February, 2011

Drifting DSC_0068, originally uploaded by Ronaldok.

We live only a few blocks from daycare, Franklin’s school and my work. This is normally a wonderful thing. We walk every morning, rain or shine. We talk without distractions like comic books or DS games, We point out double-decker buses and watch construction. We see the same people walking to highschool, playing morning soccer and the old Dean of Humanities doing his best impression of Forrest Gump’s bearded running phase. Normally, I love this portion of my day with the kids.

Right now the wind is howling outside. The snow has dried into little pellets and will be hammering against our faces tomorrow as I carry Eliza (strollers don’t plow through snow drifts over unploughed sidewalks) and remind my son and his friend, who we also walk with, to keep walking forward as sometimes they will just stop in the middle of the walk during a particularly intense Pokemon topic of conversation.

This morning I felt a white hot pain in my back as I tried to keep my balance over the ice. Eliza’s getting bigger – something I would also normally be a fan of during any other time.

Sigh. Tomorrow looks like it may be more of the same.

Things would be immeasurably better if the sidewalk that all the high school, middle school and university students used both on foot and by bike was ever cleared. Too much to hope for, I know.
We are Victoria. We plant peas in February, we don’t shovel snow in February.

Yet, walking home from work this evening was different. I’m not carting an almost 3 year old, my books, her blanket, doll and lunch kit. I’m also not making sure two 8 year olds keep forward momentum. It’s just me, the sunset and the most beautiful view of whirling snow blowing through the trees and making everything sparkle.

I’m hoping it stays for the weekend.
Please, snow, stay for the weekend!

The next time someone waxes on about how children are forced to grow up so early these days I’ll think of this photo and remind myself that perhaps, just perhaps, we shouldn’t really give a rat’s ass and let them just try it all out.

Trust is a hard concept for a parent. I think it’s indicative on little I feel I can trust myself – or my parenting skills. The idea of Franklin walking to school on his own in a few years shocks me… until I remember that I did it myself at his age – across town, across the Yellowhead Highway, past a few very “shifty” residences.

The thought of Eliza wiping her own butt though? Totally ready for that.

3rd Birthday Party, 1957, originally uploaded by ozfan22.

Apparently, there is a new show on TLC these days – Outrageous Kid Parties. The latest episode had a 6 year old girl’s birthday party in which she arrived with her friends, dressed as princesses and riding in a very Disney Cinderella type carriage drawn by horses. According to the show, the cake alone was worth $2100.00.

When Franklin was small, his birthdays were a big deal. He’s the first born. This happens, right? I think when he turned 3, I invited his entire daycare (and of course both sets of parents as a 3 year party doesn’t do the drop off thing), people from my work and everyone in the neighbourhood. It was mayhem in our tiny townhouse. Lovely mayhem but we were seriously lucky that no one broke a tooth or got their head stuck in a chair.

Subsequent parties were then held in places outside the home such as the Heritage Museum and The Bug Zoo. As he got older though, the parties got smaller and we moved to a place with a back door and green space that was easier to access than a patio. We began the lost art of home birthday parties. Many of his friends were having them at Laser Tag and a gymnastics centre but I held fast to the scavenger hunt and open a wrapped package with oven mitts and wooden spoons idea. It’s not that I didn’t like the destination birthdays, it was just that there is a finite number of places to go in the city and since Franklin wasn’t set on anything in particular (and he’s a homebody at heart) we’ve had the last three birthday’s at home.

The last birthday though? The best and the least amount of work. Isn’t this always the way? A sleepover with just a few friends, a borrowed wii and a rented Bionicle movie. The cake was nothing worth noting except that it was chocolate and it was tasty. The goodie bags were just a Bionicle each – chosen by Franklin according to each friend’s personality. They all came over after Aikido and they all left after a few waffles in the morning. No horse drawn carriage, no caterer, no two thousand dollar cake.

I remember the parties we had when I was a kid and they were pretty low key as well. Of course, I was born in the beginning of August so it was a simple matter to hold an outdoor party – sprinklers, wading pool, tag, opening presents on the patio… it was all pretty easy going from what I remember, anyway.

Eliza’s birthday is in a few weeks and I am hoping this will be the first year none of us have the flu – never mind inviting the entire population of Victoria. I asked Eliza who she would like to invite since she has now been to a few birthday parties and knows the drill.

The verdict? 5 adults and one child (not including her brother).

So, it’s now just a matter of enough fine cheese and pate, then!
That’s my girl.

Imagination , originally uploaded by Ty Heimerl.

Recently, Franklin has become fixated on a particular lego theme that has come out – Lego Ninjago. Seeing as how he still had a few presents from Christmas and his birthday (in OCTOBER) to explore, we weren’t in any rush to find an excuse for him to receive a set. We left it up to him and his allowance and figured the parting of his own money would be the deciding factor that made sure he truly wanted it.

His solution was not to save the money. Instead, he built one of his own. Now Lego is a smart company and the users of their products are all about creation so it figures that much of this new spinning ninja product, the real draw for Franklin, was custom built and not available with previous parts from other sets. There are screws, even! Screws! Silly Lego. Screws are not what legos are about!

Regardless, Franklin made one. He went through some frustrating design challenges but in the end, he figured it out. He’s tested it against his friend’s store bought ninjagos and it works well. The sense of accomplishment in making the toy is a lot better in our eyes than the sense of accomplishment in saving up his money for it. Either way would have been good though.

The funny thing is that most of his friends thought it was odd of Franklin to make his own. In fact, many of his lego buddies don’t really “play” with lego. They are more collectors of the toys and lose interest quickly due to how fragile the sets are. For Franklin, the sets are to be taken apart and built again complete with sound effects and 5 minute long narration of how he’s built it and why over skype with his grandparents – patient souls, they are.

The whole ninjago creation reminded me of a time in grade school where I drew a picture of Cinderella in my class. My Cinderella had a big multicoloured dress make of iridescent feathers. It was from a few different books I had at home and I amalgamated the different Cinderellas to make one of my own. I loved my drawing. I had painstakingly drawn those feathers so that it had just the right amount of different colours. My teacher put it up on the art board and I was pretty proud of it.

Again, my friends were not as impressed. It wasn’t my drawing ability that was at question but instead, my deviation from the norm. My Cinderella didn’t look like Disney’s Cinderella. She didn’t have blonde hair in a bun with a tiara. She didn’t have a blue dress. She didn’t have a headband. She was my kind of gorgeous and she certainly looked like a fairy godmother had conjured up a ballgown of magical proportions! Wasn’t that the point?

Similarly, isn’t the point of Franklin’s lego creation that it spins fast enough to knock another ninja off it’s own spinner?

For Christmas, Dickson and I bought Eliza a fairy tale book with Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Swan Princess, The Nightingale, and many other fairy tales. I wanted to make sure it was a book that had different ways to represent Cinderella or Beauty. Cinderella is a little more paper bag princess than Disney and Beauty is beautiful, but definitely not Disney’s Belle. It’s a beautiful book and she loves it. In fact, the page she likes the best is an illustration of the Beast baring his teeth at Beauty’s father after he stole her rose. Forget the princesses, bring on the fangs.

It’s not that I have a problem with Lego or Disney in this regard (although I still have to question Disney’s storylines – wtf with Bambi’s Mum?) but that more and more representations of a story falls to the primary producers of an image. Cinderella does not belong to Disney. Ninja’s or the concept of spinning warriors were not invented by Lego. It’s okay to make our own narratives and our own representations.