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3 Jan

Art by Anne Taintor. I totally borrowed this image without permission, so I'm linking to the store where you can buy these awesome sticky notes. (Click image.)

It’s one of those Murphy’s Law days, where it feels like anything that could go wrong, is going wrong.

I had a long list of stops to make today, with Halia in tow, so I wanted to be out the door by 9:30.

The van wouldn’t start because it never does when the thermometer dips below freezing. Stupid battery. So I hooked up the booster pack and then proceeded to break my fingers uninstalling Halia’s carseat from the back row for reinstallment in the middle row. Now that her cousin’s carseat is no longer in the van, Halia insisted we move her seat back to its rightful place.

After successfully moving the carseat, I tried starting the van again, in vain. I had to interrupt Michael’s client meeting to get him to boost the van from the truck.

As soon as I got the van started, it dinged at me to remind me the gas tank was close to empty.  I’d had to drive around for a few things on January 1st, when no gas stations were open, so the tank was getting down to its last fumes.  I was halfway out of the neighbourhood when I remembered the banking paperwork I had to take with me, so I drove home. Then down to the gas station. (Made it! Whew!) Where the van wouldn’t restart.

A gruff old guy was kind of enough to give me another boost (after I’d dropped my keys in the gas station garbage, fished them out again, and made a fool of myself trying to untangle the booster cables) and he even peered into the engine to tell me the alternator was working, but it looked like one cell of my battery had boiled.

Every month I have to go to the bank to take care of some business that is stuck in the dark ages and can’t be done online. I walked into the bank and was delighted to see there was no lineup.  One teller was just coming free, hurrah, and it was… oh no, it was the guy I dealt with last month who had no clue what he was doing and caused me to be in the bank for over 45 minutes.  I will say he was a bit quicker this month, but I’m sure the long line of customers that formed behind me didn’t appreciate that I was taking up two tellers after he got stumped.

Then there was the soaking of my jacket sleeve by the faucets at the library bathrooms, forgetting things at the grocery store, and the frightening cost of Nanuq’s medication refills, but the coup de grâce was when I decided, after all the other tasks were over, to let Halia have a snack in the van while I quickly ran into the pharmacy to buy her vitamins.  I left the van running this time, to keep it warm and to prevent the need for another boost, but when I got back outside, the van was locked! This never happens.  The van doors only lock when the van hits 30 kmph, or when it’s manually locked, and I sure as heck did not lock my kid into the running van.

I phoned Michael, who was on the road heading for another client meeting.  He had to turn around and go home to get the other van key for me, making him late for his meeting. Thank goodness Whitehorse is so small; I think it took only about 20 minutes for him to get there, maybe less, but I was freezing my buns off by the time he arrived.

Halia was fantastic through it all. I hope it wasn’t just because I’d promised her a chocolate-chip cookie if she kept her listening ears on all day. But you know, on a day like today, I’m not at all above bribery.

And I’m not above having a chocolate-chip cookie for myself, either.

Waiting for the party

13 Nov

Halia turned three on Friday and we had a lovely day together as a family, with Michael returning home from a week away that afternoon.  She was old enough to ask for a party this year, so we hosted that today.  There was a balloon forest, a clown, chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting (gluten-free and vegan, and absolutely delicious, natch), dancing, giggling, and balloon sword fights.

There are days when the girls are at each others’ throats all day long.  And there are days where they are inseparable best of friends.  Here’s what they were doing today while waiting for the first party guests to arrive.  It might be a bit long for those of us used to 30-second clips, but the whole thing makes me smile.

I didn’t know Michael was filming, or I’d have stopped putting dishes away.  No, I wouldn’t, but I’d have been quieter about it.  Oh, and it was Jade who put The Four Seasons in the CD player, by the way.

Well, of course you did

29 Sep

Halia, holding a whole red pepper that has fallen to the filthy, dusty, dog-hair-covered kitchen floor: “Mama, can I eat the wed pawt on dis?”

Me: “No, Halia, it needs to be washed first.”

Me, noticing a bruise on the pepper and mistaking it for a bite mark: “Halia, did you already take a bite out of that?”

Halia: “No.”

Me: “Oh, good.”

Halia: “I licked it.”

Perspective

29 Jul

It has been a hectic week.  Four of the five suitcases from our trip are still sitting, unpacked, on the basement floor.  I’ve spent a total of about 16 hours in the recording studio, which has been thrilling and exhausting at the same time.  Jade has been attending music camp for three quarters of an hour every morning, the sessions being just short enough that it doesn’t make sense to try to run errands as they unfold.

A few days after we got back, Halia came down with a fever and some kind of stomach bug and I got to reacquaint myself with the art of catching vomit with whatever happens to be available.  On top of that, she is in the throes of exploring preschooler independence, which manifests itself in saying mean things to Jade (which makes Jade cry), selective listening, tantrums, and teenageresque expressiveness.

“Halia, get off my chair,” I might say.

“Okaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy,” she’ll drawl back, her voice implying the rolling eyes she has not yet learned to do.

She’s a challenge for sure, and she tests my patience daily.  Hourly.

This morning I was thinking back to what Jade was like at this same age.  That puts us back in September of 2008, a time I try not to think too much about.  That was a month before Jade started on the ketogenic diet, a time where her seizures were getting progressively worse, the last month we had her in daycare before her seizures became so severe it was no longer safe to send her there.

I remember hearing friends bemoaning their children’s behaviour, who were doing exactly the same kinds of things Halia is doing now.  I remember thinking, “I would take those challenges over what Jade is going through.  Any day.”  I remember wishing I could complain about the same mundane things.

And here I am.  It’s exhausting, yes, but oh my… Right at this moment, I feel so damn lucky.

Big girl signs

12 May

I just got Halia to bed.  She didn’t ask to be breastfed and I didn’t offer.  I feel conflicted about this.  I’m pretty much ready to be done, but then again I wasn’t expecting to be done.  She still likes to nurse in the mornings sometimes, so it’s not like breastfeeding is done done.  But I think the end is in sight.  I’m not sure why this is not making me leap for joy.

I’m not allowed to call her a baby.  Every day she insists, “I’m a big girl!”  Today she declared, “I don’t need a bib.  Because I’m not a baby anymore.”  She astonishes me with the sentences she concocts.

She’s losing her baby-talk.  I’ve been teaching her how to add the “s” at the beginning of those s-plus-consonant words like snake, squirrel, star, stop.  Now she loves to say, “Ssssssss-gwirrel” and “Ssssssssssnake”.  We almost never hear “Daw!” and “Dop!”  She still sounds adorable, but she’s clearly not so babyish.

Still, she sings it: “Kookabudda sits in de ol’ gum twee-ee, mewwy, mewwy king a da bush is he-ee!”

And also: “Deep in da Hun-dwed A-cah Wood, where Chwistunnah Wobin plays…”

She hasn’t tried to climb out of her crib, but she’s asked for a big-girl bed.

With Jade, the milestones came so late, we had almost no nostalgia for the passing of babyhood.  With Halia, though, I can see her racing to catch up to her big sister, and she runs so fast it leaves me dizzy.

There’s no room for aching when my heart is swelling, though, and every day I get  her declarations of love.  She can say, “I luff you!” And she does say it, at the most surprising moments.

But I think my favourite declaration is one she uses most often in the mornings: “I want to ‘nuggle you!”  So we snuggle.  And big girl or little, she still fits perfectly in my arms.

Some Molly

20 Feb

It’s been pretty rough over here, what with sick kids, Michael away, the aforementioned paperwork, and perhaps a sudden realization that I can’t actually manage everything in my schedule.  Change is needed, methinks.  However, it was a music-filled weekend, Michael is home for a few days, and so things look brighter for now.  Probably I should make myself go to bed earlier.  (“Should” is always such a loaded word, dontcha think?)

I just had to share a Halia moment.

Yesterday and today Halia has been crying intermittently for “some Molly”, or at least that’s what it sounded like to me.  Jade couldn’t translate, and I couldn’t get Halia to say anything clearer than “some Molly”.  Frustrating for her, frustrating for me.

Finally, tonight I asked her to show me.  She led me to the fridge.  (“I’ll bet it’s cheese,” says Michael.) Indeed, she pointed to something in the deli drawer.  But she was pointing past the cheese.  I opened the drawer and saw…

…the salami.

The D with the belly

11 Feb

It’s been a couple of years since we’ve had to worry about doing Valentine’s cards.  Sonja dropped by this morning with a little gift: a box of Disney Princess Valentine’s cards, including slots for holding princess pencils.  I must say I really appreciate a non-candy coated Valentine!

We decided that addressing Valentine’s cards would be this morning’s little project.  I broke out the markers (which normally are hidden away because despite being washable, Miss Halia is a terror with them).  I wrote the names in the “To” part and Jade signed each and every one herself under the “From”.

I haven’t been working on writing skills with Jade at all, but I can tell by the crafts she brings home from school that her fine-motor skills are really improving.  She was really enthusiastic about writing her name on each and every one of those 16 cards; I was very impressed by her stamina!

It also gave me the opportunity to show her how to make the letters correctly.  She was imitating the shapes she saw, but since we haven’t been spending any time on it, didn’t really know the technique for shaping each letter.  Her D’s generally looked like O’s.  Or worms standing on end.

So I showed her, “One straight line down.  Lift your marker.  Start at the top again.  Now make a big round belly for the D, so we know it’s a D.”  Then I drew a dotted letter for her to trace.

Then she took up with the cards again and delighted in that D!  “A big belly for the D!” she crowed.  “It’s pushing the E away!”

(Funny, suddenly that D looks like a pregnant woman, crowding her poor hubby right out of bed.)

The cute vaccine

8 Feb

Forthwith, further inoculation against the Dread Virus Pessimismus.

 

The birthday Grinch strikes again (sort of)

25 Jan

Last year, I shared with ya’ll how I’m not really into doing great big birthday parties.

I wasn’t hugely enthusiastic about it this year, either, to be totally honest, but Jade’s been looking forward to her birthday ever since Halia’s in November.  (Hmmm, that happened last year, too, didn’t it?)  Plus, this year, Jade’s excitement level has been heightened by all the birthday parties from her preschool crowd.  There have been three birthday parties since the beginning of December, and the whole preschool has been invited to each of them.  I’ll admit they’ve been fun, and it’s a nice chance to get to know some of the other parents.

Jade had so much fun at the Polarettes Gymnastics gym at the December birthday party that we decided to have her party there, too.  All the kids can just run around and enjoy the equipment and the focus doesn’t have to be on food.  I figured I’d buy a bunch of helium balloons, bring a few trays of food, put together some fairly simple loot bags, and call it good.

But!  At the last birthday party we attended, we discovered that we had booked the gym for an afternoon the day after Diego was going to have his birthday party there.  Argh.  In half a minute, we decided to just go ahead and combine the two parties into one.  Hurrah!  Shared costs, guests who aren’t wondering why they’re going to the same place twice in one weekend, plus cutting down on the volume of gifts because we’re asking boys to bring presents for Diego and girls to bring one for Jade.

Diego’s mom has a couple of older children and so has been doing this birthday party stuff for years.  Plus she is one of those really energetic creative people full of awesome ideas and who owns a crazy art printer and more scrapbooking supplies than you can shake a stick at.  She came up with this great “Let’s Monkey Around” theme using an adorable image of two sock monkeys hugging.  Her “draft” invitation was so cute I nearly died.

(And then part of my brain remembered that once upon a time I loved party planning, too.)

Once we started brainstorming ideas for the loot bag (bananas with monkey-themed banana stickers on them, water bottles with custom labels, magnets, stickers, an activity book, crayons with sock-monkey labels) I decided it would be fun(!) and easy(!) to make monkey masks.

Here’s the thing.  Every party so far has included the parents (because so many have special needs, and they’re really not at the age yet where you just drop the kid off and go) and of course that means the siblings are there, too.  Halia has been given a share in the loot bag loot at every party… So since this is a double party (each family will have some extra people there), I figured we should prepare about 30 loot bags.

Can you see where this is going?

Here’s a visual:

In case math isn’t your strong suit, that there is 36 monkey masks.  These really are incredibly easy to make and they don’t take long, either.

That is, they don’t take long if you’re making just one,or maybe two, like a sane person might do.  But 36 of these suckers takes pretty much an entire bloody day, even after you stayed up until 1:40 a.m. cutting out all the felt pieces the day before.  (Except, of course, that wasn’t really the day before.)  (Thank goodness Diego’s mom and sister helped me cut and glue all the eyebrows.)   (It’s amazing how much faster things go with three people…)

I’ve saved two of these for Jade and Halia, who each picked the colour they wanted.  They were very excited about them.  And then wore them for about 3 minutes each.  *sigh*

But, you know what?  I am looking forward to the party.

And I think the monkeys are, too.

Breathing

19 Dec

Why hello, December.  Are you here already?  Pardon me?  What do you mean you’re almost over?

I know, I know, we’re all busy.  But holy cow, has this month ever been a whirlwind.  And not even because of Christmas.  Okay, well, maybe a little bit because of Christmas, but certainly not because I am in any way prepared.

We don’t have a tree.  Our lights are up outside, but, grinch-like, we never plug them in at night because it is frakin’ cold out there these days.   I mean -30 cold.  I bought a timer for the lights but haven’t set it up yet.  There are zero decorations  inside our house because they are still in boxes buried under the stairs.  Christmas shopping is kinda, sorta taken care of but it’s been happening piecemeal here and there like and I have nothing for stocking stuffers.

Oh, who cares?  You don’t want to listen to be complain.  Besides, what am I doing here when I have to go pick up all the clothes strewn all over my bedroom so I can pack my bags for the course I’m taking in Vancouver, flying out tomorrow afternoon and coming home at 1 a.m. on Christmas-for-goodness-sakes-Eve?

Oh dear.  Really I just wanted to pop on here to say hi and tell you about what we have been doing, because, really, it’s been a pretty awesome month.  Crazybusy.  But awesome.

Let’s see.  Jade and Halia and Michael and I participated in Whitehorse’s Christmas parade.  The girls participated in a free community art project to make “Frollies” (little Christmas spirits) and then were invited to tote them in the parade.  So we did.  And one of the benefits was that Santa hung out at the headquarters while all the paraders were mustering, so Jade got to spend a good 20 minutes following him around and gawking at him in total hero-worshiping wonderment.

Hangin' with Santa before the parade

Even Nanuq was in the parade! Jade walked the whole way by herself and Halia rode in my amauti.

The Big Band (in which I play piano and Michael plays bass trombone) had a concert at the Yukon Government building (which is the building I work at 2.5 days a week).  The girls had a marvelous time dancing to swingy Christmas music.

The All-City Band (in which Michael plays tuba)  played a concert at the government building later on in the week.  (They have music all week the first week every December.)  The girls were not nearly so attentive that time, so I hardly heard anything while I chased hurricane Halia around.

Huge for me: I played a gig with my friend Steve Slade at a local restaurant called Antoinette’s.  We rehearsed together every weekend for a month before.  We played for two hours to a full house and I’m pretty proud of how it went.  I wore a baubly pearly necklace I made myself and a Sally Ann top I upcycled and my sparkly red shoes and just had a fabulous time.

 

This is how my top started out back in August. Check the attached shorts with different polka-dot pattern. Hotness!

Sorry I don't show the whole thing, but rest assured the shorts are gonzo! New neckline with white insert (material leftover from my wedding dress!), hot-fix rhinestones to add sparkle, and a red sash to add some Christmas flair.

My mom arrived in Whitehorse on Thursday and my dad got here this morning.  I made homemade hand cream to use on the girls and to give away as gifts.  I made earrings for Jade’s teachers, and a beach glass pendant / Christmas ornament for a neighbour who has helped us out countless times.

And now I’m about to take off for Vancouver and arrive home just in time to cook the big family dinner and do Christmas mass.  Oh my. Yes, I am still breathing.  But I think I will breathe just a little easier on Christmas morning.

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