Invasive pop up ads on parenting sites – when you’re trying to look up something, ANYTHING, that would help a nauseated child. Fucking *genius*, I tell you. Marketing magic.
Anyways, here is our Mother’s Day BBQ. My mum didn’t have a very restful day but she was very gracious about it all. The sick child will probably stay home tomorrow, so I’ll wash all her floors and hopefully make up for it a wee bit. Poor Nan.
Our very old kitchen table came out of the garage to pull duty. The kids don’t even remember it, ha.
The kids were unsure about our guests, but eventually were happy to natter. Wolfie proclaimed them “Good New Men! I wike you New Men!” They were pretty stoked about eating outside, too.
Wolf is turning out to really love cars and trucks, and figurines. Like, wee plastic people and dragon toys and such? He will sit for an hour at a time narrating stories with them. He makes it sound like a child’s book “Hello, how are you today, Dwagon?” “I am just fine, said the dwagon, Let’s go get some lunch”. His sis never really got into that kind of By Herself play. She is much more adventurous than he is, though – you can see her climbing and swinging and testing her strength on all the park pieces back there. She’s growing like a weed and punching holes through all her pants 🙂 They were both exceedingly well behaved today, and I’ve really been enjoying my time with them. They’ve changed so much in the last few months. It will be nice to finally have the four of us all together again… Stephen is missing a lot.
I find myself wearing the same grim lipped rictus grin my mother so frequently wore when I was growing up.
It’s funny, coz you can’t always say “I should never have done X” because if you hadn’t done it you wouldn’t know that you SHOULDN”T have, and in some cases you’d actually regret that you hadn’t because you wouldn’t know better.
So regret is fucking bullshit.
So is Mother’s Day!
I’ve been up sine 4, the washing machine doesn’t work, I just got my period, the breakfast I made didn’t keep because I made it too early – in an effort to have everything cleaned up before anyone would wake up to see the mess or the space I was taking up while cooking – and… oh yeah! I look like my mother did at my age, only not as thin.
I’m going to put on the t.v. for the kids, read my book, and then take them out into the garden to pick up dog shit and rinse out the litter box listen to the birds and try to stop feeling so disgustingly sorry for myself.
So hey yeah, it is EASTER! And it hasn’t snowed for a few days! Like, two days. So that’s great right?
My friend reminded me of this blog just now, and that reminded me of those vague thoughts of resurrecting it and using it to keep in contact and write about things and keep a journal of our family’s doings. I’ll have to find out how to keep the site prominent so that I remember.
Anyways, here are the children on Easter morning. Éowyn Catherine is now 5 and a half, and Wolf Corbin is 2 and a half. They are funny and smart and they usually smell pretty good! Éowyn was a complete love this morning, she waited in the room – I was the only one she woke up both the boys were conked* – and then I got her dressed up, she woke her brother and put his tie and shirt on for him. She was sure to guide him and give him treats when he couldn’t find as much as she did. I’m very very proud of her and he thinks she hangs the moon. He loves her so much ❤
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*We are all staying with my parents for the moment. About 5 months or so. Stephen has been living in Calgary, and visiting about once a month when he can. We're sharing a big cozy room, which smells like a damn bear den when all four of us are packed in 🙂 We're very snug and it's kind of nice to be so close to the babies while they are so small and soft and squishy. We're due to move to Calgary in July, until then we are here to finish out the school year and give the kids extra time with Nana and Baba.
Soooo… Happy Easter 🙂 It's one of my favourite holidays, and I just love that both the kids were old enough to get excited about it this year!
K you don’t understand. What this means to me. My son is OBSESSED with stars. to the point where it sounds like he’s having a verbal seizure when he sees one? or hears about one? or thinks abut one? or thinks YOU”RE thinking about one? We had to take the stars out of his room because HE WOULDN”T SLEEP WHEN HE KNEW THEY WERE THERE. And we have to sing twinkle star to him? ALL THE TIME!!?? ALL. THE. TIME.
so i love this. I love this so much. and i’m going to send it to stephen and he will actually laugh (he only does that once every six months) he’ll laugh and he’ll laugh until he sobs. i swear.
Nana has been alone at home quite a bit, now that my father has a job. We’re all super happy for him! He gets to be out at camp, but doesn’t have to deal with strenuous body killing work. He drives – and that’s like, one of his favourite things. Perfect job 🙂
The result is that Cat is finally alone and quiet with her own self – after nearly 30 years. She’s been visiting lots which is a *total* delight to us. Especially me. The kids love her, she leaves them so happy, and we get to have good honest bitch sessions. I feed her (which makes me very very happy) and make her tea, I got to get out for a walk by myself today while Nana watched a movie with Éowyn, and Wolf got to talk with her befor ehis nap – and when he woke up I plunked him down between his two favourite girls and got them all snacks.
Super lovely day. All you need is love. And. You know. A house, and food, and money, and beer, and popcorn, and toys, and clothes – but. Mostly love. That’s my best one. It’s been a very very different first year with Wolf, than with Éowyn. We’re in a better place, and we have more money (coz right, love isn’t all you need) but just HAVING them here and seeing them with the kids and knowing they’re happy – that’s the core. That’s the molten mfing core, yo.
Éowyn likes to do my kick boxing cardio routine – because I told her that’s what Jedi’s do to practice their light saber moves. It was the only way I could get her to let me do this while the baby slept, and now she asks me to put it on for her and let her do it herself. While I make dinner. Coz she’s the best kid. Wolf is in the back there, tinkering 🙂 He just packs up and goes into his toy corner and stays there playing quietly for good long chunks of time. Ahhh, I have the best job hey? Lucky 🙂
Good grief, it’s been nearly a year since my last post. I have, however been extremely active on facebook. Too active. Anyways, gosh, here’s a video of the kidlets today, right after Wolf face planted and got a bloody lip. He was very cuddly.
does this work?
See at the end, when Éowyn and I sing his favourite song – he goes nuts for it. This kid is hilariously obsessed with stars. He has radar for stars. It’s one of the first and last words he says every day, and he just freaks out for them. It’s pretty great, he’s got a cute wee voice 🙂
Éowyn has been going a bit stir crazy this winter, as we’re spending most of our time indoors again. It’s either too windy or to slippery or too wet or too cold. I used to like winter, really, but I can barely remember why. Next year will be a lot better, I think. At the very least the boy will be able to walk better, and his Sis will be in school (!).
They’re both doing really well, they’re healthy and smart and kind to each other. They are super fortunate, as am I, to have my parents here – they’ve both been off work this winter, and so they’ve been spending SO much time here with us, or us with them. It’s nice to break the day up.
WELL. I have so much mfing cleaning to do. As always. There’s the update, hopefully more to come. I should get out of on the fly posting and actually blog. In the long run it’d cost me a lot less time.
HEY SO WOW. I haven’t been updating this shit at all, and the kids aren’t going to be looking back through my damn facebook or emails for scrapbook stuff, so I REALLY SHOULD WRITE.
Allright lets get some visual aids happening.
We haven’t had much winter here which is pretty ok with me. It’s a drag getting a wee bobbin out when it’s -30 and these prairie winds can be brutal. There’s been a lot of slush and ice though, so even with the warmer temps we haven’t been going out much. OK AND ALSO I have no energy, and lots of chores, and the baby wants to eat all the time, and then he wants to sleep, and sometimes it just doesn’t happen! But it snowed a bit a few days ago and Éowyn and I went out into the yard and built a bit of a snow fort and a wee snow goblin – a Ukrainian snow goblin apparently – while Wolf talked to us from his chair on the stoep. She was pretty thrilled to be outside which made me feel a bit guilty but ultimately POWERFUL.
BUT Wolf is finally getting big and strong enough for his pack! We can’t go for big walks yet, but he’s good for a walk to the grocery store or a trip to the park. It’s been really great to get out and MOVE, I am still losing the baby weight but I feel pretty out of shape. He’s heavy and it’s a work out to haul him around – but not painful as a front carrier can be. I have some sleds for him – FIVE OF THEM after Christmas – but I’m always paranoid that he’ll like, shoot off them int he middle of the street or something… and besides, walking at my own pace is such a treat. I have taken him out on my own a few times and it’s been a boon to my mental health. He’s much happier up where he can see everything, anyways 🙂
Baba went to Quebec for awhile and during the month that he was gone we had a real cold snap and even Nana didn’t want to go out. So, now that he’s home, we’ve visited more often. It’s tiring for me because of the interruption to our routine, and the lack of anything chore like to do kinda makes me feel soporific. It’s very very good to see the kids and my parents together though. Éowyn gives them a lot of attitude, which stresses me out for a few reasons. Am I raising her to be polite, is she hurting their feelings, am I being to hard on her or not hard enough, CHRIST is she yelling again… but then I remind myself that she doesn’t do this with much of anyone else. She treats them the way she treats Stephen and me. So… it must mean she is comfortable with them. This place is like her second home and it does my heart so much good to see that. I would get majorly depressed when I was pregnant with Wolf, before I knew they were moving down here… thinking about everything they’d miss with the new baby and with Éowyn growing up. This is pretty amazing.
Wolf has been hitting some milestones, let me see if I can pull a few up off the top of my head. He can grab his toes like that, and he LOVES it 🙂 It makes diaper time easy… he can pass things from hand to hand and he is very interested in toys now. He has started on solid food – we were going to wait till week 20 but started in week 19 because he was waking all night long, having issues with nursing during the day (distracted, Éowyn went through that phase too, but SHE didn’t have a 3 year old whirling all over the place and exacerbating it) and he is SO interested in our food. We started him on boxed rice cereal which he loved and took like a champ – no gagging, spitting, confusion, aversion – and so far he’s tried avocado, banana, carrots, and peas. We finally broke down and got some damn jarred food because i couldn’t get a perfectly smooth consistency right and it seemed to bug him. No matter, this stage doesn’t last too long and I feed him fresh stuff when I can. He’ll be fine. It’s been fun 🙂 Oh, what else. He can roll from tummy to back, and back to tummy, though not regularily yet. He can almost sit unassisted, and loves to go play with his sister and someone to prop him up. He is exceedingly proud when you stand him up 🙂 I don’t know what all else is a milestone, but he’s hittin em all appropriately at any rate.
Éowyn has started to be interested in mothering. She gets to do a lot of little things with Wolf – they bathe together now, and she loves to wash him. She puts his penaten on him sometimes, and helps me throw his diapers away. She wipes him off when he spits up, hands him toys, sings to him and makes him laugh when he’s fussy, and generally dotes on him. She uses her toys to express other mothering – she climbs into the rocking chair and nurses her stuffies, puts them to bed, disciplines them, feeds them, changes their diapers and tells me about how she’s going to be a mama when she grows up. Right now that seems to be the best career she can think of. Which is gratifying, I guess 🙂 I remember thinking that. I’m pretty happy with it, so really, I am just totally stoked to see her doing this.
Her father takes great pains to tell her it won’t happen for SOME TIME.
Speaking of Stephen. He’s a love. I’m so glad he isn’t working the oilfields. Obviously we are spending a lot of time with the baby, and I know she is feeling insecure about that at times, so we’ve both been getting some one on one time with her, every day. She and her dad watched all the original star wars movies together and she LOVED them, which was fun for Stephen. She didn’t show as much interest in LOTR, but now she’s into watching him play Bayonetta on the xbox before bed. He usually puts her to bed while I nurse Wolf, and if she wakes later before we go to bed (or, more likely, just doesn’t go to sleep) I go in to her and lay down with her and talk and sing and cuddle. Sometimes he comes in to talk a little bit with us. It’s good. I think she still remembers and is slightly anxious about how he left us for those few months a year ago. She always asks where he is and when he is coming home again when she wakes up, and a while back S told me that she usually asks him if he’s coming home after work the next day. Lately I’ve heard him say goodnight, and as he closes her door, “I’ll see you after work tomorrow” ❤ I'm glad she gets lots of one on one time with him on the weekends – he's made a habit of taking her out sledding, or to his parent's house, and last weekend they both went to the pool. We took her out of preschool because it was tiring her out and all three of us were getting stressed out with a rushed morning routine 3 days a week. She was angry about being rushed and brushed and washed and fed and dressed. Wolf was mad about being bundled up twice, having to wait in a over heated class in all his outdoor clothes, not being allowed to nap when he wanted, being woken up to go back out, and having snow and wind blow into his tiny face. And me? I was tired as fuck in the mornings and got tired of yelling. Now they tend to sleep in until they want to get up, breakfast can take an hour, and things are much calmer. I thought it would be really hard to be cooped up with miss social butterfly here, but it's actually been pretty chill. It helps to have my folks around to take us out once in awhile, and now that Wolf is bigger we can go out once in awhile, too. The TV helps, absolutely, but I'm not going to beat myself up about that. I know how much we got out last summer when I was uncomfortable with the pregnancy – and I know we'll make up for it. Honestly I'm so looking forward to spring and the advent of toddler hood. This town has so much to do, and is so pretty, and the weather is so nice. AND I WON"T BE PREGNANT.
IT"S GONNA BE GREAT.
THese were taken at my folk’s place today. She showed up wearing her tutu – she had wanted to wear her Bawway clothes – black tights and her pink sparkly shirt – to their place and when we got there they had a surprise for her – a new tutu to keep at their place so she could dance for them. She promptly put the new skirt on and Wolf got to wear the old one 🙂 He was very happy! She’s been really into ballet for a bit and we finally had an epiphany – DUDE THE YOUTUBES HAS BAWWAY.
Observe.
Since she started watching things like Swan Lake and The Nutcracker I’ve seen a real change in her dancing. She’s imitating them! It’s super fucking cute, and it reminds me of how much I used to love to dance. She just loves jumping and flailing and it’s so cool to see that she’s emoting while she does it, not just going crazy with hyperactivity. There are dance classes here… maybe one day 🙂 For now, I just really want to find videos and music to play downstairs for her, where there is lots of room. Tchaikovsky is an old favourite, and I haven’t listened to his music is a very long time, not since I was a kid and listening to the Nutcracker at Christmastime.
I’m getting pretty tired… Stephen is out at a movie with his brother David and it’s my bedtime. Here are a few more photos for now, and I’m signing out.
Things are good. We’re all together, we are warm, healthy, well fed, have tons of books and toys, and while we yell lots, I’m pretty sure she laugh more.
Whiskey Jac 