100th Post (and nothing momentous to say)

In less than 12 hours, I have changed pee sheets 4 times. Jack at 8 pm, Ethan at 11 pm, Jack again at 2:30 am and Ethan at 7 am. I don’t know what the F is going on in my house but I am more than ready to leave for my weekend in Seattle with the girls.

I made a phone call while in the car yesterday, and after I hung up I started to relay the conversation to Ethan and Jack in the back seat. Silly me, I thought they would be interested! Ethan interrupted me to say, “Umm, Mummy? You know we can HEAR your part of the conversation when you’re on the phone, right? Cause you don’t ACTUALLY have to tell us everything again.” Smartass.

I am just sick to death of wearing pink. I vowed to wear pink every day this month, to honour Breast Cancer Awareness month. And I have followed it faithfully. Every single pinkalicious day. I used to like pink. Now, not so much! And to be perfectly honest, one day I wore all blue, except for pink socks and wearing pink pyjamas that night. (Are you singing in your head, or maybe out loud if you’re like that, about the lady who’ll be wearing pink pyjamas when she comes when she comes? And riding six white horses? ‘Cause I am.) So I felt like I was breaking the pact but I could not bear to wear another pink sweater. Today – another pink sweater. Anyway I will keep going with this until October 31st – thankfully my Halloween costume has pink in it too. But my costume’s still a secret so I can’t confess what it is.

Jack has started belting me in the eye every time I bend over to kiss him. I’m starting to get a complex. I asked him why he keeps punching me and he just said, “Oh, sorry, Mummy” like it just never occurred to him NOT to hit me. He can be quite affectionate, but also just plain ol’ violent. I told him to go upstairs about an hour before bedtime last night because he’d just hit me in the face again. Unfortunately I told him that I didn’t want to look at him right now. Great parenting, eh? Ethan cried out dramatically, “Why can’t everyone stop fighting and get along?” Gulp. Then a few minutes later when I saw Jack again, he asked me plaintively if we were friends again. Gulp gulp gulp. Oh, the guilt. This parenting thing will be the death of me.

I went to my Self-defense class on Sunday. I was feeling all strong and powerful, and a little self-confident too, until I got home. Then Mike laughed at me for trying to look tough and POOF – I’m back at square one. It was good, though, and I learned a lot. I was a very good kicker. I nearly punched myself in the face once or twice, but I escaped from my partner’s grasp and even from a choke hold with no problems. The instructor (a double black belt) used me as an anatomy chart of sorts when he was demonstrating where on the neck and throat you can poke to drop someone like a ton of bricks. He didn’t want to press too hard on the trapezoid pinch but I asked him what was the worst that would happen if he really pinched me hard there. I wanted to see what it really felt like. He said, “a bruise, and your legs will buckle” so I said go for it. One millisecond I was standing there, and the next I was on the floor. I never even saw it coming. The good news is that it didn’t hurt and I have no bruise, but the other ladies said it looked pretty gross to see him lift my trapezoid muscle up like that. Anyway, it was valuable and worthwhile and I really think that every woman should learn some basic self-defence in order to protect themselves from becoming a potential victim. My most valuable lesson of the day was about appearance. If your attacker thinks you may be too difficult to prey on, he may not choose you. And that’s a good thing. Be aware of your surroundings, be confident, and you may not end up a victim.

Jen, Shannon, Sonia and I saw Secret Life of Bees on Monday night. All I have to say about that is that you’d better have Kleenex. And backup Kleenex for when the purse-size one runs out. And greasy popcorn-butter napkins ready for when THOSE run out. Sonia and I agree that we would like to hunt Queen Latifah down in a completely non-creepy way and ask her if she will adopt us. That woman is beyond awesome and I love her.

Our lives have settled into a routine of school, soccer, and storytime. We’ve also done some skating and the boys are starting their skating lessons at the end of November. Oh wow, and in other great news, Jack had his pediatric allergy appointment and he tested negative for EVERYTHING! Yippee! Woohoo! We are staying nut-free here in the house, but it’s nice to know that I don’t have to send an Epi-pen with Jack to school.

PS Ethan is currently singing upstairs at the top of his lungs: “O Canada, I just pooed in the toilet! God keep our land, poo poo poo poo poo poooooo!” He’s very patriotic like that.

Friday Fill-Ins #13

It’s been a while since I did a fill-in, so here we go...

1. Follow the light.
2. My pillowcase is something I always take with me on vacation.
3. To achieve your goals, you must write them down, make a plan, and set about accomplishing them.
4. Everything I talk about is something I'd like you to know about me.
5. I have a sore neck.
6. Crap floats. Actually it doesn`t but I liked the way it sounded.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to Thai food with some friends, tomorrow my plans include playing on one of Surrey`s newest ice sheets with the Olympic mascots and Sunday, I want to kick some butt in my self defence class!

How? Why? What?

Moms such as myself are all too familiar with the following questions:
How?
Why?
What?

With a 4 year old and a 6 year old, I have to know a LOT. They are very inquisitive and are constantly thirsty for knowledge. They always ask how things work or how they are made, why things work the way they do, and what do things mean. My IQ is up there, but I still can't keep up with these guys. Luckily, I have my Phone-A-Friend - my dad, who answers space, math and science questions that I just have no clue how to answer.

Also, I am competing with Ethan's teachers. I used to be THE authority in his life, my word was the gospel, but alas, I have been usurped. (I like to use words like usurped to prove that I do indeed have an IQ of some sort) Now he says things like: "but Madame pronounces it this way" or "Madame says lunch is called diner NOT dejeuner".

So the other day we were talking about the movies Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda, which they want for Christmas. Ethan asked me,
"How do they MAKE DVDs?"
So I take a deep breath and I'm about to launch into a whole spiel about the fabrication process of DVDs, which by the way I know nothing about, when he says,
"I know, I know Mummy, it's ok".
I'm all like,
"You do?"
and he says
"Yes, Mummy, it's the ELVES. THEY make the DVDs."

"Yep. It's the elves, sweetie."

Thank God for the elves.

The Many Faces of the Boys

Happy
Sad
Scared
Trying to be Mad
Confused
Angry
Silly

The Blogs in my Head

Just so y'all know, the blogs I post in my head are awesome. They are amazing, witty, insightful, so well-written, and just slap-your-knee hilarious. The trouble is, they mostly occur to me when I'm driving, watching soccer practice, or dressed up in a helmet and breastplate playing knights. So you never get to read them. Too bad for you; you'll just have to take my word for it. They are terrific.

Just a Roadrunner Here

All of us parents were standing around waiting for the kids to come out of the classrooms for their Grade One Mingle Day / Parent Picnic. I was talking to Forrest and Cathy, and I was completely focussed on the conversation, watching my words fly out of Cathy’s fingertips as she signed for Forrest. (It was a much faster conversation than any other I’ve had with Forrest so far!)* Then somewhere in the back of my head I heard this little “Help Help” and on the edge of my vision I saw this little blue figure, impossibly high on the climbing wall. Yes, it was Jack. My head snapped around, and you won’t believe it, but I actually gave myself whiplash racing for him. It felt like I was the cartoon Road Runner, where he “meep meep”s and the legs run off first but the head stays behind for a second. Then the head snaps forward in a cloud of dust to join the racing body. I’m sure it looked just like that too. Right. But anyway, that’s what it FELT like, and throughout the day my neck got worse and worse until now, where I am immobile on the couch with a heating pad, waiting for the painkillers to kick in. And getting my manservant to keep the G&Ts coming. And BTW, Jack was just fine. He did tell me that he had been hanging “a vewy long time” just to lay on the guilt nice and thickly.

If ever you think of radio or music in the car as just background noise, and that your kids aren’t listening, think again. I screen the kids from TV commercials at home – they only watch Treehouse, which has no ads, or DVDs I have approved. As for radio commercials, though, I haven’t really been paying attention until now. On the way to school on Friday, here’s our conversation:
Jack: “I want to go to 95 Crave sometime” (one of our local radio stations)
Me: “Oh really, why is that?”
Jack: “Because if they don’t play five in a row, they will jet you to a sun destination” (I’m not kidding, this is the four-year-old talking)
So not only do they listen, they listen so hard they can repeat verbatim what the commercials say. I’m on alert now, and I may have something to say to the Beat 94.5 about their latest condom commercial. It’s on at driving-to-school time and seriously, it’s a little too sexy for that time of day. Even for me. I think we’ll be flipping to another station for a while! I have no desire to answer what lubrication and pleasure have to do with Trojans.

Search terms that have led to my blog:
apple orchard langley school tours
girls filling their pants with poo
how often should you bathe a jack a poo
lifepoo
my baby pick out hard poo 3 month
perler bead poptart
zigazig ah oh yeah ferris bueller

It’s all slightly alarming. Most often, it’s poo that brings you here.

*One of my previous conversations with Forrest was when I signed Good Morning, then forgot how to finger spell my name to introduce myself. So Forrest gave me his cell phone to type it in. Unfortunately the “smart” writing was turned on, so when I started typing in my name, T-A-M-S-I, it spelled V-A-M-P-I then suggested R-E. So the poor man thinks my name is vampire. He made a fang sign and we both laughed but then the bell rang and I didn’t have time to correct him. So I think instead of trying to tell him my real name, I will just go by the alias of vampire. The fang sign is much easier than finger spelling my name anyway!

Party Days

The party days started with the comedy night for Marzia’s birthday. The headliner was very funny although the layout of the venue was terrible. Anyway, it was a fun evening and nine of us made it out to celebrate on a school night – unbelievable!

On Saturday we had a Kung Fu Panda party for Ethan’s sixth birthday and it was a big success.
12 crazy 6-yr-olds doing kung fu chops through balsa wood and slurping away in the noodle-eating contest. Great fun for all! Here was the cake – I made it myself. Do I rock or what?

And although we were exhausted after, we still had dinner at Mike’s Gram’s with that whole side of the family. Hoo boy. I thought she was crotchety 15 years ago when I first met her, but at the ripe old age of 95 she censors nothing. She has zero tolerance for the boys, and she is quite vocal about it! And I almost lit her on fire when I brought her the cake – I forgot about the whole oxygen tank / potential explosion thing. If there is a next year, no candles.

I had to put my mom off until Monday – three parties in one day might have killed me. But we had a very nice afternoon at the bird sanctuary out on an island in Delta, and still had time for a coffee and presents.

Jack wanted to get her a mouth for her birthday. So that when he isn’t there to kiss her, she could kiss the mouth. Unfortunately we couldn’t find a suitable mouth, so he and Ethan got her a stuffed bird from the Audubon society that gives a very realistic bird call when you squeeze it. She said her cat Misti was VERY interested in it when she got home.

And in other extremely exciting news, Ethan lost his first tooth today.
It’s been wiggly for a week or so, which is utterly disgusting to me. Ethan’s friends first noticed my squeamishness about a year ago, when they started losing their teeth. It’s kind of the joke around school, go wiggle your tooth to Ethan’s mom, and watch her choke on her own puke. So Ethan has been wiggling away, which is ironic since he HATES talking about the human body. Don’t mention blood or bones to him. Jack wanted to be a skeleton for Halloween, but Ethan panicked and shakily blurted out that it makes him feel like he’s “cracking apart inside” to think of those things. Awww poor kid.

Anyway, it fell out at soccer tonight while he was practicing drop kicks, and it was probably the best place for it to happen. He was with guys his age, the coach thought it was cool, his friends picked up the tooth off the gym floor, and I couldn’t cry about it because I was the only mom there; the rest were dads.
I also couldn’t puke or I would have completely lost face. But I’m glad I’m writing about it now because the tooth fairy better remember to do her thing tonight. E tried to say that teeth go for about $20 each these days, but I’ve done a little research on the playground this week and it’s $1 in these parts. He may well be disappointed tomorrow! Stingy fairy.

Jack also started his soccer class and is loving it.
There are two boys and one parent in his class that I want to deal with, though. One of the boys obviously has a behavioural problem of some sort and the other speaks no English, which makes it hard for him to do what the coach says. And because those two boys aren’t listening, the other 5 or 6 (including Jack) get distracted more easily. I feel bad for the poor coach. And the parent I have an issue with keeps letting her 1-yr-old run into the practice area and kick balls around. I have no problem with giving the little one a ball and letting her play elsewhere, but it’s totally disruptive to the ones who paid $80 for these 8 weeks, and it’s also unsafe for the 1-yr-old. She’s going to get creamed by the ball sooner rather than later. Hmpf. I was very proud of Jack and his behaviour. You know he gives me grief, but he was listening very well to his coach. He totally got a treat when we got home.

It was a far cry from the other day when we heard the door beep. Uh-oh, a child has left the premises – unauthorized! We went out to the driveway and there was Jack, dressed only in Spiderman underwear and sandals. He was dancing and singing something about “Captain Underpants” while the neighbours laughed. That’s my sensible boy; he paused long enough in his escape to put on sensible footwear. Kind of forgot the clothes part, though...

Now we’re looking forward to Ethan’s real birthday this weekend. Like we haven’t already had enough cake!

Hey Ladies

I’m sure you’ve heard it already, but you do know it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month, right?

And I don’t know about you, but I have lost too many lovely ladies to breast cancer. Even one person is too many. And there are still more ladies close to me who are survivors.

But they shouldn’t even have had to go through this.

So what can you do?

• Donate money to cancer research when you can (I bought a pink ribbon Sharpie today – it’s ok to start small).
• Get a mammogram.
• Pledge to walk in next year’s Weekend to End Breast Cancer.
• Wear pink every day this month (I am).

Anything, really, just do something and let’s cure this thing.