Things are good. Life is moving along well. Events are happening as they should. The biggest political news is that our Toronto mayor may or may not have done some cocaine and they've been talking about it for about a month.

In other words, nothing is happening.

That's one of the hardest things I find about living in Canada again. Where are the stories?? Where is the craziness?? The daily adventure?? Mildly interesting adventure?

Bah. Everything is just normal and fine. Why is that a bad thing?? It's not at all. It's a great thing. What I pined after during our time in Brazil. Cursed Brazil's ridiculous bureaucracy! Why is everything so slow?? Strangers so inconsiderate and self-interested?? Why is this person walking incredibly slow on the street and this one running making it impossible to walk down the road in a straight line??

It's just that having learned to cope with so many challenges makes anything that doesn't infuriate me seem just boring in comparison. And on that note, I am just so much more patient about life in general anyway that I don't really let little things get to me. And so life comes across as boring.

Even teaching English isn't quite as dynamic as it once was, most likely because I am teaching at a school, in a classroom and I have the same students every day. Don't get me wrong. It's not at all boring and I still love love love teaching (God I love teaching) but instead of hitting the streets and moving around the city everyday, I am tied to a single classroom. Also, I'm not the different one. They are. I am just like everyone else they see.

On a super interesting note, however, teaching mixed nationality classes is so incredible and tests my full potential of pronunciation teaching abilities. In one class I have Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Brazilian and Russian students who all have different language interferences and pronunciation difficulties. It's a linguistic nerd's dream.

So my challenge is to open my eyes up to some interesting stories in my own country. They are there. Especially now that I'm teaching Asian students, who are lighting up my life. They are the sweetest people... so friendly and kind and respectful and, on top of it all, great students. To think, I was so nervous about teaching them because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to connect in the same way. Maybe they wouldn't understand my sense of humor? But they do. They all do. And they are hilarious too.

But the highlight of my day? After work, walking about 15 minutes to the daycare where I leave Stella and seeing the excitement and joy in her face when they bring her around the corner and she sees me there to get her. The minute she's back in my arms with her big gummy smile (well, 2 little teeth now!), bouncing up and down, practically bursting with happiness .... well it's incredibly cool and makes it worth it to leave her for those hours just to feel reunited with her.

Because really, Stella is my story. My craziness. My daily adventure.

For my friends who aren't living abroad... how do you find adventure in your regular daily lives? For my expat friends... even after you're used to things, do you still find your guest countries exciting and adventurous? 

I'm impressed with my newly acquired ability to super multi-task like a mutant. Right. I was always pretty good at this skill, but now I am like a crazy person, combating 2, 3, 4, 5 tasks at the very same time.

Yesterday, while trying to put Stella to bed (it only took 4 hours, I might add), I think I hit my pivotal moment, when my mom came down asking if I wanted some help, and found me shushing and bouncing a swaddled Stella, with a soother in my mouth AND pulling her swaddle blanket tight with my teeth like a wild animal (also I was desperately trying to watch a little Glee!) It was a sight. I had a moment of clarity that I was crazy and should just relax a little. But then Stella screamed louder than a vacuum in my ear and I realized THAT was the crazy thought.

That's the thing with the babies... you start to realize that as soon as you have a window of opportunity (ie. Stella sleeps for a minute) you need to get as many tasks done as humanly possible, because god forbid she has a bad day and she is scared awake after a minute by her own flapping hand hitting her in the face. A good day is when my tight straight jacket swaddle keeps her hands tight down for at least 45 minutes.

**Side Note: How do babies sleep the way they do?? They are a mess of flailing limbs, especially during their REM phases of sleep. Right now, Stella is sleeping beside me, but she is kicking me and hitting me (and herself) and writhing around and grunting... I am trying to write as fast as possible because I know, any minute now, she's going to punch herself awake. **

So, now I've become this super task-oriented person, running around the second Stella sleeps to do any number of tasks that are impossible to do while she's awake. Laundry, folding laundry, putting dishes away, eating lunch, taking a shower, brushing my teeth, HAVING A DRINK OF WATER... God forbid I leave her side for a nanosecond to re-hydrate my body! She pulls out the big guns when I do, her nuclear weapon of sound.

Yesterday, something happened and Stella slept for two and a half hours. In fact, I kept going down to check on her for breathing because this was just not normal. Reassured by her breathing and seeing that she was still tied up swaddled, I decided NOT to do anything and to actually sit down and watch a lot of episodes of Girls (ps awesome awesome show).

I watched 7 episodes. Gasp. (PS. Please ignore how horribly lazy that sounds)

Laziness aside, it was glorious to just sit down and rest for a minute. I knew somewhere in the future I would have to pay for it but wasn't too interested at that moment. It was sweet to just eat a huge bag of chips without worrying about dropping crumbs all over Stella (probably waking her up from the crumb shower).

She slept so long, in fact, that Ro came home and WE woke HER up. Karma's a bitch, isn't it, Baby!

But, why would I even think that? Obviously, I am karma's bitch. And I was appropriately served when hours later, at bed time, I was frantically shushing, bouncing (trying to honestly control myself not to squeeze her out of frustration), pulling that swaddle tight with my teeth for the fourth straight hour. Message received. I will never rest again.

During my time in Brazil, I wrote several times about dating myself. Ro was working ALL the time, and terrible hours, so if I wanted to be wined and dined, I had to do it (to) myself. Dating myself was something I became comfortable with. I'm a cheap date and I make good conversation (side note: I probably looked crazy making good conversation with myself... but I digress).

So, now that Stella is being less of a perfectly normal newborn baby crazy, I can finally get up, get showered and take her out of the house! It still only happens after 12 noon, but whatever. I have moved away from dating myself and I am now onto dating my baby.

The last two weeks have been particularly productive and, dare I say, fun! We went to the mall twice, went to our aerobics class twice, went to a doctor's appointment and on Wednesday we went to the movies! There is a special event here called Stars and Strollers where you can go see a regular, adult movie but you can bring your young children and strollers.

It's AWESOME. There were 3 other small babies there plus us, an elderly couple and a young couple who clearly thought they were going to see a normal matinee of Les Miserables. Haha, sorry dummies! 

Seeing as there are so few people, and it's a movie especially for parents and their babes, the normal movie-going etiquette is totally non-existent. I got there, parked my stroller and proceeded to take up 3 seats with my jacket, blankets, purse, baby bag, hat/coats/mitts, plus my popcorn and oh yeah, MY BABY.

Right off the bat one of the babies started crying. Did anyone bat an eye? NO! No annoyed staring. No loud, exasperated sighing, you know the kind... big exaggerated inhale and the loudest, slowest exhale you can manage without passing out, believing you are making your annoyed point. Nobody even paid attention. It was totally acceptable to stand up when Stella started getting fussy (of course it was at a REALLY critical moment in the movie...). But when I looked around me I saw two of the other moms also standing right in the rows just rocking with their babies. I fed her multiple times and even changed her as they had set up a changing pad right outside the door of the theatre. In one word - AMAZING. I had a great time and ps Les Mis is so good and I cried so many times... (keep in mind I have never seen the live production so that may affect my opinion).

So, here's hoping for another equally as fun week of dating my baby... I'm kinda starting to like her ;-)

More than a month since my last blog and I'm happy to announce that our baby has arrived! Today she's 3 weeks old, in fact.  In the last month quite a lot has happened here...

• Ro's parents arrived and have been here for a month already

This has been a huge blessing. They have been so helpful, especially now that the baby is here, with cooking and cleaning and just helping me with the baby (even when that means I just need to take a break from her incessant crying...) I'm happy that I find myself appreciating their help, rather than resenting it. I was afraid that having so many parents in the house by myself would make me crazy but I imagine that being alone in the house with a newborn would achieve that faster than having extra hands around.... 

• My blood pressure suddenly sky-rocketed and I had to have a surprise induction

Yes, in the last 2 weeks or so my blood pressure went incredibly high and I was being monitored. Two days before my due date, I went for a regular midwife appointment which ended in me going to the hospital where I was informed that since I was already full-term, I would be induced immediately. That was on Tuesday evening but she wasn't born until Thursday morning. Yes, folks. That's a long time in labour.

Actually, more on that surprise news... it was really surreal to be told we would be having the baby that day. Almost as if the 9 months of preparation meant nothing, because it was like being told we were having a surprise baby. We weren't ready with any of our bags, not prepared to spend the night in the hospital (in fact, our plans were to have a home birth). Generally we were expecting the baby to be late by another 7 days or so....  Obviously none of our birth plan was followed. 

• After going through more than 24 hours of labour, I ended up having a C-Section

My hospital experience was as good as it could have been, I guess. I really don't like hospitals and the idea of having the baby there was frightening for me. To sum it up, I felt like the birth experience was much more invasive than I wanted. I understand that my particular experience was a bit circumstantial because my pregnancy suddenly became higher risk. But I still didn't like the doctors shoving the forearms up my vagina to check my cervix and insert stinging gels inside of me to induce me.

• Our baby is here! 

Her name is Stella and she's a little warrior. I call her my little samurai. She is a fighter (literally takes two of us to get her to eat and I constantly ask out loud 'how is it that we are fighting a baby and losing???)

So please forgive my delays in writing right now but in a nutshell Stella lost a lot of weight at birth and only yesterday was back to her birth weight (normally it should take about 10 days to get back up)... My days are pretty much spent breastfeeding at the moment... Hoping for some reassurance that this will change?

Until then, please enjoy this hilariously awesome photo of Stella crying and complaining, as she mostly does! :D

Classic Stella!