Don’t panic, but Toby has a broken neck.
Or so he claims.
It turns out he has a sore throat, but it got our attention this morning when we walked into his room an heard his announcement. And why WOULDN’T he think he’d broken his neck? Waking up with a sore throat HURTS.
Ever since Toby was 4 months old I have sung him the song “Lullabye” by Trout Fishing in America as he falls asleep each night. It’s a very sweet song that Toby refers to as “close your eyes” because that’s the opening line. It talks about night time; crickets serenading, the stars shining on the lake, cows sleeping in barns and how you’re safe and warm in your covers. It’s the perfect good night song for him and Toby adores it.
However, after 21 months of singing this song EVERY NIGHT to him, he decided, last night, that he wanted to hear “another song”. I believe his exact words were, “No, not THAT song” when I started to sing it.
I sifted frantically through my brain’s very limited lullabye lyric collections. I tried things like “Feeling Groovy” and my old good night song from Camp Trillium. He listened to the first few lines of all of them and then promptly NIXED them with his newfound phrase, “No not THAT song.”
I was beginning to feel like a Juke Box.
FINALLY after scraping the bottom of the barrel of my repertoire we settled on a new good night song. It seems to have stuck and we’ve used it for the last few nights. Tonight he even asked for it by name; “Sing the Pop bottle song, Mommy!”
This is how it goes ;
One bottle of pop, two bottle of pop three bottle of pop four bottle of pop five bottle of pop six bottle of pop seven seven bottle of pop
Fish and chips and vinegar! Vinegar! Vinegar!
Fish and chips and vinegar! Pepper pepper pepper Salt!
Don’t throw your junk in MY backyard MY backyard MY backyard!
Don’t throw your junk in MY backyard, my backyard’s FULL!
(I wasn’t joking about the bottom of the barrel…)
Who says we can’t change things up once in a while?
We’re back safe and sound from Vegas after an incredible trip. It really is great to have a kid to come home to, because the sadness of vacation endings is now mitigated by the almost irrational excitement to get back home to our boy.
Unfortunately, Grandma has had an opposite reaction. She had been eagerly anticipating and planning for her long weekend with Toby for ages and when it ended, it just ended. Although I’m sure she’s glad to have a few minutes to herself, she’s going through a bit of her own Toby withdrawal. The feeling is mutual; Toby keeps asking where Grandma is and telling us stories and “inside jokes” (or so we assume they are…) from his visit with her.
I didn’t realize how much he was missing her until today when I pointed out to him that there was a groundhog outside.
It was just a passing statement, as groundhog sightings usually are, but Toby LEPT up from his playdoh and RACED to the window throwing his arms in the air and jumping up and down to see.
A few minutes later after staring disappointedly at the measly little creature scurrying through the yard he threw his arms up in despair and asked,
“Where’s GRANDMA???”
I never knew that the word “groundhog” could sound like “grandma”, but apparently it does. No matter how many times I explained to him the difference between the two, hours later he was still periodically racing over to the big window to look for her and repeatedly breaking my heart with his pitiful disappointment and questioning WHY I had told him that his “grandma” was outside when in fact, she wasn’t.
And so I’m getting guilt trips from both ends. We may just have to go back to Vegas again sometime soon to appease both the kid and the “groundhog”.
We have been trying to use Skype with Toby and his long distance grandparents for a few months now. I can't say it works all that well with our rural "high speed internet" but both devoted sets of grandparents have humoured us and are grateful for any opportunity to see and chat with Toby...even if it involves a grainy, slow motion picture with a 20 second delay.
So what a shock for the poor boy when we skyped with him for the first time on high speed. Rob and I were enjoying a long weekend in Las Vegas while Toby was busy being spoiled by his Toronto grandparents and family when I woke up the second morning of our trip and was so excited to talk to Toby that I didn't even anticipate the trauma that it might cause him.
As soon as our faces came up on the computer screen Toby gasped in shock and exclaimed, “what HAPPENED, Mommy!?!?”
I guess it WOULD be rather scary to have your mother disappear for 24 hours and then find her as a 2 dimensional image on your grandmother’s laptop.
I had to calm him down and explain to him that we’d been on an airplane and gone to a place called Vegas and that we missed him very much and would be home soon.
“Where’s DADDY?” was his curt response,
Good God, he was a 2 dimensional creature as well.
Just as I thought Toby was going to go and launch himself off the nearest bridge, his face disappeared and all I could see was the top of his head. Up close.
He was hugging the screen.
It was when he tried to follow his hug up with wet kisses that we got disconnected.
Technology is marvelous. Although we were 3 time zones and hundreds of miles away, we still got to traumatize and then hug and kiss our little boy.
I know that for some parents, the Olympics served as a great opportunity to educate their children on the importance of dreams and aspirations, the making of history, the rules of sports and the pride of nationalism. I heard stories of parents who kept their kids up late at night so they could watch history unfold, and I can only imagine the quiet swelling of emotion they must have felt, knowing that they were about to share a moment with their child that would be remembered and talked about for years to come.
Rob and I enjoyed watching the Olympics. We didn’t go to great lengths to explain the various events to Toby, but he would sometimes sit and watch with us and catch onto our slogans, his favourite being “HARD! Hurry, HARD!” It wasn’t until this week, in fact, that I began to catch on to just how much of it he actually caught onto…and what a warped perception of everything he had inadvertently developed.
It all started with his sudden desire to “snowboard”. Part of his bedtime routine is to jump on the bed. It’s not the most calming of activities, but I would venture to say it’s his favourite part of the day; so who are we to deprive him of it? The other night while he was jumping on the bed he announced that he was going to snowboard. I sat back and watched. Turns out that snowboarding, in Toby’s mind, involves standing on a huge stack of pillows, putting your arms out to the sides and then falling face first into the bed.
Need I elaborate on Toby’s impression of skiing? It’s pretty similar, except he usually throws one leg in the air before his harrowing descent.
None of this is as problem, this skewed perception of the two sports, but perhaps a reflection of how well most of the athletes performed in them? Or, maybe Toby’s favourite part was watching them fall down. Who knows? The whole thing was kind of comical….until Rob’s parents arrived last night to go skiing.
As soon as I heard them telling the inquisitive Toby that they were going to go skiing, Toby matter of factly told them both that they were going to fall down. I tried to explain to him (after they had left the room) that telling people that they were going to fall down was not nice. But he was insistent, “Papa is going skiing. Papa is going to fall down” he repeated, nodding his head in agreement with himself.
Finally, as I heard them coming back up the stairs, I decided to try a different tactic.
“Toby,” I said hurriedly, “Why don’t you say to Grandma and Grandpa that you hope that they DON’T fall down….say, ‘I hope you DON’T fall down skiing, Papa’”
Toby looked at me like I was an idiot, but managed to comply.
“Don’t fall down skiing, Papa! Don’t fall down skiing, Gaga!” he said as he kissed and then waved them goodbye at the door.
We watched them get their gear into the car and drive off and Toby waited patiently at the window for their car to disappear around the bend before very decisively whispering to no one in particular,
“Papa’s going skiing. Papa’s going to fall down.”
I’m sorry that I haven’t posted in a while, but we got busy celebrating the hell out of Toby’s 2nd birthday.
It always happens that way; when you decide not to bother too much with something it ends up exploding in your face as a weeklong birthday fiesta extravaganza. The kid is two. He will likely never in his life remember how we chose to celebrate this birthday, nor will he really care. It was my full intention to let the day pass quietly by and enjoy one last peaceful March 4th before he reached the age of knowing what it all means…All I can say now is this; if he hadn’t known before, he sure does now…
It started off with my mother’s birthday – a low key dinner at our house which quickly (because my mother was involved) evolved into Toby opening HIS presents, followed by Toby opening HER presents followed by rounds of the Happy Birthday Chorus to each of them.
That clinched it. He was INTO this.
A few days later, on his actual birthday, he got to celebrate with his daycare friends. And NO ONE makes birthdays more fun than a roomful of preschool kids and their two fearless and unceasingly energetic leaders. Apparently he got sung the birthday song every 15 minutes. He also ate the MOST cupcakes of ANYONE and, in case I didn’t believe it, had an appropriately splattered outfit to prove it. They TRIED to get him to wear the birthday hat, and he did...for about 5 seconds before he placed it on Owen’s head. And Owen obliged. I mean, it WAS Toby’s birthday. When he got home that night, in a post-sugar coma, he managed to utter only one thing about his day, “it was Owen’s birthday”.
By today, after traveling to Burlington to make sure ALL SIDES OF THE FAMILY had had their fair share of watching Toby eat cake and open presents, he was almost expecting “the usual”. He waited patiently for lunch to be done before he began asking where the cake and presents were, and even let his cousin help him blow the candles out. It WAS his fourth birthday cake. We had yet another fantastic and fun filled morning and once again, left on a sugar high with our car overloaded with generous gifts.
Tonight at dinner, shoving some leftovers into our cake filled bellies, as Rob and I smiled peacefully to ourselves at the thought of NOT having to finish he meal with cake and presents, Toby opened his mouth and let out a loud….BURP.
“What do you say?” we asked him in unison.
I can’t say we were at all shocked to hear his answer, said with a devilish grin,
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOBY!”
Toby has always talked about his friends at daycare, but recently he has become more and more inquisitive as to their whereabouts AFTER daycare. The other night at dinner he was asking in particular about Anita, who is one of the 2 wonderful women who take care of him at daycare.
"Probably at home" I answered, in an equally offhandeded way.
Toby dropped his fork and GLARED at me. I don't think it had occured to him that she would be anywhere OTHER than DAYCARE.
"Anita's at DAYCARE." he stated, picking up his fork and resuming his meal.
"Well, Toby, I think Anita probably goes HOME after daycare."
Toby thought about this for a minute as he chewed his lasagna and then it made sense to him,
“Anita went home to see her daddy.” he said matter of factly.
Can you tell what bargaining technique I use to get him home at the end of the day?
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