i am a mother, lol

but i'm still not - after more than 1 year, i'm still having so little to do with whatever i was made to think that motherhood represents. it just happens that i have a daughter, and that i can accept. here is  me with the ugly crinkly baby in her first minutes of life - she magically became very beautiful for the next set of pictures, when they swaddled her. 

omg, do i ever remember this day! the baby was 4 days old, and we had to take her out at -14C because she needed to be weighed so her CLSC nurse could see whether she was putting on weight properly or not. at that point i wasn't even sure how to hold her, and i think in my mind the whole thing was a matter of life and death. also: those were the days of trying out clothes on the baby and somehow realizing that everything we'd gotten was too big for her - she's absolutely drowned in that sweater!

better, more efficient days (april!) - the tiny baby graduated to her spring plushie coat and was eating up a storm! (yes, these are the things i remember about half a year of my life) - anyway, this is also around the time when i started wearing her, before spring i'd always left her to her father. 

baby at 4 months, at her probably fattest point. we spent that entire day in parc jarry, the kid was not even rolling, so we put her up on a table and she just kicked her feet at us or whatever. 

this is just before the baby's father got his PR. retrospectively (have i said this 100 times before?) it was a blessing for those first 7 months to have 2 people in the house non-stop, to cater to the tiny baby. or not in the house, but outside every day in the summer, mostly in villeray and parc-ex. here we're at the edge of the park, next to the swimming pool. Rada is wearing a small jacket that i've just retired because the sleeves are too short for her now. she wore it for 11 months (it is an item meant for 6-month-olds)

in parc-ex, celebrating B's PR with a wild mural, a haircut (mine), the swings and i think a bunch of biriyanis from Dosa Pointe

suddenly fall, and suddenly weekends started to have meaning. i was alone on weekdays with Rada for about two months only. In retrospect, it was not the hardest time of my life: it was pretty straightforward. Weather was still nice for a while so we went to the park, she ate alright and started sleeping 2 regular naps. One thing I reproach myself for is that I didn't let/encourage her to crawl more - by this time she could lift herself up to standing position. But she only started crawling AFTER she was already walking with a chair along the hallway, prompted by her grandmother.

this picture is from right before my mother-in-law came to help us with Rada/free my time so i could make some money and some attempts at, whatever, being an educated person with a computer (i still don't know exactly what i was doing those months: a couple of classes, blah, i don't like to talk about it (but i'll have to one day)). anyway: the thing i'd like to point out is that Rada is wearing these exact jacket+hat TODAY, at 15++ months, that she was wearing at 9 months. i know i'm paranoid that she's not growing properly (i.e. putting on weight etc), but also  grateful for having nice clothes that she was able to grow into. i mean, the jacket was clearly too big  back then and is just right now. 

here's when the baby's father started using his new phone's camera in the service of good things. time must be about november (child still looks fat and hairless) and i am seriously stumped as to what exactly we were doing all day long. i have zero pics with her of those months, and billions of pics of her alone and with her grandma. she started talking, getting teeth, crawling, doing lots of things. i was still there (literally. all day long) just not in the pictures. B's photos of her of this time are very sharp, and everything that contains me is a candid.

example of candid photoshoot (early december?): the light was apparently just right in the kitchen - 

christmas week spontaneous photoshoot, when we decided to dress the child (in the middle of winter! in her Tamil clothes that her grandmother had brought her). this is less about the dress than the cute expression, and remains one of my favourite pics of us together.

birthday at mcdonalds! i keep singing the praises of mcdo for how child-friendly they are. we discovered this only after Rada was born, when it was about the only place we could go with her (in wintertime, natch) to have lunch and coffee - there are items on their menu that are reasonably priced and actually taste of something + their coffee is good + we could always lay the baby down on one of those long seats, and from 6 months on put her in a baby chair. we became regulars at the mcdonalds next to the park (in this pic) and the one next to the child's ped hospital. this one is after tobogganing as a birthday celebration. (the cake and everything else had happened earlier in the day).
also, this is on the day when she took her first 4-5 tied-together steps - and has not stopped moving around since (now she's running and climbing stairs)

april, after we moved, in our new neighbourhood: strolling in parc de l'ile de la visitation. we were also conveniently matching.

and home: sunday morning in the yard (this is still april, it was probably the first day when we could go in the yard coatless) - featuring our crooked chimney and the city tree that nobody-knows-what-it-is (we're waiting to see leaves/fruit production to hopefully figure it out). 

anyway, here's to many more months to come.