About Me

My photo
I am a mother of one with a background in public relations and communications, and a degree in Psychology. Before becoming a mom I was very career focused and traveled across Canada working for the Canadian Forces before moving to a job with the Yukon government in order to settle down. This blog is about my transition from working bee to full-time mom and maybe back again. It's also about what it means to be a mom and a home maker.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

A visit with grandpa

I realize it's been ten days since I updated this blog and I apologize, but Kaitlyn had a really nice visit from grandpa last weekend and I couldn't tear myself away from watching them bond.

When Kaitlyn was born I was shocked at how much of a softie my dad became. In fact, he started getting protective the first time I went to visit my parents while pregnant. He wouldn't let me go shooting because the sound might scare the baby. And after she was born it just got worse (well, better really, I love it). She can do absolutely no wrong in his eyes. When I was visiting with her at three months, he was the one to get out of bed laughing at 4 am when I was threatening to throw her out the window because she refused to sleep. And when it came time for her first birthday party, he and Keith took charge of the decorations and cleaning up the house.

This visit, grandpa jumped in to play with Kaitlyn every chance he got. I could see them growing closer as the weekend went by and it warmed my heart every time I saw them laughing together. This isn't the relationship that I had with my dad when I was younger and I've never seen him have so much patience and tolerance with someone, but maybe that's the difference between being a parent and being a grandparent.

When some visitors leave, you sigh with relief that the pressure of having a guest is over with and your life can return to normal. When my dad left this week, I wished we had booked him a longer trip and I just hoped he'd be able to visit both his little girls again soon.


Kaitlyn teaches grandpa how to colour on her new dry erase crayon board (his idea!)


Kaitlyn and grandpa enjoying the Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous festival.


Monday, February 18, 2013

Potty training false alarm!

Kaitlyn's fascination with the potty has been short-lived. After two sessions of pooping on the floor because she doesn't want to actually sit on it for more than a few seconds, I'm going to declare that the move into potty training was a false alarm. I can't help but sigh with relief because I wasn't quite ready to go there yet. Not only have I not done a single bit of reading on the subject, I just don't feel like I'm up to the challenge of reinforcing these habits yet. We'll keep the potty in the bathroom, where I manage to trip on it daily, and see how she does with it later on. At this point, familiarity is good enough for me.

In other news, we had a house full of stomach flu this weekend. I was the last to get it, last night, so I get a sick day all to myself at home. I should mention that for me, flu means just feeling nauseous and tired, rather than actually getting sick. For Kaitlyn and Keith, it means, well, what flu usually means. Arguably, I could have suffered through a day of work but after a weekend of dealing with a sick household, I could really use the rest.

Eleven of the kids at Kaitlyn's daycare also reported having flu over the weekend, which makes me want to pull her out of there asap. Some people argue that daycare is a great way for kids to get exposed to all the germs so that they build up immunity, but I call BS on that one. I didn't go to daycare once in my life and I have great immunity. It's rare that I actually get sick and when I do, it's not nearly as severe as it seems to be for everyone else. Hopefully, they don't all pass it back to each other again today.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Singing solo after all

So it seems that I'm getting a second chance to try my hand at singing solo in the choir, or rather as a duet. I got the part! I'll be singing the opening to Memory along with one of our other, more experienced choir members. I'm super excited but not as much as I think I would have been if I had done better at the audition and felt like a really deserved it.

As it turns out, the girl who blew me away during the audition studied voice in university and has aspirations of singing opera professionally. She isn't singing this part with me but she has many other solo parts in the show. And that's the beautiful thing about a community choir, you get all types of experience and you don't have to be the best to get a chance to shine.

True to my word, I'm investing in voice lessons and had my first one last week, with the aspiring opera singer. I had a great time and gained a lot of confidence just in that first short hour. And I know that I wouldn't be putting this effort in if I hadn't both done poorly and then gotten the part, an opportunity to prove myself. Thanks to our very understanding choir director for that!

Happy lessons learned this week!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Daycare smells funny

I don’t like the way Kaitlyn smells when she comes home from daycare. It’s not a bad smell, just different, and distinct. Like when you walk into someone else’s house.
I notice it as soon as I pick her up and it reminds me that someone else has been taking care of her all day, watching her play, teaching her and making her smile. It takes about an hour for her to smell “normal” again, about the same amount of time I feel that it takes for us to reconnect and her to be okay with not being in my arms.
It took me a while to realize what was different about her every day when we came home and once I realized that it was a distinct scent, and that I was unconsciously smelling her as soon as I got her into my arms, I started to look into the idea of what we can learn about each other through smell. It turns out that mothers can identify their children through smell (no surprise there), that there actually is such a thing as “old-person smell” and, most interestingly, that humans have long used smell to get to know one another and for inner assurance that the other person is familiar.
This article tells us that pheromones are responsible for those familiarity smells, but I still don’t know what makes her smell so different. Her pheromones haven’t changed, and her daycare doesn’t have a distinct smell to it when I walk in the door, so what gives? My guilty working-mom conscience tells me that it’s nature’s way of reminding me that I haven’t been doing my job, or encouraging me to bond with her again and get her normal smell back.
Does anyone else experience this? Is there something different about your child when you've been away from them for a day or more? 

Monday, February 11, 2013

Kaitlyn goes sledding!

We've had really great weather here lately and we finally had the winning combination of warm(ish) weather and no sick peole in the house, so we took Kaitlyn out for her first sledding experience. She loved the first two runs but as you can see, the wind was blowing pretty hard so she got tired of that rather quickly.


I'm not one to be deterred by poor location so the next day while Kaitlyn was napping I built a kid-sized sledding hill in our backyard. We tried it out and when I asked if she wanted to go again, I got a big smile and a great big "Yeah!" Finally, we're having some outdoor fun this winter!

Getting ready for our first run on the home-made hill.


Success! Kaitlyn loved the short ride and the lack of wind.
I should probably mention that the making of the sled hill was only possible because Keith's been shoveling all the snow off the deck into a huge pile all winter long. All I did was pack it down with snowshoes and run the sled down the hill through the powder a bunch of times, tough work for a girl who loves sledding!

Yukon Quest Winner!

I just thought I'd post this link about Allen Moore winning the Yukon Quest because Olivia, the dog on the right, is the one that Kaitlyn met just before the race started! That sweet little dog helped lead Allen and the rest of his team to victory.


Photo by Sam Harrell, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner


Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Matt Gurney says we should quit our jobs

Yesterday, a federal court ruled that employers have to accommodate parent child care requests. This mostly affects shift workers who may have a hard time finding child care on weekends and evenings, and I know there are a lot of you out there. One of my best friends, a brand new mom, is facing this challenge in the United States, where she will have to occasionally find care for a 12-week old baby on weekends. Don't even get me started on the horrible parental leave situation in the States!

Matt Gurney, from the National Post, says that parents who don't want to work shifts as assigned by their employers, should quit their jobs rather than raising a fuss about it. New parents, who suddenly have a lot more responsibility in their lives, should just up and quit their jobs that provide health care benefits and, I'm assuming, things like pension funds.

He says that becoming a parent is a lifestyle choice (which I agree, it is, but one that is necessary for at least some people to make) and that employers should not be expected to accommodate parent needs because they are part of that lifestyle choice and not a legitimate need, like religion.

I think this is a terrible piece of advice from Matt Gurney, who is apparently also a new parent and should know better. Here's a few reasons why a new parent might not want to, or be able to, quit their job.
  • Tranferability of skills. In this case, the person who filed the case worked for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). I imagine that some of her skills are transferable but it seems to me that there is pretty specific training for that industry and I'm willing to bet that most employers who could also make use of those skills are also based on shift work.
  • Benefits and pension funds. There are a lot of incentives for staying with an employer long-term, especially ones like CSBA and those benefits are geared towards people with families who value stability and long-term planning.
  • Requirement to remain with the employer. When I took maternity leave I was offered a top-up package, a very generous boost to my income for seven months of the year I was on Employment Insurance (EI). In return, I have an obligation to work for my employer for at least six months. Fair enough.
  • Income. Anyone who has been on EI for maternity leave knows that even at the maximum level, it's not much. After a year of that income (assuming you don't have a top-up), you're probably scraping the bottom of the savings barrel, or living with some debt. The most irresponsible thing you can do is quit your job because your employer isn't willing to be flexible.
Employers are (mostly) obligated to hold a job for an employee on maternity leave, why shouldn't they also have the same obligation to not make life so difficult for an employee with children that they are forced to quit? After all, the years that the employee will need this arrangement are not long in the scope of a career and would probably build a lot of loyalty.

Ideally, this would be something the employer and employee should be able to work out together, without having to go to court. But if an employer has the ability to be flexible for employees because of religion or disability, they should be willing and able to be flexible for employees with children.

UPDATE: Last night, Matt Gurney and I hashed it out a bit on Twitter, with a few others jumping in, and Keith and I hashed it out a bit at home. This is the beauty of writers posting controversial views, it gets people talking. I appreciate that Matt took the time to read this blog, offer me constructive criticism, and to discuss viewpoints, especially since he also has a young family.

Following the discussions, I have to say that I still feel that employers who are able and willing to offer reasonable requests for accommodation to people for human rights reason, should also be willing and able to offer the same accommodation to parents. In this case, I don't think it was unreasonable for the complainant to ask for regular and predictable hours so that she could schedule child care when it was available. However, I'm conflicted about whether or not this is something that should be brought to the courts, which was Matt's point from the beginning.

I personally wouldn't take this issue to court. In fact, when I returned to work, it was made known that easing back in with part-time hours simply wasn't an option for my position and I accepted that without question, even though another woman down the hall was able to return with an 80% commitment. I know that if I want to change my work hours, I'm going to have to quit my job. At least I have the  luxury of regular work hours that coincide with daycare hours.

However, I still don't think quitting work is a reasonable or even viable alternative for a lot of parents out there, as discussed above. And I think we can all agree that the world would simply be a nicer place if employers just played nice, within reason, and made things a little easier for everyone out there who needs a little extra flexibility sometimes. I appreciate the discussions I had last night and thanks again to Matt for stirring things up a little.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Potty training already?!

I thought potty training was something you started to try out around age two and were maybe successful with around age three. But lately a few of my at-home(ish) mom friends have been posting about their successes with kids that are only one to three months older than Kaitlyn, including One Fit Mom. I was shocked! I thought to myself that there’s no way Kaitlyn will be potty training any time soon; she doesn’t know when she has to potty and I don’t have enough time with her during the week to enforce anything.
Not two days later, Kaitlyn toddled in from the living room and announced “Poop!” out loud and with sign language. Sure enough, she had a smelly little bum and had come in to announce it. She then proceeded up the stairs to her change table singing “poop, poop, poop,” all the way. I was floored.

Image from pottytraining.ca

I got a potty, just in case. Then last night she walked into the kitchen and once again announced “Poop!” and proceeded upstairs. This time though, there was no smell. I brought out the potty, just to see what she’d do. She was thrilled, so thrilled that she forgot about saying, or going, “poop” and focused solely on her new accessory. She opened and closed it constantly, repeating “potty, potty, potty” and getting on and off. She got so excited (and we so distracted by her excitement) that she pooped on the floor.
So it looks like we’re heading towards potty training much earlier than I had ever expected. Or are we? Could this just be a new fascination because she’s been spending time in the toddler room at daycare, where they have a potty?
Baby Centre Canada has a fairly informative article on knowing when they’re ready to start training and how to go about it. All indications tell me that she is at least getting close but I’m worried about enforcing it because her daycare has a strict “no-pressure” policy when it comes to this. Any other resources out there that you would recommend?

Monday, February 4, 2013

Just a little song and dance

I have that feeling you get when you face the reality that a dream is never going to come true. Utter, crushing disappointment. It's not that I ever really thought I was going to be a professional singer but until tonight, it at least seemed like something I could have done.

Back in July, I wrote about a dream I've always had to be a singer and I said that I was going to take a dance class and try out for a musical. I did take the dance class but I didn't try out for the show. One reason is that after going back to work I realized that I didn't want to take any more time away from Kaitlyn than I had to and the intense rehearsal schedule would have been too much. The other reason is that I realized in my dance class that it wasn't really a strength and although I had fun, I was way out of my league and there were a lot of very talented people lining up for parts in that show.

So, I re-joined the Whitehorse Community Choir and went back to my roots. This semester we are doing Broadway tunes, including my all-time most favourite song ever, Memory (from Cats). This is a song I've been singing to myself several times a day since I was eight years old, the first of three times that I have seen Cats. So when it was announced that the opening lines would be a solo, I literally almost fell down with excitement. I felt like a character on Glee, obsessed with getting a solo and convinced that I would simply die if it wasn't me.

I practiced on my keyboard. I recorded myself on Garage Band to see how it sounded, and loved the results. I drove Keith and the cats insane with my repetition of the same eight bars. I have it absolutely nailed and I swear to you that I can sing this song beautifully and in my sleep. In fact, I probably do and it might explain Kaitlyn waking up so much lately.

Finally, tonight was the audition. I stood up for my turn and it was... terrible. My timing was off and I sounded like a terrified little girl. The image I had of myself standing up to sing in a beautiful somewhat-operatic stage voice crumbled as I realized that I was off tempo, wavering and far too quiet. 

I've never sung along with the music before. I wasn't paying attention to the piano and it threw me off. That, and the the girl who sang before me had a gorgeous voice and nailed it. I tried another song, Think of Me from The Phantom of The Opera, and the same thing happened. An octave transition that I easily managed at home was almost impossible in audition. So maybe that's it. Maybe I'm one of those people that can only sing in the shower except that for me, the shower is home and it's only good as long as there is no accompanying music.

So for tonight, my dreams are crushed. I've realized I'm never going to stand up and wow everyone with my voice out of nowhere. That kind of talent takes practice, and a lot of dedication. And maybe a bit more nerve than I had tonight. But at least I can comfort myself with a hot spiced rum, the knowledge that at least I tried, and a plan to take voice lessons from the girl who nailed it before I could even open my mouth. 

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Kaitlyn goes to the dogs

Yesterday was the beginning of the 30th Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and the teams took off from Whitehorse. Lucky for us, it was only -2, not so lucky for the dogs, who prefer to run at about -20. We bundled Kaitlyn up and took her down to Shipyards Park to meet some puppies and get in on the excitement. She loved meeting the dogs, gently woofing at the ones near the fence that were getting ready to run.

Unfortunately, even a warm day in Whitehorse usually turns cold when the wind is blowing and it's always blowing at the start line. We had about five minutes of absolutely miserable baby when she refused to put her gloves back on. All in all I think the excitement of the day was lost on her but the chance to meet puppies is always a highlight of any day for Kaitlyn.

"Oof, Oof!"
Kaitlyn and her best buddy Hayden
After a good cry she still refused to put her gloves on but we got her bundled up and warm anyways.
The only decent shot I managed to get of the Quest.