still

In this crazy season of GO and DO and GIVE and PREPARE (While I’m speaking specifically about Christmas, the sentiment could also apply to our current season of parenting), I find myself craving still moments. Tiny bits of space in my day. Silence.

More and more I am turning to creating as a way of making that space. Sometimes it’s knitting, others it’s taking pictures and hopefully soon it will be sewing (if I can ever find enough time to gather all of my supplies and get to work!). This month I learned how to knit in the round and have been making hat after hat after hat. There is something so soothing about the rhythmic click of my needles, counting stitches in my head, the yarn slipping through my fingers. After only a few stitches I can feel myself breathing a little more slowly. Even with all of my children playing around me, I can lose myself for just a minute in a round.

When my kids are doing this

the counter looks like this

and my dining room table looks like this

I can pretend it’s all good and just do this

which ends up looking something like this

Loving those moments of still!

punked?

Dear Children,

Am I being punked this week? It sure feels like it.

At first I thought it was a coincidence that you were all acting up at the same time. On Monday I thought you guys were exhausted from the busy weekend. My excuse for you on Tuesday was that you were tired from staying for lunch at school and not eating enough. Then Wednesday rolled around and brought with it a fresh batch of misery. That’s when I started to get suspicious.

I’m wondering when you hold your secret planning meetings? Do you meet at night when Daddy and I are sleeping? Who chairs those meetings? Maybe you meet by the water fountain at school, make your plans and then bring your brother up to speed when you get home? I’m really curious.

I’m thinking it goes something like this: “Things have been running too smoothly around here lately. It’s time to SHAKE it up and turn the house upside down. We need to band together and tag team if we are going to make this happen. Mr. Baby, you need to start waking up yelling at 5:45. As soon as Mom crawls back into bed, G and Tuck will start a fight in the bathroom. Then they need to keep fighting over EVERY.LITTLE.THING.FOR.AS.LONG.AS.POSSIBLE. Got that? FIGHT LOTS. And don’t forget to cry. Especially at bedtime. We all need to have HUGE flailing temper tantrums every night for absolutely no reason. Refuse to brush your teeth. Cry when you have to wear long sleeved pj’s but then cry harder if they let you change them. Cry about everything! What else? Oh, yeah! Mom hates it when we don’t eat. Let’s all go on a total food strike! Refuse to eat anything, especially our favourites. Got all that? Don’t sleep, don’t eat, temper tantrums, make messes, fight lots. Goooooooo team!”.

However it goes down, I’M ON TO YOU! The next time you hold one of your little meetings you better remind yourselves who knows where the stash of Halloween candy is…

Lots of love,

Mom

november

Good bye October! You were fun and ended on a high (sugar high that is!) note.

Hello November! I’m going to be kicking it NaBloPoMo style again this year. We’ll see how that goes…

slipping through my fingers

This is my daughter. I LOVE her.

She will tell you that she is four and a HALF. Don’t forget the half because it is very important.

She likes swimming until her lips turn blue, her teeth are chattering like chipmunks and her skin is prickled with millions of goosebumps. She loves to paint, spin like a beautiful ballerina, dress up and pretend that she is a “WEAL” fairy princess and not just a pretend one and then run outside and ride her bike so fast it makes my heart stall. Her hair is always in her eyes. She loves cheese but usually only the o-nnnnge kind. When she is afraid she whispers, “I a-skeered Mommy” and it makes me want to dip her in chocolate and eat her right up! She’s allergic to nuts and will tell you so fifty million times a day. My girl makes the best faces and has an inspired giggle. She bakes a mean carrot muffin and can open her own applesauce thank you very much! If you are 9 and you threaten to run her over with your bike, you better watch out because she will flatten you FIRST.

Last Friday my girl went to school for the first time.

She was so HAPPY! I was happy for her but after I turned to walk home I found silent tears sliding down my cheeks.

And then I heard this:

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while…

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time…

Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time…
(song by Abba)

You are LOVED baby girl. So loved.

wheels and jammies

This morning Little Miss asked her Daddy to fix her training wheels “cuz one did felled off yesterday”. He got her to try riding with just the one training wheel. Turns out it never touched the ground so Daddy took it off as well, just to see what would happen. She climbed back up on her bike sans training wheels, put her feet on the pedals and rode off down the driveway, JUST LIKE THAT! With nary a wobble or sideways wipe out, we now have two kids streaking up and down the sidewalk (and road when they think we aren’t looking)!

Children, you are make me so proud but you break my heart a little bit too. SLOW DOWN ALREADY!

Last week I picked the boys up some matching jammies. N was SO EXCITED that he could hardly wait to wear them! Here’s a shot of the boys hanging out before bed the other night. I love to watch their relationship grow.

jealous?

I didn’t think so! This is what the 40cm of snow we got Saturday night looked like in the morning:

That would be our driveway!

At least she doesn’t let a little snow stop her from having fun!

I’m ready for spring…

waste

After living here in crunchy-ville for a few months I could not believe the amount of waste I encountered out west. I knew it was bad but being away for a while absolutely magnified it. There is no curbside recycling. They* throw out EVERYTHING. Cereal boxes. Tin cans. Milk jugs. Water bottles. Pop cans. You name it, it goes in the trash.

It was sort of painful to watch my friends washing dishes while running the water the entire time. Or leaving lights on all over the house all day long. That sort of thing has always driven me nuts. When I see a running faucet I’ve been genetically programmed to visualize dollar signs washing down the drain! Now that I’ve lived here for a while I also see my kids future washing away. I like living in a city that thinks about the future and plans for more than just today.

The next time my garbage isn’t picked up because it’s in “violation” (ie. improperly sorted), I’m going to try to be thankful rather than ticked off!

*Some people do recycle but you have to pay an independent company to come and pick it up or collect the few items the city recycles and drop it off at collection bins located around the city. Most people find it more of a pain than it’s worth.

home

We are home! It is so good to be here. My kids are super cute when they are sleeping.

Our flight was great. Baby J slept most of the time. A friend of mine from childhood sat in the row in front of us with his wife and three kids. It was unexpected but fun to catch up!

There was a woman in the row next to us who had 2 little kids with her. She was drinking throughout the flight to the point that they cut her off. It was so sad to see her drunk in public with her children. I wonder what her story is?

7 am is going to feel like 5 am to us so I better roll!

Only 2 days left in this stupid blopathon!

there’s no place like home

We are heading home tomorrow. I’ve had a fantastic time here but I am ready to go home. I really miss our kids. It was great to have a break, visit some friends, get a little head space, etc. but now I’m ready for my life again. I just might be able to handle it now too!

Once we get home it is going to be a whirlwind until January. We’ve got a lot going on this month… N’s surgery next week, birthday’s to celebrate, Christmas to ramp up for and celebrate, family visiting. But right now I’m most looking forward to the hugs I’ll get Thursday morning.

edge

so baby J has had a rough time with traveling. It’s been great to see friends but he’s been up more at night than when he was a newborn!

Anyway - we’re off to see some old friends for dinner tonight and to stay over and hang out with them tomorrow. It’s always good to see those friends that are like family - you just pick up where you left off and enjoy doing life together.

So this is my second post today. I wrote the last one, hit Publish and got a database error. You’d think supergeek T would keep these things in order for me (just kidding).