feed the animals

My son was doing the cutest thing today.  I only noticed him do this for the first time.  He has a baby chick stuffed animal that my sis gave him for Easter last year.  Today he was holding it and feeding his milk to it.  It was so adorable.  It's funny to see them imitating the every day things that we do.  I wonder what he was thinking in his head.  I used to love pretending when I was a kid.  My cousin and I would always create these awesome stories and adventures.  It's cool to see this pretend play sprouting in the little man. 

I had an awful scare yesterday.  We had gone out for the afternoon.  I took him to Barnes and Nobles to run around and maybe look at books but he always prefers running around then choosing a book to read/listen to.  Anyway, we have one flight of stairs to get to our apartment.  I had him, the stroller and some stuff from the pharmacy in my hands.  We climbed the stairs together.  He ran to the neighbor's door and tried to open their door.  I thought that would give me enough time to quickly open our door.  But low and behold I turn around and he's taken 3 steps down on the stairwell...I of course panicked and told him to come to me.  I went to grab him and he tried to run away from me (of course), turns around on the stairs and proceeds to stumble downward!  My heart stopped beating.  It was like watching a movie in slow mo where someone falls down the stairs but I couldn't believe it was happening right in front of me for real.  I ran down to him.. He was screaming.  He had hit his face on the railing.  It was just awful.  He stopped crying after 5 minutes.  I tried to put ice on his bruises and then he was off on his way like nothing happened.  He wanted to eat snacks and play.  I think I was traumatized for life.   I called our doctor's office immediately to take him in and get checked just in case, although I figured he didn't have a concussion because he seemed perfectly fine.  The office was very accommodating, and let us come in within the hour.   The nurse practitioner was cool.  She took a look, said he looked fine, didn't look like he needed an MRI, eyes weren't dilated, he hadn't thrown up, no bleeding, he wasn't acting weird or unusual, he didn't cry for over 15 minutes when he fell...all good signs.  She also said she'd seen bumps much worse.  But she said to watch over him overnight and make sure he didn't start acting weird or throwing up.  Overnight, he was fine.  I just can't believe he didn't hurt himself more.  Doc said kids are still pretty rubbery at this age.  If we had fallen, we definitely would have broken something.  Anyway, I just thank God he was ok.  It really is just the worse feeling seeing something like that and feeling so helpless..I  sometimes feel like I need to keep the kid on a leash or he's going to run down the stairs or into the street, but that's a bit inhumane, right?

2 weeks and counting

So it's almost been 2 weeks since I've been unemployed.  It almost feels the same because the whole time I was working, I was taking care of baby and that still takes up most of my time every day.  But I am no longer a slave to the emails.  That is the very big and major difference nowadays.  I also do not have phone calls to deal with.  Still not sure of what it is I should pursue next, but I did decide that I should set up an Etsy shop to sell cards for now...maybe work my way up to add other nicknacks.  Who knows if anyone will be willing to spend $6 bucks on a card (after shipping costs).  But it only costs $0.30 an item to list (and a small percentage of sales) so what do I have to lose?  I thought about just starting my own website but I think the trouble to do that with minimal inventory isn't worth it.  Now that I am not enslaved to the computer, I can take my son out more and it feels really great to not have any time constraints or stress about having to get back to work.  My son has been addicted to the Nintendo Wii lately.  I know, I am a very bad mom for even allowing my child to see this at such a young age.  But for Christmas I got the Just Dance 4 game from my parents (which I actually specifically requested), and of course when I tried it out, he was there and wanted to participate too.  Over the past few weeks however, he has been asking to play this game every day..he is still not speaking yet so he's not literally asking but he has been bringing the remote over to me or dragging me to the TV to turn it on.  Yes, it's the easy way out.  I needed a distraction in order to work so I used the Just Dance game for his entertainment.  It was getting harder and harder to keep a toddler occupied while working.  I'm thinking at least he may be absorbing some cool dance moves and not just vegetating watching some cartoon?  Ha. The other bad thing is I have a kids app on my android phone - also used for distraction.  He's gotten pretty good at surfing through the app to pick out videos or games to play - pretty good for a 19 month old.  Damn.  Hopefully he won't need glasses when he turns 3.  Anyway, I know it's bad and I need to cut his habit down so I've been trying to get him to play more with his legos and cars and non-radiation type toys. That's also why I've been trying to take him out more to play, although the weather lately hasn't been cooperating.  Winter just seems to be dragging it's feet and doesn't want to go away just yet.  But now without the need to be tied down to emails, this should be an easier task.  I just need to think up some creative things to do.  I'm sure there is a plethora of ideas online.  

Find what you love..

As I approach my last day on the job, I know I need to focus on my next step and what I should be doing.  There is this blog I often read called Decor8.  I like reading design blogs and the sort.  Holly Becker is the blogger of this site and posted something on the day Steve Jobs died.  Yes I know it's an old post but she references his commencement address to Stanford University, which I just now read...

http://decor8blog.com/2011/10/06/youve-got-to-find-what-you-love/
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Steve Jobs was an inspiration to many.  His speech is really inspirational.

Having lost a cousin unexpectedly and so early in life, you truly realize that you really never know how much time you have left in this world and you should make it worth while.  I've lived most of my life to the constraints of what people expect of me.   Ok maybe i haven't lived totally to the confines of the morals of my parent's generation and upbringing but pretty close to it..Get good grades, go to college, get a 9 to 5 job.   I've had my job for 13 years.  13 years of sitting on my ass in front of a computer, slaving away to the grind, helping as best I can to keep the company going.  But where does that get you if you aren't the owner of the company?  You're just a cog.   I suppose there's nothing wrong with being part of a team, a cog that helps the machine keep running, but shouldn't there be more to life?  Is there more to life? I see how others are doing things they enjoy and love and it's a more fulfilling life instead of the drudgery of a job just so you can keep paying the bills. 
I always felt like I was an artist trapped in the body of some conservative upbringing, always afraid to leave my comfort zone and venture out into the world and see what's out there, not wanting to be a failure, not wanting to find out that perhaps the creativity I believed was inside me wasn't really worthy of expression.

Where do I go from here?  Now that I'm being laid off, I have the time to really focus on what I want to do.  I also now for the first time can really focus on taking care of my son.  Since the day he was born, I was still working..even while on maternity leave, I had one eye on the computer.  Anyways, I look forward to doing different activities with him, instead of him sadly being stuck in the apartment while I work.   I was thinking I might do something part time instead of full time...I don't know. 

Ba!

So my son's favorite food is banana and he's learned to say all the syllables for it, but can't really string it all together yet to form the whole word. But he has made us understand him by saying, "BA!" and pointing in the direction of where the bananas are.  I'm still playing a guessing game with all the rest of the things he's trying to say because it's still mostly "da" for everything. 

Lately it's been harder and harder to work from home because he's really vying for my attention or wanting to pound on the keyboard of my computer. Either way, it's not conducive to working.  But I recently received the news that I was being laid off because they can't afford to keep me full time. March 8th is my last day. They offered me part time work but I figured it's not worth it. And do you think they're really not going to keep calling me for things if I was only part time? I'm not sure if there would really be any boundaries.  I felt it was a sign for me to move forward and working part time would not allow for that.  At least now, I have some time to focus solely on my son instead of struggling each day for balance between working and him.   Maybe I'll have time to blog more.  Money might be tight.  Unemployment, after taxes, will probably only cover my rent..then I have insurance to pay for on top of the regular daily expenses.  And then I have to figure out what the heck I'm going to do next...i have this idea in my strange old head that I need to learn to sew so I could make things like bags to sell. It's always been a pipedream of mine to start my own business. I just could never pinpoint what exactly.  And I like working with my hands, creating things.  The question is, can I start something and actually survive? I was feeling nauseaus and gagging all day yesterday, I think because I'm stressing about not having a job, and also maybe because my hubby was leaving for England that night for 10 days.  It was weird going to bed with the hubby not there. 

Last night, I took the little man out to dinner for my friend's birthday: 10 adults plus 1 child. We went to a restaurant called Le Philosophe on Bond St in Manhattan.   It was a 3 hour long dinner and he got a bit tired and bored after maybe 1.5 hours.  But aside from  insisting on climbing up and down the stairs several times, he was very good and passed out on my shoulder by the time dessert was being served (which took a long time  for them to bring out by the way)...um..although he didn't eat anything but bread and pomme frites. I had Hake for dinner and he refused to even try it.  He seems to be getting more and more finicky these days. I must admit it was a bit salty anyway.  The fries were good.  I tasted someone's bone marrow and that was more flavorful than expected which was good. I even tried some pig  trotter. It didn't taste like pork at all.  I'm not sure what to make of it.  My friend's lobster thermador was sweet and tasty.  For dessert, the profiterole was pretty good.  We also had chocolate mousse but I didn't eat it properly. There was a layer of passion fruit mousse on the bottom layered with a very intense chocolate mousse on top. Each time I tasted it, I got one or the other and seperately the flavors were not really the most pleasant.  Melded together, however, it balanced each other out, but it just made me ask why do that in the first place? Why not just have a really awesome tasting  plain chocolate mousse? Ah well, it was a good night overall just to see friends I hardly see anymore. It did disrupt the baby's schedule but it doesn't happen often.  Was it worth the back breaking stroller carrying up and down the subway stairs? That's something you  just have to learn to live with living in a place called NYC. Or next time I should  maybe cab it home.