A New Year

2011 brought many changes for me, and for my family.  For starters, I went from a working mom, to a stay at home mom.  We moved to Canada in March, and then welcomed our sweet little girl in August.  Having a baby in a different country, without the support of family and friends has been difficult.  There have been days where I thought I was going to have to tell my husband "thats it, I can't do this anymore, we need to move home", but when I have those days, I just tell myself "One day at a time" and we have made it 10 months without any major meltdowns on my part (I say any major meltdowns, because last april, while every one of my friends and family were posting on Facebook about how beautiful the weather was in NJ, I left the house to go grocery shopping and it started to snow.  I cried all the way to the grocery store, shopped with make up smeared all over my face, then cried all the way home, I was pregnant so I may have been a little hormonal haha.)  I have joined a great mommy group, and have made some wonderful friends, and that has helped to ease the sting being away from my friends and family.
 For the most part we are dealing with the changes pretty well, better than expected actually, but it is always hard after seeing our friends and family to return to our isolation in Canada.  We went home for the holidays, and it was SO wonderful seeing everyone.  We stayed with my brother for 10 days, our family of 4, our dog, Ryan, and his lovely girlfriend, and their two dogs, all in a small 3 bedroom rancher.  We were all a little apprehensive about the living situation, but it worked out great, and when we were saying our goodbyes, I had to do everything I could to hold back tears.  Seeing everyone for the 10 days really made me realize how much I miss everyone.  Being a stay at home mom can be very isolating in itself, but add in being in a different country away from everyone you love, can make it pretty damn rough.  Last week was one of the more difficult weeks for me since we moved here.  On top of really missing everyone, our little lady decided that she wanted to wake up every hour of the night, and little man decided to forgo naps, which meant that I wasn't sleeping, and was getting absolutely no time to myself. To say I was grumpy would be an understatement, I was emailing my husband every day at work asking him to please let us  go home.  Thank god he is so understanding of my alternate personality when I am sleep deprived, haha, I really am a different person. And to top it all off, the sub-zero temperature of Canada (it was 7 one day) froze our battery, so I was stuck in the house for the week.  I am feeling better this week, I just needed the week to pout and miss everyone, but the car is fixed now, and we are getting back into the swing of things.
With this new year, I am looking forward to the changed that are to come.  I am making some changes for myself, I am going to write more in my personal blog (lifeasmyjourney.blogspot.com), my goal is to write every day.  I started my personal blog to write about not only mommy issues, but also just about life in general.  There are so many more aspects to being me than being a mom, and I am starting to worry that I am loosing Richelle to mommyhood.  I am going to make time for my art.  My husband has 2 hours for himself every weekend to work out, and I am going to take 2 hours a week to paint, or draw, or maybe sculpt.  I am going to take care of myself better, I joined a weight-loss challenge, and it starts tomorrow, I saw myself in a bathing suit last week when little man decided he needed a shower, and my god, it was not pretty!  People tell me "Oh you look great for having 2 kids."... I don't want to look great for having 2 kids, I just want to look great.
My wishes for 2012 are to keep a happy and healthy family, to have as much fun and laugh as much as possible, to help all members of our family of 4 to be the best they can be.