The Scream (Anna)

Emmy has been screaming and screaming. Purple. End-of-the-world kind of screaming.

If you've ever had to spend time with a six week old baby who has learned to scream, you will understand why this post isn't longer...

6 weeks (Anna)

This morning, after a long night of being up with Emma, I turned to Caroline and asked her if she wanted to go for a walk along the sea wall. At 6.30 on a Sunday morning. Unheard of - I am absolutely not a morning person. Parenthood has changed me. But it was lovely :)

In other news, Emma now has a library card. Turns out that there are no late fees on children's books taken out on a children's card. Quite a relief. Library fees could have been dire.

Emma is six weeks old. In many cultures, the forty days or six weeks after birth is regarded as sacred time, after which the mum can rejoin normal society. Hopefully, we can define what "normal society" means.

Emma has been developing emotional needs. For the first few weeks, her demands were mostly physical - needing to burp, be changed, feed, sleep etc. And now, her demands might well be "I need you to bounce me awkwardly on your knee until your muscles go into spasm. And if you stop, I'll cry again" or "I need you to rock me rigorously from side to side so that my neck flops around, while singing to me in your made-up language. And if you stop, I'll cry again." She gets bored easily and demands a new view periodically ("And if you don't move me, I'll cry again"). She's developed a dislike of being naked. And she is very aware when our attention is split - no more watching tv while feeding her, or rocking her to sleep with a book in hand ("And if you don't pay attention to me exclusively, I'll cry again.") Her repertoire of cries has extended to accomodate all of these needs. We're very proud of her.

Oh, Canada (Anna and Caroline)

After years of bureaucratic hoop-jumping, we became Canadian citizens today! That is, two of us became Canadian citizens, and Emma came along to offer her support and advice (she had an air of been-there-done-that about her; she, after all, has been a citizen FOREVER - since birth, in fact).

Our final step in the process (after interviews, paperwork galore, an exam, medicals, police checks, etc) was to turn up to a citizenship ceremony and take the Oath.

We dressed Emma up in a little Canadian outfit her Grandpa had bought for her (thanks, Hans/Dad!). It was covered in red moose (mise?) and maple leaves and had Canada printed across the chest, in case there was any doubt about our patriotism.

When we arrived, one of the volunteers looked at the sleeping Emma sprawled in our arms and said, "You'll have to hold the baby on your lap. There aren't any extra seats." Man, this is Canada, and they can't even give us a seat for our six-week daughter?! We assured her that Emma would probably not mind having to share. Maybe once she's seven weeks, she'll resent not having her own...

We spent most of the ceremony watching Emma carefully to see if she was about to blow. Then, just before we were due to say the Oath, she woke up, got hungry and starting bleating. Ever prepared, we popped a bottle of expressed breast milk in her mouth. To take the oath, we had to stand up and raise our right hands. So Anna had Emma in her left arm, and her right hand raised. Caroline used her left hand to hold the bottle firmly in Emma's mouth, with her right hand raised. It was quite the spectacle. Luckily, we made it through with a quiet baby and didn't have to leave the room, although we must confess that we giggled our way through the entire Oath and were thinking more about Emma than about Queen Elizabeth II and her successors.

Then we were honoured with a speech about what it means to be a Canadian citizen. Apparently, they felt the need to simplify things for us all. The two things apparently we have to do as citizens are 1) turn off our lights (and, therefore, "save the planet") and 2) shovel our neighbour's snow. If we do that, we can become prime minister. We're paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.

When we were given our certificates, the judge kept saying "Welcome to Canada". Slightly odd, given that Caroline has been here since she was 13 and even the newcomer Anna has been here for 8 years. But, perhaps beforehand we were merely tolerated rather than actually welcome.

So now we are Canadians. We still don't put "eh" on the ends of our sentences and neither of us follow hockey, but apparently those are acceptable transgressions...as long as we turn off our lights.

Honk, honk. Baby on Board (Caroline)

Everyone says that having a baby is life changing, but I didn't expect it to change my driving. Sure, I thought, I'll probably drive more cautiously to keep the precious cargo safe, but I didn't expect that red lights would become so annoying.

Most of the time, Emma goes to sleep in her car seat. But today, she was cranky. When the car was moving - fast - she was calm. But if we stopped, she would scream and scream as if the world was coming to an end. So, my job was to drive through downtown Vancouver in such a way that the car didn't stop. Yeah, right. So now that I am parent, my driving consists of abrupt braking to keep the jiggling motion going, slowing down well ahead of a light to avoid a complete stop, driving in the bus lane to keep the motion going and a desperate desire to honk anyone who actually stops at a red light in front of us. And the belief that if I say "Zoom, zoom" over my shoulder to my daughter, I can somehow convince her that the car is still moving. We were joking that we needed a siren on the top of the car that amplified her wailing to all the other drivers. "Coming through. Baby on board. Pull over and let us through!"

All of this is an improvement over my driving during pregnancy, when I developed a strange form of hormonal road rage where everyone on the road was pissing me off royally and I wasn't afraid to talk about it. I think I used more expletives during pregnancy than I did for ten years prior.

I wonder what the next change will be to my identity as a driver...?

Happy Birthday, Dad/John/Grandad (Anna, Caroline and Emma)

Today is April 21. Emma's Grandad's birthday. Happy birthday!

Emma has a few words to say to Grandad which we captured on camera. For everyone else, we thought you might like the first videos of her.

Please excuse us while we shamelessly exploit our daughter's cuteness for our own ends and put words in her mouth ...:)

Birthday wriggles...

Birthday singing...

This one's an out take. The funny expression on her face just cracked us up. It was just so NOT a "birthday face."

Writing and Parenthood (Anna)

5 signs you're a writer AND a parent:

1) You wish someone would design a diaper bag that has room for a laptop.
2) In your jacket pocket, you have a notebook, a pen and a burp cloth.
3) You are an expert at typing with one hand with a wriggly baby in the other.
4) When you're given time by yourself to write, the first 1000 words are heaven and then you start desperately missing your partner and your baby and can't wait for them to return.
5) You start off with five things in your head but by the time you've written them down, you've lost one of them.

Emma's first trip to Victoria (Anna)

In a parallel universe, we had a terrific weekend. We took Emma to Victoria for the first time. We enjoyed a sunset on the ferry. We wondered through the stalls in the inner harbour. We had a nap on the grass in the park near the ocean; enjoyed a lemon gelato. We went for a lovely drive to Shirley and introduced Emma to Jay and his horses. Had coffee with Anna I and Jason, and tea with Wendy. Browsed the shelves of Munro's. Had sushi with Kim and her friends. We might have seen Emma's Opa/Grandpa (Caroline's Dad) as well, if he had been in town. We soaked in the sun. Had fish and chips down by the harbour. We came home relaxed and happy after a lovely holiday.

Unfortunately, the only thing that ACTUALLY happened was that we went to Victoria. Caroline ended up with terrible abdominal pain and vomiting. We stayed holed up in a cheap hotel for a day and a half while she could barely move, and then came home early, having cancelled almost all our plans with everyone. We don't know if it was food poisoning, flu or some kind of complication from the Casaerean. She's still feeling pretty fragile, but glad to be home.

And we lost our new camera. Left it on the ferry on the way there while distracted by a screaming baby (ours). We both moped about having lost some photos of Emma and the fact that there wouldn't be any new ones for a while. We both pretended that both of these facts didn't really matter, and that we could always save up for a new camera. But - the saving grace of a shitty weekend - some kind, wonderful, beautiful soul handed our camera into lost and found, and we got it back on the return trip. We now have new rules in our relationship about carrying a screaming baby and a camera at the same time.

For all of you who received garbled messages over the past two days cancelling our plans, profuse apologies. We will try to repeat the trip at some point in the near future.

Happy 4 Weeks, Emma! (Anna & Caroline)

Yesterday, Emma was four weeks old. In honour of the occasion, we are finally posting some more photographs. No, we haven’t just been saving them up for this day; the USB drive on our computer was broken and we couldn’t connect our digital camera. And you know, priorities and everything – a baby who needs feeding wins out every time ☺ Thanks to all those people who have “gently” reminded us that they couldn’t care less about words – they want baby photos!

Since she was born, we have noticed so many differences in her. For the first few weeks, she was a very sleepy baby. When she was awake, she would squint at us from one eye. It took her over a week to show us both eyes. Now, she is often alert and active, taking in the things around her, gazing at us for hours. She’ll often lie in our arms on the couch looking for all the world like she’s browsing our bookshelf for the next good read. She has a full repertoire of squeaks, bleats, grunts, and cries, and can coo like a pigeon, quack like a duck and whimper like a puppy. She will now tell us when she is hungry and demand cuddles when she wants attention, rather than waiting for us to come to her. She can lie on her front and pull her neck up, moving her cheek from one side to the other with only the occasional head butt. And she nuzzles in our necks when we cuddle her, and gives gorgeous little baby smiles when the mood strikes (or when she passes gas, depending on which school of thought you belong to).

As for us, we’ve grown too, although perhaps we are the worst people to try to tell you how. We are growing into ourselves as parents, a journey we expect to take a lifetime, and falling even deeper in love with our bub. We take advantage of having a peaceful baby to go out – we can hang out in coffee shops without feeling the need to tear our hair out. This might be a limited time opportunity, so we don’t take it for granted. We curl up for naps with her, and sing silly songs to her and give her endless kisses and cuddles. We go for walks along the sea wall – which we did all the way through the pregnancy as well. And of course the feeding, nappy changes, rocking, bathing and everything else. This parenthood thing is pretty profound.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past few weeks. The food, the phone call check-ins, the gentle, loving emails, the packages, the hand-me-downs, the hugs and chats, the visits, the house work, the encouraging words, the space for us to figure it out for ourselves – we have been extremely lucky to have such wonderful people in our lives and so much support.

Smile for the Camera (Anna)

Today we undertook the bizarre rite of passage that marks our status as contemporary parents in a globalized world - we had passport photos taken of Emma. Emma, by the way, is taking global citizenship to a whole new level - she is eligible for no fewer than FOUR different citizenships.

Now, the Canadian rules around passport photos for infants aren't particularly stringent. You just have to make sure that your baby's eyes (both of them) are open. And she isn't crying. And her hands aren't near her face. And her head is directly facing the camera, to ensure that both her ears are showing. And no hands, props or pillows are in view. I don't know why parents make a fuss about it. I mean, really, how hard can it be to make a month-old infant conform to all of these things?

At our first attempt, there was no way Emma was opening her eyes. But, no big loss - we figured we would use those ones for her German passport, since those rules are less particular. The other ones (Canadian, Australian and English) could wait.

When we returned to the photo shop to pick up the photos, Emma's eyes were open! We dashed in and asked them to take more. "And we mean, NOW!!" So we both crouched down on the floor in the middle of the shop, while Emma reclined on a white board (photos of young babies are taken from above, to avoid the needing-to-sit problem). I held her arms down and kept her lying on her back, while Caroline held her head and we both said stupid things in high-pitched voices to encourage her to keep her eyes open. "Ready, one to, three," Caroline said and moved her hands away, allowing for a brief, split second moment of opportunity before Emma's head lolled to one side. The photographer clicked. "My flash isn't working," he said. He tried again. Still no flash. Any moment, Emma was going to start crying. "Ready, one, two, three," Caroline said, giggling. "You can do it, Emma," I cried. Click. "I'm not sure what's wrong with my flash," the guy said. Emma's eyes started to close. "Stay awake, kiddo! Smile for the camera. Stay awake." The guy fiddled with his camera for what felt like an eternity, while we contemplated whether it would be better to leave Emma on the floor or to pick her up again. Honestly, if a baby wants to close her eyes, there's really not a lot you can do about it. Eventually, the camera was ready. The first three photos would have been lovely profile shots as Emma's head rolled to the ground, and then Emma's hands burst free from my grip and there was another shot lost. But eventually, all of our efforts coordinated and we actually got the photo. Angelic infant. Eyes open. No crying. No hands. Both ears. Just as well they didn't insist on a closed mouth as well.

On the way home, our tired, grumpy, hungry, hot and poo-ey baby had a meltdown in her car seat. And she chose this afternoon, after weeks of crying dry tears, to produce real live wet tears. So our little angelic baby had tears streaming down her cheek as she howled and howled and howled. Heartbreasking. Would have made a good photo :) But at least, she will soon be able to travel in more than just the back of a car.

Emma's parents (Anna)

It's remarkable how quickly things change from "This is Anna and Caroline and their baby" to "This is Emma and her appendages".

Birth certificate (Anna)

We received Emma's birth certificate today! So she is an official person.

Kind of profound - seeing her name and then our names listed as parents. Wow - we have a child!

And, as always, I'm grateful that we live in Canada/BC where we can both be on the birth certificate from birth; definitely not to be taken for granted :) We were also able to order two certificates - one includes details of her parents and the other just lists her - so if she needs to identify herself without necessarily mentioning that she has two Mums, she has that option.