Cars.

I was about 8 months pregnant when I experienced what could have been a disastrous car accident. I was with my mother and father. My dad was driving and we just picked up some food for dinner. Upon leaving the parking lot, the south bound traffic was nice enough to leave enough space to leave the parking lot while they were stopped at a red light. So naturally my dad waved to thank them, and pulled out just enough to look for northbound traffic. Unfortunately he wasn't expecting a southbound car in the northbound lane. Did you know that if you are making a left hand turn, and an accident occurs, you are always at fault? Even if the car that hits you is on the wrong side of the road?

Anyway, that was nearly 3 years ago.

I don't consider myself to be Catholic. My father was raised a Catholic, but my parents didn't really raise me to follow any particular faith. I want my daughter to be informed enough to follow whatever faith suits her, so we started sending her to church with her father's family. Every Sunday, my daughter, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother go to church. It's a 20 minute drive, and this past Sunday it was snowing.

The mass they attend starts at 9 am, and at 9:30 (far to early for them to return) the neighbors across the street come and knock on the door. What I didn't see through the window (which I can see from the couch) was that they had my daughter with them. Her father answered the door, and the first thing I heard was "where was she?" Then a bunch of mumbling as my daughter runs to me with an expression on her face I had never seen before. He thanked them, and proceeded to tell me that his family was waiting for a tow, because the car is in a ditch, and that they hadn't made it to church.

It's not uncommon to wind up in the various ditches here, the roads are narrow, and if you have to pull to the right slightly for any reason, you're going in.

Brushing it off as no big deal, I was only mildly annoyed that the neighbors knew something about my daughter before I did. Her father, thinking the same thing, immediately got on the phone. We were informed that his grandmother was in an ambulance because of a pain in her right shoulder, that the car had actually rolled off the road, and was totalled. My daughter had been looked at by a paramedic before she was sent home with the neighbors, unscratched, and relatively unfazed by the events that had taken place.

I'm a little paranoid when it comes to car seats, and just recently pushed myself onto my friends showing them how to correctly adjust their car seats, and I have to say I've never been so relieved. The car seat clearly did it's job and if I could find it, I would definitely recommend it (seems they don't make it anymore). It was a Cosco brand convertible car seat (one of their more expensive seats) with all the cushions and whatnot, it was black and metallic blue in colour.

Monday evening I went on a quest to find another one. With the intention of buying the exact same model, I bought one that appears to be similar and received excellent reviews, though I did go with the Safety First brand, seeing a Cosco wasn't available locally. The new seat is brown faux suede with light blue plush accessories. It hasn't been installed yet, since we are now minus one car, but upon adjusting it, and seating my daughter in it to fix the straps and test the sizing, I'm content. I can only hope that I'll never find out if it holds up like the last one did.

I'm grateful that no one was seriously injured, though great-grandma is still very sore. The more I learn about the event, the more I feel sick to my stomach. I've seen the prints in the snow from the car, and I've seen the car from a distance. Grandma hit her head on the window, and came home picking glass out of her hair.

My advice? Read your instruction manuals for your car seats, and check them regularly to see if they need to be adjusted. Shoulder straps should come from shoulder height, they should not feed chair from the middle of the back. The head rest should be behind the head. It seems like common sense, but as kids have growth spurts, and you buy new clothes, a lot of people forget that the car seat has many different set-ups.

Also, take care of yourself, I feel at this rate I'll have my first heart attack at 26, if I haven't has a series of minor ones already.

We've Still Got Half the Summer Left, Let's Make The Best of it.

So the strike is finally over, after 39 days of waisted time, and Abby and I are slowly starting to enjoy the outdoors again. We've recently been experimenting with Abby's tricycle her great-grandmother gave get for Christmas, and I do have to say, we are slowly (very slowly) making some progress. She can sort of push the pedals herself, when she's feeling very motivated, or she can steer, but only one at a time. However, her favorite thing about her tricycle is hiding stuff in the "trunk".

Summer.

Sadly, our summer has been interupted by city drama, resulting in the temporary closure of all of our city pools, community centers, city run daycares, and garbage removal has been cancelled.

Needless to say, the city isn't a nice place to be right now.

Abby and I are searching for alternative ways of enjoying the summer, and will post the ideas that we come up with.

Welcome.

This is my second blog. My first can be found at http://www.itstartedwithaguitar.blogspot.com/ .

I found that I was torn between writing about the little things that happen on a day-to-day basis, and ranting as I so love to do, so I thought I'd separate the two.

Here you'll find all the joys and hardships of my life as a mom. You'll hear all about how I, like most mother's, are a mother first, above all else, and also all about all the firsts I've encountered as a mother, and the new firsts I'm sure I will encounter. I'll try to back track a bit, get all caught up on those things missed so far, so that we can really get to know each other. Or at least, you'll know me.

I became a mother near the end of the summer of 2007. I was 23, clueless, and a little reluctant to grow up. That changed in a matter of seconds. My daughter was place in the NICU within an hour of being born. It was a scary thing at the time, but in retrospect, she kind of sounded like a goat when she cried. Since no one could tell us what was wrong with her, I automatically jumped to the worst case scenario every time anyone even mentioned her.

Fortunately, it was a minor birth complication, that eventually fixed itself, and after a lot of hospital drama, and a seemingly eternity long week, we were able to bring her home.

Honestly I would have to say that I didn't quite feel like a mother until she was about 3 months old. Perhaps I was too sleep deprived to feel much of anything, but what I did feel was that someone was going to come and pick her up, like it was a temporary arrangement. I didn't want anyone to come pick her up, I loved her more than anything, it just didn't feel real to me.

Once she started interacting, smiling, moving and playing, it all became real. I woke up one morning, after sleeping through the night for the first time in months, I couldn't imagine my life any other way, and I felt human for the first time in almost a year.

There have been a lot of first since becoming pregnant. There's the first time you're excited about setting up the nursery, the first time you actually bring yourself to purchase something other than pre-natal vitamins for this little person growing inside you. The first time you hear the heart beat, the first kick, the first time you send daddy-to-be out to buy you something ridiculous and edible in the middle of the night.

There's the obvious, the first time you give birth, the first time you hold your baby, feed your baby, change your baby. Then there's the not so obvious, the first, second, third and fourth time you stare at your baby while she's sleeping, trying to watch her breath, worrying that she's not, considering waking her up, all the while there's this voice screaming at you in the background. It's you're own voice, and it's screaming at you to shower and sleep.

There's the first time you attempt to shave your legs post-pregnancy. That was also the first time I've ever cut myself shaving.

There's the first time you leave your baby with someone else so you can have "you" time. You spend the whole time worrying about the baby, feeling like a horrible person, and mostly wanting to sleep.

There are other obvious first, the first time baby rolls over, crawls, makes you think she's going to start walking, then months later actually starts walking. First foods, first outings, first words.

Right now, Abby and I are experiencing jumping, climbing, singing, and potty training. She'll be two in September. For those of you who are interested, our first experiences with permanent markers, and Vaseline in the hair can be found on my other blog.

I'm finding this post to be a little long, so I'll end it here, but there is always more to come.