Life in the hutch

One of the many reasons to love this time of year is the arrival of the Christmas Orange to the stores. You know the ones I mean, the clementines that come in the little wooden crate with the orange mesh on top. Throughout the year, we consume regular oranges on an infrequent basis, but once Christmas season is upon us, we are vitamin C machines. It’s normal for us to burn through one to two cases a week, and have even dug into a third case on those weeks when they are at their optimal sweetness.

I am not sure what it is about these little babies that make them so wonderful, but they are the first sign of Christmas that I welcome with open arms*. It could be the fact that they are so simple to peel, that they taste so good, that they are largely seedless, or that they are the perfect size for a snack. It’s likely a combination of all of these qualities, along with the good memories that I associate with the fruit. I can’t be the only one that spent many a junior high school lunch snickering with friends as we tried to peel the orange in that special way that resulted in a single piece of peel that resembled the guys “junk”. We are also creating new memories with Woo and Goose, memories that haven’t (yet!) gone down that road.

I always buy my first case too soon, when the oranges are not yet ready. This year I was smart, and waited until they had been out a few weeks. I heard some positive feedback and this week took the plunge. We bought our inaugural case and dove in. The first taste was heaven, but the rest have been sadly lacking. It was too soon.

*everything else can wait until December 1st*

Willy plays rec hockey a couple of times a week. I have a love-hate relationship with his participation, one that I am not so great at hiding. I LOVE it because he is playing a sport that he has grown to love, it gives him a chance to get out with the boys and have some fun on a regular basis, and it sets a great example for the lil peeps. I HATE it because the games are at wonky times making him too tired at times, it leaves me at home alone with the lil peeps at bedtime far too often, and I want to be playing too. Last night, I gained a new reason to hate it.

When Willy called at 8:05pm, I assumed it was to tell me that he was going out for pints after the game, because that is what you do when you play beer league hockey. I was surprised to hear that he hurt his shoulder and would be going to the hospital. This alarmed me immediately. It is not that he is a stranger to our local emergency room (they know him by name), it’s that he was going right away. Willy is more of a “wait and take stock” kinda guy, so for him to be heading to the hospital moments after the game, it was serious. I masked my concern by asking all sorts of silly questions about the logistics of the trip – who was driving, what car, how would the driver’s car get home, how would our car get home… Questions that I am Willy really wanted to answer when in excruciating pain. He got me off the phone and headed off.

The rest of the evening was spent fretting while waiting. I was distracted by some friends on twitter and kept somewhat in the loop by one of the guys on the team. He arrived home just after midnight with the sad news that he had a grade II/III shoulder separation. According to Dr. Google, this is a pretty decent one, and could take up to 12 weeks to heal, if it doesn’t need surgery. Willy wasn’t in too much pain, so he gave me the re-cap, and we headed to bed.

This really sucks for Willy, and I feel terrible that it happened to him now. He’s only been playing hockey for a few years now, but this year he was starting to feel really comfortable and get better at it. He loves playing squash but had to take the summer off of playing squash because of a back injury, but this week had been given the all-clear to resume playing. He doesn’t get to pick-up the lils, can’t play with them the same way and misses out on at least a weeks worth of their not-so-gentle cuddles and snuggles. It’s his left arm and he is left-handed.  You get the idea.

This is going to put a strain on all of us, but we’ll deal with it. The selfish me though, is really ticked because I was getting him new shoulder pads and hockey pants for Christmas. I’ll be damned if I am going to give him a gift that reminds him that he can’t use them yet. Now I have to come up with something else, and he is not the easiest person to buy for.

In my logical head I know that Goose is not allergic to peanuts or any nuts.  We had her tested a year ago.  My mom heart, on the other hand, is racing and anxious. I’m afraid that she will be allergic, despite the test results.  We’ve I’ve been putting this off for much longer than we I should have, but that ends today. Today we give her peanuts for the first time.  She’s almost two, the same age that Woo was when we gave him peanut butter.  He still remembers both the taste (loved) and the trip to emerg (also loved – by him).  We just remember the trip to emerg.

If Goose is allergic, we will deal with it, she’ll deal with it.  We can teach her how to be safe and not eat without checking, how to recognize the sign that says safe to eat, and question when it is not there.  She’d have her brother, who is a pro at this, to guide her.  I know she’ll be fine.  There will also be the hope, as there is in Woo’s case, that she will outgrow it.

Me?  I might not be as fine.  I tend to obsess out a little about our allergies and don’t deal with them as well as I should.  You would think that I would be better at this by now, with my own serious food allergies.  I am not.  Though getting better at it (I hope!), I still get freaked out when the food is out of our control.  Though I am aware that this is a problem and am trying to fix it, it’s hard.  The last thing I want is for my children to become stigmatized because of the allergies and how I react to them.

Woo is very excited to give his sister peanuts, asks all the time when we are going to give them to her.  I asked this morning and he told me that he wanted her to be allergic like him.  I don’t know if this is rooted in the fact that he doesn’t want her to have something that she can’t have, or if he wants her to be like him so he is not alone.  Either way, it’s sweet and sad.  Today, I hope my head is right, even if it disappoints a little boy.

Statistics show that one in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of eighteen.

There has been a lot written today about an electronic publication on Amazon’s US website. This book appears to be counselling it’s readers on how to be better pedophiles, how not to get caught. It is available for sale/download on their e-book reader. I say appears to be as I did not buy it, or attempt to view it. Reading the description and the comments purported to be from the author were enough to support my belief. This disgusts me, and many of the people that I have spoken to or seen comment on the issue.

There were, however two distinct responses to the story that also elicited a strong reaction. The first was the argument that attempted to look at the issue from a free speech perspective, and asked whether Amazon could/should censor this book without violating the author’s right to free speech. I do not believe that a decision by Amazon not to sell this book would equate with censorship.  It would state that the corporation found the content not suitable for sale.  Furthermore, I believe that counselling another to commit this crime, while not in itself a crime, crosses the lines of free speech. It is not an offence in Canada, but I think that it should be.

The other reaction that I felt garnered a response was the notion that people should have acted instead of speaking out. I disagree with this completely. That is not to say that I don’t think each and every person who is upset and outraged by this book should only speak out without also explicitly letting Amazon know. They should do both, and many, myself included, have. The part that troubles me is the belief that I should not be speaking out against this book and the decision to sell it by Amazon.

I know that my one voice lodging a complaint to this large corporation would be lost without the support of like-minded individuals. This support cannot be encouraged without some sort of mechanism for sharing concerns. I would not have heard about this book had someone not alerted me to its existance on the site. So I tweeted about it, and am writing about it and I hope that everyone I know does the same.

Statistics show that one in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of eighteen.

I have seen the effects that this has on a child, a person, a family, a parent, a marriage, a life. Most of those who suffer at the hands of these predators suffer deep, raw and life long wounds. Some are never able to put back together their shattered lives. I cannot fathom how a company such as Amazon can have such a blatant disregard for the lives of those who are violated. If pulling this book stops one child from being abused, I will write a letter, mark that content as “inappropriate”, and will continue to talk about it until Amazon listens. If I don’t, I can’t bear to think that a child will be violated because of that publication.

I am but ONE voice, who needs to ensure that more voices are heard.

We have never let the littles watch much TV, hoping that this would help stop them from turning in to couch potatoes, and foster the development of some great imaginative play skills along the way. We knew all along that they would eventually want to watch some, we were just delaying it for as long as we could.  Of late, we have gradually been allowing them to watch little snippets, mostly of sporting events.  It’s no secret that we are huge SENS fans, so you can likely guess how often it is hockey that they watch. While Woo gets to watch hockey for ten or so minutes once or twice a week, this past Saturday was one of Goose’s first few times watching a bit of a game:

This is how they react to the TV being turned on

After we finally got them into their chairs

Yesterday at bedtime, I let Woo know that Willy would be going to the game. He first asked if Daddy was playing for the Senators (hehe), then asked if he could go and watch. I let him know that sadly, the answer to both was no, but that he would be able to stay up and watch a few minutes of the game with me. I didn’t think twice in telling him this, as today was a daycare day and I knew he would come home well rested and full of beans. He always does.

Sadly, when I arrived to pick him up, I was told that he had not napped! This shocked me, and the crank that followed made me doubt that staying up for the start of the game at 7:30 was going to happen. He soldiered on though, and we settled in on the couch for cuddles at puck drop. As we sat there, I gave him a choice. He could stay for ten minutes and then head to bed for stories and cuddles or he could watch and cuddle for twenty minutes, followed by a quick trip to bed.  He negotiated a third option that involved twenty minutes on the couch with a story read there and we settled in.

I should have known that you don’t negotiate with the tired and cranky three year old, and you certainly don’t overstimulate him when it is already well past his bedtime.  I knew that he was keen to watch the game and wanted to give him a treat.  I should have known. Sadly, bedtime took another hour post viewing* and was filled with many tears, cuddles, tucks and re-tucks, and a few complete meltdowns (all him, I swear).  He finally fell to sleep a little after nine, and will likely be well out of sorts tomorrow.

I am fairly certain that I will need to find slightly less stimulating choices for these types of night.  It shouldn’t be hard.

*the sad part?  after he was finally settled and I was able to resume watching the game, the Sens scored their first goal.  It was literally seconds after I paused it to settle him in bed.  I so wanted to wake him!

Willy went to the LCBO this afternoon to pick up some wine that we had tried recently and really liked.  Goose was sleeping and I needed to get some work done, so I asked him to take Woo with him.  Woo loves to go on “adventures”, so this was a no-brainer for him.  He actually volunteered to get out of his jammies for the trip, which says a lot!

They were gone for a couple of hours, and returned with tales of all the places they had been and the fun that they had.  Their trip involved a very minor fender-bender at the gas station (car rolled into our car at a very low speed), so their re-cap of the afternoon was quite excited, and didn’t really tell the whole story of anything that they had done.

When we sat down to supper, I asked for more details about their trip, and Willy told me what a help Woo was at the liquor store. It seems they were having a hard time finding one of the wines, so he turned to his Dad and said, “Why don’t we just go to the cash and ask them to help us find it?” Wise beyond his years that lil one!

I have always loved the Autumn time change. I am sure I didn’t really notice it as a child, but started to appreciate it more in my teens and early twenties.  Once I started going to the bars, though, it definitely started to mean something.  It was another whole HOUR of drinking, after all. It doesn’t matter that we could have continued at drink anyone’s place after the bar closed, this night was somehow better.  And more expensive.  As I got even older, I started to love the bonus hour of sleep more, and had pretty much stopped going to the bar after midnight anyway.  Sleep won.

When we had the little people, I started to have mixed feelings on the time changes in general.  Woo was born the night that we sprang forward, so that time change will always be special regardless of the havoc it always creates with my sleep, or the interesting things that it has done to us trying to overcome it’s effects on the lil ones and their schedules.  We have never successfully adapted, never gone without some really crazy effects like breakfast at four in the morning, napping strikes and all out crib parties at 3:00am.  Why is one hour so hard for us all to cope with?

This year is going to be different, I can feel it. It’s not that we’ve talked about the time change, or that I’ve devised a strategy that will help us deal with it.  Today even started ominously, with Woo waking before six for cuddles.  I groaned and moved into his bed, knowing that it could be the start of another long day for us.  Then it happened.  I was able to get him back to sleep, and fell back to sleep myself.  When I woke and looked at my watch, it was almost eight!  The magical day that I’ve only dreamed of thus far was upon us – the littles slept in!!  Seeing that they were already an hour behind their usual schedule, I figured that we would roll with it, and move the time change ahead a day.

We are a pretty well scheduled family and it works well for all of us most days.  Today we were able to keep their regular day, and they barely noticed.  Goose was a little over-tired for her nap, but only when she could not fall to sleep because she had been goofing off too much with her brother.  At the end of the day, they both knew that they were staying up late and felt that they were getting a treat.  When they fell asleep, they fell asleep at their corrected “normal” times.  I am going to sleep tonight knowing the I gain an hour sleep tonight, and tomorrow is my sleep-in day.

I think this just might work, and we will beat the time change for once.

We’re so doomed.

I recently undertook a contract to write a course for a local school. I am really excited about this, but also nervous.   It’s something I’ve never done before, and have very few guidelines to follow, other than “get it done by the end of the year – or sooner”.  I like to have a template or ten when taking on a new project, and use them to guide me. Quite often the final product looks nothing like the templates, they just give me the boundaries.

Timelines are a little tight on this one, and my other job has been taking up all of my free time, so I took this week as holidays to write the lessons.  I have been making slow progress, and am struck by how much this reminds me of being a student.  I basically sat on my butt all week doing research, writing, revising, reading, researching some more.  My butt is INCREDIBLY sore from all the sitting.  I time my work so I know when I can take breaks, make a million outlines and lists, and I procrastinate.

I envision that the anxiety will set in next. I did veg and take some vacation-y time this week, and am getting bogged down by some technical issues put me a little more behind than planned.  Next is work around the clock mode, I am pretty sure.

We’ve had a long and hard three or so months, but I am beginning to think that our family is coming out of the lows and moving forward again.  We’ve all had a hard time adjusting, and shown it in different ways.  The lils have been great, but I know that they are sad and confused by all the travel, upheaval and change.  I’ve been lost as to how to help them at times, but have done what we thought was best.

In the past week or so, something has slowly started to creep back into our lives.  A sound that has been conspicuously absent and sorely missed, their laughter.  Not the little giggles when someone toots, or tells a joke, the belly laughs that leave them breathless, snorting and begging for more. It makes us all feel so good, and shows that we are doing better now.  So we are doing silly things, singing crazy songs and relaxing more and more everyday. It’s so wonderful.