Grandma bought a new toy for Talia this weekend. This fancy-dancy exersaucer was the happiest place on earth on Sunday night. She gets to stand up and reach things and most importantly, get them to her mouth. Home is a sad, sad place to be all of a sudden.

Tonight, Grandma and Poppa came to practice putting Talia to bed. All fared well, and Talia is snoozing away happily. As was Poppa when I got home. At 8.

For the 2 hours, I took myself and a book out for sushi and a glass of white wine. It was probably lovely. Sadly, I was a bit distracted by being a mother who mostly wants her daughter to be fine with whichever circumstance she finds herself in, but also mostly wanting her to prefer that circumstance to be me. I phoned Scott at 7:30 so that I wouldn't phone mum. He humoured me, but pointed out that he has been leaving her with me for months now and is a bit used to the bitter-sweetness of that.

Which of course has me thinking. Thinking about how being a mother has opened a whole new world to me, and a much more different world than being a wife ever was. Thinking that the same is probably true for Scott being a father, but the world is not set up for him to think on that at all.

The book I'm reading (Between Interuptions) was given to me by Heidi and is a collection of women's writing about motherhood. This first section I'm in is about the difficulty of merging motherhood with previous identities and specifically work identities. Oddly, I found I couldn't relate much, perhaps because my "work" identity had been a bit of a joke for the last 3 years. But then a writer wrote about being her father, not being a mother to her children and about how lonely that was and oh my, I was sad. Sad because of what it means it must be like for so many fathers.

Ugh, this is boring. What I want to say about all this is that I am intensely grateful for the privilege of staying home with Talia. I am thankful to every Canadian tax payer that funds my employment insurance. I am thankful for the bureaucrats who wrote a billion reports to convince someone, somewhere that a full year with a parent at home was way better for children than just 6 months. I am thankful to Make-A-Wish for obeying the law and for being a mom-friendly workplace. But mostly I am thankful to Scott who has giving up days at home with his daughter to work extra days so that we can afford for me to make up words to half-remembered rhymes and blow raspberries in the middle of diaper changes and spend 12 minutes choosing an outfit. To check the mail in.

Motherhood is such a privilege, in every way, and I am so, so thankful.