Chaos Theory

Archive for the ‘Kids’ Category

This is exactly the kind of weekend that I like - we had plans but weren’t overly busy so it was a laid-back enjoyable day today. Tomorrow promises to be much of the same.

This morning I woke up at 8 am and realized that everyone else was still sound asleep out in the living room. It was the first time that Breanna had made it through the whole night for a living room camp-out. She usually wakes up around 3 am wanting to know where I am. However this time I actually had a chance to marvel that it was morning and I had not been poked awake by a small child needing to pee and then I even fell back to sleep for awhile. That was awesome.

After lunch we drove out to see my parents for the afternoon and Breanna opened up the present that they got her. My family knows how much Breanna loves dinosaurs and got her this little guy. I sometimes really despise battery-operated toys because they’re usually obnoxiously loud and take away from the chance to use your imagination but there are some that I do like. I definitely like this one. He chews on your finger (or a toy spoon, bottle, etc) and “eats”, then makes little cooing baby dinosaur sounds. No overkill and it’s really cute; she loves it.

Hayley and Breanna spent most of the visit trying to convince my parents’ cat to come out to play but unlike the first two cats my mom and dad owned, this one isn’t used to kids at all so she’s just not very interested in seeing two overly enthusiastic children who try to chase her around with toys. Alas.

It wasn’t cold out today but it was chilly by the time the sun started going down so we had a simple comfort food supper of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. When I was a kid my mom sometimes made tuna or salmon sandwiches and a mix of tomato and celery soup on nights when my dad wasn’t going to be home for supper and I always loved soup and sandwiches as a comfort meal.

Tonight it’s all quiet. Both kids were tired because they didn’t go to sleep until well after ten last night. Meanwhile, George is out at a friend’s house so it’s just me (and the dog, but she’s not much for conversation). I’m taking advantage by watching a movie that I know doesn’t interest George in the least, a foreign film called Osama. It’s about a family in Afghanistan during the rise of the Taliban. The father dies and leaves behind a wife and 12-year-old daughter. Since the Taliban prohibits women from working the young girl cuts her hair short and disguises herself as a boy so that she can work to support herself and her mother.

As you may have noted in my reading material post, that’s the kind of movie that is right up my alley.

So on that note, I’m off to read subtitles and relax. Enjoy your Saturday!

(The pictures of Breanna on her birthday are over here. Unfortunately the quality is kind of ech because it was pouring rain outside, leaving practically no natural light to use. My external flash needs new batteries so I had to use the dreaded on-camera flash. Alas. But the subject matter makes them cute anyway!)

This is exactly the kind of weekend that I like - we had plans but weren’t overly busy so it was a laid-back enjoyable day today. Tomorrow promises to be much of the same.

This morning I woke up at 8 am and realized that everyone else was still sound asleep out in the living room. It was the first time that Breanna had made it through the whole night for a living room camp-out. She usually wakes up around 3 am wanting to know where I am. However this time I actually had a chance to marvel that it was morning and I had not been poked awake by a small child needing to pee and then I even fell back to sleep for awhile. That was awesome.

After lunch we drove out to see my parents for the afternoon and Breanna opened up the present that they got her. My family knows how much Breanna loves dinosaurs and got her this little guy. I sometimes really despise battery-operated toys because they’re usually obnoxiously loud and take away from the chance to use your imagination but there are some that I do like. I definitely like this one. He chews on your finger (or a toy spoon, bottle, etc) and “eats”, then makes little cooing baby dinosaur sounds. No overkill and it’s really cute; she loves it.

Hayley and Breanna spent most of the visit trying to convince my parents’ cat to come out to play but unlike the first two cats my mom and dad owned, this one isn’t used to kids at all so she’s just not very interested in seeing two overly enthusiastic children who try to chase her around with toys. Alas.

It wasn’t cold out today but it was chilly by the time the sun started going down so we had a simple comfort food supper of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. When I was a kid my mom sometimes made tuna or salmon sandwiches and a mix of tomato and celery soup on nights when my dad wasn’t going to be home for supper and I always loved soup and sandwiches as a comfort meal.

Tonight it’s all quiet. Both kids were tired because they didn’t go to sleep until well after ten last night. Meanwhile, George is out at a friend’s house so it’s just me (and the dog, but she’s not much for conversation). I’m taking advantage by watching a movie that I know doesn’t interest George in the least, a foreign film called Osama. It’s about a family in Afghanistan during the rise of the Taliban. The father dies and leaves behind a wife and 12-year-old daughter. Since the Taliban prohibits women from working the young girl cuts her hair short and disguises herself as a boy so that she can work to support herself and her mother.

As you may have noted in my reading material post, that’s the kind of movie that is right up my alley.

So on that note, I’m off to read subtitles and relax. Enjoy your Saturday!

(The pictures of Breanna on her birthday are over here. Unfortunately the quality is kind of ech because it was pouring rain outside, leaving practically no natural light to use. My external flash needs new batteries so I had to use the dreaded on-camera flash. Alas. But the subject matter makes them cute anyway!)

Four years ago today I went into a very fast, very short labour and in under four hours this little girl was born.

And somehow four years have passed and this morning when she woke me up to go pee and whispered that she didn’t want to go back to bed, I whispered back that it was okay because it was almost 9 am anyway and it was her birthday. She had forgotten about it despite being excited the night before. I reminded her that she’s four and she asked, “no more three?” No kiddo. No more three.

In four years she learned so much. She knows her numbers, her alphabet, countless songs, how to color inside the lines, how to play board games, and how to climb up everything at the park, among so many other things. She can turn on her (and Hayley’s) computer, log in, open Firefox, and navigate her way through the bookmarks of all their kid sites. Most recently she loves to help me make supper and has learned not only to assist me in adding ingredients and stirring them up, she can also crack her own eggs and scramble them at the stove (with direct supervision, obviously).

It’s hard to believe someone who couldn’t even hold up her own head this time four years can do so much now. Time flies.

She had a pretty good birthday. George and I gave her a Hungry Hungry Hippos game because she desperately wanted one, Hayley gave her a play tool set that she wanted, my sister sent a dinosaur playset (I’m not going to be surprised if she becomes a paleontologist one day), and she got a cute little outfit from George’s parents. We ordered pizza over there for supper and when we came home she had her birthday cake. Right now George and the kids are camping out in the living room after having had a movie night.

Tomorrow we’ll go see my parents and spend the afternoon over there and we’ll do her party in a couple of weeks since that will be the only time the majority of friends and family can make it.

I have many more pictures but my glass of wine and my book are calling. I’ll get to them while still trying to ponder how my little baby is a big four year old girl!

In that time in between growing up and having kids of my own, I started becoming ambivalent about Christmas and many times I found myself putting the tree up around December 20th or so. After having kids (especially as they grew enough to understand the excitement of the holiday), Christmas perked back up again. Suddenly it became magical for me like it used to be and I started putting the tree up the first weekend of December.

Yet here I am on the 14th of November and I’m now starting to do some prep work for Christmas. Oh, I don’t have lights and decorations up yet (though I did debate replacing my Fall door hanger with my Christmas wreath; I resisted the urge) and I certainly haven’t started my shopping yet (hahaha). However, Andrea over at A Peek Inside the Fishbowl came up with an amazing December challenge that sounds like a lot of fun.

Although we always get the Advent calendars with the little chocolates - two of course, one for each of them - I’m very interested in taking part in the Advent challenge.

Basically, instead of treats, you tuck a kid or family activity into each advent window/envelope/etc and on each day of December leading up to Christmas, you pull the daily activity out and do it. The key is to make the activities simple but fun - they don’t all have to be epic adventures and they don’t even have to necessarily require you to leave home. The point is to fill up those days full of anticipation with smaller moments of anticipation.

I still have to figure out all 25 activities that I’ll use but I’ve come up with some between seeing what others have done and ideas of my own. For instance, I have the obvious “decorate the tree and apartment” and “write letters to Santa” but I also have the outside-the-box “candlelight bubble bath for the kids” and “family game night - Wii edition”.

Not every activity has to be related to Christmas, although the majority of mine are. Basically as long as they’re fun, easy, and family-oriented they’ll be a hit.

I haven’t decided yet how to do mine. Andrea has a printable template to make paper envelopes where you can tuck the activities inside and I cut mine out; I might use it with some old Christmas bags, construction paper, and other papers I can find lying around. My other idea was to use baby/toddler socks. I have a bag of them and for some reason they’re still in Breanna’s drawer even though they either don’t fit or are missing a mate. I don’t know why I didn’t get rid of them but I’m thinking of using a long ribbon or a string of braided yarn and hanging the little socks with clothes pegs. That could be cute too, considering the use of stockings at Christmas time.

The only problem with this whole idea is that we’re not even halfway through the month of November yet and now I want to just get started already! This Advent calendar may be a great way to help with the anticipation of Christmas when December gets here but now what am I going to do about the anticipation of the Advent calendar?!

Are you in?

Sometimes the weekend feels like a letdown at this point in my life because there’s nothing in particular that stands out. In the younger years, before kids, weekends meant staying out until the wee hours, having brunch well past normal brunch times, and just kicking back and relaxing.

With young children there’s no going out until the wee hours - the only one who still does that is George and when he does it’s only because he’s playing a gig and thus working. We don’t go out for brunch because strangely kids are not as into the incredible joys of brunch as adults are, silly kids. As for kicking back and relaxing… well, it’s more about kicking than relaxing. While I would love to spend an afternoon lazily reading my current book on the couch, alas that just doesn’t happen often (ever).

On the other hand it’s not so bad. While I can justify staying out until 3 a.m. just for the sheer hell of it, at least I didn’t have to set the alarm for 6:15 tomorrow morning and although the kids won’t sleep in until a luxurious hour, it’s still better than sunrise.

We don’t go out for brunch but George often makes brunch for us on one of the two days, cooking up eggs, bacon, and toast (I need to put in a request for sausages sometimes I think; bacon is good but sausage is BETTER). The kids do like that, and so do I.

There’s not much relaxing going on but without the time constraints of school and homework we can do anything we feel like - going to the park or into the woods when the weather is good, playing Wii games, watching movies past bedtime, whatever.

So really it’s not that weekends are bad when you’re a parent of young kids (from what I understand, that’s one advantage of teenagers - at least they like to sleep in so there’s that much). It’s just different. And different is pretty good most days.

We kicked off our weekend today. Hayley went straight from school to her grandparents’ house. George and I had Butter Chicken and since I know Breanna’s not keen on that I had her help me make some scrambled eggs with vegetables for her supper. She helped. She cracked her eggs, whisked them with the milk, and then I started scrambling them, letting her finish up. She was so proud she ate both eggs and half the vegetables.

Then George went out and Hayley was still out as well so I gave her a dinosaur bath and then we made popcorn and watched The Little Mermaid*. Hayley arrived home halfway through so she joined us and they both went to bed easily and quickly.

I’m now enjoying some Shiraz and chips and looking forward to what the next two days hold (preferably a little extra sleep for me tomorrow what with the horrendous sleep I’ve been getting lately!).

What are your weekend plans?

*When I suggested it Breanna was all over The Little Mermaid. Lately she’s very into any movie that features a boy and girl, preferably a prince and princess-to-be, and she loves when they kiss. I think I may have my hands full by the tween years, God help me.