Author Archives: Sherry

The great outdoors (finally!)

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Come on, you can do it!

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the weather so far this weekend has been WARM, it’s certainly been warmER. Especially when you consider the fact that it snowed halfway through the week. But I refuse to talk about that any further, and since it melted by lunch time, I’ve decided not to hold it against Mother Nature, though there will be WORDS if it happens again. Ahem.

Anyway, with the weather being pleasantly sunny on Friday (more overcast today) and of a decent temperature both days Hayley, Breanna, and I spent many hours (hours!) outside. It was so nice. We decided to hit up the park both days for awhile for some playing on the swings and the slides.

Swing kids

Big kid

After doing that for awhile, we decided to take a nice hike through the woods. Breanna demonstrated her utterly fearless leader behavior (as long as you don’t turn out the lights!) by leading the way the whole time.

Follow the leader

Day 99: Early spring scene

Can you TELL how happy I was to finally be able to enjoy the great outdoors again, instead of just trying to survive it? It was so nice!

14/52 Happy hiker

When we finished our hike we stopped by the park again for a little while since some kids had shown up. Neither Hayley nor Breanna were very keen on coming home, but I finally managed to convince them – plus we were hungry! We had eaten a really early supper after Hayley’s eye appointment on Friday, so by the time we were done running around outside, we all needed a little something else to fill us up.

(Hayley’s eye exam was inconclusive. It’s been determined that she will most likely need glasses but because of the scope of the issues with Hayley’s eyes and her history with strabismus, he said he’d feel more comfortable referring us back to the hospital, so we’ll know more then. At least I still have an appointment for May!)

Sliders

Today wasn’t quite as beautiful as yesterday but it was pleasant enough. The kids were both all wound up and high strung because they were excited about Easter being tomorrow, so I figured the best thing for my sanity was to take them back out again to kill some of the afternoon. Another two hours passed in a blur as we spent time at the park and in the woods again. We took a different trail this time but it was cold enough that I didn’t want to go too far; I figured it would be better to go back to the park instead and let them run around to keep warm.

"I tired now"

That photo of Breanna makes me laugh because after all the playing she sighed and said she was tired, so she ran over to sit on the bench at the newly installed picnic table. She said, “Oh, I never sat here before!” Then all of ten seconds later, she hopped back down, announced, “I feel better now!” and ran off full tilt to play some more.

We also took Pearl this time which was an exercise in patience (I failed) because she still pretty much sucks at understanding not to pull on the leash. She knows not to, but she doesn’t care. I don’t understand how she can enjoy walking for long periods while constantly gasping for breath since she essentially strangles herself, but I guess that’s part of what they were talking about when the SPCA folks told us Beagles are stubborn. STUBBORN IS PUTTING IT MILDLY.

She enjoyed it too, though, and is currently passed out asleep by my feet. I love this picture of her sitting on the park bench (attached, naturally), because you can tell how utterly unamused she was.

Day 100: Harrumph

I know it’s cliche for a mother to say that her kids are gorgeous, but you know, duh. Of course my girls are beautiful. But even knowing that, every once in awhile I take a picture that takes even MY breath away. This would be one of them:

Beautiful girl

I think that happy smile sums it all up, you know?

I hope you’ve all had a great weekend so far too!

Fast forward to the future (or, is it May 8th yet?)

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Day 94: To boldly go where no one has gone before

Today George and I took Hayley and Breanna to the theater to see Monsters Vs. Aliens. I really enjoyed it. The story was cute and engaging, and although I worried it might be a bit scary at a few pivotal moments for Breanna, she appeared to be completely unfazed.

It was Breanna’s first time in a theater and she did pretty well. She did walk back and forth among our little row but no one else was sitting there so she didn’t seem to bother anyone, and she didn’t get bored or loud at any point. It was a fun outing for the family.

But I’ll be honest. All this movie excursion did was make me long for May 8th more than I already was. I had seen the previews on YouTube, but today was the first time I saw this trailer on a big screen and I just about peed my pants.

I have GOT to go and see that in theaters so I can experience it with a big-ass screen and the crazy sound and just freak out completely.

Did you know I was a Trek fan? No? I’m honestly more of a Next Generation fan. I always thought Picard was the best captain and I was a little head over heels for Commander Riker (“number one” indeed), but Trek is Trek is Trek and this movie looks AMAZING.

(Note the fact that I had to stop and take a photo of the awesome Enterprise hanging over the movie theater lobby on the way out. Cough.)

I think George and I will be having a little date on May 8th.

Being a mom

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Day 50: Brief snuggle

Catherine, over at Her Bad Mother wrote a post about what she loves about being a mom. She then asked if I would participate – I agreed but warned her that my post would either be cutesy/sappy or highly sarcastic depending on the day I had had with them when I wrote it.

Luckily for my kids, it was a pretty good day. I had many ridiculously adorable moments, such as having Breanna “exshersize” with me while I was doing the 30 Day Shred. As if a three-year-old bouncing along beside you while you work out isn’t cute and funny enough, she added to the hilarity by using some Mega Blocks as hand weights. I would have taken a picture but I was busy sweating and breathing and occasionally cursing Jillian Michaels and her damn killer workout.

Then Hayley came home from school and after a quick supper we all went to her school – in lieu of Parent-Teacher night after report cards were distributed, they had student-led conferences. Just like last year’s conference, it involved having Hayley bring us into her classroom so she could show us her work. She read a book to us, showed us her recent classwork, and took us on a tour of all the things they’ve been learning as they study Ancient Egypt, including her very own pyramid, mummy, and sarcophagus. So I came home all over-the-moon proud.

Between the two of them, despite fighting bedtime with a lot of effort, they have forced me to write the happy post instead of the snarky and sarcastic post. Well, maybe a bit of humor, but no sarcasm.

Five things I love about being a mom? Okay.

1. That feeling of pride whenever they say/do/learn something amazing. Seeing them take their first steps, hearing them say their first words, it’s incredible. And it isn’t any less exciting the second time around either. And the older they get, the better it is. I’m so proud to hear Breanna rattling on and on about her day or explaining – in great detail – how to play golf on the Wii. To go from mumbling two-syllable words to rambling paragraphs worth of storytelling is awesome. And listening to Hayley explaining all about Egypt to us in her class tonight made me so proud that I could have just about burst. Kids will disappoint you at some point, it’s inevitable, but my god, they will make you so proud that you produced someone so intelligent/funny/engaging/etcetera that it’s not even funny.

2. Seeing everything in a new light. I can walk out my front door and walk around the block and not really notice anything in particular. I’m too busy listening to my iPod or thinking deep thoughts about, you know, what to have for dinner that night or why the hell George made me watch The Boy in the Striped Pajamas when surely he knew it would make me cry until I feared I would vomit, so I don’t see the little things. Kids do. Kids see the bee buzzing among the wildflowers on the side of the road. They stop to inspect the crack in the sidewalk and wonder aloud as to what could have caused it to break like that. They look at the clouds, the leaves, the ants, the gum wrapper being swept down the storm drain, the bird sitting on the roof, everything. And I will tell you right now that sometimes it is really goddamn annoying because when you really just want to hurry the hell up and get home so you can pee, you don’t want to stop and blow yet one more dandelion seed or pick up any more pine cones. But you know what? If you stop and just follow their lead, it is truly amazing to look at our insane world from the simplicity of a child’s point of view.

3. Kids break up the monotony of life. Being an adult sucks. Sure, we don’t have a curfew and we don’t have to eat our vegetables if we don’t want to (but we should since we’re now role models!), but we have to pay rent/mortgages, pay bills, buy groceries, cook, clean, blablabla. It’s exhausting. Which is why kids rock, because when you’re sitting there with your online banking open and you’re transferring all your money to this utility and that creditor, it’s just really nice to have a good excuse to go outside and kick a ball around, get down on the floor to play with dinosaurs, or get your ass kicked by your kids on the Wii. It keeps me young. I think.

4. Candy and chocolate. Kids love to get cookies and candy canes at Christmas, chocolate bunnies at Easter, and candy of all sorts at Halloween. But seriously, they have these itty bitty bellies that can’t hold all those treats. And their teeth – think of the havoc on their teeth! Let’s not even talk about the sugar rush and subsequent crash. Kids just can’t have all that junk. Which is why it’s so handy that we’re around to help them out by eating some of it. Or half of it. While they’re asleep and completely unaware. Hey, it is TOTALLY for their benefit! It’s hard work eating all those Cadbury eggs!

5. Unconditional love. I’m sure that there is a point where you can break a child enough that they no longer love their parents. Generally though, I like to assume that most of us are just doing the best we can, making mistakes, and dusting ourselves back off so we can try again tomorrow. There are days that are so much fun and so full of laughing that the hours fly by. Other times there can be days where the kids fight non-stop, push every button I’ve got, and I end up realizing that I yelled more than I laughed. But I love my kids with everything in me and just as wonderful, I know they love me too. No matter how frustrated we all might get with each other, at the end of the day, the love is still there and it’s still there the next morning when we start all over again. The unconditional love – mine AND theirs – is one of the best things in the entire world.

There are times when my list of five things I love about being a mom might have included sarcastic quips like, “I love to clean the same thing up 8742934 times a day!” and “I love never ever getting to use my own toilet without a three-year-old talking to me!” but today was a great day so you get the great list.

Because I have great kids.

*******
Catherine’s purpose in starting us off on writing about this topic is because she’s working on a project to see if you can get “around the world in 80 clicks” – connecting moms all over the world like one giant playdate. Here are the basic guidelines from Catherine herself:

Here’s how it’s going to work: this post that you’re reading? Is the departure lounge. I’m going to link to a couple of other mom bloggers here in Canada, and to a couple of mom bloggers from other countries around the world, and they’ll write their posts, sharing 5 things that they love (or maybe what they don’t so much love – this playground doesn’t force conformity) about being a mom, and then they’ll tag a few more bloggers from their own country and from other countries, and so on. And you’re more than welcome to join: just write a post of your own (5 things that you love about being a mom) and find someone to link to and tag – someone from your own country, if you like, but definitely someone from another country (Google is a good resource if you don’t know any; google any country name and ‘mom’ in their blog search function) (be sure to let them know that you’ve tagged them!) – and link back here and leave a comment and we’ll add you to the ‘itinerary,’ which David will compile and post and update as the tour proceeds.

If you play along, please go to Catherine’s entry and comment, and definitely comment here too so I can go read what you write. In the meantime, here are my tags – some local, and some international.

Angella, a fellow Canadian on the opposite side of the country over at Dutch Blitz // Tertia of So Close, blogging about life after infertility in Cape Town, South Africa // Jodi is an American mom in Tuscany (ohhh, Tuscany…) // Mara of Monkey Jumping on the Bed, a Canadian living in Panama // Neera of Our Life, A Jigsaw from India.

Check them out over the next few days when they will hopefully join in, and please remember to let me know if you do this too!

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Eye Spy

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Day 87: Hayley has a new Mummy

If you’ve been reading my site for awhile, you may remember that when Hayley was a baby, she had a condition called Strabismus. In simple terms, it meant that her right eye crossed in, waaay in. We treated it by using a patch on it several hours per day, and then she had a surgery to correct it at the age of ten months. It was much better but not perfect, and they did another one for her at age three. Her eyes were nice and straight and the only time they would turn in a bit was if she was really tired, and even then I think it was more noticeable to us just because we knew to watch for it.

Prior to the first surgery, she was given a prescription for glasses, and good lord a little baby in teeny little glasses is adorable. Check her out at seven months old:

After the procedure, she no longer required them. However, the other day she mentioned that things sometimes looked a little fuzzy. George also noticed that her eyes looked a little unfocused from time to time. Her class is mostly laid out so that the shorter kids are in front (which makes sense) and with Hayley inheriting George’s tall person genes, she sat in the very back row. I asked her if she could see the board and she told me that sometimes it was hard.

I wish she had told me sooner if she was having problems, but regardless of that, I immediately called our eye doctor at the hospital. The earliest they could see us was in May (!), so I took it anyway, along with one for Breanna who has never had an eye exam. Still, I didn’t want to wait that long, so I also called Lenscrafters and booked an appointment for Hayley next week. If there’s any sort of real problem, they’ll refer us back to the hospital anyway (which is why I kept that May appointment), but if it’s just that she needs glasses now, we can get everything taken care of sooner rather than later.

Hayley is eager to have her vision fixed but she asked me if she would look strange in glasses. Ah, the joys of getting older and being in school with other kids – that’s the sort of question that never would have crossed her mind once upon a time. I assured her that she would look very nice with glasses. It’s a tricky step for me since I personally hate my glasses and prefer my contact lenses. George and I explained that I don’t like MY glasses because they’re really old – the anti-reflect coating is partially worn off which makes it look cloudy when I look through them and it bugs me. I told her that I plan to get some new glasses soon and then I’ll probably wear glasses and contacts equally. I also showed her pictures of other young kids in glasses, showing her how nice they look.

I do hope that it’s just a simple matter of glasses. When you’re sitting at the children’s hospital, waiting for surgery to finish on your kid, it’s just a whole ball of stress. I would see other kids who were obviously very seriously sick or I’d chat with another parent who was waiting for their child to finish a major surgery (such as the mother of a young boy who had a perforated intestine and bowels and it was like some 7-hour procedure), and I would remember that at least eye surgery wasn’t quite that scary, but no one ever wants to have their kid put under, so glasses would be a much better solution. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

Plus, if she has glasses, I’m hoping that maybe it will allow her to better see the mess that she makes and that it will make it easier for her to CLEAN UP after herself a bit. What? They don’t make glasses for that problem? Well, I can hope, right?

RIGHT?!

(The photo above shows Hayley with the mummy she made out of clay and t-shirt strips since her grade one class is studying Ancient Egypt. I never got to study Egypt in grade one, she’s so lucky!)

Sunny day, dark night

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Day 86: Withered

Saturday ended up being a rather nice day. It was warm enough that I went out with the kids and the dog, and we immediately came back upstairs to dump our coats because we were going to end up too hot with them on. Pearl was pulling on her leash again and I just don’t have time to deal with that when I also need to keep an eye on my kids, so we left her behind with George when we dropped our coats off, and the three of us went back outside, enjoying the great, fresh spring air for almost an hour and a half.

Somehow, they managed to find one of the last – and also the dirtiest – piles of snow left behind and they played on it for a few minutes. Breanna is pretty disappointed that it’s all disappearing. Me? I’ll live.

Moths to a flame

After walking a little further, they decided that a lack of snow wasn’t a big deal after they used their imagination and creativity to turn a fallen piece of a tree into a see-saw.

See-Saw!

We definitely had a good time outside, and it was good for getting all that excess energy out.

12/52 Trio

Things got darker at 8:30 that night. In order to participate in Earth Hour 2009, we turned off all the lights, the computers, and the television and lit candles instead.

Glow

We had done it last year, but I added a chocolate fondue this time, and let me tell you – THAT went over very well. It took awhile for the chocolate to melt with just a tea light burning below it, but after about 20 minutes we had a nice pot half-full of melted goodness. I had sliced up some bananas, and we also had some fresh fruit salad that included strawberries, grapes, and melon slices so we speared all of those up and dipped them in. It was the first time the kids had ever had fondue, and they loved it.

Chocolate fondue

Dipping

I know that some people are ambivalent about Earth Hour and how much good it does, but I don’t think that the one hour of darkness is meant to fix anything. I don’t believe any of the participants thought they were making an actual tangible difference. However, what I feel is that Earth Hour is about educating and drawing attention. It gets people talking about climate change and helping the planet by reducing energy use. One hour won’t change anything, but what if people sat around in the dark for an hour and then realized that it’s not so bad? What if those people then decided to light candles every night or at least used one lone lamp instead of three or four? THAT is what makes the difference.

It’s also good for the kids. Hayley is terrible about leaving a stream of lights blazing in her path. She’ll turn on her bedroom light and then walk back out with it still on, only to go into the bathroom and do the exact same thing. George is forever turning the hall light off and telling her it doesn’t need to be on during the day. Earth Hour was a good way to reinforce the concept of saving energy and not using what we don’t actually need.

That education can come at any time, of course. And it should be a lesson that is brought up regularly. But having a specific time when you know everyone in the world is able to participate makes it special. Besides, Earth DAY doesn’t do anything more to help the planet either, but I still like to do something for the occasion then too.

The kids went to bed quickly and easily and then George and I did power up the television and the Wii to play a few games together, but we kept the dark theme going. We turned on the tiny night light in the hall in case one of the kids woke up, but we kept the candles lit in the living room and only turned the kitchen light on when we needed to get something to drink or eat.

Small steps.

I’m glad Saturday was a good day because Sunday was damp and rainy so we didn’t go out at all. It was still raining this morning but it’s stopped for now. I’m trying not to let the rain get me down since I know it will help get rid of the last of the snow (sorry, Breanna), and it will get the grass to be green again instead of that post-winter yellow straw stuff we have now. As long as we don’t get too much rain in one fell swoop, it should be okay!

Counting down to Earth Hour 2009

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Earth Hour 2008

That photo is from last March, when Hayley, Breanna, and I celebrated Earth Hour together for the first time. George wasn’t here – I think he may have been playing that night. The girls and I sat in the living room with a few candles and we read books by the candlelight. I also told Hayley about how people once had to sit by candlelight all the time because electricity didn’t even exist back then.

This year the four of us will be turning all our lights off from 8:30 until 9:30, along with televisions, Wii consoles, and computers and lighting candles. To add something new to it, we’re going to do a fruit and chocolate fondue as well. When we went to the wedding, the gift that they gave all the guests was a mini fondue set, which I thought was a great unique idea. We’re going to melt up some chocolate and spear some grapes, banana slices, strawberries, and melon chunks and enjoy a little picnic by the glow of candles.

I know that Earth Hour doesn’t change the world but it does help raise awareness and helps remind people – I hope – that just because we have lights in every room doesn’t mean we have to actually USE them all at all times.

Will you be joining us in the dark this year?

A bit of proof that I'm a total sap

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I used to try, once upon a time, to hide the fact that deep down, I am a complete and utter sap. I’d try to put up the tough exterior as often as I possibly could. Sometimes it was a good thing. No one wants to break down in tears after a poor review at work or after getting yelled at by one of your high school teachers. And when you live most of your teen years through pathetically unrequited love, it was really handy to be able to pull on all those acting desires and hide the tears until you were alone at home.

But really, it’s good to be emotional, it’s good to feel things and for years now I have shrugged off most attempts to be tough and untouchable. There may still be times when it comes in handy to have a mask but overall I am who I am (“I yam who I yam”?) and who I am is a ball of emotion.

I cry at the drop of a hat. George likes to tease me about it because I will cry while watching movies – even if they’re not necessarily meant to be sad, they just need something really touching to set me off. I cry over children’s movies (yes, I’m looking at YOU Wall-E!).

I cry over television shows – “Criminal Minds” is my favorite show but it makes me cry from time to time because of the crimes and the victims. Same goes for “Law & Order SVU”. And don’t even get me started on “Grey’s Anatomy”. While I haven’t done any formal research, I’m quite sure that I have never ever gotten through a full episode without crying at least once. Sometimes that show has made me cry so hard I worry about having an aneurysm (shaking my fist at the writers behind Denny, damn you!).

I cry over books. I’m reading Slumdog Millionaire since I loved the movie so much and as recently as today I found myself in tears during one chapter. And let me just say that while A Thousand Splendid Suns is my favorite book ever, I am so glad I was not trying to read that book in public anywhere because I was a total mess throughout, oh, 85% of it at least.

So yeah. I cry. I cry easily and I get embarrassed when I’m caught all teary-eyed and blowing my nose, but that’s the way I am. So it didn’t surprise me when I caught this commercial on TV for the first time tonight and was immediately dissolved into a puddle of tears.

Seriously. COME ON. To make it worse, that commercial aired during Grey’s Anatomy and, well, see above for how I fare during THAT show.

Please tell me I’m not the only sap around and that you get all emotional too!