Raising Paige

Paige was awake this morning shortly before I left for work so my wife brought her downstairs to say goodbye. I picked up Paige and gave her a hug and as I was leaving the house she waved goodbye while she followed my wife into the kitchen. There are few things in this life that make me feel better than when that little girl gives me hugs and kisses, goodbye waves or an enthusiastic 'Hi' when she sees me. Her personality is really starting to emerge more and more every day now and it's pretty cool. She has started to say when she needs to go to the bathroom, although she hasn't been successful yet, and she even lets us know when she's sleepy. She waves and smiles to almost everyone and you can just see the smiles she brings to their faces when she does. She is already kind and loving but also shy and cautious. Of course she's not cautious when it comes to standing or climbing on things. As her personality develops I find myself wondering if what I'm sa...

In the past week or so Paige has suddenly started communicating more. Using more words, putting words together and really showing that she is understanding us and trying to respond back. It’s pretty amazing. Being a grandparent raising a grandchild isn’t easy but raising Paige certainly has more pluses than minuses. As I’ve mentioned before, getting up in the night to change her (my wife does this) and give her a bottle (I do this) means we don’t get a complete night’s sleep. Luckily my wife is able to nap during the day on weekends, which is something I can’t do easily, and I have the occasional drink. J To be completely honest, I don’t recall having this experience with our daughters. Now I’ll admit my memory isn’t what it used to be but for the life of me I can’t recall going through this. Is it possible that my wife did everything and I did nothing? I suppose so - but I hope I’m wrong. Is it possible that it was so traumatizing that I have blocked it from memory? Maybe, ...

Raising Paige makes me feel old and young at the same time. This Christmas was Paige's second, but really the first one she truly experienced. She was able to tear off Christmas wrapping and actually enjoy the festive atmosphere. Watching her open her gifts and see the excitement on her face when she sees a doll or, of course, a snowman just warmed my heart. That's the stuff that makes me feel young. Chasing her around and hearing her (occasional) angry fits, plus getting up in the middle of the night then trying to get back to sleep afterwards, is what makes me feel old. But as the saying goes, you have to take the bad with the good. In this case, the good totally makes it worthwhile. Right now Paige is going through a stage where she doesn't want to eat very much. Well, I should clarify that. She doesn't want to eat very much when she's sitting at the table. She was good these past few weeks at snacking throughout the entire day but if we put her at the tabl...

Paige LOVES snowmen. But of course she can't say 'Snowman'. I think we’ve played The Legend of Frosty the Snowman’ on Netflix every day for the past few weeks. Probably several times a day. Plus we have the DVD of the original Frosty which she enjoys as well. She knows when the snowman is going to show up on the TV and loves to point him out. She also gets me (and anyone else) to pick her up and hold her in front of our tree so she can point out all the snowman ornaments over and over again. I have to admit that over the past several years Christmas has not been as festive a time for me. My daughters are older and weren’t around much leading up to Christmas and it just didn’t seem so special. Most people know that Christmas has become extremely commercial and is more about buying gifts and spending money. For many years now conversations have gone like this: Family member: What do you want for Christmas? Me: Ummm…..I don’t know. Family member: Well you...

I watched a couple episodes of 'Couple Thinkers' on YouTube during lunch today - I suggest you check it out - and episode six was about 'How do we define success?'. During the conversation there was talk about Social Media and how children are exposed to it very early, before they have developed their own sense of self. It was pointed out that before children truly define their own self image they develop a need for validation from Social Media - be it Facebook friends or likes on an Instagram post - in order to find self worth. I quickly realized that it's rather ironic that I am writing about raising Paige on a blog and sharing these posts across my limited Social Media accounts. So assuming that some day in the future, if machines haven't risen against us and I'm leading a group of freedom fighters, I would like to use this early post to write something directly to Paige. Paige Take the time to understand who you are and how special it is to be you....

I'm sure everyone has heard the expression 'I slept like a baby'. I'm starting to think that doesn't mean what everyone thinks it means. Well ok, to be fair I have to admit that when Paige was a little baby she slept fairly well. She of course was up in the night several times but there was a stretch where she would sleep through the night and therefor so would we. Then she became a toddler, and I have no idea what went wrong. Paige typically goes to bed around 7pm, maybe 7:30pm if she's playing and isn't showing signs of being tired. For example rubbing eyes, screaming or crying for no reason, basically the same things I do when I'm tired. Anyway, she always seems to wake up around 2-3am - sometimes as late at 4:30am - and depending on when she first wakes up in the night she will then wake up again a bit later. Say...5am or like this morning 6:09am. Luckily my alarm goes off at 6:20am so this was just a little early for me. Obviously I'm ...

WARNING: This blog post may contain several bad puns. Constipation can be a pain in the butt for anyone, but seems to be worse for a toddler. There’s something both sad and funny about seeing a toddler stand in the middle of the living room grunting, body tense with pressure and red faced trying to poop in their pants with no shame or embarrassment at all. Paige has had issues for several months now and we have tried everything; Mineral oil, prune juice, peas, corn, fruit and carrots. That last one apparently can have the opposite affect so we were told to stay away from them. In the end we had to resort to glycerin suppositories and probiotics crushed up in ice cream. I don’t know if it’s the medicine in the suppository or the act of pushing something in the escape hatch that causes the reaction but the suppositories certainly did the trick. For the first few days Paige was actually sleeping through the night again which means my wife and I were too. Well, we’re supposed ...

Bringing a new human into the world is nothing short of a miracle. Not a modern-day miracle like cheese in a can or the Toronto Maple Leafs making the playoffs two years in a row, but a bona fide old-world miracle. Just take a second to think about how that life begins (probably my favorite part) and how a small human enters this world and grows to become a big human. Hopefully a big human that knows how to navigate a traffic circle properly. In the first few years they grow and develop so quickly it's important to cherish the little things. Raising Paige is no different. For example, about a year ago I could sit on the couch with Paige on my lap and feed her a bottle. I would gently tap my leg up and down and the rhythm along with my body heat would put her to sleep and she would sleep on me for an hour or so. Now she takes my hand and drags me to the refrigerator for a bottle, takes it from my hand, sits in her own chair and then hands it to me when she's done. Essent...

Paige - currently a 20.5 month old little girl with a ton of personality and energy. Me and my wife - 40-something year old grandparents raising Paige full-time and wondering where we can get some of her energy. I won't go into detail as to why we're raising Paige right now. That's a different post once I get permission from the wife. Suffice it to say at this point in our lives we weren't expecting to be raising a child all over again. In less than a week I turn 46 but in the past 20 months I have felt both 26 and 66 at various times. Raising Paige will do that. At times she is so full of wonder and excitement, snuggles and laughter that you feel young again and able to do anything. At other times she is so full of tears and tantrums, energy and anger that you feel too old to move. But hey, it's all fun right? Right? Of course it is... Since she will be raised in a world of social media, computers and the Internet I thought I would start this blog to chro...