17
July

Grumpy old men

It`s funny how things always seem to happen in bunches.  My lils always have spurts where they are really hurting themselves in fluke ways, I bump into people in bunches at places that I have never bumped into people know, the animals that inhabit my back yard all seem to be doing crazy things all at once…  I usually crop these experiences up to normal causes, like growth spurts or a change in my routine that makes me notice them.  Lately I have noticed that I am surrounded by grumpy old men. Lots of grumpy old men.

One of these was the man who turned left at a traffic light, but turned into the right most lane (the roads were both two lanes wide).  He almost drove right into a car that was coming from the opposite direction, and legitimately turning into the lane.  The driver of the second car stopped in time, avoiding the accident, but the older man decided to block traffic so he could yell and gesture wildy at the guy who had just avoided the accident.  This despite the fact that he was completely in the wrong.

That same night, we attended a scrimmage at the Sens development camp.  It was jam packed, so people were basically sitting on top of each other (literally in our case – the lils were on our laps, to let people sit on the steps in front of us).  Amazingly, despite the fact that it was loud, past bedtime, and that they had no room, the lils were really well behaved and not interfering with any of those around us.  When the time came for the ice to be Zamboni`d, the lils got up and watched at the glass.  As the Zamboni finished up, we started to settle, but there were people in front and to the right.  The guy to the left was still standing, so Willy popped Goose on the bench so he could sit down and then put her on his lap.  The guy looked down at her then at me, so I made a joke about not sitting without looking, to which he rolled his eyes. A guy that was well into his 60`s rolled his eyes at me because a little girl had to stand in his spot for 30 seconds…

Sadly the grumpiness has followed us on vacation too.  We decided to head to a local park on the water one night to catch their “Jazz by the Bay”. We arrived as it was beginning and spread out a blanket for the lils to sit on.  A few minutes later, a group of people came close to us, led by an older man who set up his chair right at the edge of our blanket; despite the fact that there was about twenty feet of open grass behind us where he could have sat.  I looked at him wondering what was up, but he just starred at me.  A few minutes later, I wandered off after a lil, only to return and note that he had moved the blanket so that he could stretch out his feet.  I guess we were in “his spot”.

My absolute favourite has to be the dad at the local park who tried to tell me not to be too hard on Woo when he and I were having a discussion about how to share the pool toys at the park, and which belonged to the pool and which needed permission for use.  I brushed this off, as we were just talking, no one was being hard on anyone.  Woo wandered off and the same dad told me that Woo`s hair was cut too short!  Taken aback, I politely explained that Woo had asked to be shaved bald, and that he loved his hair cut.  He then asked me if it had been an accident, if I had forgotten to put the guide on before starting to cut the hair!

Not all of these men were all that old, they just acted it.  I`ve decided that the heat has to be to blame for these incidents, so I hope it lets up soon.  If it doesn`t, I might start getting grumpy myself.

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11
July

Wordless Wednesday – Summer vacation

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10
July

The bakerman

I am fortunate in that my lils have always loved to cook with me.  Sure, it makes for messier meal prep, and it might take twice as long to get some recipes made, but it has allowed me to get the recipes made, which is the important part.  Food is important to me!  I have encouraged their help from an early age. I started with really simple stuff, like moving ingredients around the kitchen and playing with the measuring spoons, but over time both lils have come to be able to do pretty much anything that I ask of them in the kitchen.  They listen, because they know the only rule about cooking with mom – if you don’t listen, you have to leave.  Being kicked out of the kitchen is the worst thing that a mama could do to her lils, so they listen.

Woo has always been our adventurous foodie.  He has eaten everything we put in front of him (which included peanut butter that one time. OOPS), and rarely fusses about the content of his meals.  He tries new, exotic foods on a regular basis, and eats with gusto when he finds something he likes.  His play has often included a creative cooking session, where he dreams up recipes that he likes us to make.  Some of them are just crazy, but some of them sound pretty good.  I have taken him up on the suggestions as to what he would like to see added to a dish on occasion, and am often surprised please with the result.

In the last year, he has started to really experiment in the kitchen.  Some of his creations are downright awful (hello apple milkshakes!), but some seem to be quite tasty, according to both Woo and Goose.    Last weekend he decided to make some cupcakes without a recipe.  He determined what ingredients he would need, measured the quantities, and set them in the oven and watched them like a baby, before icing them with nutella.

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They looked like cupcakes, smelled like cupcakes and felt like cupcakes… In the end they would have been good had he not added too much salt.  Way too much salt.  So much salt that the critters who broke into our green bin the following night licked the icing off, but refused to eat the cake (or died trying).  We stressed that it was a great first effort, but he was a little embarrassed, and knew that they weren’t good.  I was still impressed, as I was well into adulthood before I was brave enough to create a baked good with no recipe to base it on.

This weekend found Woo reading through one of his cookbooks, when he happened upon a vanilla cupcake recipe. He wanted to make it, so we encouraged him and made him responsible for it all.  He had a small bit of help, but the end result was a vanilla cupcake, complete with strawberry icing.

 

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They are the best damn cupcakes I have ever eaten.  EVER.  I think that my lil bakerman is on to something here…

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4
July

Wordless Wednesday – wandering around

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26
June

Her first haircut

When Goose was born, she had a full head of dark hair.  It slowly fell out in the first few months, and was replaced with the finest white gold hair.  That hair grew in slowly and by the time she was a year old, I tried to force a “first hair cut” moment, but there wasn’t much to cut, so it was more of a ‘tidy up the wisps’ kinda trim. A little while after this trim, it started growing and growing.

By the time she was two it was long enough to do things with, but I had barely put any effort into styling her hair.  Most of my attempts were met with tears from the brushing, and resulted in a sloppy mess.  Goose would frequently come home from day care at the fabulous N’s with her hair elaborately done up, and I would be mostly in awe of what N had done, but also a little embarrassed that my efforts were never even close to looking that good.

Moving to India brought about two changes in our routine.  We switched Goose from the baby shampoo to a shampoo and a conditioner, which greatly helped with the tangles, and we had to start braiding her hair every night to prevent her from getting really bad heat rashes while she slept. Sure, we still had battles over the brushings, but we both got adventurous and saw some of the fun things that we could do with her hair, and I got MUCH better at doing it.

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the bedtime braid

About three months before we moved home, Goose decided that she wanted to cut her hair off.  She had a friend at school that had a really cute short ‘do and she wanted to try something like that.  Realizing that her hair was long enough to donate, I talked to her about donating it to have it made into a wig for children undergoing treatment for cancer.  It took some explaining, but she understood and decided that she wanted to do that.  Sadly there was nowhere to send it in India, so she decided to let it grow longer and cut it in Canada. When we returned to Canada, she decided to wait until summer, when her hair would be even longer.

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summer fun

Summer is here, and Goose had decided that the time was right, so I got her an appointment at a local salon today.

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getting measured

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the first cut

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checking herself out after the initial cuts

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happy girl!

I am really proud of my little girl, who had her first real haircut today, a sixteen inch cut of hair that took her four years to grow. We will be sending it into to one of the charities listed on the Canadian Cancer Society’s website, and hope that the wig it is used in will make one child’s battle with cancer just a little bit easier.

Goose was so sure of this through the whole process.  She was confident in her decision and never wavered, even when the cut was imminent.  Her reply was always that she wanted to help other children by making wigs.  Even when I offered a trim or a cut that was just at the minimum she would tell me that she grew it longer to help more.

When I asked her what she thought of her haircut at bedtime, her reply was, “I love it, I have an awesome haircut”.  She’s a pretty awesome little girl!

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some awesomeness

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25
June

Bested

From the time that they were wee babes, both of the lils have gone to bed really early. It has always been nice, as it allows Willy and me to enjoy some time together in the evenings, but also an opportunity to get things done; work, laundry, dishes, or even veg on the couch playing Ratchet and Clank for three hours.  Even now they are pretty tired from their days and start moving to bed at 7:00. The tiredness, Woo’s pre-dawn waking, and Goose’s general love of sleep have meant that we have little inclination to try and change things.

The long days of late have been lovely, but have threatened to change the bedtime routine in our house.  The lils are tired at bedtime, but the daylight fools them into thinking that they *should* stay up, and they often get the sillies in the early evening.  If this goes too far they get really wound up and start to feed off each other.  Separating them becomes tricky, and then we have to try and wind them back down.  This usually involves an extra story or two, and an extra-long cuddle before leaving them to go to sleep.

Last night was one of those nights.  The lils were having fun together and it got silly.  We got them apart after several false starts and Willy settled in with Woo, Goose with me. I thought that I was doing pretty well with her and was about to leave our cuddle, when she asked me to tell her what parts of her body I loved.  I started to name parts; her eyes, her lips, her knees, her elbows.  Each time that I named a part, she matched and told me about part of my body that she loved.

It was fairly calm and quiet until she said, “I love your boobs.”  I could tell by the mischievous tone in her voice that she was testing, to see how I would react.  Not wanting to rile her up again, I refused to bite and just replied that I loved her toes.  Undeterred, she tried to bait me again, this time with, “I love your stinky breath.” Again I stayed flat and professed my love for her toes.

At this point I thought that she would sense that I wasn’t biting and give up.  She did get that I wasn’t biting, and came back with “I love your tail.”  My TAIL.  At this pointed we both dissolved into giggles and I knew that I had lost.  The silliness continued, and bedtime took a wee bit longer.

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20
June

Wordless wednesday – at the zoo

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18
June

Parents behaving badly

We’ve gone through a rough patch over the last few weeks where the lils have been behaving very badly at times, behaviour that escalates as they feed off each other, and ignore our efforts to rein them in.  I know that summer is coming and that they are more than ready after their extra month of school this year, so I have been trying to cut them some slack, while still letting them know that we expect that they will be polite and respectful to their parents, teachers, friends, and those around them.  Still, it`s hard when you are four and six, but they are trying.

One of the things that I have noticed of late is that my lils are not the only ones who are having a hard time behaving as we ease into summer.  Oddly enough, it isn’t the other children who catch my attention, it’s their parents.  Parents like the father at the Zoo who walked away from his child to swear right in front of my children – repeatedly – despite my polite request that he not swear in front of my lils, or the mom at the museum who watched us talking to our child about the importance of moving off an exhibit and letting the other children use it, but felt it necessary to interrupt me to say “will you just get him off it so my kids can use it?” These and other experiences have made me shake my head and wonder what they were thinking, but nothing has upset me quite as much as the two fathers who were sitting beside me at soccer last week.

The lils’ soccer classes follow each other on Thursday evenings, so Goose and I were sitting on the grass watching Woo’s lesson when it happened.  His class was warming up, and the leaders had them playing a game of freeze tag. It was pretty chaotic, but the lils on the field were all having a good time, when I noticed the conversation of the two men sitting right beside me.  They were being extremely critical of one of the children on the field, making snarky remarks about how he ran, who he tagged… I shook my head, thinking that I was wrong or that I misunderstood, but they continued, and made several more comments which made his identity clear.  I wanted to say something, but I had Goose with me and didn’t want to get angry. I also didn’t want to call her attention to what they were saying.  Then they started talking about whether he had a disability, or if something was “wrong” with him, and I knew I had to leave.

I walked away and took Goose to the play structure.  I was mad at myself for not saying anything to them, but they were being jerks and I knew it would end badly.  Mostly I was mad at them.  These are six year olds.  All of them, their sons included, were having fun.  They were playing a game.  Why do these parents even care how any of them play it?  Why do they think that they have the right to say what they were saying, out loud, ever? The only thing that was “wrong” on this particular field was the two men beside me.

Four days later, my heart still races when I think about this.  In hindsight, I should have said something, but the moment had passed by the time I was calm enough not to just tell them off.  If it ever happens again, I will be prepared. Sad that I have to think about what I would say, but sometimes the old, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” isn’t enough.

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13
June

Wordless wednesday – FIFO, first tooth edition

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12
June

Getting on my bike again

When we were little, my sister, brother and I used to bike all over our neighbourhood; all the kids did.  We’d go to school, to friend’s houses, to Becker’s and buy treats, or just for a cruise.  We’d also ride down to the creek to misbehave, but our favourite thing to do was ride the hill that was across the street from my parent’s house.  To the under ten crowd, it was steep and long, and we would ride up and down it all day long if we could.  I am pretty sure that all of the neighbourhood kids from that era still have bits of gravel embedded in their skin from wiping out on that hill.  I know I do, as does my sister.

My bike back then was one of the big banana seat bikes with the high handle bars and a sissy bar on the back.  I am sure that it was a hand-me-down from my sister or one of my parent’s friends, but it was still golden to me.  I could easily double on it in comfort, could carry loads of treasure, and rode it all over our community.  As I got older, I biked less and less, and eventually that bike made it up to the cottage, where we rode it down another big hill – a trip that always ended with a jump off the end of the dock into the lake, bike and all.

I was in my mid-thirties before I thought to bike again.  Willy is an avid cyclist, and it was important to him that the lils bike too.  I knew that setting a good example was one way to ensure this, so I took a chance on a bike that I saw posted on freecycle.  It turned out to be a great bike, and I was really starting to enjoy it when we moved to India; enough that I packed the bike up and brought it with me.  I left the bike with a friend when we moved home, so I needed a new bike this spring.

The bike that I bought is quite nice, and I have taken to riding it on most sunny days.  I go for a 30-50 minute ride that ends at the lils’ school, and we all bike home together.  When I first started to ride, I stayed close to home.  I found that if I rode on every street in my community once, the ride was about 30 minutes. This kept me away from traffic and busy streets, and offered enough.  A few weeks in, I found that I was getting bored with the scenery, and started to look farther afield. I knew that if I could just cross that one scary busy street, there was a whole other neighbourhood, and beyond it, the bike path.

Finally, late last week I made the leap.  I rode up to the traffic light, and boldly crossed the road (there is a joke in there somewhere) and meandered through the new neighbourhood to the bike path.  My rides since have been longer and much more of an adventure, and I find I am looking forward to the next ride before I have finished putting my bike in the garage as I arrive home.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself for crossing the big scary road.  Proud that is until Sunday; when Woo was out with Willy and I and asked if he could see where I had been riding.  He didn’t blink as we rode to the traffic light and safely crossed to the other side.  Then Monday, he and his dad went even further than I have ever been, and even crossed under the highway!  Suddenly I feel like I haven’t explored nearly enough.  At least I know he’ll be game to go with me if I want some company!

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