2011 in Review (a little late)

Exactly a year ago.
Photo courtesy of  the talented Tom Wiebe.

I realized just after the year ended that I should have done a retrospective post! Whoops! Better late than never, though, right? Here's the year in review:

January saw some new beginnings. I let go of the log of how much formula Sprout was drinking, his weight gain, etc. If you're thinking that tracking his formula consumption for almost five months seems a little insane, well, yes, it was a little obsessive. But there's a back story: when I found out my milk supply wasn't enough, I needed to keep track to help adjust the balance of breast milk to formula so he was getting as much of the former as possible. I did everything I could to increase my supply & keeping track of how much formula supplement he was taking helped me know if the Domperidone, lactation tea, pumping six times a day, etc was working.

I also started school again in January after a two-semester break. Taking two classes when Oli was home with Sprout wasn't difficult & I really enjoyed the linguistics course on first language acquisition. I've been anxiously awaiting the appearance of words since taking that course & it's so exciting that he's starting to talk now!

After some struggles on the getting-Sprout-to-sleep front, I wrote Nap Battle Day on the last day of January, which has been one of my most popular posts ever.

February Sprout started to sit on his own & I joined a postpartum fitness study at UBC. Twice a week, Sprout & I trekked over to UBC for the stroller fitness class through the spring. I met lots of cool mamas there, including Debbie, who I've stayed in touch with & now count as a friend.

I also sold my ANEW baby & mama gear at BirthFest near the end of the month.

The biggest thing in February was Sprout starting to eat food! We skipped the spoon feeding, purees & mush, going with the baby-led weaning method. It was so much fun & Sprout was eating a lot in no time. I got rather distracted from Sprog blog at the time & didn't write about it at all until March.

Near the end of March I got my first smart phone & was so distracted with it that I didn't blog about it until April. I blame Angry Birds.

In April Sprout moved up to three meals a day. February we started with just dinner, then March we added in lunch & by April he was eating breakfast as well. It got difficult to fit all the meals, diaper changes, naps & breastfeeding into each day. Going out & doing stuff got a little more complicated when there were so many other time-consuming things to do. We did manage to get ourselves over to North Vancouver to participate in The Great Cloth Diaper Change, in an attempt to promote cloth diapering & set a Guinness World Record.

I subtracted a couple more questionable-chemical-containing products from my arsenal in April when I went 'No Poo'. I started using baking soda & apple cider vinegar once or twice a week rather than shampoo & conditioner daily.

May started off with my friend Kirsten & I strapping our babies to our backs & going out in our neighbourhood reminding people to vote. Though the results were bittersweet for the NDP, I still think of it as a pretty happy day & I did a little photo essay on it. May also saw the first of the Linnaeus X.x posts: nearly nine months old & mama finally thinks to start organized weekly updates. Heh. In further efforts to post more, I started Wordless Wednesday posts weekly.

My first Mother's Day since Sprout's birth was also the day we celebrated the life of my grandmother, who passed away in April. Nanny had a long & happy life, but I often wish she were still here.

Sprout's head finally grew big enough to fit a toddler helmet, so we got a bike trailer & got the whole family on the road. This made for a much quicker trip to the Trout Lake Farmers' Market.

June was all about food: I tried some wheat-free baking, Sprout continued to consume mass quantities like a tiny Conehead. He figured out how to pick up handfuls of small things & shove them into his mouth, moving himself up the weight percentiles from svelte to average. This was probably in preparation for the energy he'd be burning once he started 'spidermanning'. Since Sprout was gaining so well, we finally dispensed with the formula top-ups that he'd been getting nightly for ages.

I worked a little this month, participating in another market (ANEW was at Car-Free Day) & finally got back into stilting with a couple of gigs. I also started one class up at SFU for the summer semester.

July I performed four days, including three at the Vancouver birthday celebrations in Stanley Park, where Oliver snapped this awesome photo: Sprout 'visiting Mama at work'. I also started writing for Vancouver Mom & Sprout finally got up off the floor & figured out how to cross-crawl.

In August our backyard garden really got going & started to produce. The big event of the month was Sprout's first birthday, of course. We travelled to visit Opa & Oma in the Okanagan for Oma's birthday, & then celebrated mine too by going to the PNE.

The month ended on a sad note because we had to say goodbye to our dear 19-year-old Stimpy cat.

September saw me taking three courses at SFU. Since Oliver went back to work, Sprout started daycare. There was no difficult transition, as daycare was a his best friend's place. When I dropped him off most days, he'd crawl at top speed toward all the awesome toys in the playroom as soon as we were in the door. I also participated in another Blim Market with ANEW at the Autumn Shift Festival. We also got rid of our TV & except for a few evenings where I was tired & just wanted to zone out to inane cop shows or sitcoms, I didn't miss it.

October was another sad month, as my 92-year-old Grampy passed away. That put a bit of a damper on Halloween, but we still took Sprout out to trick-or-treat at a few houses, then went to a Halloween party for a couple of hours. On the positive side, October was the month I managed to start daily blogging & added gear reviews to the weekly lineup.

November was a bit of a roller coaster month too: Sprout had his first visit to the emergency room at BC Children's Hospital due to croup. He got his very first haircut, which transformed him from a baby to a boy. He looked just like me at the same age before the cut, then started to look just like his Papa as a toddler after.

December was a very busy month: basically schoolschoolschool until exams were over on the 17th, one more stilt gig, then ChristmasChristmasChristmas, trying to cram everything into the week I had left to actually do stuff. This year was a bit slim on holiday parties & I missed two due to that horrible stomach flu. Our Christmas Day was fun though & I managed to keep up the daily blogging.