Birthday lunch and turning seven

Posted on September 24, 2009 by Sherry

Before we left for Halifax (sigh, Halifax), we had figured that we’d have Hayley’s birthday party on September 19th since it was Saturday and the day before Hayley’s actual birthday. Then we realized that after a three-week trip we might be sort of short on funds for such an event. We ended up postponing the party until October 10th which will work much better. Also, since it’s Thanksgiving weekend one of our friends has offered to roast a turkey and we’re basically going to have a big turkey dinner for the party which should be awesome.

However, I didn’t want to just let the weekend of Hayley’s birthday slip past unnoticed so we decided to invite her two best school friends over for a birthday lunch on the Saturday. These two kids aren’t even in her class this year, but they still all play together at recess and lunch so it made sense to have them over.

We had some lunch and birthday cake and we played a few games like Freeze Dance; it was also Talk Like a Pirate Day so I made them walk the plank, arrrr. That went over so well, they begged to keep playing it long after I expected them to get bored with it.

On Sunday we got up and went to one of those traveling fairs that set up in shopping mall parking lots. The kids went on a few rides and had a lot of fun. Breanna’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie apparently, and she was walking around with that crazed “NOW WHAT?!” look for much of the morning. She was royally pissed that she wasn’t big enough to be allowed on the ferris wheel, let me tell you. She also really wanted to go on the roller coaster by herself but we had run out of tickets by that time and had to go to a birthday party, so she’ll have to try it next year.

That afternoon we had a birthday party for our friend’s daughter. I wondered if Hayley would be upset about going to someone else’s party on her real birthday but she wasn’t bothered at all. As far as she was concerned that just meant more friends, more cake, and more games.

After the party wrapped up we gave Hayley her gifts from us. We’ll still get her an extra gift for her party, but her main gifts were a CD player (she has a stereo but the CD player has become temperamental lately and doesn’t always work so now she can either listen to this one with headphones or hook it up to the stereo) and a microphone. She was especially excited about the microphone. We hooked it up to the kids’ computer which then plays through our sound system. Now she can load up a video on YouTube (especially fun are the ones that have the lyrics on the screen) and she can sing along. Once she gets used to it I can try her on some karaoke videos too.

All in all I think it was a pretty good weekend! Unfortunately Hayley had caught a cold last week (right on schedule, first week back at school for her, happens every year) and while she was over it by Saturday, it hit my like a freight train on Sunday. By now I’m mostly better, thanks to putting vapor rub all over my forehead to ease the pain in my sinuses but I’m still pretty tired. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be starting back on the illness cycle that comes with school, yippee!

I can’t believe my first baby is seven years old now – that’s just crazy!

New beginnings

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Sherry

Even though school started at the beginning of September, obviously Hayley missed it since we were in Halifax. In the end she missed eight days; it could have been seven since we got back on Thursday but I knew she was exhausted so I kept her home to get her back on a normal schedule and started her this past Monday.

She was very nervous because her homeroom teacher is her French teacher and she was convinced that she wouldn’t be allowed to speak English at all and that she’d have French all day long. I continually reassured her that it only meant she had French first thing in the morning while the other class had English, and that they would then switch. I also told her that her teacher understands that it’s an English school with French immersion and that all the kids are at varying levels of comprehension and that she would certainly help her out if she didn’t know how to say something properly.

Hayley was excited on her first day of school, mostly because she wanted to see her friends, but at the end of the day she discovered that I was right. It’s still pretty intensive with the French but it’s the same amount and program that she would have had if she had ended up in the other class. She was also thrilled to find out that her teacher from grade one would be teaching her math this year.

The week went pretty well. She was very unenthused about going to school on Thursday and there were some tears based on the fact that she felt like she was getting sick but she had no fever and had missed those eight days so I smiled brightly and sent her off to school anyway. Luckily no one from the school called to say that my daughter had H1N1 and to come pick her up, but she was right in the end – she was getting sick and has a bit of a mild cold now. Oh the joys of being back at school! Still, at least she had a great day.

In the agenda they have, there’s a place each day where you can circle a smiley face to represent how the day went. There’s a happy face, a neutral face, and a sad face. I was amused to note that she had originally circled the neutral face but then later erased it to choose the happy face, so I’m glad I made her go.

Friday was a ped day because Thursday night was a parents’ general assembly and meet the teacher night where you can learn a bit about the curriculum and how the teacher works the classroom. Her homeroom/French/drama teacher is super nice. Her English is very good but she explained that she encourages the kids to use French 99% of the time unless they’re really struggling because if you’re always speaking in English how on earth are you ever going to learn French? She has helpful signs placed around the classroom with common phrases including “Est-ce que je peux aller a la toilette?” (“Can I go to the bathroom?”) and whatnot to assist the kids in expressing themselves.

Her English teacher (or rather, her Language Arts teacher) is awesome. I love her classroom. They have a great program but she also has free time activities that she has set up into stations for the kids to help them learn some independence. They take about 15 minutes each day and the kids can choose what they want to do – there’s reading (and they can read anywhere, even sprawled on the floor), writing (Hayley chose this one all week, you can write anything you’d like), listening to audio books while watching the words on screen, or reading with a partner.

My big new beginning came about during the general assembly. The school’s Governing Board had three openings since other parents had left once their kids graduated. A friend of mine asked if I’d run for one of the positions and I confessed that I’d really love to although I was nervous at having to give a speech if more than three people were interested and a vote was necessary. When nominations opened, two people were nominated right away and then there was a moment of silence. My friend and I looked at each other and I nodded so she threw my name out there too.

Luckily for me no one else ran so there was no need to do a speech to convince people to vote for me. I’m good at writing speeches but I can tell you from my leg-shaking nerves (literally) at my sister’s wedding, speeches are scary for me – it’s the whole panic attack issue. I can talk in small groups but getting up in front of a gym full of other parents, most of whom I don’t know, well. Augh. I would have done it if was necessary and I had my reasons for wanting to run ready in my head but I’m just relieved that it wasn’t necessary.

And so now I’m suddenly a part of a board that makes an awful lot of decisions about the school, including allocating funds, programs, and much more. I’m very excited about it. I’ve always wanted to be a big part of my kids’ school and the past two years I’ve let my panic issues stop me. This is the year that I stop letting it dictate my life and take it back a bit. I’m looking forward to doing this. I also joined the PPO (Parent Participation Organization, pretty much the same as the PTA in the U.S.) and that should be fun too.

It’s a whole new year, let’s see how it all goes. I still can’t believe I’m the mother of a grade two kid!

Oh, there you are summer

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Sherry

After spending most of July cursing the near-constant downpours which killed most of my flowers on the balcony by the way, summer finally woke up from its leisurely nap, raised its head, and sleepily drawled, “Oh hey, were you waiting for me? My bad.”

And the it whacked us with a ton of humidity. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see the sun and the park after supper is very comfortable after a humid day but it was almost insane – there was no normal buildup, it was just *thunk* humid.

Ah well. We’ve spent some time at the park this week and that’s just been really bloody nice because the kids had gotten kind of stir crazy. Not that you can tell.

Last night was particularly nice. A husband and wife who own my favorite dog in the whole neighborhood showed up late in the evening and we got to pet the little guy. She even took his leash off and he ran around with us. He is ADORABLE.

Then another woman that I had seen but never met showed up with her three dogs and it was just mayhem – the good kind – with four happy dogs running around, not to mention my two equally happy kids. No one else was there so no one was bothered by them. Hayley was ecstatic because she got to hold the three dogs on their leashes (even though they didn’t really need to be held, they were happy to stay close by).

It’s something she can’t really do with Pearl, which is unfortunate. I’ve been working with that damn dog since last September and no training has ever put even the tiniest dent in all the genes bred into her that make her so desperate to sniff that she pulls over and over again. The Halti collar worked but Pearl CHEWED her regular collar; the Halti attaches to the regular flat collar for security reasons, so we can’t use it until we get around to buying a new one. Right now I walk Pearl using a choke collar and let me tell you, that stubborn Beagle does not give a hoot how many times you yank on that thing. Sometimes she sounds like she’s going to strangle herself when we’re walking.

So when Hayley got a chance to “walk” a whole herd of dogs around the park, she was beside herself with joy. Even Breanna got to walk one around.

It wasn’t an easy task convincing my kids to come home considering the dogs were still running around when it was time for us to head home to do snacks and bedtime.

Despite the humidity, I am so much happier now that the sun is making a semi-regular appearance and we can get out more often and for longer periods of time.

Between reading my book on park benches, zoning out while pushing swings, or just sitting in the grass, it makes for a more zen-like me, that’s for sure.

*******

In trademark stereotypical Canadian fashion, I also bitched about the weather letting us all down over on Canada Moms Blog, drop on by and feel free to comment with your own weather woes!

Park time

Posted on June 7, 2009 by Sherry

I have a love-hate relationship with the park closest to us. It’s great because it’s not far at all, it has some fairly decent if not exciting play stuff, and it backs on to what’s left of the woods around here. And of course, we all know how much I love to go walking in the woods. On the other hand, I loathe it when the summer weather hits because they stupidly stripped all the trees away when they put the park in; sure there are plenty of trees along the perimeter but not in the actual park itself. Which means there is zero shade where the swings, slides, and whatnot are located. There used to be two trees that provided a wee bit of shade but they got sick and were cut down last Spring. They’ve also recently planted some new ones along the path so there’s that at least, but they’re too young to provide any relief from the sun just yet.

Usually we go to the park during the day so that there’s less rush to get back home. Yesterday, though, we were busy during the afternoon so I promised the kids that we’d go to the park after supper. We ate at a decent hour and since we had ordered in some Chinese food which meant few dishes I figured the world would not fall off its axis if I left the plates in the sink. I constantly struggle to keep on top of housework, but as much as I hate doing dishes I also hate when they aren’t done. There’s something incredibly discouraging about a sink that is full of dishes when you wake up in the morning (oh, to have a dishwasher…). Still, taking the kids out to play was a bigger priority so off we went.

We ended up spending almost two hours there and I can tell you right now that once school is out (just over two weeks to go), we will be doing that a lot more frequently. Not only is it more pleasant to be at the park when the sun isn’t directly overhead, and not only does it usually provide a bit of relief from the daytime humidity spikes that plague Montreal, apparently that’s when most of our neighborhood goes to the park.

Usually it’s just us at the park. It’s so rare for other kids to be there that it’s like a huge novelty to see one other kid show up. Last night there were so many people at the park all at one time. There was a family flying kites, another packing up some soccer balls to go home, some kids who were playing a land version of Marco Polo, and it was awesome. It was noisy in that really great “look at all those children having fun” kind of way and all the parents seemed to be in a good mood – myself included.

I definitely want to go back at the same time from now on. I’m sure we’ll go during the day sometimes too, especially when we have those days that are nice and sunny without being oppressively hot, but it seems evening is the time to go for our park! I was even thinking that I could pack up their before-bed snack stuff and we could have a snack picnic there, then come home and get them into bed. That would be fun to try.

I managed to get some better pictures of the kids in their glasses too. Hayley is still loving hers (but I have to remind her frequently that she doesn’t need to demonstrate this love by taking them off to clean them every five to ten minutes) and has been reading a lot more lately, just like she used to. It’s unbelievable how much her vision troubles cut into that, and reading is something she loves. Today I put Breanna to bed for her nap and then sat on the couch with my book (Eat, Pray, Love, totally awesome), and Hayley curled up beside me with Charlotte’s Web and we read quietly together for half an hour.

Breanna asks regularly if she can please take her glasses off now, but since her vision is apparently worse than Hayley’s is, it’s really even more important for her to wear them at all times. She’s still feeling under the weather (and as of this moment has been napping for an epic two and a half hours, I’m going to be screwed at bedtime but she really needs the sleep) so I know it’s annoying for her to wear them, but so far a bit of distraction has helped a lot.

And I still think they look adorable in them.

Too bad today is overcast to the point that it looks like it might pour rain at any moment. Good thing we’ll soon have endless summer days for park time!

Two girls in glasses

Posted on June 6, 2009 by Sherry

On Friday I called to find out what was going on with Hayley and Breanna’s glasses; it had been almost two weeks and they had told me it would take about a week and a half. The guy who checked the file said the glasses were already there and they had called on June 2nd to let us know. A quick scroll through Call Display showed this to be a total LIE but I shrugged it off because other than that their customer service had been great and the prices were reasonable.

I had to go out in the afternoon because Hayley’s school held their volunteer tea. It was way more fun this year because I knew a lot more people. I sat with some of my friends and we had such a good time laughing and just enjoying some pleasant afternoon time while our kids all ran around outside with the daycare. The drummer in most of George’s bands over the years is also a lunchroom monitor at the school so he was there as well and it was good to catch up with him after not seeing him for awhile. When it was time to leave I invited him to come drop by and see George for a bit so that was nice too.

After supper George had to work, but his dad was nice enough to come pick us up and we drove over to get the girls’ glasses. I realize that I’m seriously biased, but they both look *ridiculously adorable* in them.

Breanna has a cold that’s been keeping her up at night and driving her crazy so she was less than keen to pose for me but I got a couple at least.

Hayley is ecstatic. She was so happy to be able to see more clearly. The optometrist told me that she would have had trouble seeing clearly beyond three or four feet, which explains why she was having trouble seeing the board at school. However, she also said she has trouble seeing right up close, and that it would affect her concentration levels. That struck a chord – she’d been having more and more trouble getting through her homework and I thought it was just a combination of being tired after seven hours of school and being too much work, and that may be part of it, but the optometrist said that it may also be from her eyes tiring out from the effort of reading and writing.

I also didn’t really realize it until last night, but she hadn’t been reading in bed much lately. She used to read books every night before falling asleep but it was too hard for her eyes. Last night she was really tired but when she hopped into bed she pulled out one of her favorite books and forced herself to stay awake long enough to read it just because she could.

Breanna is mostly ambivalent. She didn’t really want to keep them on last night but she was tired and not feeling well. This morning she refused to put them on again and I didn’t push it, but once she saw Hayley wearing hers she went back to the bedroom and brought them out for me to put on her. So far she’s had them on for about three and a half hours without any complaints or requests to take them off. I think that there’s a huge difference in how she sees now. She told me everything is bigger.

The optometrist was surprised last night because she said when kids put on glasses as strong as Breanna’s are (+5 and +6) they sometimes have trouble adjusting and walk funny but Breanna walked and ran all around the store for us so they could see how she reacted and she didn’t have any issues at all. She had never been able to tell us she had trouble seeing because she didn’t know anything different, but I’ll bet it’s a whole new world for her. She didn’t want to leave the store but then I said, “come on and you can look out the car window and see all the stuff you didn’t see on the way over” and the staff all laughed.

I think it’s really helpful that they both had to get glasses at the same time. It probably would have been harder to get Breanna to keep hers on if it was just her, but seeing her sister in glasses makes her want to do the same thing. Meanwhile, even though I hate my glasses because they’re old and need to be replaced, I’m wearing mine today just so they can see me in them too. They make me a bit woozy after too many days in a row because the anti-reflect coating is mostly worn off, but I can wear them for today at least.

Hayley is so excited to go to school on Monday now that she can see properly – she can’t wait to sit and look at the board and actually see things clearly. I’m so glad their glasses are working well for them so far!

Stream of Consciousness

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Sherry

For reasons that I can’t even really understand, I have been suffering from incredible writer’s block. Luckily it hasn’t gotten in the way of work. When your job requires you to write numerous things daily, a complete mental blackout is a very bad thing. However, I did find it pretty much impossible to write here for some reason. Who knows why.

I’m tired of the same old entry sitting up top here though, so I’m going to just force myself to write anyway, some sort of stream of consciousness effort. Let’s see what the past week held that I haven’t told you about.

I had a personal record last week. I got a headache on Monday and I swear it did not go away until Saturday. It wasn’t just one headache after another it was the SAME damn headache all week long. Tylenol didn’t help, all that did was dial it down a notch so I could function and then it came straight back to full force after four hours. I was starting to make jokes about brain tumors while thinking “hahaha… hmmm, maybe?” in the back of my mind, but George suggested it was weather-related. Considering it also rained all damn week and was a weird combination of humid yet damp and cold it’s entirely possible.

I do know that on Saturday George got me some Advil and two of those plus a break in the weather finally kicked my headache to the curb. Sunday was the first morning where I woke up without any pain and that was a total relief. Which is why I was so pissed off that I later smashed the side of my head into a hard, wooden chair while bending to pick something up off the floor. That was awesome. Luckily the pain went away with two more Advil.

Any more painkillers and I’ll need to check into Betty Ford.

*******

Hayley’s class has been studying the rainforest (hence their field trip to the Biodome) and they all had to do a research project on one animal that lives there. Hayley picked the iguana and she had to write up about two pages’ worth of information on iguanas (she ended up with three, detailing things like what they eat, who their enemies are, and so on) and then she had to make her own iguana and its habitat. Yeah, it was a lot of work for a SIX YEAR OLD in GRADE ONE, but she had fun at least.

She originally made an iguana out of clay – and she actually did most of it herself, I just kind of guided her and showed her how to make spikes down the back – but the more it dried the more it fell apart. I ended up having to glue three of the four limbs back on, as well as the head and the tail. I was worried it would completely fall apart in class, so I suggested that she make one out of cardboard too. She used a printout as a stencil, traced it onto construction paper, glued it to cardboard, and decorated it.

She also used a shoe box as the habitat and glued green construction paper, sticks, and some leaves that we bought at the dollar store to make a rainforest for her iguanas. All I really had to do was cover the outside of the box for her (since it was a neon pink Barbie shoe box!) and she took care of the rest herself. She’s really crafty and artsy. I think it came out really well!

*******

They should be getting their glasses sometime this week. Hayley can’t wait, she asks about them all the time. Breanna doesn’t think of it often unless someone mentions them, but Hayley is tired of squinting at the board in class. I can’t wait to see the difference it makes for both of them.

*******

On Friday Hayley had two milestones. One of her friends takes gymnastics and they were having a special party on Friday evening. She invited Hayley to come with her and they got to play on trampolines, do obstacle courses, and all kinds of gymnastics activities. It was the first time we had ever just had Hayley dropped off somewhere like that without one of us being there. Her friend’s parents went out for dinner and picked them up about three hours later and they had both had such a good time.

In related news, Hayley would like to sign up for gymnastics in the Fall. I totally saw that coming.

The other milestone was that Hayley had also been invited to sleep over. She’s spent the night at her grandparents’ house before, usually when George’s sister is in town, but this was the first sleepover at a friend’s house. We had told her that if she changed her mind she could come home at any time, even if it was 3 am, but she did great. They didn’t even go to sleep until 11:30 so she just slept straight through until sometime after 6 the next morning.

She was EXHAUSTED on Saturday. She actually fell asleep in the afternoon, something she normally never does unless she’s sick.

Since Hayley had been out, Breanna and I did a movie night on Friday. She loves Sleeping Beauty but had never seen the actual movie, so we got her that, popped some popcorn, and she stayed up later than usual. Then on Saturday, since Hayley was asleep and it was the first time there had been any sun in days, Breanna and I went out for a walk for awhile. She actually spent most of the hour and a half making “soup” with a puddle of rain water in a rock, stirring in all sorts of bits of nature. I think I need to get her a water table for the summer. Or even a big tupperware container.

It was a pretty decent weekend overall. And I’m just really happy to be starting this weekend off without any headaches!

Two girls with glasses

Posted on May 23, 2009 by Sherry

On Wednesday I was really swamped covering the Cannes Film Festival for work purposes, so George took Hayley and Breanna to their eye appointments. It was really weird for me because it was the first time I had ever not gone to an appointment with them. Sitting at home (even though I was working) and waiting for a phone update was strange.

In the end it turned out that Hayley most definitely needed glasses which we had expected. She had been having trouble seeing the chalk board at school and I wasn’t surprised to find out she needed some extra help. What shocked me was that Breanna actually has terrible eyesight. It never crossed our minds because she runs around, looks at books, sees everything as far as we could tell (including things we don’t want her to see, like when we’re trying to sneak something), and watches TV. She doesn’t walk into walls or get confused, she sees planes way up in the sky, everything. Finding out her eyesight is actually worse than Hayley’s was stunning to say the least.

They got prescriptions and an appointment in July to come back and see how things were going with them. Today we went to New Look for glasses because they seemed to have the best current promotion for children’s eyewear. We don’t want to go cheap, but we also don’t want to get $300 Calvin Klein frames for kids who run around outside a lot.

Hayley was so disappointed to find out that she wasn’t going to get them today. It takes about a week to a week and a half to have them made because of their specific prescriptions. Still, they picked out their frames and were happy. *I* was happy because neither of them wanted anything obnoxious. I was worried for a second when Hayley told Breanna she had found Caillou frames. They were cute in that they had a tiny Caillou and a heart on the side, but they were a really loud primary blue and just didn’t look good on her at all. Luckily she wasn’t interested and seemed to like the oval gold-framed glasses I found in her size. Meanwhile, Hayley already knew she wanted either gold or silver since one of her teachers wears gold-framed glasses. We found some she really loved in a rectangular shape.

Even though they won’t be ready and they’re only the sample lenses, I got them to pose for pictures. Hayley is totally thrilled with hers. Because of her face shape the sales guy said we really shouldn’t go any wider than these but since she loves them they’re perfect – she has to wear them every day so being happy with them is important.

Meanwhile, Breanna is pleased with hers but she wasn’t too keen on posing so I got the standard “Breanna Silly Smile” face, but it’s close enough.

(Also I really did brush her hair before leaving home, but the windows down in the car kind of killed that effort.)

After our adventure in eyewear we stopped and had lunch at La Belle Province for some burgers and poutine, then hit the dollar store for supplies for Hayley’s rainforest project. It ended up being a pretty good day. Luckily they went to sleep easily since my parents are coming for lunch tomorrow so hopefully the kids will be rested and cheerful.

I can’t wait to get the new glasses to see what kind of difference it makes for both of them!

Eager learner

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Sherry

It took Hayley a bit of time to warm up to grade one. It’s such a total difference from Kindergarten. In Kindergarten they had circle time on the floor, sang songs, did arts and crafts, had play areas with different toys, and learned simple things while sitting at tables.

In grade one everyone has their own desk, there’s no singing or dancing, and there’s a lot of sitting and listening to learn things. There’s also a shocking amount of homework, to the point that we never EVER do every single thing she’s supposed to do, because hell no, I’m not spending every moment that she’s home doing school work after she’s been sitting at a desk doing school work for hours on end.

Still, she’s finally really loving school. She liked it well enough before but we had several instances where she would play sick only for us to discover that she was just fine after we had kept her home. More than once I had to hope I wasn’t making a mistake and send her off to school despite claims of stomach aches, sore throats, and headaches.

Then she stopped. She went to school for a month straight without a single complaint. She goes to the breakfast club and she loves arriving in the cafeteria a bit early so she can have a variety of breakfast meals – they vary from day to day, things like cold cereal, hot cereal, eggs, breakfast burritos, waffles, pancakes, and English muffins. They also offer yogurt and fresh fruit every day in case some kids don’t like the meal of the day. She also loves seeing her friends and coming home to tell us all that she learned that day (right now they’re studying the rain forest and they have a project due for the end of the month where they have to pick an animal – she chose the iguana – and find out information about them, give a speech to the class (!), and make the animal out of clay).

Last week she had some sort of random bug. She was fine when she got up on Monday but then she suddenly had a bad cramp right before it was time to go. She started crying and said the cramping was across her whole stomach. When I felt her head she felt a little bit warm so I decided to keep her home. She spent most of the day lying on the couch looking sad and small.

She also stayed home on Tuesday. She started crying as soon as I woke her up, so I called the school again and let her sleep. She was better by lunch time so I said she’d be okay to go back to school on Wednesday. In the past she would get nervous about that, worried that she’d be stuck at school feeling sick, but that day she said she was looking forward to going back and couldn’t wait to go to bed so she could get up and go to school.

She wasn’t kidding. On Wednesday morning I got up at 6:30 like I always do. I usually go and take the dog out to pee before I get her up. I walked into the living room, leash in hand, and found Hayley sitting on the couch, fully dressed with her teeth brushed. I was shocked.

Then she repeated that on Thursday and Friday. Each day she was up before I was and dressed, waiting for me to get up so she could have her hair done and go to school. It was nuts.

This weekend was a long weekend here in Canada, and so she had today off. All day she kept telling me how she wished it was already Tuesday so she could go to school.

I’m glad that she’s finally super pumped over school. I just wonder what she’s going to do when school wraps up for the year in just over a month!

——-

Speaking of Hayley, she’s still a girl on a mission to save all the snails in our neighborhood. The other morning she saw that several of them had wandered from the damp grass to the sidewalk and she was worried people would step on them, either by accident or on purpose (which seems likely since there are sometimes a ridiculous amount of smashed shells when I’m walking along). She always, ALWAYS stops to pick them up. She’ll tap them on the shell very lightly so that they slip up inside, then she picks them up and puts them back in the grass out of harm’s way.

I sometimes joke with her that maybe the snails are going to get ticked off, saying, “Oh my GOD, I spent three hours getting to that damn sidewalk and she just put me back in the grass!” But really, I love that my little good Samaritan will take time out of her busy six-year-old life just to save snails.

A weekend of Mother's Day

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Sherry

Considering the fact that Mother’s Day is only one day, I actually had a really great weekend altogether. My one disappointment was that I didn’t get to see my own mom due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control but hopefully it will work out for getting to see her next weekend. Other than that, Friday through Sunday were awesome.

George’s sister and her husband came for the weekend and since the kids were excited to see them, they ended up staying at George’s parents’ house for supper. Because of that, George and I actually went out to eat by ourselves. We didn’t go for a fancy meal – we actually just went to Kentucky Fried Chicken to try out that new Star Wrap thing. Verdict: More filling than it looks, pretty tasty, and was clearly invented by someone who was completely stoned (chicken strips, salad, tortilla chips, sauce, and cheese wrapped in a soft tortilla? Definitely made by a stoner). However, what made it great was that we were able to just EAT in peace without having to deal with anything else and we were able to talk without interruption. That’s a nice change of pace! Afterwards I took the dog for a long walk in the woods and then had an hour of quiet to finish up my work for the weekend before the kids came home.

Speaking of the woods, I found a new spot I had never seen before and was greatly confused by what was sitting in the middle of it. Because who the hell expects to see a REALLY old and completely rusted out car in the woods, especially when there are currently only footpaths, no roads.

Weird.

Saturday was the day that my parents were supposed to come over for dinner so I passed the morning by cleaning up and getting ready for the visit while George did some shopping. When my mom called to tell me they couldn’t make it I thought maybe we could invite someone else to come over for dinner instead. However, when George’s sister showed up to take the kids out for awhile, we ended up asking if they could go over there for supper again. When they said yes and George and I were alone once again, I ended up being able to get the one “present” that I really truly wanted for Mother’s Day.

Not that, you pervs.

We went to see Star Trek! Seriously, I have been climbing the walls waiting to see it and I assumed the weekend would be too busy for me to get to the theater. When George asked me to go check the showtimes at the theater I would have done a backflip if I was physically able to perform one.

The show started at 6:40 and I was so paranoid that they’d sell all the tickets out that we were there about 40 minutes early. It didn’t sell out but the theater was definitely jam packed with only the first two rows empty (the rows where you can’t move your neck for three days because of craning to see the screen).

I can not lie to you: That movie was amazing. Seriously. It was exciting from start to finish and I’m not entirely sure that I blinked at all for the entire two hours because I was afraid I might miss something. George had to slip off to the washroom for a minute halfway through and when he said he’d be right back I think I asked him, “are you insane?!”

I only saw it a few days ago and I already want to see it again. Chris Pine as James T. Kirk? AWESOME.

The kids went to bed pretty quickly once they got home after 9 pm, so that was nice since it left me a few hours to enjoy a couple of glasses of the red wine that we had lying around.

On Sunday I didn’t really get to sleep in, but I did get to lounge around in bed for several hours and I dozed on and off which was nice. Hayley brought in all the stuff that she had made for me in school and a pendant that she and Breanna had picked out for me the day before, then Hayley made toast for me for breakfast in bed (George handled the coffee though!). A couple of hours later, George made bacon and eggs for brunch too, so I was pretty full for awhile.

We mostly just took it easy after that. We went over to his parents’ house for an hour later in the day because we had a DVD with all the photos that I took at his sister’s wedding (all 200+ of them!) and the photos from their honeymoon. It was fun to look back at all those pictures.

Once I got the kids into bed, I just spent the evening relaxing with some TV, the Internet, and a little more wine, and that was the perfect end to a really good weekend. In a move that is so utterly uncharacteristic of me that I wonder if I was abducted by aliens, I didn’t take any pictures of myself with the kids for Mother’s Day. I’m not sure why I didn’t, I guess I was just too busy. Busy being relaxed. And really, that’s not too bad in the end.

I hope everyone else had a great weekend too, especially the moms!

*******

In other news, I have a review up for Colgate Max White toothpaste.

Also, I totally forgot to link to this when I wrote it, but I vented a slight grievance that I have with Scholastic over at the Canada Moms Blog.

Is it lunch time already? Good lord, where is the time going today?!

How to find some peace

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Sherry

The other day the kids were both driving me crazy. They’re going through a phase where they can barely be in the same room together for longer than three minutes without some sort of epic fight breaking out. And I swear to you, they can – and will – fight over anything. ANYTHING. They’ll fight over who gets the one lone yellow bowl and who has to have a blue on (I’m about to throw the damn yellow bowl out). They’ll argue over who gets to lock the door when someone leaves. It never ends.

It got to a point where I was seriously debating walking to the nearest mental facility and insisting that they lock me inside a nice soft room until both kids reach adulthood but I’d probably change my mind after the first couple of days (maybe a whole week?) so something less drastic was in order.

It turns out that a dumb Beagle on your leash, Jason Mraz on your iPod, and woods spread out around you can do a whole lot of good for the soul. Remember what I said about how we need a yard? What we really need is a place with a yard that backs onto a really huge wooded area. I felt so much better once I was away from street noise and people and was just surrounded by trees and plants and dirt paths. I would do so well in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere. With a good high speed Internet connection, naturally.

But seriously, this kind of landscape does wonders for the spirit.

In other non-stabby news (with a nod to Angella for the term “stabby” which is so accurate, isn’t it?), Hayley decided that she really wanted to cook something. She’s been getting her own sandwiches from time to time but she wanted to make something more substantial. I wish I could remember who it was that mentioned it on their blog (if you remember, please tell me!) that the danger with kids cooking is that they could burn themselves on a hot stove, but so what? That’s how they learn. That stuck in my head for awhile.

I’m obviously not about to let my six-year-old handle a pot full of boiling water and she’s not ready for unsupervised cooking, but just some basic stove use? Well, why the hell not.

Thus, the other day when she came home from school, instead of giving her a yogurt or something simple for a snack, Hayley made herself some scrambled eggs. She was super excited when I said that yes, she would be making them on the stove and no, I was not going to do any of it. I narrated to her, telling her what she needed to do and I mimed things for her (like cracking the eggs into a bowl and how to whisk the milk in) but she did every single thing herself.

And she did indeed burn herself a tiny little bit on the edge of the pan, and the world didn’t end. She basically reacted like me, except that she said, “Oh, OUCH!” whereas I would have used a slightly stronger expletive than “ouch”, but she was fine and she kept cooking.

The only time I finally stepped in was when it was time to dish the eggs out into two bowls so that she could share some with Breanna. For one thing, I wanted to make sure Breanna got more than one bite in her bowl, and for another, the frying pan is a bit heavy and I didn’t want Hayley to lose her grip and drop the eggs all over the floor – not because it would be a huge mess, but because it would have triggered one of those “really tired post-school kid meltdowns” of epic proportions.

She was so very proud of herself and is already looking forward to doing it again. Maybe I’ll let her make us breakfast this weekend. It IS going to be Mother’s Day after all!

Breanna won’t be ready for real stove cooking for awhile but she has helped me pour and stir things before when they’re not directly on the burners, and the same day that Hayley made the eggs, Breanna made her own tuna sandwich, first helping me mix the tuna with the mayonnaise and then making the actual sandwich herself. The only thing I had to do was cut it (square, please, never ever triangles!).

Do your kids cook?

Chaos Theory

Category Archives: Hayley

Birthday lunch and turning seven

New beginnings

Oh, there you are summer

Park time

Two girls in glasses

Stream of Consciousness

Two girls with glasses

Eager learner

A weekend of Mother's Day

How to find some peace