The daycare sent Franklin home on Wednesday with a suspected ear infection and a fever on one side of his head (don't ask, I don't understand either...)
Luckily, but not so happily, my Mother and sister are here in Victoria to bury my Grandmother's ashes next to her husband and son. Franklin loves his Taita and Auntie. It is clearly a treat to stay home with them.

I really don't think he was sick though. We went to the doctor Wednesday afternoon and they swabbed his throat. He has had to stay home with my Mother ever since - awaiting the lab results for suspected strep throat. Again, I really don't think he is sick. He's just not acting sick. He's a good kid when he's sick, but he really isn't acting sick.

We got the lab results this afternoon and what do you know? No strep throat...hmmmm. So, what does he have? He must have something. It can't be that he just doesn't feel like playing with others and for that particular day, seems to be a little moody. That couldn't be it. That might mean he's a... oh my god... toddler!

I realize the daycare knows all about normal toddler playtime action and they have to err on the side of caution. Hey, I would rather they send a kid home who has a danger of spreading something horrific around the centre. However, there are days when I wonder if the daycare actually owes me money.*

He went back to the doctor this evening to let another professional tell me what could be wrong with my son. Apparently, nothing. Apparently, a toddler can have swollen glands for teething, a cold, any little virus. It's not necessarily something in need of attention.

On the plus side, (there always seems to be one when it comes to this little guy) Franklin is very good at greeting his doctor au jour:
"Hullo doca-ta-teur".
He will sit calmly while his ears are examined and they listen to his chest. When everything is done, he checks himself out in the mirror, turns and proudly says:
"See-yah-lather doca-ta-teur".
He then runs down the hall and yells goodbye to the "doca-ta-tuer offis".

Too cute.

*Believe it or not, I actually calculated this during my lunch hour the other day and they don't owe us money. It might seem to me and to those who read this, that I have a sick child at home more often than a healthy child at daycare. Alas, it is only me, whining whining whining.

Nevertheless, my mother has still brought me a documentary about dangerous mold growth in homes. I also came back from work today to find the yellow pages conveniently left open on the dining room table - at the air quality testing page... yuk

It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Edith Laidler (Ellwood) of Edmonton on May 15, 2004. Edith was born in Riviere Qui Barre, Alberta on December 6, 1915. She was predeceased by her husband Pete and son Tom as well two sisters and two brothers. She leaves to mourn in her passing her children, son James (Lynn) Laidler and daughter Janet (Michel) Saab, her sister Elsie Williams, her grandchildren, Carmen, Brandy, Sami, Ada, Thuraya, Bechara, Adam, Elizabeth and Morgan. Her great grandchildren, Ethan, Nolan, Franklin and many nieces and nephews.

In the words of my father, my grandmother had a keen mind. She had a great love for Canada and Canadiana. She collected spoons from every province, every city, every village and every event. She read all of Pierre Berton's books and knew every corner of Canada, and its history and trivia from maps, atlases and history books. From her kitchen table, she visited the world.
My grandmother loved company, loved to visit and loved to reminisce, told and listened to jokes... and always, always spoke her mind.

For the past couple of days I've been thinking quite a bit about parenting. A theme keeps coming up with many people I've been talking to lately. I have wanted to get it down here for awhile but I've been so busy - which has been frustrating. However, last night, D and I got to go out on an actual date together. We had a great long talk about Franklin, when we first met, more Franklin, moving to Edmonton or anywhere else, more about Franklin, and finally, we talked about Franklin. How can we not talk about our amazing kid?

What has been coming up recently is how easily our little idiosyncracies and the way we have been brought up can be passed on to our children. I have this immense amount of respect for a woman I know who did not have a very good childhood yet, her adult children are beautiful people. She has such a good relationship with them and she has consciously made the decision to change the pattern that she had inherited from her Mother.

Being a Mom now, I am starting to understand how our baggage from our own lives can sneak into our parenting in the smallest ways. To be present enough every day to change ingrained behaviour takes an immense amount of energy - especially when you are dealing with a lifetime of negativity.

I also have a friend who is raising a teenager and is noticing that the parenting she is dealing with now is incredibly different than the basic mode of providing and guiding that I do with Franklin. It seems that with a teenager it is not so much what you tell them but what you do yourself. I know this is true for parenting at any age, but a teenager doesn't really want to listen to your words of advice very often. It must be so scary - to have to let go and hope they have been listening to you all those years. I remember advice my parents gave me when I was young and as I went through university, but my teen years? I must have had a thick wad of cotton stuffed in there. Apparently, nothing they said would have any relevance to what I was going through - jeeeez!

I also have another friend who is preparing to have a baby and she is having all these thoughts about her own baggage, and how she wants to raise her child free from it all. You can't free yourself entirely from it of course, it makes up who you are, but to be conscious of it is such a strong step in the right direction. To blindly step into parenting thinking that you've either dealt with everything or will be able to hide it all from your kids is ludicrous.

I still find myself checking my emotions when I think someone is a bully to Franklin, or some old biddy tells me he's a "hefty" boy. I even check myself when they tell me how intelligent and advanced he is in something. I don't want him to think we value him for any specific reason other than that he is our son and we love him. I never thought that could be so hard.

Yesterday could have been bad, but it wasn't. Locking the keys in the car after daycare turned out to be a lot more fun than it sounds...

Directly before and after work every day is a bit full. In the morning, Franklin and I only have a half hour window to get him set up in the centre with his lunch in the fridge, say our good-byes (lots of kisses) and finally, for me to walk up the hill to work.
This is do-able when things go relatively smoothly. Most of the time, things do go smoothly. Every once and awhile something doesn't.

... like last winter when it was raining full sheets of water one morning and I wasn't able to stop the car in time and rear-ended the car ahead of me (going almost 0 kilometres an hour, yet I think the other driver has tried to claim medical expenses, but whatever).

...or like the time (yesterday afternoon) when I let Franklin play with the lock/unlock button on the driver side door as I threw all the books, lunch kit and extra clothes into the car. I picked him up, closed the door, and brought him around to the other side to put him in his car seat. I hadn't realized he had locked the door. Puzzled, I desperately yanked on the handle, looked in, and saw the keys dangling in the ignition. Crap. (Franklin then says, "Crap Mommy!").

However, this was all the more fun for Franklin. As we made our way to the bus terminal and my workplace, we talked about all the cars, the cement mixer that rumbled by, what a busy street it was, how much he loves to play in the sandbox at daycare, how sand is a yucky yucky phooey eeewwww thing to eat, who he played with, how important it was for him to lay down for his naps, how my day went, what sound a crow makes, what sound a chick-a-dee makes, what sound a flamingo makes... You get the idea.

In the end, we were fortunate enough to get a ride home from my boss who happened to have a car seat in his car. Good thing too because I was not far away from asking for spare change - I discovered I was twenty-five cents short for the bus.

The grateful ride home was spent discussing who's car it was, who was driving, who's car seat he was sitting in, the big trucks that were driving by, the toolbox between the front seats... You get the idea.

The coolest thing was all the time Franklin and I spent talking to each other. Of course, we aren't having a in-depth conversation, and most of it is spent with him repeating the last couple of words of my sentence, but he will add bits and pieces of things as something around us catches his eye or he wants to add to our growing list of bird calls.
Our conversations go something like this:

Okay Franklin, we have to go up to the bookstore to call Daddy. We'll get to see all the buses!

Mommy... bookstore... Daddy!... Bussssss!

Yes, busses Franklin! Big city buses!

Big Bus! Double-decker BUS! Truck! Big Truck!

Yes, that was a big truck Franklin! This is a busy road isn't it?

Busy Road Busy Road Busy Road...

You're always in the sandbox when I come to daycare Franklin. Do you like playing in the sandbox? Is the sand box fun? Who plays in the sandbox with you?

sandbox... cars... castle... sandbox... busy road....

You know, it's really yucky to eat the sand. Yuck-y! Bleh! Ewwwwwy sand!

Yucky yucky yucky castle....

Yucky sand Franklin, Phoooey, Bleh, sand is yucky to eat.

Yucky bleh castle....

Franklin and I stayed home today and I was privileged enough to watch huge gobs of yellow snot bubble out of his nose every two minutes. Although I've been puked on, scooped up his poop with my hand (accidentally), and stuck a thermometre up his butt, nothing disgusts me more than thick, slimy snot.

I can't believe you are still reading this.

He's doing fine though - probably even okay to be at daycare except that I wouldn't wish this snot faucet on anyone. My Mother is now convinced that we have a mold problem in our house which is causing the constant run of colds. However, she may not be used to this constant germ fest as we were stay at home kids with strong Albertan and Lebanese blood running through our veins. Franklin has been diluted with the Prince Edward Island variety - which is a great strain for holding your liquor and having a sense of humour, but for some reason seems to lack in the health department.
(I'm only kidding D, you are healthiest person I know next to your Father)

This will be the third time I have cancelled his 18 month immunizations. I haven't mentioned this to the daycare, which requires everything to be up to date. I'm a little worried about it. I had always been told not to immunize your child if they have a cold. This makes things a little difficult as the waiting list for an appointment is long and the chance of coming down with something from daycare is high. It's a big gamble - especially when the nurse asks you if you would like to scoop up a cancelled appointment and I turn her down because I think I need to be a work all day... I've cancelled two immunization appointments since. argh.

Then I read that a cold doesn't matter, that the immunization is more important and will not effect the developed cold. So, I should not have waited in the first place? Or at least, I should not have cancelled this last appointment?

I'm slapping my palm against my forehead and making a new appointment immediately.

So... I should get over my blogger block shouldn't I? After initial reactions of my blog are settling, I feel a little better about continuing. I enjoy dirtyolive.net and I find it strange so many should have such an opinion on it.

Edmonton was such a wonderful visit. Franklin is getting better and better on the plane. He now understands what is going on and is facinated with the airport traffic and the process of taking off and landing. This is a good thing as the airline requires you to hold your "under 24 month old" child in "the burping position" for both procedures. Keeping Franklin anywhere he doesn't want to be requires a special form of wrestling that is hard to do when confined to the economy seats of a plane. Those people who chose to recline their seats during this time deserve the swift kick to the back that will eventually happen. There is only so much room!

It is a dangerous thing to visit Edmonton when it isn't minus 30 degrees outside. It was cold, at least colder than Victoria, but it would have been fine if we had come dressed appropriately. I love Edmonton and I miss the company of some pretty amazing people.
I got to sit and have coffee with a good friend while I was there. We closed down the coffee shop and continued to talk in her apartment. Phone, email and websites just aren't the same as face to face talking. We discussed the pros and cons of living in Edmonton. The conversation with her alone is enough for me to start packing right now.

Throughout the entire visit D and I would compare the situation we were in to Victoria. Would there be snow falling in May in Victoria? - probably not, but at least it's snow! I miss snow. I miss skiing. I miss toboggans and snowmen and face-washes.
Would we have such flexible jobs in Edmonton? - I don't know. We have such a good set-up here in so many ways. We work with some amazing people. I love working with books. Franklin is completely happy in daycare (more on that another day!) and it is so close to my workplace. However, what about the pay? I've noticed that there seems to be higher wages for comparable jobs in Edmonton - with a lower cost of living.

We could actually get ahead in Edmonton rather than making it month by month here in Victoria. We could purchase a home - and although we know owning a home isn't the end all be all of life, it is a start of something. Getting ahead could mean travel and more opportunities.

Another thing that I wonder about is the equality of living here. There seems to be such a large gap in-between the rich and the poor. It's not apparent when you walk down the street but when you look closely at our city it boggles my mind. There is such wealth and such poverty. The gap seems narrower in Edmonton and although the reasons are simple enough to realize, is it just one more motivating factor to raise a child there rather than here?

I love Victoria though - for completely emotional reasons, I love it here. I love sitting on the beach in the rain. I love the cherry blossoms that cover the streets like fake snow. I love how the smell of the coast rushes into my nostrils when I get off the plane. I am starting to replace the cozy feeling of being inside on a snowy winter afternoon with a rainy winter afternoon. I love the overcast days, one after another - the city looks so beautiful when everything is about to downpour. I love Tofino!

Family, friends, practical finances, travel potential, and jobs versus amazing little Victoria.

It's a harder decision than I thought it would be.

The other day I was mentioned in Victoria's main newspaper, The Times Colonist for a story about weblogging. It has been a little strange letting other people in my life know about this page. Right now, weblogging is it's own little sub-culture and I know it must seem strange to many of you that I write online about my family and myself - but I do, I enjoy it, and have met wonderful people through it all. Thanks for all the emails from people who have read the article. There is also a place to comment on my site below every entry if you decide to keep reading, but I am sure 99% of you are just here out of curiosity and will move on in time.

The most important thing about this weblog is that it is only a story about an ordinary person doing ordinary things. If you do not know me or are not interested in the things I do in life (such as being a new parent), you will quickly become bored. I most certainly do not write this for mass entertainment - as I'm sure you have noticed.
I have to admit, the traffic has been a little disconcerting and although you have all been quite flattering, I will be a bit perplexed if many of you outside my interest scope keep reading. I might have to start thinking of myself as an actual writer - and I am pretty aware that I do not hold any talent in that department.

So, I will not be blogging for the next little while as we go on a bit of a family trip - off to show how wonderful Franklin is to everyone in Alberta.

Again, thanks for coming by.

I've looked over all the points in this guide and can plainly see that my actions would not be acceptable for the apparent standards of a good, 1950's wife.

• I will never, ever have dinner ready for when D walks in the door. There was once a time when I thought it would be nice have something on the stove at least (back during my maternity leave, when Franklin started sleeping for three hour intervals instead of two and I felt like I had oodles of energy to spare). I think it happened once... and he didn't eat it... it was liver... who knows what I was thinking.




• Prepare ahead? For anything? Yeah, ummm... it's not going to happen - ever.




• His day is indeed boring, I agree. How can it not be, when his "gay and interesting" partner in crime works on the other end of the city? I am most certainly both gay and interesting - except when I'm covered in our child's vomit, and then I'll be just interesting.




• Clutter clearing and dust cloth running will be done on a need to do basis only, such as company and home inspection. I have my priorities.




• "...catering for his comfort will provide [me] will immense personal satisfaction" ...yes, well, I'll have to take their word on this because for myself, I tend to get quite a bit of personal satisfaction from things like masters degrees and gardening.




• ooooh, the fluffing of the pillows! I'll fluff his pillows anytime, baby. However, the need to remind me that his topics of conversation are more important than my own?!? This stuff can't be real.

The list goes on and on. It must have been quite a source of amusement back then as well - except that there may have been a bit more quilt felt than I feel right now.* I certainly see that I don't fit the mold of the "good wife" for the time period but I'm pretty sure I'm a good partner for 2004. Actually, I would probably make a good partner for D in any period, I think it would make him feel a little odd if I were to "speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice".

Of course, there are occasions when I feel bad that I am so tired by the end of the day and I feel like I have given almost everything I have to Franklin. By the time we've put the little guy to sleep we can only manage to sit and veg in the same room. As a result, the stimulating conversation tends to lag.
Yet, I look at Franklin and realize that he, himself, is a pretty large thing we do together. If we don't get around to talking about the crap in our day or the depressing politics in our province it's okay. We are still together each evening, eating popcorn and pickles for dinner and imitating the way Franklin says the word "nakeeeed".

*No one has actually found the source of this article so it may be just an exageration to make us feel good about how far we've come and all that.

Well, that's it for infant care. Franklin will no longer eat when he wants to eat, drink when he wants to drink and most importantly, nap when he wants to nap. Apparently, toddlers crave structure and he will have to groove to the tune that has been set for everyone.

Yes, again with the napping I know - enough already.

The last day was a little anti-climatic - no tears or hugs goodbye. There are three children going on to new centres and as I packed up all the extras of everything stored in his locker, I meekly observed the beautiful flowers other Mothers had thoughtfully brought in as a thank-you. I thought of it too, - really I did! - but sometimes things don't work out like I'd hope them to and I wasn't able to get to a florist. The centre gave us a nice little photo album of pictures taken throughout Franklin's stay. It was so nice to read all the comments from the caregivers. All in all, he had an amazing time there and I'll miss my lunch-time visits.

D has taken the next week off work in order to help integrate Franklin into the next place. So far, things aren't working out as we'd hope (this is beginning to be a theme here). As most of Western Canada knows, British Columbia is in the midst of some heavy labour turmoil. The university will be walking out on a day of protest in support of the Hospital Employee's Union. I understand and support the reasons why we will be out there and I'm lucky to have a supervisor who feels the same way. I'm also glad that the daycare, usually considered an essential service, will be able to demonstrate as well. However, as they will not be open Monday (and may stay closed Tuesday as well) there will not be much time for Franklin to become accustomed to the next centre. We are going out of town on Thursday so in fact, he may only get one full day to try out the infamous floor nap arrangement I'm so wary about.

I'm going to keep telling myself what an adaptable boy he is. Nevertheless, I feel like I'm chucking him into the deep end of a pool and hoping that someone in there will catch him and help him stay afloat.