January, 2009

mmmm, giraffe butt, originally uploaded by AdaSaab.

I just got a new comment on this photo recently in flickr. It’s funny when that happens because all of a sudden, a photo comes up in your flickr activity list again that you hadn’t been thinking about.

And there it is.
Sweet Eliza with no hair in her eyes. No teething rash. No runny nose.

Sweet little Eliza. She is just over 4 months old here.
4 months old!!

She’s so wee and precious and adorable.
She’s still wee and precious and adorable but now she rubs food into her hair – hair I can’t seem to keep out of her face. I am constantly moisturizing her face, and chest and everywhere else her baby eczema seems to crop up. She’s getting over a cold and is vehemently opposed to my getting anywhere near her nose. This causes a huge mess when she sneezes the snot out of her nose and proceeds to rub that all over her face and hair as well.

I really should take a photo of her in all her lunch time food mashing, snot smearing glory.

I keep looking over at this photo as I write this post and my heart is bursting and cracking all at the same time. My stomach is doing flip flops. My little baby is growing up.

Franklin has had one doozy of a cold these last few days. We’ve been quite healthy until now so perhaps the cold is just a normal run of the mill snot fest and I’m just not accustomed to the regular smell of snot and constant reminder to do something about that yellow thing sliding down to your mouth.

Ugh.
So, so gross.

For the last two days he has been hanging out with Eliza and I. Guess who has a cold now? Not me. Might as well be me because if she’s sick, I’m miserable. Snotty babies, no matter how satisfying it is to pick their noses, make me sad. Breastfeeding snotty babies are even sadder. Breastfeeding snotty babies who need to nurse all night? Full level of Sad. Let’s hope I’m not at the full level tonight. Let’s hope.

Tomorrow I’m sending the snotty six year old to school. Everyone can thank me later. He’s pretty much over it. He’s not coughing anymore. He’s just sporting some pretty yucky nostril goo. He has a box of tissue in his desk. He has to go. I can’t handle it anymore.

I now know that the space between our children was a wise decision (decision? what decision?). A six year old (albeit a sick and house bound hyper six year old) and a 10 month old (also snotty and therefore hyper – why?!?) don’t mix. The six year old can’t play a calming game of roll the ball across the living room floor. It has to be a competitive game of “TRY TO SCORE ON ME, MOMMY! SCORE ON ME! SCORE!” when all I want to do is try to make it through the moment without someone accidentally drop kicking a baby in the head…. again.

I brought out the big guns. I brought out school and made him exercise his brain.
He did his reading. He did some Japanese memorization. He did some math drills. However, nothing calmed him down as much as the BBC’s Questionaut game from Amanita Design. Lord, I love these people. I would give them my first born but something tells me that’s not gonna slide.

It’s that time of year. The time where I usually look into Seedy Saturday and realize that I’ve missed it by a week or so. In the past, it always seemed like I was a month behind schedule, garden wise – okay, anythingwise, really. This year it seems I may actually arrive on time.

What’s more, my garden is looking mighty fine. Mighty fine as in,
“Woah, baby! Look at that finely cooked mulch! Hott!“.

If my garden were a porn star, I’d be rich.
And popular.
And have really, really big zucchini.

So, to say I’m stoked for planting season would be an understatement.

In all seriousness, her hair isn’t this big (or white), her lipstick isn’t this bright and I’ve never actually seen her turn into a goat. However, if you were to see her get down on the floor with my children you’d see a definite Carol Channing / White Queen of Wonderland side of her – complete with silly singing and arm waving.

My mother-in-law had her first Skype conversation with the kids tonight. For a lady who’s 101, she sure grasps the technology quickly. Very admirable.

These people are now all writers of this blog. It’s not that I don’t want to blog anymore. I just thought it would be nice to have other points of view – you know, other than mine.

Clockwise from top left:

Dickson (my partner),
Joelle (one of my oldest and dearest friends),
Thuraya (my sister)
Jen (my travel partner, co-worker, friend and idol – you know, if I want to be truthful and not embellish anything).

Now comes the matter of getting them to actually write…

5.11.08 – Good Job!, originally uploaded by invisibleElement.

Once you start to see praise for what it is – and what it does – these constant little evaluative eruptions from adults start to produce the same effect as fingernails being dragged down a blackboard. You begin to root for a child to give his teachers or parents a taste of their own treacle by turning around to them and saying (in the same saccharine tone of voice), “Good praising!”

Click on the paragraph above. It is an interesting read.

I can relate to so much of this – in my experiences growing up and how I sometimes absent-mindedly praise Franklin. I find my “good jobbing!” usually occurs when I’m the most tired. I can see how empty it actually is and I do believe that children recognize this as well.

I had a coach who tried to explain this to me once. I was so caught up in needing his praise that for the longest time, I mistook his reluctance to constantly “good job” me for criticism. It took me years (many years after we parted ways) to finally release myself from the requirement for this kind of reinforcement.
These days, I am so conscious of how many times children are “good jobbed” without real connections or consideration. Like the top paragraph says, it is hard to hear without getting frustrated and trying to compensate without motivation instead of letting go and trusting. I end up becoming the journalist with a deadline – asking a billion questions. Perhaps this is because Franklin is now going to school and I know that he is probably “good jobbed” there quite consistently.

I will consider it a true achievement if I can raise my children to find value in themselves and measure their own self worth, not look to me or their teachers for validation.

(thanks to This Inspired Life for once again posting something so thought provoking)

Planting :How To Build A Raised Planter Bed

We have about 50 beds in the community garden. Approximately 4 of them are already raised. I hope to have the rest done by the end of the summer. Wish me luck.

Also, if anyone has any source for untreated wood in the city, can you let me know?

bunny leeks , originally uploaded by Wanda and Chet.

This month has been a lesson for me in patience. We have had rabbit damage in the garden and it has begun a war I was not prepared to make.

Last weekend, quite a few of the community garden membership came out to fortify our garden. The trouble was only with one or two this summer and I was getting quite good at chasing them out and filling up the odd hole.

Then, this winter the snow fell and the true invasion was revealed. The amount of rabbit entrances that could be seen in the snow were alarming. Once the snow melted, which in Victoria meant 5 days later, we set out to surround the garden perimeter with chicken wire dug into a trench and attached the wire to the chain link fence. One side with a record number of 10 people to help. Another side with considerably less people but we finished it nonetheless.

I felt so proud. We worked hard and protected our beds. We didn’t have to kill any rabbits (we aren’t allowed to anyway). We didn’t have to disturb any dens. We did it at a good time and there is plenty for those bunnies to eat elsewhere on the campus. No hard feelings?

Yes, hard feelings.

The rabbits are still coming in. I can’t tell you how frustrated I am about this. It is hard to gather a bunch of people for a work party like that and everyone felt so victorious once we were done. Now, more rabbits and more damage. Now, the vegetables that many were relying on for the winter – the leeks, the broccoli and the kale – are barely surviving. This isn’t just a hobby for many of the members. This is their food. This is what they count on to eat.

The university wants photos of the damage to add to their case that the rabbit population needs to be controlled. These rabbits, these tourist attractions, cost the University thousands of dollars every year by trashing their gardens – of the none food variety. They have also made restoration of the natural areas almost impossible. The UVic campus is known for their rabbits. There is even a documentary that mentions our domestication situation and compares the grounds to the dogs of Pompeii and the cats in Rome. The UVic Bunnies are fiercely defended and completely integrated into the UVic brand.

Yet, what about the gardens? What about the food? As another member put it, we are in a situation where food security is waging a war with animal rights activists. Who wins?

Franklin was a pretty calm, easy going baby that was able to adapt to anything around him. He was always watching and soaked everything in with his sponge of a brain. He still soaks everything in and he can still remember the conversation we had 6 months ago – word for word – but “calm” isn’t what I’d call him. Instead, I call him “Six Years Old” and “My Talented Drama Queen”. He is passionate and thoughtful and feels everything so deeply it hurts sometimes. I never tire of hearing his observations about the world. I love him with all my heart.

Eliza is excited and frenzied and moving constantly – if not with her body then with her eyes. She craves change. She needs stimulus. She is happiest outside with the wind blowing in her face. When she’s upset, she’s VERY upset and EVERYONE knows it. Her cry can rattle the nerves of the most hardened nurse. Yet, her smile stops people on the street and her excited yelp (at her brother) wakes up our neighbours and is better than a cup of black coffee. She’s 10 months old and making her mother feel like she’s fifty. I love her with all my heart.

luke skywalker, age 6, originally uploaded by olrebbie.

I think I may have spent about an hour going through the flickr group, Growing up Star Wars. I would absolutely love to show the photo pool to Franklin tomorrow except for how it would how high of a bar it would set for his parents.

Darth Vader and R2-D2 cakes, cardboard X-Wing Fighter jets, paper mache sand people masks?!?

What the ever loving God did these parents do all day?
I’ll tell what they weren’t doing.
Surfing the Internet.

Damn Internet.

Actually, I’m spending less and less time online lately. When I’m here, I am here for a purpose – you now, like Star Wars photos…

No, really. I find myself going to the usual places and then actually turning off the computer. Crazy. I used to be one of those people that kept it on all day. You know, just to check my email… every 5 minutes.

It’s good.
It’s also necessary because this second child? Tiring. She’s on the go go go. She doesn’t stop. If she’s not trying to eat the cat food or the kitty litter, she’s trying to bring down an entire cupboard of canned good on top of herself. She’s opening up drawers and climbing into cabinets. She’s pulling off tablecloths and crawling over Millennium Falcons. She’s gnawing on light sabers and chewing up permission slips. Lord help the cat…

Seriously. It’s hard to get anything done around here. I have to section off almost everything and we live in a very small and basically open space. It’s not easy.

Regardless, I found a great recipe for pizza crust teethers and I thought I’d share because these days, if I close my eyes to blink and she’s not there I can follow her trail of saliva.

1/4 recipe of a basic Pizza Crust dough

Makes 4 teething sticks.