Mat Leave

is OVER.

officially.  I am no longer on the EI money train.  One of the greatest things our Federal Government does: provides 15 weeks of Maternity Leave and 35 weeks of Parental Leave.  I love seeing that money  pop into my bank account every 2 weeks.  I mean, I've paid into Employment Insurance ever since I started working, but it still feels like free money!

Anyway, this wasn't going to be a post about EI.  Or returning to work.  Which, by the way, I'm not doing at this point.  this was going to be about the year I had off work following the birth of Eva.

Previous to leaving work for Mat leave, I wrote a post about what I was dreaming I would be able to do during my year off.  Remember that at this point, I did not know that we would be selling our house and moving to a new community, otherwise packing and unpacking a house would have been at the top of the list.

I thought it would be fun to revisit this list and see how I fared:

From February 2013:

Other than caring for my children, here's a list of what I hope to accomplish:

1. Learn & master the art of making bagels from scratch.  Learned, but did not master. I made them a handful of times.
2. Complete my 2011 digital photo album and start & finish a 2012 photo album.  Did not finish my 2011 digital photo album, though I made some progress on it.  Didn't touch 2012.
3. Finish sewing the napkins I started sewing on my last mat leave.  Accomplished! And it took me less than an hour!
4. Go to Strong Start at the nearby elementary school with Akeyla.  Not even once.
5. Visit my stay-at-home mom friends more often.  A little complicated since I moved 5.5 months into mat leave, but I did okay at this.
6. Learn how to play the banjo....again.  nope.
7. Master and memorize the Turkish March on the piano.  Not even close.  I hardly even played the piano!
8. Go outside for a walk with the kids almost every day.  ummm.....hard one to measure, but I suppose it would be accurate to say that I did not go for a walk almost every day. It would be more accurate to say that I stayed in almost every day!

Here was my more realistic list of dreams during mat leave:

1. Attempt to make bagels once. Check.
2. Complete a few more pages in my 2011 digital photo album.  Check.
3. Nap at every possible opportunity.  Check.

Having realistic goals is important.  Wouldn't you say??  :)