Hudson Nolan Coleman: The First Year

Similar to what I have done for E in the past, I have stuck to my guns and completed a memory book that captures Hudson's first year. While E's memory books have made great Christmas gifts, H's memory book comes in just in time for a solid Easter gift for grandparents.

Click here to view this photo book larger

If your interested in making a memory book of any kind, I highly recommend Shutterfly - their application is very easy to use, and I have had great experience with their customer service.

24 pounds of TROUBLE!

If there was ever a boy who was put on this earth to keep me on my toes, I am pretty sure its my baby boy!

We are in that stage of discovery and independence, and while this is a great from a one year old's perspective, its wearing on my last nerve as a mother!

 It seems every time I turn around he is into something... I think he believes he was put on this planet to identify the baby loop holes in our house - and trust me, there are many of them!

I guess the biggest challenge for me is believing that he can and will get into something each and every time I am not all up in his grill. His older brother was not that kind of a kid, and still isn't. E's level of mischief is actually pretty pathetic as it isn't worth charting on the holy graph of mischief. However, I can see that H is making up for that.

I try not to compare my boys... because while they are brothers, they are very different personalities and as such require different parenting techniques. But I can't help it! For E, raising your voice just an octave or two got his attention and deterred him from any further destruction, but for H, raising your voice three octaves (or down right screaming your head off) doesn't do anything but encourage him to continue his actions. Once he has it locked in his mind that he wants to do something, I have yet to discover a technique that will change his mind.

This week, H discovered that he's tall enough to pull the door handle open that leads to the basement stairs. When E was in this stage, we kept the door to the basement shut and that was the end of it. We actually only installed one baby gate in the whole house at the top of the second floor stairs for E. But now with H, its a different story. He insists on opening the basement door and I can't trust that he won't instinctively go head first down the stairs, so we took new measures to ensure that doesn't happen - a second gate. 

He's not pleased about it, but at least I can safely contain him to the first floor and do so with peace of mind. Of course... restricting him only triggers the 'what kind of trouble can I cause under her nose' button, and it turns into issues like these... 

But such is life... with a busy boy!

He's not all trouble all the time, every now and again, we are pretty pleased with his actions... like last weekend, before the baptism, he decided to take his first unassisted steps... in the presence of Grandma & Grandpa B too!



We love him to pieces... we just hope, like all parents of a busy boy, that its JUST A PHASE!

 

Truly blessed!

This past Sunday was a special day in our household. We finally made the arrangements to have the boys baptized and did so at a small service on Sunday afternoon.

Now... for many families, baptism happens when a baby is only months old, but in our household this was not the case.

PC and I have always had the intention to have our children baptized but there were a series of excuses factors that came into play during the last three years. Of course, PC and I being children of catholic parents, and being raised with the influence of the catholic church, the silent pressure to have our boys baptized only mounted with each passing Sunday. As PC likes to say... "3 hours after they were born is too late for my mother!", and that's a fairly true statement for my father too!

Nevertheless, we finally got things rolling on our end and made the arrangements a little over a month ago to have it done this past Sunday. I don't think it matters when we did it, but just that we finally did it!

I have to say, it was a really nice day, and the fact that E was very into it, also made it fun. He was so proud to be called up to receive his baptism candle with his godparents. I loved the look on his face. And H was pretty pumped to have the holy water poured on his hair - gave his famous 'rock on' sign right away!

It turned out to be a bit of a bigger deal than I had first envisioned, and I am really happy with our decision to have it done at the church the boys will now be apart of throughout their school years.

Here are a few pics from this special day... thank you to the boy's godparents, and their grandparents for setting aside sometime to be part this day and for spoiling them with love and support - it means so much to us.

 

Mixed emotions

What a week it has been.

Without boring you with the government background or my personal opinion on whether or not I think the moves this Government is making are right or wrong, what you need to know is that this past week my home department (along with many others) announced the implications of the overall recent budget cuts which includes staffing implications for many employees.

While I should be jumping for joy at the personal outcome for me, I am finding it challenging to hold back tears for so many reasons. To put it clearly, I was deemed 'not affected' by this week's staffing implications and this came as a HUGE relief to me. I feel as though some-how, some-way I dodged a very big bullet and I have take a moment to appreciate that and to thank my lucky stars for what this means to me and my family.

My job is stable, and appears to be for the foreseeable future, however, many of my close colleagues and personal friends are affected and now must go through a selection for retention and lay-off process to determine whether they can retain a position in the department or be declared surplus.

As I've mentioned briefly in the past, since returning to work after my maternity leave, I have been tasked with working on some of the communications activities surrounding the deficit reduction action plan. It has been a draining file... interesting and challenging, but also morally exhausting when your preparing products that will tell people (potentially yourself) they are at risk of losing their indeterminate position.

I knew the day was coming when the cuts would have to be announced, and not knowing my own fate created a world of stress that I had underestimated.  Upon learning that my position was not affected, I actually broke down in tears... because I was in shock of hearing the news, but also because I knew that my safety meant someone else was at risk of losing their position.

Last night the overload of stress caught up with me by way of a massive headache that felt crippling. It almost underlined for me everything I had been feeling all week. 

Working in an environment that has affected and non-affected people in the same group is challenging. It immediately creates a division between colleagues, and a segregation that you try not to acknowledge, yet it is there.  Undergoing changes like these also drives workplace moral into the ground. I know personally I have hard time focusing on my day to day tasks when something like this is happening to my colleagues, and I am not the one who has to actually think about the next steps in the process. I can only imagine what this news has done to them and their personal lives. It is paralyzing in so many ways - and while I tell myself the good ones will make it through these retention processes, I know that some of them will not, because the exercise is designed to realize savings through the elimination of positions regardless of the individuals who hold those positions.

Its a mathematical equation that determines who is affected and who isn't, but it feels personal on so many levels. Those who are affected are feeling like somehow their work is inadequate, or their commitment to their position is in question and those who are unaffected are somehow positioned to look like their work speaks for itself.  The truth of the matter is that some people who were unaffected by the cuts don't have the best performance records or half the commitment level of many of those individual who are affected (not in all cases, but in some).  When you put all of these factors together you have a lot of people questioning the commitment of the department to employees in general when really, it appears they are just a number or box being moved around on an org chart rather than a person with skills and abilities and a dedication to the department's mission, vision, and overall values.  I know that is not the intent of the exercise, but that is the reality from my perspective.

This last week has presented so many questions for what the future will hold, and many of them I still don't have answers for. I have had a very heavy heart over all of this, and while I am not deemed 'affected' this has, in so many ways, affected my professional and personal life.

I will take each day as it comes but I will not for a moment forget this experience or how it has impacted me on so many levels.