Kaylee Is Such A Good Girl

Visiting Steph and Dave (both before and after doing Christmas with my family) so I finally got to see their new puppy!!

Meeting Kaylee - December 30, 2019

Quick snapshot with my phone

The funniest thing is that she doesn't like Jason at all!! Normally dogs are obsessed with Jason and love him so much, so her dislike of him was pretty refreshing for me. She wasn't super in love with me either but she didn't bark at me like she did at him. 

Also, she was a puppy in the summer and she is much larger now. I am sad to have missed seeing her when she was tiny tiny. Steph said she woke up one day and all of a sudden she was a dog. However, she is still super playful and very soft.

Cramps With Less Meds

Since getting pregnant I haven't paid a lot of attention to 'the rules' because I pretty quickly discovered them to be based on bad studies, no science, disproved theories, etc. I would totally recommend reading Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster, it was great to have someone go through the studies and provide the facts and statistics around them instead of just getting an absurd lists of dos and don'ts.

However, for the past couple of weeks I have had really bad cramps in my lower stomach. I don't know if it is gas, or constipation, or my uterus expanding or implantation pain, or what have you, but it hurts! To the point of crying some evenings after dealing with multiple periods of sharp and constant pain throughout the day. Luckily I can keep it in perspective with my gallstone pain, which was way worse. Those gallstone attacks are still the most painful thing I have ever experienced!

One of 'the rules' that I have been paying attention to is medications while pregnant. (In fact I have decided with my doctor that, while I will continue to take my two anti-depressants, I am going to go off of the Adderall I take for my ADHD for at least the first trimester.) Anyway, while I would normally just take Tylenol or Advil, which ever I found first for pain, like cramps, soreness, or headaches, it is advised that Advil (or ibuprofen) should be avoided. However, Tylenol (or acetaminophen) is fine to treat pain and/or fevers. It sucks a bit that I am a bit more limited now on my pain killer choice and I really need to stock up on the one that is okay, because I am frequently very uncomfortable!!

Pixeled PacMan

Did our first pregnancy ultrasound this morning. Had to drink a whole pile of water first, was very uncomfortable. This is so the bladder pushes the uterus up more making it easier to see. However, after taking a few pictures it was determined that they couldn't see enough so had to switch from the stomach wand to a trans-vaginal (it is what it sounds like, they use a stick.) The nice thing about this is that they let me pee first.

After the technician had finished, she called in Jason and we got to look at the pictures. As I mentioned before, this was a dating ultrasound. So it doesn't give a lot of information. We could see the yoke sack, because that part is the first thing that is around giving nutrients to the embryo. The placenta will form later. The embryo looked like a little circle with a pie piece cut out (like the PacMan character.) We could also see a few flashing pixels that the technician thought was probably the heartbeat but it would need to be further evaluated to confirm.

They wouldn't let us have or take a picture!! Not until the 12-week ultrasound, it is their policy. I was pretty disappointed but it was still really cool to see - still in shock that this is happening.

Oh, It Really Happens

Ok, this will be quick because it is late but I wanted to post about it right away. First, a bit of back story, I am a little late to the game, but I have recently discovered The Baroness von Sketch Show, which is hilarious (and Canadian.) Over the past few weeks I have watched pretty much all of their clips on YouTube, including this one about 'Land Acknowledgement:'

I thought it was very ridiculous and totally feel like the woman in the audience, "Oh, should we go?" Because I don't feel like this type of acknowledgement actually DOES anything. But at the same time, I hadn't ever seen one happen. ERin had mentioned that they are done ahead of government related meetings, events, and conferences. But for me that makes sense, she is often working on projects that have direct impact on aboriginal groups and making this type of speech hopefully starts conversations off in a positive direction - seeing that she is often involved in land claims/disputes.

Well, this evening at the Nutcracker, which Jason and I went to with ERin and Matt actually, they did a land acknowledgement ahead of the performance! It also mentioned the desire to make The National Ballet of Canada a more diverse company, which is a great goal. A quick flip through the program, which had photos of all the dancers, showed that they have a ways to go on this.

A longer version of the land acknowledge given verbally at the start of the performance was included in the program, it says:

The National Ballet of Canada acknowledges out creative home on the sacred and traditional territories of the Anishinabek, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat. We acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Williams Treaty signed with multiple Mississausgas and Chippewa bands. We support the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

The National Ballet recognizes the enduring presence of Indigenous peoples and that Toronto (Tkaronto) - which means "where there are trees standing in the water" - continues to be home to many Indigenous nations. Toronto has also been called "the Dish With One Spoon" which means all were and are invited and able to share, including the responsibility of ensuring the dish is never empty, taking care of the land and the creatures we share it with and that there are no knives at the table, representing that we must keep the peace.

The National Ballet is grateful to have the opportunity to work, dance and create on these lands and we thank the past, present and future caretakers of this land for their stewardship. We take this as a moment to reflect on our own activities and how the National Ballet can be part of a community of sharing as we take steps to ensure our practice, artists, staff, volunteers, Board members, patrons and audiences are open to engaging all people who live in these territories today and in the future. To this end, the National Ballet is now developing action places to support this direction.

I am interested to see what these action plans include, hopefully more than just words said or written. Also, how long have they been working on these plans? Not to pick on The National Ballet, but words can only go so far and I hope they don't spend too much time saying things and hurry up with these supposed 'action plans' that are mentioned.

So Tiny!

It was a good appointment today! My doctor is very excited for us, so her and Jason will probably get along great. What is awesome is that even though she is my family doctor, she also has additional training in obstetrics, with hospital privileges to provide obstetrical care at St. Joseph Health Centre Toronto. So she can manage my pregnancy!

We got some information sheets with dos and don'ts, talked about my care options (I chose staying with her, I wasn't interested in a midwife or OB-GYN specialist), got requisition forms for blood tests and she is sending me next week to day a dating ultrasound. While I thought my cycle was consistent, apparently it isn't regular enough to date the pregnancy accurately.

The estimate is that I am around 4 weeks pregnant, since I JUST took the home test yesterday! Everything seems to measure baby size by fruit, which I think is weird and depending on the fruit it can be confusing. I found a fun article that does a Millennial Baby Size By Week using things other than fruit comparisons. Apparently this early on the fetus is the size of spec of eye shadow glitter. For reference that's 0.014 to 0.04 inches in length and not quite 0.04 ounces. So very very tiny!

Whaaat?!?

I have made a doctor's appointment for tomorrow. We were trying to get pregnant but I am still in shock that it happened! Also, that I was just a bit bored this morning and decided to take a test, I hadn't really even registered that my period was late. Jason is over the moon and we have already started to tell everyone (mainly through texting - the modern era.)

He Knows Me Well

A while ago we were at a games night playing Codenames and Jason made a comment that showed just how well he knows me - and how my mind works (or doesn't work.) Every time we play the game I remember the moment and it makes me smile.

The game involves a layout of 25 words, which a single player trying to communicate to their team, using a single word only, which words are assigned to the teams colour. It the goal is always to have your team guess correctly multiple words in a single turn. It is surprisingly hard to tie together a series of vastly different words using a single word hint, followed by a number for how many fit that hint.

Here is what happened:
Looking at the layout, as the player giving the hints, I said: Animals, three.
This means that my team members, Jason and Teri, needed to look at the words in the layout and guess three that fit with the word Animal. They choose: "Giraffe" and "Dog"
Then they started to struggle, as there were no more obvious animal words.
So Jason adds for their third guess: And, "Papyrus"
Everyone was confused: What? For animals? Papyrus?
Jason continued: Yes, because she probably thinks it says "Platypus"
And, he was right, I totally did!! I have a Masters in English.

Let's Go To Virginia, Real Quick

So this past weekend brought a snow storm to Toronto (and the surrounding area). I got a call on Sunday that Steph was trapped at the airport downtown. (Toronto Island Airport that was originally just Porter but now a few other carriers use it too. Also, you used to only be able to get to it using a ferry but now there is a tunnel to walk under the water.) Steph was trying to get to Virginia for a photography conference.

Upon reviewing her options she called to see if she could stay overnight and then figure out a way home to Ottawa the following day - since everything in Toronto was basically shut down with the snow (even though it had basically stopped snowing at this point.) I decided to do one better and offered to drive her down to Virginia so she didn't have to miss out on the conference, or the styled shoot she had scheduled on location as well.

It took 10 hours to drive to Charlottesville and we arrived at her hotel at 4am on Monday morning. I was going to drive her to the shoot but then decided I wanted to sleep and just lent her the car for the day while I hung out at the hotel. When she got back that evening (and how she worked a full day, I have no idea) I drove her up to the Washington, DC airport (where she was originally going to fly in) so that she could grab her rental car and continue onto the conference. Then I drove home overnight from Monday to Tuesday.

It was great to spend time catching up but now I need to catch up on some sleep!