If you’re a stay-at-home-parent then you know that some days feel amazing and some days feel like absolute shit. Obviously life is like that before we have kids too because circumstances are always in flux but I think that with every child you add to your family you also add a new depth to the lows and high to the highs. Those wonderful “good days” when you and your kids are all in sync and going with the flow and not under the influence of hormones, teething, sleep deprivation or a general latent crankiness become almost magical. Unfortunately the “bad days” when you all wake up short on patience and joy and everyone blows out their diapers and cries and you finally get 30 seconds to yourself only to realize you’re out of coffee… those mornings can turn into some real rock bottom days if you can’t figure out how to do a hard reset. Is this resonating? If not I’m gonna seem like a total Jackass Mom, but I’m gonna risk your judgement and continue.

At some point I realized something that shook me to my core: it usually wasn’t my kids determining whether a day was “good” or “bad,” IT WAS ME (insert sheepish look and apologies to my children). Specifically, the days were determined by my mental state which usually hinged on one single thing: whether I was feeling anxious that day or not. I know, I know, anxiety is such a buzzword right now and I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about it but it can be a big deal. Anxiety manifests in our lives in a ton of ways that can affect home, work, health, parenting, pretty much anything including… your ability to handle your day! Apparently.

First let me just mention how much power can come from getting to know yourself better. Learning about ourselves throughout our childhood and adolescence, our twenties and thirties, can unlock a lot of problem-solving potential in later life! Knowing why and how we do things the way we do them – at work, school, home, or when we’re dating – is crucial knowledge. We can use that knowledge to (hopefully) avoid making the same dumb mistakes over and over again or keep those mistakes from becoming harmful habits that continue to cripple us throughout adulthood. Self knowledge is an ongoing, lifelong journey but I think certain experiences like hardship can push us to discover our own minds faster than normal. I can’t be sure about everyone else but I don’t learn much from those perfect, joyful days where everything goes according to plan. I try to stay present and soak it all in but there aren’t many teaching moments in the good times. But during hardship phases, when my mettle is truly tested, I can often learn a lot about my own mental workings as long as I create the space to allow that to happen. Nothing has taught me more in such a short time than my hardest phases of motherhood.

After my first pregnancy I ended up with a severely colicky newborn with an unknown future due to a medical diagnosis we hadn’t been expecting. The crippling anxiety that hit me my first year as a mother made the anxiety I had been dealing with throughout university look, well, cute. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t go out, I couldn’t make time or room in my life for my friends, I couldn’t do anything so I completely shut down. For about ten months I just stayed home with my new baby bouncing on a yoga ball and crying. It wasn’t until after I had my second baby that I realized postpartum anxiety is normal for me but not nearly to that extent.

During that first year of motherhood I was in a survival state that didn’t leave a lot of time for philosophical deep-dives into my sense of self. But I guess I scraped together enough self-actualization to recognize that certain things triggered the onset of those first anxious feelings that had the potential to spiral into a full-blown, heart-racing, I-can’t-do-this Anxiety Attack. After the surprising realization that it was my own issues that charted the course for the day and not the kids and their crankiness, I started to pay more attention to how I felt on good or bad days (aka manageable or unmanageable days) to see if I could garner more control over the outcome of my days at home. Here are the things that I figured out I personally need to avoid to ensure that I have more “good” emotional days! I’d love to hear what your “bad day” triggers are, if you know them.

Hunger: the kids’ hunger, my own hunger, anyone’s hunger anywhere is a trigger for my feelings of inadequacy because apparently I’m a Feeder. Lack of food in the fridge makes me feel like I’m failing as a parent and human and when I don’t have something on hand to feed the kids (they get hangry every hour on the hour) everyone loses their shit collectively and the day goes downhill from there.

The Solution: on days when I need to majorly lessen the chance of a mama meltdown (like when Tom is out of town) I make sure that the fridge is stocked, fresh snacks are at hand, and meals are prepped and ready to be reheated quickly. If there’s nothing around we do an emergency stroller walk to the grocery store and buy every croissant available and a massive amount of fruit for the walk home.

Unrealistic Expectations: this is a huge one for me. I went into motherhood with a rigid expectation for what I should do each day and that expectation was: everything. I was making myself massive to-do lists and then berating myself if there was one thing that didn’t get done because the baby refused to nap that day. Allowing my day to be more flexible has served me better than most lessons I’ve learned over the course of the last three years. My “must do” list has become a “suggestions” list and if I ignore the whole thing to brave a solo beach day or go get coffee with a friend I don’t sweat it.

The Solution: learning to let the small stuff go has been an important and necessary step for me and my relationship with my anxiety. I have the perspective now to care less about the little things. My kids are still pretty young but I’m also making attempts to get more stuff done while they’re awake instead of during their naptimes. I’ve been incorporating my to-do list into their day and making it as fun for them as I can. Usually I can unload the dishwasher, bake or prep meals, load the laundry machine and get the laundry hung on the line, tidy up, and exercise by pretending it’s a fun thing Hen and I can do together. Kids love to help and she likes it a lot more than I do!

Lack of Routine: since my kids aren’t school age yet it’s easy to feel like we have no structure and are just floating through the day doing whatever. Both me and my kids respond better to a bit of a routine but as per above, we keep it pretty flexible. The outline of our day evolves naturally but gets more lax in the summertime.

The Solution: duh. Create a bit of a routine, even if it’s just a loose one: park in the mornings, books before naptime, a little screentime while you cook dinner just to keep the kids out of your hair. I’m going to try for a tighter routine in September and I have some pretty cool tools at hand that I’m excited to try out.

Staying Inside: even though getting out of the house is daunting some days (and becomes more daunting the more children you have!) every mom I know swears by it in order to gain some perspective and distract everyone long enough for a bit of a reset. If you have older kids you can get a pretty fun day trip in once in a while, but if you have younger ones like me you might have to keep outings pretty short and sweet. Currently our son sleeps 10-12, our daughter naps 12-2, and our son takes a second nap from 2-3, so I’m housebound for most of the day.

The Solution: I prep the stroller in advance for a quick morning outing and stay close to home by just doing a coffeeshop run, a visit to the nearby garden store, a hangout at the park around the corner, or just a long walk through some neighbourhood trails. We definitely don’t get out every single day but sometimes just hanging out in the front yard is enough!

Identity Outside of Motherhood: I’m still working on this one because it’s really hard. It took me multiple years of being a mother to admit that I not only want but need time away from my kids. There’s still a pervasive idea for many moms that our kids should be enough for us but why? If we’re multi-faceted women before we have kids why wouldn’t we expect to be multi-faceted women after we have kids? I think we need to play other roles besides just the mama one, and have other interests as well. It’s a necessity for sanity, I’m sure of it.

The Solution: I make time to do the things I like to do without my kids around, even if it’s just once in a while. Tom and I are pretty hardcore homebodies so we don’t need time out of the house super often. Just watching movies together, doing renovation projects, and the occasional date night are enough for us. He also has work and I chip away at my freelance writing projects when I’m able to. When I crave adult conversation I call a friend and we FaceTime or go for beers!

Not Exercising: I don’t care who you are, exercise helps clear your head and offers perspective. Sometimes just going for a walk (preferably in the forest) is enough but when I’m really working through some stuff I generally have to get some longer runs or harder workouts in to feel like I’m releasing some of the nervous energy I feel when I’m anxious about something.

The Solution: I haven’t felt very motivated this summer so Hennie and I have just been doing yoga together before bed and sometimes in the mornings as well. It’s a great way to get her to stretch and a great way for us to bond. I want our kids to grow up seeing us being active and prioritizing ourselves so they know that it’s important.

I’m always interested to learn more tools for handling anxiety; what are some of the things that threaten to send you into a Bad Day Tailspin? What do you do to combat them? Let’s learn together!

I’m the first to admit that motherhood isn’t easy. If you’ve followed our journey on social media for a while or you know me in real life then you know that it hasn’t been all sleepy newborn snuggles and sweet toddler affection over here. The addition of a child is an adjustment for everyone and we all have our own struggles but for me the difficulty felt so deeply ingrained in my emotional wellbeing and went overlooked for so long (who has the time!?) that it eventually became a part of me and my mothering worldview. Resentment, anger, and frustration became my norm. I was grateful but I wasn’t deep down in my core grateful. I didn’t feel like I really knew the meaning of the word, actually. Maybe somewhere amidst the colic, the medical diagnosis, the always-looming questions about Hen’s health and the complete shitshow that is raising back-to-back babies while moving to a new house in a completely new place (phew!) I got bogged down by my feelings of discontent.

It’s no surprise that those feelings started to colour my perception of motherhood. I was holding on to so much trauma that there was no room left for me to notice the characteristics that made my two kids unique and wonderful in my everyday present reality. Defining myself by how my journey had begun left no room for me to create new, freer versions of myself. Even though I was renovating my dream house with the love of my life in a new community that we loved with our two gorgeous babies I still had niggling feelings of discontent and even unhappiness. I was stealing joy right out from under myself and I felt so much shame because I knew I was doing it but couldn’t figure out how to set myself on a different course.

The biggest difference between first-time and second-time motherhood for me was always foresight. In the thick of the sleeplessness and colic and medical-mama-drama of that first year of motherhood I truly felt that I had no lifeline, that there was no end in sight. That first year felt eternal and my husband and I still agree that there were not many good moments in it but it ended. Colic sloooowly subsided, Hen slowly became more manageable, we slowly got a handle on her diagnosis. Bad days come, but if we’re lucky they also end.

The thing is, the second time around you have that hopeful knowledge to cling to and it helps with the teething and the sleep regressions and the rest but you quickly realize that it applies to the good stuff as well. The phase when your newborn blissfully passes out on your shoulder despite the low rumble of background noise at a party? That ends way too quickly. The phase when they need you to kiss their bumps and bruises ends, too. The phase when they need help getting their own snacks. The phase when they crawl into your bed at 4am and fall asleep, sweaty and content, in the crook of your body ends. There will come a point when they’ll solve their own problems, do their own homework, a time when they have so much going on in their own life that they won’t even remember to call. All the good stuff ends.

Unfortunately it took this constant, painful, roundabout realization of the finite nature of childhood for me to start practicing true gratitude for what I had. In order to remind myself about what I had learned I drilled the phrase “it’s just a phase” into my head and repeated it as necessary (luckily it applies to everything from toddler tantrums to weather systems). When you’re tired of the long, dark, cold days of winter you know that the spring will inevitably arrive and when you’re tired of applying endless layers of sunscreen to your sticky, sweaty kids you know to soak up those summer days because the autumn is coming, too. Of course none of this means that you have to love every minute of motherhood (I ain’t about that vibe!) but take it from a constantly rehabilitating complainer: seeing the silver lining makes it a whole lot more sweet.

Happy It’s-Been-A-Week-Since-Earth-Day!

I didn’t want to post something about how crucial it is that we save the planet because I found that the internet was oversaturated with that sentiment and sometimes that makes our scrolling become immune to the real message. I’m so glad so many people posted and reposted those messages of urgency because it’s an urgent problem and it has become the most important problem that we as humankind need to solve (aka fix the problem we ourselves have made). There was also also a lot of influencer garbage being posted too, though. If someone is endlessly trying to sell you shit every day in their posts but takes one day off to talk about how important it is to reduce your consumption, that person is a fraud who is just trying to use the moment to get some likes. The internet makes it so easy to tap in collectively to an event and share information about it … and then leave it behind 24 hours later until the next year’s annual post. This is usually fairly harmless but when it comes to climate change every year that passes is crucial to the cause, so please join me in trying to talk about this stuff all year long – I don’t normally post about the environment but I think we all need to start making space for an ongoing discussion about what we’re doing to save this planet and how we can all better our choices so we can move collectively toward a more sustainable future, fast. It’s too late for a bandaid solution now and fast is our only option. We have an opportunity to use the internet as a platform for us to learn from, encourage, and inspire each other. So let’s dive right into my own unsolicited two cents 😂

The latest climate change report stated that we have 11.5 years to reverse the damage we’ve done to our planet, and that’s frightening. My kids will just be entering their teen years then and if Tom and I have raised them even remotely well they’ll be asking why the hell they’re being left an irrevocably damaged planet and what, if anything, we did to try and stop that from happening. We don’t want to have to tell them we did anything less than our absolute, back-breaking best to pass on a beautiful (albeit healing) earth, so we’ve been making as many changes as we can in our lifestyle to attempt to do as much as we are able to do.

It’s really hard to do everything. In fact unless you have unlimited resources it’s impossible, and we’re all in different situations so I think it’s understandable that we each do whatever is within our personal means to do. And I don’t mean we change one little thing to assuage our own guilt and call it a day. The time for fake change and ignorant bliss has long past. Start today and every few months re-evaluate what you can do. Can you make more eco-friendly swaps? Can you go meat-free 6 days a week instead of just 1? Can you stop buying gd water bottles for once and for all (seriously this is SO BAD, but obviously don’t do this if you live in an area without safe drinking water). That’s why we do what makes sense for us to do.

I write all this in the spirit of informing, not preaching. It’s not about who is doing the most, it’s about all of us doing as much as we can. I’m learning more all the time about my impact and the impact of my family. This is an ongoing conversation that Tom and I have and that we hope to include our children in as soon as they’re old enough to talk (lol, still waiting on that). Just in case you’re at a loss for ideas here are some places to start! We have incorporated or are in the middle of incorporating these changes and would love to answer any questions if you have them!

G R O C E R Y and K I T C H E N

• Most people already know to bring fabric bags with them when they do a food shop (this is like, Environmental Impacts 101) but the little plastic bags in the produce and bulk sections are a killer too! You can replace them with reusable mesh produce bags you can bring to the store for your fruit, veg, and bulk purchases.
• It’s amazing how many things can be replaced with a reusable product: I’ve replaced my parchment paper with a washable silicone pan liner (I was using parchment paper every single day!), there are great quality heavy duty and leakproof ziplock bags on Amazon as well as beeswax alternatives to clingwrap. You can use biodegradable cloths instead of paper towel, washable makeup remover pads, even biodegradable wooden dish scrubbers and toothbrushes that you can happily throw in with your regular compost at the end of its lifespan.
• You can’t use what you don’t have with you, so throw a metal straw in your car, stroller, and backpack so you don’t have to use plastic when you need to stop for a coffee or takeout. Same goes for plastic cutlery when ordering takeout.
• If you live near a bulk or zerowaste store (yay, big cities!) bring those bags and jars and fill up in bulk on whatever you can. This can greatly reduce the amount of plastic packaging that goes from your home to the landfill.
• Purchase less “single serving” products like juice boxes, squeezepacks, cheese strings, individual yogurts. Buy these things in larger portions and use reusable cups and glass tupperware. If you’re able to, making hummus, guac, salsa, etc from scratch can save a lot of plastic containers over the years. Not all of us have time for that, but a lot of us do. Hummus is stupid easy and takes about 2.5 minutes though so nobody has an excuse for that one.
• As your plastic tupperware gets worn out, replace it with glass – you can find options everywhere, even at Ikea, and they’re a little heavier but so affordable.

S H O P P I N G

• start popping into a thrift store once a week – you never know what you’ll find! I score so many kids clothing items, toys, and housewares for a super low cost, and it makes me feel good to know I’ve kept something from going to the landfill. You’re not gonna find the secondhand stuff of your dreams every time, but you won’t ever find anything if you never go. The best find are kids shoes – they’re often priced around $3-$8 and barely used because kids grow so damn fast! New kids shoes can cost a LOT so if you’re near a thrift store but don’t have a lot of time to go through it all, just check out the shoes.
• let friends and family know that you don’t mind receiving secondhand stuff sometimes! I think we often feel like a new gift is so much better than a used one and that if we give someone a secondhand gift it means we’re dirt poor (lol) but a lovingly-thrifted vintage toy or baby dress or a big basket of excellent used books is way cooler and took more time to choose than some neon plastic that someone bought on their phone on Amazon without a second thought. No shade to plastic toys, there are times when they bring major joy to our kids and last years and years, but I’ve seen firsthand how well kids play with less quantity and less flashy toys, and there’s something to be said for that, too.
• I used to think making and receiving DIY stuff was a little ghetto, but I’ve since realized that these are just the best gift. Homemade play dough is freaky easy to make, the colours are better, it’s all natural, and you can choose your own scents with essential oils.

D I E T

• Whelp, this is gonna be an unpopular suggestion, but also maybe not because I’ve received a ton of questions about all of the vegan recipes I’ve posted on IG and I know that a lot of people are making some changes for health, for planet, and for their love of animals. Veganism has such a weird negative stigma associated with it sometimes but meat and dairy are a major part of your individual environmental impact. I’m not going to cite all of my sources here because it’s so easy to find the information if you choose to look into it. I didn’t look into it on purpose for a really long time because I knew what I was going to find and I knew that my discomfort and guilt would make me want to make major choices that I didn’t feel ready to make. To be perfectly honest I don’t give a hot damn about animals being eaten (this makes me sound like a total monster and I’m very sorry but I’ve always felt much more tender-hearted toward humans in need than animals. But saving animals is a lovely bonus too). The more I informed myself about meat and dairy and their affects on our health (so bad) and the planet (so, so bad), the more inclined I was to try reducing our consumption of those products. I was worried that Tom wouldn’t be on board at all, but after the latest climate change report freaked us out we did some research and found that cutting out meat and dairy was one of the biggest things we could do for climate change on an individual and family level. At first I felt like it was such a major personal sacrifice to make (and difficult for me as our family’s primary meal-planner and cook to change all of my habits!) but I quickly realized that my palate had changed and I truly preferred to eat a more veg-heavy meal. I experimented a lot and found ways that my family and I could love eating tons of veg and fruit. I found that there are amazing meat-free alternatives to almost all of our favourite things. For now we are what I’d call “Home Vegans” and it’s really easy for us. This means we eat plant-based meals at home and we try to go veg when we’re out but we sometimes indulge when it’s easy or we’re having a major craving for something. If we’re out with the kids we might grab an ice cream or a piece of pizza. On a date night (not that we get any of those!) we might split a burger. When we eat at someone’s house we will happily eat whatever we’re served without making a special request. But I’m shocked at how easy it’s been to transition at home and how much I prefer to eat healthful meals that I know are nourishing our bodies in a big way. I easily made all of my baking dairy and egg-free without one failed recipe. Our dinners are big, beautiful buddha-bowls filled with grains, veg, tasty sauces, nuts and seeds. We aren’t perfect but we’ve made a big change and I’m kinda proud of us.
• if you want any recommendations for great meat-free substitutes, hit me up! I’ve tried a lot of them and have some major faves. If you have that you love, also hit me up! Always looking to try new recipes and products.

H O M E

• when Tom told me he wanted to replace all of our thermostats with smart thermostats and our bulbs with smart bulbs I thought he was just being a dork who wanted to pimp our house with tech. And maybe he is! But then I read about how setting your heating systems to a timer can save a ton of energy and now I’m into it too. When we leave the house in a frenzy of chaos (which is every time we leave the house, because kids) and we forget to turn lights and heaters off, we can just do it from our phone in the car. We can set our heat to drop during the night and come up again in time for morning. We use this one.
• cleaning supplies: just so much room for improvement here. Science is amazing and people have come up with eco-friendly cleaning agents that work just as well as the ‘bad stuff’ and won’t give your kids a rash or kill their brain cells. So many of those mass-produced candles and “odour cover” sprays are full of some truly toxic shit. Get thee to Amazon, Whole Foods, any alternative store, or just your local grocer, because better options exist! Esp. essential oils. 
• I hang-dry the laundry when I can but sometimes you just need to use the dryer (especially when you’re cleaning your toddlers sheets in the middle of the night when they have the flu). I just found out about wool dryer balls last week. Throwing a couple of wool balls in the dryer with your clothes can reduce your dry time by 50%! That’s just convenient. I ordered mine on Amazon but you can find Canadian-made, organic wool balls (lol) pretty much everywhere.
• I know that it would be more eco-friendly for us to have stayed in our 750 sq ft condo; the massive house we bought needs a lot of heating and that isn’t doing the environment any favours. But the plus side of having such a large property is that we have the opportunity to do some other cool stuff, like composting, rain collection, and growing our own food. Plus hello, money saving! The free soil we’ll get from our compost and the free food we’ll grow in our veg garden and harvest from our fruit trees will save us tons of money, especially since I’ve found groceries to be much more expensive on the coast.
• we paid a few hundred bucks to have a full EnerGuide home evaluation done. An energy expert comes to your house and assesses its draftiness, heat sources, blah blah blah, and sends you a full report on your home, telling you where you can save the most money and energy and which rebates (whoop!!) you can apply for to get a bunch of money back on the changes you make. Knowledge is power, people. Also we basically bought the draftiest home in BC so there’s a lot of work to be done over here (cringe).
• eventually we’d love to get solar-powered energy in our house but it can cost around $25-$30k so we aren’t able to make all the leaps we wanna make at this time. But I’ll mention it because maybe you can! Also, the government should give huge rebates for this kinda stuff. 

P O L I T I C A L

• I’m still working on this one. Currently in North America our leaders are not the climate change leaders that every country needs. Keeping myself informed and voting for a party that will consider the future of the planet is important to me and something that I want to spend more time doing.
• major corporations should be held much more accountable for their environmental footprint than they currently are. This is something we can all learn more about and lobby for within our local and wider government systems.

If you’ve read this far, wow (fun fact: I started writing this as an Instagram caption, but it got a little ahead of me). If you read this and want to head to your local shops to purchase some reusable and sustainable items, mother earth applauds you! We can’t all do it all. You might not be able to relinquish air travel if you have relatives overseas. You might not have the space to grow your own vegetables. But maybe you have the money to buy handmade wooden toys on Etsy for the next birthday party you attend, or the time to search on Craigslist for a baby swing instead of having it delivered by Amazon Prime, or the energy to visit a bulk store for half of your grocery list. Again, it’s not about who’s doing the most, it’s about all of us doing as much as we can.

We have such high (and often unrealistic) hopes for ourselves when they’re freshly born, don’t we?

Just for fun, so we can all have a good hearty laugh together, these are the things I said I’d never do before I became a parent (in my infinite and knowing wisdom). Eye roll.

• feed them sugar
• let them ‘cry it out’
• kiss them on the mouth
• lose my patience (ya ummmm ok)
• give them screen time
• feel the urge to shake them (sorrrrryyy but if you’re a colic mama you’ll understand)
• cater to them by making a separate meal at dinner (or breakfast… or lunch…)
• let their nap schedule dictate my day
• use food or TV as a reward
• stress about taking them on a plane (ha. ha. HAAAAAAA)
• miss being in the workforce
• eat food my toddler has dropped on the floor
• eat food my toddler has dropped out of her own mouth
• talk about my kid’s poops in great detail with my spouse
• skip a workout because I was too tired

…are you rolling on the floor laughing? You should be; I certainly am.

I thought I’d sit down amidst the utter discombobulation that is packing with two small children to write a blog post about what led us to our decision to move to a small coastal community we’ve never been to. It might seem like it came out of nowhere but I’ll remind anyone who has known us for 3+ years that a surprise move is kind of… dare I say on-brand for Tom and I. I mean, we did elope and this feels pretty similar to that. In both instances we spoke at great length about what we thought was the right move for the future of our family, took it about as seriously as we needed to (that is to say… not very) and then took a leap of faith. The only difference is that getting married cost us like eight hundred bucks and was probably a smaller commitment than the current weight of our new mortgage and sprawling fixer-upper.

Our first home together was a cheery and bright one bedroom apartment in the city. We got married in that apartment and brought Hennie home to it a year later. When she was ten months old we bought our first home, a tiny but cozy two bedroom condo. A year later we brought Wells home from the hospital to that apartment; I guess we move fast! Even before he was born we were having the conversation most of our generation probably has when raising a young family: do we want to continue to live in a small space in the city or do we want to move further afield so our kids can have the stuff we took for granted, like a yard and their own bedrooms? Like many young families our age, we can’t afford to have it both ways. We had this conversation over and over and over again, never really deciding what we wanted.

A year ago this month I was reading this post on one of my favourite blogs and I started daydreaming, as I always do when I see a home tour of a whole house, about upsizing our home and downsizing our community. Though it had always been a bit of a dream in the back of my mind, something about that article made me think “why not?” and I began thinking more critically about the logistics of that move – whether it would be possible, what it would look like for us. It felt like a monumental decision for me but when I mentioned it more seriously to Tom he seemed game for a change; having lived in multiple countries throughout his twenties I don’t think moving outside of the Lower Mainland was too much of a stretch for him.

Soon I became pretty fixated on the idea of selling our tiny apartment and moving somewhere else, but the checklist of what we were looking for in a community made the move seem fairly improbable. Our non-negotiables included mild weather (well, for Canada), decent elementary schools, a young, liberal-minded (or at least open-minded) community, multiple breweries (if we’re being perfectly honest) and obviously a real estate market that would allow for a detached home to be within the realm of possibility for us. We wanted to stay in as close proximity as possible to family in the Lower Mainland but knew that this was asking a lot. Knowing that it might not be possible to check all of our  boxes, we didn’t pursue it too much.

When we became serious enough about selling our place to connect with our realtor, we focused on a move to another local city where we thought we could afford a decent townhouse. We hung out there and loved the area, even staying in an AirBnB for two weeks in the fall and viewing some properties. One evening as we were doing our usual nightly scouring of the real estate there, Tom entered our search parameters and just started cruising around the map to see what we could afford elsewhere. He ended up on the Sunshine Coast looking at the houses for sale in a little beachside town called Gibsons. We marvelled at some gorgeous ocean-view homes and went to bed. A few nights of real estate hunting later and we were still looking at houses in Gibsons. We had never been there before and knew nothing about the coast but within a week our search had shifted. Without even talking about it we had both stopped looking at townhouses in the lower mainland and completely redirected our house hunt to the coast. Rather than approaching our nightly real estate searches with our usual sense of tired obligation I could feel a palpable excitement in the way we talked about the possibility of this move. Just as I can remember the moment when we decided we were going to be together forever (me: “is this it!?” Tom: “…I think so!”), I can remember the moment when we decided to redirect our house hunt to this totally new, seemingly random community we had stumbled upon in our late-night, beer-fuelled deep-dives into the depths of REW (me: “should we tell our realtor!?” Tom: “…I think so!”).

And then we found the house. It checked all of our boxes: stunning natural light, all the windows I could imagine, bedrooms enough for guests (or more babies! or guests with babies!) and it was even a rancher, which we were kinda hoping for. It was on a huge property with a back and front yard, had a fire pit, a large deck, and a detached office for Tom to work out of. It even had fruit trees and space for an ample vegetable garden, which was a long-shot wish of mine. We could afford it because it needed a helluva lot of love, but we were game for the challenge. We told our realtor. He called to inquire. The house was sold.

To Tom’s credit, he stayed calm through the many ups-and-downs of house-hunting, a feat that I cannot say I was capable of. With my exemplary imagination and lingering postpartum hormones I was a maniac every time we found a place we loved and a much bigger maniac every time we found out that a place I was already picturing myself living in was unavailable. I took up meditation to try and handle myself and we continued to focus our search on Gibsons, a community we had still never been to. We moved out of our condo so we could stage and show it more easily, packing up all of our unsightly clutter and moving it to my dad’s house (lucky him!). Before we left we went for one last date night at a local pub. Over many cheap pints I found that my husband, who doesn’t get excited about much, was unable to stop talking about the renovations he’d do on that first house we had fallen in love with. Poor guy.

The next morning our realtor called. The sale on the house – that house – hadn’t gone through and it was on the market again. He wanted to know if we could hop on a ferry immediately to go view it. Tom booked the next morning off work and we loaded the kids into the car to take a look at the rustic rancher that had occupied his thoughts for so very long. On the way there we said “at least now we can see it for ourselves and if it’s terrible we can put it out of our minds forever.” The day felt easy and exciting. It was a clear and crisp day in early February and the views of the local islands during the ferry crossing were stunning. We docked, drove to the house and stepped inside. We viewed it for probably ten minutes, the backyard too covered in snow for us to even really know what we’d be getting. Shortly afterward we were back on the ferry on our way home for nap time, instructing our team to begin compiling our offer.

And it was accepted! But first we had to sell our own condo, and fast. We cleaned, staged, photographed, and showed it as well and as quickly as we were able to and received a really fantastic offer after only a few days. We accepted it (whoop!), but it fell through. We accepted another offer, but it fell through as well. On the brink of losing our DIY dream house, we accepted a third offer. My anxiety was through the roof waiting for the buyers to get their affairs in order but thankfully, it went through. Miraculously, it seems, everything happened at the last moment when it needed to, teaching me all kinds of lessons about trust and letting go of things I can’t control. You would think I would already know how to deal with those things, having a medically complicated toddler, but it appears I’m a work in progress.

So here we are. Getting possession this week of a home which needs repairs we probably won’t know the full scope of until we’re up to our eyeballs in asbestos-laden insulation and rotting cedar beams (jk, probs). We head into it with a meagre budget, an inspection report so long it has a table of contents, and, thankfully, a sense of humour, at least for now. We’ve had so many moments when we’ve looked at each other, laughed, and said “what if we don’t even like it there because we still haven’t actually been?” but we’re just so sure that this is the right move for us that it hasn’t even really been a question on our minds. At the risk of being excessively corny and barf-inducing, I think I could live anywhere in the whole wide world with Tom Procter and it would still be the most stupendous life, so moving to a scenic coastal town where we can slow down and enjoy our kids and each other just seems like the icing on an already delicious cake.

For so long I existed in awe of the people I saw who were able to take a leap of faith and step forward into the unknown of a big adventure. This feels like that moment for us.

It’s a big weekend around here – Canadian Mother’s Day and the start of my third and final trimester carrying our second child! I’ve never been a huge fan of holidays, admittedly; I’d much rather have a long weekend. Give me an extra day to spend with family without the plans or pressures that accompany most holidays! That said, Mother’s Day has caused a little introspection for me this year. This is my last Mother’s Day being a mom to just Hennie and I’m feeling so many feels! Rather than worrying like a normal mom about how she’ll handle all the change that’s coming to our family dynamic, I’ve been selfishly worried about her relationship with me.

Since her birth, Hennie and I have always had an interesting and complex relationship. I suspect that most mother-daughter relationships have these qualities, but having only one daughter (and being only one daughter) I don’t really have enough experience to know for sure. In the beginning I blamed the colic and high-needs attributes for her not wanting to co-sleep or cuddle, but as she grew into toddlerhood she continued to remain pretty indifferent to me, not unlike the beloved cat I had when I was twelve. I begged my parents my whole life for a cat and when I finally got one she completely ignored me and rebuffed all of my attempts to cuddle with or pet her. My response was to forcefully smother her with my affection even as she clawed her way out of my arms. I was never able to successfully convince her to acknowledge me when she wasn’t hungry and I quickly realized that tactic wouldn’t work on Hennie, either. So instead of smothering my daughter in love I have dutifully heeded my parenting instincts, which have instructed me to stand back and let her comfort zone blossom over time, offering attention and affection only when it is asked for. It friggin’ kills me, but she responds well to being given her space.

In time I’ve learned to see her independence not as a rejection of me but as a movement toward her own freedom. I’m happy for her that she self-soothes at such a young age and sleeps well in her own bedroom. I’m happy for her that when she falls her first instinct is not to look for me, but to pick herself up and continue determinedly forward on her own path. I’m not getting the cuddles I always dreamt I would receive from a child but hey, there’s always the next one. And I certainly cannot deny that the girl is unstoppably strong-willed; in fact I had hoped for this quality in spades for any daughter I might be lucky enough to raise.

Things have changed oh so slowly and Hen really seems to love it when we spend time together now. Our weekdays as a twosome are full of fun local adventures and my heart pretty much explodes every time she reaches for my hand or runs toward me with her arms raised. We snuggle a little more often and once in a while I even catch her looking at me with an expression that feels like the whole universe is shining it’s light on me. Maybe after the new baby gets here she’ll regress back to her “I don’t need no mama” attitude, but I’m secretly hoping she gets jealous and clingy and I become buried under babies that my body has made. The future remains a mystery until this baby comes so for now I’m gonna soak up three months of summertime park hangs, iced coffee dates, and hand-holding with my smart, strong-willed baby girl.