The waiting game

I have taken Gabe to the grocery store with me pretty much every week since he's been born. The truth is that during the time span between 6 and 10 months he hated it. It was always a race to the finish, with me trying to throw as much from my list into the cart as I could before he completely melted down. It made me sad that he didn't enjoy the time out and about, despite the fact that I always tried to make sure the trip was made during a window of time when he was well fed and well rested. Nicki and I always enjoyed grocery shopping together and from the time she was a baby I would wheel her around the store teaching her all about the different foods we saw, letting her touch and hold various fruits and veggies, counting things out as I put them in the cart. We would take our time and were never in a rush. Many people would comment to me as we went along how nice it was to hear a mom talking to her child so much, making a tedious task enjoyable.

It was a fun bonding time for Nicki and I, so like I said, it made me sad that Gabe just wanted to get out of there as fast as he could. But eventually, he came around. And now we have a blast! He loves to zoom around the store and hold various boxes and cans as we go. He knows the order that I usually get items in, so as soon as we get the milk for example, he starts yelling out "Eggs!" because he knows that's what comes next. He enjoys helping me put all of our produce into little plastic bags, naming all the fruits and veggies he recognizes as we go.

After all of that fun you would think that waiting in line to pay would be a big let down, but in reality that's where we have the most fun of all. The lines are excruciatingly long at the grocery store I go to, and with no one to bag your order, it takes forever for the cashier to move on to the next customer. Today for example we got in line at 9:45 and didn't roll away with our groceries until 10:05! That's 20 minutes in line!

But Gabe and I had a fine time while we waited. As he munched on his apple, I showed him various magazine covers and asked him to name the letters from the titles. We looked at a cooking magazine and named all of the foods we recognized. We looked at the cover of Châtelaine and named all the parts of the woman's face. We checked out the clothes in Vanity Fair and all of the celebrities in US magazine. At one point I was talking to Gabe about the colors of the dresses that the women were wearing and then said "Oh no they are wearing the same dress, that's a no-no in Hollywood!" The woman behind us in line laughed and thanked me for entertaining her as well. :) She gave me a wonderful compliment, saying that it was refreshing to see a mother with so much patience. She then started to talk to Gabe and the women behind her chimed in as well, feeding him a grape and telling him what a good boy he is.

After we paid, he waved and said goodbye to both of them and I walked away feeling happy and proud that we had fun while we waited and helped a couple of other people smile too. If only I could always slow down to this speed, make waiting fun and realize that there's a learning opportunity hidden in every experience with my kids. Hopefully this will serve as a great reminder for me and maybe you too. Happy grocery shopping!

The differences between boys and girls

Nicki is slowly but surely starting to realize that there are differences between boys and girls. For the most part we have done our best not to let silly widespread stereotypes, like boys shouldn't wear pink or girls shouldn't play with trucks, become a part of her mindset. But there's just no arguing with the physical differences that she is now beginning to notice!

A week or two ago we were in the entry getting ready to go for a walk when she asked me "Why is Gabe a boy?" Dancing around the obvious answer, I replied "He was born that way, just like you and I were born girls." This was of course not good enough (hey I can dream can't I?) and so she repeated "Yeah, but why is he a boy?" I attempted to skirt the issue again saying "Everyone is different. Some people are girls and some people are boys and both are just as good." Getting frustrated now, almost as if she knew the answer she was waiting for, she once again asked "But WHY is he a boy?" Finally I could avoid it no longer and answered "Because he has a penis", bracing myself for the barrage of questions to follow. But none came. Nicki simply had a pensive look on her face, like she was evaluating the validity of my answer, and then just continued to put on her boots, dropping the subject completely.

The following day after bath time, Nicki was sitting beside me wrapped up in her towel as I dried Gabe off. Whenever I wash them, I always name all of their body parts, so Nicki is familiar with both the terms penis and scrotum. As I was drying that area on Gabe, Nicki pointed in the general direction of his thigh and asked "Is that his scrotum?" So I matter of factly showed her exactly what was what, hoping that she wasn't too young to be told this kind of thing. Satisfied with my answer, the subject was once again dropped.

A few days later, we were once again in the entry getting our jackets on when Gabe wandered over. Nicki exclaimed in an enthusiastic voice "Hey Penis Guy!" I was so taken aback by it that I had to bite my tongue so as not to laugh out loud! Instead I said "Have you ever heard anyone say that before?" hoping that she hadn't picked it up at school. She said no. So I asked her "Why would you call him that then?" and she replied "Because he has one!" I couldn't exactly argue with that logic and was still so surprised that I couldn't get out more than an "Oh, ok." I didn't want to say anything that would make her think badly about our so-called private parts.

In retrospect I should have told her that it's impolite to call people by their body parts regardless of whether or not they have one, sort of like I don't go around calling her "Nose Girl" or Gabe "Elbow Boy". But that bit of sound parenting completely escaped me in the moment. I'll have to keep it in my back pocket for another day, as there surely will be a next time. In the meantime I guess I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope that she doesn't yell out "Hey Scrotum Boy!" to Gabe when we go pick her up at school one day. Oh the looks I would get for that one, I'm sure! :)

Matters of a sensitive nature

My daughter Nicki is an incredibly sensitive little girl. I only truly realized this when we started letting her watch TV not long after her second birthday. At first all we allowed her to watch was Sesame Street and then gradually introduced such things as Dora The Explorer and Curious George. She is limited to only 30 minutes a day which I think is more than enough for a kid her age. But some days I want to just cut out TV altogether because she has been frightened multiple times by things she has seen on the screen...

Who would have ever thought that something as wholesome as Sesame Street could cause a preschooler to burst into tears? Well it has quite a few times and even as recently as last week. The latest occurrence was during the opening segment when Oscar the Grouch was hosting a game show called "What happens next?" meant to teach kids about simple scientific concepts. It started off innocently enough with Slimy the Worm diving off a diving board into a pool of mud. Elmo needed to guess if he would make a big splash or a little splash and hypothesized that since Slimy is small he would surely make a small splash. He was of course right. Next Slimy climbed up a tall ladder and was to jump into the same pool of mud from much higher up. Alan explained to Elmo how because Slimy was higher up he would be going faster when he landed in the mud and would therefore make a big splash this time around. Slimy did indeed make a huge splash and got mud all over Alan in the process. This caused Alan to yell out "Oscar!" in an angry voice which made Nicki cry and hide her face in my arm. Oscar continued on with a few more "experiments" each one resulting in some sort of mess that made someone angry and in turn made Nicki cry.

There was another instance this past month when we took Nicki to the movies to see Horton Hears a Who. During one of the previews for Ice Age, a scary dinosaur appeared on screen roared loudly and showed his teeth. Nicki immediately started to cry and cling to me for dear life. I was amazed that in this theater filled with kids, some older, some younger, not one other child cried. Nicki was the only one who seemed to be affected by it at all.

Though most of her sensitivity has been evidenced by her reactions to things seen on screen, it has not only been limited to that. At her preschool earlier this year they sang a song called "There Was an Old Woman". The first verse of the song goes:

There was an old woman who swallowed a fly,
I don't know why she swallowed a fly,
Perhaps she'll die.

The song goes on to have the woman eat bigger and bigger creatures so that they will catch the smaller creatures, until at the end she finally eats a horse and they say "She's dead, of course!"

Now I won't even go into my personal opinion of how inappropriate this type of song is to sing to a class of 3 and 4 year olds, but the truth is that all the other kids in her class were laughing and thought the song was hilarious. Nicki burst into tears and had to be taken out of the room so that she could calm down. (Side note: I have been assured that the song will no longer be sung in class.) It's interesting to me how deeply affected she was by the lyrics while the other children seemed unfazed.

What is it that makes her so sensitive to things like this? Have I kept her too sheltered so far in her short life? Should she have already been exposed (and possibly desensitized?) to the harsher realities of life? To be honest, all her reactions make me want to do is keep her sheltered even more, keep her innocent as long as possible and let her live a worry free childhood. Or is it possible that she is more in tune than other kids to these types of sensitive matters, which makes topics like anger and death affect her more? Does that mean I actually need to be more careful with what she is exposed to and not less?

I feel like all I can do is be there to hold her and comfort her when she gets scared and try to explain to her in words she can understand what all of these frightening things mean. There are so many things in her life that she is going to need me to explain and walk her through as time goes on. I hope that I can somehow help her to learn what life is all about without putting negative thoughts in her head and yet also without giving her a false illusion and naiveté about it all...

Sleeping like a baby

I am truly amazed. Last night our burglar alarm when off in the wee hours. Eddie and I both jolted out of sleep, jumping about 10 feet in the air. Thankfully it was just a false alarm, but I was astounded by the fact that neither of the kids woke up to the incessant blaring which went on for over 2 minutes. I watched a report a while back where they tested kids to see how quickly they would wake up and leave their rooms if the smoke alarm went off. It took many of the kids as much as 15 minutes to finally rouse from sleep with some of them never waking up at all. I didn't believe it then, but now I certainly do. Makes me wonder why I tiptoe around the house when the kids are napping. Sheesh!!

"Snow, snow, go away..."

This has been an incredibly long winter and I am itching for some nicer weather. I just looked at video taken a year ago today and we were at the park playing on the swings and slides, with only patches of snow here and there on the ground. We were wearing light jackets and no mittens! The thought of that is so far off at this point with the snow banks on each side of our driveway being over 7 feet tall. And it is still below zero every day. We're freezing and it's the end of March!

Last winter we were blessed with a very late first snowfall, somewhere around the last part of December and like I said, by late March only patches of snow were left. That means only 3 months of snow!! This year our first snowfall was in early November and it feels like it has never stopped. We are going on 5 months of snow right now with no end in sight. The 7 day weather forecast predicts 4 days of snow. We are going stir crazy despite our daily walks. There's no way to go out and play in the snow because it is just too deep and the kids just sink down and can't move. And besides that, it's just so cold that keeping them out any longer than 20 minutes or so leads to frozen fingers and toes, cheeks and noses, even if we are all bundled up. Blah.

I'm not the only one feeling this way either. Nicki has been asking me for the past 2 months when spring is going to start. When the first day of spring came last week, I think she thought I was joking. "It can't be spring Mommy, look at all the snow!" She even made up her own twist on an old favourite, changing the words to "Snow, snow, go away. DON'T come again another day!" She keeps asking about going to the park, making chalk drawings on the driveway, taking out the kiddie pool, and going to the lake. At this point I don't even know when to tell her we'll be doing any of those things. At the rate things are going, it almost seems reasonable to think that the last of the snow won't have melted until mid-June. Good thing I bought both kids new rain boots last week. With all the snow that there is to left to melt, I think there will be a lot of puddle stomping in our future!

Daddy's little girl

My dad and I have had an interesting relationship over the years. I wasn't necessarily what you would call Daddy's little girl, but I do have a lot of good memories about my dad from my childhood. I can remember him reading children's books to me, like our favourites Cinderella and The Penguin That Hated the Cold. In elementary school, I can remember him walking me to school on the mornings that he had his "9 days off" (he worked 9 days, followed by 9 nights, followed by 9 days off back then). I can remember us painting the fence together one year. I can remember lounging by the pool with him. I can remember him helping me put together my dinosaur project in high school. I can remember him preparing early suppers for me on evenings when I had a 5 o'clock shift at my part-time job. I can remember how he would drive out to pick me up, no matter where, no matter what time of night, whenever I needed him to.

I also know that he disagreed with many of the decisions that I made as I got older. I remember how he was vehemently opposed to my having a long distance relationship with my boyfriend (now husband!) for over 2 and a half years, insisting that I had no idea what he was doing behind my back when he was away at school. I remember how much he hated the idea of me moving out of the house at the age of 19 to live in an apartment downtown with one of my girlfriends, preaching how dangerous it was for 2 young women to be living alone. I remember how upset he was when I didn't finish my post graduate CA program and instead chose to move away to California. And most of all I remember how disappointed he was when I chose to leave my job and become a stay-at-home mom, saying that I was wasting all of the education that I had worked so hard for.

Which is why the compliment that he gave me a week ago was one of the most touching I have ever received. While we were out to lunch last Sunday, out of the blue he said to me: "I have to say that you and Eddie and doing an amazing job raising those kids." I was completely speechless. I lowered my head and said thank you, fighting back tears of joy. Because compliments don't flow easily from my father's lips, it meant the world to me to hear such high praise. Knowing that he didn't support my decision to stay home with my babies made what he said that much more poignant.

When all is said and done, I don't begrudge him for opposing many of the decisions I have made along the way. Being a parent myself now, I can finally understand that he was just doing what he thought was best to protect me. I hope that he can now realize that the choices I made were not made to spite him in any way and that I was doing what I truly believed was best for me at the time. And in reality I don't regret a single one of those decisions. Each one of them has brought me great joy and happiness. Each one of them has brought me to the place I am today and there is no place else I'd rather be. I hope that he can see that and be proud of who and what I have become. I love you Daddy.

Sibling relations

Every day when we get home from our afternoon walk, we head upstairs to do what I call "upstairs chores". This is basically a 15 minute chunk of time that I dedicate to preparing the bedrooms for bedtime and the bathroom for bath time. This is of course something I could do later in the evening when the kids are playing with their Daddy, but I've come to view this time as something of an experiment in sibling relations. I do the rest of my daily cleaning/tidying/washing/folding when the kids are asleep so that I can spend as much time as possible down on the floor playing with them. But that also means that they have very few opportunities to play alone together. So this "upstairs chores" time gives them the opportunity to play together if they want to and figure out the give and take of their unique relationship.

When I first started doing this, they didn't play together at all. Nicki would go to her room and look at books and Gabe would follow me around, bring me toys, or just stay in his own room and listen to the CD I had put on in there. But slowly they have come to enjoy each other's company, at least most of the time. Some days I will find them in the same room, each doing their own thing, some days they are actually interacting and getting along. But it changes from day to day and even minute to minute sometimes. One day last week, I was thrilled when they spent the entire time playing together. Gabe was sitting in the tent we put together in the guest room and Nicki was running back and forth between the bedrooms and the tent, filling it up with every toy imaginable. Every time she brought in a new toy, Gabe would squeal with delight. Not once was I called in to referee and in fact the only time either of them addressed me at all was when Nicki ran in to say "Mommy, we are having SO much fun!"

The next day however was a different story. Gabe was in a foul mood and Nicki's preschool was closed because of a snow storm. So we went to the bookstore and then to Toys R Us where I bought them a Little People garage set. They both love the Little People toys we already have, and at $15 off I just couldn't help it! So we brought it home and put it together. I thought it would be the perfect toy to share because it came with 2 people and 2 cars. But boy was I wrong! Gabe insisted on having one car in each hand at all times. I repeatedly asked him to give one car to Nicki, explaining that Nicki would have one car and Gabe would have one car. He would give up the car but then proceed to burst into tears and flail around on the floor like the world was ending. I can't even count the number of times this exact scenario was repeated:

1. They each have a car.
2. Nicki sends her car down the ramp.
3. Gabe snatches it as it gets to the bottom and runs away.
4. Nicki says "Mommy, Gabe has both cars!"
5. I insist that Gabe give one of the cars back to Nicki.
6. Gabe has a mega tantrum and loses his mind.
7. Return to step 1.

I honestly thought that eventually Gabe would get the idea, but he never did. Nicki was doing her best to be patient and even suggested swapping cars when he would try to take hers, but of course that wasn't what he wanted. Eventually Nicki gave up, in part because it was so frustrating for her and in part because she hates it when Gabe cries. She left the room to play by herself, but since I didn't want Gabe to think that his persistence had won the battle, I put the toy away instead. The whole scene had lasted only about a half hour, but it felt like an eternity!

I guess that 2 day snapshot is actually a pretty good portrait of what their relationship will be like over the years, one minute the best of friends, the next minute arch enemies. I don't have much first hand knowledge of sibling rivalry. My brother is 7 years older than me, and to be honest I don't really remember playing with him at all. I do remember him chasing me out of his room with a staple remover saying it was going to bite me. And him telling me that if I pressed the red button on the side of his watch the room would explode. And him tricking me into believing that my parents had moved away and left us one day when they were late coming home from work. But I also remember that as I got older our relationship got better. I remember him helping me learn French. I remember him taking me to see every Tom Cruise movie that came out because I liked him so much. And I remember going into his room after school just to chat and not being chased out.

So I have hope for my kids too. With less than 2 years separating them I know that there are many more disagreements, arguments and fights that I will be called in to referee. But I also hope that there will be a bond between them that deepens with time and that they will view the relationship that they have with their sibling as one of the most important in their lives. I hope that they will come to respect each other, rely on each other, and in essence know that the other will always be there for them no matter what. Isn't that what family is all about?