Sunday, November 22, 2009

Adult Abuse

So my son punched me in the face today. In public and on purpose.

Which really makes me feel like such a fantastic parent that I have trained him SO well in his time on earth that he would think it was actually ok to punch me in the face.

We were on our way back from hockey and needed to stop at Home Depot. E has always resisted on-the-way-home stops; he hates the thought of appearing in public in his uniform. Remember this is the kid who won't participate in Crazy Hair Day in case others "think he's stupid". So this was the first time we made him get out.

Mike and Jack went inside so that I, the voice of reason, could talk Ethan out of the car and into the store calmly. He refused. I reasoned and rationalized. He still refused. I started to need to go to the bathroom badly. All of a sudden, we HAD to get in that store for my sake. Ethan didn't quite see it that way. I told him that he had a choice - he could walk in normally and be unobtrusive, or I could carry him in.

He chose the "Struggle and Carry" method.

He's not light, and he was wearing all his hockey gear (minus skates thank GOD or I would be posting from the hospital recovering from major lacerations) and he was kicking and screaming. Think 70 lbs in my arms. So the kid who doesn't want to be embarassed with others looking at him was making SUCH a scene in the Home Depot parking lot that people stopped their cars to look at him. And me.

At one point he unbalanced me and we both fell to the ground (and in a puddle, of course). I grimly picked him up again and continued on. When we got in the door, I asked the closest orange apron where were the bathrooms? as Ethan cocked his fist back and belted me in the jaw. My head snapped to the side and my jaw dropped open. So did the HD employee's jaw.

I have never been so embarrassed in my life. We made it to the bathroom. Ethan started walking on his own about halfway there, and by the time we got to the bathroom he was calm enough for me to share a few choice words with him.

After the bathroom we found Mike and Jack, and Ethan sat nicely in the driver's seat of the cart. We did what we needed to do and then went home.

Needless to say, Ethan has lost a LOT of privileges this week. We have talked seriously at regular intervals throughout the day. What else do I do? I am shocked and horrified, and honestly - I'm hurt. Physically, yes it hurt (and it's still tender), but I'm also heart-hurt. He HIT me. My boy who loves me as much as I love him and he HIT me.

I carefully explained to him that if he was a grown-up and he had hit me, he would be in jail right now. I don't think he'll hit again. But what if he does?

Friday, November 13, 2009

Protecting My Brood

There has been a lot of controversy about the H1N1 vaccine. I've always vaccinated my kids, though, and got them the flu shot every year, so I figured that this was no different. I made sure to read up on it, though, as I know it's a new vaccine. I spoke with doctors and health care workers - the fact that they were getting it themselves and for their families was reassuring. Also reassuring was the fact that although the vaccine itself is new, the components are not new, and WHO recommends getting the vaccine.

I found out that Ethan qualifies for the Priority vaccine, due to his asthma. He doesn't need the inhaler very much, but if he's sick or having allergy problems he certainly needs it, therefore he gets to jump the line and get protected. He could get very sick if he got H1N1 and a lot of the deaths have been in otherwise-healthy asthmatics.

When we got to the special clinic today, they said that within the last half hour they had been advised they could now vaccinate healthy 5-year-olds, too. Lucky Jack! Jack was very brave. My big 7-year-old; not so much.

E. found out he needed two needles as he was getting seasonal flu too. Jack could only get H1N1 today and needs to wait with other non-priority people like me to get his seasonal shot in a few weeks. We barely had to wait 5 minutes in total, and we were arranging ourselves on the chairs. Jack whimpered slightly, shut his eyes and was done in a flash. Ethan... well, Ethan ran away.

They called in another nurse, who was waiting on standby for the escapees. She and I together managed to wrestle Ethan (67 lbs, remember, and strong as an ox) into my lap. Then we couldn't get his shirt off. So we yanked the collar down to expose his shoulder and told him to relax - ha, ha - and poked one arm. Oh, the tears! The drama! And we still had an arm left. We yanked the collar down the other side (his shirt is stretched out just a little too much to wear now) and poked the other shoulder. One hug later, and we sat on the waiting chairs for 15 minutes to make sure they didn't get any reactions.

We played a new card game: "War", which the boys found really fun and certainly took their minds off their arms. Jack sauntered up to a friendly neighbourhood fireman and informed him that he was the bravest boy today. The fireman laughed and gave him a sticker. E. got one, too, and I kept his not-so-brave secret.

The reason I felt compelled to post this today is that I've been quite surprised at just how relieved I feel. I do feel like I have protected my brood, so I'm feeling quite mummy-proud at the moment. I never want them sick and I never want them to suffer. Also, when Ethan's sick we ALL suffer, so maybe there's a little selfishness in there too. And when Jack's sick, he gets sick so hard and fast; his little body gets so frail that I worry myself sick, too. So - I feel I can relax a little. Maybe I DID do a good mom job today.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Today's List

Here are ten things I should be doing right now, instead of writing here:

1. Folding laundry
2. Washing dinner dishes
3. Cleaning up the Game of Life and the 2000 piece puzzle the boys started
4. Wrapping Liam's present
5. Watching Vampire Diaries
6. Filing paperwork
7. Sleeping (What? I made it to #7 before writing Sleeping???)
8. Answering emails
9. Filling out more Olympics paperwork
10. Cleaning toilets

Ok, Ok, you win. Vampire Diaries it is.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Go Team 4!

Ethan had his first honest-to-goodness hockey game yesterday. Score clock and uniforms, cheering crowds in the freezing-ass stands, referees and whistles, breakaways and faceoffs. And I'm just such an awesome mom that I can't even remember his team's name. Yey team!

Ethan wasn't really too keen on pausing for the pre-game photo op. I guess he needs to be trained in keeping the paparazzi happy. (he's #7, "streaking" onto the ice here)
This is our boy in his pre-game skate. He's on the left and I can say proudly he is NOT the one fallen on the ice. He did keep his footing in this drill despite skates that were badly in need of sharpening.
He also was responsible for a couple of faceoffs. Now, it may look like he forgot his stick here, but I can assure you he did have one. Also, please don't judge him because he is facing off the completely wrong way. In his defense, they have not done faceoffs in practice so he really had no clue. And he did quite well, if by "well" you mean that he touched the puck first and passed it directly to the other team immediately.
He had a great time, and they won 8-5. Ethan's plus-minus is +3, if you're counting. I'm not even sure they keep track of that in Timbits league, but there you have it. Lots of fun. I was dismayed, however, to discover that his hockey equipment is already beginning to stink. I thought I had a while before we would need to fumigate his gear!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

All About FAILing

Remember last post, when I said I wanted to write a little something every day? Well, FAIL on that as it is now November 5, and I'm four days late on the every day thing. Due to that, and a recently-given-but-undeserved nickname of Mother Teresa, I decided that this post would be about failing miserably. Here are ten things I have failed at in the last week alone. And there's more! I am just limiting this to ten so we don't all get too depressed.

1. Jack-o-lanterns. FAIL. I did not take the kids to the pumpkin patch this year, nor did I even buy pumpkins during a grocery run. (Mainly because there haven't BEEN any grocery runs - see #3 below) Hence, we had none to carve this year. About 4 pm on Halloween, Ethan goes, "Hey, we haven't carved pumpkins this year!" to which I braced myself and replied "Sorry, but we don't have any this year...", expecting a mini-meltdown at this breach of tradition. Instead, the kids just said, "OK" and moved on. So is it a FAIL if nobody cares? Yes, because I have no pumpkin patch pictures for this year's scrapbook. (Which I am also failing at because I am 4 years behind on scrapbooks.)

2. House cleaning. FAIL. Something smells in my kitchen (finally figured out it was high time to take the compost pail to the composter in the back yard), I can't even take a shower in the Master bathroom because it's so slimy and disgusting in there, the dining room table is covered with papers ready to file, and there are baskets of laundry in various stages of cleanliness. Sigh - don't even know where to begin.

3. Groceries. FAIL. You know those good ol' staples - bread, milk, cheese? We've got none of these, nor have we had any for quite some time now. Mealtimes have been interesting and packing lunches for the boys have been barrel-bottom-scraping, to be sure. I've been living on tea and Halloween candy.

4. Bread. FAIL. I tried to make a loaf in the breadmaker for the first time in a while and it was a disaster loaf. I used what was probably old flour (and that's a double FAIL because I have no idea how old this special Best For Bread Flour is/was) and tried to make a whole wheat bread. Woke up to a delicious smell emanating from the kitchen, and as I opened the breadmaker I may have drooled a little only to find... the densest, smallest loaf our maker has ever created. Totally inedible.

5. Arriving on time to hockey. FAIL. Oh, I can't tell you how much this stresses me out. We try so hard to get there early, in enough time to properly lace the skates and get on the ice. I thought I really had it together on Sunday, but I thought we were three minutes early... turns out we were two minutes late onto the ice because I had Calendar-ed 1:15 instead of 1:10. FAIL FAIL FAIL. hmpf.

6. Building a house. FAIL. I was SO happy to participate in a Habitat for Humanity build through work. I was very excited to leave the house at 6:40 for the pleasure of arriving on the job site at 8 am. Not only did I arrive 10 minutes late due to traffic, I also annihilated a raccoon on my way. He (and I'm saying he was a he because if I stop for even a minute to think that he may have been a mummy raccoon with babies I may go insane) ran right in front of me at 6:40 am - pitch black, raining cats and dogs or, er, raccoons, and I had no chance. I whacked into him first with the middle of the front bumper and then, for good measure, ran over him with both the front and back right tires. Crunch. And I screamed, then hyperventilated. I didn't even have time to brake. And on the way home at 5 pm, there he was, lying exactly where I'd hit him. He looked like he was sleeping except his tongue was hanging out of his mouth. So my happy feel-good volunteer day? FAIL.

7. Changing a lightbulb. FAIL. Feel free to insert your own bad lightbulb joke here. But the real story is that every evening for the past four nights, I go to turn on our entry-way light and realize that yet again, I have failed to get out the stepladder to remove the old bulb to go to Home Depot and match the bulb and buy the bulb and come home to replace the bulb. And now that it's dark earlier because of daylight savings, we notice it more. Just not until it's too late to fix it.

8. Not using the TV as a babysitter. FAIL. It took me forever to sew the kids' overalls for their costumes, and I allowed them to play way more Wii and watch way more TV than is good for them. And it totally backfires, too, because they are super grumpy people when that's all they do. So we all lose when the TV is on so damn much.

9. Work. FAIL. Not that there is anything I am fully dropping the ball on; I just feel that there aren't enough hours in the week to get the projects done as fast and as well as I would like. I am only supposed to be working just under 19 hours per week - both me and my manager would like to keep it at that. But for every task I accomplish, I seem to add three more. And I would love to take advantage of some of the other learning opportunities and cross-training available to me, but it's just not working for me right now.

10. Staying positive. FAIL. I fully believe that you can make your day whatever you want it to be by adjusting your attitude. There were several days this week that I lost sight of that and I let myself get overwhelmed. No more negative Nellie here!

So for those of you who think I wear a halo, ask yourself this - does your toilet stink like pee? Because mine does, and as soon as I track down the boy who missed, there will be a stellar parenting demonstration happening. Check your halos at the door people! Over and out.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

The Halloween Report

Hello all,
I am trying to catch up on a bunch of things I wanted to share, so I'm going to try to write a bit every day. I think I'm going to work backwards, though, and give you our Halloween report for 2009!
The Mario Brothers took our town by storm!
Seriously, how cute are they?
And then this strange spider-webby lady swooped in:
We spent Friday at the school, with me hosting a craft station in the morning for the Kindergarten Halloween party. After making 40 ghosts with 40 five-year-olds, I am happy that there are no more Kindergartners in my future after this year. I am also happy that my original costume didn't work and I didn't have to struggle with the extra spider arms after all. The web on my dress didn't get in the way! After Jack and I were done, it was time to hand out hot lunch to Ethan's class, then we hung out in the playground until the costume parade after lunch. And by "hung out" I mean I hovered over Ethan and Jack, not letting them climb on anything or play on anything in case they ripped their costumes that I had spent over 20 hours sewing.
The costume parade was awesome and lots of fun for the kids. We eventually got home from school - what a long day!
Mike and I went to our friends' for dinner on Friday night, and I will certainly have to change names to protect the not-so-innocent. We had a raucous good time for "Tim's" birthday and were extremely thankful that the boys didn't get up until 8 am Saturday morning. Halloween was crazy busy as usual and before we knew it, it was late afternoon and time to get costumes on. Ethan asked me at 4 pm when we were going to carve pumpkins? FAIL - Mummy didn't actually get to the pumpkin/jack-o-lantern thing this year. Blame the damn costumes, son.
Our friends arrived at 6:30 and away we went, the kids running from house to house. 90 minutes later we hauled the kids home with their gigantic bags bulging with candy.
And today, surprisingly, no sugar crash... yet. Maybe tomorrow?