This post is about all of the wonderful mom hacks and awesome products that I have discovered after having a baby in January, in Canada. If you were hoping for ideas on what to do to avoid going stir-crazy, I’ve recently compiled a list of the top 10 kid-friendly indoor things to do in Ottawa during the winter so that you can adventure out into the wild without worrying about hanging out in the frigid Canadian cold. If you prefer to stay inside and avoid the cold altogether, scroll to the end of the post–I got you! Let’s start with that list of gear.

In case you didn’t know, I am a work-from-home mama. I also exclusively breastfeed my daughter, which has been somewhat of a challenge, to say the least.

When baby refuses the bottle, shove it in their mouth. Sort of. The milk, not the bottle. Let me explain the background on this one first. When my little girl was a month old, I was running on no sleep, no energy, and my husband was back at work. So, when he offered to do one of the night feeds for me so that I could get 4-6 hours of straight sleep instead of only 2-3, I begrudgingly agreed and bought myself a Haakaa to collect some of my milk. It went great! Fast forward to just over a month later, and bottles were apparently poison. Seriously, the screams coming out of this child sounded like death was imminent. As time passed, mama needed to get back to work, which meant bottles needed to happen. Hundreds of dollars spent later on different bottles and nipples, we finally found the solution. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked.

This is my life now. I feel like this thing is always attached to me, and to escape it means my daughter might go hungry. My breastfeeding journey has been easy for me (minus a few minor issues along the way) so I had no idea that pumping would be this hard.

You probably read the recent blog post about how I got my husband to let me post all the things on the internet, so it may come as a surprise that we decided NOT to share our daughter’s name on the internet at all. There is a rather simple explanation for our choice, but seeing as it seems to conflict against our share-everything policy, I wanted to share that reason with you.

Marriage is hard. Marriage after having a baby is harder. Marriage when that baby is cranky, won’t sleep, learns to scream on purpose to get your attention, and you’re living off little sleep and lots of caffeine…feels impossible.

It’s been a while since I have posted #babyfoodsadultsactuallywanttoeat recipes because we have been dealt the added challenge of little miss being allergic to dairy. Yeah–anyone who knows me knows that dairy is like 80% of what I consume.

When our daughter started crawling, it became evident that our space was not exactly child-friendly. Baby-safe, sure! But not so much for little movers. We needed to find a solution that kept baby safe, still looked pretty for my home-based business, and could be easily removed when outgrown.

Other than the obvious of baby gates and plug covers, I didn’t really know what else I needed. I could have crawled around the house myself to find the problems—as if I have time for that while keeping up with my little girl!?—so I brought in the big guns. Yup, the first thing they said was to lower that crib…

Sweater weather is here! and the outdoors is still a great place to be with all the fall colours and warmer days. BUT since our weather in Ottawa is usually super cold during the winter, as beautiful as it sometimes can be, it keeps us cooped up at home and we can tend to get stir crazy. I have compiled a list of the top 10 kid-friendly indoor things to do in Ottawa during the winter so we can adventure out into the wild without worrying about the frigid Canadian cold. I’ve also got a bunch of honourable mentions that are great for date-night or out with friends sans-children.