I took her skiing this week. I have been dying to get her on the hill for years. Grammy bought her her a kid pass in the fall. I couldn't afford to get myself one but as luck would have it I am now employed at my favorite hill...

It was a challenge finding her equipment on such a tight budget; I bit the bullet yesterday and bought her some used equipment from a local used sports store. She wasn't too thrilled by the lack of colour choice but the sales girl gave us a great idea to go buy stickers and decorate her skis. So we did.

Later that day...

Inside the staff hut, I set her up with her new gear and princess stickers she had picked from the Dollar Store. I chatted with the other instructors and got myself ready. When she was done personalizing her skis, I helped her put her boots on. She put her skis on by herself... and then skied over to the door, opened it, and went out the door. I guess she was ready to go.

She loved being pulled around by my poles. We practised a snow plow -- the little smarty pants nailed it right away. Then we cruised over to the lodge and grabbed a snack and had her picture taken for her pass! We ran into a family friend who bought her her very first ski helmet (after the hit I took buying all the gear, I decided we were just going to go old school and wear a toque). Now we were set. We hit the beginner hill where we could ride the magic carpet.

She kicked butt going down the hill, like every kid she only wanted to go fast and straight down. She could make her snow plow and slow down (or fall) at the bottom (most of the time). My supervisor happened to be there and was giving her more ski tips, our friend was taking pictures and cheering her on. We were both too eager to hit the chair lift so off we went. That could have been disastrous as it took 20 minutes to go down a run that would normally take me less than a minute... We were having way too much fun though. Once we figured out her balance, I handed her my poles and she skied beside me as we whizzed back and forth across the hill, 'weeeeee!" giggle, giggle and "Mommy I want to go straight down" is pretty much all that came out of her the whole time. She wanted to go again but I could sense some exhaustion coming on -- from both of us. I took her back to the hut, she rolled snow balls outside while I got our stuff together -- and that was the end of her very first day on the slopes! The end of season is just over a month away so I have one month to catch up on two years of missed skiing with her! Weeeee!!

J.O.B.

She is having a great time in my friend's home daycare for the morning and I am sitting in the library whipping up some resumes. In September, she will be entering kindergarten and I will be getting a real job. Graphic design intern? Work in a print shop and learn the nitty-gritty of the printing process? Education Assistant with the school board? Work in that tasty hamburger joint up the street? What will I do to pay off my well deserved, monumental debts and save my now horrific credit rating that I have earned from being a stay-at-home, single mama for the past 3.5 years!?

Everything is a Song...

What a change there has been in her since she has been home full time! Not just in her, but in both of us. We are so relaxed and barfy sweet to each other (most of the time!). Since she has been out of daycare, she just sings constantly. She sings about getting dressed, spreading peanut butter on her toast, taking the dog for a walk, me, Grammy, princesses, beautiful dresses, birthday parties... you get the picture. We'll just be hanging out in the house and I'll hear her sweet little voice soaring from the other room. Amazingly, she never gets tired or pasty mouthed...

I'm a Mommy Again! Yahoo!

Hey y'all, wussup? Remember when I used to post on this thing regularly? That was fun. Well, I think about this blog regularly, I sit in front of my computer regularly, and tonight it looks like I might actually type something.

I'm a stay-at-home Mommy again. I haven't done this since she was a year old (she's four next month!). Anyone who knows me knows that I have always wanted to be a Mommy with four kids, a couple of dogs, a lovely man, a big yard and ... daycare? What the hell is that and why would I want to send my kid there? Well, motherhood wasn't exactly peachy the first time. It was a bit of a disappointment -- playgroups suck, Mom's are judgemental, I was now listed as a 'dependant' on my tax return, being at home with a baby is boring and stressful at the same time, I got called not very nice things for losing my 'baby weight' so quickly (often by women who weren't even fat...and if they were, what did I have to do with it?), and answering "I'm a Mom" to the question, "so what do you do?" is a popular conversation killer. Well, as of this week, I'm at home with her fulltime; she is out of daycare for good! I think I've learned enough to know how to make it a party this time 'round:

~ I found all the cool parents
~ I realize I can't go a day without socializing or I go crazy. We have made a beautiful (cough, cough) calendar, stuck it on our fridge and are cramming it full of playdates -- with the cool parents.
~ I got rid of all my parenting books
~ We don't go to playgroups
~ We bought a pool pass
~ We bought a skipass
~ She's signed up for dance class with her buddy (a high quality one -- they even have musicians rather than a stereo to play their music!).
~ I carry my MP3 player around with me... Seriously, she is four and can fire off 87 questions per minute, ask for something 17 times in a row and although she has a lovely, sweet voice, it's constant. Sometimes, I just need to go away to a happy place for a bit.
~ I have phased out all the unnecessary work that I have been doing (including that degree I thought I could actually finish) and only do the stuff that is exciting to me and has an actual purpose in the big picture.
~ I continually purge all the stuff I don't need; the ladies at the thrift store know me quite well as I dump a carload of stuff on them every week.
~ I drink lots of water, get lots of sleep, and make no plans -- I just go with it.

Anyway, our first week involved:
~ Rock climbing last weekend -- it was rad and I'm hooked.
~ Going to a big BBQ with all our single parent friends. She took off with her new buddies and I barely saw her the whole time!
~ A spontaneous 24-hour whirlwind roadtrip with friends (Picture two Mammas and wine on the patio, two cute, little four year old girls playing their butts off inside the hotel room, and later? ...All four girlies crammed into a queen size bed snoozing away).
~ Swimming. She swam three metres off the wall just holding onto some floating things and kicking her feet. She floated on her front and back, and did some mad jumps off the wall -- she didn't even want me to catch her!
~ Eating organic, fair trade, dark chocolate everyday.
~ Middle of the day cuddles
~ Me napping while she built a farm for her animals.
~ Her making and serving me snacks (since she's four and can do everything herself, I just roll with it)
~ Her reading me bedtime stories because she memorizes them all almost immediately (kids brains are so amazing!), and she also brings my pyjamas to me at bedtime and pretty skirts to me in the morning.
~ She put on her big, big dress and had a party in her room. She taped balloons, shiny play jewelry, stickers and pom-poms (from my socks that fell apart) to the wall -- these were the decorations; then she danced around the house all morning.
~ I did some work, it didn't feel like work.
~ I blogged :)
~ A few temper-tantrums on both our parts -- we're still working out the stress and grumpiness of the past few years.
~ I was reminded that, "it will always work out". Heck yeah!!

Acrylic Painting

I was purging my clutter one week when she discovered my box of acrylic paints. Yeah, they're toxic and take three days to scrub off, but the girl can paint so she got to use them. It took some getting used to; she couldn't quite understand that you can paint a picture with such a little dab of paint. Once she figured it out though, she was on a role. I love the work she did:


The next day (and then the next day and the three days after that) she found the box of paints again. I brought out her book, "The Colour Kittens" which the kids here love. It's about two kitties who are trying to make green -- but they don't have green paint! They keep spilling colours until, you guessed it... they make green! As expected, she went through the book and mixed the same colours onto her paper.

Look at her exploring...


I just sat by and observed, letting her get lost in her own little world of paint smearing and colour mixing.