Some Thoughts on the Olympics

• I am an Olympic junkie. I love watching the Olympics. I prefer the Winter Olympics (smaller and cozier and where Canada usually does better) but I will happily watch the Summer Games too if they’re on. I will freely watch for hours during the Olympics (and become very passionate about) sports which I would never, ever, watch of my own volition at any other point (examples: biathlon, luge, pole jumping). Curling and figure skating I will watch at any time. I loves me some curling and figure skating. (I saw a hilarious comment in a newspaper article that said when it came to curling for Canada at the Olympics there were only three options: 1. gold; 2. gold; 3. witness protection. We take our curling seriously.)
• The time difference makes it largely impossible for me to watch anything live. Bedtime and getting our lives back in order takes up most of the evening and then it just gets too late. At drop off today one of the other Mums was looking decidedly bleary and then she admitted she’d stayed up until 2 a.m. to watch the shoot out for the women’s hockey final. I would love to see some events live (Q. and I have watched the men’s hockey final live the last two Winter Olympics, once with friends in 2010, and once out for breakfast with E. in 2014), but sleep always wins. The first day I downloaded the CBC app I looked up the schedule for the men’s hockey final, which doesn’t even start until 11 p.m. on Saturday. So I’ll be learning about that result the following morning.
• This is the first time E.’s been interested in the Olympics. It’s not surprising- he was still two the last time the Winter Olympics were on, and the most recent Summer Olympics were in 2016, when P. was a newborn and I was teaching a course online. I barely remember them happening and I don’t think I watched a single event. It’s been a real source of joy to watch him getting excited. We watch a few highlight videos on my iPad or phone after dinner before he goes to bed. He’s seen snippets of most sports, but his favourite sport, by far, is bobsleigh (with luge a close second- apparently skeleton is too scary because they go down headfirst). He even announced to Q. the other night that if he ever gets to be an Olympic athlete he wants to drive the bobsleigh.
• I especially love that E. is getting into the Olympics because it reminds me of when I was a kid. The first Winter Olympics I can clearly remember were 1988 in Calgary when I was almost nine, especially figure skating (the battle of the Brians! Katarina Witt! Elizabeth Manley!). I watched a lot of the 1992 and 1994 games and got up at 4 a.m. to watch Elvis Stojko at Nagano in 1998. I thought I didn’t remember much from 2002, to the extent that I just had to look up where they were held, but as soon as I saw it was Salt Lake City, it all came flooding back, especially the two gold medals in hockey and the lucky loonie buried in the ice. I was in my final semester of my undergraduate degree and I watched both games live in bars with my friends. 2006 I was overseas in Australia and had been living overseas for four years, so I felt distant from the games for a number of reasons. But by 2010 – Vancouver – Q. and I were living in Canada, and I was hooked again.
• Clearly some changes happened while I wasn’t as focused on the Olympics. There are all these sports I’ve never heard of (mostly in the snowboarding/freestyle skiing categories, but also, since when is there a luge relay or team figure skating?). Most evenings we have a conversation where E. wants to watch a particular video, slopestyle, say, or big air, and then asks me what that sport is and I have to admit I have no idea.
• How has Norway won SO MANY medals??!! I read an article the other day that said that their budget for the wax for their cross-country skis at the Olympics was three million dollars (CDN, I’m assuming), so clearly they have deep pockets and they target particular sports (much like the Netherlands with speed skating). But I can’t get over how much better they’re doing than Sweden (currently 10 medals) or Finland (4 medals). I think of all of those countries as ‘winter’ countries. Maybe the Swedes and the Finns are busy drinking hot chocolate and playing board games while the Norwegians are out skiing 50 km every weekend during the long, dark winter months. Denmark has only ever won a single medal at the Winter Olympics (or so Wikipedia tells me), a silver medal in women’s curling in 1998, perhaps because of their culture of hygge?

How are you enjoying the Olympics?

Siblings

In the car, at the tail end of a very long drive.

E. “P., can you say Mercury?”
P.: “Mur-ee!”
E.: “P., can you say Jupiter?”
P.: “Jup-er!”
E.: “P., can you say Pluto?”
P.: “Plu-to!”
E.: “P., what planet do we live on?”
P.: “Purple planet!” *giggles*
E. *laughing* “No, P. Not the purple planet! What planet do we live on? I’ll give you a hint- it’s the third one from our sun.”
P.: “Purple one!” *shrieks of laughter*
E. *laughing even harder* “No, P.! Ok. What planet do we live on that’s not purple?”
P. *long thoughtful pause and then, delighted* “Rubber boots!”
E. *howls of laughter*

Several days later, home again. P. and I are in the bathroom for her nightly “sit on the potty for 0.3 seconds” routine. On the floor in front of the toilet are E’s socks, both crumpled into little balls. E. abandons his socks as soon as he gets home from school and leaves them wherever they were peeled off. P. often retrieves them when she finds them hiding behind the couch, under the kitchen table, or on the floor of the upstairs hallway.

P. “Socks! Socks! Ee-mon’s socks!”
Me: “Yes, P. Those are your brother’s socks. Just leave them. I’ll get him to pick them up when he comes to bed.”
P. *picks up socks in one hand* “Yah!” *throws socks towards the toilet where they both land in the bowl*
Me: “No! No, P.! We don’t put socks in the toilet. We don’t put anything in the toilet except toilet paper.” *fishes socks out of toilet and drops them into the cloth diaper laundry bag*
P. *unrolls astonishing quantities of toilet paper the moment my back is turned*

She is the most disruptive force in his life, and he loves her fiercely.

In My House

Conversations I’ve had over the last twenty-four hours:

Last night:
Me: *snuggling up to Q. after getting in late from teaching* “How are you feeling?”
Q.: *sleepily* “Not a hundred percent. I ended up stopping at the shops because I didn’t think I could stand to make the risotto like I’d planned.”
Me: “What’d you get instead?”
Q.: “I picked up some Atlantic salmon and chips.”
Me: “I bet the kids loved it.”
Q.: “I made some salsa verde to go with it. And I cooked extra salmon and then made rice for L. and P. tomorrow.”
Faced with the same situation, I would have fed the children some combination of the following: scrambled eggs, pancakes, toast, or cereal. ‘Breakfast for dinner!’ is my go-to when cooking just feels like all too much. Only my husband would consider making salsa verde from scratch to be an ‘easy’ dinner.

This morning:
Me: *sticking my head in the door* “Good morning, E.! I didn’t know you were awake already.”
E.: *looking up from his book* “Hi Mummy. I’m just reading until the big hand is at the six.”
Me: “Ok! Do you know what you want for breakfast?”
E.: “Pancakes with maple syrup please. Look at this!” *shows me page in space encyclopedia* “I’m reading about Ceres and the other asteroids. Did you know that mini meteorites hit Earth all the time? Maybe some are hitting the roof right now! They probably make noises like this” *makes clicking and popping sounds* “After school I’m going to climb up on the bridge I built to see if I can see any of them on the windowsill.”
P.: *from her room* “Peppa get up! Poopy!”

Slightly later:
Me: “P., come help Mummy get dressed.”
P.: “Unwear! Unwear! Unwear!” *stampedes into my room, pulls open the top drawer of my dresser*
Me: “Yes, I will need underwear. Do you want to pick for me?”
P.: “Purple! Purple unwear!” *digs through my collection of smalls until she finds the lone purple pair*
Me: “Thanks, P.! Can you give them to Mummy?”
P.: *firmly* “No! Peppa!” *drapes underwear artfully around her neck, closes drawer, stampedes back down the hallway*

This is 18 months

Let’s just accept that I have permanently dropped the ball on writing monthly letters to P. (poor second child). I have a lot of notes in her journal, but I can really see the difference in how much I observed/wrote down before I went back to work compared with after. 18 months feels like a milestone, however, so I wanted to make sure I wrote something down. I’ve heavily borrowed from Non Sequitur Chica’s format as I always enjoy her updates!

Vital Stats:

I never weigh or measure P. myself. At her 15 month appointment she was 81.5 cm (32”) (95^th percentile) and 9.53 kg (21 lb 0.5 oz) (25^th percentile). Three months later she was 84.5 cm (33.25”) (95^th percentile) and 10.22 kg (22 lb, 9 oz) (25^th percentile). She has been on that weight curve since she was 9 months old and has been gradually creeping back with the height (she was off the charts for most of her first year).

P. has twelve teeth (all four molars came through in her seventeenth month). No sign of the canines yet.

P. still has very little hair. It is thickest at the back but it’s still baby fine and quite wispy. It will be some time before she will need a haircut.

P. usually wears cloth diapers during the day and size 6 diapers overnight. When she wears disposables in the day she is in size 4 but she really needs to be in size 5 (we’re slowly using up our last package).

P. was in 12-18 month clothing (with the exception of 18-24 month sleepers) but mid-way through this month I dug out the rest of the 18-24 month clothing and discovered I probably should have put her in the new size earlier. I think her winter boots are a size 6 (they’re hand-me-down Bogs) and they fit well.

Development (Gross/Fine Motor):

P. walks with a lot of confidence and is starting to attempt something that resembles a run (usually accompanied by a drunken stagger and arms akimbo). Her default speed is “beetling”, where she walks with great purpose and some speed. She can move very quickly when she is excited to see someone arriving at the door or when she’s trying to do something without me noticing (she is also very fast and very sneaky at going up the stairs if we leave the gate open). She can walk from our house down to the main road and then back again with a rest stop in the swing at the park on the way (a distance of one kilometre).

She loved the “sleeping bunnies” song this month and would try desperately to jump at the critical “wake up, sleeping bunnies and hop, hop, hop!” moment. She could either bob up and down at the knees with her feet firmly planted on the ground or march in place. She was clearly deeply frustrated that E. could jump and she couldn’t.

P. sometimes chooses to walk up the stairs, holding on either to our hands or to the railing. Most of the time she still crawls up. She is starting to come down the stairs on her bottom, again holding on to a hand or the railing. She remains a confident climber and has now mastered the art of pushing E’s kitchen step stool or one of their little chairs to a particular spot and then climbing up on top of it. This has greatly extended her reach and has resulted in yet another round of baby-proofing.

P. is a pint-sized tornado, cheerfully destructive. I have to assume that her fine motor skills are improving because she has absolutely zero interest in doing anything that requires precision and patience. I know she can stack up to eight blocks because I once managed to convince her to do so, but her preferred method is to knock blocks over the minute she stacks one on top of the next. She expresses an interest in colouring but then eats the crayons (which she absolutely knows she’s not supposed to do and she’s largely stopped mouthing anything else, so I can only assume she is doing it on purpose for attention). She isn’t interested in Megabloks or Duplo and cares not a whit for puzzles. One of her favourite words is “dump”, accompanied by her emptying whatever bag or basket she has found. The number of small animals and cars we keep in our living room has dropped significantly as a result (although she is pretty good at helping to clean everything up again before bedtime).

Like E. at this age she absolutely loves cleaning and helping out. She has the apron he used when he was a toddler and she will ask for it and put it on independently. She likes to help with sweeping and the dishes, but her favourite activity is cleaning up messes. A frequent sight in our household these days is P. trundling off somewhere clutching a cloth saying very seriously to herself, “Oh dear, oh no, oh boy.”

P. can put on her own boots, neck-warmer, and hat, can unzip and take off a hoodie, and will help get her arms and legs into the rest of her clothes. She has very firm ideas about what she wants to wear. Her favourite colour (which she can clearly identify) is purple (most other colours are also identified as purple in books but when she says “purple” in her room she always follows up by choosing the purple items of clothing). She likes to wear both socks and tights, and frequently negotiates to wear both at the same time. She has clear preferences for her pjs, her pants, and her hoodies. This has come as a bit of a shock to me (and to Q.) as E. really couldn’t have cared less about his clothes at this age and has remained largely disinterested in what he wears ever since (with the exception of the red hoodie phase when he was two and three).

She likes to find items of clothing for the other members of the family and will sometimes follow E. around in the morning holding one of his mittens or one of his boots (with E. inevitably saying, in a tone of exasperation, “No thank you, P.! I don’t need those yet!”). She can turn the light switch in her room off (but has trouble with on). She is getting very good at opening and closing doors. We now keep bag clips on our cereal after one too many incidents where P. tried to help herself to Cheerios (she did try to pour them into a bowl she’d fetched for the occasion but it didn’t quite work out as planned).

P. wanted to sit on the toilet, just like the rest of us, so I got the potty out and put it in the bathroom. She’s happy to sit on it for a few seconds and then wants toilet paper to wipe herself. Nothing thus far has appeared in the potty, but I’m not the least bit fussed about it. She tells us when she has a dirty diaper (although she will always deny it when asked), and she likes to suggest that her dolls need a change as well.

Development (Language/Social):

We have been blown away by P.’s language development. At 15 months, when her paediatrician asked if she had any words, I reported that she had “Mummy” and “no” and then we both agreed that those were two very effective words! When P. turned 18 months she had over 100 words. She now (closing in on 19 months) has too many to count and is starting to string them together to make little phrases: “Mummy lap”, “green sheep”, “more snack”, “thank you, Mummy” (her “thank you” sounds like “dee-dee-oh” and is adorable), “play outside” and “Daddy play more”. On Skype, when we asked P. to explain to her Australian Granny why it was that we’d just spent 30 minutes adjusting the Christmas tree, she replied “Pippa touch lights” (“Peppa tah yigh”). When I was on the phone with her Canadian Grannie after the stomach flu incident I asked P. to tell Grannie what had happened. She gleefully reported that she had thrown up “doh up!” and then, unprompted, added “bowl” (we have a designated vomit bowl) and “bath” (she needed a few of those). She is starting to very clearly enunciate the final consonant in some words, so eat is no longer “ee”, snack is no longer “snah”, and sleep is now “seep” rather than “si-si”.

Her vocabulary has a huge range. Lots of very useful words: help, eat, water, milk, snack, all down, up, down, outside, more, play, bath, door, gate, potty, other side, etc. Words for what she wants to play with: boat, car, tractor, ball, Colleen (my old Cabbage Patch doll), tea party, animals (sounds like “ammo” or “Elmo”). Words for the other members of the family: Daddy, Mummy, E. (“Eeee”), brother, auntie, uncle, Grandpa (“Dam-pa!”), Grannie, cat, tail, cat’s name (“ee-ee”). She has picked up that we call ourselves boas after E.’s long-standing snake obsession, so she often calls Q. “Da-dee bo-a!” and when E. first gets up in the morning she runs for the stairs chanting “Eee! Ee! Bo-a! Bo-a!”. The first beginnings of what will hopefully one day be good manners: please (“pea”), thank you (“dee dee oh”), bye-bye, and sorry. Her “no” is very clear and can be said in many different ways (including a long, drawn out “nooooo”). Her yes is a head bob and a happy “hmm” sound, exactly like E’s was. She also has a bunch of words to help tell us how she is feeling: happy, sad, cold, fall (used more generally to mean “scared”), sleepy. Her “oops” words (oh dear, oh no, oh boy, uh oh) are adorable. She reduced my mother to helpless laughter when she was eating dinner and carefully poured her milk all over her plate, then examined it and said “oh deeee-aaar” in a tone of astonished dismay.

I don’t know if this is just reflective of the difference between how boys develop and how girls develop, or if this is a second child who has realized she has to get talking quick smart if she will ever be able to get a word in around her brother, but it has been quite something to witness. She’s going to really be able to express herself as she gets closer to two and the desire for autonomy increases (she already says her name firmly if she wants to do it herself and I’m convinced she’s started saying “me too”).

P. thinks her big brother is the best thing in the entire world. She wants to do everything that he’s doing. If he’s reading a book under a blanket, she needs a blanket too (preferably the same one he has). If he’s reading a book while eating snack, she needs a book to read too. She knows she’s not allowed in his room unless invited and when he does let her come in to watch him driving his Lego train she stands so carefully in the middle of the floor and doesn’t touch anything (if she sneaks in when he’s at school it’s a totally different story). She has a special cackle of glee that she reserves for when she’s driving him crazy (and she knows that’s exactly what she’s doing). If he’s trying to read quietly on the couch her favourite activity is climbing up onto the couch and then rolling around on top of him. When we had our living room furniture moved around to accommodate the Christmas tree, P. quickly figured out that meant she could climb on top of the coffee table and reach the basket with E.’s library readers. If she felt no one was paying enough attention to her, she would climb onto the table, stand up, and start throwing the books on the floor one at a time.

I had a hilarious exchange with E. before Christmas after I’d run down the street to catch our neighbours who had a baby girl in September. I told E. I was asking them whether they wanted any of our clothes since we were done having babies.
“I’m so glad we’re not having any more babies,” E. announced as we went inside.
“You know, when P. was little you were very upset that she was our last baby,” I told him. “You said you weren’t done being a big brother yet.”
“Yes,” said E., “but that was before I realized just how annoying a little sister can be! Although I guess if you did have another baby when I was older, like maybe seven, and P. was big enough to look after herself a bit more, when that baby got bigger and was very annoying to P., I could say to P., ‘Yes, P., this is just what it was like when you were a toddler.’ Because otherwise P. won’t get to know what it is like to have someone that annoying.”
I agreed that the baby of the family never had the experience of the younger sibling always getting into their stuff, but then pointed out that P. would always have to wait to be old enough to do the things that E. could do.

P. mimics everything that he does (and everything that we do too). She uses remote controls as telephones (along with blocks and anything else that seems remotely suitable) when she can’t get her hands on my actual phone. I have to keep it well hidden because she can push the button to turn it on and can swipe the screen. I didn’t have a smartphone with E. so this is an entirely new experience.

Play:

P. likes to play with small vehicles, especially tractors, and our collection of Schleich animals. Mostly this play involves carrying them around, putting them in bags and baskets and then taking them out again, and dumping them all over the floor, but she does occasionally push the vehicles along the carpet. She still loves balls, although not as much as she did when she was closer to the year mark. She is almost ready to play trains with her brother as she is getting the idea of pushing the train along the track, but she also likes to take the track apart, so that’s still an exercise in frustration rather than a fun group activity.

Without a doubt, her favourite toy is my old Cabbage Patch Kid. I have been having a really hard time with this. I loathed dolls as a child (I thought they were creepy and pointless) and spent years collecting and playing with model horses (I had hundreds of them- no exaggeration). When E. showed absolutely no interest in playing with dolls as a child, gravitating instead immediately towards vehicles, trains, and building toys, I was disappointed. Now I’m disappointed that P. doesn’t care much for those toys but will carry the doll around all day long. This is my own problem, not theirs; there is nothing inherently gendered or wrong with any of these toys and they should be allowed to explore and enjoy their own interests.

In an effort to combat this, I made sure that Santa brought P. her own baby (one of the Corelle infant dolls with the bean bag bodies) because my Cabbage Patch Kid is a big doll for her to be lugging around. On Christmas morning, when the kids came downstairs, I put P. down and she looked at the tree before announcing “baby!” in a tone of joyful surprise and then toddled straight off to take the doll out of its carry bag. She does like to look after the baby (it spends a lot of time sleeping and needing food and diaper changes) but I think she still prefers the Cabbage Patch Kid, largely because my doll came with its own bag of clothes (most made by my mother thirty years ago) and P. loves to request a wardrobe change. Interestingly, P. interprets the bunting bag my mum made for the doll, which is supposed to be a snowsuit, as a sleep sack. P. makes some interesting dress choices and has a distressing tendency to choose socks, shoes, and underwear/shorts for the doll, but not much else.

She also received a tea set for Christmas from one of her aunties and she loves to have tea parties with the Cabbage Patch Kid (and sometimes some of the Schleich animals as well). She will set Colleen up on one of the little chairs at their table in the kitchen and arrange some assortment of cups and plates and spoons (she never forgets the spoons- I think they’re her favourite). Inevitably she ends up pushing Colleen off the chair as she decides she wants to try sitting on that one herself, leaving Q. to intone seriously, “I’m a bit concerned about what she’s serving at these tea parties” after one too many afternoons of him arriving home from work to find Colleen face-down on the floor near the table, only half-dressed.

P. loves to play outside but hates playing in the snow, so the last month has been hard on her. She’s just a year too little to really enjoy the snow. She’s basically spherical in her snowsuit, she can’t properly see her feet, and wrestling her thumbs into the appropriates holes in her waterproof mittens is a real challenge. Outdoor play with the two of them usually results in E. happily romping around engaged in a building project of some sort with the snow while P. pokes morosely at a ball, falls over, and requests to go back inside for snack. We took her sliding for the first time on Christmas Day. E. at this age loved it. P. went down twice and then refused to go down again, preferring instead to sit in the snow looking resigned and miserable, chanting “all done, snow” over and over again.

Books:

P. is very interested in having a book near her, especially when eating snack, something she’s most certainly copied from her big brother (he is the best possible role model for encouraging a love of reading). We’ve fallen into a pattern of going to the library on Saturdays at least a couple of times a month. E. immediately finds a few new chapter books and starts reading them. P. used to spend the time climbing off and on the chairs, running amok, and pulling books off the shelves but in the last couple of visits she’s started to more carefully choose a book or two and bring them to me so I can read them with her.

P. likes books with flaps (although she can’t have those unsupervised in her crib because she also likes to pull the flaps off and then frantically request “tay tay!” (tape) to fix them). She still loves the Priddy Baby 100 First Words board book and will gleefully turn the pages to find anything you ask her to identify. She knows she’s not allowed to touch E.’s books with paper pages and she’s pretty respectful of his shelves. I did get Cars and Trucks and Things That Go out this month as that was E.’s favourite at this age, but P. got bored with it very quickly. She definitely does not have the same attention span for books that E. did.

At bedtime we read three stories. Perennial favourites have included the BabyLit Dracula and Frankenstein, Eric Carle’s Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? and Mr. Seahorse (flipped through and summarized more than read), Where is the Green Sheep?, and It’s Time to Sleep, My Love. I Say, You Say, Feelings! turned up at Christmas and has been very popular as is the 100 Flaps Things That Go large board book.

Sleep:

P. goes to bed somewhere between 7 and 7:30 p.m. (7:15 is probably ‘normal’ bedtime) and falls asleep almost immediately. We never hear her chatting to herself like her brother did (and still does). She still gets up once to nurse but we are getting very close to that feed becoming the first of the morning as most of the time she sleeps until 5:30 a.m. or a bit later before nursing. I think we could fairly easily persuade her to drop that feed but then she’d get up for the day at 6. If she nurses and goes back to sleep she often sleeps until 7:30, so I’m not in a rush to change things.

P. naps around 12/12:30 p.m. and sleeps for two or two-and-a-half hours. A 90 minute nap is noticeably too short by the end of the day. Sometimes she’ll sleep for three hours but usually there’s a reason to explain it- a poor sleep the night before, or a lingering illness, etc. She still uses sleep sacks and a white noise machine. I dropped the white noise machine on our return from visiting grandparents over the holidays and thought I had broken it but it turned out it was just too cold from being in the car to function properly. I’m planning to wean her from it in the summer, like we did with E. She’s better at sleeping through noises in the night and the morning, but I’m not ready to lose that support.

Eating:

P. is still a great eater, despite what her place on the weight percentiles might suggest. Our nanny comments all the time about how much food P. eats and all the different kinds of food she likes. I think this is another case where E. is acting as an excellent role model. He was much fussier when he was little but he’s been a pretty consistent eater for a couple of years now and he’ll try things even when he already knows from previous experience that he doesn’t like them. P. will sometimes refuse to try something (head shaking and “no!”) and other times will give anything that looks suspicious a bit of a lick before she’ll put it in her mouth.

She is good with a spoon and getting better with a fork (I think sometimes she is stymied by the blunt tines of the baby forks). She is perfectly capable of drinking out of a regular cup but likes to drink very nicely for quite some time and then unexpectedly turn the cup upside down (or throw it) when we let our guard down. She also needs someone to hold her cereal bowl while she eats or she’ll dump it over the side when she gets bored.

She likes to make her own decisions about breakfast (again copying her brother) and can choose between muesli (“mew-ee”), oatmeal (“oh-mea”), Cheerios (“chee-chee-oh”) and toast (“tow”). She doesn’t usually eat a big breakfast (probably because of the nursing overnight) but will put a lot away at lunch and supper. She still doesn’t like drinking milk very much but is getting better with cheese and yoghurt. She has no sweet tooth whatsoever and doesn’t like ice cream, chocolate, cake, cookies, or basically any sort of dessert (is she really my child?).

Interestingly, P.’s favourite food is still avocado (my number one craving when I was pregnant with her). She would eat two a day if we let her and “a-cah-o” was a clear word before her eighteenth month was finished. Other favourites are cucumber, crackers (especially Goldfish), strawberries (and most fruit in general), pasta, mashed potatoes, and any sort of stew or vegetarian dish mixed with rice (dahl, chili, chana masala, etc.). She notices immediately if we’re eating something that she isn’t (whole nuts are a big issue), and she frequently requests to drink our wine or my tea (although she will cheerfully follow up the latter request with “Noooo, hot!”).

She is still nursing. She nurses before bed and before nap if I’m the one home with her, once overnight, and sometimes first thing in the morning (depends on when the night feed was). She associates nursing now with comfort and connection rather than with food, and she can very clearly ask for it (“Mummy!” complete with hitting her own chest, or just lifting up my shirt/sticking a hand down my shirt if I’m within reach). She wants to nurse as soon as I get in the door after work and would prefer to spend the hour between me getting home and eating dinner attached to a boob. On days when I’m home with her she nurses a lot, but these are usually quick cuddles. I don’t really have any sense of how much she’s actually drinking these days, which is why I’d like her to be a bit more keen on dairy products. I no longer get over full on work days after the weekend at home with her, and I can miss both the nap and the bedtime feed on nights when I teach without becoming uncomfortable. It’s clear that how much she’s drinking is decreasing, but it’s also clear that she’s still very attached to nursing, and I’m in no rush to encourage her to give it up, especially since she is able to go down for a nap or at night without me. She is my last baby and I am very glad to have such a positive nursing relationship after the way things ended with E.

Miscellaneous:

P. is a great traveller. She really enjoys playing with toys and looking at books in the car (a mystery bag filled with vehicles and animals is always a hit), and she almost never complains if E. is in the backseat with her. They often invent silly games (usually involving throwing stuffed animals at each other), and if E.’s back there it’s easy for her to eat a snack as he will carefully hand her things and pick up her water bottle if she drops it. She drove with me when I went to see my Dad during his medical scare in mid-December (and coped admirably with the eight-hour epic that was our return home when we were caught in a snowstorm) and then again between Christmas and New Year with Q. and E. as well.

P. had her first ever stomach bug (at least in terms of vomiting) right after the New Year. She threw up nine times in eighteen hours but was generally cheerful when she wasn’t puking (and was very frustrated and confused that I wouldn’t let her eat anything other than Cheerios). She also unfortunately caught HFM from her cousin at the end of November (although she escaped much more lightly than either Spud or poor labmonkey).

She is prone to serious bouts of Mummyitis. It is still generally impossible for me to cook dinner if it is anything more complicated than defrosting something Q.’s already made and cooking rice or potatoes or pasta to go alongside it. P. either demands to be held on my hip (and clings like a monkey if I try to put her down), wants to nurse, or holds on to my leg and cries. The other day Q. came home and I was running late because P. had had a massive diaper blow out that had required a full wardrobe change and a bath. When he walked in the door, I was trying to get pasta in the boiling water while P. held on to my leg and cried.

“I don’t know why you’re never able to have beef Wellington ready for me when I get home,” Q. quipped. “It would be so easy for you to make it.” (When Q. cooks, P. happily plays with her toys.)

At this age, E. loved standing on a chair helping me with dinner, but P. is not trustworthy enough to stand on a chair. We decided to get one of the learning towers (or a smaller knock off) as her present for Christmas but the one I want has gone out of stock most places online. Hopefully I can order it soon as I feel like it would make a world of difference if she could safely help me. It is unfair that so much of the cooking is resting on Q.’s shoulders right now, even if he understands why this is the case.

Q. and I have always felt that around 18 months was the golden age when E. was little. He was walking, sleeping well, eating well, communicating with us, able to amuse himself with toys, keen to help and/or participate, and still generally very agreeable (the autonomy seemed to emerge overnight when he turned two). We have been getting noticeably more resistance from P. in the last week than had been the case earlier, but she’s still very obviously in this sweet spot as well. It’s a really wonderful age, and she is a great deal of fun to be around.

The best-laid plans

Over a year ago, when I was discussing with our nanny how our arrangement would work, she asked whether I would mind if she didn’t work the two weeks when E. wasn’t at school over the holidays. I said that was fine.

I’ve been looking forward to this week ever since. I knew the first week of the holidays would be busy, with Christmas on the Monday and then us travelling to see the grandparents. But I figured the second week would allow me to spend some quality time with both kids. We’d be at home, in our comfort zone. We could play in the snow. We could go to the library to get some new books. We could make use of our annual passes to a couple of our city’s attractions.

It hasn’t quite worked out as I’d hoped.

Monday, the 1st, was quiet. We’d arrived home lateish the night before, so we spent the day cleaning, unpacking, doing laundry, and figuring out what we’d need from the grocery stores once they opened the next day. E. and I finished building an Eiffel Tower out of K’nex that we’d started on Christmas Day.

P. started vomiting in the wee hours of the 2nd and kept right on going that entire day. (My despondent post while I was waiting for laundry to finish so I could go to bed turned out to be the last time she threw up). So the 2nd (Tuesday) was very quiet indeed. E. and I packed up all the Christmas decorations (we even managed to get the tree outside onto the front porch, which was the only point any of us went outside all day).

E. was saintly on the 2nd. P. needed a lot of attention (and a lot of cleaning up) and he did a great job of amusing himself and helping me as much as he could (with the Christmas decorations, getting his own snack, watching P. in the bath while I cleaned the carpet, and running to get the vomit bowl when it was clear P. was about to be sick yet again).

Yesterday, the 3rd (Wednesday), P. was clearly on the mend and managed to keep (plain) food down all day. I bundled them both up and got them outside in the morning. E. and I dug a tunnel underneath the giant snow pile in our backyard (made from shovelling our parking pad and our section of sidewalk). P. poked morosely at a ball and then complained until it was time to go inside (she is really one year too little to be enjoying the snow). The wheels fell off  a little bit in the afternoon but I managed to find an activity that both kids could do- building with the Crazy Fort sticks and balls. E. built a slide/ladder on our couch and P. was happy to stand in the cube I built for her, whacking whatever she could reach with spare sticks. Q. arrived home to find E. and I chasing each other around the house in a tickle war (using Crazy Fort sticks with balls on both ends as our magic tickle wands) while P. was stampeding along behind us, waving her sticks in the air, not understanding what was going on but joining in wholeheartedly (which is P. in a nutshell, really).

Everyone felt well.

I reached out to E’s best friend’s mum to see if they wanted to come with us on an outing the next day. We made tentative plans to meet for a playdate in the afternoon. E., P. and I hatched a plan to go to the museum in the morning.

And then, last night, almost exactly twenty-four hours after P. stopped vomiting, E. started.

So we’ve spent today at home, again. P. and I have sorted through the many, many piles and boxes of outgrown baby clothes that I’ve been meaning to donate. We organized them into three piles- give to the baby girl three houses down, give to the house for young mothers a few streets over, give to the Diabetes Clothesline the next time they’re in the area. We got out her 18-24 month bin and pulled out everything that was seasonally appropriate and sorted it into three piles- put in P’s dresser, send to Spud, give to house for young mothers (the baby on our street was born in the wrong season to need winter 18-24 month clothing).

E. has spent the day lying in his bed. He fell asleep for a couple of hours in the late morning, but mostly he’s just been lying there. He’s not even reading.  He hasn’t thrown up since early this morning, and he isn’t running a fever, but he is clearly VERY UNWELL.

It hasn’t been a terrible week, and I’m glad I’ve been the one to be around. We’ve had some good moments. And I know there will be other opportunities to go to the museum or do any of the other things we’d planned.

Still.

This is the only week I’ll get at home with my kids between now and the summer holidays.

I wish it could have been different.

Simplifying Christmas

Yes, I know it’s the New Year, but I’m still processing December.

Christmas really crept up on me this year.

It was partly due to the fact that it was a Monday, and E. was in school until the 22nd, so by the time he finished school there was Saturday and then it was Christmas Eve.

And it was partly due to the fact that I spent the penultimate school week with my Dad in the hospital. P. and I had an absolutely horrific drive home again, complete with a major snow storm that approached total white out conditions at one point and a massive diaper blow out that required me to change every piece of clothing she was wearing (while being out of wipes after the previous unscheduled diaper change stop). I ended up carrying her back and forth naked to the sink from the toilet stall that had the change pad in it so I could wet toilet paper and try to get her relatively clean. She stood on the change table and said “cold” and “fall” over and over again and then cried. I ended up with poop on my coat. Eventually she was clean and dry and happy and I stuffed her in the car and drove off into the snow.

It took eight hours to get home (the drive should, at most, take five, even with stops for littlies) and I was utterly shattered by the time we arrived. I then didn’t want to do anything that weekend until I realized that the very next weekend E. would be off from school and it was going to be Christmas Eve.

In 2015, I convinced my family to stop exchanging presents with Q. and I for Christmas (doesn’t apply to the kids). This year my father and stepmother, largely out of the blue, decided to stop doing birthday presents as well (they both have birthdays which fall in the holidays), which made life even simpler. We still do presents with Q.’s family, but that’s Q.’s job to sort out (although I am in charge of presents for our two nephews).

Q. and I decided to get a Sodastream so we can have a ready supply of bubbly water, and to make sure we go on some good dates this year. Otherwise we agreed not to get each other anything else other than the traditional Christmas Eve pjs and stockings.

When I look at my list, I can’t figure out why the lead up to Christmas felt so wildly out of control and stressful.

• pjs and stocking for Q. (his stocking usually has socks, undies, t-shirts, and tasty treats in it)
• pjs for E. and P.
• gifts for E. and P. from Q. and I (using the “something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read” guide, where the “wear” are the pjs)
• Santa stuff and stockings
• ornaments for Q., P., and E., because I get each of them a new one every year
• gift for Q. from E. & P. (normally E. tells me what he’d like to get Daddy but I dropped the ball on this one and had to just make an executive decision)
• gifts for two nieces and three nephews (and the nieces were sorted out in November as my sisters and I get them and their parents tickets to Disney on Ice every year)
• photo calendars for three sets of grandparents (two of the calendars I made and the third I was just responsible for choosing photos and sending them to my sister-in-law; I did all of this in late November)
• annual photo ornaments for three sets of grandparents (left these to the absolute last minute as usual and then struggled to get the photos printed)

Admittedly, E.’s request from Santa required me to make a trip downtown that blew most of a morning, and the photo ornaments were an enormous source of stress and frustration when I couldn’t get the photos easily printed, and I did also make a stop in a bookstore to buy some books for the baby next door, the family where all of P’s clothes come from, and friends’ children whom we were going to see over the holidays. But by the standards of Christmas, even by the standards of my previous Christmases, this was a pretty light year.

I didn’t do any baking at all (I haven’t managed that since 2014) but I did decorate the house. We had a family expedition to cut down a Christmas tree on the 9th, and we decorated the tree and the inside of the house that same weekend. I didn’t get the outdoor lights up before I left to see my Dad, so E. and I put them up once I was back.

There isn’t anything I can really point to as causing the chaos (except those damn ornaments), but I felt like I was two steps behind the entire holiday season.

I think I left everything too late. I didn’t start thinking about Christmas in any serious way until December and then by the time I made all the decisions, I was running out of time to order things online (and I absolutely loathe shopping in real stores especially with kids in tow). I ended up ordering some things online at 5 in the morning when I wasn’t able to sleep when I was away to see my Dad and having to do my in-person shopping in the last week before Christmas when I really should have been working. Everything arrived on time in the end, but it was a bit too close for comfort.

Resolutions for next year:

1. Think about the Down Under nephews in November (Q. had yet another year of panicking at the last minute for his family and has resolved, yet again, to do things in November next year)
2. Choose photos for calendars and ornaments, make and order calendars, and print ornament photos in November (I’m sure I’ll leave purchasing the actual ornaments until mid-December like always but if the photos are ready it takes only a minute or two to make them)
3. Always have five or six excellent picture books stashed away in the house so I have an easy gift if we end up getting together unexpectedly with friends who have kids. Books never go out of style.
4. Use Black Friday sales as an opportunity to pick up a few things for Q.’s stocking and possibly find Christmas Eve pjs as well
5. Remember December/January birthdays when planning (Spud and Pea)
6. Make decisions for E. & P.’s gifts earlier
7. Realize that it is unrealistic to plan to work full days right up until the very last day E. is in school and not feel guilty when I inevitably end up spending at least one afternoon shopping.

Basically I need to think about Q., E., and P. earlier, be better organized, and maybe bite the bullet and pay for Amazon Prime because two day shipping with no minimum would probably have done a great deal to alleviate my stress.

Christmas Day itself was absolutely lovely, and that’s the important thing.

Do you have any strategies for managing Christmas preparations?

Say What?

While driving in the car:

Me: “E., have you thought about what you want to ask Santa for this Christmas?”
E.: “I know exactly what I want! I want a balsa wood glider that is big enough for my stuffies to ride on it!.”
Me: “…”
E.: “It will be so fun to see them sailing through the air!”
Me: “What an interesting idea, E.! Have you thought about a back up option in case Santa has trouble finding a balsa wood glider that big?”
E.: “If it’s not big, how will my stuffies fit on it??”
Me: “They’re usually pretty fragile given the wood is so light. Do you think they would be strong enough for your stuffies?”
E. *getting agitated*: “Yes! It would be FINE!”
Me: “Maybe what we can do, E., is we can look online to do some research and see what sizes balsa wood gliders come in.”
E.: “Ok! Then we will know which kind I should ask for.”

All is quiet in the car. After we are home and the kids are in bed, I relay this conversation to Q.

Q.: “Oh, that’s nothing. We had this conversation the other day. He talked himself down to the balsa wood glider after he originally suggested he wanted his own little airplane to ride in that would go above the house.”
Me: “…”

Road Trip

We drove back yesterday from visiting both parental households. Q. and I spent most of the drive discussing the current state of my parents (mother very stressed but long-term prospects are still good; father’s situation provokes rage and despair in equal measure). There was a lot of ranting (not all of it from me) and some serious talks about what to do next, all buried under loud music for the sake of the little pitcher with huge ears in the back.

Meanwhile, it the backseat, the drive looked a lot like this:

Five scenes from a six hour drive

Scene 1. Turia is driving. P. is asleep. E. is telling a story to himself.
E.: *unintelligible* “Don’t worry, I borrowed it from the solar system! The Earth said it would be all right.”
*muttering*
*sound effects of crashing and explosions*
E.: “And all the planets were consumed!”

Scene 2. Turia is driving. We are thirty minutes away from stopping for dinner.
P. *shrieks of laughter*
E.: “Pick up the monkey and throw it back to me, P.!”
*flurry of motion in the rear-view mirror*
E. & P. *shrieks of laughter*
Repeat scene with everything within reach in the backseat

Scene 3. Q. is driving. We are trying to get back on the highway after having to take a detour to avoid an accident right before our on-ramp.
P.: “P. Door. Car.”
E.: “How far away from home are we?”
P.: “P. Door. Car. Out.”
Turia: “One hour and forty-three minutes, according to Google, once we get back on the highway.”
P.: “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!”
E.: “I meant, how many kilometres?”
P.: “P. DOOR. CAR. OUT!!!”
Turia: “One hundred and sixty-eight.”
P.: “Mummy, Mummy, MUMMY!!”
E.: “Oh, ok. I will not start to look for the [very well-known building] yet.”
P.: “P!!! DOOR!!! CAR!!! OUT!!! MUMMY, MUMMY, MUMMY!!!”

Scene 4. We are listening to Sharon, Lois, and Bram’s Greatest Hits. Q. is driving. “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” is playing.
E.: “You know, I think there are other versions of this song where they are eating things other than chicken and dumplings.”
*song ends*
P.: *very quietly* “Choo-choo.”

Scene 5. P. is asleep again. Q. is driving.
E.: “I still feel sad when I think about P. [our cat who died in April of 2016] just like I still feel sad when I think about Grandpa I. [my stepfather, who died in August 2016].”
Turia: “It’s ok to feel sad, E. You feel sad because you loved them and you miss them. I still feel sad when I think about them too.”
E.: “Remember after Grandpa I.’s funeral and I said that maybe at night he would get out of the cemetery and go geocaching? Maybe our cat gets up at night too.”
Turia: “Do you think she’s the one who makes our floorboards creak when L. [our other cat] is asleep on our bed?”
E.: “Yes!”
Turia: “Is she a little cat ghost?”
E.: “No! She is a cat zombie! She gets down off the shelf in her box and goes all around the house.”
*long pause*
Turia: *very quietly, to Q.*  “We really need to make time to bury her and get the box off of our bookshelf.”
E.: “Brrrrraaaaiiinnnnssss!”

Happy chaos.

On Track

E. brought home his first report card this week.

It was a progress report rather than an official report card, but it was still a serious assessment of how he is handling Grade One.

The short answer is he’s doing just fine.

Nothing was identified as being “unsatisfactory”.

There were no areas where he was currently “progressing with difficulty”.

And his “highest” score for the behavioural section of the progress report was in collaboration, an area that has been a huge struggle in the past.

There’s room for improvement, sure, and E. will probably find it easier to meet the expectations of the classroom as he gets older and is better able to self-regulate.

But this was a great start, and we told him he should feel very proud of himself.

Not Just Mittens

A couple of weeks ago we were in Walmart to print photos for E’s assignment at school. I ended up trolling the aisles with E. and P. in tow because we needed various things, including waterproof mittens for both kids. E. has for years worn the same style of mitten from MEC but he needed the next size up and when I looked on the website I saw that MEC has changed the style and the new version is not getting good reviews. I also live in fear of E. losing expensive mittens at school, so I figured there wasn’t any harm in trying out a cheaper pair.

We poked around for a while and found one pair that E. liked. I was worried they were a touch too small.

Then I spied another section across the aisle.

“E., come and look at these. Tell me if you see anything you like.”

E. came over, took one look and stopped short.

“Mummy, I can’t wear these. These are for girls.”

Inwardly, my reaction went something like this: OH FUCKITY FUCK FUCK. WE’VE WORKED SO HARD ON THIS!

Outwardly, I said to E. that even though the store wanted people to think that there were girl clothes and boy clothes, because that meant they could sell more clothes, the truth was it didn’t matter.

“No one is allowed to say that only girls can wear purple and pink and only boys can wear blue and red,” I finished, pulling a pair of black mittens off the rack. “I bet they had the same mittens on the other rack and they’ve just sold out.”

E. picked the black mittens and a purple pair of waterproof gloves.

Before we left we gathered up a bunch of purple and pink mittens and gloves and put them on the empty racks in the “boy” section.

That would be the end of the story except that it quickly became apparent that these mittens and gloves were still a little too big for E., so on Monday I took him to the dollar store.

E. very quickly picked out two pairs of waterproof mittens (red and purple), one pair of purple and black wooly mittens and one pair of lightweight turquoise gloves with snowflakes on them.

“Look, Mummy,” he said happily about halfway through the process. “I can pick whatever I want because there’s not a girl or a boy section.”

I stopped dead. I’d been in that store earlier that morning (buying mittens for P. because there had been nothing appropriate for her at Walmart). I’d observed there were loads of mittens in E’s size but had completely failed to notice that they hadn’t been in any way segregated.

The dollar store has fairly minimal outdoor gear (and I might still come to regret buying mittens from it, but we’ll see) and even less by way of clothing, so it makes sense that everything would be confined to one big aisle.

I hadn’t noticed when I’d been collecting purple mittens and a purple baby balaclava for P. (because she kept picking the purple options when I put several in front of her) that the purple and the pink and the red and the black and the blue and the green mittens were all on the same hooks.

E. had.

He is a boy who has always loved pink, a boy who happily wears leggings from the “girl” section to school, a boy who can sit and flip through the pages of a cake decorating book from the 1980s and criticize its gender assumptions (“Mummy, look- there is a rocket cake but they say it is for boys! That is inappropriate because everyone likes rockets. What do they think girls like?” *turns pages in ever-increasing horror. “A princess castle? Well I like pink and I like princesses and I like castles. A sewing machine?! Well if a boy doesn’t know how to make his own clothes he would have to go to the store. An oven?! That’s ridiculous! Everyone needs to know how to cook!”).

But even he, at age six, knows that he is somehow not supposed to shop in the section for girls.

There’s starting (finally!) to be a serious movement to stop the practice of segregating toys in stores and making assumptions about which kids should want (or be allowed) to play with them.

Toys aren’t going to be enough.

We need to do clothes too.

And if the dollar stores mittens actually turn out to be waterproof, we will be buying more of them in future.