October Wrap Up and November Goals

October has been a busy month. I’m really getting used to living in Calgary, and I enjoy getting out with Lil’ Ziggy and exploring our neighbourhood and beyond. I’ve discovered some great places to take him once the weather gets cold. There certainly are things I miss about Fort McMurray, namely our church and the people in it, and the friends we left behind. It would have been a good place to raise Lil’ Ziggy because they try so hard to make it kid-friendly. But there’s just so much more to do here, there’s no denying it. So much variety. The same could be said for any smaller community when compared to the big city.

We’ve been in our house for over a month, and there are still a few boxes here and there. Most of it is stuff we just haven’t figured out what to do with yet. And that one box of art that we just haven’t gotten around to putting up on the walls. We all took turns with head cold a couple of weeks ago, but thankfully my baby boy is a trooper and wasn’t too badly affected. His nose was stuffed up for about four days, which made nursing difficult, but it didn’t really bother him at night. We had quite a few moments of “banana, booger or both?”, which was was, as you can imagine, a very gross game.

A couple of weekends ago, we took Lil’ Ziggy to the Calgary Corn Maze, a totally adorable place just to the southwest of the city. It has lots of activities for children, a petting zoo, a mini pumpkin patch perfect for photo-ops, and a massive corn maze (duh!). I’m sure glad we got the BOB Revolution stroller, that thing was made for off-roading!

And finally, Halloween! One of my favourite childhood memories was dressing up for Halloween in costumes my mom lovingly made for us. I distinctly remember a bunny costume she made that I insisted on wearing several times, until the costume basically came up to my elbows and knees.

I want to continue that tradition, and this Halloween I resolved to make at least part of Lil’ Ziggy’s costume. We used a hat we were given when he was a brand new baby (that still just barely fit him!), and a brown long-sleeve onesie turned backwards as it had football laces on the front, brown pants and brown socks. I made a hooded robe out of cream flannel and….

Lil’ Ziggy became Lil’ Yoda! He had a little light sabre that we got from Build a Bear to complete the look. We took Lil’ Yoda to a baby costume party in the afternoon at a friend’s house, and he was a total hit. All the babies were adorable. We plopped them down on the front lawn in a line for photos, and I suffered a little bit of cuteness overload.

Back at home, we excitedly awaited an onslaught of trick-or-treaters. We were living in a condo for so long, so we never got kids coming to our door. We always had to eat all that candy by ourselves…

So we waited. And waited.

And waited.

Where were they? We could actually see groups of kids walking on the OTHER side of the street, going up to houses and ringing the doorbells. Why weren’t they coming to OUR house? We had the light on! We had a pumpkin on the steps! We were standing in the window holding a big bowl of candy, for crying out loud! Then we realized, we were the ONLY house on our side of the street with a light on. To experienced trick-or-treaters, coming to us would be inefficient.

The grand total of kids who came to our house?

Twelve.

One kid gave us pointers on how to improve our chances next year. It involved turning our front yard into a graveyard. We thanked him for his constructive criticism. He forgot to thank us for the candy.

Oh, well.

All in all, it was a fun day, and a great way to cap off the month.

Can you believe that it’s NOVEMBER now? Compared to how slowly the first few months of Ziggy’s life had been, time seems to just be flying by now. But I love November, when cold weather invokes a feeling of romantic coziness before it becomes just drab and frigid. Sweaters. Scarves. Lattes. I’m writing this from a Starbucks right now.

I’m feeling inspired. I want to do things this month. I’m not in survival mode anymore. Anything I want to do, I can just strap Ziggy in his carrier and get to it. Or let him play on his mat with his many, many toys. This stage of babyhood is great – when he can sit and play on his own, but he’s not moving around and getting into things he shouldn’t yet.

Here are my goals for the month of November:

Stick to the diet and exercise program I’m starting.

I’m glad there isn’t really a holiday in November that requires some sort of large dinner or copious amount of treats. It’s the perfect time to start a get-healthy regimen, because there are less reasons to let it go off the rails. I’m doing a program that my friend introduced me to that focuses not on cutting things out of my diet, but on eating the actual proper portions I should be eating, along with short daily workouts. It’s going to be hard, because right now my diet and workout regimen includes eating whatever/whenever I want, and exercising never (with the exception of going for walks with Lil’ Ziggy). Let me be clear – I don’t want to be skinny. But I do recognize that I need to develop some better habits and nourishing my body better.

Publish at least two blog posts per week.

As I mentioned above, I’m writing this in a Starbucks right now. With it being Sunday, I asked Chris to watch Lil’ Ziggy so I could grab some coffee and do some blog planning with minimal distractions (the two older couples beside me were having a long conversation about sex, but at least they weren’t yelling at me for attention!). So I’ve cleaned up my Evernote folders and used my WordPress Editorial Calendar to plan out the next several weeks of blog posts. Even if one post has content and the other is a photo post, I’d be happy. Now, I just need to find time to actually write them!

Publish my Facebook page