Blog - Page 14 of 16 - Jenny R. Hill

Catching up

February 2, 2012/0 Comments/in Exercise, Music, Parenthood /by Jenny R. Hill

It has been a while since I wrote a post. I have obviously been busy with taking care of Wesley, but lots of other things have gone on as well. So I think I’ll use this post as a bit of a catching-up point, and hopefully start to write more regularly from here.

Wesley

Obviously one of the main occupiers of my time lately is our new son. After some initial troubles with him eating, and him being jaundiced and losing weight, we’ve started to settle into a bit more of a routine, and his last checkup showed he’s doing quite well. He’s certainly not sleeping through the night yet or anything, but we’re definitely getting more sleep than we were at the beginning, which is awesome. He’s had a bit of a cold this week, which is unfortunate, but he’s doing well otherwise.

Once he is over his cold, I think we’ll start having more adventures during the day. As it is, we pretty much hang out at home unless there are doctor’s appointments, or we’re taking a quick trip down to the mailbox with him in his carrier. But starting next week I think we’ll go out to the library and the Early Years Centre and other places around town more.

I took a little video of him the other day- it’s just him flailing around, and then at the end he sneezes. He’s not really interactive yet, but he can still be fun. 🙂

I’ve been putting together an online baby book for Wesley that I’m sharing with my family (from scratch- I couldn’t find a service that did what I wanted) – I might, at some point, make a public version of it as well. It has been fun to put together!

Maternity Leave

I have to say, being on maternity leave is strange, but not quite what I expected. For those not aware, maternity and parental leave in Canada adds up to a year, and a parent on leave is eligible for employment insurance payments (like unemployment) for 55% of their normal salary, up to a certain amount. I’m about a month and a half in now, and have gotten my first few EI payments.

I think this system is how it should be everywhere. Parents are able to do all the caregiving for that first year if they want, I think it makes women more likely to return to work as well. I feel like I’m able to do what I need to do and still stay connected to my workplace, and I don’t have to worry that my job won’t be there when I get back. It really takes a major stressor off new parents who want to maintain the two-income household. I feel like a shorter unpaid leave would be a lot more stressful.

Singing

I’ve been singing, which has been good. I still have to convince my brain that I have my normal breath capacity back- my mind thinks I’m running out of breath a lot sooner than I really am, which makes me breathe more. But things are getting back on track in that area which is good.

I managed to record a track for Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir this time around, which was cool! I always wanted to do that, and I’m glad I got the opportunity this time. I’m looking forward to when the final video is released!

Back to the gym!

I’ve just passed 6 weeks postpartum, which is the time that people generally start exercising again. I probably could have increased my activity before now, admittedly, since I had a pretty decent recovery. However, the demands of a newborn and all that made it easy to hold off.

But today, I’m going to head out to the gym for the first time in a long time. I don’t have any expectation that I’ll be anywhere near where I was last year at this time (when I was training for a half-marathon) but I think a brisk walk and some weights will do me good! I might look into taking up yoga again as well. I still have some pregnancy weight to lose, so increasing my activity will definitely help with that, as well as being a great mood-booster. Definitely excited.

House

In the past couple weeks, we’ve put the finishing touches on the nursery (and it’s becoming quite nice in there actually, I don’t mind hanging out there for late night feedings). There’s a rocking POANG from IKEA, some printed out pictures on the wall in inexpensive frames, and I hung up a nice quilt we got from a relative. There’s a small hanging drying rack for diaper covers, a bookshelf with a little stereo to play music, a few books and toys. Right now his bassinet is still in there, since he’s not sleeping in the crib yet (we’ll be transitioning him this week once his congestion clears up- the bassinet mattress is slightly angled so he can sleep easier with his cold).

We’ve been planning to finish the basement for a while, and we’ve finally gotten started on that project, in that we’ve picked a contracting company and put a deposit down. Work will start in March, and it will take about 5-6 weeks. I’m hoping the weather is decent during that time so that if it’s loud or what have you in the house, I can head out for a walk with Wesley.

We’re putting in a bathroom and a rec room type area down there, plus some storage space. It should increase the living space in our house quite a bit, as well as make it easier for us to have a proper guest room and a decent play area for Wesley. I imagine once it’s finished, we’ll be spending a lot of our time down there.

The current family room will become a double office for Trevor and I, and Trevor’s office will be the new guest room.

So my office is already moved to the current family room- once the basement is done, the family room furniture will go down there, and Trevor’s office furniture will move in here. I’m actually considering seeing if a moving company would lend us a couple of guys for an hour to move the furniture around our house- I’m not looking forward to negotiating all the stairs with a couch.

I think that’s enough for now! Hopefully I’ll write more often so that this doesn’t become a monthly thing. 🙂

Birth Story

January 10, 2012/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Jenny R. Hill

The Weeks Before

ultrasound photo A couple weeks before the baby was born, I had an ultrasound to follow up on some previous concerns (size, etc). My amniotic fluid was low, so they sent me over to the hospital for a non-stress test. That was a bit of a surprise, but everything was ok, so they scheduled a followup ultrasound for a few days later. My fluid went up, so we were good. I was scheduled for weekly ultrasounds though, to keep tabs on that.

We took a first aid course on the 10th, which was pretty tiring, but good. I didn’t really fit in the desk, though.

So moving into the week or so beforehand, I was starting to get more and more uncomfortable. The baby had started to drop, which was supposed to make me more comfortable, and it did- for about a day. I was hugely swollen in the wrists and ankles, and at that point almost 0 of my maternity pants even fit comfortably anymore and my feet were so swollen I was wearing slippers at work all the time and braces for carpal tunnel. I had another followup ultrasound.

On Saturday, I went to the spa and used an awesome gift card I received from some work friends to get another prenatal massage, and a pedicure. It was really good! But I have small suspicions that that helped move things along a bit, because…
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Weekend, first aid, Muppets

December 12, 2011/0 Comments/in Awesome Things /by Jenny R. Hill

It was a pretty busy weekend! On Saturday Trevor and I took a long first aid course with St. John Ambulance, and we’re now both certified in emergency first aid for adults, children and infants, and use of defibrillators for same. It was a decent course, I’m glad we did it. Made for a long day though- practicing CPR on plastic dummies can be pretty tiring.

On Sunday, we saw The Muppets, which was pretty good! I didn’t get to watch much of the Muppet Show when I was smaller, though I did enjoy pretty much all the Muppet movies I’ve seen. Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, and you like Muppets, go, because it’s awesome.

Things that are awesome

December 5, 2011/0 Comments/in Awesome Things /by Jenny R. Hill

Christkindl Markt – I’ve been to the Christkindl Markt in downtown Kitchener for the past 4 years or so, and it’s awesome every year. This year, I didn’t have to sing there, which was nice. I got a funnel cake for lunch on Thursday when it opened, and it was delicious.

New desk at work – Our office is expanding, and everyone is moving around to best make use of new spaces. So my team moved down a floor, and I wound up in a pretty nice desk! I am pleased. I’m by the window, but not facing it, which is nice as I prefer to face the room anyway. Though I’m only at work for a few more weeks before my leave starts, it’s nice to spend them in a workstation I like. My keyboard tray is coming tomorrow too, so that will be good!

Trello – Over the past little while, I’ve been using a service called Trello to organize tasks for myself, and I’m finding it pretty nice. I was using Google tasks before, but this is nicer and has a lot more options, and it works nicely on my Blackberry. Check it out if you regularly make to-do lists!

Blackberry 9810 – I got a new Blackbery recently, with the new OS (OS 7) and I am a big fan! It has a better camera than my previous device, the navigation is nice, I still have the sweet keyboard, bigger screen… I dig it.

Good lord, I’m getting enormous.

October 7, 2011/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Jenny R. Hill

20 Weeks 2 Days:

25 Weeks 6 Days:

DANG.

Accessibility Camp Toronto 2011, and Accessibility Summit 2011!

September 28, 2011/0 Comments/in Awesome Things /by Jenny R. Hill

This isn’t something that I’ve written about in great detail here, but over the past year and a half or so, I’ve become kind of a web accessibility advocate. It’s something that I’ve been able to start bringing into my work, which is very exciting for me, and I’ve become something of the accessibility go-to person in my department. Even though I’ve gained a not-insignificant amount of knowledge that we’re starting to apply, I am always eager to learn more.

Over the past week, I’ve had some great opportunities to do just that. On Saturday, I attended Accessibility Camp Toronto, an un-conference designed to bring together attendees to learn and share in a more informal environment than the traditional conference. I was able to attend a number of really cool sessions- I particularly enjoyed the demo of FireEyes from Deque Systems, and the more informal presentation about HTML5/jQuery and the Fluid Project, from members of the IDRC and Everett Zufelt.

Even though I got some really useful new information, I think the thing I took away from the conference is just how much interest and excitement has been growing around this subject (It’s not just me!). There’s an amazing community of people that are driving huge amounts of improvement in websites, applications, and all sorts of information delivery, and it’s not just because the legislation is requiring it.

On top of that, today was Accessibility Summit 2011, which is an online conference presented by Environments for Humans. There were a ton of great sessions, from some big names in web accessibility. I was a little apprehensive that an online-only conference wouldn’t have the same amount of discussion/networking/collaborative opportunity, but looking at how many new people I’m following on Twitter, I think that worry was unfounded.

Glenda Sims‘ (again from Deque Systems- these people are pretty cool!) presentation about captioning, and Derek Featherstone‘s presentation, “Everything I Know about Accessibility I Learned from Star Wars”, were major highlights of the day for me. However, every single presentation was top notch, and the issues were few, considering that there were additional technical considerations to deal with to make the online delivery work.

So now, I’m pretty much buzzing with even more ideas and excitement than normal (and I have an idea train that is already hard to slow down). Watch out!

Birthday present to me!

September 24, 2011/0 Comments/in Awesome Things /by Jenny R. Hill

So I got some really awesome stuff for my birthday- a gift card for the spa so I can get a massage, and some homemade cinnamon rolls (yummmmm!). But I hadn’t gotten anything for myself yet! Until today.

I got a guitar! I’ve been wanting to learn, and now I have my very own! Now all I need to do is build up lots of calluses on my fingertips. 🙂

Almost 24 weeks of Preggonaut

September 21, 2011/0 Comments/in Pregnancy /by Jenny R. Hill

It’s hard for me to believe that I’m actually more than 5 months pregnant (except when I try to put on pants). I am definitely doing my best to enjoy all the good things, though. It’s starting to get to the point now where it’s pretty obvious to people that my abdominal bulging isn’t just the result of too much cake. Though, I definitely did indulge in too much cake recently, in honour of my birthday. Mmm. Cake. People are saying how cute I look, which is nice, especially when I’m feeling a bit mountain-esque.

It’s interesting though- some parts of my experience seem to jive with the universal things. I get teary-eyed at all sorts of situations and when seeing small children and babies, I definitely like to eat a lot and sometimes crave somewhat specific things. A good rub to the belly when my ligaments are sore is nice. I was pretty excited at my last ultrasound. However, with some things I’m seemingly falling outside the typical experience. I haven’t bought a single baby thing yet, while some women have already totally pimped out the nursery by this point. We’re not finding out the sex ahead of time, or calling the fetus by a pre-chosen name (for now it is CookieMonster, or baby, or occasionally, in my head, Babynaut). We haven’t bought any minivans or enrolled in any preschools.

I always thought women were essentially completely consumed and distracted by their pregnancies- I mean, having a little alien thing inside you must be pretty distracting, right? Maybe some women are consumed, I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll become more distracted as time goes on. While I do have times where my uterine passenger is at the forefront of my mind, I am decidedly not just a walking, eating gestational sac like I imagined. I might not have the physical stamina I had previously (physical limitations being the biggest difference for me at this point), but I’m still really into all sorts of other projects, and I haven’t lost any sense of self or gained any new earth-motherness or anything. I’m glad about it.

Trip to Philadelphia and DC

September 12, 2011/0 Comments/in Awesome Things, Travel /by Jenny R. Hill

So we took a bit of an interesting vacation this time, in terms of days off and placement. We took off days from a Wednesday to a Wednesday, which made for a slightly shorter vacation as we didn’t have two weekends on each end, but having two short work weeks was in a lot of ways so much nicer! So I highly recommend if you don’t absolutely have to take your time all in one calendar week, do try it.

Anyway, we drove down to Philadelphia- it being one of the few decently-sized cities on this side of the continent that we hadn’t visted yet. We decided to drive, since with me being 20 weeks pregnant I didn’t really want to deal with flying and airplane lavatories and such, and the car is much more comfortable than a seat in coach. The drive down took us about 9.5 hours or so- the weather was sunny, so it was a really nice drive overall.

We got to our hotel, which was in a New Jersey suburb of Philly. It is one of the newer Starwood offshoots, called Aloft.

The hotel was pretty nice, overall. It definitely had a bit more of a “trendy” air to it, seemingly trying to target a young professional type demographic. When we arrived and checked in, we discovered it was karaoke night, haha. The lounge was right behind the lobby and front desk, and it was a lot more of a party air than I expected, but still pretty cool. We did not participate in karaoke, haha. We did go out and get ourselves some Mexican food, because we love it and Mexican restaurants are sadly lacking in my town.

On Thursday, we did a bunch of shopping. I had held off on buying much in the way of maternity clothes because I was determined not to spend a ton more than I would on regular clothes, just for something to get me through the next few months. However, there are a lot more reasonably-priced options in the US (Target and Macy’s being the main places we hit) so I was able to get some things that I hadn’t found in the thrift stores up here yet.

On Friday, we drove a couple of hours down to DC for the day, to do some wandering around. We can hardly resist that town. Trevor lived there for a while, and we’ve been there together 5 times now. This time, I wanted to go on the Capitol tour, something I hadn’t gotten to do yet. We had a fast lunch with a friend of ours who lives there, and then quickly walked over to the Capitol Visitor Center to get ready for our tour.

The tour was pretty good! First, they usher you all in to watch a short film, which is pretty much one of those patriotic-spirit-rousing quick tours of US history engineered to make pregnant women all weepy. The score was really good too. I wish I could find a clip of it somewhere on the internet, but I suppose it’s not out there anywhere.

The walking part of the tour was fast, though. We had a good tourguide, who was enormously tall. We went down into the crypt (not that anyone is buried there, but) and saw the rotunda, and the old Supreme Court hall, and the old House of Representatives hall, and lots of statues. We went to the Senate hall as well. I got my picture taken with a statue of Ronald Reagan on the tour (it was near where we were walking, and RR has a special place in my heart because he’s the only President I’ve ever seen in person).

After the Capitol, we went over to the Library of Congress and saw some of the cool exhibits there (we hadn’t been there before despite 5 visits). My feet were starting to hurt from some new shoes, so then we went outside and walked past the Supreme Court building, and started to head back to the car.

On Saturday, we headed into downtown Philly to do some of the historic/touristy stuff there. We went to the visitor center to get our bearings (and I got my picture taken with the Philly Phanatic statue there). We went to the Constitution Center after that, and saw a sort of mixed film/theatre presentation called Freedom Rising- similar to the Capitol film, but a bit more variety in that there was a live narrator and it was done in the round with projections on surrounding screens and a 5 sided screen that flew in in the center. It was pretty cool.

After that we wandered around a bit more. We saw the Betsy Ross house, and the Liberty Bell, and I found out how to get a National Park Passport (which is a really cool thing by the way). We missed out on getting tickets for Independence Hall, but we went back another day.

On Sunday, we hit up Independence Hall and the zoo. The Independence Hall tour was pretty good, and it’s definitely a cool building. The zoo was not a huge zoo (though nothing seems big after San Diego), but still quite decent. We took advantage of the Big Bus Tours ride that came with our CityPass to get out there (that was actually far more useful than initially expected). It was busy at the zoo, since it was a weekend day with fair weather, but we still got to see a lot of things.

After the zoo, we stopped at the Museum of Art and I finally got my photo at the top of the Rocky Steps. I did not run up them.

On Monday, we went to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden. It was a pretty good aquarium (though I would say that the aquarium at the Henry Doorly Zoo, though smaller, is definitely up there). It was also busy, that day being a holiday, but overall, it was really nice. We wound up having lunch there because of how timing worked out. After that, we took the ferry across the river into Philadelphia, and did a bit more walking around. We went to see Ben Franklin’s grave, mostly. By this time we were getting maybe a little sick of walking.

Tuesday was super rainy (leftovers from a tropical depression) and it was pretty depressing. However, we spent Tuesday at the Franklin Institute, which is probably the best science museum I’ve ever been to. We don’t have any photos from it, because we were having so much fun playing with all the exhibits. We walked through the giant heart, I learned when to use a defibrillator, we played at wheelchair racing, all kinds of things. It was awesome, and probably the best thing on the CityPass. After that we were intending to go to Penn and Princeton (I have a hoodie I bought at Harvard, and I wanted to improve my Ivy League collection) but it was so rainy we gave up.

On Wednesday, we drove home, mostly through the aforementioned tropical depression. Tons of rain, flood warnings, all that. It took us a few extra hours to get home, but we made it alright!

If you want, you can look at more photos from the trip.

Preggonaut Eats: Cravings.

August 22, 2011/0 Comments/in Pregnancy /by Jenny R. Hill

So I haven’t had much in the way of ridiculous food cravings. Mostly what I’ve wanted to eat since I’ve been knocked up has been squarely in the carbohydrates camp, but that’s not really a craving, per-se.

A couple weeks ago though, I did wants something specific. Trevor posted our exchange about it:

Jenny: Stacey posted a picture of cinnamon rolls and now I want some!
Trevor: Uh huh?
J: Help me?
T: I’m afraid I don’t know the spell summon cinnamon rolls.
J: I think it involves getting into the car and driving to the store? [hopeful face]
T: …
T: I’ll get my keys.

Ever since then, we’ve pretty much had some type of cinnamon roll on hand- usually a package of the mini ones from the supermarket bakery. I mentioned this at work, and a coworker brought some in for a meeting. Something about the cinnamon in particular is super delicious to me. That would be the only thing so far that I would really classify as a craving. Not bad!