101 Things to do in 1001 days

I have decided to hijack this idea of doing 101 Things in 1001 days. My biggest fear in life (besides something happening to my family) is being one of those people who is all talk. I want to have goals and complete them, and I find making to-do lists so satisfying. It's great to be able to cross items off and know that I have actually accomplished something, even if its just making something for dinner or remembering to pick something up at the store. These goals will help me to refine my character, hopefully, and take steps towards becoming the kind of person and role model I want to be for my son. I also want to show him this list, one day, with check marks beside each item. I hope it will inspire him.

The List:
1)Learn to crochet and complete at least 5 projects
2)Make an alphabet book for Baboo for his first birthday present
3)Collect and perfect (or create) 10 new recipes (6/10)
4)Make at least one DVD every 6 months of Baboo's life (1/5)
5)Do a photoshoot of Baboo every month until he's a year old (5/12)
6)Get professional family photos taken
7)Take first family vacation (Hubbs, Baboo and I)
8) Take a yoga class
9) Get a massage
10) Enroll Baboo in swimming lessons
11)Finish my psych degree
12) Make Baboo a texture book
13) Make a Christmas Star
14) Learn to sew at least well enough to patch something or re-attach a button
15) Take Baboo to see Santa
16) Open an Registered Education Saving Plan for Baboo
17) Open an RRSP
18) Get life insurance for Baboo (because if he develops an illness later in life he could become uninsurable, so getting it while he's a baby will ensure that he and the future family he may have will always be protected)
19) Read ten books (1/10)
20) Go to a film festival
21) See a live music performance
22) Breastfeed Baboo until the end of flu season (March 2010)
23) Take Baboo to the beach and let him feel the sand
24) Visit with friends from out of town
25) Make a charitable donation in my son's name
26) Take Baboo camping
27) Visit with family from out of town
28) Make or bake Christmas gifts
29) Make Christmas ornaments with Baboo
30) Join a Mom's group
31) Secret goal number thirty-one, which is so embarrassing that I will reveal it only after it is completed
32) Spend a night away with the Hubbs (sans Baboo)
33) Refinish a piece of furniture
34) Make a piece of jewelry
35) Write a petition
36) Write my m.p. about an issue that is important to me
37) Get Baboo a lovey
38) Pay off visa
39) Pay off personal debt
40) Learn to do one winter activity with Baboo (ice skating, snow shoeing, skiing, etc)
41) Publish something (anything)
42) Do the 365 photo challenge, starting January 1 2010
43) Make some art for Baboo's room
44) Try hot buttered rum
45) Plan a 1st birthday party for Baboo
46) Make friends with at least one other couple with kids
47) Open an on-line shop
48) Make a ringsling
49) Take Baboo to the zoo
50) Take Baboo to at least 3 Early Years Programs
51) Take Baboo to Niagara Falls
52) Go shopping in the U.S. and Take advantage of Target
53) Make a photobook or album of my pregnancy photos
54) Make an artsy photo wall in our house
55) Do a cast, ink print or painting of Baboo's hand or foot prints
56) Try holiday drinks at Starbucks besides the Peppermint Mocha
57) Take Baboo to Ontario Place
58) Buy Baboo musical instruments
59) Take Baboo out on a sled in the snow
60) Get a Library Card
61) Eat at a new Resturaunt
62) Fill out Baboo's Baby Book
63) Make a blanket out of Baboo's newborn clothes
64) Attend husband's Graduation
65) Do something to celebrate my Graduation
66) Subscribe to Chatelaine for a year
67) Aquire membership to print your own childrens book club
68) Put up pictures in our house
69) Make own Babyfood
70) Watch It's A Wonderful Life
71) Read Dante's Inferno
72) Read Donald Miller's A Million Miles In A Thousand Years
73) Read I Was Teenaged Katimavictim
74) Do Want, Need, Wear, Read one Christmas
75) Buy Putomayo CD
76) Go to the movies with Hubbs at least once
77) Finish "Are You Talking to Me" devotional
78) Attend church an average of once a month (1/33 times in 1001 days)
79) Shop at a Farmers Market
80) Give up something for Lent
81) Learn to play 10 kids songs on the recorder (5/10)
82) Learn to play 10 kids songs on the guitar (0/10)
83) Make a list of 100 reasons why I love my baby
84) Make a list of 100 reasons why I love my husband
85) Make a list of 100 things to be grateful for
86) Make a list of 100 things I like about myself
87) Buy a bottle of the perfume I wore on my wedding day, but don't own, because I forgot mine and had to borrow a friend's
88) Move blog to wordpress
89) Write a poem for Baboo
90) Write a story for Baboo
91) Get a part-time, seasonal or contract job to make extra money
92) Stick to Til Deb Do Us Part Budget for at least 6 months
93) Get will and guardianship papers notarized
94) Baby-proof the apartment
95) Buy a new camera
96) Do a painting on canvas
97) Fill a bookshelf with books for my son
98) Put together emergency kit for the car and house
99) Play games as family once a month (1/33)
100) Finish Baboo's Nursery (!)
101) Take a class for something I am interested in (glass-blowing, pottery, cooking, spanish, etc).

Wish Me Luck!

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My Baby, My Passion

I'm participating in Mama's Losin It's Writers Workshop this week. The subject is, "Describe what makes you want to live a life with passion?":
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When I found out I was pregnant, I did not experience the excitement and awe I’d always dreamed I would experience. I’d always wanted to be a mother, but at the time I was a miserable, unemployed student and living in my parents’ basement, which was placing a huge strain my marriage. It was just about the worst timing ever for the news. I took a couple of weeks to be depressed, wallow and will “it” away. Then I realized, this baby is coming and it doesn’t deserve such a mess for a mother. I had to get it together.

I got a crappy retail job, and on my days off I worked in the church nursery for a little extra cash. I wanted to work in my field, which was community services related, but in order to finish my degree I had to put 600 hours of field work—for free. So my days were dedicated to volunteering, and my nights were spent folding clothes and pretending to be nice to customers, while on weekends I chased around other peoples’ kids, hoping my own would be better behaved, and crammed for exams. In the meantime, my husband and I found free counselling from both an agency and the pastor who married us. We wanted to get as much help for our marriage as possible before it was transformed into a family. We didn’t want our baby caught in the cross-fire. He hadn’t asked for us to be his parents.

The nine months of pregnancy were a frenzy of 12 hour days, penny-pinching the likes of which you have never seen, and valiant attempts to reverse the damage that being poor and living with my family had inflicted on our relationship. During my lunch breaks I holed up in the storage closet with my previously-owned, pay-as-you-go cell phone and made frantic phone calls to different housing agencies, trying to find a place of our own. My parents were having their own relationship issues (read: yelling and screaming) and I was sick to my stomach at the thought of bringing a tiny, helpless baby into that environment. I trolled second-hand shops, craigslist and garage sales looking for the things my little one would need but I couldn’t afford.

Desperate love calls for desperate measures. I didn’t know it then, but this frenetic despair was actually passion in disguise. I was disheartened and hysterical, but devotion to my kid pushed me on and forced me to keep trying. I had to make money, I had to finish school, I just had to find a peaceful quiet place where we could be parents. And I did.

Sitting in the hospital in late July, I realized what it had all been for. I knew that all women didn’t necessarily bond with their babies at birth, but after everything I had been through during the course of my pregnancy, I was desperate to just feel something other than worry or sadness. My husband was an amazing birth coach, and after just under four hours of labour, the nine months of hell I’d endured were a blip on the radar compared with the tornado of love that ripped through me. They threw that baby on me and told me we had a boy, and I knew that I was incapable of living a life that resembled anything ordinary from that moment on.

I live to teach him that anything is possible--to show him the world and how to fully embrace it. I will tell him the story of his nine months in waiting so that he can see how love changes everything. I will live with passion so that he has a good example in me; so that he will do the same.

From the outside, my life is nothing spectacular. But from where we were just a year ago, when I got my Big Freaking Positive, it is absolutely charmed. I dance around covered in spit-up, and do it with gusto. We go for walks with him wrapped around my torso, and I am happy to stop so he can marvel at the leaves. I wake up at 3 am in our new apartment and can’t help but burst with joy as the most beautiful boy in the world grins up at me. It is just a 3 a.m. feeding, but it doesn’t get any better than this.

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