Hello, old friend

I can't say I'm surprised that I haven't blogged in well over a year.
Chloe is almost two years old now and is a total terror. She is going to daycare once a week and I'm back teaching at a national junior high school twice a week. Needless to say, we are keeping busy.

The past few years have been a whirlwind of new experiences in parenthood. Shuhei is an amazing dad and really dotes on Chloe, they have a wonderful bond.

What have we been up to? Let's see...
We ended up moving apartments when Chloe was about 4 months old. Our old place was amazing but was on the expensive and small side. The new apartment is ok, its certainly older and further out than the old one but its close to parks and we found a good daycare for Chloe.
We have been travelling! In the winter of 2014 we went on a family trip to Bali and this past December we took another trip to Malaysia. Chloe will hopefully be quite the world traveller. We also took Chloe to Canada to meet her other family for her first birthday.
I joined and quit the gym after a year of working out and seeing NO results. Sigh!

... And you are all caught up! Well, hopefully it won't be almost two more years before I update again!

And just like that...

my mum has gone back home. I can't believe how fast the week flew by. It was such an incredible week, I can't even begin to write how wonderful it was to see my mum and introduce her to Chloe.

We spent our week together mostly puttering around my neighborhood as the weather was terrible! Hello rainy season! My mum also acted as guarantor for my passport renewal so we had to head down to the Canadian embassy to submit all the paperwork and I also picked up the paperwork for getting Chloe's proof of Canadian citizenship.
We also cooked a lot together, it has always been a favourite pastime of ours when we are with each other. We tried a new recipe she read about in a magazine on her flight over and it turned out really well! It was a salmon dish with syrup, butter and dijon mustard, sounds strange but was actually quite nice. On two of the less terrible weather days we went to visit my husband for lunch which I know he enjoyed. He was disappointed he couldn't take time off to spend with my mum.
She was amazing with helping me around the house, (I'm sure our apartment looked disgusting when she arrived as I have been quite lacking on the housework department for quite some time now) and with the baby, whenever Chloe fussed my mum was eager to pick her up and give her back rubs, walk around with her and just cuddle her. We discovered that little Chloe likes to go out... especially for lunches and dinners. Maybe she enjoys the scents in restaurants or something.
We also engaged in our all time favourite pastime of window shopping. We used to spend countless weekends strolling through the malls and streets of Vancouver, browsing all the lovely clothes and whatnot, rarely buying anything but having so much fun nonetheless. It was more about the company than the activity and hey, good exercise, no?
All in all, I'm quite sad to have to say good bye so soon to my dear mum and I really hope little Chloe has convinced her to come visit more often. Until then, we have Skype.

Mum Mum Mum Mum

My dear sweet mum is coming to visit tomorrow. I'm so excited for her to meet Chloe - her first grandchild. After becoming a mother myself, I see our relationship in a new way, probably more clearly than I used to. I cannot adequately sing praises for my mum. She is amazing. She always put us kids first. When I was younger she really wanted to be a real estate agent, studied hard and got her license. After a few years of pounding the pavement and doing her best, all the while us kids complaining because we didn't want to go to after school care, she gave it up to be at home with us. 

When I moved away to go to university, I started calling her every day and we would talk for hours. Mostly because I was lonely where I was living at first and started getting really anxious about leaving my apartment for anything and she would keep me company while I was out, it was then I realised she was (and still is) my best friend. When I moved back to Vancouver, we used to go out shopping almost every weekend or I would go back home and have dinner with my folks often. I know when I decided to move to Japan she was really sad I would be so far away but she always supported me and we still talk almost every day.  I hope someday I can see her everyday again. Now I'm tearing up thinking about her and how much I love her.