Saber-Toothed Tigers

Toby went to a birthday party today at the trampoline gym.  As such, the ride home was filled with a lively conversation about Saber Toothed Tigers.

Oh, sorry, was that a non-sequitor?  It didn’t make much sense to me either but it was entertaining nonetheless.

Here’s what I learned about Saber toothed tigers from 5 year old Toby

-Saber toothed tigers are good. They are called saber toothed tigers because they SAVE people by rescuing them if they need help.  SAVER-toothed was repeated over and over again to me until I got it.

-They are very fast.  Like, faster than Cheetahs.  They accomplish this by running and then doing a somersault over the backs of the cheetahs and landing in front of them.

-They eat bears, lions and tigers and anything covered in fur.  And grass, too.

-They live in the forest near caves so they can be near the bears that they eat.

-They are made of steel.

=They are not orange in colour, more like a very deep red.

-They have  long pointy teeth that are sharper than vampire teeth

-If there was ever to be a fight between a Saber toothed tiger and Captain Underpants guess who would win?  The saber toothed tiger.

-They have sharp claws and when they try to catch someone they only have to swing one claw of one hand without even moving their arm and that person would be knocked to the ground.

-NO one could ever hurt a saber toothed tiger because they are so fast they would just jump out of the way if someone came at them with an axe or something.

After this informative introduction to the Saber toothed tiger, Toby reached into his loot bag and picked out a mask that was obviously a hippopotamus face.  Toby put the mask on, roared at me and then announced that he was a Saber Toothed tiger and would I like him to be my pet?

I declined the kind offer graciously on the basis of safety concerns.

“Mommy!” I was immediately reprimanded, “Don’t SAY THAT!!!!

I have rehearsed several potential arguments in my head that having kids might force me to have: why smoking is bad, why a curfew is important, why you can’t get you’re ears pierced before you are 10. But I never thought much about having to defend my choice NOT to want a saber-toothed tiger as a pet.  So I had to do my best with little to no preparation on this one…

“Toby, you’ve just spent the last 20 minutes explaining to me how TERRIFYING and SCARY Saber toothed tigers are.  It’s not that I don’t LIKE them I just think they sound kind of dangerous.”

I was reminded of the fact that they are called SAVER-toothed tigers for a reason because they would SAVE me and that they also don’t eat hair so when they were saving me they would use their nostrils and NOT their large pointy teeth so I would be OK.

I reluctantly agreed and Toby went to put his mask back on

Just when we thought all was right in the world the elastic band on the mask broke and we arrived home, broken mask in hand, wailing in grief at the loss of the dollar store-hippopotamus -that-is-actually-a-saber-toothed-tiger-mask.

Phew.  Birthday parties ARE exhausting.

My Mother's Day Fantasy

Aha!  Finally the day comes I’ve been waiting for all year…Mother’s day; a day that is dedicated to THANKING me for the tireless and sometimes thankless work of being a mom.  Today my friend asked me what my plans were for the day and I allowed myself a few minutes of unbridled, uncensored mind candy of what my obscenely lavish mothers day wishes would be…. Here are a few excerpts from my fantasy…

(I recognize they are LAVISH and EXCESSIVE and unlikely EVER to come true…but please, humour me…)

1.  A Guilt Free Day

For one day, JUST ONE DAY. I would like to choose a daytime activity that takes place between the hours of 9am and 12am and do it GUILT FREE.  (Just writing that makes me cringe).  For just ONE DAY I would like to do something that doesn’t’ immediately make me think I’m going to piss my husband off, garner criticism from my mother, or turn my children into disadvantaged hellions.  Just one day.  All day.  No matter what I choose to do.

Cause here’s what I’d choose to do…

2.  Sleep

I can’t REALLY imagine what it would be like to just sleep until I woke up on my own.  I wonder- how late would that be?  Would I MAYBE sleep all day?  Could I POSSIBLY make it till 9am without the influx of noise, guilt or routine interrupting me?  Doubtful.  But yet…an interesting thing to try.

3.  A Quiet Breakfast

I’d like to eat breakfast without having a child on my lap or without having to get up 5 times to get someone more cereal, a glass of juice, a cloth to clean up a spill or wipe a poopy bum.  (Toby ALWAYS manages to have his morning poo right as I’m about to take my first bite of  breakfast…)  And hey, while I’m asking for it, how about a breakfast in which no one cries over the colour of their cereal bowl or deems life completely unreasonable and unfair because their brother got the placemat with the frogs on it and you got stuck with the placemat with the rabbits on it.

4.  Two minutes of Private Urination

I’d like to pee in private.  Demanding, aren’t I?

5.   A  Shower in Solitude

A leisurely shower, perhaps with the luxurious time frame that could allow me to shampoo AND cream rinse my hair and…wait for it…shave. All at the same time.  Of course this would be GUILT FREE (see ludicrous request #1) and without having to carry on a conversation with EITHER kid OR husband at the same time.  I MIGHT have to accommodate this request immediately after #4 to maximize my chances of it happening…

6. A Chance to Read the Newspaper

I know I’ve been living under the proverbial “parental rock” for the past 5 years so I’m not sure that this is still an up to date request.  Do people still read the newspaper or is it all on line?  Cause I’d like to sit with a cup of coffee (or 2) and peruse the paper cover to cover, not just skimming it for the task of acquiring the-basics-needed-to-still-understand-what’s –going-on-in-the-world but to actually read an article just because I can and potentially MIGHT find it interesting.  And I’d like to have dark black smudgy fingers at the end of it just to PROVE it.

7.  A Change in Radio Stations

How about a change from Raffi and Serious Satellite Kids channel “the Animal Farm”.  Instead of listening to a pretend Llama share his woes about his neck and his fears about being touched how about the CBC.  Jian Gomeshi and Q would be just perfect…

8.  A Snack that I don’t have to share.  Like maybe a CHOCOLATE bar or a tall glass of JUICE or a handful of chips that I can grab whenever I please without having to endure simultaneous whining that I am not sharing it with THEM. 

9.  A bitchfest with the girls

Cause you know, there ain’t NOTHING more refreshing than a girls’ night bitchfest.

10.  Bedtime Exemption

Can you even IMAGINE the luxury of just SITTING there while someone else puts BOTH of your kids down?  Not because I had to work late and not because I’d done it on my own 4 times the week before.  But just cause.

Sigh.  As I look back on this list I realize that these requests are COMPLETELY unrealistic. Well, most of them at least.  Maybe the fact that the world grants you a day named after you make one feel the need to think up the most lavishly ridiculous things.  Perhaps if I was single and without kids and it happened to be “Single Lady’s Day” I’d envision equally unreachable things like hiring a private jet to go to France and drinking Dom Perignon for breakfast at the top of the Empire State building.

But just PICTURING that scenario it kind of makes me feel a little lost.  Cause really, how great can those things be if you don’t have a house full of loud, imposing rugrats to come home to? 

I guess that’s why we’re mothers.  And I guess that’s why the world names a day after us and doesn’t WORRY that there will be handful of abandoned children and angry dads around as we ludicrously lavish in the confines of our bathrooms in guilt-free-bliss for 24 hours.

And I guess that’s why this year, like every year, I can’t actually think of anything better than waking up to a chaotic, messy and loud attempt at breakfast in bed, complete with home made cards that I have been shown 5 times already (out of sheer excitement) and wet dirty faced kisses and smiles that accompany me all the way from bed, to the bathroom, to the shower and back. 

Being a mom means sacrificing a few basic human rights. But It also means being loved like you never knew possible.  I guess in that way every day is Mother’s day…

The Boy on the Bus

Kindergarten is a bit of a black box for parents – the child goes in, the child comes out and you have NO idea what happens in the 7 hours in-between.  You search desperately for clues, “You didn’t eat your apple – were you busy talking to your friends at lunch today?” or they bring home obscure art work with only one repetitively familiar phrase on all of them – TOBY – “What’s this a picture of Toby, is this something you’re learning about this week?”  The more you ask, the curter the answer and the more deadpan the stare.

I have learned, over the course of this year, the difficult task of patience.  I wait for the mood to hit and casually lure details out of him when the picking is ripe.

The other day I managed to hit a JACKPOT with the bus.

The hour long bus ride that we so cruelly subject him to on Monday, Wednesdays and Thursdays is even MORE enigmatic than the mundane routine of kindergarten in which they do “nothing” every day.  (Or so it seems…)

Here’s what I know about the bus:

-       It’s yellow

-       He sits by himself

-       It is a medium, sometimes long ride

-       He hates it

The guilt I have suffered over this bus ride could move mountains.

At the beginning of the year I had meetings with the teachers, BEGGING them to ensure that they sat someone beside him.  I would spend hours at night coaching him on how to make friends on the bus, how to ask someone to sit beside him, what to say to make friends and games he could play by himself to pass the time.  Despite it all, Toby hates the bus. 

So imagine my surprise last week when he raced in the door from his ride home and announced that he had to make a card for his friend “Josh” from the bus. 

I raced downstairs behind him, hot on his heels, my casual attempt at garnering information flying out the window.

I asked excitedly who Josh was.

“Just some boy on the bus.”  Toby replied casually as he got his markers and paper out.

“Is he in kindergarten?”

“Nope”

“How old is he?”

“I don’ know…maybe 7 or 8?” 

(FYI that means NOTHING. Toby once took a liking to my mom’s friend Vivien and later confessed that he thought she was probably 4 or 5 years old. He is RUBBISH at age prediction…)

“Does he sit with you on the bus?”  I asked with baited breath.

“Oh, no.  He sits with the big kids.”

I was getting nowhere.

“But he told you it’s his birthday tomorrow?”

“Well…” Toby replied, already focusing on his artwork, “I just heard him telling someone that it’s his birthday either THIS Wednesday or NEXT Wednesday I’m not really sure.  So I’m making him a card.”

All of a sudden the animalistic parental protection alarms started sounding in my head.  An OLDER kid who doesn’t even seem to ACKNOWLEGE Toby who MAY or may not have a birthday tomorrow or the next week?  And Toby was diligently making him a card?  As thoughtful as it seemed I just knew that the error factor and potential for disappointment or even being made fun of was too high for my comfort zone.

I went upstairs to think it out and Toby arrived TWENTY MINUTES LATER with a birthday card that broke my heart.  Toby has only ever spent that long on a card for one of his beloved Grandmas’ and that was OK because I KNEW it would be well received with the appropriate laudations and lavish gratitude’s it was deserving of.  In Toby’s attempts to make this card special he had used ALL of his markers AND his scissors.  The results was a misshapen mangled, colour jumbled MESS of a piece of foolscap with the familiar phrase TOBY scrawled across it.

OH SHIT.

The next morning (Wednesday, either the day of Josh’s birthday or the week BEFORE this said Josh’s birthday) it was raining.  We ran into the logistical problem of how to pack this card appropriately.  I tried to pack it in to the main section of Toby’s backpack but Toby is a rule follower and apparently you are not allowed to open your backpack on the bus (I am now up to 5 things I know about the bus…) so he wanted to put it in the side pocket.  The problem was that it was RAINING and I cringed at the thought of what the rain would do to this already terrible piece of lovingly made artwork.  I was TEMPTED to put a note in his book for his kindergarten teachers explaining this conundrum but decided against it; this was one scenario Toby would have to figure out on his own.  (While I secretly hoped he wouldn’t be able to deliver his card to this older Josh fellow).

The next morning I rushed home from work eager to hear how the card exchange had gone.  Had he given Josh his card?

“Yes.” Toby said matter of factly, “But I was wrong.  It wasn’t Josh’s birthday today.  His birthday is next week.”

“OH, I replied” as best I could without bursting into tear for the little guy, “That’s too bad.  Did Josh like the card anyways?”

“I don’t know.” Toby said.  “But I gave it to him anyways.”

Even as I write this, the scenario breaks my heart.  I have no idea who this Josh guy is nor whether he was kind to Toby when he was presented with this heartfelt week-early birthday card.  I can only hope that he made Toby feel good about the efforts he put into it and that Toby isn’t forever scarred from the experience.  I suspect this is just the first of many experience Toby will have on the bus, at school, and in life where I am left out of the details and can only hope as a bystander that the world treats him fairly.

In the meantime, I am glad to hear that SOMEONE on the bus has a name.  And I take solace in the fact that one day Mia will also be on his bus and he will at least have a little sister to sit beside.  And I know EXACTLY how Mia will react to any unappreciative bus bullies: she’ll kick their ass.