Oh, My Babies :-)

So we're driving home from visiting my older sister's place (she lives about 15 minutes from us). It's close to 4:00 pm and the kiddies didn't have their nap today because we were at a birthday party in the city and then we dropped in on my sister and her family for a visit. So as we pull onto the highway leaving there, E. asks:

"Am I having a nap today Mom?" (Translation: Even though we're going home, I've missed the time to have a nap, right?)

M: "No E, you've missed your naptime. Just like we talked about, you're not having a nap today."

J: "I not having a nap either?"

M: "No, J. you won't have a nap either."

J: "I no need a nap I tink. I a big boy."

E: "I don't need a nap either."

M: "No, you didn't have naps and you're not even grumpy."

J: "I no grumpy (duh, as if....I'm way to grown up to nap)".

E: "I'm not even tired mom. I don't nap anymore."

J: "Oh no, I not tired mom."

So we drive past the road to my mom's place (we've been on the highway about 3 minutes) and I point it out. They oohh and ahhh appropriately.

We drive past the town about 3 minutes past my mom's place and I point it out. No comments from the peanut gallery. I stop at a red light about two minutes from my last comment and look in the backseat:

Ah, guess we still need naps...... Yeah, I tink.

Watch the first 10 seconds of this video on Utube before reading on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g


So, we're watching the Beyonce video Single Ladies (our new fav.). J. watches the first couple of seconds of it and then asks,

'Mom, why they are running around like that?'
M: 'They're dancing.'
J: 'Oh.......Why they put their arms up like that mom?'
M: 'It's just part of the dance J. They're dancing like that.'
J: 'Oh.....They must be doing ballet I tink.'


Well, they are wearing black body suits, so I guess it could be ballet.

Sweater Dress & Fun in the House

I think this video speaks for itself. She just appeared wearing this one afternoon after her nap.

Here's a new game they invented this week. ummm..... the clothes you see at the bottom of the stairs are on their way to the laundry room. Yeah, I don't just leave piles of laundry willy-nilly around the house......most of the time.

Bullets - Mental Health Issue

• It's not good for your mental health to be sleep deprived because your son is waking up at 4am every morning.
• It's not good for your mental health to have a son that is sleep deprived because he is waking up at 4am every morning and who is therefore having great difficulty listening to and following instructions about not touching every fuckin thing in sight.
• It's really not good for your mental health when this happens in the weeks leading up to your period.
• It's really, really not good for your mental health when all of that happens while you are trying to figure out how you are going to fit assessment exercises into you lessons at school before report cards when you know you are losing a whole week of classes due to Spirit Week.
• It's really, really, really not good for your mental health when all of that is going on and it's been too cold for children to play outside for the past month (umm.... both your children and the one you teach).
• It's also not good for your mental health when you are in a constant time crunch, but you run around collecting stuff, creating a care package for your husband, delivering it at 8:30 on a freezing cold night because you had Parent-Teacher interviews to someone who will take it to the base for you only to get a phone call 3 days later informing you that the package cannot be sent because it contains liquids (which is the one thing your husband REALLY, REALLY wants and that you had to run around to 3 different groceries stores to find enough of the only, single kind that he likes) which are the very same liquids that you sent to him the month before that he was absolutely thrilled to receive and so you have to drive to the base - 45 minutes from where you live - to pick the boxes back up and then you fall asleep at the wheel on the way back from there at 2:15 in the afternoon because of.....well....see the first bullet. That one is bad for both your mental and physical health actually. Not too good for the kid in the backseat either.
• A dirty house is not good for my mental health. Cleaning it isn't too good for it either :-))
• It is good for your mental health when you finally give in and buy pull-ups for your son and he sleeps until 6:15 the next morning and most mornings after that. (Don't ask me why he was waking-up though. The pull-ups are dry every morning anyway.)
• It is very good for your mental health when your husband sends you a dozen roses when you are very, very close to tipping over the EDJJ (and maybe taking a couple of them out with you - mostly the bigger J.).
• It is also very good for your mental health to be surrounded by family, neighbours and friends who are willing to help you by:
• shoveling your driveway after 3 days of snow
• taking your kids to gymnastics so you can get some work done
• keeping your babies all day even though they're only supposed to be there for the morning
• ordering a meal by e-mail to be delivered to your family on a day when there are no groceries in the house
• bringing us our favorite meal from our favorite restaurant so I don't have to cook or clean-up on a Saturday evening
• picking-up one child from the babysitter while I take the other child to an appointment
• It's also very, very, VERY good for your mental health to hire someone to clean your house one a week when you are living as a single, working, little-kids-having parent. Why oh why didn't I save myself a lot of grief and do that as soon as I found out he was leaving?

It Takes a Village

Yes people, it takes a village to get report cards written around here. Yesterday my wonderful babysitter offered to keep my kiddies all day so I could get a good jump on my task. I got all my comments written for Math and got started on the Language Arts comments. This afternoon, my brother-in-law (well and my sister) came and took my kiddies to a couple of hours of 'gymnastics', thus allowing me to further my cause (so to speak). It is now 9:00 pm and I am finished writing. I will still go back and review the comments over the next few days, but I am basically done (sigh of relief). I know that I write way too much in the comments section of the reports. I'm sure parents don't even read them, but I just can't help myself. Someday I'll learn to use the cut and paste comment bar to greater advantage, but for now.....who cares.....I'm done! Oh yes, I did a little report card math yesterday just to make myself feel better because it was taking so long. I figured out that if I spent 15 minutes on each child in each subject it would take me 11 hours to finish the reports. It took me about that. Oh and uh.....I'm not posting a picture of what I look like at this moment. I did shower today, but that's about it :-).

I really would like to add something more interesting (such as copious whining) to this post, but I simply cannot stand to spend another second on the computer tonight. Later.

Great News!

E. had her annual cardiologist appointment today. She was born with a small ventricular septal defect. Basically, that's a small hole in the dividing wall between the two lower chambers of her heart. It's never caused her any problems. She's always been in the 90th percentile for both height and weight (as you can see from one of the earliest pictures we have of her) and she's always been an active child.Anyway, her tests today showed and the doctor confirmed that the hole has closed over and E.'s heart is now perfectly normal! While we expected this to happen around her fourth birthday, I was still surprised. Wonderfully surprised.

On the way back from the city though, I suddenly woke-up doing 100 km/hr on the grass between the two highways. That was extremely scary and E and I are just lucky that we weren't approaching an overpass when I fell asleep at the wheel. My god it happened so fast and I was so completely asleep that I don't remember leaving the highway at all. I had enough sense not to panic and just manouvered us back up onto the highway and kept going. A good day almost ended very tragically, but all is well.

Poetry from E.

Here's E.'s version of Eenie-Meenie:

She has a new favourite video which contains a bunch of clips of various Disney songs. She LOVES it and would watch it 20 times a day if I'd let her. She loves to sing. She's been into Cinderella for a while, but now she knows most of the Disney princesses. Recently, on DH's facebook page, E. saw a picture of two little girls with Cinderella. Once I explained that those two little girls were at Disneyworld and had likely eaten with Cinderella, that was it. E. was on a mission to get to Disneyworld. Then, a couple of days later, she informed me that the other little girl at her dayhome was......wait for it......going to Disneyland! She was going to meet the princesses! 'Mom (that's what she calls me when she is very serious), I wanna go to Disneyland.' I can't believe I am willingly falling for all that marketing to kids. I want to go too just to see her face when she gets to eat lunch with Cinderella!

Losing My Mind

Ummm..... I haven't been stellar parent as of late. Ummm... I've been very frustrated, very often actually. You see, I can not leave my children (read mostly: child) unattended for more than 1 minute or 'things' happen.

You know what they say about things changing at the mark where the child has been with you as long as they've been in other care....it appears to be true. It was true for our daughter - she became much more relaxed and happy. It's true for J. as well - he's much more relaxed as well.....too relaxed for a single parent!

Anyway, when E. first came home, one of us had to be with her at all times or she would hurt herself. When J. came home one of us had to be with them every second or they would whale on each other (to put it mildly). I assumed however that there would be a point where I would be able to, oh I don't know, take a quick pee without having to clean up some disaster when I got back (spilled milk, juice, water, soup; broken glasses, plates, bowls; dumped water all over the floor because they filled the bathroom sink and splashed in it; toothpaste on the wall while I went to get a rinse cup; still in p.j.'s when the sibling got themselves dressed an hour ago; chips, raisins, cereal, (or whatever you can think of) all over the floor because they wanted more; etc; etc; etc). There was a brief, blissful period last month where I could actually run upstairs to grab my toothbrush as they ate breakfast and 'things' did not happen. Gone now....all gone.....gone.....gone.

And so, to return to my original point, I have not been a stellar mother these days. Ummm.... being alone, 5 O'clock mornings, parent/teacher conferences, the Febuary grumps at school (which means kids who are getting on each others' nerves = more conflicts), upcoming report cards and nothing for Valentine's are really not helping to calm my nerves. Anywho, I have been heard to utter the following phrase often enough that my son has now started to use it. Ummm......to be fair...... he's heard it aLOT more often than his sister over the past 2 weeks!

And yes, he knows what it means:

Yes, you see, when I have just spend my Sunday morning cleaning (during which time I've had to stop at least 15 times to 1. break up an argument; 2. check to see what they are up to; 3. talk to the peeps, Eli, Penguin, Cindrella, the prince or Super Why and/or 4. wipe various body parts (not my own) and then someone dumps half a container of APPLE JUICE on the freshly washed floor because they couldn't wait for one minute until mom could come and help them.....yes......then, I do truly feel like I'm going to LOSE MY MIND and I tell them!

All of the Sudden It's Been a Year!

January 21, 2008 was the day J. joined our family. He was offically adopted the next day. Since that time a year ago, J. has grown yet he's remained the same in so many ways. He's definately the boy we met in China - affectionate, contemplative, lively, funny and curious with just a touch of cheekiness. I've been truly stunned at the ease of his transition and I'm proud of the way he has remained who he really is. One example is how he has insisted on keeping the name with which he identifies himself. He is J. no if-ands-or-buts about it and so he will always be. Recently we were sitting in the rocking chair in his room looking at the pictures we have hanging on his wall. He identified everyone in the pictures and then he said, 'Mama, we need to change that one (indicating the picture of DH, E. and I taken while we were waiting for his paperwork to come through) 'cause I not in it and I in the family now.' Then he told me that we needed to change his letters (letters that spell S.A.M. that are on his wall) " 'cause there's no J. in that'.

What happened to J. a year ago was not romantic. It was damn hard for him. He was forced to give up all he knew, almost all he was actually, to begin again in a very strange world. He handled it all with such strength, grace and humour, while facing it all head on. He was able to seek comfort when he needed it and to find joy all around him.

His medical issue has not turned out at all as we expected. We assumed he would need surgery and a hospital stay followed by appointment after appointment in his first months with us, but glasses and patching has all that's been required. His eye/brain has responded even better than the doctor first predicted and now both eyes are working together as they should. He still needs to wear a patch every second day for two hours and to have monitoring visits with the opthomolgist every 6 months, but the prognosis for his sight is excellent.

Ahh, our J.

E.'s big brother and best friend, Mama's little man,

Papa's other piece, a true little boy and

the completion of our family.

Furture Designer

Yes, E. created this outfit all by herself.

The ensemble consists of the absolute fashion necessities of:

• the Pocahantas' headbands (so-called because you look like Pocahantas when wearing them)
• the patented 'U Necklace' (a letter 'u' that belongs in a floor mat gets placed backwards around the neck)
• the very favorite Penguin Pajamas
• the 'Mama Spent the Months We Waited for Your Paperwork to Come Through Knitting' knit blanket
• the ever popular Purple-Clicking-High-Heeled-Princess shoes with the see-through toe complimented by the Pajama-Matching Elephant socks.

Are we feeling it or what?

Her Peeps were definately feeling it. Here she has them all lined up on the kitchen counter adoring her as she eats supper. Yes, she calls them her Peeps. The other day she said to me, 'Mama, do you want to go and play with my Peeps with me?'

E.'s World

E. is never E. anymore. For a long time she played Cinderella (see previous post), but she was always just acting out certain parts of the story. These days she is whatever character she's obsessing about. She is Pocahontas today and we have to call her that. If I slip up and call her E. I am gently corrected (not just by her BTW. J. corrected me during lunch today). Sometimes she is Miko (the little raccoon from Pocahontas). Of course I am usually Miko. I love it when I get to be him because he doesn't talk which means I get to just sit there. Other times I'm 'Jasmine' (that's how they pronounce it). This is confusing because Jasmine is a princess from the Aladin movie, but that's not what they are trying to say. They're saying 'John Smith'. That's the guy that loves Pocahontas. I wonder who she'll be next.......