We are lucky to have pretty happy go lucky lil people.  They are rarely in bad moods, and when those moods do happen, they rarely last for long.  All it generally takes is some silliness, some food, or some silly food and we can reset.  My grumpy funks are rarely cured so easily.

This past weekend, Woo woke up in an ornery mood. He didn’t want to do anything, despite the fun adventures that we were proposing for the day.  We tried to work with him, but in the end decided to head to Bate Island.  It’s a family favourite, especially if there are kayakers, paddle boarders and other crazy water enthusiast riding the standing waves on the north side of the island.  Woo was adamant that he was not going to get out of the car, so we told him that was fine.  If there is any place where we can easily watch him and still enjoy our time it’s there.

We arrived and noted that there were people in the waves, but parked on the far side of the island and Willy, Goose, and I left Woo to walk around the island.  As I suspected, Woo was watching, and ran across to join us as we approached the queue to ride the waves.  We all watched for a while, but then Woo decided he wanted to go back to the car, so Willy handed him the keys and he ran off.

He returned a few minutes later, and Willy asked where the keys were.  Woo gave that patented seven-year-old shrug, and offered up an “in the car?” as a response.  He and Willy set off searching, and as they walked away, I heard Willy ask if he’d locked the car. I had my answer when I saw that Willy was standing beside the car, on the phone.

Woo had locked the keys in the car. On Easter Sunday. Thankfully, Willy was able to get a cab to come get him, and was back with the keys in no time at all. It likely wasn’t the cheapest way to solve the problem, but given that we were stuck on an island in the middle of the Ottawa River with the Lils on a chilly mid-April day, it was the right solution.

Despite the setback, all of us were in a good mood by the time the car was unlocked, and the rest of the day went off without a hitch, until we went for a bike ride after dinner.  Generally the lils go for a meandering ride through the neighbourhood, while Willy and I walk behind.  It gives them some independence, as they race up and down the streets, and loop around some blocks without us, and lets us have some adult conversation.

All was going well on this particular walk until Woo wobbled as he passed a parked car.  I thought that he had just bumped the car with his elbow, but we noted a big scratch on the side of the car as we walked up to it, then confirmed with Woo that his handle bar, the one with the exposed metal on the end of the hand grip had scraped along the car.  Willy rang the doorbell and we all apologized to the owners, then gave them our contact information so that they could send us the bill for what was likely to be a costly repair. That brush that had looked so innocent had left a deep scratch on a relatively new car.

As we slowly made our way home, we commiserated to ourselves about what had become a very expensive weekend, and spent some time talking over what had happened with the lils, stressing that they needed to be careful of all things on the roads when they are biking.  They listened and responded appropriately. It’s a conversation that we have had before, but we felt that they now had a concrete example to reflect on.

As we got close to home, Woo approached another parked car on the road. “Dad, do you wanna see what happened when I went crazy?” he asked. “No!” shouted Willy as he stood between Woo and the car, “I can’t afford a Volvo!!”

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I write down my random thoughts here mostly for me, for our family. I want to have a record of our lives for when I’m old and my memory is shot, but it is also an outlet for me to share my thoughts and feelings, and my pictures. that being said, I do love and appreciate that others read what I write, so I was super tickled when I was approached by BlogHer this week, to syndicate my post on Woo’s recent bout with Croup, and how I still check to see that my Lils are breathing every night before I sleep!! The post can be found on the BlogHer family site at http://www.blogher.com/breathe-breathe-out-1. Go check it out!!

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When I was a teenager, I babysat for a family who lost their youngest child to SIDS. I didn’t know anything about SIDS, but knew that this family had put their healthy infant son to bed one night and he never woke up.  It was terribly hard on the family, their lives altered and filled with grief in an instant. As their regular babysitter, it affected me too.  I became hyper-vigilant for a long time after, afraid that any of the young children who I babysat would suddenly stop breathing in their sleep.

In time, the memory of that little boy faded, and my schooling and career took me away from regularly caring for small children.  Then I had children of my own, and that old fear came back in an instant. As an adult, I knew more about SIDS and what puts a child at risk, but I also had croupy babies, and one child with asthma.  So I worried.

When they were really wee, I got in the habit of checking on them several times while they slept, just to watch them breathe. It didn’t matter if they were napping, or down for the night, I’d invent reasons to go by their rooms and just watch and listen. I never actually thought that they wouldn’t be breathing, I just needed to check.  I still do it, at least once a night, even though they are five and six years old.

This past Thursday night Woo had his first bout with croup in over a year.  It was a bad one, and it caught us by surprise. We`ve all enjoyed a winter of relative health, and save for an adjustment to new asthma meds, Woo`s breathing issues have been a non-issue.  Little people are supposed to outgrow croup, yet here he was, lying in bed complaining of the tightness in his throat and sounding like Darth Vader.

Past experience has taught us that sounding like Darth Vader is the point at which you go to the hospital.  Well, past experience and that time that the nurse from Tele-health called an ambulance to our house… On Thursday though, we had given him Advil to help with the swelling, and while we discussed going to the hospital, his breathing started to get better. I decided to lie in his bed with him, to comfort him when he coughed.  I was with him when his breathing got worse again a few hours later, and then when he came home from the hospital, untreated after a three hour wait.

Something in the time that he left the house had made the croup better, either his wakefulness, enough cold air, or a different humidity in the hospital.  He didn`t meet the threshold for the steroids, so he and Willy came home and his crappy, coughing, wheezing, Darth Vader-like breathing returned for a few more hours in the night.  I lay beside him and listened to every breath, willing it to get better, consoling and rubbing his chest when he was worse. As I lay there, I thought about the number of times that I have wondered at what point I will stop my routine checks to see if they are breathing, but now I know.

Not yet.

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One of the many reasons that Willy and I grew to love our community after we bought the house was the fact that the elementary school was within walking distance. The walk is a little over a kilometre, so the lils are technically eligible to ride the bus for the first few years, but we wanted to walk.  So we walk. The walks haven’t always been fast or easy, and on more than one occasion I have walked or biked home with a teary lil person, upset that it wasn’t cold enough or yucky enough for me to have brought the car. For the most part, however, the walks have been great.   I love that we can talk about anything and everything, and that it is just the three of us, or as been happening more and more lately, just the two of them lost in conversation with each other.

The majority of our route is on a busy street, so I am thankful for the sidewalk that is set well back from the street.  As much as I feel safe on the walk, there are times when I get frustrated by some of the people who we encounter.  The teens and adults who don’t realize that they need to share the sidewalk, and walk single file as we pass them, so we end up in the snowbank; the cars that think it’s OK to park on the sidewalk every day, forcing us to squeeze around the back of their car through the exhaust or walk on the busy street to get around them; the people who don’t reign in their big dogs, allowing their behaviour to fuel my lils fear of big dogs…

I take a deep breath and try to explain to the lils that others just might not be aware that they are being rude, inconsiderate, or that big dogs jumping on lil people can be scary.  Instead we focus on the good people, the friendly neighbours, the daycare “families” that are bursting with energy, the family at the street who we look forward to greeting every morning – even though we don’t know their names, classmates that we walk with when we time it right, and our always smiling crossing guard.  Each of these are important parts of our walk.

Lately I have been troubled by the cars that are leaving the ‘hood in the morning.  We cross seven streets in the course of our walk, and most days at least one car comes out from those side streets and turns right onto the busy street. They do it without looking, ignore the stop signs, and are oblivious to the fact that we are waiting to cross.  We have the right of way, but they take it, never seeing us waiting at the corner.  The lils know that they can’t safely cross these streets without me, so even if Woo arrives before Goose and I, he waits.

Woo is always seeking a little bit of independence on the way home. Goose is slow and tired at the end of the day, so he likes to scoot ahead.  Most days I make him wait for us at each street, but I see this as a safe way to teach him to cross safely, so today I let him go farther. He was allowed to go one block ahead, provided that he was careful and obvious in looking all around before crossing one intersection.  He did it flawlessly several times. I was close behind, watching and feeling that he was doing well.

At about the third intersection, a car pulled up as he landed on the corner. Both stopped, and Woo waited.  The driver waved him on, so Woo checked one more time and crossed.  I guess he was walking too slowly, or the driver forgot that there was a small child crossing in front of him, but just as Woo got in front of his car, he started rolling forward. Woo noticed and jumped out of the way, and jumped out of the way, so the car just kept on driving.

I ran up to Woo, who was predictably full of questions.  He was curious about why a driver would be so unsafe, but not terribly upset, or frightened.  I was, and still am both. I can’t wrap my head around why he thought this was OK.  He chose to let Woo go, then apparently changed his mind and decided to roll his very large vehicle towards my son. Woo wasn’t close to the edge of the cross walk, he was right in front of the car!  I wish that I had been closer, but I am not sure that I could have been able to do anything differently.  Thankfully nothing happened to him, but I’ll be keeping him a little closer for the next little while. I need to reassure myself that the rest of the driver’s will watch out for a little boy, learning to cross the road on his own.

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I like the fact that the lils believe in Santa Claus, and his ability to magically deliver presents to children all over the world.  I know that we are essentially lying to them when we talk about him, but they are small and the Santa/Christmas myth doesn’t just have to be about commercialism and greed. I try not to lie directly, and ask them how they think it works when they ask specific questions.  They come up with some pretty awesome answers, and mostly convince themselves that parts of the story are plausible.

That being said, I’ve suspected that Woo has been convincing himself that Santa exists for the last couple of years, but he tries really hard to believe.  This year, I started to have my doubts about Goose.  The first clue was at the Santa Claus parade.  It was a magical snowy day, and the lils were having fun donating coins and getting free candy canes, but there were not terribly interested in when Santa would appear.  He wasn’t really a big part of the experience for them.  Then just before his sleigh appeared,  we saw this guy:

“Hey!” said Goose, “There is Rudolph, or a guy in a Rudolph costume, actually.” No magic there.

Then a few weeks later, Goose came home and reported that Mr. Coombs had given their class candy canes at school that day.  I remarked that that was nice, and thought nothing of it until I picked her up the next day, and the JK teacher asked if Goose has told me about Santa’s visit.  I was surprised, as she had said nothing.  The teacher laughed and told me that could be because her reaction when Santa walked in was to very loudly ask “What is Mr. Coombs doing in a Santa suit?!”

Then we went away for Christmas, and they got into the spirit; watching the chimney from the skylight in their room, prepping the Santa snacks and sprinkling reindeer food on the snow, and tracking Santa on NORAD’s website.  It appeared that the magic was saved for one more year, until today, when they found the bag that I had stashed all the packaging from the gifts that went in their stockings, which had inadvertently been packed and brought home from Toronto.  They looked through it, and it was clearly evident that this trash related to the gifts that “Santa” left in their stockings, yet no questions were asked.  Is it possible that we are now the ones being fooled??

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