bambamblog

Savour It

For the most part, Oliver has adjusted amazingly well to having a sibling—he loves George, especially now that she's out of adorable blob phase and can actually play with him, or at least try to. She reveres him and of course finds him hilarious; their favourite game right now is chase, at which she is at a distinct disadvantage given even fast crawling can't keep up with running—but she doesn't seem to mind, and sometimes he even drops to his fours.

Still, there is the whole problem of my having to divide my attention between two. He's overall patient, but he also makes it clear how much he wants alone time with me, which I try (with Craig's help) to give him whenever possible.

When I pick him up at school, his first question following the usual "Can I wear my Canucks shirt now?" (this shirt still makes up at least one-third of our daily conversation—we're into year two of the obsession) is,

"Can I do something with you?"

Then,

"Do you want to do something with me?"

Second to Canucks attire, with Oliver, is a big deal. To be honest, his bond with me is sometimes overwhelming; it can be hard to catch my breath sometimes from the sheer force of it. There are nights when I'm told at least ten times how much I am liked and loved.

See? What am I complaining about. Life changes in the blink of an eye. This is a blink. There will be many, many years in the future where I will return to this blink and try to remember every blessed, intense second of it.

The Bad With the Good

Sometimes it’s tempting to write up only the cutest, most brilliant parts of your kids’ existence and interactions with you: anecdotes that prove how loving and (implicitly) exceptional they are, and which (implicitly, ever-so implicitly) reinforce that you’re a wonderful, open-minded parent who is raising a pure joy to the world.

I love writing up that material. But sometimes—imagine!—such fodder is scarce around here. There are three-tantrum nights where it’s pointless to put music on because the screaming, even from a closed door upstairs, is so insane. There are horrendous rejections of grandparents and kind friends. The other day, there was the first “I hate you!” (delivered at the top of lungs in a booze store, necessitating an order change in terms of quantity and alcohol content.)

I want to document the “bad” stuff a little more. When I think of it, my allegedly angelic behaviour as a child has provided fewer memories than my brother Dylan’s heinous acts of defiance, stubbornness, and outright thievery when he was little. Dylan lopped off plastic superheroes’ heads and basically funded an elementary school gang from the contents of my parents’ wallets. He teased me mercilessly and got booted from too many classrooms to count. There was an incident with a BB gun. He is now an unbelievably kind, interesting, and wonderful 40-year-old father of two girls and PhD holder.

All to say … Oliver is OFTEN bad. Yes, bad. Funny and … bad. We love him desperately but he tests us QUITE A LOT. He will likely turn out just fine, just like my brother.

Episode 1: Oliver Is Sometimes Extremely Not Very Polite

[We are at the Ron’s Diner for breakfast with my dad. Georgia is sitting beatifically or at least quietly as she stuffs her mouth with pancakes. Oliver is squirming around, falling out of his chair, and making evil faces at his poor Grumpa (my dad) who is only trying to engage him. I have hollandaise sauce all over me as I try to shove as much food in as possible before being jostled again by Oliver. It is NOT relaxing.

Craig finally steps up to the plate—someone has to—and reads a respectful riot act to Oliver. He delivers it calmly and patiently, much more patiently than I could do. The response, delivered just as calmly (actually under his breath)?]

“Zip it, dad.”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Zip. It.”

Oliver is 3 3/4.

It was an interesting day.

 

 

 

Fashion Dilemma

I'm finding it pretty hard to dress for my needs right now. I need to feel like I'm not really forty; I need to not succumb to sweat pants and forget that I still have a few pounds to lose; I need to be more than a mom; yet I need to be comfortable and flexible when I'm out with the kids. These needs are contradictory, so I'm usually a "fashion" mish-mash when I'm out (though not, I hope, as bad as it was in the months after O): stretchy jeans and a t-shirt are the norm.

I thought I was doing okay until a few weeks ago O came up behind me as I was crouching with Georgia showing her something among a group of people.

"MOM! Your bum is hanging out of your pants!! It's out!"

Much laughter from the group, and I joined in of course, horrified. It seems stretchy jeans stretch out all ways and are quite accomodating of a bum's need to be released from its confines.

So now I'm cinching up the belts, but I'm not oblivious to the fact that this succeeds in locking the lower bum in but actually encourages the upper bum (i.e., the back muffin) to escape gleefully out the top. What to do?

I guess a little more diet and exercise ("I'm a busy mom" doesn't quite cut it when it comes to actual results). That or ... the dreaded mom jeans, defined by the website StyleHog as: "Unflattering, tapered, high-waisted, pleated creations whose sole purpose is to add comfort to a woman's wardrobe, while simultaneously destroying her appearance."

As if you need a visual representation, but still, enjoy: SNL mom jeans fauxmercial.

 

 

 

 

Helpful O

I made a so-so Chinese tofu-veggie dish tonight (too salty and too sweet, ugh). With O so fixed on plain dishes these days, probably as a result of some of his pickier yet cool friends at school, I knew I had to sell it. "It's CHINESE!" I said. "Did you know there are dishes from around the world, exciting dishes you've never tried, Oliver?" "Like what, mama?" "Like our awesome Chinese tonight, but I also like Indian, Italian, and Lebanese." "I love Lemonade, too, mama, but it's not a food, it's a drink." "No, Lebanese, O. It's all garlicky and lemony." "Yes, mama. It's called Lemonade."

Thank you O. And for eating approximately four bites of my unsuccessful dish.

Wondrous G

I gotta get it down, I know I do. I look back on all the entries on Oliver and I know I would remember less than half of what happened had I not documented it here. But so far, I’ve written so little on Georgia.

The story with G is both more complicated and simpler than with O. O was and is so outrageous that his exploits demand a public venue. And writing it out makes it easier to laugh than to cry; the two emotions are so close when it comes to parenting O. I am rarely, rarely quietly soaking up the best of O: I am hit over the head with it, sometimes literally. He either makes you want to pull your hair out or cover him with kisses. The other day at a christening: “Mama, can you pull my pants up? I just peed under the table with Molly” (and ripped up all the grass to boot). The other night in the tub: Me: “Should I get out now to make some room for you?” O: “No, I love you too much.”

With G, things are quieter. Of course part of that is that she’s only eight months old; but O was yammering and yelling his head off at eight months. G coos, and cries, and laughs, but mostly she smiles. Mostly she concerns herself with letting you know you’re the sweetest thing she’s ever laid eyes on, and every time she sees you, it’s like she’s surprised to have been blessed anew. She looks up and simply beams. You smile back and she looks like she might topple over from gratitude. When she’s really thrilled with something, G succumbs to a fit of snorting and sniffling that scrunches up her whole face and her toothless grin doubles in size. She’s normally a beauty, but this show of ecstasy is almost creature-like in its bizarre adorableness.

Like all second children, G watches her elder sibling closely and is particularly chuffed when she’s allowed to follow in his footsteps, like when we guide her down slides or push her slowly in a baby swing. She struggles for O’s attention when he’s not bestowing it vigorously of his own accord; if it’s won, she gets a look of pure satisfaction and adoration. If anyone’s going to make Georgia laugh, it’s Oliver.

I am writing this in bed, in the dark, with Georgia dreaming beside me. We have at most three nights left before she leaves my bed to be sleep-trained, away from me and nursing, into her crib in another room, soothed for the first few nights by her dad and eventually by no one but herself. It seems impossible. I can’t imagine not sleeping with her, though she now wakes at least four times a night and I can’t function most mornings I’m so tired. In the night, when she cries out expectantly, whether it’s for the first or seventh time, I turn over lightning quick to put her back to sleep. And stroke her downy hair. And hold hands. And listen to her breathe as she settles again. 

I will miss this. But I have written it.

 



Move Over Mom

A couple of months ago I wrote of my struggles to provide a school-approved, Oliver-approved, me-approved lunch for the young lad to take to school. Since then there have been highs and lows and things in between. The most successful efforts have involved very, very plain sandwiches on mini-buns. The biggest failures are always the ones into which I invest the most love, sweat, and tears: heavenly pasta salads or hearty soups. It's been an emotional rollercoaster, in short.

Tonight, Oliver declared that he would pack his lunchbag himself. After every couple of items, he would run downstairs and yell at Craig and Georgia: "I am packing my lunch ALL BY MYSELF!". Then he'd come up and scour the fridge for more items, employing me as no more than a wrapper and bagger. He even buttered the bread and placed the ham in the middle of his sandwich.

The contents of Oliver's first-ever do-it-himself lunch:

• 1 ham sandwich
• 1 salmon cake
• 2 olives
• 3 cherry tomatoes
• 1 pear
• 1 candy
• 1 yogurt
• 1 pkg raisins
• 1 snack-thing Goldfish

We all had to peruse the final product a couple of times ("Mom! Dad! It's going to be such a HEALTHY lunch!"), and then it was zipped up and put on a fridge-shelf of Oliver's choosing.

Oh, my little man.

 

Perfect Is the Enemy of ... Edible

Oliver and I are at it again: another night of gourmet baking (okay, maybe our third or fourth ever) and destroying the kitchen. We continue to knock it out of the park on presentation marks alone; tonight’s creation rivalled even our cupcakes in terms of colour and texture. 
 
We found an exciting kid’s food site, Weelicious, and set our sights high—Fruit on the Bottom Tapioca—despite my vague feelings of revulsion about the gummy, fish-egg-evoking stuff. It (see image to left) looked so fresh … and that gleaming white-on-red contrast! The only thing we could imagine improving was the lack of garnish, so we popped out to our handy herb garden out front and picked whatever mint the earwigs hadn’t hit.

The mint, it turned out, was the best thing about it (that’s why you don’t see it in our image below). We tried to swallow but it kinda hurt and we worried a little about ever being able to open our mouths again. We tried to make dada eat two servings but he wouldn’t. Even Baby Sis seemed uninterested. So, we thanked good God above that dada hadn’t yet eaten all the Haagen Daz in the freezer and polished that off.

The way we see it, we don’t want to peak too soon. And no, I don't know what that squiggly orange thing amid the muck-crust is. And yeah, that's our wet laundry hanging on wood chairs. It's clean. Just wet.

Private Parts

Okay, I know the thrill, the hysteria really, of mentioning the unmentionables. Of scatalogical humour. I think it was pounded literally into my head by my brother’s bum when we were growing up: I cannot count the number of times he pinned me down to fart on my head. I get it, and I still laugh at potty jokes despite myself.

So I do empathize with Oliver’s current fascination with all things related to bums or genitalia, especially as material for comedy. The best jokes always relate somehow to the taboo. And Oliver is three, a time when body parts hitherto unexplored are suddenly irresistible. But there is a limit, and we are reaching it.

The other day, when informed that the day’s summer camp activities would involve going swimming at a public wading pool:

Oliver: “Who am I going with?”

Craig: “With your class and Miss Laura.”

Oliver: “Oh, you mean Miss Laura’s vagina? Miss Laura’s vagina will be taking me swimming?”

Craig: [Unsuccessful suppression of laughter, then …] “Uh, no. Miss Laura herself. We don’t talk like that about our teachers.”

Oliver: “About her vagina?”

Craig: “No. We don’t talk like that.”

Oliver [laughing hysterically]: “Vagina vagina vagina vagina!”

They were driving in the car. It was hot. The windows were down. At a stoplight, Craig pulled up beside another car driven by a young woman. Her windows were also down. You know what happened.

Oliver [leaning head out of window, and he’s LOUD]: “Vagina!”

Craig smiles sheepishly at the woman, who is thankfully laughing, as if to say, “Crazy kid … sorry about that … you know how it is.”

Oliver: “VA-GI-NA!”

It’s amazing how long it can take, says Craig, to roll up your car windows. Seemingly a lifetime.

For more (as if you need more) on our v-word problem, see Blogthecat.

 

 

 

Talking Points

When Oliver turned three last month, he really took it upon himself to shake off the lowly two’s and assume his rightful place as a big boy. He wished the year adieu—“Goodbye, two,” he said solemnly, walking on Elgin Street the morning of his birthday—and, as if he had it all mapped out, he updated his persona and activities to suit the new times.

In particular, Oliver is done with simple declarations and plain old fart and poo jokes. The latter will always entertain (duh!), but he’s now experimenting with more sophisticated humour, word play, and stories. I don’t think we’re alone, as parents, in delighting in the awkward, foreign weight of the “adultisms” (my word for the throwaway phrases we all get used to using) he’s peppering into his language.

It started with “actually”:

• “Actually, I’ll have raisins with my oatmeal.”
• “Actually, these are not pants, they’re jeans.”
• “Actually, is my Spiderman mask still in the Jesus dryer?”

Okay, maybe not the Jesus part, but you get the gist of it.

Now he’s progressed to reminding me of things (not a bad idea):

• O: “I’d like to remind you of something, mama.”
• Me: “Yes?”
• O: “I’d like to remind you that when I was a baby, when I was just borned, my titi [his penis] was attached to your bellybutton by a string.”
• Me: “Well, not your titi so much as your bellybutton, kind of.”
• O: “Mama, I’d like to remind you that when I was a baby, my bellybutton was attached …kind of … to your ... bellybutton ... by a string. [Pause] Why mama? Why?”
• Me: [Pause] [Pause] “Thank you for reminding me, Oliver.”

It’s with gusto, too, that O is trotting out his new sense of language. Gusto and a touch of sanctimony. For about a year, I have neglected to tell Oliver that his pronunciation of “orangutan,” that smelly jungle swinger, is well, wrong. That’s because his own version is so danged cute: “tangorang.” But now that he’s all big and worldly, I felt I owed him the truth the other night when one of the monkeys appeared in a bedtime story. I was a little nervous about what his reaction would be; he’s not in love with being corrected (a trait inherited from his father). I needn’t have fretted.

• Me: “Oliver, you know that, actually, that monkey is an O-RANG-A-TAN? An O, RANG, A, TAN, you know?”
• O, with the merest of blinks: “Yes, or, ‘Tangorang,’ mama. ‘Tangorang’ for short."

That was a peaceful night. On not so peaceful nights, sometimes we offer Craig up as a threat to O for bad behaviour. Is this a good idea? No. Will it scar their relationship forever? Maybe. But it does make for some good humour. For example, when Oliver was wriggling madly out of protest on our insistence he get in the bath the other night, we informed him that Craig would go to sleep with him rather than me if he didn’t hop in pronto. His response:

• “Go to bed with dada? [Pause]. Not mama? [Pause] We can’t have THAT!”

Three is definitely, for us, the transition from O’s merely enjoying communicating and acquiring words to really playing with them and exploring concepts. One of these concepts is friendship. He definitely associates friends with good things. When he and Craig were traipsing through Halifax’s beautiful Public Gardens on Spring Road a couple of weeks ago, he noted, “I used to live here with my friends.” Hmm. And whenever he sees kids his age when we’re out walking, whether he knows them or not, he says, “Those are friends of mines [sic].”

No matter how much of a big boy Oliver is now and sophisticated with language, there’s one concept he can’t grasp; but none of us can. We had to put our kitty down last week (very sad) and we thought it had kind of gone over O's head since he wasn’t too troubled the day it happened. But tonight, he wanted kitty back.

• O: “Where is kitty?”
• Me: “Oliver, he’s gone now. He died.”
• O: “How much did he die?”
• Me: “All the way.”
• O: “Oh.”
• O: “I want kitty back.”

So we hugged. Sometimes talking is good, and sometimes hugging is better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Beauty

Oliver called me beautiful tonight. We were lying in bed after a tough evening caused by what we suspect was a tough day at school. He is betwixt and between being little and big and can't decide which he prefers. On the one hand, he’s fascinated by the older kids at school, who inhabit the upstairs, or “Casa,” of the Montessori he attends. On the other, he’s loath to give up the leadership status and security he’s achieved in the downstairs toddler program. He oscillates between wanting to go upstairs, where he is welcome because he is now potty-trained (yay!), and aching to stay downstairs where he “remembers” the kids (his way of saying he knows them). The confusion manifests in his being wild, whiny, and prone to nonsense talk, fake laughter, and other irritating tics.

Except at night, when I lie down with him before he goes to sleep. Then I hear a bit more about the hurts and insults of the day, and his wired body gradually releases its tension. It was during this time tonight that Oliver called me beautiful. “You are beautiful, mama,” he said, sort of out of the blue and sort of in context. He was gazing at my face, but I don’t think he was assessing it for its aesthetic qualities. But neither do I think he is so sophisticated as to be referring to anything like inner beauty. Three-year-olds are pretty superficial in how they look at things.

What I do think is that he was telling me he loves me. He was looking at my face and seeing beauty because he was loving me a lot at that moment. And wow, did I ever feel beautiful. Beyond that, I felt panicky. “I always want him to think I’m beautiful,” I thought, and immediately worried about getting older (temporarily missing the beauty = love connection). Then I thought about how I look at my mom. I remember, as a kid, being gobsmacked by her beauty. I watched her among her friends: always shining but in such a natural, inclusive, unthreatening way. I watched her dress: bohemian, ethnic chic enhanced by a willowy frame. I watched her at work: serious, passionate, and determined to pursue her career despite (or because of) me and my brother. I watched her joke, get mad, sing, cry, laugh, and love us. Just … love us. And she was so, so beautiful.

My mom is in her mid-sixties today. She is still so, so beautiful.

Here she is last summer with O. As I was saying.