August, 2008

Ah yes.
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Monday I took my children to the dentist. Why? Well, because Franklin’s camps are over and I wanted to show him what a good time with Mom means!

Come look at Mom’s gingivitis!
Guess what you’ll look like in a dentist chair if you only floss for the two weeks prior to your appointment. Yes! That crappy!
Woooohooooooooo!

But wait! Don’t run!
Dentists are fun! Don’t be scared!

I swear, I didn’t think the cleaning was really going to happen. Nevertheless, I showed up bright and early. I was totally game. The receptionist told me that she lurved babies and that my son was oh so cute the last time he was in and really it was allgoingtobeokaysoseeyouonMondaybye!!!
So, of course, I wanted to test her.

I figure that when people tell me to bring my kids to the dentist, cocktail party, café, poetry reading, jam session, sex toy/Tupperware evening I try to take them up on it as often as possible because if I can’t have fun, I might as well act as a strong form of birth control.

So there I was, laying back in the chair while answering Star Wars questions and breastfeeding as a very talkative dental hygienist tried to scrap my teeth.

To be fair, the receptionist read Franklin Scooby-Do at the top of her lungs for about half of the visit and Eliza either sat on my stomach or did the vertical breastfeeding manoeuvre. Both kids were adequately entertained – read: they were silent. All in all, it was a good visit. I think the young lady was exhausted by the time we left but she’s a lot more knowledgeable not only about Star Wars Lego but also about our friends in Japan, how to swim in a lifejacket, and what happens when you place your bird feeder too close to your patio windows.

For our next trip, I promised to take Franklin to a more exciting place. So far, my record of outings has included opening a bank account and watching his mother get her teeth cleaned so I’m totally going to make up for it tomorrow. We’re going to Blood and Guts at Beaver Lake Regional Park.

They’ve got pointy teeth and sharp claws, and they don’t eat tofu! The predators of the forest are fascinating and beautiful. Drop by to learn more about animals that make their living by eating meat. Cougars and owls and bears – oh my

Yeah, there are about three things in that little snippet that make me cringe. It’s a horrible write up. Do people get paid to write that? Seriously?

Also, before I bugger off to sleep I just want to mention one last thing.

Eliza?
Sleeps through the night.

Yup.

(I probably just jinxed it but, whatever.)

Breast-feeding in a wind storm

Originally uploaded by AdaSaab

I bet you thought after that little three-day stretch last week that I was going to posting regular again.

HA! Fooled you.

What me? Write on a regular basis when I have proposals for money to write that I have NO IDEA how to write? When I have children to drop off at sports camps parent all day? When I have nipples that won’t cooperate no matter what kind of herbal hippie concoction I dream up to prevent mastitis?

Ah yes.

If you were to venture back in my archives to a time when I was breastfeeding Franklin you would find that I was plagued with Mastitis about 4 or 5 times during his infancy. It all stopped by the time he was 4 months old though.

Eliza is 5 months old.

I totally thought I was in the clear. I have got it once quite badly when my mother-in-law was here (awful timing as I’m sure she thought she was the cause of it AND SHE WASN’T – in cause your reading this, you-know-who).

Since then? Twice

Plugged Ducts are the culprit

I’ve had Mastitis a total of about 7 times. To be completely accurate, I’m not sure how many times I got it with Franklin. In fact, it could have plausibly been one large and long case of mastitis torture. My breasts are my badges of courage. My breasts are symbols of what I believe in and my breasts show how incredibly stubborn I am.

My breasts are haggard and tired and totally not erotic.

At least, that’s how I’m feeling.

But then I wake up at 6am and Eliza’s hungry. The house is quiet and I sit in the rocking chair that my mother used to breastfeed all 5 of her children and that I breastfed Franklin in. I nurse Eliza while I look out the window and watch the sun rise…

and I think, “My breasts are beautiful.”

I had such high hopes this year for my beautiful little garden. We’ve moved about a block away from the site and I thought that nothing could prevent me from caring for it each and every day – almost like it was in my back yard.

Well, “nothing” turned out to be entertaining two children, miles apart in age and activity, for the summer.

First, there was the winter kale:

I wasn’t sure what it was so I asked anyone on flickr for identification. I couldn’t see the little buggers moving so I thought it was indeed Cabbage Worms and since my kale had basically been stripped in the span on one week, out they came.

A tad too dramatic? Perhaps.
However, gardening has become quite emotional for me. The community garden and my little backyard spot are my favourite places to be. When I come home from the garden, even if the trip has been a gong show of simultaneous breast-feeding, watering, weeding and thinning with a whole lot of “Can we go NOW?” thrown in, I still feel refreshed and calm.

This doesn’t even begin to explain just how much gardening affects me. It’s not enough that it is a hobby. I want to study it for the rest of my life. I want to place community gardens everywhere possible. I want people to know how special it is to grow their own tomatoes, carrots, beans… I want children to understand how much water it takes to grow food. I want society to realize how important bees are to our existence.

I want
I want
I want

I want the Wooley Aphids to stop eating my brussel sprouts!

and how about my sad artichokes!

This is The Summer of Aphids.

I wonder if I was able to get there on a daily basis, if I would still be having this problem. Who knows. Swimming lessons have taken precedent over our morning walk to the garden. Sometimes I try to go after dark but this hardly happens. I am, as they say, on a short leash. The last few times I’ve left the house to the garden while there was still light outside, I was called back to a screaming baby.

The end of the day spells almost constant breastfeeding. Bring on the solids!

Ah, it’s all good. If we still lived across the city, I would have had to give up on this garden so I’m happy with what I have been able to do. We ate endive salad tonight. Our squash is growing well. Carrots are plentiful. We have a bell pepper or two. The yellow beans are turning… yellow. The pole beans are climbing. The strawberries were excellent.

I’m going back there tomorrow armed with a spray bottle of dish detergent and water and I hope to make those brussel sprouts too slippery for those guys.

Wish me luck!
If anyone else has any more advice on how to get rid of these aphids, please let me know. Until then, it’s the ladybugs, the yellow jackets and me.

Spam-Dandy

Originally uploaded by Miss Retro Modern

Okay – blogs are a little like time capsule. If I had all of my archives online, mine would be one as well. The fact that a good chunk of my life that I care to share with the world-wide-web crowd is here means that I am able to go back and see where I was a certain times in my life.

Actually, even though there is A LOT that I don’t publish (even more since I’ve come back), the entries are still memory triggers. I can clearly remember writing certain things and what was happening in the background – what I wasn’t writing about.

It is for this reason that I need to record something today. This doesn’t happen all that often and the very fact that I’ve had a day like today needs to be remembered.

This morning, Franklin and I played until 9am – meaning, Eliza slept in until 9-freaking-am. If she were an only child, this would mean that I would have had an amazing amount of sleep but she’s not and instead, this means I got to spend some wonderful time with my son (who woke up at 7am).

We ate breakfast together.
Eliza woke up.
We got ready for swimming lessons and while walking to the pool we decided on the mantra (we are learning about Hinduism right now) “I can swim”. I think it is doing a good job (and by that I mean the mantra, I’m not sure he’s absorbing everything about Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva but it’s a start).

I find it interesting just how much of my time ski racing has come into play while I’m parenting. I’m not sure if this is a good thing but I tend to do a lot of the same things with Franklin that my coaches did with me – especially after a session with a sports psychologist.
(Please, let you not be screwed up, Franklin. I’m just going with what I know.)

After swimming lessons we went home, ate lunch and laid Eliza down for a nap. (She also napped at the pool in the wrap, which made sitting by an outdoor pool really quite relaxing).

Franklin and I then settled down and read a story.
Then we napped.
Then I woke up and for 15 minutes, I had two kids asleep. (!!!)

So, I stared out the window at our pumpkin plants and, in the process, found our first ovary!

After both children woke up we went to a swim shop and bought a new pair of shorts for Franklin – ON SALE (oooh, thrifty!). We wandered through the rest of the store and finally came home.

Eliza napped again.
Franklin played and watched me make dinner.
Dickson came home.
We ate at 6pm sharp. (!!!!)
Franklin had a bath.
I left Dix and Franklin at home while Eliza and I walked to the garden.
Eliza played on the grass and in my arms while I weeded and took photos of aphids (more on that sad story later).

I know what you’re thinking; “Big Hairy Deal, Ada”. Probably every single one of you reading this does this every day.

Every. Single. Day.
However, this doesn’t happen to me. I don’t work like this. We always seem to fly by the seat of our pants and I always think that jumbling to bed at night only to start the tumble the next morning is normal.

Can I do this every day?
To tell you the truth, I hope not. It seems…. what… too predictable?
Nevertheless, I’m still impressed. I managed to eke out a pretty ordinary day. It’s a strange feeling, this.

Black Hole Sun, originally uploaded by lightgazer (will return someday).

Sailing isn’t going to happen. We actually didn’t make it off the wait list. I thought it was going to happen and then, crash – no sailing. I’m a little sad about this if only because I grew up in Northern BC. We didn’t sail. Our summer camps consisted of making sure we didn’t have leeches on our legs after coming from the lake and swatting the mosquitoes the size of eyeballs once they had collected enough blood to make them really SPLAT on our friend’s arms.

Sailing just seemed like so much fun. Anything that has to do with the ocean seems like such a treat for Dickson and I. Even going down for a walk on Dallas Road brings on sigh after sigh about how lucky we are to live in a place so beautiful. People come from all over the world to see our little corner and of all the places I’ve travelled to this is truly the most beautiful.

So, it’s with this appreciation that we look on Franklin’s protests.

“The O-C-E-A-N… Why do we have to go there?”

It is hard to see how good you have it when you don’t know anything different. The ocean is practically in his backyard and he thinks this is a normal everyday thing. Just recently, however, he’s been easier to get to the beach. We have moved to by a particular beach that he likes and so we only have to ask him once (okay, maybe twice) and he’s game.

Phew.

However…. What to do in place of Sailing Camp? I’m clearly going to have to find something because you know what we did today after swimming? He opened his own bank account.

Yes. The Camp of Mom is just riveting.

Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins

Originally uploaded by greatspacecoaster15

What is this I see before me?
An empty screen and it is not 11:45pm and I’m not trying desperately to keep my eyes open? Free moment?

Wow!

Yes, the kitchen table looks like I’m a university student studying for exams in finger painting and sand art and I have to start grilling soon or we’ll be eating at 7pm again but hell! It’s quiet! I’m gonna write something!

edit: notice that I have had to save it and finish it off later this evening because I’m wasting all this time babbling about stupid free time

So? Franklin is still sad. He refuses to let us delete any of the movies of him and his friend off of the flip so that he can watch them by himself. We have saved them to the computer but he wants the flip as he can curl up and watch it himself.
Dramatic and yet, so sad.

I also miss his friend and all the fun they had together.
I have cried “uncle” on the Entertaining a 5-year-old for Two Months fiasco. He’s bored. I blamed myself until I realized that I NEVER SAID I WAS A GOOD MOTHER and then promptly signed him up for weeklong summer camps.

This week is swimming lessons.
After that? Sailing.
And then? Pottery.

Yup, that’ll give us one week before school starts and we will love each other until we are hiding in our separate corners again.

Relax – the camps are only a couple of hours long each weekday.
He needs to run like the dickens and I can’t chase him with a wee one strapped to me – not for too long anyway (and not that I haven’t tried and Eliza doesn’t think it’s hilarious).

I also blame the Kindergarten and his care for the last 4 years. They constantly kept him stimulated. Here he is now, at home with me everyday, and he’s wondering where the other children, the variety of games, puzzles, art supplies and jungle gym is…

Where’s the yoga instructor?
Where is the group to teach me how to build a cob house?
Are we going to make sushi today? – with an expert?
Art Gallery adventure?
A measly flipp’n water park?

Come On, Mom!

Two weeks ago, I was thinking, my Mom did this! With 5 kids! But then I thought… 5 kids entertain themselves. One 5-year-old and one 5 month old don’t exactly jive – yet. I’m thinking that they might at some point, right?

And really? I must stop thinking along those lines – “but my Mom did this” and “my Mom did that” because from what I remember? My Mom, as amazing as she is, wasn’t Mary Poppins. My selective comparison to my mother with a carpetbag and a spoon full of sugar are unrealistic no matter whose Mom I’m talking about.

We’ve recently met another family with 4 children – 4 glorious, beautiful children. I’ve had a few conversations now with the mother of this family and while I would freely admit to being okay with more children previously, I am even more okay with it now.

Except for a few details like… money, I’m 35 on the 8th, money, Dickson is 7 years older than I am, money, we feel still so far from family and…. Money.

Never mind that I don’t have a carpetbag.