Annual Review: Year Four

Posted on 7/1/2010 by cheesefairy

I never knew how badly I wanted you until I saw that first positive pregnancy test, that first faint line.

I went off to a meeting that day, an all-staff meeting. I was bored, but smiling. I had a secret. I drank all the free tea and ate all the free food and smiled to myself.

I didn’t tell anyone until two days later. Four weeks pregnant hardly counts. I knew that. I told people anyway.

Oh and then you grew from that speck to a marble, marble to a grapefruit, grapefruit to a basketball, basketball to a

…baby.

It’s a baby, I said when you were born.

When you were born, after all the stress and cervical checks and really long shower and really short pushing stage, I thought you were the most beautiful baby in the world. Your huge, round head. Your plump fists. Your little nose and smirky lips and the very lightest dusting of fine hairs on your head.

We took a lot of pictures of you. You were probably six months old when I looked at those newborn pictures and said, wow. Not as cute as I remember.

What? said maternal side, pulling out her switch to whip me.
Ugly! said realistic side.

You had pimples. You had blotchy red skin. You had a blocked tear duct. Your hands and feet were scaly because your amniotic swimming pool had been drying out / I wasn’t drinking enough water / he were a week past your due date.

Saint Aardvark said it best (and has said it repeatedly over the many years I have known him): All newborn babies look like Winston Churchill.

6 months later, I could see that. But then, at six months, you were the most beautiful baby. Gorgeous blond hair. Huge blue eyes. Pudgy like a Buddha. Still toothless.

And then, when you were a year old, I looked at the pictures from 6 months and said,

Kind of funny looking, really, isn’t he?
What?
The kid is funny looking.

The grandparents are tsking. I know. You are many, many things, Trombone.

A genius,
rhythmic
and musical
and friendly
and funny
and curious. Very very curious.

You are gorgeous when you smile.

***

If you were to ask me, “Cheesefairy, how would you judge your ability to live in the moment, from 1 – 10,” I would probably score myself at 4. Maybe at 3.

I used to live a lot in the past, but when I stopped being able to remember it accurately, I switched to the future. Partly this is out of necessity; it really is important when managing a household and two small children to know what you’re doing tomorrow and next week and whether or not you’ll need to buy bread and milk or just bread. If you run out of bread! If you don’t sweep the floor 8 times a day! If child A has sniffly nose starting Saturday morning and vacation starts Thursday morning, will child B be insufferable or merely miserable by the time it is time to get in the car?

And you say I suck at algebra.

But then it seems, also out of necessity, I spend a great deal of time in the present. Who is crying. Has he stopped yet. Is the sun out. Look, they’re playing together. Listen, it’s quiet. Just right now. Just right now.

***

This week leading up to your birthday has been chaos. We are leaving town on your birthday, on our first family vacation. No, not the camping trip, this is just a small jaunt but still, the planning. I am planning, planning, planning and then you got sick. And then your dad got sick, really sick, too sick to move. And then your brother got sick. And so here I am, on your birthday eve-eve, trying to be eloquent and really, what I want is to have there be no more bullshit, thanks.

How non-eloquent. Parenthood: The non-eloquence.

***

I have always tried to be realistic. I keep my standards low and my hopes high. Don’t ever read this and think I didn’t love being your mother. I did. I do. Some days are easier than others.

***

The first birthday party we had for you was in my parents’ backyard. We ate lemon thyme shortbread.
The second was at our house. We ate strawberry ice cream cake.
The third was at my parents’ again. We ate cupcakes, little ones.
This year we will be at a lake, watching fireworks because you share your birthday with Canada.

This year has been a big one. This year is the year you:

– learned how to make friends
– discovered superheroes
– started dressing yourself
– and eating a relatively balanced diet again
– experimented with different screams and yells and tantrum techniques
– stopped napping regularly
– started riding a tricycle
– became brave enough to play with the scary kids
– decided you were an authority on almost everything
– lost your phobias of noise, sheep and scary things
– found your voice and imagination.

It’s incredible. I don’t even like fireworks but I think you deserve them.

***

As a mother, I think I do OK. It still weirds me out to hear kids refer to me as Trombone’s mom. I have everyone else convinced, but four years later I still sometimes feel like an imposter. Like the babysitter. I look at photos from before he was born, even just the year before, and I was so young. I can’t objectively say that I looked younger then, because I think it’s like reading old writing; the stuff you wrote last year is always better than what you’re writing right now. But I feel older now, especially since we added Fresco to the mix. Suddenly, my eyes are lined, puffy, my slouch is more pronounced. I feel older when I look at my old smile, my old chin, my old clothes.

I went digging in a box in our storage room to find a cushion for a booster seat – it was in a giant storage bin that also contained a Christmas tree stand and an empty hanging basket (of course) – and I found a box of pre-pregnancy clothes. Tiny tank tops I had bought on CafePress. Concert t-shirts. Itty bitty useless bras. These clothes are suitable dress up clothes (except the thong that has a squirrel that goes wheeeeeee! on it) for my kids now. They are dress up clothes not just because they are small but because they belong to a person who is not me. They were a costume I wore when I was that other person.

***

I attempted to cut Trombone’s hair while he and Fresco were in the bath. His hair is thick, straight, blond. It is very warm on his head. Both of the children need haircuts but Trombone actually asked me to cut his because he claims he will be cooler with it short. I got halfway done and he got cold, wanted to get out of the bath, said he liked the hair fine.

But…I said.
Yeah, it’s fine, he said.

The right side is short. The left side is long.

That night, after the bath, when he smiled at himself in the mirror and did a little pose and said it’s fine, I like it mummy, he was the most beautiful child.

The next morning I thought, oh god. I have to fix that.

Magic.

Four years of slogging and stress and anger and tears and confusion and questions, so many questions, and laughter and sadness and all of it surrounded, rainbow-bubbled, by magic.

Four years of every day knowing he is the most beautiful child, within and without, and every new day, thinking, no TODAY he is the most beautiful child. Today. He could not possibly be more beautiful than he is right now.

Four years today. And counting.

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Just Like A Vacation

Posted on 6/30/2010 by cheesefairy

You know that Blue Rodeo song? It’s pretty, isn’t it.

When I used to work out of the home, I took vacations very rarely. In part, because the days before the vacation were so whirlwind, chock-filled with tasks and lists and leaving things so that when I got back my desk wouldn’t be a flaming pile of poo. Invariably, the last day of work before my vacation, I would be at the office late, leaving file folders strategically placed and post-its written in my neatest hand and then, by the time I was on vacation, it would take me hours to actually come down from the hell of preparing for it.

I am choosing to think that this is the case in my current job as well. It is either that or that there are gods and those gods are angry and those angry gods are telling me No! Don’t Go To The Vacation! Bad Shit Will Happen!

So today is Wednesday. We are due to leave tomorrow for Penticton. This morning I unveiled the first of the kids’ vacation gifts: two rolly suitcases, one with Spiderman and one with Hello Kitty. They were ecstatic and immediately set to rolling them about on the hardwood floor so I had to tell them to stop as it was only 6:10 am.

Oh did I mention they’ve been getting up earlier and earlier every day? Yesterday it was 4:45. Today a bit later. I am so tired I can’t see my own cornea. Also they have colds and there is snot everywhere.

SA came down with heinous flu-like symptoms on Sunday night and has been home, in agony, with a headache and fever ever since. Yesterday’s doctor said it looked like allergies and a virus or maybe just one or the other, here, try some Reactine. I said it looked like a sinus infection but I can’t prescribe drugs yet, since my medical degree is from Crack of My Ass University. No respect!

Anyway, he decided to go to work today to show his boss how sick he is.

I decided to take the kids to Safeway and get supplies for the road trip tomorrow. My mom called just before we left and while I was talking to her, the kids started fighting over the suitcases. Who gets Spiderman. Who gets Hello Kitty. Who gets to LOOK at Spiderman. Etc. So I went into the bathroom and closed the door. Heard screaming. Came out to find Trombone with his arm around Fresco’s neck. Lost it.

Safeway was great. Quiet! Except for the Michael Bolton.

Next errand: getting the cat to the cat kennel. Maybe not strictly necessary because if SA is still that sick (ie: sweaty, moaning, unable to bend over) he won’t be coming with us to Penticton so he could stay home with the cat but I know if I cancel the cat kennel, SA will be OK to come with us and then we’ll have nowhere to put the cat.

Here’s a fun one: cat in the carrier, kids in the car, car to the kennel. Say it 5 times fast!

Engage in brief conversation with next door neighbour on my way to the car to put the cat food in / get the carrier and bring it upstairs. Next door neighbour tells me about her friends who were in Europe while their pug was looked after by relatives. Pug got a scratch on its eye and had to have its eye replaced. “Do they do prosthetic dog eyes?” I wonder. “Probably,” she says, “they do prosthetic testicles. In different sizes.”

I start to giggle and I don’t stop for three more minutes.

Back upstairs to convince the cat to get in the carrier. Doesn’t help that the kids are yelling, “Seamus! Time to go to the kennel!”

The cat is underneath our bed, at the back by the wall. He will not be lured out with any number of treats. Though I have left the children downstairs, the cat and I (and possibly people as far as Israel) can hear them loud and clear. The cat is not budging. Time is passing. I feel bad, because he is a damaged cat anyway and he is fearful of people but I have to: I yell at him. I tell him I just want a good night’s sleep and for there to be no more snot. I tell him I don’t want to take him to Surrey to a kennel but I have to. I tell him I don’t really want to drive the kids to Penticton all by myself. He is unmoved. So I rattle a plastic bag at him and he runs out from under the bed. I get him in the carrier.

Get the kids. Get the cat. Get to the car. Get Trombone in the car. Buckling Fresco in his seat, I smell something. Of course. Now is the time to poop! Please! Do!

BUT! It is all right! I do not have to take everyone out because I have already packed the diapers for our trip in the trunk! Ha! I change Fresco’s diaper in the front seat of the car. Buckle him in. Start the car. The radio is set to the traffic station. It says, “There is an accident on [the road you were planning to take].” Seriously, it wasn’t even on for two seconds. First item.

I turn off the ignition and pull out the map book. I am going to Surrey, you see, to a cat kennel I’ve never visited before. My directions are from google. Now I need alternate directions. My map book is incomprehensible. I stare at it for a minute or two. I am so tired.

“Mommy?”
“Yes Trombone.”
“I do have to go to the bathroom after all.”

Did you guess this is a conversation we already had? You’re right.

BUT! It’s all right! Because if we go back upstairs I can look up alternate directions on google while Trombone uses the bathroom!

On our way back down to the car we run into a different neighbour coming from the gym. We chat pleasantly for a minute and then I go to open the door to the garage and – shit! We have a little electronic scanner that opens the outside doors and I took mine off my keychain when I was in the car because I need it to open the garage door. And I left it in the car. Which I can’t get to without the scanner to open the door.

The car where the cat still is, by the way.

BUT! It’s all right! Because my neighbour hasn’t gone far, and I know her name and call her back and she lets me in.

“Prosthetic dog testicles,” I mutter to myself.

Back in the car, cat yowling, kids’ bowels cleansed, we drive our alternate route. Ha ha! I think. I take the correct exit off the highway and the directions I wrote down say turn right. But there is no right. So I turn left, on faith. Maybe there will be a right turn soon?
Maybe the directions know something I don’t?
Or maybe – just maybe – they are trying

– to fuck me?

Yep. That’s right.

BUT! It’s all right! We see the Surrey Transfer Station! turn around and end up on the correct road.

(I double checked the directions when I got home. I wrote them down right. There is no right turn. Fuck you google maps.)

Many, many winding roads and numbered avenues through farmland later, we arrive at the cat kennel. I think. I go up to the door and ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. I look at the piece of paper I printed with the address. It’s correct but there is no phone number. Then I take the path around back and find a cat kennel. Whew. Leave the cat. Almost leave the children.

Drive back.

Eat lunch.

Plan to nap. So tired.

Oh but of course today the children aren’t napping. Why would they? Fresco is awake and shrieking because he napped for 20 minutes in the car. Poor dear, he missed the Surrey Transfer Station! And Trombone is busy packing his Hello Kitty suitcase.

I can’t nap.

BUT! It’s all right! SA is home. He saw a different doctor, who diagnosed a sinus infection and gave him the big antibiotics so he should be on the mend pretty soon.

Prosthetic testicles.

And I just remembered I left the dirty diaper in the trunk of the car.

(PS: Will have much more delicate, less pissy post up tomorrow for Trombone’s birthday)

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Who Invented the Shower: A Question I Ask (Almost) Every Day But Am Too Lazy To Google

Posted on 6/22/2010 by cheesefairy

Today in the bathroom at the berry farm, while I was holding the stall door closed with my foot for Trombone and feeling very highschool because of it, another mom with a babe in arms said something about regretting wearing her hair in a ponytail that day because now it had to stay in a ponytail and aiiieee.

“Yeah well I can’t take this hat off,” I said, in a rare display of oneupmanship. I had put on the hat while out picking berries in the fields because hey guess what, strawberry fields are hot places.

“Totally,” she said, “that was me yesterday. I was all, hey I’m not showering, forget it.”

Then we had a boring conversation about showers and oh my god showers and showers oh. my. god, as mothers do.

I know for some people, daily showers are non-negotiable. I am flexible, although sometimes that 7 minutes is all I get in a day (like today!) so I just go ahead and TAKE IT and if I come out and the children have coloured on each other with non-washable markers (true story!) so be it.

So be it.

I am saying that a lot lately. And we haven’t even LEFT for our vacation yet.

Then I was thinking about showers and I couldn’t decide which shower was better: the first shower after giving birth or the hangover/headache shower. And then I remembered all the other showers that stand out among the boring, just-get-clean-and-get-out showers, so I decided to make a list.

The Five Best Showers Of All Time According To Me:

1. Hangover/headache shower.

Hangover: You wake up. You can’t move. Coffee would be the right thing, but the sound of the word “coffee,” even uttered silently, bangs from one side of your head to the other like a marble and makes you feel nauseated. You drag yourself out of bed and go to the shower, where you sit, face against your knees, water beating against your head, for up to an hour, until the sound of the word “coffee” in your head makes you feel like living and even like doing a little tapdance.

Headache: See above, but without same sense of moral failing.

2. Childbirth shower.

When I was in labour with Trombone, I spent three hours in the shower. The hospital showers are … they are …

…so fucking amazing. I’m sorry. Words fail me.

Three hours. I would feel worse for the planet but it’s labour. All bets are off. So be it.

3. Post childbirth shower

On the other hand, once the baby is out and OK and you’re euphoric (all best case scenarios, I know) you get to have a shower. A shower I still think about fondly. While I was in labour with Fresco, one of the things that kept me focused was “after this you get to have a shower.”

It’s the one where you get all the blood and gore and I DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT-ALL off your body and you get to be one person showering again and the baby is over there and it’s like a brand new world of showering splendor.

One you should enjoy while you can because now that you have a baby you are in the same club as people who talk to strangers in public bathrooms about how awesome and rare showers are. Dignity, you fickle bedfellow.

(I suspect it’s not as good for post c-section births…or is it?)

4. The Saturday Shower

In our house, there’s another grown up around on the weekends. That means on Saturdays and Sundays I get a shower that is generally longer than 7 minutes, frequently free of noise (at least if there IS noise I can shut the bathroom door without feeling like a neglectful Nellie) and blissfully thorough. One time without thinking I skipped a Saturday shower. I was all, hey, no, I can do it later, or, you know, tomorrow. What? Are you crazy?

5. Skipped Yesterday Shower/That Camping Trip Was Awesome BUT Shower

All that extra dirt! All that extra sweat! All that yesterday and the day before yesterday ennui that you can now rinse away, down the drain, the better to rain on you another day.

Runners Up: rain showers. Hotel showers. No hot water for three days showers.

Do you also keep lists of the best ever showers? Would you like to reflect on them now? Please, do.

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Notes From Mother’s Journal: 1,000 Words

Posted on 6/16/2010 by cheesefairy

Dear Fresco: Are you trying to kill us? Because if you kill us, there will be no one around to get you blueberries from the freezer. Trombone is not tall enough. Also, he can’t read so who will read you stories if you kill us? Please stop trying to kill us.

Dear Fresco’s bowels: 5:20 am is not the right time to move.

Dear Trombone: Nothing. We’re cool right now, kid.

***

Trombone went to a birthday party on the weekend and he got a goody bag with a clown nose. The kind with an elastic that goes over your head. Happily, this solved the problem of what to take for show and tell on Tuesday’s “Everyone Gets Show And Tell? OMG! We’re Freaking OUT!” preschool class. He took the clown nose.

“When he put it on, everyone laughed,” said his teacher.
“Yeah, that’s good,” I said. I am sucking ass at small talk lately.

It’s because of the time thing. Summertime means FUNTIME which means lots of time with the kids. Festivals. Parades. Street Fairs. If I worked outside the home full time I would be very excited about spending lots more time with the kids but as I see them every day for 12 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, mostly Summertime means “re-evaluate your priorities and make sure you get some time to yourself because when you don’t you are not a very nice person.”

I get miserly with 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there. I will not get up a second before 6:30. I will not go to bed a second before 9:40. I cancel engagements, cite vapours. I hide from the world because I fear I will be short, say something regretful.

On our way home from school on Tuesday I said, “So everyone laughed when you put on your clown nose?”
“Yep,” said Trombone.
“And how did that make you feel,” I said, sounding even to my own accustomed ears, very psychologist-y.
“Good!” said Trombone, “I feel happy when I make my friends laugh.”

I’ve got to write that down, I thought. So that someday when he is filled with angst, between jobs, he can say to me, “What did I want to be when I was almost four years old?” And I can say, “SupermanSpidermanBatmanIronman and a Monster Truck. And you liked to make your friends laugh.”

***

I should smile more. All those jerks on the street who implore me to smile, they’re right! Sorry jerks! I’m still going to call you that because no one should tell strangers on the street what to do, but you’re right. I should smile more. I saw myself on TV, and I look serious. Far more serious than I feel at any given moment.

***

I think we are going to get Trombone a camera for his birthday. He is only turning four – I KNOW! FOUR! – so it’s not going to be a Supafly Hipsterama Digital SLR or anything but still, it needs to be something that doesn’t say “Elmo loves cameras!” when you press the button.

There are some wild toys out there. There are electronic toys more sophisticated than my 5 year old cell phone. Yesterday I saw a toy blowdryer. It didn’t make wind, it just made noise. There are some toys that I just don’t understand.

Lately while Trombone is at preschool, I am the person who runs errands and neglects her younger child’s development, so Fresco and I have been looking at toys and getting groceries and going to coffee shops.

OK, the coffee shop thing is good for his development; it teaches him how to sit at a table and eat a muffin and he is very skilled at this. But one time a couple weeks ago it wasn’t even a coffee shop, it was a McDonald’s. How disgusting! The muffin tasted like a Strawberry Shortcake doll. Remember the scented ones? Do they still have those scented dolls or is that against the law now? There is a girl in Trombone’s preschool class who loves Strawberry Shortcake so I asked her about the smelly dolls thing but she just looked at me like I was unhinged.

I still have mine – not Strawberry Shortcake, though, I have Raspberry Tart – and it’s (she’s) 30 years old and it (she) still smells. Just like a McDonald’s muffin.

At the McDonald’s in question, one of those ones in an outside mall where you drive from store to store (I know, but I was at Canadian Tire buying a tent and I really had to pee and the McDonald’s was closest and we did walk across the parking lot) the cashier was the friendliest McDonald’s cashier of all time. She talked to Fresco and asked him if he wanted his muffin heated up and told me to sit down and brought our food to us. It was a new McDonald’s so it was all done up like a real restaurant. But the coffee still tasted like McDonald’s coffee, which is to say, slightly better than American truck stop coffee but just slightly.

***

When we go away, with our new tent and roof racks and noise canceling headphones, we will have to board our cat.

Yes! We have a cat! We have had him for 7 years. I know this only because I dug up his file (Yes! I keep a file on my cat!) to see if he had vaccinations because the kennel requires them.

Cat kennels have made some progress since the last time we boarded our cat (2005, says the file). Now the cat kennels feature luxury rooms and in-room movies (called “The Cat Sitter” and I am dying to see it) and wet treats after 9 pm. Our cat, who is sadly neglected because we are bad people and have two small children, will think he has died and gone to heaven. We never let him watch movies.

***

As Fresco says at the end of his stories, “And that’s IT.”

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The Revolution Will Be Noisy

Posted on 6/9/2010 by cheesefairy

It is how I picture the fallout of a natural disaster; people running around without any sense of reason, arms flailing, mouths open and screaming. Some grab for wheeled objects and try to ride them, others simply pick up the wheeled objects and throw them to clear a path.

Like a barn full of horses who smell smoke.

Like inmates who have never left their asylum, suddenly faced with an open door.

While the people running the asylum stand back and watch.

Yes. I took both children to the drop in gymnasium today.

Oh, Motoring Munchkins. A big gymnasium with trampolines, plastic cars to drive around, tricycles, balls and hoops, hockey sticks, ropes to swing from and best of all, other children to freak out with. Only $3.25 for the first munchkin and $1.00 for additional munchkins.

I go infrequently enough that I forget between bi-annual visits just what it is that makes my heart sink with dread when my child says, hey, maybe we could go to the gym today. I know the heart-sinking dread is serious because it has caused me to lie to the child on more than one occasion, taking advantage of the fact that he cannot yet read or use my computer so he has no idea whether Motoring Munchkins is on, canceled or having a Halloween party on any given day.

“No, Tim (the gymnastics guy) is sick with scurvy today.”
“Oh no!”
“Yeah. Pirates. So we gotta just go jump in puddles.”

Sometimes, though, there is just nothing else. Sometimes you are too tired to live. And the children need running. And you are between illnesses, so going to a place with 400 other kids, most of whom have the personal hygiene of wild goats, is your best bet for catching a rotovirus or flu just in time for the last week of school.

I love/hate it.

Love: the kids love it. They get to go batshit crazy and no one can say anything about it.
Hate: No one says anything about it. I still feel compelled to make them apologize if they hurt someone. Which means a) I have to be watching them (both) (at the same time) and b) no one else feels so compelled so I just get irritated with other peoples’ kids. And their parents.

Love: Run! Be free!
Hate: Always in opposite directions. Seriously. It was better today than 6 months ago but Fresco also ALWAYS runs for the front door just when I’m helping Trombone on to the trampoline. The front door that has a big red button you can press that makes it open. BUTTONS! Who needs trampolines when there are buttons! Screw that, have you seen this VENDING MACHINE? I have been heard to say, on more than one occasion,
“Why did I pay $4.25 to bring you here when all you want to do is stand in the lobby and beg for chocolate milk?”

Moms. They love you.

Love: No one is talking to me or asking me any questions. They just run, go crazy and uh, that’s it.
Hate: No. I love everything about that.

However, delicate flower that I am, I do hate that the noise level in that gymnasium is like 4,000 decibels above the ear splitting level and that this puts me into a sort of coma from within which I can’t make conversation with other adults, not even a banal chitchat about how old your daughter is or whether your boy likes bikes or trucks better, because I have to scream to be heard and then I can’t get the kids to stay still so I can tell them it’s almost time to go so I have to scream at them too and then they scream back, what a fun game! and then they run away and I really have to pee so I have to somehow rope them in without the benefit of actual rope and —

–suddenly I feel like I am in a war movie. And I am the loser soldier who’s going to get killed in the first battle and all these other parents, standing around casually, having conversations, knowing each other because they come here more than twice a year, they are the ones who are going to make it home alive.

It stresses me out! Some of those people only have one kid and that is just the perfect amount for one person. That is good math. But some of them have three kids and they know their way around the gym so the parents don’t have to pay as much attention (although some of them *could,* in my opinion but nevermind) and they wear earplugs, maybe? Or they’re just used to The Din? I – I just can’t get used to The Din. My kids (and yes, me too) react to The Din like a giant shower of sugar has just poured over them and they open their mouths and noses and skin cells and take it all in WOW WOW WOW and the only way to get them to come down is to go outside. Where the silence is cliche-riddeningly deafening.

(Wow, poor phrase!)

(Yes, there IS a band called The Din.)

Love: That when you leave Motoring Munchkins, you are in Queen’s Park so you are immediately welcomed back to the arms of hundreds of big, green trees that soothe you and cushion you and bring you back down to earth.
Love: Sometimes, (like today!) the children nap afterwards.
Love: Friday is the last day of Motoring Munchkins until the Fall so when I say “Tim’s on vacation! Probably in Australia with the Wiggles!” I won’t be lying. Much.

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