Doomsday

Today, Leo told me that he loved me so much that "when we die, at the end of days, I will let you lie down beside me so that we will never be alone."

Um...End of Days?? Surely, they're not teaching him that at the Catholic School are they? I mean they couldn't.

Could they?

i think I'm going to chalk it up to Aidan's obsession with the Mayan calendar and disaster movies. Maybe Leo has picked it up from one of Aidan's many dinner time conversations. That's the thing about having an enthusiastic ten year old at the dinner table, they do tend to monopolize the conversation. When we aren't being enthralled by recitations of the millions of evolutions of all of the pokemon in each region, we are being inundated with stories of destruction and solar flares. Maybe Leo has been paying closer attention than it seemed.

Even still, I'm going to give the posters in his classroom a closer look tomorrow when we have our parent teacher interviews. I'll be on the lookout for any and all quotes from revelations or any particularly suspicious advertisements for kool-aid.

Why I love Christmas

Last night I festooned the house with our advent chains and hung up the chocolate advent calendars. And, yes, for the entire month of November I entertained visions of creating heirloom quality advent calendars from upcycled, felted wool sweaters and old socks. But instead I hung up two $1.69 Zellers specials, the ones covered in pictures of Marvel Superheroes and filled with fingernail sized, waxy chocolate squares.

First thing this morning, Aidan and Leo each ate their chocolate (before breakfast, what kind of mother am I?)and opened their chains. We made the paper chains I remember from my childhood. There are 24 links and each link contains a secret message, something Christmasy that has to be done that day. It's like your secret agent Christmas orders for the day. Today's task was to decorate the house. So, after school,I dragged out the Christmas decorations from the basement: the wind up Santa statue that plays Silent Night that Kurtis' mom gave us a few years ago, the china penguins that huddle around the warmth of a candle flame, holding out their flippers like movie set homeless men, warming up by a garbage can fire, the Christmas kissing ball and the drunken salt dough snowmen that Aidan and I made when he was five, who always look like they may not make it home from the bar.

Leo was so excited by it all. He loved finding places to hang wreaths. He loved positioning the penguins and playing with the knitted Santa elephants. He must have wound the Santa statue forty five times, the tinny notes of Silent Night are still ringing in my ears. He did get a little carried away with the drunken snowmen and one of them suffered a slight mishap, losing the tip of his carrot nose. I'm telling myself that it adds to their charm.

And that's what I love about Christmas. Somehow, the haphazard, slightly hacky aspect of our lives gains a magical quality. It sounds hokey, I know, but in December all the things I might normally blush about or try to nudge under the rug with my toe; the flour on the counter tops, the bits of glitter glue and paint smeared across my kitchen floor, the piles of scrap paper and trash bag wreaths, all of those things are suddenly elevated to the realm of the touching and thoughtful. The slapdash suddenly becomes homey and sweet. The tackiness turns into enthusiasm. It all gets so much more meaning at Christmas.

We got our tree tonight. It's lying down, wrapped in a garbage bag, on our porch along with an explosion of paper snowflakes that we stuck up with masking tape last year and never managed to take down. I wonder if our neighbours appreciate my definition of Christmas as much as I do. I do know that the kids still get the magic, even the tacky magic. I caught Leo staring at his Spiderman advent calendar before he went up to bed tonight. He kissed it and whispered "I love you".

New Year's Resolutions

So, I know it's a little early for this post but, considering the way I've been about keeping up with this blog, it's more than likely that by the time I write my next post this title will be entirely appropriate.

I've made a lot of new years resolutions in my life. I've promised to eat less candy, eat less in general, go to the gym more, play on the floor more, tidy up more often, yell at my kids less often, be grateful, do more crafts, practice my guitar, and write in my blog every day. That was my resolution last year. I was going to write in this blog every day. Perhaps you can see where this is going? I suck at resolutions. Consistency and commitment have never been my strong points.

Yesterday, Leo asked me why he has to go to school. We have some friends down the street that are homeschoolers and Leo is very jealous of the cozy nature of their days. I told him that he had promised Miss Cifani that he would come to her class when he signed up and that when you say that you are going to do something you have to stick to it. If only I could learn that lesson myself.

Leo is still not sure about school. I think he's only attended about half of the days that he was supposed to. He's been sick (he was oinking with the H1N1 for awhile) or he's been tired or he's been angry and he tells me that Miss Cifani doesn't like him to "bring his angry to school". Obviously the only logical option on angry days is for Leo to stay home because, as he says, how could he leave his anger at home? It's inside him!

He is, however, doing a lot better than Aidan did in kindergarten. Aidan cried every morning until just before Christmas break and then he started up again, crying every day after Christmas break right through to February. I remember riding my bike to class in tears, after leaving him sobbing on his classroom carpet. I think his attendance was about 25% in jk and only marginally better in kindergarten. Actually, come to think of it, it's only marginally better than that now. It amazes me that he does as well as he does. I think he misses more days than he goes.

I wish I had the kind of self sacrificing nature that would allow me to home school my children. But I like my little life too much: my habits and hobbies and the things that make me me. I like having time to read my books, time to take pictures, time to sing and act and bake cookies and spend time in my own head, preferably at coffee shops with large caramel covered coffee drinks...although obviously not time to write in my blog...or tidy up...or play the guitar. Can you see how dusty that case is?

Labour Day Camping

We spent some time at Sandbanks Provincial Park last week. It's an annual tradition for my family and all of my cousins and aunts and uncles usually show up for a little bit. My brothers were MIA this year but the boisterous presence of my children more than made up for it. We were walking back from the washrooms one night and my mother asked me if I ever felt like I inhabited my own private little tornado of sound. Well, mom, I do. Every day.

Russell is a full fledged toddler now and by the end of the week he was walking like a pro over both the rough terrain of an uneven campsite and the soft sand of the beach. I can't wait for this next stage. The next couple of years are my favourite years: the walking, the talking, the independence and the new little personality that develops over the next two or three years. It's all so exciting.
My uncle made his annual sandcastle. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good shots of the finished product but here's one of the construction.
Of course, the boys made one too. Although, as usual, it was a little difficult to get the concepts of the nine year old to jibe with the capabilities of the four year old.

Leo was often relegated to water duty.
And the highlight of my week was definitely seeing Kurtis in his element once more. Give that guy a camp chair, a beer, a fire and a baby to hold and you give him bliss.

Spiderman

Possibly the greatest day of Leo's life so far...

Match girl.

I wrote today. My life is full of to-do lists that stay pinned to the bulletin board for years, literally years, and so many ideas that are never brought to fruition. But, then again, I wrote today. I have to remind myself of what I actually do accomplish or I'll be scuttled by all these things I've never finished. They're sharp. They like to poke holes in my self esteem. And keeping a positive self image is hard enough already. It's so hard to see who I am without comparing myself to the person that I want to be. I get bogged down by all the things I could have done, should have done by now; those sticky, swampy, disappointments and failures.

We had friends over on the weekend. They were full of wonderful things to say about our house, our pictures, the homeyness of our kitchen, the colours of paint on the walls. Things I never think. I never think anything nice about our house. All I think is "Ugh, I need to re paint that porch railing. God, those weeds back there are out of control. Why can't I keep that bookshelf clean?" It's unthinkable to me that anyone could find my house appealing. Is it always like that? Did the people in the story know that their Christmas tree was that bright, their fire that warm and beautiful? Or were they drowning in their own family squabbles and setbacks like the rest of us and unable to look through the windows and see their own happy faces.

I know my kids have the same difficulties that I do. Aidan always perceives his failures as greater than his successes and I've dealt with years of frustrated meltdowns about pictures that aren't as good as the ones in his head, lego models he's built from just an idea that don't work exactly right on the first try, words that don't immediately say exactly what he means. And Leo is the same, in his own way. We play superheroes and when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, the disappointment is almost palpable. Because he isn't really Batman, you know.

How do I change that? How do I help them see the good instead of the bad, keep them boouyed up and happy with themselves? Am I ever going to get this right or is this yet another example of the mother that I am falling short of the mother that I want to be.

The kids and I leave today to go camping with my parents for a week. I can't wait. I need to get away and listen to trees and that weird morse code that squirrels speak in, rather than the voices in my heads. A chance to be surrounded by the lake, the leaves, the light and not an ever lengthening list.

portent or procrastination?

Leo and I were cleaning the pool this morning and this is what we discovered...



Is it just me or does anyone else find this creepy? I nearly had a heart attack at the sight of it. If I hadn't been holding Russell at the time I probably would have.

I feel like it might be an omen, some kind of warning from the gods about letting the children use the pool today. I'm almost afraid to go to exercise class because Kurtis might recklessly decide to take all three of them in at once and Leo is not a strong enough swimmer to be in a pool with only one adult and a baby brother. He can't touch bottom yet.

It's probably silly but the arm feels ominous to me. I believe in omens. Or maybe I just don't want to go to exercise class. It's so hard to know myself at times.

boxes

Who knew how fun a cardboard box, an inflatable pool and a box of smarties could be...

becoming friends with superheroes

On the way out of Ikea yesterday, Leo whispered in my ear that he had saved all of the other kids from drowning in the balls because he was a superhero. I asked him who he was playing with.

"I had special names for them." He said.

"I called them Night Serana and Princess Gihalla."

"Oh." I said. "That must have been fun."

"Not really." He whispered.

"They didn't like their names so they pushed me away because sometimes, Mum, sometimes people don't even know that they need to be saved."

My secret identity

Are mothers supposed to have other lives? Specifically other lives where they dress up in funny costumes and sing songs about love and loss and drinking?


Shhh....I do....

Short Hills hike

Here we are on a recent hike. It was a three hour hike and both Aidan and Leo did it all without complaint. In fact, the only one who complained was Russell. He just couldn't wait to get out of the back pack and get on the ground himself.




















Can you tell that he does everything his older brother does?

















Russell was so much happier once he got moving







We didn't build it. We just found it.







Awwww....look! They love eachother.

doo dee doo...

well, my baby is too wonderful for words and none of my children know who Michael Jackson was...whatever shall I write about?

um...ahem...hello, again?

So, it's been awhile...babies, potty training, a wedding. What can I say? Things got away from me. But I'm back. I'll try to be back. I know I've been bad. I'm sorry. Can we just skip this terribly contrite post where I grovel at your feet, unknown audience? Let's move on to the good stuff, shall we?