Notes from Mother’s Journal

Posted on 3/26/2009 by cheesefairy

This morning I had a shower. It didn’t help. My hair has done that thing where it grows an inch overnight and goes from adorable shrubbery to overgrown lawn animal. Plus, on Sunday I dyed it and it is MADDDDD at me. Whoa is it mad. Refuses to do anything cute at all. Luckily today it is colder so I could wear a hat.

We went to the park, Queen’s Park, after much negotiation. Trombone likes to negotiate. I think it’s the age, I don’t really think he will be a lawyer someday; not that that would be the worst thing in the world. So you say, What should we do today? And he says, let’s go to the park! and then you spend the next 45 minutes trying to get him out the door.

I want to read this book
don’t you want to go to the park?
yes…
then come put your socks on
but I want to play with Fresco!
lots of time for that when we get home
OK
so come put your socks on
maybe after I cook some cookies in my kitchen / sit on the potty for half an hour / oh and I’ve always wanted to read Proust.

About a block away from the house, I notice that Fresco has already lost his hat. This is the 4th hat he has lost in the past let us say month and be generous. It’s ok, he has a hoodie. I pull up the hood. He pulls it off. Says, “MAwwwww!” Whatever. Get a cold head. What’s going to happen – you gonna get SICK some more? Silly baby, sickness doesn’t come from bare heads! It comes from the library! Anyway, your sickness doesn’t scare me. We’ve been healthy for three days; right now I am expecting the next virus to pop out of the bushes like a cartoon pervert.

At the end of the block we see the woman I like who walks her old, black dog at the same time every day. I like her because she always says hello and because back when we had three feet of snow on the ground, she plucked her dog’s pile of steaming poop from out of a rather awkwardly placed snowbank. I like her old, black dog with the grey around his mouth. He always barks at us in a friendly way. She has a partner who is friendly too. And he used to drive a yellow VW Rabbit but I haven’t seen it around in a while.

Trombone walks behind me as I push the buggy up the hill. He sings, “walking up the hill / walking up the hill / walking up the hill / and I am eating raisins.” We pass some women on their way down to the swimming pool. One compliments his hat. It is the chicken hat his grandma made him. I love this hat also and often borrow it because he and I have similarly sized heads despite our 32-year age difference.

At the entrance to the park, the sidewalk switches to forest trail. Very tall trees sway above us and there are lots of squirrels eyeing the buggy for crumbs. Fresco loves trees. He makes noises of amazement at them and if you pull a branch down for him to grab, he laughs. When we walk around our little townhouse complex, he stops and pats all the shrubbery and pokes all the plants.

Trombone picks up a stick with some greenery at the end of it and bangs it against the ground, shouting, “Whack! Whack!” Fresco dissolves into hysterics. The squirrels head off for friendlier ground.

We play on: the swings, the teeter totter, the firetruck and the things on springs that you rock back and forth on. We do not climb up to the tower where the slide is because someone is sleeping up there.

There are very few people in the playground. It is a cold day and this park is often colder because of the tree cover. I give Fresco my hat to wear and it comes down to his nose. He takes it off. I put it on. He takes it off. I put it on and pull his hood over it so he can’t get it off. He admits as how he does feel warmer and thanks me by saying, “MAWWWwwwwww!”

I think about how convenient a location this would be for a coffee cart. Just a little one, nothing fancy. (I have recently discovered – or admitted to myself – that I am officially addicted to TWO cups of coffee in the morning. It used to be one. Now it is two.) There is a snack bar that is open in the summer, with the water park and the petting farm. But in the dead of winter (OK, early spring, but still) there is nothing. The closest Starbucks is pretty far. On the other hand, the fire station is just across the street. I wonder if they would give me coffee if I went in and asked for it. Maybe if I had better hair.

A few people arrive and play and leave. Preschool is out and everyone is heading home for chicken soup and grilled cheese. Least that’s what it sounds like.

This woman that I have seen “around” since Trombone was a month old strikes up a conversation with me. She picks it up like we just left off talking a day ago but I’m certain I’ve only ever exchanged passing hellos. She tries to straighten Fresco’s hat for him and he loses his shit, starts screaming. Stranger anxiety, I am guessing. He pulled the same thing when we met elswhere yesterday and she is about the nicest stranger ever.

When we get home, I see Fresco’s hat on the floor. He had taken it off before we even left the house.

We eat lunch. Fresco has discovered that if he rocks himself back and forth in his chair-top booster seat, he can move the chair forward. One minute he is where I left him and the next he is at the table reaching for his bowl of yogurt. Aaaand dumping it on his head. I consider the possibility of another high chair. I reject it. Trombone eats his alphabet noodles with butter and parmesan cheese, then a bowl of yogurt because Fresco is having yogurt, then more alphabet noodles. I eat nachos. Both children think I am insane for this.

Loud, emphatic protests greet my suggestion of an afternoon nap, but when Trombone is done stomping his feet and turning his back on me to indicate his anger (just like a cat!) he does get into bed and agrees to just put his head down for a minute to see what happens. That was 70 minutes ago.

Fresco is convinced to sleep within 15 minutes and requires only some maintenance in the form of rocking at the 45-minute mark to get him back to sleep, hopefully until 3:30. 3:30 is today’s goal for everyone’s naps. Says I.

I just realized that I have not made shortbread this month. It is the 25th of March! But I do not have enough butter to make shortbread today. Perhaps after naps we will make a trip to Safeway for butter.

Not all days are like last Thursday. Some days are a great deal more peaceful and mundane. It averages out.

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Who’s Up For Some Hockey?

Posted on 3/25/2009 by cheesefairy

My post today at the Canada Moms Blog explores the hell of hockey-momdom.

(Do you think I’ll get exiled? Is Sweden still our country of choice for exile? I hope so. I have always wanted to learn Swedish. But they are hockey fans there, too, aren’t they. Must. Regroup!)

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Let’s Catch Up With A Nice, Bulleted Post!

Posted on 3/24/2009 by cheesefairy
  • We met a baby on the weekend who is 8.5 months old and has THIRTEEN TEETH? I saw them. I counted them. That’s crazy. Fresco is still working (very hard!) on number 4 tooth. I think his tumble last week actually pushed it back in his head. On the bright side, he is now refusing to go down the stairs unless I am there. Smarter than a cat! Yay!
  • He has also learned to say “Mawwwwww!” which makes him sound like a bleating lamb but is really his call for me. For the cat he says “kiiikiiii” with a kind of gutteral, phlegm-clearing on the “k” and a big scream of excitement at the end. Everything else is “gahhhh!” or “gahhhh?” or “GAHHHHHHH,” accompanied by pointing.
  • Trombone tried telling Fresco he was using an outside voice today and to stop it. That went over predictably well. Then he told me to stop laughing at him because he wasn’t being funny. So I did. But I kept laughing a little bit inside. My truffle-seeking piglet but this has been a long year.
  • Fresco slept through the night again last week. Then he woke up every two or three hours all night for the rest of the week.
  • Trombone and I had a big fight about his quilt.
  • I have started contributing to a new group blog, which is still under construction but has a gadzillion posts already. I should have a new post up tomorrow morning. I am in very good company there with some excellent Canadian writers.
  • Part of my silence here, lately, has been due to the need to find content for my posts there. And of course once there is pressure (the slightest, teensiest bit of pressure) to write something on a topic, even one as vague as “motherhood,” subtopic, “Canadian,” my brain seizes up and says no. You cannot write that. Or that. Or that. You suck! Shut up.

    But I got over it.

  • The other part of my silence here has been due to scheduling conflicts between me and the children.
  • I remember being in the place where buying those running shoes seemed like a good idea. (and that was only a month ago? Yeesh!) I think I must have been high. No, I remember, that was in the lull between colds. When you haven’t blown your (or anyone else’s) nose for two days straight you get COCKY.
  • But: the new babysitter mentioned in that above-linked post moved in next door on Sunday. Her family did a very smart thing. They hired all her teenage friends to heft boxes. They just moved from the building across the street so there was this steady stream of teenagers carrying boxes, like an army of giant ants, back and forth, forth and back, and then it was all done. Maybe I will wait until my children are teens and then use all their friends to move. By then we might be able to afford a bigger place that is not in Abbotsford. What could it possibly cost; 200, 300 bucks in pizza?
  • Today the children are sleeping. I rubbed Thai green curry paste into a pork roast and am hoping that it will taste good once it’s cooked. Nothing to do now but move forward.

Or, you know, around in circles, if that’s more your thing.

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Why Canada’s National Sport Gives Me Nightmares

Posted on 3/20/2009 by cheesefairy

When I was working and pregnant with my second child I had a conversation with a colleague on a Monday morning. He told me about his weekend. On Friday night he had played in a hockey tournament. Saturday morning: up at 4 am to take his son to hockey practice. Saturday afternoon: son’s hockey game. Sunday morning: up at 4 am again for daughter’s hockey practice.

“That’ll be your weekend in a few years,” he said, gesturing to my belly.
“Hell no, it will not,” I replied, “My children will not be playing hockey. My children will not even know what hockey IS until they are out of my house.”

I got a funny look for that. Because how could you deny your children the joy of hockey! Canada’s other official sport, besides lacrosse!

Easy. My deepest, most shameful anti-Canadian secret is this: I do not want to be a hockey mom.

Like many aspects of parenthood – sacrificing my personal hygiene, teaching a three-foot-tall person how to wipe his own butt, considering the implications of zee versus zed – that my kids might end up, well, sporty was not something that had crossed my mind until it was too late to turn back.

I am not sporty. My husband is not sporty. But I know enough about life to know that she sure does love to toss a curveball now and then so it would not at all surprise me if both of my children turned out to be hockey prodigies. Just to spite me.

I have a lot of relatives who love hockey. They follow the NHL teams. They play in fun leagues. They watch their kids play. They watch their friends’ kids play. They would probably watch gas station attendants play; they just love hockey. They would probably not even consider it a sacrifice worth noting to get up at 4 am on a weekend if it was for Hockey. (cue angel choir here)

I have tried to like hockey but I just couldn’t get interested. The game itself is just like any game but the fetish that accompanies it really puts me off. The big NHL stars and their huge salaries. The gratuitous violence. The song, “Big League,” by Tom Cochrane.

I have even been to a couple of games but I couldn’t stop thinking traitorous thoughts all the while, things like, “why does the crowd cheer louder when the dudes fight than when they score goals?” and “why is this crappy beer $9?” I know these thoughts are traitorous because when I shared them with friends I got that all-too-familiar, “What the hell is your problem – it’s HOCKEY!” look.

A couple years ago I even participated in a hockey pool at work. I had to – otherwise I would not have been able to have a conversation with anyone in the office for the entire 9 months of hockey season. Boy did I piss a lot of people off when I came in 2nd place having chosen my players based on their names.

So all my attempts to indoctrinate myself and be a good Canadian have failed and I find myself lately hoping against hope that my boys look away from the sticks and helmets and promise of million dollar salaries and toward a nice, quiet, free hobby. Horticulture, anyone? Web design?

I do not want to get up at 4 am to drive to a cold rink where I have to sit, hands warming around a cup of horrible Tim Hortons coffee, feigning interest and trying not to wince when the other parents yell things like “smash ’em!” and “way to pass, Bruce!” I do not want to spend my life savings on equipment and uniforms that will only fit for one season at a time. I do not want to do hockey laundry. Have you ever smelled a hockey bag? I do not want to sell those chocolate covered almonds as a fundraiser! Those chocolate covered almonds suck!

I just want to sleep in on Saturday mornings. That’s really all there is to it. At the moment, sleep-deprived as I am, the thought of getting up early on purpose, for sport, makes me fretful.

And so, when my older son sees kids outside playing street hockey, I hand him a book. When he grabs sticks in the park and bats at the pine cones and says, “I’m playing HOCKEY!” I ignore him and keep walking. When he makes a goal out of a chair and his baby brother and shoots his plastic cow into it and shouts “GOAL!” I weep a little for my own illusion that I have any control over this at all.

I don’t care if they’re gay or straight, folk singers or rappers, right or left wing. I just want my kids to be a) happy and b) not hockey players.

I sleep with my fingers crossed.

(Originally posted to the Canada Moms Blog)

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Into Every Life a Little of It Must Fall

Posted on 3/19/2009 by cheesefairy

We went uptown this morning because it was one of those days where you could stay in the house, sure, but there would be a trip to the hospital eventually because everyone was grumpy and clumsy and that means crying. Lots of crying. Fresco fell down two steps and by the looks of it smashed his top two teeth (only one of which is actually through the gum) into his lower lip so he had blood on his lip and oh the crying my lord the crying. Yes, yes, poor guy, but if he would for one second consider learning how to go DOWN stairs instead of just climbing them incessantly. Have some foresight. What are you, a cat? We’ve got the gate up at the third step so he can practice coming down the steps but he won’t practice, just climbs up and rattles the gate and yells at me and then, half the time, takes a step back and whoops.

Trombone woke up way too early because I had a shower (on the bright side, I had a shower) and was a bear all morning, asking me why I wouldn’t play with him and then turning his back on me when I answered and then turning back again and saying, “I’m not listening to you,” and then turning around again. So I kept sweeping the floor – honestly, that’s all I was doing, my hourly floor sweep, so that Fresco doesn’t eat coffee beans or peanut butter dollops or cat litter; you get the idea, it’s not like I was partying it up in the kitchen with Elvis Costello and some tequila – and he started crying at me about how he has no friends and he wishes he had some friends and I was all, oh yeah? Where are MY friends, hmm? Do you see me hanging out in here with MY friends?

Pop quiz: who is more immature, the almost-3-year-old or the just-turned-35-year-old?

– anyway. We walked uptown and I went to London Drugs and got some new markers because our old markers are a little dingy and some crackers because we are out of crackers. Waiting in line we were right near the Big Screen TV they have to demonstrate how wonderful Big Screen TVs are. Usually the BSTV is playing an Elton John live show and we dance along to Crocodile Rock and I laugh at Elton John’s glasses but today it was a live Eagles show and the Eagles were moaning on about their comeback album and how everyone just wants to hear Desperado and wahh wahh wahh. There in front of the BSTV, London Drugs has put two large leather armchairs and there are always people sitting in them, watching the BSTV and today those two people were obviously drunk.

The smell. I could smell how drunk they were. And also they were transfixed by the Eagles Live show. And then one of them started singing along.

I’m not saying if I had nothing else to do today I wouldn’t go drink a bunch of beer and then hang out in the comfy chairs at the London Drugs. I am totally not saying that.

But which line were we in? Carpal Tunnel Cashier line of course. With a heavy side dose of Dude with Unscannable Items and then for a bonus round we got to be The Till Closest to the Security System that Keeps Going Off / Oh My God is this Man Really Going to Strip Naked to Prove He isn’t Shoplifting?

“I’ve got a peaaaaaceful…..easssssssy feeling…”

“Mommy where are the crackers?”
“Right here.”
“Have we paid yet?”
“No, we have not. We are next in line.”
“What is that?”
“That is an ice cream freezer.”
“What is inside?”
“Ice cream.”

“..and I know you won’t let me doooooowwwwwwwwn,”

“What KIND of ice cream?”
“The cold kind.”
“Can I have some?”
“Not right now.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Because it’s winter.”
“It’s not FAIR.”
“Nope. It’s not.”

“…and I”m allllllllready standing…..on the ground..”

“I swear, it’s gotta be something in my jacket setting this thing off! Ha ha! Here, let me show you the inside of my jacket!”

“What’s the thing with the stripes?”
“That is a popsicle.”
“What does it taste like?”
“Sugar and fruit.”
“What kind of fruit?”
“All kinds of fruit.”
“Can I have one?”

Then I got a coffee from Starbucks which I don’t usually do but I couldn’t figure out how I was going to get the buggy in the down-the-street coffee shop that I like – it has a heavy door and opens inward and I think I would get looks if I left the children outside and also it would have been far too tempting to just sit inside and drink coffee and watch them watch me through the window.

Mean. I know. That’s why I went to Starbucks, where I risked it on the bold roast and it didn’t make my eyeballs shrivel up so I have newfound hope for Starbucks and their roasting style. I also snuck a cranberry lemon scone into my pocket (I didn’t steal it, I mean I snuck it past the kids) and…I just remembered it right now! Yay for blogging! It helps me remember my treats!

We got some fruit at the fruit store and some flowers at the flower store and a huge smiley faced beach ball at the dollar store and then we came home. As I was walking I put down my hood and my head got nice and misty. I drank my coffee while it was hot. And then “Southern Rain” by Cowboy Junkies popped into my head so I sang it all the way home.

Sadly we do not own that album and at first I could not find it on the Internet either (panic!) but then I did.

Southern Rain – Cowboy Junkies

Ah. Listening to Margo Timmins sing is kind of like taking a deep breath. Don’t we all feel better now?

As Trombone likes to say, “Enjoy the day!” (And if you find him any friends, please send them over.)

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