11
June

Expelled from day camp

We have very limited experience with day camps for the lils, and although the first experience was not entirely positive , I was willing to try again.  A large part of this is that I am at a loss for cool excursions for the lils to do that don’t involve long car rides, that Willy is travelling a bunch this month, and that many of their friends are gone on extended trips for the summer.  While we all love each other, we need to see other people every once in a while!

As luck would have it, there is a series of camps that are running in the community hall in our neighbourhood, so I enrolled both lils this week.  The camps started this morning, and we arrived at the appointed time to be greeted by a room that was not quite ready, and a leader that had not arrived.  She arrived and met each parent, but things had not gotten started when I left twenty minutes later.  I was leery about how things would go, so popped in at lunch time, and it appeared that all was well.

When I picked the lils up, they were happy, but both spoke of a little boy who was bugging them.  They were excited about their day, but there were little things, like Goose’s butterfly was crumpled thrown out by this boy, he threw sand on Woo… I took most of this with a grain of salt, until Woo told me that he was punched a few times, including the face.  Sure enough, he had a lump under his eye and possibly the starts of a shiner.  He said he told the leader and that she told the boy to stop it, but I wasn’t happy… so I went back over to talk to her.

The leader was aware of the problems, and let me know that she had tried to talk to me as I was leaving, but I took the lils out early and intercepted the group as they were returning from the park, so she didn’t have a chance.  She realized that the boy in question, who was only three was a problem; disruptive, hitting, not listening. She was always having to discipline him, so she called his mom and asked that she remove him from the class, so he won’t be back tomorrow.  While I would normally like to see the boy be given a chance to change his behaviour – it is a one week camp so that wasn’t going to happen. So he was asked to leave, and the selfish mama in me is glad that my lils won’t be bothered by him any more.

 

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8
June

Rock’n’roll

I was a child of the eighties, and as such grew up with a pair of roller skates.  They were “the” thing to have, and I was happy to finally get a pair at some point in my teens.  They were hand-me-downs from my sister, which meant that I had to covet them for a year or so before I got them, which made me appreciate them all the more.  They were the classic white boot/red wheel pair, and were well loved by both of us.  They certainly beat the metal wheels that I had been strapping on my sneakers to that point.

As an adult I looked to reintroduce roller skates into my life and failed.  I looked all over, but roller blades were the in thing then, and skates were nowhere to be found.  I reluctantly settled, but soon grew to love the blades.  I would frequently hope on the bike path, near my west end apartment, and head downtown and back.  It was a long ride and a good work out, with no cars to deal with.

My blading was curbed a little when I moved in with Willy.  We were living in the Market area of downtown, and access to the bike paths meant that I had to face my foe, the car.  I was a little bit of an out of control roller blader, and cars meant that the rides were scary, not enjoyable.  Then we moved back to the burbs, had two babies, and I forgot all about my blades.

When Santa brought Woo some blades for Christmas, I felt a bit of regret that I had not given in to the urge to bring my blades to India.  Woo loves his, and our community is perfect for riding around. Then yesterday, these were posted on the community news group: They are just Goose’s size, so we snapped them up for her. They came with a full set of pads, so she was ready to go instantly. The look on her face when she first tried them was priceless, pure joy.  She is so in love with them, even though she can’t actually move on them.  She has mastered standing on her toes, standing on the wheels, falling, and getting herself back up again.  It’s only a matter of time before she is rocking and rolling around. Now I want to get roller skates again.

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6
June

Wordless Wednesday – Last day of school!

(contrast with – http://lilbunnyrabbitz.com/2011/10/19/wordless-wednesday-first-day-of-school/)

 

 

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29
May

Loved every minute of it

We just returned from an insanely busy and absolutely fabulous two week trip to Ottawa.  I was worried when I left that things would be different, and I would not know how we could fit back into our “old” life easily and quickly.  We were only going to be there for two weeks, so we were going to have to hit the ground running to see all the family and friends and hit all of our favourite haunts. I was determined to give it a good try.  Here are a few snippets of our weeks in Ottawa…

Goose and Woo, watching for our plane to arrive at the gate, and hanging out in Frankfurt airport.  The plane left Bangalore at 2:30 AM, and then there was a decently long stopover in Frankfurt.  Give them some planes to watch, a long hallway to roam in, or something to colour and they are happy lil ones!

We managed to hit the Museum of Nature twice, including bright and early on our first morning back!  I decided to renew our membership, even though we were only there for a couple of visits, because we now live more than 100km from the museum, so two visits which included the special “Whales Tohora” exhibit meant that the membership has already paid for itself!  Here Woo and Goose are in the Children’s play area, learning where the different whales can be found all over the world.

We headed to the country, where we were able to visit my cousin and her family at their farm, then my Grandfather, Aunt and Uncle at their farm.  In addition to catching up and eating way too much, Woo got to play some basketball with his older cousins, and I got to check out some of the tulips and all the apple trees that were in full bloom!

We headed to Mud Lake, our secret hideaway in the city, where the lils were most excited to be allowed to run around with no shoes on (we don’t let them go barefoot outside here for a  variety of reasons), and I was most excited to play with my newest lens!!

Woo and I went with Uncle Kentie for his very first golf lesson.  He loved it, though his form needs a smidge of work.  This was followed up by a round of mini-golf that got rained out after eleven holes, much to Woo’s dismay.  He was consoled by some bugs and cheese for lunch, bought by mom, who came in third in the mini-golf.  We brought his new clubs to India, and he looks forward to LOTS of practice in the park.

We convinced our friends (cousin) V and Monkey to play hooky from school for a whole day, and had LOTS of fun, including some very serious park play where no one would look at the camera. I’m just sorry that their mamas could not play hooky from work too!

We visited our best pals at our old day care three times!  The lils loved hanging with the super awesome N (and even asked if they could just go back to daycare), and fell right back in with their pals.  They even re-affirmed their plans to marry one another!!

The second weekend of our visit was the May 2-4 long weekend, and was bright, sunny, and unseasonably warm for May in Ottawa (the temps broke 30C several days in a row). It was the perfect weather to attend opening weekend of the Ottawa Fat Cats, our semi-pro baseball team. I convinced my sister and friend Rebecca to come out, and we all had a great time.  I am still laughing at Rebecca, who innocently asked if I thought it might be too hot to go to an afternoon baseball game… we do live in India after all J. She wisely sat in the shade, while we enjoyed the hot sun for most of the game.

On holiday Monday we hosted an open house barbecue, which was really fun for me, as I do love to throw a party, and we don’t do a lot of entertaining here.  Throughout the afternoon we saw many friends, family and neighbours, and loved the way it felt to have them all close to us.

We enjoyed many visits by friends and our families, and were able to get out many evenings to hangout out (ok, and have a cocktail or two) with them.  Coming back to India has not been hard on the lils at all.  Despite their claims early in the trip to Ottawa, they did miss their friends and life in India. While I did too, it has been an adjustment trying to get back to the calm and quiet that is our life here.

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28
May

The treehouse

Our Goose was born to be a jumper.  As a baby, she loved the jolly jumper, would bounce up and down in the exersaucer all day long, and hopped long before she could walk.  We thought our bouncy little girl was pretty cute, until we noticed some slightly unpleasant side effects. Little things like her habit of jumping full bore on to us when we were most vulnerable, like when we were sleeping, or when our most sensitive bits were left unprotected from sharp little elbows and knees.  We tried to teach her to restrain herself, but she was rarely successful.

As Goose got older, we began to notice that her jumping behaviour got more and more daring.  She started just launching herself from the top of the stairs without caring if you were ready to catch her or even facing her, which often meant a high speed piggy back landing.  She also became even more daring around water.  She LOVES to leap into the water, and seldom waits until the catcher is ready for her. She has also been known to launch herself off the dock at the cottage, causing parental scrambles on more than one occasion. Now that we are in the pool most days, her leaps mean that I get a face full of Goose, or that I have to pull a sputtering girl’s head above water.  I am fairly certain that this is the leading cause of my latest crop of gray hair.

This past week she took her leaps to a whole new level.  A level up, as it were.

We stopped by Woo’s best friend’s house at the end of our last full day in Ottawa.  It was meant to give the boys one last short playtime and say our final goodbyes.  We headed into the backyard, as C was anxious to show us the family’s latest project, the tree house.  The boys clamoured up the ladder and hung out on the platform for a few minutes, until Goose asked for demanded her turn.  They came down and she headed up the ladder with a little help from mom.  Pleased as punch, she danced and played for a few minutes, then asked to come down.

She was afraid to turn and go down the ladder, so I reached up to help her down.  As I opened my mouth to say “don’t jump”, she jumped. She jumped from a platform that was roughly six and a half feet off the ground; launched herself straight at me.  I was in no way ready for her, but somehow caught her.  I caught her and then stumbled backwards, over a pot full of dirt and we went down. We hit our knees, then elbows, then finally poor Goosie’s head on the pavement.

Goose started screaming, I started triaging, and our poor friends were in shock.  We got some ice on her, and I did a quick assessment to see that she was OK*.  Her head barely touched the ground, and after twenty minutes, I felt confident enough to bring her home for further monitoring.  She scared a few years off of my life, but suffered no ill effects.  It seems that I actually bore the brunt of the damage, ending up with a number of gaping wound, bruises, and the scar of another fall that ended in a knock to the head.  I think we have had just about enough of those.

*In their short lives, the lils have had more than their share of head injuries, enough that I no longer have to look at the checklist that the lochildren’s hospital gave to us on our first visit for a head injury (http://lilbunnyrabbitz.com/2011/07/21/haunted/). The list is memorized.

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15
May

I don’t wanna

I  had this nagging little fear when we booked our trip home, a fear that it would disrupt the happy balance that we had finally achieved with the lils in India.  It took them a long time to settle in, much longer than I thought it would at the outset, so it took Willy and me a long time to settle in. Mostly, they were homesick and resistant to so much that was new to them.

This has changed in the last two months or so, and we both feel that they are really happy.  I no longer have Woo telling me, daily, that he wants to go home, nor do I have Goose declaring that she doesn’t like this or that, or pretty much everything new that we find in India. It’s been really nice.  Then we came home for a visit.

Things have been so simple for the lils here.  They’ll see their extended family and all of their friends.  There have been long visits and extended play dates, with more to come.  We are doing all of their favourite things, because it makes us all happy.  They just picked up where they left off.  They are content to play independently, given much more freedom, and they don’t fight.  Not with each other, and not with their friends.  We are four days into the visit and they are loving it.

They are loving it, until we talk about going back ‘home’ to India.  “I don’t like India”, says Goose.  “I’ll just stay here until you move back from India”, says Woo.  It’s tough to hear.  We know they are happy in India, but they are much happier here.    I worry that we reset, and start from scratch when we return, but we’re better equipped to work through it.

I hope I am wrong about this.  Today is dentist day.  Maybe that will convince them that India is not so bad after all?!

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14
May

Best in class

 

Allow me a moment to indulge in some shameless bragging about my lils.  Yes, I know that every parent knows that their child is the best and that is how it should be, but in this case, I have independent verification of the lils status. They are simply fabulous. 

When Willy first started talking about going to Las Vegas at the end of April, we both realized that it was really close to our trip to Canada.  So close that it would have meant he would have flown home to India and essentially  hopped back on a plane two days later to return to North America.  It would have been painful, and I could not ask him to try.  I told him to go to the conference in Vegas, then hang around, work where work wanted him, and meet us at home when we got there.  I told him this even though I knew it meant I would be home alone with the lils for two weeks, and that I would have to fly home alone with them when we returned to Canada.

As luck would have it, Goose came down with a cold the day that Willy left. This surprised me in no way, as the lils ALWAYS get sick when Willy goes away.  When Woo started sniffling two days later, I was somewhat relieved, thinking they were getting it over with long before our flights.  The sniffles persisted, and got slightly worse each day.  Then two nights before we were due to leave Woo casually mentioned that he could not hear. 

We headed off to the doctor, and were given Benadryl to help clear his congestion.  When he still could not hear the morning of our flight, we headed back to the doc and learned that he had an ear infection.  To this point I had been mildly worried about the almost thirty hour trip we were about to embark on, but this news ramped it up to plain scared.  Two sick lils, one with an ear infection?  I expected the worst. 

The opposite happened.  My best case scenario of having them maybe sleep on one of the flights, possibly fight just a little bit, and only have to repeat things two or three times completely underestimated how good they were.  They listened, they had fun, slept a lot, got along perfectly and were really quiet.  We had two minor meltdowns, one when Goose’s juice cup exploded all over her jammies and the other when Woo was being forced by the crowds down the ramp to customs in Ottawa.  

I was pretty convinced that they were great at this point, but was a little tickled by the number of people who came up to us following both flights and complimented the lils on how well behaved they were.  There was a steady stream of kudos coming from other passengers, and I got a wee bit prouder with each one!  While I don’t ever plan on making such a long trip with them solo, I’d gladly do it after this experience!!  

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9
May

Wordless Wednesday – excited and homeward bound

 

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7
May

Rules of engagement

We started when they were itty bitty. There were rules about when they went to the doctor, when they are supposed to sleep, when to wake them to feed them, how much to feed, what to feed them. We quickly tossed a bunch of those “rules” (hello, my doc told us to wake Woo to feed him every three hours! He was already gaining a pound a week, he was good). Out went the old, and we started a few of our own. Most of them were arbitrary and told in jest to infants that could not understand them.

As both lils got older, they did start to ask about things that are governed by rules; when you can drink, when can drive, when you are allowed to vote. We gave them the correct ages for all of these, and started making up a few of our own. Rules about how old you must be to ride your bike down the slide (eight), which is the highest stair that you can jump off of (the third), and when you can become a vegetarian (twelve). Lots of these values change to suit the situation that they arise from, and the lils like to review them regularly.

Moving to India has meant that there were a large number of new rules thrust upon the lils. They have adopted many of them, but still fight and question a few. We knew it was only a matter of time before the started coming up with their own rules. Surprisingly, it was Goose that came out with a rule for us all.

Each bedroom in our house has its own attached bath, and the lils love to use any toilet other their own when they need to go. This often means that they use each other’s. A few weeks ago Goose reached her breaking point and adamantly decreed that anyone who used her bathroom had to sit down. She was apparently tired of her brother messing up her toilet, and had figured out that this was the only solution. It’s worked too. Woo follows the rule, she is happy and we have peace again when it comes to the toilet. Well, we did have peace. Tonight Woo instituted his own rule… Everyone who uses his toilet has to stand when they pee.

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1
May

Curiosity and that cat

If there is a phrase that I have said at least once a day, every day since we have been here, it is “Don’t drink the water”.  The tap water here is suspect at best, so we rely on a reverse osmosis purification system to ensure that there is safe water in the house.  It does a great job when the power fluctuations don’t kill this part or the other, but there is only one tap in the house, so you have to get your drinking water from the kitchen.  It’s been an adjustment from me, so I expect that it is for the lils too. We stay on top of it, and have been healthy and hydrated for the most part.

Over the last two weeks or so, I have noticed that Goose has been going out of her way to drink the water.  Well, any water that she shouldn’t be drinking, that is. She drinks in the pool when we are swimming; she sucks it from her facecloth as I wash her face; she drinks it in the tub when the lils are bathing; she even sucks it out of her hair when it is wet. She is well hydrated, and often has water or juice close by when she is drinking the wrong liquid. It’s beginning to drive me a little crazy.

Things came to a head on Saturday, when she was constantly trying to drink the pool water, despite my removing her from the pool as punishment on several occasions.  She continued that evening in the tub, until finally I gave her one final warning. When she drank again, I ended the tub fun and told her that she could not watch the drawing game, as has become our nightly ritual.  The tears, promises and begging were epic, but I stuck to my ground and she went to bed with cuddles and a story, but missed out on the fun.

As we were lying in bed, I once again explained to her that drinking the water could make her very sick, especially since she is a little girl.  I asked if she knew that it would give her an upset tummy, and what some of the consequences were. She said yes, so I asked why then.  “I wanted to see if it would happen” she answered. I am so glad that we have raised our little girl to be curious, but she needs to know that the cat that this curiosity might kill is me.

 

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