Category: Kids
Wednesday, Mar 19, 2014 | Chores, Friends, Girl Runner, Kids, Lists, Organizing, Soccer, Work |
Monday: returned the copyedits to my editor in New York. Big day. That means the book is nearly done, and very little will change from here on in, but I need to take a deep breath when I say that because I’m a tinkerer and tweaker, and it always seems that just a little more effort and a little more time will make the book just a little bit better, so how can I let ever let it go? But I let it go.
Yesterday: felt at loose ends. I wondered, as I sat before the fire holding this computer: am I getting enough done today? I decided to tally it up, even while wondering what’s enough, exactly? I didn’t write the opening sentences to a brilliant new novel yesterday. I didn’t cross everything — or even more than three things — off of my massive to-do list. But I gained a few experience points here and there. (To explain: my brother Christian has an amusing habit of giving himself “experience points” for all of the little odds-and-ends of must-dos in his daily life; life as video game. Oddly satisfying to do, actually.)
Yesterday, tallied up
Up at 5:40 to meet Nina for a run. Floss, take vitamins. Run 8 km. Conversation. 3 friendship points.
Shower. Deodorize. Brush hair. 3 points for good hygiene.
Dress. Eat eggs on toast. Drink cranberry juice. Hug and kiss children and check backpacks. 3 points for smooth start to morning.
Take nap (half an hour). 2 points for renewal.
Drink water and surf Facebook. Waste half an hour. Lose 2 points. Also make arrangements via email re book club visit tomorrow evening. Gain back 1/2 point.
Blog about two books. Stop tallying points.
Call allergist and change Apple’s appointment to next week. Leave message at horse farm about camp this summer. Cross several items off to-do list. Points! Lose steam, fail to return other calls.
Transfer files from dying iMac to laptop. Gather all essays written in last number of years into single folder (think: non-fiction book???). Get distracted reading old poems. Win points, lose some.
Begin writing dedication and acknowledgements for GIRL RUNNER.
Eat leftovers for lunch. Read newspaper.
Try to fix iMac with help from brother Karl. Sit in front of fire. Email Hilary (agent). Finish writing dedication and acknowledgements, email file to Kevin for his opinion. Begin writing this list.
Greet Albus, home from school. Fail to think of acceptable snack.
Walk to meet CJ at bus. Also meet Fooey. Walk home with CJ and Fooey, chatting to both simultaneously about school day. Carry Fooey’s bag. Meet Apple walking home too.
Host playdate with CJ’s friend, steer them away from electronics. Help very grumpy Fooey make her own snack. Negotiate trade with Albus: read for half an hour = play Minecraft for half an hour.
Horse farm calls back, brief conversation about summer camp.
Chop potatoes, onions, garlic, parsnips and squash and make curried coconut soup for supper. Turn on radio. Turn off radio. Receive but do not reply to several work-related emails.
Make Apple eat snack and remind her to get ready for soccer practice. Text Kevin to pick up milk, bread on way home. Instruct Kevin on last-minute supper prep. Yell at Apple to get ready for soccer practice already! Lose points for losing cool; gain points because child now ready for soccer practice.
Drive Apple to soccer practice. Chat with other moms and watch soccer practice. Discuss practice with Apple on way home. Fill up truck with $100 worth of gas (!!!!!). Definitely lose green dream points.
Exchange parenting duties with Kevin, who leaves with Albus as soon as we arrive for their team’s soccer practice.
Eat (cold) supper with Apple. Plan CJ’s birthday party with Fooey and Calvin, add to guest list. Clean up supper, put away food, fill and start dishwasher. 10 points just because.
Supervise Fooey’s piano practice. 2 points.
Feed children snacks. Supervise tooth brushing. Read Farmer Boy in front of fire. Put CJ and Fooey to bed. Bonus snuggling points.
Fold laundry. Try to think of acceptable snack for Albus, now home; no acceptable snacks. Albus retreats upstairs unhappily. Lose a few points. Kevin leaves for hockey.
Eat grapefruit in front of fire, read first chapter in book that happens to be on coffee table nearby: IMAGINING LONDON, by Anna Quindlen. 1 point for self-comfort.
Convince Apple to brush teeth and take asthma meds before letting her finish her book in front of fire, whilst snuggling with dogs. Apple finishes book, briefly discuss, send to bed.
Albus back downstairs, still seeking snack. Helps crate dogs in basement. Cheers up. 3 points for mysteriously good mothering moment. Albus drinks chocolate milk and eats peeled orange. Brushes teeth. Goes to bed.
All children now hugged and in bed! A million points!
Surf Facebook lamely for forty minutes whilst castigating self for not being in bed. Read article on lost Malaysian plane, for example. “Like” photos and statuses of friends. Do not reply to work-related emails. Am reminded of the old days when I would slump in front of the TV and watch just because I was too tired to do anything else. Mildly depressing; maybe necessary? No points gained, but decide no points lost either.
Brush teeth, take probiotics and fish oil. Lock house. Turn out lights downstairs. Carry folded laundry in basket upstairs. Read LADY ORACLE by Margaret Atwood for approximately fifteen minutes. It’s not even 11pm! Turn out light. Goodnight.
Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 | Exercise, Fun, Holidays, Kids, Winter |
Yesterday, we went cross-country skiing.
We drove to a conservation area on the nearby escarpment, and rented skis. We spent two and a half hours on the trails, with everyone skiing the entire time.
It was warm and AppleApple took her coat off and left it at a marker, and of course it wasn’t there when we went looking for it, hours later, after the visitor’s centre was closed. But I called this morning and apparently it was returned to the centre by a kindly passerby, so we will just have to go back and ski again this week (and get the coat: the temperature is dropping, blowing snow forecast for tomorrow).
Highlight reel:
* being outside
* being in the woods
* playing in snow
* doing something everyone enjoyed
* being active together
Of course, let’s admit that we had a few rough moments. Losing the coat was a (temporary) annoyance. We also split up about midway through the adventure, with CJ and Kevin heading back toward the visitor’s centre together, and the rest of us continuing on a longer looping trail. Except the older two skied much faster than Fooey could manage (she was hampered not only by being small and recovering from a stomach bug, but also because she had to wear boots and skis that were my size, nor hers). While she grew more and more exhausted, I grew more and more frantic, unable to catch up to or communicate with the older two, to tell them we needed to turn around now. (There was no way I could have carried Fooey and skis out of the woods — we were many kilometres in at that point, and I needed her to make it on her own steam.)
Finally, I decided to turn around without the older two, hoping they would have the sense to come back looking for us (they had agreed to stop and wait for us at a point we’d seen on the map, aka “the mythical G”; it never materialized). About forty minutes into this scenario, the big kids turned up behind us, glowing and unaware of the angst they’d caused us. I did not let them leave our sight after that. So, in future I might make a few amendments in planning. Ten-minute check-ins? Travelling with a backpack and a cellphone?
It was, all said, a real adventure. And really really really fun.
We finished with pie at Marj’s Diner in Alma, on the way home. Pie that was almost as large as this very tired child’s head. That’s banana cream, if you’re wondering.
Saturday, Mar 8, 2014 | Books, Chores, Fun, Good News, Holidays, House, Kids, Organizing, Travel, Winter |
AppleApple’s last major school project before March break: an original handwritten folk tale
March break started yesterday. The kids celebrated with Minecraft in their pyjamas, a game that they play collaboratively, and that includes everyone, and which therefore I don’t find myself objecting to as stridently as I do to other video games. I also make no comment when Kevin sneaks off to play FIFA14 (a soccer video game) with one kid or another, calling it “soccer practice.” I actually think that “pwning” his opposition in FIFA14 may be helping Albus with his “mad dekes” on the field, in real life. It’s the power of envisioning results. If you can’t imagine it — in specific, calculated detail — it’s never going to happen.
the couch in its new location + airborn son; we call that beanbag chair “the cow”
On our first family outing of March break, we walked uptown to get passport photos taken. Because — newsflash! — I’m flying to London, England next month! (My passport is actually fine, but in digging up everyone’s, I discovered that most of the kids’ had expired.) This trip fulfills a dream to research early print culture, specifically popular culture (i.e. the precursor to the tabloid), in Elizabethan England. Long ago, I wanted to write a doctoral thesis on the subject, but I have the feeling that fiction will be much more fun, and ultimately more in line with my talents and abilities. I studied English Lit through grad school, but have never seen the places imprinted in my imagination by all that reading of English Lit; just like I wanted to see Nicaragua again before trying to write about, I want to see England before trying to write about it (I’ll save the time-travelling for my imagination). There is no guarantee that I’ll find my story, of course, but I know for sure I won’t find it unless I go (see above re power of envisioning.)
different airborn son
I’m going before the spring soccer season starts, and Kevin claims not to be worried at all about managing the house and kids and scheduling madness in my absence, now that he’s home so much more often (and he really is home so much more often, a fact I don’t mention enough, but which has greatly benefitted and altered all of our lives). The timing couldn’t be better: I have friends on sabbatical in London this year, who have offered to feed and shelter me. In fact, Nath has been acting as my unofficial guide, looking up directions to places I want to see, and providing advance tips on using the British Library and getting an Oyster pass so I can use the trains, etc.; plus she says she’ll come with me on my outings and provide me with an umbrella. I keep emailing her questions like: what kind of shoes should I bring? (Don’t we all need someone to whom we can email questions like that? It’s funny how it eases the mind just to have someone to ask.)
I also hope to see another friend, whose family is also in the UK on sabbatical, and meet my UK publisher, Lisa Highton of Two Roads, in person.
And maybe have a jacket potato and some beer.
Fooey playing with matchbox cars, last weekend
Our second stop on yesterday’s family outing was Words Worth, where I bought a pile of bargain books, and AppleApple ordered Black Beauty, and Fooey picked out a guide to making bracelets on her Rainbow Loom (she has been doing nothing else since), and CJ chose a Pokemon guidebook. (Albus was at the library with a friend, as he didn’t need a passport photo). CJ is starting to read, for real. Pokemon guidebooks wouldn’t be my first choice for his reading material, but if he’s the one reading them to himself, I have no objection.
jam cupboard in its new location
We have a list of things we want to do this week, including:
– matinee movie at the Princess
– family party night (tonight!) [note: definition of party supplied entirely by the children]
– make-up piano lesson
– possibly move children’s rooms around
– clean basement / house
– trip to mall
– plan CJ’s birthday party
– family cross-country ski trip
– lamps for living-room
– uke night
– supper at Grandpa’s
– play with friends
– early morning swim with AppleApple
– trip to the Museum to see this exhibit (over strong protest from the very family member we wish to take)
– hot yoga in the living-room
– fix iMac (the computer on which I process photos, which has been crashing with alarming regularity: which is why this blog doesn’t always have up-to-date pics at present)
– transfer all important files to laptop
– exhibition soccer games
– plan Carrie’s trip
– library
new bookshelf
We’ve already added a new bookshelf to the living-room and shifted the location of the piano and the couch, and moved the jam cupboard up to our bedroom where it looks so beautiful it almost causes me grief — I think because it seems like hoarding to keep such a beautiful object in such a private space.
“Does it seem like we’re in a constant state of change?” Kevin asked this morning, as AppleApple offered to do a room switch with Albus, who is not enjoying sharing with CJ. To which I could only reply, Yes. We are.
Thursday, Mar 6, 2014 | Big Thoughts, Books, Kids, Photos, Politics, Sick, Winter |
After this morning’s run (-24 with the windchill, again!), I felt inspired to post photos comparing the weather today, March 6th, 2014, to the March 6ths of previous years. Easier said than done. I’ve just been scanning through the past few Marches, as recorded on my blog, and it would appear that in those years when it was simply grey and dreary and melty, I didn’t take a lot of seasonal outdoor photos.
March 4, 2012
Here’s one. Looks like there was still some snow two years ago at the same time, though not nearly in our current volume. Photos from later that month show the lilacs starting to bud, and lettuce and chives coming up in the back garden beds, but that hasn’t been the March-norm, according to my blog. It was odd enough to remark on.
not all photos are flattering
This is me, this morning. I have a moustache! And a beard, kind of. This photo was taken around 6:45AM. The light was beautiful. The cold was not. My toes were frozen.
I have a sick child home again today. Not the same sick child, either. We’ve cycled through sick children this past week, with the three eldest taking their turn. March break begins tomorrow. I shake my head. This winter.
AppleApple finished Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story before I did. It was a very readable book, we agreed, although odd to be reading in book-form such recent news events; and of course the story remains unfinished.
I’ve been thinking about tyrants and celebrities. Larger than life. That seems to be how we want our leaders. That’s why the most impossible-seeming characters wind up in power, despite being bumbling fools or ruthless autocrats or outright sociopaths. The gods and goddesses had outsized appetites and were obviously flawed, too, but we never said we wanted perfection, we the people. We are awed by enormity, by behaviour on a scale we can’t imagine of ourselves, whether it be idiocy or tyranny.
Vladimir Putin is larger than life. He may appear bizarre to the Western eye, posing shirtless while conquering a variety of wildlife, but he knows what he’s doing: he’s creating a potent myth of himself. What an oddly self-inflated little man, we might think, while he smiles like the Mona Lisa and crushes his opposition. And on a scale of far less global importance, Rob Ford is also larger than life. His appetites are renowned, his body enormous, his inability to speak the truth unstoppable, his buffoonery legendary. When we laugh at him, we forget that he still has power. In some ways, it’s an odd trick common to many a corrupt leader: their pretensions are so absurd, we can’t believe anyone’s taking them seriously.
We should. We take them as seriously as they take themselves, or else we’re the fools.
Thursday, Feb 27, 2014 | Kids, Readings |
Can an evening be both packed and relaxed?
After piano lessons yesterday, Kevin and I tag-teamed supper prep: chicken fajitas with leftover refried beans and accoutrements from Taco Farm (radish salsa, pickled jalepenos, cabbage crudito). We were all home to eat together.
I left Kevin with the cleanup, and the girls and I headed off to AppleApple’s open house, where the students had set up displays on their arts projects. (They do a project on social studies in the fall, arts in the winter, and a science project in the spring.) Among the topics were cake-decorating (with slices on offer), magic, opera singing (the student composed and performed her own aria), and radio drama. AppleApple’s scrapbook on Land Art was well-written, beautifully illustrated, and seemed to be well-received; I observed two dads reading her text and commenting on the fascinating strangeness of Andy Goldsworthy’s art. It struck a chord.
After some cake, Fooey and I left AppleApple to mingle with her friends, and we headed off to gymnastics, picking up a carpooling friend on the way. In the quiet car, on the way back to the open house, I caught part of a well-produced profile of Buffy Sainte-Marie. Almost the first thing I heard her say was (and I paraphrase): “I’ve travelled all over, and the lies are always different, but the truth stays the same.” She was saying that the universal truths that resonate between cultures and times don’t change; it’s the lies that are shifty. So speak your truth, people. That’s what I took, anyway. She also reflected on her parentage, saying she was sure she wasn’t pure Cree, but had some European blood in her, somewhere along the line. She put it like this: “It was either an act of war or an act of love.” I was struck by the stark clarity of that dichotomy of possibilities.
I picked up AppleApple and we headed over to the university, hoping to arrive in time to hear Lisa Moore read. It was really cold last night. We got to St. Jerome’s and discovered in the frigid blowing wind that we’d need $4 in change to park in the lot. I had $1.75. “I can’t believe we’ve made it this far, and we might not get to go!” Luckily we discovered meter parking nearby, and purchased an hour, spending every last nickel we could find in our pockets and in the car. After a quick detour to the library to drop off books (some of them on Andy Goldsworthy, in fact), we settled into chairs: just in time.
“Is this what university classrooms look like?” AppleApple wondered. “How do students fit their notebooks onto the tiny desks?”
Lisa Moore, before her reading
I worried a little bit throughout the reading that it might be too intense and at times too imagaic and densely poetical for my 11-year-old, but she listened raptly and clapped with enormous enthusiasm at the end. We were fascinated by Lisa Moore’s answers to questions about her process: she described setting herself a problem when writing her novels, usually of form or structure, that she worked to solve, such as telling the story entirely in flashbacks, or telling the story entirely in a forward-moving trajectory, or telling the story from a cacophony of viewpoints (all different problems for her different novels, obviously). She also talked about being part of a writer’s group, and how important feedback is to her process: she described button-holing family, friends, strangers off the street to read and comment on her work-in-progress. I shuddered to imagine it. My own process is so intensely private. No one reads my first drafts, a) because they’re terrible, and b) because I fear that critique at that early stage could kill or muddle my long-term vision for the project.
Discussing this on the way home, AppleApple wondered if I was insecure about my writing in the early stages, or maybe too much of a perfectionist. Either theory might be true. But I guess what works for one writer doesn’t necessarily work for another. I am a meticulous and hyper-critical editor of my own writing. It isn’t that I don’t want critique, but I don’t want it until I know the project is ready for it.
Here was AppleApple’s take on Lisa Moore’s reading: “She had such a good presence. She was very confident and calm, kind of laid-back but also serious. It’s so different hearing someone read their writing than reading a book.”
“Would you like to do that when you grow up?” I asked AppleApple, who certainly has a facility with language.
“Um … I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m going to be doing that again, very soon,” I said. And I realized I’d spent the reading taking mental note of the very things that AppleApple had observed: Lisa Moore’s calm and welcoming presence, her intensity mixed with humour and lightness, her frank and open manner. I was recalling how much effort and discipline and practice it takes to make a presentation like that flow so naturally — how much energy it takes to be the person at the front of the room; a fully present and true version of yourself. And I was reminded that readings can be quite wonderful events to attend. I’m glad we found that parking meter.
Wednesday, Feb 26, 2014 | Kids, Reading, School |
We’ve added an element to the house: FIRE. It’s a gas stove, not wood-burning, placed in the centre of the wall in our main room. I’m sitting in front of it as I type, with my feet up (sorry, treadmill desk; I’m cheating on you with my new flame). As you can see from the photo below, this room remains a long-term work in progress. Kevin and I have two plans, one a total dream and the other something we could hack together ourselves with some help from Ikea. The latter is likely the route we’ll take… when we get a spare moment. Meanwhile, the room looks like this:
I read to the kids in front of the fire last night, snuggling up for the first chapter of Farmer Boy, which CJ had strongly objected to reading (but I can’t read any more Calvin & Hobbes comics, which he loves but totally doesn’t get, requiring a lot of difficult explication). After some stomping around, and “I’m not listening to that,” he came around to “Fine!” when he realized what he’d be missing out on — namely the snuggling in front of the fire.
Farmer Boy begins with children walking through deep wintry snow to a schoolhouse that seems remarkably lawless and dangerous, the scene of potential violence and humiliation where big boys want to “thrash” the teacher and the teacher is considered especially kind because, unlike previous teachers, he does not beat a little boy for not knowing how to spell. The Wilder children are close in age to our family: Royal is 13, Eliza Jane is 12, Alice is 10, and Almanzo is 8. Almanzo, the littlest, has to carry the dinner pail (CJ, the littlest: “That’s not fair!”). By chapter’s end, CJ was hooked. Here’s what the Wilder children found in their dinner pail: bread and butter and sausage, donuts and apples, and one big flaky apple turnover each. (CJ: “Do they only have one nutrition break?” Me: “Yes, but they call it dinner, not nutrition break.”)
We only read one chapter, but it took ages; the conversation around the story could have gone on and on. The little kids were tucked into bed quite late, and Kevin left for hockey. When I came downstairs, the big kids were so perky and happy and chatty that I couldn’t send them to bed. It was the fire. We just couldn’t help but gather and linger and talk … about everything and anything. I learned more about Albus’s school day than I’ve heard all year. They wanted to know what school subjects I was bad at (domestic science and art), and what I looked like in grade 7 (plain and unfashionable: I mostly wore my hair in braids), and I could see them wondering, would I have liked Mom? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been cool enough for Albus. But I grew up so differently from them: never staying in the same place for more than a few years, often the new kid at school, shifting between countries and cultures. By age 12, I’d lived in four different countries, and moved approximately 10 times. The life I’m offering to my children is a settled one, rooted, with privileges that they take for granted, and that I remember not even bothering to envy as a child, because they weren’t things I wanted or needed. Swim lessons, sports teams, fancy gadgets and the “right” shoes and clothes. I was a clueless 12-year-old: dreaming about getting a pony. At the end of grade seven, we moved to a farm and I got a pony! I never felt deprived.
It’s funny how we want to give our kids the things we didn’t get (i.e. swim lessons); but also give them the things we valued from our childhood. I valued my freedom to explore, and I valued being an outsider. It gave me a special status, a special vantage point from which to observe. My kids aren’t getting those things; they’re getting rides to soccer fields instead, and new jeans. What terrifies me is raising entitled kids. I struggle constantly not to do too much for them, to ask them to pitch in for the benefit of the family (and not to earn an allowance, another perk they have, which I did not grow up with). I want them to do the right thing; but more importantly, I want them to choose to do the right thing, not be forced or punished into doing it. You know? I want their inner fires stoked.
So here’s my slow-burning hope. Gathering, talking, sharing, instilling values (one hopes), connecting, laughing: these years go by so fast. Last night, I let the kids stay up late. It seemed like a rare occasion, but I hope it happens often, now that we have something to gather around, something warm and ever-changing and comforting.
