April, 2006

POO!

Originally uploaded by lla.

There is a woman who works in an area of my office that will be using the cloth diapers that Franklin soiled about a billion times. She is a woman of many hats and on top of working near me, she has also been a casual “teacher on call” for the preschool that Franklin attends.

Here comes the irony:

We were discussing the end of her contract in my office and the potential to start again at preschool. She rolled her eyes at the prospect. It isn’t that she doesn’t enjoy the kids; apparently it is the potty humour that she knows she will have to endure. She’s up to her eyeballs in poop at home with her newborn baby and then she has to look forward to a full day of poo talk at work.

She is right. There seems to be nothing more fascinating to a three year old than poo. From the time we get there in the morning, the lunch hours and the afternoon pickup, there is poo flying everywhere – you know what I mean.

Nanana Poo Poo!
You eat POO!
You are a Poo Poo head!
I’m going to poop on you!
Pssbbsssssst!
Do you eat POO?
How about PEE? Do you drink PEE?
Hahahahahahahha, YES YOU DO!
YOU EAT POO AND PEE!

I suggested that when her son grows to the curious age of three, she might find it cute and interesting – and then I laughed nervously. She just looked at me blankly.
Clearly, my plan of endearing her to my child’s most certain and imminent poo talk wasn’t working very well.

The reason being, although he is currently enamored with trains and more so with all things space, he is obsessed with poo and pee – like the rest of his peers.

(Well, not all of his peers. There are a couple of older children who have passed the poo developmental stage and will only revert back if things get out of hand silly. I have a feeling this will happen to Franklin when he becomes…oh…say, 16 and trying to be somewhat cool. Then he’ll come back to his childhood when he’s 20 and stay there.)

D was farting the other day in the bathroom* and Franklin was laughing so hard he was having a hard time standing. All bodily functions are funny. All of them. So, as we are a bodily function kind of family, there is a lot of laughter in this house. There is also a lot of poo talk.

* (Heh heh… sorry, hon. For the record everybody, I fart too)

However, I have drawn the line with the subject of poo while we are eating. Although I am perfectly at ease talking about bowel movements at the dinner table, the ramifications of Franklin mentioning that he had a “big POO and he spattered EVERYWHERE!” while sitting with my in-laws fills me with such horror that I need to switch hats from “ALMIGHTLY POO MASTER” to plain ol’ Mother.

Mother says, “No poo or pee talk at the table, please.”

will work for food

Originally uploaded by phrenophile.

Just when I thought my coal tender was reaching it’s limit of Thomas the Train, Franklin seems to have switched gears – if only temporarily.

This is the danger of feeding a child’s obsession for they are fickle playmates. Now the stupendously impressive collection of train paraphernalia lies in precious balance. What is on the other side, slowly weighing down its side of the scale?

Space.

Franklin has become obsessed with space. We read about the solar system every night. We read about space aliens, flying saucers, asteroids, planets, robots… and on and on. D and I are now fielding questions such as,

“Can birds go to outer space?”
“Where is the universe?”
“Can Captain Gork come to visit me?”

Franklin has also started to ask people if they have ever been to space before. He hasn’t had anyone try to tell them they have. I think that because he asks with such serious interest, they are afraid to respond with anything other than the honest truth.

So, in the spirit of a parent who will do anything to feed her child with knowledge and entertainment in the hopes that he will be occupied on one task for more than 5 minutes, I bought him a small collection of astronauts and space ships. The set came with a monkey in a space suit.

I know.
Imagine the questions that brought on.

Anyway, these little guys/gals (because I tend to annoyingly remind him that there are also girl astronauts) have been everywhere.

The squash court
The sand box
The bathtub
All reach-able windowsills
Bed
Preschool
The car
Various coat pockets

I think that once he moves on to the next “thing” (and experience shows there will be one), I will put them away until he is an adult – along with Thomas, Percy, Gordon, Trevor, Alfie, Emily, Tobi, and all the rest.

Strawberries

Originally uploaded by dirtyolive.

Community Garden:

1. sense of community
2. finally a space of land for me to do as I please
3. friendly neighbours that speak extremely fast French on one side and extremely fast Arabic on the other
4. some excellent gardeners to learn from and talk to about our climate
5. free tools and unlimited use

Private Garden Space (a.k.a. a backyard)

1. privacy to garden in your bikini
2. variety of space and design
3. ease to work whenever you please – such as at 6am when you look out the window and realize that a cat had tried to sleep on your seedlings and you need to do some rescue work
4. NO ONE STEALS YOUR PLANTS

Yes, the community garden is great – and I realize it’s the only way for me to garden until we decide to live off potatoes, carrots and cheese in order to jump into mortgage hell. However, stealing my strawberry plants? That’s cold.

My space was clearly occupied. I had done work on it. There is no excuse to think that no one was going to use the fruit. The only thing we concluded (me and the two equally insulted and sympathetic sisters on my right) was that perhaps the old owners came to claim them. That, and since I didn’t buy them myself, they were never really mine in the first place.

My friend Missey came to the plot with me today, to help me face the scene of the crime once more, and we decided those strawberry plants are bad news. They’re diseased, yes… that’s it. They are going to release vermin all over your illegitimate, traitorous, underhanded crop… you…. you strawberry stealer, you!

Argh.

Dinnertime

Originally uploaded by punkassbitch.

On Tuesday I had a final exam. I studied all through Easter weekend like a woman on a mission. I had calculated what I needed to achieve in order to keep my A+ and I was extremely paranoid that I would fail. Every time D mentioned anything about school or the exam, I wouldn’t be able to speak unless I had gone over the different stages of economic liberalization in my head. I mention the A+ not because I want to tell you that I was doing well in the course, but to explain the annoying persona that appears when I know I am close to achieving something to be proud of – complete idiotic behaviour that is so anti-social I wonder how I ever got to the life I have now.

Fluke.

I loved my course – geopolitical economics. It’s right up my alley in terms of what to say to conspiracy theorists and how to listen to the news. I now know what caused the Asian financial crisis and I can spot a crisis of accumulation from a mile away. Capitalism, and all its “quirky inconsistencies”, has been burned into my brain. Ask me about the problems of e-waste, the informal labour sector of developing countries and how to short stock.
No, don’t.

However, I knew very little about any of these things before. If you had mentioned globalization to me I would have babbled about sponge like borders and the smuggling of immigrants across the border. Now, it’s a scarier and more solid world than I had originally thought.

But Whatever!
Hooray for books that make you hug your kid harder and thankful that you were born in North America. Right?

Anyway – after the weekend of studying and a long all-nighter right before the exam, I decided that I would treat myself to a dig in my new garden plot. If you look at the pictures I posted a few days ago, you’ll see that there is a lot of work to be done. How I over-turned the amount of area I accomplished on zero hours of sleep, I’ll never know.

What I do know is that I was ecstatic. The garden had previously been divided by wooden 2x4s. By now, they are rotten chunks of wood that come apart in my hands. However, the soil is extremely healthy and there seem to be about 6 or 7 worms in every pitchfork I turn over. So I’ve dug as much as I could out and have a lot more to do – hopefully tomorrow.

Today we passed by a demolition sale and scored some bricks for the pathways and border. As well, I have drawn out a garden design and figured out which vegetables will go well with others. Ideally, it would be nice to have the brick ready to lay down by tomorrow so I can slowly plant on my lunch hours.

I guess I’ll have to wait and see.
Ha! Will you listen to me read what I’m writing… “life” is starting to get in the way of my garden.

There are a few little boys in Franklin’s life right now whose parents feel they are old enough to watch Star Wars. That’s not a problem for me. I don’t seriously think that what these other little guys watch is going to turn them into terrible adults. Every family is different.

D and I don’t want Franklin to watch Star Wars. I mentioned that among a group of more experienced mothers today. Immediately, I was told by a woman in the group that her kids played with guns (water guns, lego guns and I’m not sure if there were plastic look-a-likes but she wasn’t counting them out). But (and there’s always a “but”), she had a “friend” who didn’t want her kids exposed to violence and now this other woman’s non-violent, “sheltered” children are out of control and are “the worst out of everyone’s kids”.

Why do mothers do this?

Why does one family’s decision mean that they are judged mercilessly? Perhaps the kids are “the worst” in the neighbourhood. It may or may not have to do with the amount of violence exposed. Why do I constantly hear stories about how “this” mother did “this” and look how much she screwed up.
Thank-God we’re all so supportive.
To tell you the truth, there are people I know who claim to be my friends but I know that any success I have or parenting decision D and I make, is judged with scorn.
I’m sick of worrying how my actions are going to upset them.

D and are trying to take sugar out of Franklin’s diet – because we feel it might help Franklin.
D and I don’t want Franklin to watch Star Wars because we feel that guns and war is not a game to be acted out.
D and are against Franklin watching too much television, especially commercials, because we are worried that young children Franklin’s age might not be able to think critically enough to understand how they are being manipulated – hell, sometimes we aren’t mature enough and we’re adults!

I have a friend who is not worried about her child’s sugar intake. In fact, smarties as a reward for vital, yet unpleasant, medicine intake is shear genius in my eyes.
I know a good family who would do anything for their kids. They have watched Star Wars. Their kids play Star Wars. Star Wars, to them, is a nostalgic adventure movie they can share with their children.
I have friends who believe that watching television is not detrimental. They will deal with each consumerist request as it comes because television is a good way to offer some downtime in the middle of the day for a non-napping toddler.

Are we sheltering Franklin? I don’t think so. He’s THREE for God’s sake. I feel he’s allowed to be a kid for a bit longer and I’m allowed to have a child for a few more minutes. Of course, these are my thoughts.

We’re just doing our best here.
How you decide to screw your own kids up is your business.

Not bad for a first try

Originally uploaded by dirtyolive.

If 50 Cent were to knock on my door I wouldn’t know who the hell he was. Yet, the other day I found myself performing an Easter, kid-friendly version of this song in front of strangers. The song was the challenge section of an Easter egg hunt we attended on Saturday. When I asked my team-mate to “rap” a few lines she mentioned something about drinking Bacardi so I said, “Oh I get it, it’s a commercial!”

Crickets were chirping
I have now firmly established my music cave dwelling status not only on the internet through my “discovery” of Radiohead a little while back, but now people I’m just getting to know think I read books and paint water colour all day while listening to my son play Handel on the harpsichord.

Apparently, this song is not a commercial. However, I must state that if you’re singing a song and you mention a certain brand of alcohol in the lyrics, isn’t it a commercial? I mean, don’t you think Bacardi is doing quite well with 50 Cent singing its praise and drinking its product with or without any birthday shenanigans?

I’m just saying.

Regardless of my pop-culture faux pas, Easter has been wonderful. We’ve met some great people and have done so much. Let’s just say, my Flickr account has been busy.

As for the eggs pictured above, I dyed them using onion skin for the orangey yellow, beets for the red and blueberries for the purple. They turned out much darker than I expected!
I also used the fancy nylons from my wedding (white fancy stay-up silky things I will never wear again) to encase different plants from the garden and around the complex before hard-boiling them in the dye mixture.

The result reminds me of sun prints (which I want to do with Franklin once the weather gets a little more reliable). They are a little rough in places, and I will never use witch’s hair moss again, but I love them. It’s a good thing I only bought a dozen though. I would have done them all afternoon only to discover that I am the only one in the house that will eat hard boiled eggs. D doesn’t touch them and Franklin only goes as far as the whites.

All the more for me.

Here it is!

Originally uploaded by dirtyolive.

Franklin is upstairs having a bath with D. I swear these last couple days have been incredible. The child is possessed. I was telling my mother how D and I have decided to cut out all white, processed sugar from his (our) diet in order to help him cope more with the normal trials of being three. And then she laughed.

She laughed and told me to find his “off switch”.
Yes. It’s that simple, folks!

This is the advice I received from a woman who brought up 5 children in the isolated north while her husband was an over-worked doctor. My mother is tough. She has coping mechanisms that no one has ever heard of. If she landed herself a spot in Survivor the other cast mates would just surrender. She is both physically and mentally hard as nails.

Find his “off switch”.
I’m laughing – on the inside.

You know what though? I asked him – of course I asked him. I will try everything once. It was my motto in my twenties and still holds strong to this day. He immediately pointed to his chest and pressed it. He was silent for about 1 and half seconds and then started singing.
Thanks.

Anyway, for more sane news…
I have a community garden plot! It isn’t the community garden I was working on with a bunch of people in the downtown area. I wouldn’t actually qualify for that one, as we don’t live in that district. I was just working with them in order to see what it would take to set up my own. I don’t think I will live here long enough to do this. Working with city hall is a different kind of frustrating than a three year old – but not that much different. There is definitely no “off switch” and they not only sing while you are trying to talk to them but they sing and put their fingers in their ears while dancing in front of a camera.

No, my garden plot is on the university campus. I was on the waiting list and they found room for me! I am so very happy. I can’t believe how happy I am. I was jumping for joy. The plot is in a good location as it is out of the way on the edge of the property and due to get plenty of sun. It also has some well-established strawberry boxes. I’ve put up some photos on flickr. Just click on the picture above for this entry.

Now you can look forward to a ton of garden related posts that may bore the concrete socks off of you. However, if you’ve got a plot of your own, I welcome any advice. I’ve never done the community garden thing.

Hot Wheel Memories (with reflected self)

Originally uploaded by pinhole.

When Franklin first started to talk there was a lot of imitation and pronunciation of every word under the sun. Everything was “What’s that?” What’s that?” What’s that?”

It was entertaining at first and normal routine by the end.

“What’s that?”
A squirrel

“What’s that?”
A duck

“What’s that?”
A tree

“What’s that?”
A Shoe

“What’s that?”
A pimple – look over there! A moose!

These days, it’s a whole new slew of questions, but now they require more concentration:

“What does Custom mean?”

“What is a Gypsy?”

“Where are the leprechauns?”

“Why is my hair curly?”

“What are genes?”

It’s a funny feeling, being my son’s main lexicographer. I’m beginning to feel like Dr. William Charles Minor. His definitions will forever be tainted with our feelings about the environment, manipulative consumption and society’s treatment of the mentally ill as we answer his questions as to where the garbage goes, why commercials seem louder in the movie theatre than the actually movie and the reason for the man walking down the street yelling and punching the air (ironically).

I know this is part of parenting, showing your children your views of the world, but isn’t another large part of parenting the ability to let them think for themselves? My parents were good at that. I say this because I always thought they were wrong (har). Perhaps, in time, Franklin will understand that D and I don’t know all the answers and that we are doing the best that we can with what we know. Perhaps I’m just jumping ahead of myself.

However, this absolute trust in our definitions of things can be hard. The other night, Franklin asked me the following question:

“What is an army tank for, Mom?”

That’s such a loaded question.
It’s one that I know will bring on so much more,

“What’s war?”
“What do soldiers do?”
“What do they do fight / kill / destroy?”

I have a choice here. I can be obscure and evade the question with a vaguely true definition, or I can face it head on.

I evaded.

“Army tanks are big vehicles with strong treads so they can drive over a lot of rubble and dirt”

“What’s rubble?”

See, that line I can handle.

rubble n. 1. A loose mass of angular fragments of rock or masonry crumbled by natural or human forces. 2.
a. Irregular fragments or pieces of rock used in masonry. b. The masonry made with such rocks.

Except that my “masonry” was brinks and bits of building. However, I forgot that I was talking to the patron saint of all things inanimate.

“Why do the buildings fall down?”
(worried)

“Oh, some building fall down, Franklin. It’s a good thing. This means construction workers can come in and build new buildings.”

“oh”

“Are there army tanks downtown, Mom?”
(There is a lot of condo construction going on in our city)

“No, Franklin. Not yet. We don’t have that kind of rubble.”
(worried)

curry and violet

Originally uploaded by calamitylill.

Okay, that title is embarrassing.

Whatever. I write a blog. It’s a mommy blog. It’s about nothing but the amount of snot in my son’s nose and my disasterous ability to convince everyone that I want my son to be gay. I should be BEYOND embarrassed by this point.

Anyway, Easter is coming. My family has always decorated Easter eggs for this holiday. It was always a treat for me, not just for the opportunity to be creative but to spend time with my family in an environment where they are all concentrated on an activity yet still felt the need to talk talk talk.

My family talks. It’s especially funny because when they are concentrating, be it on a puzzle, an oversized Christmas colouring book, or Easter eggs, the conversation is really odd. It’s a distracting conversation that results in all of us actually thinking a bit longer than normal before we speak – which is an interesting phenomenon for us.

I have always enjoyed this dialogue. In fact, now that I think about it, I should have brought over a few more boyfriends in these situations. The first time D met my family was at Easter time and although I believe he spoke about 5 words (Nice, To, Meet, You, Good-bye) he at least felt safe enough to stay around for the long haul.

Anyway, my point is that Easter is coming and I thought I’d post some easily-found-elsewhere methods of dying your eggs naturally – just in case you don’t think of looking for it yourself (now, how holier than thou is THAT?)

Add tap water to come at least one inch above the dyestuff. This will be about 1 cup of water for each handful of dyestuff. Bring the water just to a boil, and then reduce the heat to low. Let simmer about 15 minutes or up to an hour until you like the color obtained.

Pour mixture into a liquid measuring cup. Add 2 to 3 teaspoons of white vinegar for each cup of strained dye liquid. Pour the mixture into a bowl or jar that is deep enough to completely cover the eggs you want to dye. Allow the egg to sit in the dye water overnight if you want the colour to be really deep – but make sure you store the soaking eggs in the refrigerator.

You need to use your own judgment about exactly how much of each dyestuff to use. Except for spices, place a handful (or two or three) into the saucepan.

Eggs colored with natural dyes have a dull finish and are not glossy. After they are dry, you can rub the eggs with cooking oil or mineral oil to give them a soft sheen. Rubber bands and waxed crayon are good for making designs, as are sponging the colour before it has dried.

Blue: canned blueberries, red cabbage leaves (boiled), grape juice

Brown Gold: dill seeds

Brown Orange: chili powder

Green: spinach leaves (boiled)

Greenish Yellow: yellow delicious apple peels (boiled)

Grey: purple or red grape juice o beet juice

Lavender: small quantity of purple grape juice, violet blossoms plus 2 tsp of lemon juice, red zinger tea

Orange: yellow onion skins (boiled), carrots, paprika

Pink: beets, cranberries or juice, raspberries, red grape juice, juice from pickled beets

Red: lots of red onion skins (boiled), pomegranate juice, canned cherries (with syrup), raspberries

Violet or Purple: violet blossoms, hibiscus tea, small quantity of red onion sins (boiled), red wine

Yellow: orange or lemon peels (boiled), carrot tops (boiled), chamomile tea, celery seed (boiled), green tea, ground cumin (boiled), ground turmeric (boiled), saffron

What kinds of methods have you guys used?
Any other ideas?

I can hardly wait to get everything ready only to start with a gusto and then see Franklin get preoccupied with a vehicle and leave me to do it all by myself.

Yippee.

Floral Martini I

Originally uploaded by *AGK*.

Ironic that just the other day I posted about Franklin’s ease of affection and today I am shown the horror of rejection directly caused by my seemingly sweet little boy.

On the weekend, Franklin was playing with one of his best-est friends. They were on his friend’s new “big boy bed” and “frolicking”. I don’t know how else to describe it because they weren’t really doing much of anything other than twisting and bouncing and giggling.

So, isn’t frolicking the best way to describe this behavior?

At one point, Franklin must have become overwhelmed with emotion because he scooted up behind his friend and with a grin from ear to ear, planted a big hug. Franklin’s a bit bigger than this guy as well so he really engulfed him. It was sweet.

His friend’s mother looked at me and I knew exactly what she was thinking – in fact, we went to the movie together.

It seems we are to be in-laws as well as good friends.
Excellent.
Really? I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Edit: For the cusiously concerned. I didn’t think this needed to be said, but a few emails, comments and a friend’s different intrpretation of my post makes me feel that I need to add the following:
I do not care what sexual orientation Franklin might be. The “excellent” and “wouldn’t want it any other way” statements here are meant for my potential in-law relationship with my friend. That, my friends, is all I meant by that. – Thanks.

Of course, he could swing in another direction altogether.
Or we could have a girl in the future.
Actually, there are a number of scenarios here but I’ll stop at these two…

Today, D, Franklin and I met up with a girl from his old daycare. She loves Franklin. When I say this, I mean she LURVES LURVES LURVES LURVES him.

She asks him to marry him.

She brings him flowers.

She shows him her ballet moves.

Yes, she’s only three.
So is he.

Puberty starts early these days.

Franklin likes to run around and… frolic with his friends. However, showers of affection like this? He doesn’t really know what to do with them. He immediately said no to the proposal of marriage and then turned to ask me what “marry” meant. I didn’t have 5 or 6 hours to spend dealing with the topic so I just told him that his friend really likes to spend time with him and, and… isn’t that nice?

Apparently, not really.

This afternoon, she tried to give him some flowers that her mother had given her at the end of the day. He didn’t want to take them. He wanted to honk his bike horn an get his parents to the bike store to pick up “Road Star” (he’s named his bike “Road Star”. This will become an entirely different post some day, I’m sure).

Undaunted, little Lucy van Pelt kept thrusting them toward her Schroeder and he kept backing away. The look on her face was so traumatic. It didn’t help that she was trying to honk his horn at the same time as give him this plant, but essentially she was being rejected.

I wanted to sit her down, buy her a martini (or four) and let her smoke all my cigarettes while she recounted every second of that exchange until it was over-analyzed to death.
Poor girl.