweenager was a baby but I guess I forget about how I’ve already passed these feelings 11 years ago.

We head home (the 3 of us) and we have dinner. All through dinner I’m thinking about her. But I don’t say anything to my family as I don’t want to seem ridiculous and lame to them. Immediately following dinner I ask my hubby to call his parents and see how she is. Something inside of me is saying don’t listen in case she’s crying. I just don’t think I can take it. And wouldn’t you know it, she is crying.

I think maybe the hardest part was the fact that everything that was said about how she was feeling was said in French, so I’m constantly asking my hubby, what did they say? What’s going on? Did she eat the carrots? Did she drink her bottle? Are her pajama’s on? And the lag in translation was killing me. It seriously was all too much for me and I broke down. Come on. Let’s be honest here. We all knew it was going to happen anyway from the beginning of this story.

We take a break and call them back in a bit. And she’s still crying. At this point I’m wondering if maybe it was too early for her (and me). Should we go over there and pick her up? What am I feeling about that? A failure? What’s going to happen on Saturday night when I NEED them to look after her? Am I just being a pussy and over reacting? Maybe I just need a good cry.

And then she stops. Ok, she stopped enough for the tweenager to break into “Baby Beluga” and wouldn’t you know it, she’s looking for the voice that’s coming from the computer. (By the way, we’re skyping so we can see her but we haven’t turned on our camera so we don’t scar her by seeing us.) She was still a bit whiny and so I decided to add my voice to Baby Beluga but when I started singing it, more tears came. Then the hubby started crying so that got me going even more (I might be crying while I write this).  Then the part in the song where they say “Is your momma home…” I can’t even get through it without crying. The look in her eyes is priceless. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them so huge since I’ve known here. Like the cat in Shrek. Come pick me up, their beckoning to me.

So she was still a bit whiny and standing up usually solves this for her. Sit down = she cries. Stand up = she stops. Go figure, it’s pretty annoying. So I make a joke to papinou (grandpa) why don’t you stand up, dance and sing to the little angel. I feel like we’ve told them all the little quirks that make her happy so what’s one more thing. Hold her like this so her fingers are free so she can put them in her mouth, stand up, sing to her, dance, flap your arms in the air, do some jumping jacks, etc… you get the idea.

Papinou get’s up and throws on a dance CD. Where’d her get that from? And on top of it, it has graphics for the TV too so the wee babe is transfixed. He puts down the computer so we can see him holding her, dancing. It’s freaking AWESOME! The tears are gone, and now I’m smiling from ear to ear. No more tears from anyone – my face actually hurt from the smiling and laughing. We’re laughing and the wee babe is dancing with papinou to some crazy disco song. Oh man. Then the tweenager grabs the flip mino and get’s almost all of it on video. I need to get papinou to sign the release forms first before I can post this on YouTube though. Stand by.

The song is over and we decide to leave on a good note. Papinou is moved to tears which gets the hubby crying again which sends me into another blubblerfest. Enough said.

Was I ready? I think so. Just on the edge of it. I might have been pushed a little bit due to a wedding or two but I think it was the right time for her. I’ve always prided myself on the fact that the tweenager has been able to sleepover at anybody’s house. Anybody. And I attribute that to the fact that she slept over at people’s houses from a very young age. Very young. So shouldn’t I be trying the same thing with the wee babe then if I want the same results? I think so. It’s just so damn hard. She’s so little and I HATE to see her cry even for a minute. It breaks my heart when I know that I can make it stop if she’s just with me. But whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger right? I’m sure she’s not going to die over there tonight so she can only be stronger.

Bon nuit ma beaute. Fait de beaux reve. Jusqu’a matin. I can’t wait to see you in the morning.

I’ve been thinking about how I could capture the wee babes cute sounds and then post to the blog. For privacy reasons, I’m just not ready to post video of her (even though I’ve posted a couple of photos throughout the site) or my tweenager but audio doesn’t seem to bother me.

If a video blog is called a vlog then shouldn’t a podcast blog be called a plog?

Anyway, I’m trying something new, I’m using the Cincopa Rich Media Plugin with allows you to create galleries of photos, music, podcasts and video. In order to get the podcast happening, I needed to download software that would record my voice, Audacity, and then an mp3 converter. All the information was on this page. It was quite simple to figure out after I did some research with the babe on my hip. (I first turned to the App Store and downloaded 2 free voice recording apps but neither worked well as they saved in formats that weren’t compatible.)

Without further adieu, here is the wee babe’s first plog.

Warning: this could be giggle forming.

It was a hot humid morning waking up in an unknown apartment in Geneva with my boyfriend. Let me be clear, the apartment was known to him but not to me.

We were heading over via EasyJet to the South of France to attend his cousin’s wedding that morning.

After boarding the plane it dawned on me that this would be the first time I would be meeting his family. And not just his parents and sister. His ENTIRE French family. I began to shake a little.

My French was appalling, I’d had little to no sleep and I’d just been through the time change ringer so my senses were all a tizzy. Oh and did I mention it was hot?

I expressed my uncomfortableness to him and he said not to worry. All I need to know is that in France they kiss on the cheek. Oh and they do this in Switzerland too but instead of the standard 2 kisses that the French give it’s 3 for Swiss people so his Swiss family will greet me with 3.

Huh? Are people going to be flying flags so I know if they are French or Swiss? What if Germans come? Or Italians? My heart began to race.

The questions came pouring out.

“Could you demonstrate how I should be doing this? Do we start on the left or right? What if we both go left and then we kiss on the mouth!??! Do we actually land our lips on their cheek or is it more of an air-kiss-cheek-bump? Do we grasp each others arms so we don’t fall into one another? Do I make a kissy sound? What about my breath? Does it stink? And my makeup? What if I accidentally get lipstick on someone? Should I wipe it off? What about sweat? Did I mention it’s hot out? Do the guys kiss each other? And if a French person and a Swiss person kiss, how many kisses do they give? What about germs? If someone has a cold do they not kiss? We don’t hug when we have colds. Is this whole kissing thing optional like when you can tell that someone isn’t really a hugger? NO?”

I wasn’t sure I was up to the task. Could we go back to the unknown apartment? Not only am I meeting his family for the first time but now this whole kissing thing is happening. It gave a new meaning to “all up in your face”.

Did I mention that they do this upon greeting and departing? Has anyone ever heard of a hug sufficing?

The plane landed and we were greeted by a couple of people in his family. I got to practice. It went not too poorly.

We arrived at the wedding. Smiles, kisses, some awkward cheek smashing, (hey, I’m new at this!) but I got through all 45+ family members. If you do the math, let’s say there’s 40 French people and 5 Swiss people so that’s 40 X 2 and 5 X 3 which equals 95 kisses I donned out. And then I got to do it all over again when we left.

I wonder if people in Europe actually account for the added time it takes to greet people for events like this cuz let me tell you, hugging is much more time efficient

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This post was prepared in response to a RemembeRED prompt for the Red Dress Club. This week’s prompt was about affection. We asked you to write how the show of affection played a part in your memory.

This was a week for firsts for the wee babe (and me).

First was swimming. I was nervous as I always am when I’m doing something new and out of my comfort zone. If you can believe it, I was nervous about what the heck to do with her once we exited the pool. Not the actual act of swimming and how she would do. I guess I just knew she would like it since she enjoys her bathes.

So we got all ready to go to the pool. Bathing suited – off we went. We arrived and I saw a woman who had a little boy who looked like he might be a starfish like my little swimmer. Sure enough she was and she told me that the class was really easy and that they were doing dunking today but that I’m sure I wouldn’t have to do that since this was our first day.

Let me back up. When signed up for the lessons, the babe was 3 months. They can’t go until they are 4 months and since we’ve got this trip planned, I wanted to make sure we got into some lessons before we left otherwise, I just didn’t want to have another swimmer who was afraid to get her face wet until she was like 8. So when she turned 4 months she had a cold and an eye thing going on and then the next week was my ingrown toenails and thus now we are at this week, and four and a half months old.

So I strip her down and me down and I grab the car seat (because they don’t fit in the lockers so what are you supposed to do with them?!?!?) and her and head off to the spot where they all gather for starfish. In the water we go (there was about 6 mom’s and dad’s) and we practice back floats, front floats, “jumping” off the side of the pool, splashing, singing, back kicks, front kicks and of course bubbles. The babe didn’t smile but she didn’t cry either. There was this grimace on her face like “What the heck is going on? I’m not sure about this.” We’ll have to see what next week brings.

The class ends and now I’m at the point of where I’m just not sure how it’s all going to go down. So I grab the car seat, her and head off into a family change room. We rinse off in the shower. I get her changed (she’s not really impressed plus I think she’s tired now.) then strap her into the car seat and then I get changed. Walla! I’m done in 15 minutes. Thanks for the tip Megan!

I walk to the car and by the time I get there she’s asleep. Pretty tuckered after all that swimming

The next day we head off to Mother Goose. It’s a beautiful day so I decide I want to walk home from the Sidney Library (where Mother Goose is) so I need to catch the bus there. It’s 10.1 km’s by the way.

I get down to the bus stop and I start to get a bit anxious realizing I’ve never done this before. How do I store the stroller? Where do I get off on the bus? What if the babe starts to fuss? Breastfeeding on the bus? Didn’t someone get asked to leave because of that?

The bus pulls up and lowers itself so the stroller and I can get on. Walking on a moving bus with a stroller is no easy feat. We get to the area where the strollers can park and there’s already a stroller there. Also, the area where handicapped people can sit is taken as well. Hmmmmm… so I pull the stroller in perpendicular to the bus.

The bus driver pulls over. “You can’t block the aisle.” he says.

So I ask him how I should put the stroller.

“Not sure but you can’t block the aisle.”

I look at the lady who owns the stroller and she’s got her baby in her lap and her stroller is FULL of stuff. I’m panicking. “Should I get the next bus?” I ask him. No answer.

I look at my stroller and decide that I’ll have to collapse it even though I have tonnes of stuff in the bottom of it, I’ll have to pass my babe to some stranger to hold while I collapse it and the bus won’t start again until this is done.

Anxiety, panic, nervousness, everything that I was expecting to happen was happening.

Then someone suggests that we collapse the chairs in front so that we can park both strollers going horizontal. Success! Phewf! We did it and I didn’t need to catch another bus.

My nervousness subsides until I realize, how am I going to get the wee babe into the stroller without falling over. How am I going to get off the bus? What bus stop do I get off at…

Don’t worry, it all worked out in the end.

And Mother Goose was a success as well, save for the puke fest that the wee babe had during it. Oh, and I walked all the way home in the wonderful sunshine.

I’ve been preparing for this date, knowing it was coming. Looming almost.

The dentist.

And it’s not necessarily that I’m concerned about my dental hygiene or the anxiety that overcomes me while I’m have my teeth scaled. My anxiousness resides with leaving my wee babe for 1.5+ hours with my mom. And don’t be fooled with those words, it’s not my mom by any means that has me stressing but more my baby not knowing where I am.

She had a good sleep the night before, and even slept in with me waking her to have her last feed before I left. Everything that I do, I do to expedite my appointment. I even make a few lane changes to get me to the office a bit faster in case they can take me a bit early – even 1-2 minutes.

“Robin?” That’s me, great my waiting in the waiting room was only 2-3 minutes. I’m running right on time now. The hygienist chats with me and how quickly I notice that she can’t actually talk and work at the same time. I’m doing everything I can to sound normal as I’m answering the questions. “Two daughters”, “11 and 4 months”, “yes it is a beautiful day”… and in my head I’m willing her to get going.

As a good hygienist, she explains everything she’s doing. Even right up to the new fangled scaling machine she is going to use. And what a machine it is. The sound that emits from it. Pure terror! My heart starts racing. It’s not exactly a stroll in the park where you’re reclined in the big chair but I tried to hold it together.

“We’re over half way done!” She chimes in. ONLY? It feels like its been an eternity. Breath. You can do this. Are you stressed from the tool or the lack of your baby. Who cares at this point just be done with it. And then she’s done. But wait there’s polish. So I let her know about my anxiety of being baby-free. “Ok I’ll be quick.” Great thanks.

Then the fluoride. Then the dentist needs to check for cavities. “All clear.” Another sigh of relief. I’m on the home stretch now. I just need to get past the front deck and then the traffic.

All green lights all the way! My only impedance was a minivan travelling in the fast lane going 80. Yes, I indeed flashed my lights at him and shockingly he pulls over into the slow lane. Make way! Coming through!

Just a short drive now.

What will I find when I get home? A screaming sleeping or smiling baby? And my poor mother…

Wait a sec, who’s that walking along the road pushing a stroller? My mom!! Yay! And as I cautiously unroll the window do I hear cries? Nope. Silence. She’s sleeping? “She did wonderful!” and then my mom rehashes the last 1 hour and 42 minutes. Exactly what you would think would have happened, happened.

I did it, a small (huge?) accomplishment for me.

Next time I’ll book a massage.

This is it. I’m starting it. Here I go.

This blog is meant to be a place for me to start writing about all the things that twist and twirl in my head. I meant to start one when the wee babe was born but never got around to it. Now with 3 months under her belt and 3 months to go until we leave on the trip of a life time, I’m starting a new beginning.

I realize that my memory isn’t getting any better. These entries are meant for me to look back on and say, “Oh yeah! I remember that!” or even “I DON’T remember that! That happened?!?!?”

So this is it, everything from thoughts, poems, life lists (Thanks MamaRobinJ for inspiring this), stories, baby stats, adventures, rants (I’m sure there’s going to be a few of these) laughter and bliss – this is what it’s all about. Oh, and I’m going to throw a recipe or two in as well.

I’m going to write for me, the future me who will read this later, not for everyone else that will say “gosh, she’s boring, I don’t want to know all about her baby-barf” – too bad. I know me and I know I will want to know all about that boring barfy stuff.

Here we freakin’ go baby!