February 7, 2016

Dear Baby,

Can I get a toot toot. Can I get a beep beep? Ug. So lame, mom. Who the fuck is R. Kelly?

Whatever, Baby. 

Weekends. Marginally different from weekdays of you are on mat leave since every day is a “wake up at 6am” kind of day when you have a baby. For us, weekends mean that your dad is around (except for ALL OF FUCKING FOOTBALL SEASON- LATER, FOOTBALL. SEE YOU NEXT SEASON- maybe with a better halftime show too- amiright???). 

4 hands are better than 2 and special things happen on the weekend such as mom can go back to bed in the morning for an hour or we can take turns cleaning up your very predictable but gross mid afternoon poop explosion. It’s the little things that make a Saturday, a Saturday.

This weekend in particular was gorgeous (for February) so we took advantage of the way above average temperature and walked to the local farmers market and stopped on the way to visit a friend. This friend is a family of 4 with 2 amazing kids who are 2 and 4 and we walked in on them all in their pyjamas having a long breakfast and building forts. 

When we asked them what they were up to for the rest of the day they surprised us by saying “nothing.” 

They had no plans, no classes, no schedule and no obligations. They explained that they actively chose to have a weekend day together as a family with nothing to do. FUCKING BRILLIANT. 

So we are going to be copy cats and take this idea as our own. 

It means:

No scheduled activity, no programs, no weekly obligations and no set plans for at least one day every weekend. 

Waking up and spending the day as we please. 

Letting you build forts all morning long if you so choose. 

Not having to rush anywhere or be anywhere. 

Doing it all together. 

Of course, there will be parties, family functions and the like but we want to hang out with you in an unstructured way and actually see what you like to do. Love to swim? Let’s all go to the pool! Love the museum? Family trip to the ROM. You get the idea. 

Baby, the world you will grow up in is a really hectic place. Long before I had you I was lamenting about how hard it is to have free time. We are lucky to have so much to do but sometimes the best laid plans were to have none at all. 

Having you makes me want to slow down and take some deep breaths. It makes me want to really savor the moments. Days with you go by really fast and one day I will blink and you will have plans all your own every weekend. You won’t want to show me your cool new pillow fort or hold my hand as we check out dinosaurs.

I know that you are bound to get busy too one day. I hope you have tons of family, friends and interests to keep your schedule full of loving and wonderful things to do. If I could share one piece of advice on this topic it would be to use this weekend-is-rest long before or despite having kids. 

Only in the past while have your dad and I been a bit more scheduled. We have always been huge advocates of having a fun and obligation free day per week to just do whatever the fuck we wanted. I will never look back and wish I had taken more classes or programs. I will only be grateful that I took a lot of walks with my husband and friends, drove a bit out of the way to check out cool markets or trails and spent full days in sweatpants when I wanted to. 

Moving forward I don’t think you will be remiss for not having 600 programs to attend every Saturday morning. I think you too will look back and be glad the weekend learning and experiencing you did came from being together and seeing the world together. 

You can let me know what you think one lazy Saturday morning in the future. 

For now, I’m poring myself another cup of coffee. 

xo

Mom