We just spent the past 3 weeks on the Island in a whirlwind visit that kept me on my toes. Karina is so very busy. She crawls everywhere and surfs all the furniture - she even lets go and stands on her own without much notice. She eats anything except egg yolk which she kind of gags on. I have not been careful with what I have fed her and she has eaten mostly everything we eat - ground up in the little mill (minus all sweets). Yesterday she had banana, toast and applesauce for breakfast, curried tofu for lunch and ground pizza and avocado for dinner - with snack between of course and a few nursings at napttimes. I have not paid too much attention to any sort of sleep schedule with Karina, but lately she seems to nap only twice a day - noonish and then again around 3 or 4. She is asleep by 8:30 and up by 7ish. She sleeps mainly with us and nurses throughout the night. I am not so sure how many times as I am usually sleeping! I am tired, however, and am making more of an effort to have her sleep in her crib next to our bed. We plan to begin night weaning next week so that I can get a better quality sleep at night. I need it and she is more than old enough to not need to be snacking all night! It will be hard not to sleep next to her all night as I love love love sleeping next to her as I did Jonas.
Christmas was wonderful for all of us but a little crazy as well. I was totally exhausted much of the time but it was so worth it to see all the family and also have the children spend time with their extended family. Karina has some very strong stranger anxiety so would not really go with anyone else besides Jordan or I for most of the trip. She spent time with my sister and was okay with her unless I was in the room or she could hear my voice. She also seemed okay with Jordan's brother, briefly. Other than that she was pretty much glued to her mom or dad or crawling around getting into mischief.
Every time I go to the Island I always have the intention of getting out and visiting people I met during my time there. And every time I feel rushed and busy and exhausted trying to just take care of the kids and be with family. This trip was no exception and I never did get the chance to visit with any friends. I think the closest Jordan got to visiting a friend was when our Quadra house had a basement flood and a friend came to help! Our basement flooded while we were in town and we discovered through Jerry's intuition and digging that one of our drain pipes had been flattened when a tree fell on it last year. Thank goodness he discovered it quickly!
We are now home and I am catching up on sleep and we are getting back into our routine. Its so nice to be home in our little apartment, where everything is within arms reach and so very easy to live in.
Surprisingly, the homecoming event that put the biggest smile on my face and gave me the biggest sigh of relief was being over at our friends apartment on the 3rd floor the other evening for freshly baked pizza and watching them juggle their two kids. Thanks to Jordie and Casey I realized that we are not alone in this crazy parenting world. And then again this morning at a communal brunch with the chaos of kids and yummy food, it felt wonderful to be with friends and we discussed our kids and how the world is so different than when we were young and how parenting is so different as well! We discipline in such a different way than many of our parents did and although our way may be more time consuming and difficult, we hope that the outcomes will lead to grown adults who are open, loving, empathetic, positive, resilient etc...we can only do our best.
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