17
July

In the drink

The lils loved their vacation in every way, but their absolute favourite activity was watching for sharks and other fish in the water. They especially loved to come to the beach bar in the evening, where the deck overlooked the water, and the aquatic activity kicked up as the sun went down. Woo and Goose would lean over the rail, hang off of the rail or lie down on the deck with their heads hanging over. All the tables around us got the stereo announcement of what was approaching, and nothing was announced with as much gusto as the sharks, especially their favourite, “denthead” (she really did have a dent on her head).

Each time they approached the deck’s railing, one of us would warn them to be careful, hold on, sit down… and they always did. Then one night Woo hadn’t quite made it onto the deck, and was standing on the short wall looking at the fish. He lost his footing and tumbled in. I was sitting on the other side of the patio, but heard the splash and yelp. I just knew who it was and what had happened, so I bolted the fifty or so feet across the deck and reached him before Willy could. Luckily, one of the staff was even faster and had fished him out. The water wasn’t deep, but he was wet, shocked, and a little embarrassed. He got lots of love, some dry clothes, and set off to watch for more sharks.

Word travelled fast in a small resort and, for the rest of the week, we were asked by some staff if our son was OK and warned by others to keep him from the edge. We were extra cautious, and made sure that they were both really, really careful at the water’s edge. In the end, both Willy and I were relieved. He was glad that Woo was in no way frightened by this experience, and gleefully resumed shark watch right away. I was relieved that Goose hadn’t pushed him in.

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16
July

Ay Kurumba!

After several long and tiring trips, both within India, and around the globe, we had one important criteria for our summer vacation planning:  direct flight. While there are several nice places that fit the bill, the one that interested us the most was the flight to Malé, Maldives.  Private resort islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean? Of course we were interested.  After soliciting a number of friends, we booked in at Kurumba, a resort that offered some other features that we were interested in; close to the airport, children’s activity centre, and scuba diving.

We arrived at noon on Sunday, and immediately noticed that it was hot and humid.  Given that the Maldives are essentially on the equator, we expected this, but it was still noteworthy.  Once we connected with the resort employee who was sent to fetch us, we were whisked on to a luxurious and air conditioned boat and sped to the island that housed Kurumba.  As with most resorts and hotels in the Maldives, the island consisted only of our resort, a neat feature.  We were quickly and efficiently checked in, and shown to our room, which was right on the beach and looked out onto the ocean.
Room with a view

It didn’t take us long to get settled.  While I quickly tried to find the sand toys and bathing suits, the lils and Willy ran the fifteen feet to the water’s edge and started playing in the sand.  They inched closer and closer to the water until both lils were happily swimming, in their clothes.  We eventually got them into bathing suits and later dragged then away from the water to find food.  We walked the perimeter of the island to find the restaurant, and watched the lils inch closer and closer to the water until they were wet again.  It was a scene that was happily repeated throughout the week.
Walk the beach

That evening we headed to the beach bar on the eastern side of the island.  We had heard from friends that the patio was a great place to look for aquatic life, and had heard from the resort that they would be hosting happy hour for the guests!  On our walk around the island, the waters were calm and we were pleasantly surprised to find that the area within the breakwall and natural reef was teeming with fish and other creatures.  Our favourites were the numerous hermit crabs that skillfully* dodged little and big feet on the beach.  We sat outside on the deck at the bar, and marvelled at the fish, rays, crabs, squid, seahorse, and baby SHARKS that kept passing by.
Crabby

I spy

Three lil reef sharks

Our days followed a lazy pattern of early morning “shark walks”, lavish meals at the buffet, snorkelling in the patch of ocean that was right in front of our door (the snorkelling was really amazing, the reef is really well developed), more eating, some margaritas or other appropriate drinks, a visit to the “kid’s club”, more eating and switching to wine, and finished off with pouring the lils into bed (and occasionally falling asleep with them).  I was also lucky enough to get in five dives, which absolutely thrilled me.

While this may sound like it could have been any other all-inclusive vacation that we have been on, it was so much better.  The staff was bend-over-backwards friendly to us and the lils.  Everyone that we met, including the great staff working at the dive centre, went out of their way to ensure that we were all enjoying ourselves.  The food was great for the carnivores and seafood lovers in the family, and the chefs in particular were responsive to Woo’s allergy needs.  The rooms were clean and spacious, had nice linens, and were really well maintained for a resort that is around thirty years old!  We all loved the bathroom, with a great big soaker tub and a fabulous outdoor rain shower. A nice side effect is that has convinced the lils that showers are not so bad after all.

One of the best memories that we will all take from the trip was the sunset cruise on Wednesday night.  Billed as a dolphin and sunset cruise, I had no way of knowing just how many spinner dolphins we would see, and how they would perform for us!  There were literally hundreds of dolphins, swimming in the bow wake, dipping and diving all around us, jumping and doing their patented spin in the air as far as we could see.  We were all amazed, and I keep smiling thinking of it.  I just wish I had tried harder to get some better shots of them.  I was too busy looking on in awe!
We have a jumper!

Flock of dolphins

Now I have to convince Willy that we can go back there before we leave India.  I am pretty sure that he wants to go, we just need to know if we will be able to squeeze it in.

*well, all but one skillfully dodged my big feet.  RIP lil fella.*

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6
July

The L word

Today was going smashingly.  The lils and I had just gotten home from a fun playdate and were basking in the glow of full tummies after lunch when I got a text that turned my day upside-down.  It was from a friend of mine who has a little girl Woo’s age.  A little girl that Woo enjoys playing with, who he and Goose get to hang out with at day camp most days.  “You better check your lils”, she said, “My girl and another friend from camp have lice.”

LICE

I have heard enough horror stories to know that it is inevitable that anyone with children will hear this warning at least once per academic year, I just hoped that we would be able to avoid it this year.  It really wasn’t what I wanted to be hearing 36 hours before we leave for vacation.  So I started alternating between Google and random haphazard checks of the lils heads.  I had no idea what I was looking for, so I just kept looking.  They were getting frustrated, and all I noticed was that my lils seem to have a lot of glitter in their hair for two little people whose mom is too mean to supply them with glitter.  I took a deep breath and did some more reading.

Based on my assessment of the lils craniums, it was unlikely that they had nits.  Knowing that we were going away, I did not want to take any chances, so I headed to the drug store for the special shampoo, even though I knew it only killed active nits. I spent the rest of the afternoon laundering everything that has touched their heads recently, including all of the 8 million blankets that they each keep on their beds; every lovey that they could conceive to take on vacation; both of their special pillows, neither of which have a removable cover; and every hat that we own, given that they each tried on every one of them yesterday as part of a vacation packing fashion show. All of this had to be washed in hot water, and then in the dryer for at least 15 minutes.  Our washer and dryer is a combo unit, so this took forever.  While I was doing all this I was also giving their hair the special wash and comb through.  Woo was easy enough, but Goose took forever. Her hair is at her waist now, and as white as the nits and eggs that I was looking for. When I finished all this, I realised that I had to call the friends where we played this am, but at least I was able to report that we found nothing, so hopefully exposure risk was low.

Now I sit having a glass of wine and scratching.  I have been ever since I got the text, and will likely continue to do so until I know that we are in the clear.  It’s clearly psycho-somatic, as it started the second that I got the text, and Willy reported similar symptoms. I hope we don’t have to do this again for a long time.

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3
July

Clumsy

We came to India with the bare essentials; clothes, blankys and other loveys, a few books, and a not enough toys. We had a small shipment that included things that we thought we could not live without for a year, but it was due weeks after we arrived. Our house was available two days after we arrived, so I shopped for things like sheets, towels, pots, dishes, and glassware. One think that I noticed was just how much Corelle dishware there was available for purchase. I am not a big fan, so I when out of my way to search out a regular stoneware dish set. It turns out that the abundance of Corelle is likely due to the fact that the majority of houses here have marble flooring that is not forgiving when things are dropped.

We have actually been pretty lucky, and have only broken a couple of the bowls and small plates from all of our dishes. Given the lils propensity to drop things, I think that we are doing ok. I actually thought that while I was unloading the dishwasher after lunch today, although I should have known better. Within about a minute of the thought I dropped one of our wineglasses, which shattered spectacularly. The lils came running, but were content to sit and watch me clean from well outside of the shrapnel zone. They happily pointed out the pieces that I missed while sweeping and chattered on about the dangerous mess that I had made. I was sad to lose a glass that from a set that I liked.

Woo and Goose wandered off and I very carefully went back to unloading the dishwasher. Once it was completed, I noted that Woo had left half his sandwich on the table to be saved for later, so I thought that I should at least put it in the fridge. I quickly grabbed a saucer out of the cupboard. Too quickly. As I frantically tried to catch it as it slipped out of my wet hands, but failed. Seconds after the tell-tale crash, Woo called from upstairs. “Another glass?!” he said derisively.

Broken dishes are clearly exciting, as they both came running and sat in the safe-from-shrapnel zone. As they watched me sweep the kitchen for a second time in five minutes, they began to have a “whispered” conversation about how Mommy broke another dish, and just how clumsy I was. They went on and on and on about the clumsiness, saying things like: “Oh, Mommy is soooo clumsy”, “did you see that clumsy Mommy broke another dish”, and “why do you think Mommy is so clumsy”. I desperately wanted to tell them exactly how not helpful that was and shoo them away. I couldn’t because it likely would have been cute if I wasn’t so ticked at myself, and it because it was true. It began to lose it’s charm when the lils gleefully told our cook, then our guests about how clumsy Mommy is. When Daddy came home they retold the story several times, again focusing on how clumsy I was. They are a treat.

Postscript: As Willy was tidying the kitchen just now, I heard the crash and smash that has become all too familiar in such a short period of time. Third piece TODAY. Funny, no little voices called down to ask who had broken what, or ran to discuss how clumsy he is…

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28
June

The swear jar

This likely isn’t going to come as a surprise to some, but I have a confession to make.  I have a potty mouth.  It’s something that I strive to control, and can pretty effectively hide it when I need to, but once I get started I swear like a trucker.  This only really became a problem after Woo was born and started to echo the things that we said.

When I was on maternity leave there were large chunks of the day where I had two choices, I could talk to Woo, or I could talk to myself.  While I did talk to Woo a tonne, I often wanted a response and could only get that from myself.  The more I talked, the more I realized that I didn’t need a filter.  My days were coloured with many an expletive.  This went on for about six months, until our early talker’s babbles became words and he added new ones every day.  We instituted the swear jar, where everyone had to add a dollar for every curse made in the presence of the lil one and two dollars for any word that Woo repeated (each time it was repeated).*  I added one hundred and twenty dollars to Woo’s piggy bank in the first week. Thankfully I got better, but not before I had added over five hundred dollars.

Part of getting better involved learning new ways to express my agitation/anger/dismay with things.  One of my favourite phrases became “what the heck?!”, which is infinitely better than the alternative.  So much so, that I thought it was darling when Goose started saying it a while back. At first she just echoed my usage, but then branched out and began to use it appropriately, and without prompting.  I was a little proud.

Lately she has started to put her own spin on it.  Always monkeying with the word heck, she has gone through several different pronunciations. First it was HE-ECK, then HI-YUCK, and most recently HUCK.  Goose goes around saying “what the HUCK”.  That is just way to close to a word that I have never said near her, but I can see where this is going. It involves bringing back the swear jar, as I know this will get pinned on me.

Fuck.

 

*This rule as actually (and thankfully) only been invoked once. Shortly before Goose was born Willy was tasked with putting our very nocturnal and hard to get back to sleep boy back to sleep.  It took a long period of cuddling and rocking, when finally Willy put Woo back in bed.  Just as Willy was creeping away, the bed creaked, Woo woke and Willy whispered “oh fuck”.  There was a long and silent pause before a sweet little boy voice repeated (three times) what his dad had said.  I heard this all on the monitor, so when Willy eventually returned to bed, I leaned over and whispered, “That’ll be eight dollars”.*

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22
June

The wrong goodbye

We live in an ex-pat community, so we often see a tonne of people moving in and out.  It isn’t a huge community, but is older* and established, so most of the 300 or so houses are rarely vacant for long and moving trucks ae pretty common sight. Our street is a short and quiet street, with only six houses on it, and has been fully occupied for the last six months.

We were really happy to meet our across the street neighbours and their two children, aged three and five, shortly after we moved in.  It took a few weeks, but the four lils began to play together often.  Whenever one duo heard the other outside, they raced out to join in play, be it road hockey, biking, football, tennis, cricket, or various combinations of those games. They were a good fit, and enjoyed countless hours playing together.  This little group was joined by two little girls in January, who moved beside us.  While they didn’t play together with the lils as often, they always enjoyed their time together, especially when they were passing treasures to each other through the fence.  Both of those families were planning to be in Bangalore for a long time, so we were both happy to know that the friends would be here for the rest of our stay, and sad to know that we would be breaking up these friendships in the fall.

As it goes with ex-pat life, things change.  All of a sudden one family is moving home for a new job, and the other is moving because their assignment was cut short.  Both of these moves happened this week.  The lils knew that they were coming, but that doesn’t make it easy.  Thankfully, the girls next door spent their last morning in India here, and they had a great last play date.  They had fun together, took many pictures, and were ready to say goodbye when the time came.

Our across the street neighbours left without saying goodbye.  The children flew to their grandparents house late Tuesday night, and did not return during the packing.  The house is now empty, and their driver confirmed for us that they are not coming back.  I suspected this might happen when I heard the children leaving after bedtime on Monday, and began to prepare Woo and Goose, yet I am left with the questions. “Why would they leave without saying goodbye”, and “Are you sure that they aren’t going to come back?” are the most common ones.  They are left hanging, and it upsets us all.

I know that things get forgotten, and that you can’t think of everything, but I wish their parents had thought to let us know that they were leaving as the lils stopped playing together on Monday. It was obviously the last chance that they would have to play together, and saying goodbye would have been a natural thing. Instead the lils are left hanging.

*older is really a relative term, given that the community is six years old*

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21
June

What goes around…

Sometimes the nicest things happen when you least expect it. It might shock some to know that beneath my tough and unpolished exterior lies a really soft and mushy heart. I like to do nice things for people, and I especially like to do them when they don’t ask me.

Last fall I finally decided that it was time to clear our spare bedroom of all of the baby things we were storing.  I went through the mountains of clothes and quickly found homes for all of the little boy clothes.  It seemed that several of my friends had little boys that were just the right size for what I had, and they were happy to have them.  The girl clothes were another story.  I had mountains of them, thanks in large part to my friend Heidi who has gifted me with her daughter’s entire wardrobe from birth. The clothes were stinking adorable too.  I really wanted to pass these, plus all the clothes that I had added, on to a new lil girl! Unfortunately, all of the ones I thought of were Goose`s size or bigger, so I was a little stumped.

Then I thought of Amy, someone who I had met once or twice, but had connected with online and through my love of her photography.  She had just given birth to a little girl, and had moved her family back from a year in Bogotá, Columbia. Given that she has three boys at home, I knew that she would be short on girlie clothes, so I dropped her a line and let her know that she was welcome to all that I had if she wanted it!  Want it she did, and the week before we left for India, she arrived at my house and took it all away.

I didn’t think of the clothes again, except when I would see the pictures that Amy would post of cute lil E rockin’ the outfits. It brought a smile to my face each time, to see another happy wee girl getting good use out of the clothes.

Then a few weeks before we came to visit, Amy dropped me a line to express how much she appreciated the clothes, and how much she wanted to shoot our family as a thank you gift. She didn’t want any payment for her time and efforts, or purchases of prints from us, she just wanted to say thank you.  We were flabbergasted, and I was excited, as I admire all of Amy’s work. We giddily agreed, and this is but one of the photos she took, one of my favs!

The rest can be seen on the Muddy Boots Photography facebook page*, but suffice to say that we love them.  Love them. To say that they are a “nice thing” that happened to us when we least expected it really doesn’t do them justice!   It’s nice to know that Amy is also someone who likes to do nice things for people, especially when they don’t ask.

*you can also find Amy’s contact info here… 🙂*

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20
June

Wordless Wednesday – HAL Aerospace Museum

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15
June

Sometimes it forgets

For someone that likes to plan and overprepare everything in life, I sort of fly by the seat of my pants with respect to the tales you see here. I write when inspiration hits, and although I have about a thousand post ideas scattered all over my digital and real life, I rarely know what will be posted on any given day until I sit to write it. The exception to this is Wednesday, when I share pictures, generally from the week that was. Last night I broke with tradition and wrote a cute lil tale about Goose, how she looks up to me, and whether or not I have inspired her career aspirations. Thinking that it would make for a cute Friday tale, I decided not to publish it, and hit “save draft” one more time before going to bed.

I had seven hours a few minutes to myself today, and decided that I should start trying to at least find all of the post ideas and at least throw them into one of the several documents that I have started on the subject (all of them called ideas.doc, of course). I was but a few minutes into this thrilling task when I realized that I had a shiny new post all ready to go, so I should publish it. Two seconds later I was at my dashboard and there was no trace of my cute lil tale. It was completely gone, with no actual proof that it existed. I knew I wrote it, and I knew that WordPress had eaten it, as I have had this happen before, and have vowed to never author content in WP again. The rest of the afternoon was spent berating WP for eating something that I wrote and mental self-flagellation for breaking my only rule.

Today you get pictures that amuse me, because I needed a giggle.

From our trip to Ottawa, I went to Mud Lake with the lils and got to play around with my brand new zoom lens. This was just one of the test shots that I took, focussing on the duck on the rock.

Then I got home and zoomed in:
Is this seat taken?
That turtle is in for a rude awakening!

Tonight, as I prepared the lils for bed, I shut down all the windows (they spray for bugs in the evening – and that is nasty stuff). When I got to Goose`s room and looked down on our neighbour`s back door.

There are a number of stray cats in the neighbourhood, but this one seems to have found a pretty cozy spot. She was OUT.

The punchline to Goosie’s tale? She wants to go to clown school and become a clown when she grows up. You can decide whether or not I influenced that path.

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12
June

They are not even that big!

I spent the better part of Sunday trying to plan our summer vacation.  It started out as a fun exercise, looking at all the pretty pictures of hotels and beaches, picking room types that were outrageously expensive and dreaming a little, then crashing to reality and trying to pick places that were in our budget and met our needs. We had simple needs, or so I thought.  We wanted a trip that involved one flight, restaurants that could understand and deal with our food allergies, and resorts that were family friendly.  There were two basic signs that I looked for in determining if a resort was family friendly; that there was a mention of a “kids club” or play facilities on the website, and that you could actually add children to the room to get a price quote.  That narrowed the field considerably, but I still had a list of 20 or so possible places.

At this point I did what I always do when I am researching something.  I built a spreadsheet.  It listed all of the pertinent details, and might have had pro and con columns.  The research was slow, as almost all of the hotels used the same archaic software to generate their room quotes. Every time I changed one variable (like room type or meal options) it required that I re-enter many of the other variables. I was planning a family vacation that involved a beach, so I pushed through. Then I noticed that I had to keep changing the number of lils in my room from two to one to get a quote.  When I left it at two, I would get one of two errors; either “there are no rooms available that match your search criteria” or “you must book two rooms for your needs”.  It happened so often that I had to keep checking to make sure that I had not messed up and kept looking in the same hotel.

This seemed an odd quirk at first, but when approximately 90% of the family friendly hotels came back with this result, I began to get upset. At first I thought that I might get a better result if I talked to the hotel, but the ones that I reached stuck to the line that the rooms could not accommodate us, so we either upgraded to a larger room, or we got two (sometimes not even adjoining rooms).  I could understand if I was trying to book a room for a group that included older children or adults, but mine are little. They don’t take up a lot of space, they can’t stay on their own, and we are going on a family vacation FFS.  Even if I thought it was a good idea to leave them alone, it would not have gone well.  In reality, we would have either split the family or all slept in one room any way, likely in the same bed!

Perseverance and some great recommendations from friends paid off, and we picked a resort that will allow us all to stay in the same room, without charging a premium.  The others, which included both big chains and small independent hotels, won’t get any of our money, especially not the extra money that they were trying to extort from us! I wonder if they would have been more flexible if we weren’t calling in the low season, and they could have filled those two rooms with two families of four.

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