First day of parental leave, pt. 3

All right… I’ve taken a big step this morning and completed the online EI application for parental leave benefits. No easy feat, mind you. When they say it’ll take 60 minutes, they mean it.

Most of the information the application requested was pretty basic: who am I, where I’ve worked, SIN #, etc. What tripped me up was the self-employed bit.

See, EI wants to know about all the places you’ve worked. I can only speculate that they want to have a good idea of your annual income and/or know how many ROE’s they’ll need from employers, and as self-employed hobbyist, EI wants to know about that, too.

EI has changed a bit, from what I understand. Not only can you receive more assistance income, you can also work more while on leave. Used to be you could earn $50/week at no penalty. Well, those days have gone. Now you can earn up to 90% of your weekly insurable earnings (or something like that), but every time you earn $1 you’ll have $0.50 deducted from the total benefit you would’ve received.

I don’t know whether a sub-purpose of the application was to make the applicant feel like they’re going to get turned down, but my personal process definitely left me feeling concerned. Hopefully, things’ll work out for the best.

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First day of parental leave, pt. 2

Thanks for your concern, everyone.

My mother-i.l. will be fine, the medical peeps at the hospital say. Apparently she strained her leg muscles driving down here to see us, so they’re giving her no small amount of discomfort.

I remember playing softball and straining my leg muscles. Sometimes we want to tell the other person to suck it up, but that slow maturing process seems to be catching up to me right now, telling me to give others more leeway, and, in this case, that’s my mother-i.l.

I’ve asked her to stay in bed or on the couch today so she can rest her legs. Worst case scenario – I’ll be driving her back up to Edmonton next week and taking the bus back.

Thanks again for the comments on FB, everyone.

First day of parental leave, pt. 1

Well, it’s the first day of parental leave and I’m at the hospital at 3 a.m.

It’s not my wife or baby, though. It’s for my mother-in-law who isn’t feeling well.

Were I working today, this might not have happened. It might’ve been a drop off & pickup situation, but probably not a stay & wait scenario.

I hope she’s okay. I’m here in the waiting room while my sister-i.l. and mother-i.l. are waiting for a visit from the doctor on call.

What a world.

Might as well get my own dress…

 

 

 

At this very moment, I’m surrounded by seven beautiful women (technically four women and three girls). One is on her way to school, one is crying to be fed, two are still in bed and the rest are in various stages of getting up.

 

I’m the only male in the entire house. I might be the only male still at home on the entire block. Might as well get my own dress.

 

I’ve read somewhere that we absorb hormones emitted by others. Whether or not that’s true is for the scientists to decide, but there’s a mighty large amount of estrogen in this household – no wonder my guy friends are grabbing me for short getaways and asking if I’m okay (no man asks another man if he’s okay).

 

 

It’s nice, though. I spent most of this morning (all 59 wonderful minutes of it) getting my oldest daughter breakfast and watching as she looked for the tooth she placed under her pillow, discovering instead a marshmallow and a loonie (if you’re not from Canada, a loonie is equivalent to $1). We just finished waving to one another as her bus took off. *sigh*

 

Last night my mother-in-law cooked curry with roti. Curry with roti – yums. I haven’t had to do a dish in over a week! How awesome is that! Can I get a high five or a hallelujah?

 

I’m also grateful that everyone’s in a good mood. We have a small house and there are very limited places to run to in case people aren’t “feeling pleasant”.

I can’t think of a creative closing sentence, so I hope you enjoy your day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo credit: Bert Kaufmann via photopin cc

 

 

Flannel Friday: Mouse Paint

As a library programmer and p/t children’s entertainer, this looks like it would be great fun once created. Definitely something you could use to capture young attention spans anytime – check it out!

storytime katie

And yet again, another flannelboard from the Storytime Katie archives. I made this flannel version of “Mouse Paint” and posted about it in my Colors storytime, but I wanted to pull it out and highlight it for Flannel Friday.

In the original post, I wrote this “brief” note for anyone who wanted to make their own versions:

(As a brief note — I did not make the spiraled paint splots and I did not make the dancing mice. Instead, I asked the kids to dance for the mice and we twirled our fingers in the air and I just overlapped the new color over the old. And, I did not make the paintbrushes and instead just used a real paintbrush before putting the color splots on the white piece of felt. I am all for creative flannel pieces, but I am also a big believer in the less pieces…

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Green Eggs + Green Ham = Green Poo!

Among the many different things I remember looking forward to with our new baby were things like new baby smell (it’s intoxicating… there’s nothing like it) and hospital ice (what? you’ve never tried it? well, go get injured or sick or something & go to the hospital and try some).

Honestly, though, to pinpoint the one thing I was looking forward to the most… well… it’s a bit awkward, a bit weird, and (most of all) quite disgusting. In fact, you may want to set down anything that you’re eating or change to a different blog if you’re one of those people with wimpy stomachs.

I, (yes, me) Andrew Plait of Southern Alberta, was especially looking forward to green poo.

Let me write that again, a little slower for the people who weren’t sure what they read: G – R – E – E – N – P – O – O.

Green poo is, without a doubt, the best part of the entire parenting experience. Never mind the crying or discontent from the baby (actually, there’s usually one of three things to do when a baby cries, but that’s another post on its own) – green poo is to die for.

Why this fascination with feces? Well, I’ll tell you.

In my un-medical slang experience, a new baby dispenses green slime from his/her bottom within the first few hours of it being alive. You see it once, twice if you’re lucky, and then it disappears forever (unless your baby has a health problem or is from outer space or subsists on a formula/breastmilk/spinach diet).

The stuff is tougher than the strongest epoxy and extremely rare. In fact, I snapped a pic of it while we were in the hospital (but had the decency not to post that sort of thing on the Internet… just yet).

That’s why I’m a fan of green poo. Look for the collectible T-shirts coming out later this summer. We’ll start a poo-volution! Who’s with me?

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Nothing but time…

My wife and family are quite supportive. I mean, they have to live with me, right? They do a great job of that.

With the advent of our daughter, Taleah, and the EI parental leave offered by the Canadian government + the blessing of my workplace, I have access to the opportunity to spend more time with my family, be of use to my wife (not every day you hear that, dads!) and work on things I’ve been wanting to work on.

I’ve always enjoyed music, but haven’t had the chance to ENJOY (ie. listen to anything worthwhile) since the beginning of the year. Now, thanks to YouTube, I’ve been listening / watching full concerts from some of my favorite bands (ex. Radiohead, Gorillaz) online. In fact, I’m watching / listening to Radiohead (Live At Reading Festival) at the exact moment I’m working on this blog post.

My wife and daughters have given me the gift of time. Not only can I be super dad (not that I’m not Super Dad all the time), but I can be the self-employed businessman I was before, but now with the ability to focus more on the directions I want to go in.

Family, thank you for the gift of believing in me, for the gift of loving and supporting me, and for the gift of time to spend with you and improve myself (and hopefully our situation as a result).

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Home sweet home!

We made it! After nearly four and a half days at the hospital, we’re finally back at home and good to go.

See, after a woman has a C-section, there are a couple things that the doctors and nurses are looking for. Is she healing, can she walk, can she go to the bathroom, etc. Once the patient meets these criteria, they can be discharged. They look for things with the baby as well, like whether the baby is gaining weight, pooping, peeing, etc.

Now, most people probably take potty breaks for granted, but I’m thinking that victims of vasectomies don’t really feel like using the restroom either (not that there’s any good comparison between giving birth and having your soldiers grounded).

Anyway, we waited until early afternoon before the doctor on call finally walked in, gave our baby the once over and said we could go. I could hear the hallelujah chorus ringing. I packed our van so fast you’d think I was pulling an emergency move-out.

When Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home,” she wasn’t fooling around. Not only is home where the heart is, it’s the sweetest place a person could ever hope to be.

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The curse of the loose tooth

Sometimes life is full of irony. My daughter lost her first tooth mere hours before some major dental work took place.

The tooth was one of the lower front ones, but, despite repeated assurance that she’d be okay, she was quite reluctant to remove it.

We tried the wiggle first. You know, where you move the tooth back and forth with your fingers or tongue until it works its way out. The wiggle seems simple enough, but my five-year-old didn’t seem to get it.

To aid with knowledge of different ways to extract the tooth, we turned to a major Internet info-spot, YouTube. We saw kids with string attached to doorknobs, remote control cars, Nerf darts, a parent’s hand, a Lego action figure, etc. String seemed to be the way to go, but you think she’d go with string? Nuh-uh.

So, we went back to wiggling and pushing with her tongue. Grandma kept telling her to come so she could take it out, but girly-girl wanted to do it herself.

There were tears, fits, slightly violent acts directed towards adults… it was as if she didn’t want the tooth to come out. In fact, she’d said several times that she wanted to eat something hard so the tooth would come out by itself.

25 minutes into the tooth pulling I suggested tweezers. Sure enough, she tried them, but couldn’t seem to get a good grip. After repeated no-go’s, the waterworks resumed. Handoff to Daddy-o. Two quick tugs with the tweezers and that sucker was outta there!

As I said, that tooth came out hours before her dental appt. today, but that’s a story for another time. Later, all!

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Don’t argue over cooked soup

Today I left the hospital, picked up some bananas and milk for our girls, then rushed home to grab everyone and shuttle them off to the hospital. When I arrived home my mother-in-law told me she was carrying soup to the hospital to give to my wife.

Now, one of the nurses let me know that Mom had called this morning. One of the biggest no-no’s you can make with your family, at least your partner’s mother, is not to call and update her with activities at the hospital. You’ll want to call and let her know that the baby is well, the mother is well and everything’s going well at the hospital. In fact, and you won’t read me writing this much, I would think this is one time you should actually consider lying! No matter what’s really going on, unless things are looking grim, just tell Mom that everything’s okay, everything’s fine and that she doesn’t need to worry.

My mother-in-law had seven children and six of them are still alive and kicking today. She has lots of life experience with kids, but she doesn’t let us forget that, either. Many times she might say something because she wants to be helpful, but it just sounds like she’s telling everyone they don’t know how to raise a child / family properly!

When I walked in the door and one of the first things out of her mouth was “I’m carrying soup to the hospital for ‘X'”, I reacted very poorly. Men, you may’ve heard a popular saying, “happy wife, happy life”, yes? Well, the same applies to your mother-in-law!

I reacted poorly. I stood on my “hill” and tried to defend (very poorly) a line of reasoning that said her daughter needed to eat the hospital food, not home-cooked food. I lost that battle and had to apologize for my behavior. (“bad, Andrew! down! sit! baaaaaaaaaaaaddddddddd!)

She ended up carrying soup. I ended trying some of the leftovers and remembered just how much I miss her cooking. A man could happily gain 10 pounds in her kitchen over a weekend.

The moral is “don’t argue over cooked soup.” Just shut up and eat (especially if the person who made it knows how to cook)!

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