After a short sojourn of adjusting to double the children in my household (and tripling the laundry), I'm pleased to announce that I am resuming my column. My long-suffering husband William filled in for me over the last few weeks so that I was able to adjust to (and recover from) the new addition to our family. I am extremely grateful to my husband for filling in for me so I could focus on the kids however I feel like I should mention the following:
1) It wasn't as bad at our house (at least for me) as he made it seem.
2) My husband did in fact make multiple trips to the store to buy for me unmentionable products.
3) Aside from the whining about how much I made him do for me, he is in fact the perfect husband.
I have mentioned in a previous column that one of the reasons that William and I moved to Prince George from Victoria was so that we could afford to have children. The housing market in Victoria, coupled with the job market, being what it was, very nearly precluded couples in their twenties and thirties from having children and owning a home. At least, because we are only somewhat good with our money, this was true for us. We could own a home or we could have children but we couldn't have both. We had leveraged ourselves so badly that we couldn't afford for me to go on maternity leave because we couldn't afford to lose 40% of our income even for a year. Now, I know that many people reading this, (in particular, people who know us), will think, "maybe if you weren't stupid with money, you could have had your cake and ate it too.") I have met very few people in my generation that aren't stupid with money so I feel like this is a shared experience except for the blessed few who make the rest of us feel like idiots.
As I'm heading into my fourth week of maternity leave, I am doubly grateful for our decision to move back home to Prince George. I am able to be at home with my children, in the house that we own. The house that we live in is modest and if we were in Victoria, it would have set us back over $500,000. I am grateful for the beautiful maternity rooms at UHNBC and the wonderful midwives and nurses that helped me throughout this second labour. I am grateful even for the snow that's falling right now (but maybe it's just the hormones).
