I am wearing the same jeans I wore the other day when we were at the park. I noticed something in my back pocket.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t collect and save these, so here is the question: who put these in my pocket? Also, (perhaps more important) how did I not notice?
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…just realized that I totally should have tried to work in a cleverly veiled Gollum/Bilbo reference. That would have good. Really, I would love to find an invisibility ring in my pocket – would totally come in handy on those days when I just want to sit quietly and read my book. for now, I just have a mini handful of pebbles. Perhaps I should investigate alchemy. It’s not difficult to learn, right?
I’m taking a few moments to sit and be still in my living room. It definitely feels like a stolen moment. I’ve just finished vaccuuming a few minutes ago and as I wrapped up the power cord, I heard a call from upstairs to “stay downstairs”. Luckily, neither of my guys are overly devious, so I have no cause for concern. They simply want to keep playing whatever game they’ve created without parental involvement. All I can hear is the sound of running up and down the hallway and various battle sounds.
They play so nicely together now. Something fantastic happened over the summer – they each discovered that they actually enjoy playing together; they’ve become friends. It’s what I hoped for from the moment I found out I was pregnant with Nathan. I really hope it sticks with them as they grow together.
Listening to them play and giggle together is one of the greatest sounds in the world. Now I’ve gotta go: I’ve been told it’s craft time.
Yesterday afternoon after dropping off Brendan at his first day of Senior Kindergarten, I noticed something amiss in my back garden: where there was once a beautiful sunflower there now stood a broken stalk. Here it is:
once a beautiful sunflower, now a broken stalk. sad
I wish that I had taken a picture of it before it was vandalized by the local street bandits (you may know them as raccoons). There is a gang of them who hang around our yard at night, and I think they are retaliating against Trevor’s nightly assaults against them. You see, whenever he hears them or sees them in our yard, he shoots them with the “jet” stream from our hose. Perhaps they’ve had enough and decided to fight back. Either way, now that back patch looks even more sad than before, now that I’ve cut down the tomato plants (and have neglected to weed. What?)
For the past 20 years, the end of summer has brought sadness, not only for the loss of beautiful sunny days, long nights and outdoor parties around the BBQ. It also marks the anniversary of when I lost my father. The date usually sneaks up on me, and when it does it brings me back to the last few days of August 1993. Yesterday I saw the date on my phone and the numbers innocently displayed on the screen punched me in the gut. Just like they do every year.
Now that my days are filled with the needs of two little people, I don’t have the time to look at the calendar, and I think it’s a good thing. This morning while I drank my coffee outside for a few minutes of peace, I remembered again and I had a few moments to let the tears come to my eyes, but then I remembered that while I’ll always feel like a lost 18-year-old when I think of the moment that I lost my dad- I am transported back with every detail and emotion – there are other current issues that I need to be present for.
A perfect example: Nathan just needed me to help put “his” chair back at his place at the table. He’d put a sticker at the back of it months ago to know which one was his. Somehow it had been moved to another spot at the table. Also, he needed a box of raisins.
I had much more that I had in mind to write – some other fun stuff about what we did this summer, and the fact that Brendan is starting SK in French Immersion on Tuesday, and that Nathan is going to start going to nursery school a few days a week, but I have more pressing business.
Brendan needs me to play knights with him (and possibly also pirates). I must go.
Please forgive me for the grumbles, but I’m bloody sick of winter. This year we’ve had much more snow than we’ve had in years, and it still hasn’t been that much. Generally speaking, I don’t mind snow.
The boys loved the snow, which is great…Even if it was cold, if there was snow to play in they loved being outside. We had so much fun building forts or even just shovelling.
What makes it less fun is when the weather fluctuates so dramatically as it has this year: snow would fall, then it would get warmish, so the snow would start to melt, then the next day it would get freezing (-15C or more) so all that melted snow then freezes into ice. Hard, slippery ice. Everywhere.
Brendan started school in September. He’s in JK, and spends a total of two hours and forty minutes at school every day. It’s such a long stretch, that sometimes I even have time to go to the grocery store with Nathan before I have to turn around and pick him up again.
Many mornings after drop-off, I end up hanging out at the school with Nathan while we kick, throw or bounce the ball that he’s decided to bring along that day. Just in case he forgets to bring one with him, we have a stash of about 15 balls in the back of the car. For some reason he likes to bring a ball to the car when we drive anywhere and toss it in the back. I’ve never fully understood that fascination, but it does make sure that we have a ball for all sports where ever we go.
Yesterday and today, however, Nathan was robbed of his morning run around the playground. We went to the school, brought Brendan to his classroom, helped him take off his rain boots and coat and then discovered that he really didn’t feel well enough to be there. Not in the least. He had a headache, and felt a bit warm. So right after O Canada, I helped him get re-bundled and headed back home with both boys in tow. The past two days were his first sick days, so I wasn’t quite prepared for how to properly entertain Nathan (who feels just fine, thank you very much) while looking after his big brother.
Can you guess which one is sick?
On Brendan’s part, there was a lot of tv watching. On Nathan’s, a lot of throwing balls “up high in the sky” (or, more accurately, at the wall).
I did come up with a few genius activities. I had a package of egg-free gingerbread cookies ready for decorating. The end result reminded me why I try to avoid giving Nathan too much sugar. The boy was practically bouncing off the walls. I’m fairly positive that he ate a handful of the red sugar. Good times. They both even ate some of the cookies, even though they taste marginally better than cardboard. I guess the icing masked the flavour of the cookie.
At this point I think he’s just eating the candy off the cookie, but knows to avoid the cookie itself.Not known for his refined tastes, if I would have let him, he would have eaten every.last.crumb.
Today, after much tv watching, we completed the finishing touches of the Christmas tree (they took care of the bottom half of the tree), and made some ornaments. At first, they showed zero interest in putting anything on the tree, and then out of the blue started working their way through the box of unbreakable ornaments. Nathan spent more time leaving mini bells around the house than on the tree, but the result is pretty nice I think.
Tomorrow, Brendan will definitely be going to school. I think that whatever has been ailing him has passed – he spent half an hour running sprints upstairs before bedtime. He’ll be devastated when I break the news to him in the morning. No matter how much he loves his teacher (and he adores her), he still puts up a decent fight most mornings. Hopefully that won’t continue forever.
I’ve been silent for a while. Life, as always, has been busy, but there’s more to it than that. I started doing freelance editing about two days after I quit my full-time job, and for the past few months many of my nights and weekends have been spent in front of the laptop. Some nights I would work a full 7 hours after tucking the boys into bed. I couldn’t even think about writing anything interesting, and the last thing that I wanted was to spend any more time in front of my laptop. I’m at the end of a long stretch, though. The final book that I’m editing in 2012 will be completed by the end of the week, and I’ve decided that I’m going to take a much lighter workload from now on. I need time to think, time to play with the boys, and time to just relax. I haven’t had enough of that lately.
Yes, they are in the trunk section of the car. No, I wasn’t driving so they remained safe the whole time. Although they begged me to let them sit back there for the drive home.
And beyond my work, there has been a lot going on. Brendan started school, we had part of our house reno’d, Brendan turned 4 (OMG!), and I have rediscovered my love of cooking delicious meals. I will get back to writing about the wonderfulness of my children, I promise. And I will share photos of our brand new office and anything else that seems remotely interesting to me, but which might bore the average person to tears.
I will oblige and share a photo, but for today, those worthy subjects will have to wait. Right now I feel like writing about something that has been tugging at my heart since I heard the news.Today I discovered that an old friend died after a long battle with cancer.
In the wonderful and weird world of Facebook, I found out by seeing a post on my “newsfeed”, that came directly from her wall. I haven’t spoken to Tina in about 10 years, but we kept in touch via the occasional facebook message, and I sent her words of encouragement as she navigated through her cancer treatments.
Yuppers, that’s right folks, three weeks into this whole “stay at home mom” (or SAHM) stuff and all three of us are still standing (four if you count the husband).
I’m very proud to announce that I haven’t been dipping into the vino before supper time. Despite a few days when I felt like it would really help me. So Hooray for me! Pour me drink! (erm. maybe not).
We are starting to get over some adjustments of being used to different routines and schedules, and I think most of us are getting used to the new routine. It’s a wonderful thing. The best part being that I don’t have to deal with a minimum of 150 work-related emails in a day (I wish I were exaggerating). I LOVE not being tied to my computer, but instead being able to sit down and do a bit of work, and a bit of corn-holing whenever I have a free moment.
Like right now. The glorious time of the day known as Nap Time. Typically, Brendan doesn’t nap but he had an early morning play date at the park, so is pooped. He fell asleep while watching How to Train Your Dragon for the 10th time. He just discovered it a couple of weeks ago and is now hooked on dragons (and Spider-Man, and Iron Man, and Superman.)
I’m currently ignoring the big pile of laundry staring me in the face, and decided that I’d share a couple photos from the past week. Part of me is hoping that gnomes will come by and fold my clothes for me while I’m on the laptop. Weirder things have happened.
Speaking of weird things, if I give Nathan two mini sandwiches, he will eat a few bites from each, but never eat all of a sandwich. He loves carrots, though. I submit into evidence exhibit A:
Nate had the yellow plate; carrots gone, evidence of bites from two sandwiches. Brendan insisted that he wanted to eat a banana, but abandoned it after one bite. Also notice that he didn’t touch his carrots.
And, as promised, adorable photos of my children. Because I know that is the real reason why you are reading this.
Yes, it’s blurry, but this is standard of half the photos I take of them. Because I’m too busy to go running to find my real camera everytime they are doing something cute. Yum, cake batter.A sprinkler is the most amazing thing. Look Mommy, look. I’m getting wet.
This was a short week – the lovely “Civic Holiday” long weekend the first Monday in August. But, I can’t stress how much this week did NOT feel short. It was my first week as stay-at-home mom, not counting the (two) times I spent an entire year at home with my boys when they were newborn. Now it’s just official and everything. I have no EI cheques coming in the mail every week, and my final pay cheque from my job was deposited yesterday. It was a bit difficult to accept, knowing that the predictable influx of cash would be gone. Of course, also gone is the predictable (and painful) cheque that I pay to the daycare centre every month. I could have a house that is much nicer than my current house for the monthly amount I was paying those people. I never doubted it before, but this week proved that those splendid ladies (and man) at the Centre deserved every penny we were paying them.
I want to state, for the record, that I LOVE spending time with my boys. They are funny, and fun, and smart and silly and active. Very very active. Days one and two were good – we spent time at parks, went “swimming” in the wading pools, played in the backyard. We even had a play date with one of B’s friend’s. I was exhausted by the end of each day, but I felt like we were going to be just fine. I think I even tweeted about it, that’s how confident I felt. Then the universe decided to laugh at me a bit and see how I could handle two days in a row with lots of rain. Rain that keeps you in the house, because even trying to get to the car would leave all of soaked through, even with umbrellas.
oh, and did I mention that I get killer migraines every time it rains? Unfortunately, my kids don’t feel a whole lot of sympathy for me when I tell them “mommy has a headache”, so I powered through and somehow we made it through both days all in one piece. I’m not going to sugar coat it, it was hard. Last night I felt the same level of exhaustion that I did in the early days, with brand new babies; it’s the non-stop demands for attention, feeling like I never have a moment to myself. Breaking up so many disputes between the boys. Just like when they were new, I will find a routine that works for us, and we will all get used to being together all the time. I just hope it doesn’t take that long.
I did discover one wonderful way to entertain and occupy the boys – my new laptop. As they all do, this one has a built in webcam, so we spent about 40 minutes yesterday taking pictures and videos of ourselves, using the various video enhancements. It`s really fun when you can pretend that your hair is on fire, apparently.
the orange stars do not exist on my table. They are evidence of the spectacular tricks you can add to images and videos on my webcam application. yay technology!Brendan had wandered off by the time this one was taken. He was probably playing with one of his many Iron Man action figures.
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this thing called life 