Category: Kids
Saturday, Sep 27, 2008 | Kids |
Supper eaten. Table cleared. Dishes washed. Sun going down. Kids in basement with Kevin, going squirrelly. “When can we go for a ride?” How about now? Children racing back and forth between porch and driveway. “Open the car! Open the car!” Right. Car seats. Children dragging car seats off the porch and toward the car. Children scrambling over each other’s heads to be the first into the new car. Children shouting. Driveway littered with car seats. Kevin sticking car seats into position, Mama changing her mind about who will sit where, Kevin rearranging car seats. Mama incredibly grumpy. Not helping. Finally, seats in position. Mama straps baby in. Baby instantly stops chewing odd-looking odd-textured stuffed duck (where did it come from? why is it suddenly a favourite chew toy, when he’s drowning in options?). Begins screaming. Mama struggles in half-light to fasten straps. Baby screams, with conviction. Children cheer as lowered DVD screen comes to life. Cheer subsides when no movie is instantly forthcoming. Mama snaps final buckle. “Are you going to sit back there?” “I guess so. He’s really upset.” Mama straps self in. Proof that three can sit comfortably in the middle row. Plenty of leg-room. No time to appreciate, as Kevin backs out of driveway, and new uproar arises. DVD has started up, but won’t play. Baby howls. Mama fiddles blindly with controls. “You have it!” But she doesn’t. “I think that’s the right one, Mommy!” But it isn’t. “Try over there!” But she has. Kevin jeopardizes safety to paw around for the remote. The new car has a remote? Baby turning purple with rage. Another cheer erupts. Mama has inadvertently landed on the right button. Paddington Bear begins to play. “I can’t hear it! Turn up the volume!” Mama spoils success by poking more buttons. Apparently volume can’t be controlled in the rear. Kevin fixes volume, nearly runs red light. Baby shrieks. “Why isn’t the movie playing?” Mama lands on correct button again. Kevin hands back remote, pulls into parking lot. “Why are we going here?” Here is Kevin’s office. He’s dropping off supplies for scotch club. We’ve travelled about five city blocks. “I’ll just leave the car running, then? And be right back?” Yes, please come back. Mama plays peekaboo with baby. Moods improve. Eldest son plays with overhead light. Immensely pleased. Baby laughing. Peekaboo a riot. Mama fiddles with remote. Is promptly scolded by children, and tucks device into side pocket where it is likely to be forgotten. Kevin returns. “Well.” “Well.” “Should we just go home?” Drive back five blocks. Mama plays peekaboo with increasingly hysterical baby. Kevin shows off nifty high-tech features, such as rearview camera that kicks in when the vehicle is in reverse. It looks potentially confusing. Isn’t that what mirrors are for? GPS shows car travelling down familiar streets. Kevin risks life and limb to demonstrate how map on screen can zoom in, and then out. Mama wonders whether screen can be turned off. Kevin fiddles around. Then decides no. Vehicle pulls into driveway, parks. Uproar erupts. “Can’t we keep watching the movie?” Children have seen movie approximately five billion times previously. Theme song of Paddington Bear so embedded in Mama’s brain, she finds herself humming it on odd occasions. Too darn catchy. The answer is no. The answer is no! The answer is: it’s time to floss those cavity-laden teeth and go to bed! The answer satisfies few in the audience. Baby begins howling afresh. Children stumble lacklustrely out of new car. Mama and Kevin exchange heartfelt sighs. Family enters home.
Thursday, Sep 25, 2008 | Kids |
Wanted to write an update on today’s Least Favourite Hour, because it really wasn’t so bad. We had a pleasant walk home (always one of the best parts of the day), chatting about Safety Village and forts and French (AB was apparently cheered this morning when I assured her that other children in her class were also not fluent in French, and in fact, that if she already knew French, she wouldn’t need school to teach her. Poor kid. She’s a bit of a perfectionist. Wonder where she gets that from).
When we walked in the door, A was very excited about opening and displaying the contents of his backpack–which turned out to be all kinds of thrilling material about fire safety (field trip to a pretend burning building, apparently). A was insistent that we immediately check all fire alarms, and forevermore test them weekly; and that we make a family escape plan. All wonderful advice, I am sure, which I recall fretting over, oh, about twenty-five years ago: My bedroom has no handy rope ladder for escape! My family refuses to sit down and make an escape plan! Our house is a certain fire trap! We’re doomed!
First, I assured the kids that our fire alarms are in good working order–in fact, they go off regularly over cooking incidents.
And then, instead of heading toward the kitchen for the lunch-/supper-making quest, we ran some fun pretend fire drills in the living room, acting out potential scenarios (besides, baby CJ was starving and I needed to sit down to nurse him; many things I can do, but nursing while cooking is not one of them). A rolled on the floor to demonstrate precisely how he would extinguish the flames, were he on fire (“strangling” the fire, according to AB). His escape plan goes something like this: “First, I put the back of my hand to the door, and if it’s hot, I open my window and kick out my screen–” (here is where he was interrupted by his mother, “Whatever you do, don’t jump out that window!” [his window is two-and-a-half storeys above flat concrete]. “No, I’ll grab a big blanket and wave it. And scream.” “You can yell for someone to call 911,” I suggested. “I can cry really loud, too,” says A. “Maybe as loud as I can yell.”
AB also had a fun surprise waiting in her bag. “I have a pink piece of paper, Mom,” she says.
“Oh great,” sayeth I. “I’ll bet it’s a lice notice.”
Yup. Lice in her classroom. Last year we got about one of these pink pieces of paper every other week for months at a time. You have to sign and send back confirming that you’ve gone through your child’s hair. So we got out a pick, and went through the hair, A’s too. If you’re familiar with my kids, you will know that they have a lot of hair, and it’s tangly too. It took forever. And was oddly entertaining. While I didn’t find lice, I did find a few odd things that I otherwise would not have. Like what looked like sparkly blue pencil shavings in both kids’ heads. Weird, huh.
Anyway, by this time a good half hour had escaped, (who knew–fire safety and lice notices equal good times), and the kids ran happily to the backyard (oh fleeting summery weather, how I will miss you), and baby CJ hung out in his gigantic bouncy device, and I whipped up some new lunches (by Friday, my inspiration is running thin; but hey, hummus and pita is a healthy option), and made supper.
Which my family is clamouring for this very instant.
Thursday, Sep 25, 2008 | Chores, Cooking, Kids |
I’ve become frantically reaquainted with my least favourite time of day this past week; that being, the hour or so between arriving home from school and suppertime. Kevin isn’t home, the big kids are wound up from their days away, F has been craving her siblings’ attention all day, and baby CJ becomes a little monkey child and desires utter attachment to his mama. We walk through that front door, and it’s a shambles of work and chaos for the next hour or more, till Kevin arrives and I drag baby CJ out of the sling and pass him off. I use that hour to go through school bags for forms to be filled out (and money requested; I picture School like a giant maw, always hungry); to empty lunch boxes; to make the next day’s lunch; and to start supper. Of course, in the midst of that work, I’m also trying to organize happy play (outside! go outside!), reprimand bad talk (why do they come home with the desire to say mean things to each other??), discover tidbits about the day (why a particular lunch item is untouched), and on and on.
Yesterday was this gorgeous warm afternoon, and all I really wanted was to go outside and lie on a blanket with baby CJ, who loves the outdoors, and watch the kids run around and play. They did go swing in their hammocks happily; but I couldn’t lose that hour. The work needed to be done. Supper has to be eaten. Lunches have to be made. After-supper chores await. And if I don’t get into those bags as soon as we walk through the door, I lose track of the forms, the library books, the squashed sandwiches; quite frankly, I forget otherwise, the contents of those bags disappears from my consciousness, and then I’m confronted with surprises early the next morning, which is not a time of day when I’m good with surprises.
I’m a pretty organized person. Maybe I just need to get my head around re-organizing that hour, structuring my time differently, so that I can spend that hour really with the kids, not shouting from the sidelines. Or maybe I just need to accept that thus it shall be …
But playgroup this morning was really really fun!!! I have been missing that weekly dose of adult conversation. It feels more relaxed without having to race off for half-day kindergarden, too. And I’m very well-caffeinated.
Wednesday, Sep 24, 2008 | Kids, Sleep |
Obscure Canlit Mama sits before her computer on giant blue ball (instead of chair; supposed to be more comfortable, improve core strength; maybe does), with chattering baby underfoot (literally) and chattering toddler imagining with Little People (behind). Office doubles (triples?) as baby’s changeroom, and toyroom. Computer and writing life is an afterthought. Ball takes up way less room than proper chair would. Plus core strength, abs, et cetera.
Obscure Canlit Mama has virtually no brain power this afternoon due to a collision of experiences, main one giving birth almost six months ago, and several other times previously in the past seven years, compounded more immediately by enjoying two hours out with sibs last night, way too much fun, such that OCMama returned home feeling invincible, and therefore slept poorly. Invincible perhaps wrong word choice. Maybe there’s not a word for it. That feeling that comes from conversing with fellow adults for two whole hours without interruption. That feeling of being reminded that one can parry conversationally, with humour! with what passes for wit!, and that the topic of choice is politics and not people’s heads being eaten up (a favourite with AB for reasons unknown and quite possibly unknowable, though perhaps psychologically interesting).
F is hungry and so OCMama will drag herself downstairs to seek sustenance and nurse baby who is now in arms and hammering upon wrist with small plastic figure.
Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008 | Chores, Cooking, Kids, Laundry |
Morning meditation while hanging out laundry. There’s something in this near-daily (seasonal) experience that I find soothing. It’s certainly not laborious, just kind of rhythmical, picking out the pins, shaking out the fabric, hanging, repeat. I stand on the back porch and our clothesline is on a pulley, and the clothes swing out into the yard, under the trees. The air this morning was cool, birds were singing, behind me on the porch baby CJ was talking happily to himself in his gigantic plastic bouncy device (we haul this out of the basement for every baby; it’s ugly and bulky and suitable for only a few months in a baby’s life, but was already used when we got it for baby A, so has served its purpose well).
I’m looking ahead and wondering whether there will be some way to hang laundry indoors when the weather turns. Partly for energy-savings, partly to add moisture to our upstairs rooms, and partly because there’s something that seems particularly wasteful about using a drier to do a job that the air will do naturally, given the opportunity.
Darn, I have a very fussy baby strapped to me in a sling as I type. As usual, thought I’d picked a good “Mommy time” moment, and as usual, Mommy time is, by definition, interrupted time. I should call it something else. Not-Mommy-time, maybe.
Okay, brief pause and she’s back … baby CJ is now sleeping in his playpen; all he needed was a quick nurse to put him over the edge. My thoughts feel very random today and unfocussed, but to add to the laundry meditation, I wonder whether it is actually being outdoors that makes that experience so soothing. Last winter, when I was very pregnant, I went for a long walk every evening around our neighbourhood, (by the end, when I was somewhat-less-than-dainty, I called it my nightly trudge) and it was the first winter that I felt connected to that season in a really positive way. Winter has always been dark, cold, interior; not unpleasant, but more hibernation than actual interaction with the season itself.
Seasons. We’ve entered autumn. I feel my own life on the edge of a seasonal change, from a time of intense focus on babies and toddlers, to something, not quite sure what, else. There’s a Last Time sensation to many of the things I do with baby CJ. This time, the infant clothes have gone into a bag to give away, not back into the labelled boxes I keep in our attic for our babies-to-come. I have that simultaneous tug, forward and back; I’m excited and almost impatient to reach a new stage as a family (and an individual); and I’m nostalgic for what is passing right before me.
Oh, have to mention that my curries turned out fabulously yesterday, despite the spice mix-up (or, indeed, perhaps because of it!). We sat around the table extra-long, savouring the flavours, something for everyone to enjoy. These more formal evening meals have become very important to me, even though it requires more work. We sit longer, we talk, we relax in each other’s company, we eat good food. Not sure what I’ll have on offer tonight. I’m planning a pasta, with topping/sauce uncertain as of yet. I might stir-fry some tofu and whatever veggies arrive in our CSA. It needs to be simple and fast because I’ll be trying to get out the door afterward for some real “not-Mommy-time” with my sibs.
One more random story from yesterday’s truly Monday Monday. F’s Chirp magazine arrived in the mail, so I suggested she read it on the way to pick the big kids up from school (anything to make that stroller ride more appealing). It came with some advertising, including a toy catalogue, apparently more exciting than the magazine itself, so F said baby CJ could “read” Chirp instead. Mama Fuzzy-Brain said, oh lovely, and marched gaily up the hill, meeting up with a friend and fellow parent on the way, and chatting merrily along. It wasn’t till we’d reached the school grounds and I saw a dad glance into the stroller with an odd expression on his face that I thought to check on my babes. Oops. F was sound asleep, and baby CJ had eaten a large portion of Chirp magazine. A few damp papery flecks decorated his cheeks, but I could discover no wad in his mouth. Yup. He literally ate it.
But as with all of yesterday’s Monday-ness, it seemed to do him no harm, and we all came out happy in the end.
And now I need to turn my attention to F and our Tuesday morning ritual of baking muffins together from her very own Toddler Cookbook.
Monday, Sep 22, 2008 | Cooking, Kids |
I need more sleep. This was such a Monday morning. It seemed like others at the school drop-off were feeling the same way–Monday! Not ready! And that feeling of resignation, of oh yah, this school-thing is every weekday for many more months to come, that feeling of the novelty wearing off, was also in the air. I must start drinking my cup of coffee BEFORE heading out the door to school.
Uh oh. Thought I’d settled on a good time to write, but the monitor is flaring red with waking baby noises. That was a short nap.
After lunch I prepped for supper. Inspired by some pretty decent-looking naan bread in the grocery store (President’s Choice), I decided to make curries. I’m soaking red lentils for dahl, and have chopped onions, garlic, added spices to the pots waiting on the stove for after school cooking. I’m also make a potato, eggplant, and leek curry (you’ve guessed it–those are the veggies left from last week’s CSA), and those are chopped and ready to go too.
Oh good grief–just realized I’ve mixed up my two pots on the stove and put all the spices in backward!!! Talk about a Monday. The whole day feels like this. So I guess we’ll be having a dahl flavoured like the veggie curry and the veggie curry flavoured like dahl. It’s kinda close to the same spices, except not.
And baby CJ is getting louder by the minute.
