Mommyhood With Mariah: The Staycation comes to an end...

Since we somehow managed to coordinate Kassiah’s arrival with Ivan’s summer holidays (like we coordinated Mariah’s with his winter holidays – what can I say, I’m a good planner)…we’ve been able to indulge in lots of family time. I had predicted we might be confined to the house with a newborn and my post-partum hormones. But since I’ve been feeling so well, we enjoyed a ‘staycation’ filled with a good balance of relaxation and fun.

Mariah is a night owl so we’ve let her stay up past her usual 8:30 bedtime during the summer, which means we had the luxury of sleeping in since she hasn’t been waking up until after 9am! Even then, she’s become so comfortable in her crib that she usually spends a while lying down and talking to herself before she calls out for one of us to pick her up. This later wake-up also helped her combine her previous two short naps into a long afternoon nap from about 1-3 every afternoon. Ivan and I learned from our mistake of trying to be ‘productive’ during naptime the first time around and have taken full advantage of the opportunity to squeeze in some extra sleep almost everyday since we’ve been taking turns settling Kassiah at night. We’ve spent many days at home, enjoying the sun in our backyard and then watching movies inside to cool off.

Ivan, Mariah, and I all love the water, so we bought Kassiah her first tiny little bathing suit at just 2 weeks, and have been to the pool a few times since then. We continued to do the outings we’ve always enjoyed – like going to the zoo, driving to Cochrane for fresh ice cream, going to the park, and visiting the Rocky Mountains in Kananaskis. And we made a point to discover some adventures that were new to us – like insisting Mariah was tall enough to go on some of the rides at ‘Heritage Park’, going Saskatoon Berry picking at a nearby farm, visiting the Leighton Art Centre, and walking through nature trails at a bird sanctuary. I still have a few more plans on my list, like going to a Corn Maze and another farm called Butterfield Acres. As you can tell from the list, Ivan and I are outdoors people, and Mariah is more than happy to follow this lead. She loves being adventurous, and that’s really validated our choice to move from Toronto to Calgary since one of our reasons was to be closer to nature.

Ivan teaches at an early start school, so he is already back to work tomorrow. We’re both a bit sad to see our family summer vacation come to an end, but we’re also both feeling ready to get back into more of a routine. My mom is in town for several weeks to help me with the babies, so I’m really lucky to have extra hands around as I ease back into maternity leave life. I’m a bit nervous that Ivan and I will slip back into the arguments of how hard it is to be home with the kids all day instead of working outside the home and vice versa. But hopefully since we’ve both taken turns doing each with Mariah, we’ll be a bit more empathetic with each other. Fingers crossed that our transition back into ‘real life’ goes smoothly!