New Routines

It's been a good weekend. I should be receiving my books for my ECE course soon, I'm extremely excited as my friends can attest. Every day I'm constantly asking C to check the mail in case the mailman came and dropped off my books. The course starts on the 9th. I thought my books would be here by now, but nothing as of yet. If I don't get them by tomorrow I'll be phoning the school.

I've finally started to drop some of the baby weight. I managed to squeeze into my pre-baby jeans today. A size 7. Woohoo. Still I have a bit of a tummy and a lot of fat left on my thighs and this "lovely spring weather" (and by that I mean not one, but two wonderful winter blizzards which dropped about 25cm of snow on us over the last couple weeks) we're having is preventing me from taking the stroller out to do my normal routine of walking until I drop. So I've made the decision to join the YMCA by my place. It's close enough that I can walk if the weather ever gets nice. They have childcare, and they have drop in programs for me to take my baby to. There are two brand new pools (I watched them building them every day as I drove by on my way to work) with slides. A full gym, a rock climbing wall and a bunch of other cool stuff. I used to work out back when I was in University. Mostly cardio and that kind of thing, but it felt good and I had more energy, so I'm pretty stoked about it.

I mean realistically we have appointments most days of the week so I know I can't work out whenever I want exactly, but I'm confident that I will be able to fit this into my schedule somewhere as "me time". Having Skyler has really taught me about making a schedule and sticking to it. I've also learned from my workshops and this funny thing called life that I must take time for myself, even if it's just a couple hours a week at the gym to make me feel good about myself. The workshop leader says it's even more important for parents of high maintenance kids to take breaks and take care of themselves. Which makes sense to me. I need to be on top of my game to make sure I'm making the very best of my time with my son, which coincidentally is all day and night haha.

Speaking of which, my little guy and I have begun to perfect our daily routine. He basically wakes up for his day around 9:30 or 10am and starts off with a feed and a diaper change, after eating we do his stretches and his sitting and standing and tummy time stuff. The OT gave us a bunch of stretches to work on with him because he tends to like to keep his head to the left and we don't want him to end up with a flat head or a stiff neck. He is doing amazing at sitting up, and his head and neck control are fantastic. After all of his stretches and tummy time he will start fussing to let me know he has had enough, then it's time for another feed and back down for a nap. We continue our routine throughout the day including toys and tv time. Yes I said tv time, I know they don't recommend tv for babies, but as we've found out when it comes to legally blind babies it's all good. If he will focus on the tv then by all means we are to let him watch it.

So I got him a Little Einsteins dvd today. Honestly if anyone watches enough baby cartoons in a day to know what's good and what isn't it's me. Now I'm talking Little Einsteins not Baby Einstein which I don't care for. Little Einsteins is a cartoon that usually revolves around classical music and art. They go on adventures in their rocket and teach kids about music and other cool things. I think it works well for him because even if he isn't focusing on the screen the whole time he is at least getting the musical aspect out of it. I put it on for him today and sat him in his bouncy chair. I wish I had taken a video. He was delighted, I saw him focusing on the screen, he was laughing and cooing and throwing up his arms with glee. It was so adorable. He just got so excited. We're working a lot on his vision as well, and I'll be excited to see how he does as he gets older.

As for my post yesterday about abuse, please keep leaving comments I will check them and let me know if you have any questions or if you'd like me to write more about it or about a different aspect of it. I unfortunately have a good deal of experience with the subject matter and there were many other types of abuse I didn't get into in that post that I could write about. And Karen please do let your children read it if you think it will help them. It would make me very very happy to know I have helped someone in some small way to learn how to recognize the signs that they are being abused. Thank you for your comments about it. It's not the easiest thing for me to share with the world, but I want to help others and that's worth sharing my experiences for.