Who Am I?

When I was setting up my blog, this was a bit of a road block for me.  I mean it's such a simple question.. who am I?  I started typing and kept backspacking and deleting what I had typed.  I wrote 'stay at home mum with 2 young boys' but this conjured up the image that I had of SAHMs before I had kids - someone who sat on the floor and played with their kids all day...not exactly me.

Is 'who I am' who I was before I had kids? A career woman who travelled and socialised and graduated from university?  Not really who I am right now either.

I mean how do you write who you are in a small little box on the side of the page anyway?  I think it requires a little more depth than that..  So I'll tell you a bit about who I am, in a round-about way, starting with the stats...

I'm a 38 year old Canadian living in New Zealand.  I am married to a Kiwi and at the end of this month we are celebrating our 3 year anniversary.  Our oldest son, Hammer, is 2 years and 4 months (ya, ya, do the math) and our youngest, Nicky, is nearly 9 months old.  So I'm a Mum and a wife..

After graduating University but before becoming a wife I worked in IT in Ottawa, Ontario.  I had a few different jobs but the one I had the longest was working for a software company as a sales representative, selling encryption software (yawn - but really, a great company to work for!).  When it was time for a change, I chose to go hard (and not go home) and moved to Edinburgh, Scotland to be a live-in manager of a Bed and Breakfast.  Then I moved on to being an IT trainer and got to travel around Scoltand training medical staff.  So ya, I guess I was a career woman too.

I met my husband when I was managing the B&B and we lived together in Edinburgh for nearly 4 years.  When we got engaged, we decided we should 'settle down' and raise our family in one of our home countries.  New Zealand was the decision, so we travelled Europe a bit and stopped in at the Gold Coast, Australia and decided to stay for 2 and a half years.  We had our first son there.  When I was pregnant with number 2, we moved over to Wellington, New Zealand and are still here (thankfully!).  So I guess I'm also a bit of a traveller too (been to 17 countries, which is pretty cool considering I hadn't seen an ocean til I was 26).

But these things don't really tell you 'who I am' so much as they tell you 'what I've done'.  Really, who I am is a kind person with a good heart, a mum of 2 who is struggling a lot most days, who wishes she had more friends or even a few really close friends or family nearby, who has all kinds of hopes and dreams but feels a bit like she'll never be able to get to them now that she's a parent.. someone who is working through this new life and trying to find her way.

And on a lighter note, I'm someone who loves music, loves socialising, painting, drawing, sewing, doing crafts - really doing anything creative; someone who loves cooking and reading and writing and dreaming and planning and organising.  I'm also quite in to learning and listening to myself and becoming a better person.  There are so many facets to who I am.

That's why I find such a simple question so difficult to answer.  I mean really, who are you?