Miss Mia Turns 3!!!

Three years ago today it was bitterly cold but I insisted on going for my then-ritualized nighttime waddle after the kids had gone to bed.   It was my painful and desperate attempt to induce labour.  My mother, not wanting to upset me, graciously bundled herself up to come with me so I wasn’t walking the icy and darkened streets alone.

It was on this particular walk that my mom made the sweeping statement that “Babies are ALWAYS born in the middle of the night.”

Of course I argued her point; I was beyond curmudgeonly and we had run out of the usual topics of conversation.  She rolled her eyes at me,

“Name ONE BABY who was born between the hours of 8am and 4pm”

Jordan Holloway. 

Her argument was that his mother  had been in LABOUR during the night so it didn’t count.

I threw my arms up in the air.  With THAT type of specification and the length of MOST labours, NO ONE was going to meet her ridiculous criteria.

I still remember her very next words that served as the final impetus for Mia’s arrival,

“Look, Lyssie, all I’m trying to say is that no one wakes up at 7am, goes into labor, and delivers the baby at 4pm in the afternoon.  It’s never REFINED like that.”

Less than 24 hours later, after a 7am-4pm labour and arriving just before the civilized hour of 5pm, Mia made her grand entrance into the world

It was the first and LAST thing she ever conformed to.  It was the first of MANY times she flipped the inaugural bird to my mother and the rest of the world.

Since that time, Mia has lived up to that very first statement by being predictably unpredictable, doing things in her own way, on her own terms, and constantly giving us plenty of things to laugh about.

We find her now, approaching her 3^rd birthday, a strong willed, independent and quirky little girl.    While she can keep up with her busy brother in soccer, wrestling and running games,  we often find her by herself, sweetly rocking one of her many babies, softly kissing their head and shushing them in sweet maternal loveliness. 

Her palate for chocolate and all things sweet is unparalleled.  This Christmas I brought home that disgusting PC Chocolate Soda and did a blind taste test for my parents, Rob, Toby and Mia.  We all smelled it, took a sip, and guess who was the first to guess correctly?

“ITS CHOCOLATE….” She said in an astounedly dreamy voice.  While the rest of us grimaced and poured it down the drain, Mia gleefully finished her (very small) taste test, and has since then marveled at that magically perfect beverage that never materialized again.

Mia makes us all laugh on a regular basis.  Whether it’s her odd pronunciations of words such as DESSERT (pronounced De-THE-rt) or Usually (pronounced Yooooo-s-oooo—ly) or her crazy dress up get ups that she proudly walks around boasting, there is never a dull moment with her around.

Perhaps my greatest pleasure comes from watching Mia and Toby together.  There was a long stretch of time in my life when I questioned how on earth I was ever going to be able to parent two children at the same time.  I still have those moments, but seeing their mutual love of one another blossom and reciprocate, I know that by having Mia I gave Toby the greatest gift I could ever give him.   This year I can add this clause:  And Vice Versa.

Dearest Mia,

I know you are SO excited to turn 3 years old tomorrow.  You know how to hold up 3 fingers and you love the fact that if you turn the number 3 on its side it makes an M for Mia.  I look forward to celebrating the day with you with all of your babies, a big chocolate cake with whipped cream for de-the-rt and a nice cozy meal with your adoring brother and father.  You bring us all so much joy; we couldn’t imagine what we ever did without you.  I hope one day you will be a Mommy too, because I know you will be SUCH a great one, but more importantly so that you one day know how very much I love you, my sweet pea.

Happy Birthday to you

 Love Always,  Mommy xoxo

A Different Kind of New Years...

It is 7:30pm on New Years Eve and everyone in my house is asleep INCLUDING the dog. 

We had high hopes for tonight; a meticulously planned dinner party with oysters, champagne tastings and midnight poutine bar with some of our very favourite couples.  We had hyped up the sleepovers for the kids, made convoluted plans to have the dog appropriately fed and toileted, and even  had the trampoline place rented for post festivities child-minding while we nursed our hangovers the next morning.

And then Toby got gastro.

My boy doesn’t do anything half-heartedly.  While some people feel sick, barf, and are done with it, Toby not only chooses a momentous day (last year it was Halloween) but also allows the bug to completely take over his body and mind.  Rob found him wandering the basement delivering puddles of vomit to unsuspecting places just after midnight.  He then proceeded to replicate his wandering shenanigans 4 more times before daybreak.  By the time it was morning Rob had done 3 loads of laundry, showered himself and Toby and Lysol-disinfected the basement and his room twice.  All while I was sleeping.  (I married a good man.)

Mia, on the other hand, woke up with some diarrhea neatly tucked into her diaper and that was the end of it.

Needless to say, my heart went out to my two boys today.  We cancelled our evening plans and had a pajama and movie day, trading our lavish dinner for beef broth, saltines and ginger ale with a whiff of zofran on the side.

I am sitting here alone by the fire while everyone else sleeps (Rob PROMISES he will wake up in an hour to make dinner with me and usher in the new year…we shall see!) and I’m feeling surprisingly grateful for this rare moment of solitude in which to reflect on our year.

I think the feeling that I have right now – which I have every time Toby gets sick (in his own dramatic way) is that of gratitude.  Seeing your child sick and then bouncing back to health is a little reminder of how precious and full of life they are, yet how vulnerable they can be at times.

In a lot of ways this is the predominant feeling I get when I reflect back on 2013.  Rob had his big car crash in May (he was fine but his car was not) and finished off the year by hacking his 2^nd finger up with an axe on Christmas Eve.  Both events were DEVASTATING to Rob but after decompressing (!) he came around to realizing how fortunate we are.  Both events left us feeling thankful that Rob and the others were unscathed and that all 10 fingers are securely in place.  It also reminded us of the amazing friends we have in our lives. We have several lawyer friends who jumped in to give us hours of free advice and are still walking us through the process.  We have doctor friends who arrived on Xmas eve to sew up Rob’s finger and reattach his fingernail, which has since proven to be but a decorative ornament on his now grotesque finger.

Toby’s year was highlighted by sports.  This year Rob coached Toby’s soccer team and I think for the rest of our lives we will forever refer to it as The Dream Team.  It just so happened that all the boys on his team were his best friends from class PLUS his best buddy from daycare, Connor.  The boys had SO much fun all summer long meeting on Saturday mornings to play soccer together and were undefeated this season which only served to rile up Toby’s soccer ego and enthusiasm.  As winter rolled in we were fortunate enough to find adequate replacement with hockey.  Although this team is missing his very best buddies, it has finally allowed him to make friends with some of the local kids and parents in Feversham and Singhampton.  He played his first game on Dec 23^rd and they lost 18-5, which quite quickly mitigated his feelings of invincibility from his summer of undefeated soccer.

Miss Mia has continued to live up to her middle name; she reminds me more and more of my Grandma as she unveils her mischievous and fun personality.  She has SUCH a sweet tooth, whenever she devilishly tucks in to a particularly delectable treat, hiding it away from the rest of us; I swear I catch a glimpse of my Grandma in her flickering eyes.   Mia has also started to show us her softer more maternal side. She has about 6 babies who sleep with her every night.  She talks to them as she falls asleep and as soon as she wakes up.  When I go in to get her every morning I find her rocking one of them, singing a song, patting their back or just reassuring them “there, there, baby, there there”.  It is great to see that there’s another side to my rough and tumble girl.

My fire is starting to dwindle and if I have any hope at all of salvaging my evening I must go and wake Rob up so we can do our NYE quiz and make some dinner.

I am signing off this year with feelings of good fortune, good friends, and hopefully no ominous rumblings in my tummy…I wish you and yours all the same.

Sibling Affection...

There is nothing sweeter than watching your children fall in love with one another.

A parental love of their child is instantaneous and starts to blossom even before their heart starts beating.  The love between siblings is a slower process marred by competition for mom’s affection and competitive screaming matches.  I have always felt blessed that Toby had such an innate love of Mia.  He was never one to demand extra attention while I was breastfeeding; he readily recognized the importance of his sister’s needs and accepted that they were a priority above of his own.  I would never have known the bond of siblinghood to be so strong if I hadn’t had the privilege to witness Toby as an older brother.  I remember the days before Mia was born praying that I would be able to love my second as mucha s my first and the weeks after she was born praying that she would one day love Toby as much as he loved her.

And then Mia grew into her own and started stealing his toys.

With Toby being the competitor that he is and Mia being the bossy little ball of stubbornness that SHE is, the peaceful bliss that I bragged about in paragraph 1 was transient.  The moments of me worrying whether Mia will one day love Toby as much as he love(d) her have now been usurped by worries about little fingers being caught in slamming doors and what critical screech decibels are safe for our windows.  But every now and then I get a reminder of that precious love my first born has for his baby sister.

Saturday mornings were Toby’s hockey mornings.  He played at 1030 am and the whole family would pack up our stuff and head to the arena by 10 am so he had enough time to get into his hockey gear in order to play his game.  Rob an I have had a great opportunity to connect with other families in our Brewster Lake community and Mia even met a little girl her own age who was in skating lessons that used the ice for the hour before Toby went on.  Before you knew it, Mia had her own skates, helmet , skating buddies and ice time which took up yet ANOTHER hour of our Saturday mornings and also deflected the attention YETAGAIN from her poor older brother.

Most mornings now, we arrive at the arena in enough time for Mia to get suited up and on the ice and Toby gets lost in the pile of siblings his own age who play various 5 year old arena games that often involve screaming, hiding and LOTS of running.  I leave him to his new group of friends for the first 30 min before dragging him to the changeroom to get ready for his hockey practice.

Last Saturday Toby was unusually quiet on his way to the arena and when I asked him what was up he said that he was thinking about how he’d like to watch Mia’s skating practice for a change.

“That’s nice of you Toby’ I said and thought nothing more of it.

After we got to the arena I left Toby with his friends and frantically got Mia into her skates and attire before heading off to meet with the other moms.  After a few minutes I decided I should find Toby and went off in search of the large group of boys – he was nowhere to be found.  When I FINALLY located the boys Toby was not with them.  I started to panic and ran into each dressing room looking for him to no avail.

Finally I spotted him out of the corner of my eye.  He had moved to the cold rinkside portion of the arena and pulled a large overturned bin right beside the rink to the spot Mia was practicing.  He was sitting by the cold ice, all by himself up high on this bin, his little legs dangling, watching, with adored admiration, his little sister skate.

I think back sometimes to the weeks of panic I had thinking how much I might ruin my first born’s life by selfishly having another one; and now I have the perfect reprieve.   Toby is an old soul and although he may find a few more challenges in his life, having to share it with Mia, deep down there's nothing but unconditional love for her.  She's a lucky little girl...

Toby's First F-Bomb

Sometimes being a parent require spontaneous –on-your-feet-reactions to situations you have absolutely no forewarning or preparation for.  Case in point was our drive to school today in which Toby dropped his first F-bomb.

I know now WHY they call it an F-bomb: the sound of that ONE WORD erupting from the innocent mouth of my 5 year old created waves of bomb-like explosions that ricocheted off various parts of my brain I knew not even existed.

Here’s how the unexpected conversation went:

T: “Mommy, want to hear something funny?”

Me: “Sure!”  I say with genuine innocent enthusiasm as I got into the car

T: “Holden, my friend at school is SOO funny.  Instead of saying ‘suck your thumb’ he says ‘FUCK your thumb!”

Bah dum bum CHING!

Me: “WHAT!?!?!?!"  I said as I fell off the seat and out of the car.

A now somewhat meek Toby repeated,  “FUCK your thumb – that’s what Holden says.”

The second repetition of the word hit me just as harshly as the first.  I felt like a superhero character being pummeled to death with invisible speech-inflicted laser beams of indiscretion.

OK – I recognize now in HINDSIGHT that there is probably somewhere some literature (perhaps from Huffington post?) that educates parents on the PROPER way to react to your child’s first use of a swear word.  And I SUSPECT it says something about remaining calm, keeping it cool, minimizing the impact of the word and feigning indifference so as not embellish or permanently emblazon the word into their vocabulary.

I confess to you now that I did nothing of the sort.

“TOBY!!!” I shrieked as I regained my footing and got back into the car for the second time, “That’s a BAD WORD!!! A VERY bad word and I NEVER want to hear you say it AGAIN!!!”

Toby was shocked.

“What word is so bad, Mommy?  Is it the word FUCK?”

Once again zapped by the proverbial thunderbolt, he hit me again in quick succession,

“What does FUCK even MEAN?’

I explained to him again that it was a VERY bad word; SUCH a bad word, in fact, that a definition was IRRELEVANT and I went on to lecture him on the importance of NOT using words he doesn’t know the meaning of.

Finally FINALLY Toby got he message and was silent for a few minutes before boldly announcing that he was SORRY that he used such a bad word and that the FIRST thing he was going to do when he arrived at kindergarten that morning would be to confront Holden and TELL him that the expression, “FUCK YOUR THUMB” was NOT a good expression because the word “FUCK” was a bad one.

I threw my hands up in the air at this point and waved my white flag.  My mommy brain had been defeated by the relentless thunderbolts of crass terminology from its superior super hero.

One can only hope I have scared him enough with my seemingly nonsensical reaction to delay any further swearing behaviour for at LEAST another few moths…or at least to buy me enough time to do some proper research, husband collaboration and practice on the subject before the next outburst!!!

More Crazy Conversations...

My mom emailed me today to recap the “day” she had had with my father.  It consisted of hours of repetitively convincing him to shower and the details of his midnight snack time adventures.  At the conclusion of her email she lamented over how long it had been since she’d seen her grandchildren and how badly she longed for some proper dinnertime conversation with them as a break from the mundane with my dad.

It just so happened that we had had a rather INTERESTING day of conversations ourselves.  Dinnertime with Mia broke the cardinal rule of “no bathroom talk” at the dinner table.  For the past week Mia has perseverated on her friend Sam at daycare.  It all started last week when Sam pooped in his pants.   Mia’s fascination with this incident is wrought with fascination and admiration.  The story was told OVER and OVER again and we couldn’t MENTION going to daycare without being reminded, “Lets hope Sam doesn’t POOP in his PANTS again!!!”  I continued to reassure her that Sam was most likely NOT going to poop in his pants again.

So tonight, when I casually asked how daycare was, Mia gladly updated us on Sam.  No, he did NOT poop his pants today but he HAD peed ALL OVER the FLOOR.

I’m not sure who this character is; I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl and I’m not even sure that s/he DID ever poop his pants or pee ALL OVER the FLOOR but I HAVE made a mental note not to invite Sam to any play dates anytime soon…

Toby wasn’t any sharper as a conversationalist today, I’m afraid.  We were driving home tonight along a deserted country road with no car ahead of us and no car behind us when out of the blue Toby announced that he’d “like to go there with this guy.”

?!?!?!?!

Um…

I glanced frantically around the car to see if I’d accidentally picked up some other kid from school or mistakenly let some strange man into our car.  But as you can guess all there was in the back seat was Toby, staring back eerily at me after his mysteriously misplaced sentence.

“What on EARTH are you talking about Toby?” I asked while frantically searching in my med school brain for the age of onset of schizophrenia.

“That guy…” Toby said to me as if I was an idiot, “You know…the one who’s singing right now.  He keeps saying he’ll take me there to that special place.  And I have a special place I’d like to go to.”

AHA!  The radio!  I keep forgetting that 5 year olds sometimes unexpectedly stop talking and listen to things like music and lyrics.  I listened to whatever song was playing and Toby was right – the guy DID keep promising, “I’ll take you there” over and over again before qualifying the fact that it would be “to that special place.”

I SUSPECT the singer meant it in a SEXUAL way and crossed my fingers before asking Toby with as much casualty as I could muster WHERE exactly this special place was that he wanted this (CREEPY) man to take him?

“Well, DUH” Toby said as if the answer was OBVIOUS…”The bowling alley!”

And so I reassured my mother that she might not have found the stimulating conversation she was looking for tonight at the Henry Household…but hey, sometimes switching up the craziness is all you need!! 

Conversations with Toby

One of the greatest things about our daily schedule is the fact that I get to drive Toby in to school every morning.  Last year this task seemed daunting and time consuming.  This year, having gotten the kinks ironed out and having gained the confidence to know that no matter HOW BAD of a morning we are having I will EVENTUALLY get to work (and most likely on time) I am finding it quite enjoyable...and one of the best things about it is the opportunity to have a conversation with him every morning.  We have covered a vast array of topics so far, but here are two of my favourites...

T : “Mommy, I think my friend Erin is allergic to the rain”

Me : “What makes you think that?”

T: "Well, yesterday when it was raining she asked me to make a shelter for her with my body.  And I did. “

Me: “That was nice of you”

T: "Yes, but then I got bored of standing there so I went to play with my friends and now I’m worried that she might have gotten sick cause I left her in the rain."

Toby at age 5: already being manipulated by girls.

And here's another current favourite...

T : “Mommy, I want to go to Chile”

Me : “Cool!  That would be awesome! Can I come too?”

T: “Yes.  And Daddy, too.  And I also want to go to Japan. And FRANCE because they speak French and Iceland and Prince Edward Island.”

Me: “Woah.  Toby, that’s a lot of places.  It sounds like you have a travel bug. “

T: “Maybe…but I DON’T want to go to Australia!”

Me ; : “WHY!?!?!”

T: “Because they are nocturnal.”

(insert long explanation about time zones, nocturnal animals and jet lag)

T: “OK fine I’ll go to Australia.”

Me:  “It makes me really happy that you want to travel, Toby.  In fact, Daddy and I just booked us a trip to FLORIDA this March break.”

T: “Oh, MAN!  I don’t want to go to FLORIDA!”

Me: “But we were going to go to Disneyland and see Mickey Mouse and Cinderella’s Castle and the Magic Kingdom…”

T: “Nah…I’d rather just go to the trampoline place in Collingwood.”

Kids can be SO weird sometimes…

Saying Grace...Part II

Oh, the drama of dinnertime grace…it’s making the blog again.

As I prefaced in my last post about grace, I am not a terribly religious person, but I find the simple act of taking a moment at dinnertime to reflect on what we are thankful for an important one for our family.  It also, incidentally, is often the most revealing and sometimes humourous time of our day, especially noting the differences it brings out in our two children.

Toby loves to say grace and does so earnestly and thoughtfully.  He is very careful to cover all of the necessary gratitudes and often throws in some extra special thoughts and thank yous at the end.  It’s a great way for me to gauge what he’s worried about and whom he is playing with in the playground.  Often it’s the only way I get a glimpse into what he has done all day…

Mia, on the other hand, finds the whole process long and tedious and wants to get on with eating (or complaining about) her dinner.  We have tried to engage her by asking her to say something; she staunchly refuses.  Lately we have had to resort to crossing our hands while Toby is speaking just in order to keep her from rudely eating while her brother slowly and meticulously says his grace.

The other day we were engrossed in something Toby was saying when all of a sudden we heard a loud SNORING sound coming from Mia. She had put her head down on her arms, closed her eyes and was loudly pretending to sleep.  I don’t know HOW she knew it was a way of indicating boredom – but it certainly caught our attention.  Thank GOODNESS Toby burst into angry accusations; it somewhat covered up my inadvertent guffaw of laughter and gave me a second to regain control before politely disciplining Mia against interrupting Toby’s grace with her snoring.

Yesterday Toby demonstrated to us a song they sing at school.  The words go something like, “Thank you God for giving us life! Thank you god for giving us (insert something nice)” and he sang a hearty round of it.

To our surprise Mia perked up a little, listened attentively and then clapped along!  Finally, some participation!  And just to reinforce her commitment to dinner-grace-rebellion she threw in an enthusiastic “Ah---MEN!....BABY!!!”   at the end.  We may have to send her to Evangelical school…