Vacation

On vacation at the cottage this week! 

Kaia and I came up on Saturday with my parents and Brian stayed home for a few days to put in hardwood floor in our living and dining room. (Yeah for a carpenter husband!!) He finished Monday and drove up Tuesday to spend the rest of the week with Kaia and I, while my parents left to go back to the city. I was really excited to come to the cottage since we missed out on the entire 2011 season due to pregnancy and NICU time. I think I started last summer the same shade of pale I finished it, so I'm really pleased to get some nice weather while we're up here.

I am also really excited to share the cottage with Kaia. My grandparents bought this place when I was a year old, so many of my best childhood memories contain the cottage. It's really special to be able to share it with my daughter and see my parents take on the role that my own grandparents enjoyed so much. Kaia is having a good time and is finally starting to get good at sitting up on her own as well as adding a few more constants into her vocabulary. I've heard 'ba' and 'da' since we arrived here on Saturday.  I'm hoping 'ma' is next! 

Kaia continues to try new foods, including small bits of meat.  She had butter chicken at home last week and LOVED it. She's also had a bit of (soft) steak, but wasn't too keen on salmon. She will eat most fruit, so I thought she would love watermelon since it's so soft and juicy, but it was a no go.  Maybe it was too cold?  I'll have to try that one again some time.

Sleep is still a bit of an issue.  For most of Kaia's life we have held her after feeding while she falls asleep. This is somewhat of a time consuming and unsustainable bad habit, so I figured the change of scenery at the cottage might be a good chance to make a change. Since we arrived on Saturday, at every nap and bed time once Kaia's bottle is finished, she goes into her bed whether she is asleep or not. The cottage is very open and thus she can hear us walking around and talking even if she can't see us, and I was afraid this might hinder the process. So far, she hasn't seemed to mind too much, and I'm thinking it might even help for her to hear us nearby. It's taken as little as 5 minutes to as much as an hour and a half for her to fall asleep after being put to bed, but instead of crying she babbles to herself. I'm hoping we can keep this up at home. It would be a major improvement and definitely free up some of our evenings.  I might even get to work out once in awhile!

However, Kaia is still waking up at night usually twice, for a bottle. She eats before she goes to sleep at 7pm, then wakes around midnight for a bottle and then again around 5am, finally getting up around 8am. She seems to need these bottles as she does eat quite a bit (100-150 mls). Usually she goes back to sleep during the night fairly quickly...but on the nights she doesn't it's like torture. Kaia!!!! Pipe down...some of us are TRYING to sleep!  I'm really hoping the elusive 'sleeping through the night' is just around the corner, but who knows at this point.

I also have come to appreciate more of what it means to be a 'mom on vacation' when I arrived at the cottage and figured out 'wait a sec...I still have all the work that I do at home!" It's true that moms don't really get vacations. I still pump 4x a day. I still wash bottles every day. I still have dirty clothes and diapers to change, night time feedings, and an 18 pound kid to haul around and keep entertained. It's fun and I wouldn't trade it for anything...but not exactly what one generally pictures as 'relaxing'.  Different scenery, same chores.

It's nice to be away from the computer for a few days, but I hope to start my "What Aidan taught me" series when I get home. 

Hope all you Americans have a good Memorial Day weekend and hope all of you Canadians enjoyed May 24 long weekend as much as I did.

I'll end with a picture of Kaia, lounging at the cottage in her new kid-sized Muskoka chair.