14
October
Adult supervision required
This past Friday was a PD day, so the lils were hanging out at home with me. We had a lazy day planned and were getting ready to run out for groceries followed by a trip to Mud Lake when Goose came running into the kitchen complaining about her vitamin. I had given her a gummy multi-vitamin a few minutes prior, and assumed that she had lost it. Goose LOVES the vitamins, and she is constantly playing with them, trying to slow down the eating process.
When I asked if it was lost, she nodded. I admit that I was frustrated at this point, I frequently need to reinforce the need to just EAT the vitamin and not play with it, but this time I had forgotten. She nodded in answer to my question, and then I noted that she was tearing up. When she pointed to her nose and said “it hurts”, I knew that this wasn’t going to be an easy fix. Using the sun as my flashlight, I laid her down on the counter and looked up her nostril. Way up her nostril, in fact. I could see nothing, but noted that it was bleeding.
I sat her up and asked the questions every parent is dying to ask: are you sure it is up your nose; how big was it when it went up your nose; and just how far did you push it up your nose… She filled me in and kept complaining about it hurting, so I tried to help her get it out naturally.
Not sure how gummy this gummy was, I tried to encourage her to blow her nose. This is when Goose confirmed for me that at some point over the summer she forgot how to blow her nose! After several attempts, I made the decision to call Tele-Health, despite the fact that I knew they were just going to tell me to go to the hospital. After a short conversation that included my confession that I had smelled my daughter’s mucous and that it did indeed smell like an orange multi-vitamin, they told me to go to the ER, just in case.
At the hospital, we were checked in lightning fast, and were herded here:
It comforted me somewhat to know that there was a room for cases like ours, but I still could not wrap my head around the fact that she has done this in the first place. I was certain that we were past the age where things got jammed up noses. Well, jammed up one’s own nose.
Up until this point, Goose had been sniffling quite regularly, but I noticed then that she had stopped. She just finished telling me that it didn’t hurt any more when the doctor walked in the door. He gave her a quick examination and confirmed that the “foreign body” was no longer in her nasal passage and decreed that she was fine. She proved it by hopping off the bed and skipping out the door.
Happy that she was pain free and that we were so fast, we carried on with our day. She delighted in showing me MANY times that her nostril now stuck together, but was otherwise seemingly unscathed. We both learned a lesson on Friday. She knows that you don’t get a second vitamin if you “lose” your first in your nose, and I know that I can never, ever give her another gummy vitamin without adequate supervision.
7
October
A terrible horrible monster
There is nothing like the first few minutes with your child after you return from a trip. It’s happiness and love and filled with hugs. That’s what it was like yesterday with Woo, upon my return from Blissdom. He leapt into my arms and joyfully filled my ears with tales from the weekend. Goose, on the other hand, was a different story. She arrived in tears and clung to me. She started by telling me about the crimes that her brother had just committed by pushing her out of the way to get to me, and ended with telling me about getting lost in the tunnels.
My heart skipped a beat, and I calmed her enough to tell me about the tunnels. From what I could piece together, there is an exhibit at the Science and Technology Museum that involves some slides or tunnels and Goose was in them, alone, and got lost. She didn’t know where to go or what to do so she just stood there and cried til her brother found her. Irrational me immediately thought about what sort of person would send a four year-old girl into the tunnels, alone, crying – likely for hours and finally sending a six year old deep inside to rescue her. Willy. That terrible, horrible monster.
Rational me took over and I talked to her about how awesome it was that Woo looked out for her and how the tunnels were still such a fun place, and then waited to talk Willy about it later. Sure enough, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Goose had successfully navigated the tunnels once, she just got turned around. When Goose didn’t come out of the one slide (there were only two), Willy sent Woo down the path to the other slide while he waited at the bottom to make sure that she wasn’t alone when she did pop out.
The reality is that our lils are growing up, and we want them to be independent, so they are going to get stuck in tunnels occasionally. She was fine, and it is not likely to have any sort of lasting impression. I, on the other hand, need to make sure that it is the rational me that lets the lils go off into the tunnels of the world, knowing that they are going to get lost on occasion. Getting lost is part of it.
28
September
No knee-jerk reactions needed
Yesterday was supposed to be my catch-up day, a day to run errands and get some work done, but a flu-ish little boy meant that I had to modify things a bit and had a side-kick for the day. We happened to be coming home from grocery shopping when I drove down Woodroffe towards the lils’ school. Noting a couple of police cars on the side of the road, I assumed that there was an accident, and slowly moved towards the school. I saw pretty quickly that there were not two cars in front of the school, but closer to a dozen police cars. My heart leapt into my throat; this was not at all normal. The worst case scenarios began to run through my head.
I turned into our community, and drove parallel to the back of the school, on a route that took me towards the church where the students are evacuated to in an emergency. I hesitated for a brief second, trying to decide if going to the school would add to confusion. I didn’t care, I needed to get Goose.
As I parked the car, I saw two moms walking out from the church lot with their children. One of them very calmly explained that there had been an intruder in the school, he’d had a replica gun, and that he had been apprehended without anyone being harmed. She’d read in my face that I was panicked (apparently I was looking a little green) and it was a composure that I desperately needed. When I entered the parking lot, I was amazed at the lack of chaos. The classes were sitting in their groups, for the most part quietly chatting and engaged by their teachers. The teachers looked stressed, but very together. After a quick word with her teacher, I grabbed Goose and carried her to the car, hugging as tightly as I could.
The rest of yesterday was a blur. I cuddled and read stories, made jell-o, offered sundaes, and baked their favourite muffins, all the while answering their questions as best as I could. The answers ranged from: yes, there was a man in the school, he was probably sick and needing help; I don’t know why he did it or where he came from; it’s Ok that you were wearing your inside shoes outside; I promise you can get your lunch bag into morning and am sorry that you don’t get to eat today’s lunch. All of the questions were their way of processing, so we worked through it.
I knew that the rest of my community would have questions too, questions about who he was and how he got into the school. I know that this was a scary experience, but after hearing from school officials, and what was relayed to the lils in their classes, I firmly believe that this was a cry for help, despite the appearance of threat. Yet much of the discussion surrounds how the school can be made more secure.
As a parent of two small people attending that school, I want to ensure it’s a safe and nurturing environment. Simplistic approaches like buzzers serve only to reinforce the notion of school as jail. These systems would not have prevented the events of yesterday, nor will they prevent similar events from happening in the future. They are security theatre, designed to make one feel better about a specific situation, without actually doing anything concrete. If someone really wanted to bring harm to those attending the school, they would have, and could have adapted had these measures been in place.
I now know that the teachers and staff know what to do in an emergency, that they will take excellent care of my children despite being scared, and that the police response is way more efficient than I ever thought it would be. THAT is what makes me feel more secure. What I would like to see come of the events of yesterday is a discussion about how the mental health needs in our community are not being met by the current system, and how we as a community can help, not some knee-jerk reaction that isn’t going to “fix” anything.
24
September
Honey, I think you have a problem
Since we moved home, I have tried really hard to only do our laundry during the off-peak rate periods for Hydro. Through trial and error, I have determined that this time, for me, is on the weekend. If I try and wait until after 7:00PM, I frequently forget about the laundry until the following morning (at the earliest!), at which point it needs to get washed again. If I set the time on the washer to have it finish before 7:00AM, I forget it until much later in the day, or the next day, at which point it needs to be washed again. Saturday and Sunday works, and we usually have about four loads, which get done pretty quickly.
This weekend featured the perfect storm of two weeks’ worth of laundry due to our trip to Toronto the previous weekend, clothes from a business trip for Willy, tonnes of new clothes procured at a local consignment sale, and the extra laundry generated by the shoulder-season weather we have been experiencing, hot and sunny – cold and rainy – hot and muddy. As the TENTH load of laundry went into the washer last night, I sat down to fold and sort the other nine.
The actual folding was pretty fast, but I enlisted Willy to match up the socks. I’m not a fan of socks in general, and matching them up is a bit of a pain to me, so the sorting goes to him on a regular basis. We chatted as we worked, and when the matching was completed, Willy looked over at the piles, and said, “how did that happen?” Neatly stacked on the end of the couch was a pile of socks for Willy, and a pile of socks with roughly the same number of pairs for the rest of the family.
“Oh, I can tell you how that happened,” I replied, “you have issues with socks.” I’ve known this for a while about Willy. The man cannot let go of a pair of socks, regardless of their condition. It seems that the hole-y socks are the most loved, despite my efforts to throw them out on laundry day. Case in point, today’s socks:
(not pictured, the hole on the bottom of the left foot)
He claims that he needs different socks for different sports, and I accept that is a valid argument. To a point. Willy currently plays two sports, and only one of them on a regular basis. He owns roughly a hundred pairs of socks, which he sorts by colour and stores in two drawers of our dresser. His socks, approximately 100 pairs of them, take up more room in the dresser than all of the shirts I own. Oh yes, I can tell you exactly how that happened. You have a problem with socks.
Willy’s sock drawers
14
September
Three was not enough
When we looked at booking a train trip to Toronto this fall, Willy suggested that we take the early train on the Friday morning. While the main purpose of the trip was to visit Willy’s family, my sister-in-law was due to have a baby in early September, so planning to have more time in the city seemed logical enough. I booked the tickets and forgot all about the itinerary until it became clear that Willy was going to be in India over the same weekend as our trip.
Using my inside voice, I grumbled a little bit about him missing out on the trip and not being around to help out, but it was mostly out of jealousy over the fact that he was going to India without me. I told myself it was going to be ok, and spent a good chunk of yesterday packing and prepping everything so that we would be ready to get up and leave, long before dawn. I tucked the lils into bed in their today clothes, set three alarms, and went to bed earlier. I was ready.
I am usually one of those people who can’t get to sleep if they need to get up early, and then wakes several times through the night, so I was amazed when I woke up and saw that the clock read 5:55AM. “Right on time” I thought, as I sat up and reached to turn the alarm off. Then it hit me. There was no sound emitting from the radio, and the time was wrong. We needed to be on the train right now. I started to move in a hurry, but realized that it was futile. The train had left the proverbial station.
Hoping that I could salvage the trip, I picked up the phone and called VIA Rail. Luckily, they were up on time, and had someone answering the phones. I spoke to the nicest, sweetest agent, who sensed my upset and tried to make me feel better for having slept in and missed my train. Then he blew me away and waived the far difference on my three tickets. Tickets that were bought on the best sale that I have seen in a while, and normally would have cost a fortune to change. Knowing how disappointed the lils would have been if I had had to cancel the train and just drive, I was grateful to not have to make that decision. So I started to cry, and he was sweet again and made me laugh.
The lils woke up shortly after my call. Woo was first and he was crying when he found me in the family room, worried that just he had slept in and I had left without him. Goose joined us, and we cuddled on the couch until it was time to leave and catch the second train of the day. Today may have started abruptly for me, but with the help of a really caring agent at VIA Rail, a few stolen moments on the couch, and the promise of snuggles with my new baby niece, it ended up being pretty darn good.