THE GOODS BLOG: Erika's Precious Little Life - July Edition

Sorry that this is a few days late!! The Canada Day long weekend kept me away from sitting down and blogging! As you can probably imagine, my life is just a little bit upside down at the moment. But in a way, I’m also feeling surprisingly relaxed... I mean, this is just what my life is, isn’t it? I should be used to this by now.

I spend most of my days hanging out with this little face. We take walks to cafes on most days and that’s not a bad life! (And of course always plenty of yoga, but that should go without saying.)

We attended the Maison de Naissance Jeanne-Mance Pique-Nique Annuel, which is an annual picnic that my birthing center puts on. It’s a nice chance to see all of the midwives again and for them to see all of the babies that they delivered growing up!

Nathalie! Couldn't have done it without her!! She felt like a cool French aunt, ha ha.

As a part of our farewell tour, we took a trip to Toronto. The best part was spending time with Sarah and Colen and getting to have all of the babies together. ♥ We also left Archie with a babysitter for the first time and it went amazingly well! I am so glad that at five months, we are already able to do this. Parents need to have (non-baby) lives too.

We were pregnant at the same time! Archie is 5 months younger than Brayden and Cole.

ABC!!!

I also visited my childhood home (for the first 16 years of my life) so that I could take this photo! I went from being a baby to having a baby.

We also hung out with all of Tim’s Toronto friends, which was a lot of fun too. There were some park shenanigans.

On the drive home we stopped in Kingston so that we could go on the Kingston Penitentiary tour. It was SO AWESOME. It’s Canada’s oldest prison, built in 1835, and it was maximum security. I loved it. So incredibly glad that I got to go before we moved away. (This is also how we spent Tim’s first Father’s Day.)

It was International Yoga Day!

We visited the Montreal Biodome! I loved it. (I’d been once before, ages ago.) I think it’s the best attraction in Montreal. (We’re really trying to see all of the Montreal things that we haven’t gotten around to doing yet!)

When in doubt, feed your baby to an alligator!

Arch G is his MC name. He could have also been MCA, but that one is already taken.

We celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary! It was pretty low-key, but we did go out to a nice restaurant that I’d been wanting to try called Nora Gray. They serve fancy Italian food. (It’s also one of the places that Chuck Hughes recommended to me!) The food was very good!

You might remember that I participated in a breastfeeding photo shoot. (I’m pretty sure that I mentioned it.) A professional photographer was looking for breastfeeding mothers for a photograph series that she is doing. So of course I volunteered! The photo was taken at her studio and Tim ended up being in it as well! She wanted to showcase all sorts of different breastfeeding positions, ethnicities, and support systems. Breastfeeding was so awful for me in the beginning and I absolutely would have died without Tim’s support. So it only made sense for him to be in the photo! My “payment” for doing the shoot was a print of one of the photos. In September a whole “exhibit” of all of the portraits is going to go up in a store in Montreal.

Life with Archie:

Archie turned FIVE MONTHS old!

His interests include: Standing up assisted, smiling at everyone, and discovering his feet.

He probably weighs about 16lbs now, but he hasn’t been weighed for a while.

He’s just generally a great baby. Sure, he cries and freaks out sometimes like all babies do, but he has a general chill and happy personality. Plus he sleeps really well. What more could I want?! As of this week we’re switching him into size 2 diapers!

You guys should have all received his birth announcement by now. Finally got those out!! Apparently the proper etiquette is to have them mailed within six months, so at least I got it done just under the wire, ha ha.

Standing is his newest favourite thing!

OK OK OK. July. Shit is about to get cray. I am basically just strapping myself in and allowing everything to just happen around me.

First we went to Ottawa for the weekend, because we figured that it’s thee place for Canada Day, plus part of our farewell tour. We had a total blast!

Enobong and Amos met up with us! <3

While there, we also met up with my two cousins, Alinka and Marissa. (I literally only have three cousins in the entire world. These two (my Dad’s brother’s kids) and one more named Dara (my Mom’s sister’s kid) who lives in Montreal and is completely estranged from my family. I have no idea where she lives and have had no contact with her the entire time that I’ve lived here. So that’s my family weirdness.) It was so great to have Archie meet some of my extended family!

And I got to spend time with Laura and meet baby Max for the first time!! ♥

We were pregnant at the same time! Archie is 3.5 months older than Max.

So now that I’ve covered seeing everyone in Toronto and Ottawa, I feel like I’m free to leave the east again. Ha ha!

We are going to Vancouver on Thursday. (Archie’s first flight!) This is our house hunting trip and it sure would be great if we could find a place to live. It’s mostly going to be all business, with not very much time for fun. We already have a bunch of appointments booked to see various properties. I made this map of Vancouver (I loves me my maps!) and pinned all of my favourite places/stores/friend’s houses...

So the idea is to find a place to rent that is right in the midst of it all. The problem with renting is that tenants are only required to give one month’s notice when they’re moving out. We want a place for August 1st, which means that those rentals (the majority) are only being posted as of July 1st. So we really couldn’t do anything up until now. Thankfully, of the cities that we could move to, Vancouver is one of the ones that we’re more familiar with. So we have a pretty good idea of what we want and where we want to be. (We are looking mostly in Kitsilano and Mt Pleasant.)

Then we’re home for just a little bit longer and the movers come on the 18th & 19th to pack up our house and remove our stuff. Goodbye stuff, see you on the other side of the country! We then hand over our house to Hawksley. We have three homeless nights in Montreal where we’re staying at an Airbnb just around the corner from our house. I think that’ll be super fun!

THEN we leave for the cottage in Muskoka. (Goodbye forever, Montreal!) This is the last phase of our farewell tour. We’ll be there for five nights of wonderful lake time with all of the Golem crew. I am seriously dying to just jump into a lake right now.

THEN we’re driving down to Toronto and Archie and I are flying to Regina (on the 26th). Tim is driving back home to Montreal for one night. He is going to be driving our car to Regina (with a few things that the movers won’t take, like plants and booze). He is actually really looking forward to doing this. Then we’ll all be in Regina for a while! I’ll be there for 18 days!! We’re going to be having “Christmas in July” with my family, since we completely missed Christmas with them.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about August because I don’t want to leave half of this journey story untold.

Once August hits, it’s Sarah and Shane’s wedding!!! We’ve got tons of wedding-related events and then of course the big day itself!! I am so excited to be Sarah’s Matron of Honour!!!!!!

Then Tim will be leaving to continue driving the car to Vancouver. (It’s cheaper for him to drive the car than for us to have it shipped. Last time the company paid to have it shipped, but this time they aren’t.) Hopefully when he gets there, he’ll go straight into our place and meet our stuff there. He starts work on the 8th. I then fly to Vancouver with Archie on the 12th.

And then that’s it! We are in Vancouver permanently!

Let’s do this.

THIS MONTH’S SHOUT-OUTS!:

July 5th is Candice Weingartner’s 35th birthday!

I hope that you have a wonderfully fabulous day and that Ryan spoils you! I’m looking forward to seeing you and meeting Rhys in a few weeks so much! ♥

July 8th is Crystal Maffenbeier’s 35th birthday!

I hope that Jared spoils you a ton and that you celebrate in a big way! One of these days I am finally going to come to your house and hug all of your animals. I hope that I’ll be seeing you in Regina as well! ♥

July 15th is Robin Checkowy’s 35th birthday!

You’re basically a super woman and deserve to feel so special on your big day! I hope that you get treated like a queen! Countdown to Regina is on!! ♥

July 26th is Nadine Ottenbreit’s 3rd wedding anniversary!

Your wedding in Regina was so special and I was so honoured to have been there. I hope that you and Kyle get to celebrate the wonderful couple that you guys are! ♥