I have never been the type of parent who lamented the fact that my children were growing and changing. I was never sad to see them move into the next size of clothing, didn’t wish that they would stay dependent for a little bit longer, and was actually quite relieved when they started walking. Each stage was great while it happened, (except maybe teething and the “I don’t need to nap” stages, I could not wait to move past them) but the end just meant that a new adventure was beginning, and I’ve loved each one.

This has changed recently. All of a sudden I am aware that time is passing at an alarming rate, and in five short months, Woo will be starting school and everything will change. We won’t have our days together with Goose, he won’t have his most awesome daycare provider three days a week, we won’t be able to go on so many adventures, and he’ll be separated from us… This makes me a little sad. There is nothing I want more than to make time stand still now, so that we can live every second together to the fullest. As much as I am excited about this school thing that he will be doing, I wish it wasn’t so soon.

The neat thing is, in trying to hold on to this time, I find that we are doing all sorts of fun things together that I am not sure we would have if before. Goose, Woo and I are more relaxed, do more together and have a tonne of laughs and good times. It’s easy to think that you can do something or play somewhere another day when those days are limitless. For the first time in either of their lives, there is a hard date when something is going to change. That has put a little bit of pressure on us, on me. The results have been great for us.  Maybe there is something to be said for holding on.

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There are few things that Willy and I consistently have disagreements over.  One of these things is the dishwasher.  The fights are generally not over the same thing, but you can bet that there is always something we are disagreeing over.  The squabbles usually centre around what can and can’t be put in the machine, where to but things so they actually get clean, and how you need to rinse for the super efficient cycle, unless you are running it right away… We have each won our share of these little disagreements, and there is always a clearly established best way in the end.

The latest is the wine glasses.  We have some of the stemless Riedel glasses, and for the most part, love them.  They aren’t tippy, they don’t have pesky stems to snap, and the wine doesn’t actually get warmer faster from being held in your hand.  This last fact might be because the wine is never in the glass for long…  They are also dishwasher friendly, which means that we don’t have several wineglasses precariously balanced in the drying rack most days.

I recently started noticing that the glasses weren’t coming clean and mentioned it to Willy. He started to move them around in the machine, but they never got clean.  We “talked” and decided they just weren’t coming clean in the dishwasher, and Willy agreed that the best way was to hand wash them, yet the next morning they were in the machine.  So we “talked” again and reached the same conclusion.  The next morning one had been hand washed, and one was in the dishwasher.  More talking and more agreement that they needed to be hand washed.

This morning I found the same dirty wine glass in the dishwasher. Maybe I need to start cursing about this!

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“Just go work out, you’ll have more energy and feel better.  Trust me”

If I had a nickel for every time that Willy told me that…  He says it if I am down or stressed and always when I am just feeling like a lump.  My usual response it to curse at him and go on with what I am doing, claiming that I am just fine, thank you very much. Here’s the thing.  He’s right.

I have recently made a bunch of changes to improve my overall health.  I shut down at 11:00pm now (most nights), and curl up with a book until I fall asleep.  I am eating better, and tracking what I eat in an effort to achieve a healthier weight and more balanced diet.   My hours were cut at work, in an effort to save my agency some money, but added benefit is that it gives me more me time, and more family time.  I also resigned from a volunteer position that I have held for the last three years for the same personal reasons.

The biggest difference, however, is that I have fallen in love with my elliptical again.  Willy is right, I feel better when I exercise. Like race home from work so I can fit a work out in before I make dinner, skip lounging around the house or having a soak in the tub so I can work out good.  It’s crazy how quickly you can fall back into a routine, and need to keep up with it.  I see this as the start of some good balance in my life.  Even if it means admitting when I am wrong.  Even if it means admitting that I am wrong.

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My 365 has been chugging along very slowly of late. I still take daily of pictures, but I am missing something.   I thought it was the early nights, and cold weather, but it would appear that is not the case. Days are getting warmer, time has changed, and I still don’t take pictures that I am happy with, and that gets me down.

It used to be that I would sit at the computer every couple of days and try to narrow down the picture that I would use for each day.  It wasn’t an easy task, and I often called upon Willy to help me decide on “the one” for each day. I don’t remember the last time that happened.  It seems that I now look at the pictures again and again, to try to decide if any of them are for posting, or forcing one to be worthy.

I’ve tried to ignore my camera, but I truly love to take pictures, so that is not working.  Staging shots hasn’t been working, neither have my tried and true tips that I save for inspiration.  Looking at the work of other photographers that I love just discourages me a little bit more, so I don’t linger on their stuff these days.  In the end I keep going and won’t give up, but I need to figure out how to get back on track.  This shouldn’t be a chore.

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I am a list maker, always have been. If I don’t write a thought down on a piece of paper, the thought flies away never to be found. For years I have kept a list book, a spiral bound book that has all my lists in it. There are reno ideas, books to read, appointments, recipes to try, gifts to buy, things I want to buy or receive, and places to go. There are also several to-do lists in it, sorted by project, or date, or work involved in the task. It’s always been my space to braindump, and I have relied on it to keep me on track.

In the last year or so I’ve noticed that I am not as “on top” of things as I once was. I stopped using the list book, and started to try and track my lists electronically, on either my laptop or iPhone. It’s been a failure, as things weren’t getting entered into the appropriate list or calendar, or there was never one program or app that answered my varied needs. Recently I’ve started to really lose track of things, and last week was the final straw.

I got an email from on of our teenaged babysitters, confirming that she was available to babysit the following Wednesday. It was clearly in response to a request that I had made, but I had no idea why we booked her, and neither did Willy. This distressed me greatly, and it took a couple of days and an extensive sort through my emails for it to come back to me. I was lost and knew it was time to reinstitute the list book. I am much happier now, pen to paper, populating it with all sorts of little lists. The first one in the book is the list of lists, of course.

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We did some renovations to our foundation last fall, and as a result a mouse moved in. I am not sure how long it was in the house before I noticed it, as our cat likely kept it living on the fringes and there were no “traces”. I first noticed it when I went to take out the Christmas decor, and found that it had stripped the decorative/dried cobs of corn that were stored in the furnace room. It left behind the empty cobs, the wax that had coated the kernel and plenty of traces. I hunted all around the furnace room, left the door open for the cat to take care of it, and watched for signs that it had moved into other parts of the
house and found nothing. I assumed we were good.

A couple of weeks later I went into the cupboard in my kitchen island and there they
were. Traces. This made me freak out a little, as it had clearly moved into our part of the
house, and I sent Willy to the store to get some traps. We He installed them after the lils went to sleep that night, and within 30 minutes I heard the telltale snap! and the problem was solved. Willy tidied up and we had our house back.

A few weeks ago I went down to the basement and noticed that there was a little pile of flour sitting outside my emergency bag of flour. Thinking that one of the lils had accidentally ripped a hole in it, I leaned down to have a look. Then I saw them. Traces. They definitely weren’t from the lils, but I wasn’t sure if they had been recently left by a mouse, so I started to hunt again. A day or two later it was clear that we had a new mouse when the traces appeared in the same cupboard. It is the one that our stove top vent goes down, where there is theoretically access from the basement. The mouse didn’t seem to go past that cupboard, but it didn’t matter. This one was in our space too.

The next day I left for my weekend away with my girlfriends. Before leaving I wrote a note for Willy with meal ideas, the phone number where I would be, and one instruction; “KILL THE MOUSE“. I was disappointed when I got home and it was still around, so I asked or hinted about it daily. As of lunch today the trap had not been set and the mouse was not dead.

Getting more than a little uncomfortable with our uninvited guest, I suggested to Willy that I knew where the mouse might be residing, and that that might be a good place to put the trap. He didn’t really react, and didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything about it. He even accused me of not having clearly stated my wish to have the mouse terminated. Apparently the note I left and the daily “hints” were not enough, as, according to him, I had not sworn about it yet.

I leaned in and whispered in his ear, “kill the fucking mouse”. Trap is set.

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I frequently get asked how it is possible that I can safely cook with some very hands on help from Woo and Goose.  To answer that, I have a post up a Kids in the Capital, where I talk about the some of my safety tips!

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Before I left for the weekend, Willy and I talked about some of the things that he and the lils could do while I was away.  He had a bunch of good ideas, but knowing that he and Woo would be alone on Sunday morning while Goose was with my mom, I suggested that they go skiing.  Willy’s eyes lit up.  He comes from a family of skiers who spent their winters skiing at Owl’s Head, or watching his little brother ski competitively when he was in his teens.  He has since moved to snowboarding, but has been dreaming of taking our lils skiing since before they were born.

Woo, on the other hand was lukewarm to the idea.  It had been suggested to him several times over the winter, and he said no each time.  I am pretty sure the selling feature was that his cousin V, who has been skiing all winter, was going to be invited. Who cares what you are doing when you get to spend time with your cousin, right?

As the plans started to take shape, Woo’s excitement grew.  He was pretty much bouncing off the walls when he went over to V’s to try on equipment Saturday night, and quiet and focussed on the way up to the hill.   He did really well, with a few runs on the bunny hill, followed by two trips up the chair lift and down the BIG hill.  He even got to do some solo skiing, where he wasn’t holding dad’s poles.  By the end of it all he was hooked, and is already talking about the next trip with his dad, possibly even this weekend.

I look forward to many a trip to the ski hill in our future, and anticipate that Goose will want to go now that her brother does.  I’ll take lots of pictures, and then head to the chalet and curl up by the fire to wait for them with my coffee and Bailey’s hot chocolate!  I am so not a skier.

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Woo started reading about four months ago, and he continues to amaze me with the things that he can spell and read.  The reading has also made me aware that I need to be more careful about the things that I leave lying around the house, especially given my work, and that we should be more attentive to the language in the stories that we let him read.  It’s not that we let him read dirty limericks, just that there are a shocking number of children’s books that have grammatical errors in them.  I correct them when reading aloud, but as he learns, he won’t recognize the errors on his own.

Today he showed me that this reading thing is going to keep me on my toes in other ways. We were at Kid Kaf, a local coffee shop that has a large play area for young children in the back.  We’ve been a few times with friends, and the place is usually crazy busy. When we arrived this AM it was empty.  This gave Woo a chance to look around and fully take in his surroundings.

“Does that sign say only kids under five are allowed?” he asked.

I confirmed and we went in and started playing.  He was focused on the sign it seems, as he kept returning to me to ask clarifying questions.  We finally got to the crux of the matter when he asked how old my friend’s daughter is.  She turned six in February, but was five when she joined us there over the Christmas holidays. Woo confirmed this fact and then giving me a knowing look, asked why she was allowed in the play area.  Oops.

It seems that this is not the only rule infraction that I have been a part of at Kid Kaf.  I have always been able to score the comfy chairs in the corner, far away from where all the other chairs and tables are.  I’ve often wondered why these are available all the time, so, as I sipped my coffee and watched my lils eat their fruit plate, I mentioned this to the friend that I was sitting with today.

Her response cleared it all up for me.  “Well, technically you aren’t allowed food in this area,” she said.

There are signs in several areas that clearly state it.  Double oops.

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When Willy goes away the lils miss him terribly.  They are cranky, act out, and ask after him frequently.  He doesn’t travel as much as he used to, but it is often enough that they are somewhat used to it and know they don’t like it.  He is rarely gone for more than a week, but when he comes home he is lavished with attention and affection.  It’s very sweet.

This past weekend, I went away for a short trip with some girlfriends.  I was gone for less than two full days, and while I had fun, I did miss everyone at home.  When I arrived the house was pretty quiet, but I was fairly confident that they were lurking somewhere inside, so I called my “hello”s as I brought my stuff in. I was met with crickets.

Willy appeared as I was bringing in the last of the stuff, and explained that the lils were in the basement. I put away the perishables and quickly caught up on the weekend. When no lil peeps appeared, I went searching. I found them in the office, and leaned in to give them each a kiss. Woo turned away from me, and Goose told me that she didn’t want me. Though it wasn’t the reaction I wanted and expected, I tried to talk to them and got more rejection.  I was more than a little surprised, but tried to roll with it.  After a little bit of coaxing they both came upstairs, and VERY slowly started to tell me about their weekend, and finally let me give them hugs and kisses about ninety minutes after I arrived.  With this, I figured that all was well in the world.

After their baths, I asked Willy the usually “who is taking who” question.  They hadn’t discussed it in the bath, so I proposed that I ask them who wanted to come with me.  We do try to mix up bedtime so no one gets too attached to one parent or the other, but I figured that Goose would pick me (as she always does) and this would allow Woo to pick Willy (as he always does) and they would both be happy.  So I asked.

“Woo can have you” replied Goose.

“No, I want Daddy!!” cried Woo.

They both then ran to Willy for affection.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did a bit of both. Where is my love?

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