The Baby’s Rider

Posted on 12/29/2008 by cheesefairy

I just found this in the paperwork from Fresco’s birth. Wish I’d seen it months ago; we would all be a lot less deaf now.

Performance (ie: sleeping, eating, cooing) of The Baby Known As Fresco, hereafter referred to as The Baby, is contingent upon the following conditions being met. Any failure to meet these conditions in full will result in unreliable performance and an unsatisfactory baby / caregiver experience.

1. No diapers, at any time, are to be applied to any part of The Baby’s person.

2 a. The Baby must consume breastmilk only in a room which is dark and quiet. Noise and light distract The Baby from his task of consuming breastmilk.
b. The Baby reserves the right to use his teeth while extracting breastmilk.
c. The Baby reserves the right to practice climbing curtains while extracting breastmilk.
d. The Baby reserves the right to refuse breastmilk at any time and instead blow spit against the breastmilk carrier’s neck.

3. The breastmilk carrier’s neck must be available at all times for blowing spit against.

4. The flesh of any human or animal must be available at all times for The Baby’s gnawing pleasure.

5. The Baby reserves the right to tip the cat’s water dish at any time.

6. The Baby must have any surface in the room available to him for his standing practice. This might be a knee, a shoulder, a head of hair or the cat’s water dish.

7. The Baby must NOT be removed from situations deemed dangerous or messy. These situations include but are not limited to:

– chewing on power cords
– splashing in spilled water from cat’s water dish
– eating cat’s food
– licking toddler’s potty
– licking kitchen floor
– playing patty cake with Reflected Baby in the fireplace

8. The Baby does not like soothers. Except when he does.

9. The Baby will not have a nap until every surface in the house has been scaled, licked, gnawed or pooped on. The Baby is quite serious.

10. The baby will not be restrained in any way. Being restrained prevents The Baby from practicing walking. Restraints include but are not limited to:

– car seats
– strollers
– baby carriers
– your arms
– high chairs
– cribs
– play “yards”

11. Do not sit The Baby down. Sitting down amounts to restraint.

12. The Baby must have unfettered access to the following:

– toys belonging to toddler, especially The Little Lego and matchbox cars
– the cat and his food and water
– carpet lint
– dust bunnies
– any Cheerio, regardless of age, condition or location
– any venetian blind cord long enough to kill by choking / strangulation
– TV Week magazine
– bananas

13. This list subject to change at any time. Notification of change will be sent by email, carrier pigeon or telepathy. The Baby is not responsible for any messages not received.

Posted in | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Around the Corner And Down the Way

Posted on 12/26/2008 by cheesefairy

“We’re coming,” I told my mom on the phone Wednesday morning. Snow dumping from the sky, incessant. Children running madly around the house, cabin-fevered after days of impassable sidewalks.
“OK,” she said, “Your father is worried you won’t make it around the corner.”
“What corner?”
“Um, I think all of them?”

While Fresco napped, we listened to AM 730 ALL TRAFFIC ALL THE TIME and marveled at how many semi-trucks had jack-knifed. We chose our route carefully to avoid hills and any semi-trucks. We loaded up the car with presents, food, more food, other food, overnight bags, our sled, our snow shovel, our children. We drove carefully down roads that were not that bad, really. And then we turned off a slushy main-ish road onto a side street and SA said, “Oh. I see.”

The car’s wheels found the grooves in the snow and locked in like we were on a roller coaster. We proceeded with caution and in a few minutes were within sight of my parents’ house. My father had dug out a parking spot in front of the house and his truck was sitting in it, which meant we had a spot in the garage. Sweet! 10 feet from the garage, as we turned into the alley, we crunched to a halt and the car stalled.

With my dad, my mom, the neighbour down the alley looking on, we concluded our hazardous yet incident-free journey with a sudden stop requiring fervent shoveling to get us moving again.

“I guess he meant THAT corner,” I remarked to no one in particular.

After that, a sweet, mellow Christmas.

Christmas morning at 4:50 AM, Trombone woke up and spoke, clear as a bell into the silent morning of an old sleeping house where the walls are thin enough to see through, “So. I had a good nap.” (he claimed, later, that what he said was, “I don’t want to get up,” but I think this is unlikely.)

Fresco, who was sleeping across the hall, woke up and said, “Addaaabbaaadaadaaa,” in his perky, gee whiz morning is great! oh no, I won’t be going back to sleep just yet! voice.

SA and I woke up and might have said something rude. Then we went down with Fresco and watched the fireplace channel.

Trombone, however, is so intent on being contrary that he went back to sleep. Until EIGHT O CLOCK. On CHRISTMAS. I do not remember the last time he slept until 8:00 am. Period.

Of course, once he was up, he tore strips of light through the house with his excitement.

Fresco liked his first Christmas just fine. He got a doll with long hair so he has some hair to pull. He likes her a lot. Mostly he enjoyed his day because my dad will hold his hands and walk him through the house for hours without complaining. Fresco really likes to walk. I usually insist he sit down after a few minutes because my back is sore. He doesn’t like that.

No one was sick. No one shouted. No one even cried very much. All the food turned out fantastically. By the time we left for home late yesterday afternoon, the roads were clear and even Fresco’s unjustified, incessant screaming fit for most of the drive didn’t faze us much. It was good to be there and it was good to come home. The best of both worlds.

And the boys got matching pajamas. If it gets better than that, I don’t want to know.

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Calm Before The

Posted on 12/24/2008 by cheesefairy

It just keeps snowing and snowing and snowing! Not news to you East of Surrey people but hereabouts it’s like I’m a goldfish in a tiny bowl, peeking out the window every time I pass one, gasping at the snow whirling in the streetlights, at the trees that line the boulevard outside our window starting – again – to bow with the weight of it.

Originally intending a quick trip to my parents’ this morning and then back to spend the night in our own beds, only to return to their place on Christmas morning, we have realized the folly of this (my new favourite word is folly; I recite it as I walk down the street, as I try to change Fresco’s diaper, as I attempt to complete a to-do list containing more than three items) in the face of all the snow and slush that is forecast to fall from the sky in the next 24 hours. So we are going to go there as soon as it is light and stay there overnight.

We hope. I haven’t actually run this by my mother yet, as it is too early to call her.

I suspect she won’t have a problem with it if I tell her I’m bringing my own bacon. And the grandchildren.

Happy holidays all you splendid people. For your own entertainment, please imagine an animated GIF right here with blinky Christmas tree lights around a Santa head that says Ho! Ho! Ho!

Posted in | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

First Day of Winter

Posted on 12/21/2008 by cheesefairy

It was a snowy day. It looked like this:

This snowman had it coming

This snowman had it coming

I talked to our neighbour who was carrying several loads of food and party-type supplies from his house. “Are you going away for Christmas?” I said. “No,” he said, “It’s our little girl’s first birthday party. We’re having it in the park.” Ah, best of luck, then.

We found a sled in our storage locker and we took ourselves to Safeway. Fresco rode on my back and had a nap. Trombone rode on the sled. We bought groceries. The staff was really solicitous because there were hardly any customers. The Safeway has been renovated and part of their renovation agreement appears to include snow clearing because for the first time in two snowy winters attending this Safeway, we could actually walk up a sidewalk that was bare and into the store without fearing for our lives.

We came home. We had hot chocolate. We had lunch. Then there was a lot of this:

We're going to concuss ourselves!

We're going to concuss ourselves!

and this:

And we're going to concuss you too!

And we're going to concuss you too!

so Saint Aardvark and I had a low-toned conversation amidst the din and clatter of our children and decided to Release The Kitchen a slight four days before Christmas.

After Trombone’s nap, while I distracted him with a movie, SA set up the kitchen. And then there was much microwaving of broccoli and bacon and baking of tomato and boiling of potato and much, MUCH washing of hands. “Your hands are DIRTY Daddy. You must WASH THEM.” He thinks he is getting revenge on us. We are happy to let him think that.

peeping Tom sold separately

peeping Tom sold separately

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

There is a Lot of Useful Information in This Post But It’s Buried in Inconsequentialia

Posted on 12/19/2008 by cheesefairy

I was at the mall yesterday and I saw a little girl, hopped up on candy canes and dollar store chocolate, skipping madly away from Santa’s Wonderland and singing, “JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL RAAAAAWWWWWWK” and I suddenly saw both how Trombone might think the song needed some improvement and how he might have mis-heard “right” for “rock” initially and is now just being ornery about it. I know someone else in our family who hates to admit she is wrong – I wonder who it could be.

Also he spent the night away last night so I am feeling more fondly towards him.

Fresco and I spent some time together yesterday afternoon while we waited for the local tire shop to put on our snow tires. Having won over the overworked tire guys by having Fresco look up at the giant stack of tires in the showroom and clap heartily, we only had an hour to kill while the work was done.

That is why I am happy to shop in my neighbourhood. Earlier in the day when I had been planning a big outing on my own (with babysitting in my own home!) I had called a few bigger places that were near other places where I could get other stuff done. The Canadian Tire said it would be a three hour wait, the Costco parking lot gave me hives so I left in a hurry and the Wal-Mart is out in its own pasture near Seattle so I would have had nothing to do while I waited except, well, shop at Wal-Mart. One week before Christmas.

Granted, an hour is still a pretty long time for a baby and it is also a pretty long time to be Uptown in the Mizzle. I would say that on the Scale of General Unpleasantness, an hour Uptown in the Mizzle with a baby is almost equivalent to three hours at an isolated Wal-Mart.

We mailed a parcel at the post office and talked to some local flavour about People Today Who Don’t Know How to Raise Children Present Company Excluded Of Course. Then we walked a bit but it was kind of chilly. When Fresco is by himself in the buggy he sits in the front seat and he doesn’t like it nearly as much. The back seat allows him to hold on to my red purse of love and chew on the handle. In the front, he just sits there and looks around. This bores him. If I give him the red purse of love, he just drops it in the slush and then I take it away. This makes him mad. So we went in the mall and looked at the lights. I was *this close* to taking him to see Santa because SURPRISE there was only one person waiting and Santa looked sad about that but then I didn’t. I was sort of afraid Fresco would give Santa The Peoples’ Elbow.

We got our car back at five o clock and it took almost 20 minutes to get home because Uptown The Mizzle has RUSH HOUR! Who knew? All these people come out of the buildings at 6th and 6th and 7th and who knows what-all and then they all try to drive the same direction. Jeepers. We took a circuitous route through the less-traveled Queen’s Park neighbourhood and it was then I appreciated my newly applied snow tires because those roads were not clear in the least.

I had been pleased, earlier in the day, with how civilized it was to drive around the day after a snow fall, after days of freezing temperatures. The roads were…fine. It was like Vancouver finally figured out how to deal with snow. It snowed, let’s go back to business as usual. I was writing a long, fascinating post in my head while I drove about how it’s about time and maybe we are a world-class city after all but then I remembered I was actually driving in Coquitlam when I thought that so I mentally rescinded it.

How’s Vancouver, you guys who live there? Is it civilized? Or do the suburbs get the snow plows in exchange for public transit?

Anyway, those side streets around the park, they were murder.

It’s no Ontario, mind you. (But I should like to belt whoever came up with “stormageddon.”[ Tim Cuprisin apparently. Huh.])

And finally, as of yesterday, two days before he becomes 8 months old, Fresco has finally broken gum with one tooth. And a great cry of joy was heard around the house. Because everyone knows the first tooth is the hardest. To celebrate, I gave him a hunk of bread for breakfast and he absolutely massacred it. Gotta go hide my chips.

I will eat the world with my one tooth! Starting with this gift!

I will eat the world with my one tooth! Starting with this gift!

Posted in | 5 Comments