One, Two, Or Not!

Mia’s newest obsession is with the game of Hide and seek.  She is not only quite an avid participator, but she is much more adept at the game than Toby ever was at such an early age.  She has come up with a few hiding spots that are, although not ingenious, quite sufficient at hiding enough of her to make a game out of it.  Then again, it doesn’t get much worse than hiding in the middle of the room (which Toby used to do, triumphantly, during his games of Hide and Seek).

The other night, though, her true hide and seek sense of humour came through.  I got home for a very brief interval between my regular office day and my night shift in the after hours clinic.  I had initially planned to stay at work but called at he last minute to say I’d be home for a short time to hang out with my family.

I burst through the doors to a dead quiet, empty house and was greeted only by a very serious Mia who was eerily standing alone in the front hall.

“Where is everyone?” I asked, slightly disappointed that they weren’t all around to hang out with me in my brief interlude at home.

But Mia’s next expressive and overly enunciated word explained it all,

“HIDING!!!” she said in an excited whisper and threw her chubby little finger up to her lip to emphasize her point before covering her eyes with both hands and quickly reciting her Hide and seek mantra, “One….two…OR NOT!”

AHA!  So Rob WAS excited to see me.  SOOO excited, in fact, that he and Toby were making a game out of it.  This was EXACTLY what I needed and why it is worth the extra driving!

I quickly dropped all of my work stuff, grabbed her hand and set of about the house  reciting the phrase, whith childish flare, “Wheeeeere’s DADDY?   Wheeeeere’s TOBY?” while I looked in all of the obvious hiding spots.

I believe I was looking under our bed, bum in the air, a giggling Mia by my side, when Rob and Toby came stomping up the stairs, loudly declaring their whereabouts (they had been in the basement getting something out of the freezer for dinner) and blatantly dissolving the imaginary game of hide and seek that Mia had so ingeniously invented.

“What are you looking for?”  My uber-practical husband asked expectantly.

“You?”  I answered sheepishly…

Sometimes life is just more fun seen through the eyes of a 20 month old…

Toby's First Homework Assignment

Toby was sent home the other night with his first ever homework assignment. 

Drumroll, please….he had to count as high as he could count.

I figured this activity would be an easy one and decided to engage him in it this afternoon as we drove home from school.

It took about 20 minutes, but all on his own, he made it to 127.  Yes, that’s right, ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVEN.  All in a row.

Toby approached the task with a very serious, slow and methodical, over-enunciated determination.

It was, quite possibly, the boringest undertaking motherhood has ever presented me with.

When he hit 43 he dropped one of his raisins and I thought the challenge was over.  Turns out it was only a brief 10 second reprieve before he announced that he was going to go back to 40 and repeat 40 through 43 to be sure that he was still on the right track.

When he got to 75 a strangely parked car appeared out the window.  Again, a glimmer of hope came to mind, but still the monotonous count went on right where it left off after we had fully explored WHY this car was parked sideways halfway up Pretty River Parkway.

At last he reached 99 and took a great pause before asking, “What comes after 99 mom, TEN?”

“No!” I encouraged eagerly, “Ninety Nine is the last number before….ONE HUNDRED!  You did it!  You counted to ONE HUNDRED!”  

But what came next?

You got it…

“One hundred…and ONE…”

Finally he reached 126 and rather abruptly announced that he couldn’t count any higher because his voice was tired.

THANK GOD.

“Good, job, Toby!” I said, “Tonight when we get home we can tell Daddy and write in your school agenda that you can count to One hundred and Twenty Six.”

My concluding remarks were initially met with silence before a quiet but still determined whisper came from the back of the car,

“One hundred and twenty seven…”

The Sad Boy on Page 4

Mia’s vocabulary is exploding in front of our eyes.  I absolutely ADORE this stage that she is going through; the daily excitement over her new words, the bizarre American accent she uses when she over-annunciates things and the weird facial contortions is takes her to say the most basic of words are all so endearing that I want to stick her in a bottle and keep her 20 months old forever.

OK who am I kidding?  I don't REALLY want her to stay 20 months old forever; that would put a SERIOUS damper on my future life plans.  Suffice it to say, I am enjoying this stage immensely.

Tonight, however, her rapidly growing language skills brought us a new challenge.    We were enjoying some carefree time in the basement; Toby was perusing a Sports Illustrated and wondering aloud why Daddy hadn’t been invited to run against Usein Bolt in the 100m final at the Olympics while I was indulging in the latest Food and Wine magazine.  Mia, wanting to be part of the action, grabbed one of Toby’s books, and asked me to read it to her.

It was a rather boring book about 2 little kids who find an egg and the egg breaks and they are sad but then the chicken lays another egg and they are happy again.

(Who WRITES these books!?!?!?)

She was only partially paying attention until we hit the part where the boy was SAD.  I made a sad face as I said it so she would know what I was talking about and then I moved on.

Mia looked at me, looked at the book, and then promptly (and rather bossily) turned the page BACK and DEMANDED to know what was UP with the sadness.  Phrased in typical Mia-speak:

“SAD BOY?”

I explained that he was sad because the egg was broken and boldly flipped forward to the next page.

WOAH WOAH WOAH!!!! She proclaimed (In typical Mia –speak: “SAD!!!!”)  before turning the page BACK with her tight little fist.

She stared again at the sad little boy before making her melancholy observations,

“Sad HAT”

she lamented

“Sad SHOES”

as she pointed to his pitiful feet

“Sad BOY….”

she grieved, still holding tight to the page so I didn’t DARE try to tear her away YET AGAIN from her experience of this boy’s intriguing moment of anguish.

She sat very still for about 30 seconds, (which is probably the equivalent of 5 years to my dad) and then looked up at me with the most empathetic and hopeless look as she very sweetly asked, “HUG?”

Yes, Mia. You can hug the boy.

And so she gripped the book in her hot little hands and hugged the poor sad little boy with all of her love.

I’m still not quite sure WHY she was so fascinated by the poor sad boy on page 4 of the book, but I’m glad to see that she isn’t all just a bundle of mischievous energy; she can be pretty sweet, sometimes, too.

True Professions of Love

When Toby started stringing 2 word sentences together it wasn’t long before he melted our hearts with “I wuv oooo” in our arms each night at bedtime.  It has got to be, hands down, one of the most euphoricaly-drug-simulating moments that parenthood gives you.

And once again, we fall victim to sibling-assumptions.

Mia, who has been stringing 2 or 3 words together for months now, absolutely REFUSES to indulge our parental cheesiness.  Each night when I put her down to sleep I say, “night night, Mia, I love you!” to which she replies with an offhanded wave of her hand and a gruff, “BYE BYE.” 

Rob has even started practicing with her, “Mia- - I LOOOVE YOU!!” he’ll say in his most endearing voice only to be met with her dead pan stare and the now humorously predictable, “BYE BYE.”  Apparently she thinks this is the logical response to someone’s confession of love.

But this weekend I finally duped her.

Mia has a very busy social life.  She attends dance classes, swim lessons, gym, music, rhythm and rhymes at the Early Years center, the gymnastics club at the YMCA…I really cannot keep up with her busy weekly schedule.  Somewhere, during ONE of these groups, she heard the song Skinnamarink – you know the one – that ends each verse with a heartfelt “I LOVE YOU!!!!”

Shelly informed me of her new obsession with this song and the bait was on the hook.  By the end of the weekend she was humming the tune and eventually I actually heard, for the first time ever, those 3 sweet words come out of her mouth.

“I love BUUUU!”  She said with so much genuine love I felt instantaneously jealous for the recipient of her very first pronouncement of love:  her beloved blanket.

She still says BYE BYE as I kiss her lovingly good night and tell her how much I love her each night, but I now KNOW that she can say it and one day, when she realizes that I’m JUST as great as her beloved blanket, I’m going to hear it for real.

…I’ll keep you posted.  Until then - -BYE BYE.

I will conclude this post with a video of something Mia DOES share willingly: The singing of Happy Birthday with the delivery of a Lego Tower Birthday Cake.  It seems to be her newfound obsession.  As you will be able to tell from this short clip, she is missing 66% of the words to the song but the message gets across crystal clear.

Minor Construction Mishaps...

I am under strict instructions from my uber-supportive-texting-friend that I need to post a summary of what took place yesterday at the YMCA.

In fact, I will paraphrase for you her 2 word response to my text of woe: “Blog it.”

The YMCA is under construction.  Ordinarily this sort of thing doesn’t affect my day to day life but this weekend I dropped by for a last minute treadmill run and let me just say…I blame what unfolded that morning ENTIRELY on the construction. 

I was feeling so proud of myself for actually ATTENDING the gym on a WEEKEND that my post-workout gait was slightly quicker and more spry than usual.

So peppy and confident was I, in fact, that I decided to check my email on my phone as I confidently strode into the change room to shower.

SO carefree was I post workout that I didn’t even look UP from my phone until I found myself unexpectedly in the shower room amid several running showers.

And multiple naked, HAIRY asses.

I did the only logical thing to do under this scenario: I froze.

And then I bolted at top speed out of the men’s change room.

“Did anyone notice?”  My friend texted back (after a several preceding LOL and BAHAHAHAH texts).

The truth is I don’t know.  I suspect I made a fairly discreet and quiet entrance but I undoubtedly blew my cover on my frenetic exit.  I can’t say for sure whether I screamed or not, but I definitely tripped over at least ONE bench and sent my entire body SLAMMING into the exit door (which turns out to be a PULL, not a PUSH door) for my Grande finale.

It goes without saying that this weekend I think I’ll skip the gym.

Kindergarten Update!

Thank you all for your kind emails, comments, phone calls and for humoring me in my moments of mommy-weakness.  I am happy to report that today came and went without a hitch.  Toby woke up in great spirits and his excitement about kindergarten proved to be contagious.  We laughed and chatted all the way in to town and it wasn’t until about a block before school that he announced rather suddenly that his “tummy felt weird.”  I reassured him that mine did, too.

Drop off was fine.  He rallied his shyness and eventually mustered up the courage to come out from behind my legs and was sitting by the window with some of the bigger SK boys when I left.   He even casually shrugged off my eager suggestion that we wave to one another as I walked past his kindergarten window on my way back to the car.  I could tell he was going to be just fine.

Before I knew it, 3pm was upon us and I was able to come and pick him up.  I was SO eager to hear about his day. 

My anxieties have quickly dissipated and I have entered the realm of bemused investigative work.  Deciphering what ACTUALLY went down today has been an exercise in creative questioning and patience.  Rob and I have spent the evening working on it and this is what we have thus far : 

-       He has 3 teachers.  Two of them are called “Mrs. Shields”.  The other one is called The French Teacher.

-       He does not have French classes.  This lady does not teach them French, nor does she speak French.  She accompanied their class to the gym to play duck duck goose and the reason he calls her The French Teacher is that is what the other kids call her.

-       He didn’t get a turn at duck duck goose; each time someone went around he was called a Duck.
      He has a "medium" number of kids in his class.  More specifically, he has "between zero and nine" kids in the class.

-       One kid cried.  One kid got hurt and had a bleeding elbow.
      He didn't sing any songs or read any books. They did SUGGEST he participate in Arts and Crafts but he refused so someone traced his hands on the board for him.  (Probably "Mrs Shields"...)

-       At Kindergarten they call Circle time “Science Centre”.  I was corrected about 5 times tonight after mistakenly referring to circle time by its former name.

-       They start “science center” every morning by putting their hands together, saying something, and then saying “Amen”.   They pronounce it “Ah-men” not “Hah-men” like they do at church.
      He didn't go to the bathroom at all today.

-       He had two breaks for lunch.  During the first one he ate his sandwich and during the second one he ate his apple.  What he REALLY wanted to eat was his applesauce but he couldn’t find his spoon.  No, Mrs Shields was not there to help him find it because someone's Grandma was in charge of the class during the lunch times.  (He didn't remember her name).  When I emptied his lunch bag he had all his desserts sitting there untouched (INCLUDING his Cars gummies!) with his spoon sitting on top and no sign of his applesauce.  Another mystery...

-

That’s the update from our end!  I promise not to report any further drama until at least Monday when he has to start taking the bus on his own.  Until then, have a great weekend! 

Someone's got the Pre-Kindergarten Jitters!

Alas, the day we have long been waiting for, dreading, and over-discussing is finally upon us: tomorrow morning, I send my baby boy off to kindergarten.

I’m a practical person.  I know when it is reasonable and when it is not reasonable to be anxious about things.  I know the difference between a REAL problem and what is just a PERCEIVED problem.

And then I had children.

My emotional instability on the last day of Toby’s daycare took me by surprise, but I had ALWAYS thought that I would greet the first day of Kindergarten with a LOT more rationality and a lot LESS emotion than most other parents.   Once again, I prove myself wrong.

Here’s what I DON’T have to worry about:

Toby is fully potty trained

Here’s what I have been losing sleep over for the past few weeks:

Who his teacher is and what he/she will be like

How he is going to get his lunch bag opened

How he is going to handle the 1.5-hour bus ride home (!!!)

How he is going to do at drop off that first day

How I am going to do at drop off that first day

Whether he is going to make any friends

Whether he is going to make too many friends and not listen to the teacher

Whether he is going to eat his Cars Gummy Treats before any of the healthy stuff I’ve packed for him

How tired and cranky he is going to be after a full day of learning

Whether I can ever do anything fun with him ever again on a weekday…

The list goes on.

Toby, on the other hand, has no IDEA how significant an event this is.   He has not asked a single question and his only concern is whether or not he’s going to remember all of the “rules on the bus”. Yesterday, after offhandedly announcing that he only had ONE MORE SLEEP until Kindergarten I asked him how he felt about it.

“Oh, fine” he said as if I’d asked him if he’d rather have spaghetti or pizza for dinner.

I probed a little deeper,

“How does GOCHAR feel about school, Toby?  Is Gochar excited too or is he a bit nervous?”

Toby thought about this for a while as he pensively chewed his raisin bran.

After a few moments he shook his head conclusively, “No, Gochar isn’t nervous. He’s just excited.”

So I’m all-alone here on the nervous-bus on the night before kindergarten.  But I have reached the stage of acceptance.  I know tomorrow is inevitable; I have to just let whatever happens come my way.  Maybe this time tomorrow night I will have a lot less to worry about at night?  Hopefully???!

Tonight, as I snuggled my little boy to sleep he asked me to read him the Dr Seuss book “Oh the Places You Will GO”.  I hadn’t read this book since a family friend gave it to me after getting accepted to medical school.  It is TRULY ironic that he asked me to read it to him tonight.

As I read it I had one of those clairvoyant moments as parents.  Those moments in time you consciously watch yourself live through knowing full well you will think back upon them for years and years to come.  Moments you cherish so much they almost make you cry as they unfold before you.

The book is, perhaps, more suitable to a grade 8 student or a high school graduate, but as I read it to him tonight I realized that this is likely the last time I will be able to lie in bed with him and snuggle him to sleep the night before such a big event.  (I HIGHLY doubt that the 18-year-old version of Toby will let me lie with him and play with his hair while I read him “Oh the Places You will Go” before his first day of University.)

And so I poured my heart into it and read it to him, and to myself, and to every future version of Toby as he faces life’s biggest moments.

Toby:

  One day you may come upon this blog and read it, and it may be the only way you will know what I said to you the night before I let you out into the real world of school, and bullies, and lunch boxes, and school bus rides.  It may have come from Dr Seuss but it also came from my heart.

“Congratulations!  Today is your day.  You’re off to Great Places!  You’re off and away!  And will you succeed?  Yes, yes you will 98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.  Kid, you’ll move mountains!  Today is your day.  Your mountain is waiting…so…get on your way.”

Sometimes letting your children go is the hardest thing we have to do as parents.  But, as I will likely realize over the next few weeks, it is also one of the most important.

Good luck tomorrow to all of Toby’s 4-year-old friends and buddies…and all you parents, too!  I send you off tomorrow with pride, love and hope, Toby-Bear.  Go move mountains…