Fire Breathing Bullies

They must be learning about bullies at daycare; tonight at dinner Toby solemnly announced that no one hits at daycare. He then clarified that if you hit someone it meant you were a bully. He THEN went on to explain that he knows this because yesterday he SAW a bully and it had sharp teeth and claws and FIRE coming out of his nose and that if the bully ever caught him he would get SQUISHED.

As you can imagine, this description was told with the appropriate dramatic flare complete with sound effects and actions.

I get the point and (more importantly) apparently HE gets the point; bullies are bad. In fact, in his three year old world it doesn’t get much worse; a few weeks ago they learned about dinosaurs and poor T Rex has NOTHING on these terrifying bullies.

I suspect the mere THREAT of being named a bully will put a dramatic end to all hitting at daycare. If only it were capable of eliciting a similar reaction in 13 year olds…

Back seat shenanigans

We were driving home from daycare when Toby’s incessantly runny nose reached the epic proportion it needs to catch Toby’s attention. He politely asked for a Kleenex. In all of the chaos of two kids, two car seats and two sets of winter attire strewn across the backseat, I couldn’t for the life of me find the Kleenex box and, being less than 5 minutes from home, opted not to put our lives at risk for the sake of sanitation.

“Sorry, Toby,” I explained as confidently as a I could,, “Mommy can’t find the Kleenex right now so you will have to wipe it with your sleeve.”

(Was this an appropriate solution? This scenario was not covered in my mommy-course.)

Nonetheless, if my suggestion didn’t horrify you, his matter-of-fact response will:

“Don’t worry about it, mommy. I’ll just use my tongue.”

To prevent the gag reflex, I quietly averted my eyes from the rearview mirror. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination…

The new "plum" sauce

Toby is a sauce-man. That is, he lives by a firm belief that “anything and everything tastes better with condiments.” So hardcore is he in his belief that I have even caught him dipping fresh orange slices into ketchup when I wasn’t looking. (He was being discreet not because he knew it would turn my stomach, but because there are strict rules around appropriate ketchup use in our household.)

Tonight he had chicken fingers and for dip we gave him plum sauce. He was a bit skeptical at first as his favourite would OBVIOUSLY have been ketchup, but he tasted it and immediately added it to his “dip repertoire”. His vocab, unfortunately, failed to keep up with his sophisticated condiment palate.

“Can I have more of that sauce daddy?”

“Yes, Toby. And it’s called PLUM sauce”

“Ooh. He said. CUM sauce.”

Sometimes, when these unscripted moments catch you off guard, it’s impossible not to laugh. And when your kid is an attention-loving-ham that’s a sure fire way to encourage a behaiour, or, in this unfortunate case, an incorrect use of the term “cum sauce”. Lets just hope they don’t serve chicken fingers at daycare anytime soon.

Just the little things...

There are so many little things to write about in my blog that I don’t want to forget; things that have come barreling back to me from my first 6 weeks with Toby that I thought would either never end or would be impossible to forget. And yet there they were, archived in the back of my brain along with my organic chemistry notes and everything that came before “cry it out”. These little things have overtaken my world again; the sudden thirst that overtakes you as soon as your milk lets down; the sweetness of the look on your child’s face when the milk coma take over; the visceral discomfort that hearing your baby cry elicits; the rhythm of the swish and bounce; the euphoric feeling of the sun rising and knowing you’ve survived another night; my anxiety over absolutely everything and absolutely nothing…Why did I assume it would be so different this time around?

But there are also new things with this experience; the pride I feel when I watch Toby kiss and hold his little sister; the reality of how OLD my firstborn seems all of a sudden; the challenge of multitasking – doing bed time with Toby while breastfeeding, cooking dinner with Mia in the baby Bjorn while doing Valentine’s crafts with Toby; and the quiet simplicity of days with a newborn.

Above all, however, this experience is blessed with the innate knowledge of how soon this phase will all be over. Some days this brings me great relief; other days it brings me to tears. Am I enjoying these first few weeks? I know that my answer today comes with hesitation but I am very aware of how fondly I will look back on them in years to come…

Confessions of a Desperate Lady

It has been almost 2 weeks so I’m ready to come clean; I have a confession to make. About 2 weeks ago, being 8 days overdue with (the baby who turned out to be) Mia, I was dangerously close to losing my mind. So before you read this story, please know that I plead the clause of insanity.

As I mentioned previously, I lost my mental pregnancy game at about 38 weeks. It was at that time that I stopped working, stopped sleeping. contracted the flu and began to let myself daydream about going into labour and ending my 9 months of sacrificial living. So you can imagine my chagrin when I found myself 3.5 weeks later and not an inch closer to delivery. I was distraught. My sleep deteriorated, my ability to concentrate was squat and my optimism about life in general reached an all time low.

That is how the morning of Friday, Jan 21st found me. I woke up and moaned in agony at not being in labour before mustering up the strength to give myself a pep talk. Here I was, days before starting the REALLY tough part of sleep deprivation, leaky breasts and constant anxiety about my baby; why wasn’t I able to enjoy my freedom? I had all day ahead of me while Toby was in daycare --surely there was SOMETHING satisfying I could fill my day with. I racked my brains for anything that made me feel good (how indulgent is THAT??) and all I could come up with was that I always feel great after getting my hair done. My cranky brain usurped this sliver of optimism to remind me that I wasn’t in need of a hair cut and didn’t have an appointment.. That’s when I remembered that we have First Choice Hair cutters in Collingwood - $12 for a haircut. Surely they could handle just washing my hair?

And it was with this thought; a promise of a 12$ hair wash, that I managed to convince my ornery self to get out of bed.

That’s when I had to make my first decision. Did I shower? I was heading into town for a hair cut. But what if I went into labour on the way in and then was unshowered for days? What if there was a line up and I couldn’t get my hair done? I decided it was safer to shower. And so I did. And while I was in the shower I decided I might as well wash my hair. Same principles applied there.

Making those decisions in addition to the morning pep talk, was all my sleep deprived self could handle. I got out of the shower and felt exhausted. So I went back to bed and slept for 3 more hours.

You can imagine what my no-longer-wet-hair looked like when I woke up. It was almost noon and my whole plan for the day was to get my hair washed and here I was with outlandish hair after having washed it myself and then slept on it. The ridiculousness of this almost set me back but I charged forward with my plan and ventured out to get my hair done. Properly.

I have nothing against First Choice Hair Cutters- - the lady who did my hair was very nice. But it took her AN HOUR AND A HALF to wash and blow-dry my hair. No joke. For someone who prides herself on efficiency, it was a unique and slightly torturous experience. I had to keep reminding myself that I had NO WHERE ELSE TO BE and that her inefficiency was in NO WAY impeding my plans for the day. Still, how I longed to grab the hairdryer from her hands and do it myself!!!

As you can imagine, spending a full 90 minutes small talking with a stranger was also not something I had anticipated OR was in any shape to carry out. That’s when I started lying. Why was I having my hair done? Dinner plans (yeah, right). When was the baby due? Next month. (I couldn’t handle any more pitying looks…) Was I off work today? Yes, nice to have a day off mid week (for the 21st day in a row…) As wrong as lying is, I did it for her own good. If this poor girl was going to have to spend 90 minutes making a lousy $12 by merely washing and then blow drying my hair (which quite obviously not her forte) then at least I should have the courtesy of covering up the fact that I was a complete lunatic.

Finally, FINALLY the lady put down the hair dryer and proudly announced that I was done. I felt so badly I ended up paying her $20, which is, more than a 50% tip but hey, it fit with the whole theme of my day. She smiled and wished me a nice night out and an easy delivery next month and I triumphantly noted that it was 3pm and I’d almost managed to squander an entire day with the simple task of washing my hair.

It was a good thing I went into labour the next day – who KNOWS what I would have done to fill Saturday…