Another First

Last Friday we crossed another "first" off the list. After months of wavering, we finally took Gavin to get his first haircut. He didn't have a lot of hair on top, but the back was starting to grow out all mullet-like, so we decided to book him in at Beaners.

It was actually pretty anti-climatic. They sat him in a high-chair like stool that could move around and I'm certain it didn't take longer than 10 minutes, maybe even five. I don't know how Gavin felt about the whole thing, but I was at least hoping that he would get to sit in one of the cars or airplanes or whatever while they cut his hair. He did really well; in fact, I'm not sure he even really knew what was going on. At the end of it, they chose one of the longest pieces and attached it to a certificate. We saved a few more clippings in an envelope to put in his baby book.

(Which kind of makes me think...we save hair for what reason? So that he can look back and say, "Hey, at one time I had hair!" I'm not sure I get it, but whatever. I'll play along.)

He looks like such a little man now that the baby mullet is gone. We may have checked another "first" off the list, but I keep thinking about how every first for Gavin is also a last for me. It's yet another reminder of how fleeting this time is.

Now it's Porn???

Last fall I had entered a photo of Gavin in a cutest baby contest. I had blogged about it at the time because his picture wasn't accepted and the only reason I could think of was because it fell into the "inappropriate" category. It was a picture of him in the bathtub, but there was nothing showing.

Looking back, at least I can be thankful that I wasn't reported for having child porn. I'm glad these parents are suing Wal-Mart. I hope they win. Child pornography is very serious and I can appreciate that perhaps the employee had the best interests of these children at heart. But when you decide that pictures of kids playing in the bathtub are pornographic, you're trivializing those pictures and videos that are taken for much more nefarious purposes. Pedophiles ruin enough lives. We don't need our over-zealousness to add any more misery to the mix.

So Much to Do

I never imagined myself as the domestic type. I don't know why, but slaving over recipes and despairing over the state of my pantry just never seemed that important to me. I used to wonder how stay-at-home Moms kept themselves busy all day, especially once the kids were in school. No more.

Maybe now that I'm home more often I have more time to notice things. Maybe I'm just trying to keep myself busy. At any rate, right now I'm feeling guilty about being at the computer because I have a pantry to organize and a dresser to paint before I get supper ready. I've already done the grocery shopping, gone to my dr.'s appointment, made sure my friend's son caught the bus to his afternoon kindergarten, made lunch, and got caught up on my email and facebook. It's only 1:30pm and I don't know how I'm going to get everything done.

What's most interesting to me is how much I enjoy doing most of things. But hey, I'm into the third trimester now so it could all be just "nesting", making sure our home is ready for baby. I'm sure I'll have my hands full with two small children; the pot roast (like the one I made for supper on Friday) might have to wait.

One Year Later

One year ago today I started a new job in a new city. I left my nine-month old baby in the care of his father and made my way downtown in the hopes that I had finally found my fit. I don't know how many days I cried on my way to work, trying to convince myself that it would all be worth it.

I had big dreams for my law practice. Part of the reason why I had chosen this new job was because I felt it offered me the opportunity to expand the scope of what I was doing to a more sophisticated client base. It hasn't quite ended up that way. I thought that there would be more support for the type of practice I wanted to build; instead, I was offered support to build a practice I really didn't want. I think it's fair to say that while we're trying to make things work, there's disappointment on both sides that things haven't turned out the way we expected.

So now here I am, twelve weeks or so away from maternity leave, and I've been asked to decide what my plans are for afterward. If our finances permit, I would like to spend as much time at home with Gavin and the new baby as I can, but as past experience shows I know that circumstances might dictate that I go back to work sooner than I'd like. But what form that work will take, I'm not exactly sure yet.

I think that for much of my career I've suffered from a lack of focus. I was focused on "life" goals, like having a family and a healthy home life, as opposed to any career-related ones. So where some of my classmates dreamed of a partnership at a big firm, I was trying to figure out a way to use my law degree in a job that still allowed me to have a life. Now that I have children, I am even less hesitant to compromise my time with them. That doesn't mean that I don't want to work - I do. I'm just trying to find the best way to fulfill my career potential and still have plenty of time with my family. A famous mother once said, "If you don't do a good job of raising your kids, then I don't think that anything else you do really matters very much."

I'm finally in a place where I'm ready to focus as much on my career as on my family. A year later, I'm not where I thought I'd be, but sometimes that's a good thing. I really wouldn't have it any other way.

Picky?

So today I was going through the bit of mail that had accumulated for me at work since last Thursday. Among the usual requests for money, there was an invitation.

"For me?" was my first thought. I'm still trying to get my name out there so I don't get invited to too many events yet. My second thought was, "They spelled my name right!" Then I looked at the map they had printed on the invite and noticed that they spelled the name of a fairly well-known downtown street in Calgary wrong, and the name of a nearby building was incorrect, and right then and there I told my assistant that I wasn't going.

Not that it was a prized invite or anything - it was a presentation from some wealth managers about why I should tell my clients to invest with them - but still. When the Google map says "Stephen Avenue Mall" and you change it to "Steven Avenue Mall"? FAIL.

But the truth is, at this stage of my pregnancy I'm reluctant to go anywhere to try to form new business relationships. I have this feeling that no one will want to invest any time in talking to me because I'm obviously going to be on leave soon. What would be the point?

Really, it's sad that these are considerations for me at all, and maybe I'm thinking about it a bit too much, but it seems that there is still such a taboo around pregnant women in the workplace, particularly in my profession. As my belly gets larger, I get more self-conscious, like I really want my clients to know that I can still do my job. Paranoid? Maybe. But for now I'll still look to silly technicalities to get me out of finding out the truth.

(On a totally unrelated note, today The Globe and Mail had an article on the proposal that Ontario cover up to three cycles of IVF for patients under the age of 42. There was a lot of chatter in the comments section about how this proposal will result in a huge number of couples "choosing" IVF simply because it's covered by the government. Seriously, if any of those people want to "choose" to go through the indignity that is IVF, then they can have at 'er. The ignorance is overwhelming. I would link to the article but I'm having issues with that right now.)