Yoda does not use light sabres in the van and other tales from the dark side

Sometimes I cannot believe that spatter that comes out of my mouth. Dribble, drabble … close your mouth when you eat …. Wa, wa, wa … no it is not alright to pick your bothers nose. You get the picture.

Then sometimes I have to laugh at myself. Not the quiet little snicker that comes from reading something interesting; nope, not for me. It is that gut-wrenching, can't explain why I am laughing through the tears one *insert maniacal grin here* where people look at you on the street and speed call Children's Aid.

I had a moment like that this weekend where I had to put a stop to dangerous behaviour while I drove. The conversation went like this.

Me: Aiden, stop swinging that stick around in the van. You will hit someone.
Aiden: But, I am being Yoda. And it is not a stick. It is a light sabre.
Me: (no hesitation here) Yes, but even Yoda's mommy had a rule about having light sabres in the x-wing. You could puncture the side of the vehicle and send us all careening out of control and the anti-gravity devices would cause total devastation.

Aiden: (Looks around and lowers stick to ground with very concerned look on face).

Less than 2 seconds later…

Me: Keegan, stop swinging that stick around in the van. You will hit someone
Keegan: I, Yoda.

Rinse and repeat cycle. Some of you may ask why I would not just ban sticks in the van. You see, there is a general ban against all beating devices both in the house and in the van however, those sticks - they be wiley. They sneak up on you and jump inside vehicles when you least expect them. Or so I am told.

And rather than swinging my arms around in the van to snatch and confiscate said devices I have found it easier to speak in the language of the natives.

Just to be very clear: I am completely aware that my children will need years of counselling just to recover from the parenting they have been subjected to. And there was not even any alcohol involved. When my kids grow up they will face the question (shown by their belief in the impossible and co-dependence) "So, were your parents alcoholics?" "No, man. I wish they had been. Might have been easier than the suspension of disbelief. You never knew what was going to come at you next."

One Red Paper Clip

I found this fascinating blog yesterday while I was er... on my break ....

It seems this guy in Montreal decided he wanted a house. But he had no money so he wanted to trade his way to getting the house. This blog simply confirms my theory that all Montrealers are whacked.

So, being young, poor and broke, all he has to start with is "one red paperclip", hence the name. Now, he is appearing on US and Canadian television shows and notes proudly that he has reached the pinacle of seven radio interviews and two television interviews on one day. This guy is now the happy owner of a cube van and is looking for someone to trade up with him. A cube van. From a paperclip.

This is absolutely fascinating and I, for one, hope he ends up with a mansion. Innovation and sloth mixed together? He needs to be rewarded for this!

Fighting Your Canadian Heritage

So, it stands to reason that all people are different. One would think that having the same experiences in life, coming from the same family, etc. you would be “more” similar to your siblings than say, a perfect stranger. Boy, would that be a mistaken assumption.

My four year old is rebelling against hockey. As a Canadian, and coming from a long line of hockey supporters, I am shocked. I may not understand how to properly call offside (who really does?) but as a family we have attended NHL games, done tournaments and taken part in all the requisite Canadian pass times. We all own sticks, have a net and can be seen playing shinny – road hockey, for the international readers.

I have offered to take my middlest to an Ottawa 67s game this Friday, special time just for him and I watching a hockey game. “No, thanks,” he says. Can we just play x-box instead?

There are enough issues in life that I will have to force compliance: you MUST do your homework, you MUST put your laundry away. I am absolutely, fundamentally NOT forcing a sport on the kid. He complains about going to his skating class and is miserable on the ice.

He needs to learn dexterity though. He is a clumsy kid and has had (minor) problems at school because he hugs too hard (and made a little girl fall down) and today, at reading circle, he fell on a little girl (I pray it was a different one than the recipient of the hug.) Part of it is that girls at that age are pansies; prone to crying fits at the least thing. However, part of that is needing dexterity on Aiden’s side.

Hockey might not help him with learning co-ordination but I am looking for suggestions at this point. Gymnastics? Soccer? Baseball? If he continues to struggle with coordination, match that together with the fact that he sometimes spits when he talks because he has two missing teeth, he is going to have trouble finding friends. I have sired a geek; an academic; I thought I would be more proud!!!

And then there were two!

Life is all relative.

I can remember having my first child and being stunned at the grocery store when there were no clerks to help carry my groceries to the car. After all, I had a baby with me. Who could be expected to cope with a baby?

I would notice mothers of more than one child and be appalled that sometimes their kids would seem to wander off or that the mothers were not paying attention to the children one hundred percent of the time. I have learned in life that close minded thoughts like this are a little like karma: it is guaranteed that they will come back and bite you in the ass when you least expect it.

Now, as the mother of three boys, trips to the grocery store generally involve at least one child. And I lovingly remember how much more pliable a baby is than a squirming toddler. And when we are out as a group, I can only hope that I can keep the kids corralled (sic?) in one place and not breaking bones someplace. It is a little like Linette Skavo from Desparate Housewives, except that I lost the sexy undergarments somewhere along the line ... er, and the will to try to tame the masses. Three kids can wear you down.

Flashback to this weekend:

I lost a spouse to the Canadian tradition of hockey tournaments. Out of town with the eldest at a hotel (bless their souls) filled with other seven year old hockey players and their dads. It was an exhausting weekend of sitting by the indoor pool and reading a book. An exhausting weekend of rating the abilities of seven year old boys to make farting noises with their underarms. Gratefully, my son was not the winner of this competition.

And my weekend, of just two boys was delightful. We went train riding. Literally.

There is a light rail train in Ottawa called the O Train.
Understand this: it covers a total of about 10 kilometers going from "close to downtown" to "closer to downtown" over a series of five stops. It is not expensive and the total trip is less than 10 minutes, assuming you don't ride back and then repeat the cycle four times.

There are photos coming as soon as I can get the from the laptop to the blog, a seeminging easy thing for most bloggers. Decidely complicated when helped by six additional hands. Anyway, I digress. The challenge that I find with three boys is that there is a six year gap between the youngest and the oldest. The almost eight year old is bored of anything that does not involve 1)friends 2)technology 3) food. Preferably all three at the same time.

BTW - Here is the map of the path taken by the train:

It was an absolute hoot. My four (and three quarters) year old brought a friend and we changed seats at every station. We talked about the tunnels. We checked out the connections between the cars. We went over an "ocean" (who would have thunk that Ottawa had an ocean) and we were pretty sure we spotted a whale. It is amazing how life is seen through the eyes of children. There were people on the train there that take it every day (it is the equivalent of a subway) and never see the wonder that these four year olds were able to see.

And, of course, there were snacks. The one bit of advice that I would give is that jello jigglers are NOT a good train snack, despite the assurances of people under three feet tall.

Voting Assistance

The challenge with a federal election in Canada is that many people (myself included) simply do not have the time to get informed about the issues. I have been following only the information that is directly related to me and had made up my mind about who I was going to vote for. Then I received this "poll" that apparently places each of the positions of the major parties (though I am not sure that I would call the Bloc a major party) in a questionnaire format. I was stunned by the results.

Naked Olympics

I have seen one of the wonders of the world. And I think it should be mainstreamed.

You see, my kids have this thing about being naked. Last night was supposed to be swimming night but, it appears, the daycare person indulged child number two and let him make, bake, then eat, two Easy Bake Oven cakes. By the time I got home, he was holding his stomach, would not eat his supper and was making frequent unsuccessful attempts in the washroom. I decided it was not in our best interest to put him in a public pool. And not in the best interest of the other swimmers either.

So, we needed to get some excercise. Er, "we" being the figurative word. After cleaning up from supper, we went upstairs to read and have some quiet time. The clothes, they slip off more quietly than a cheap stripper, I tell ya! Before I knew it, Aiden was sitting beside me in his underwear and Keegan was asking for "elp e. I naked too!"

Well, I am smarter than I look. I am not falling for that naked - NOT POTTY TRAINED - thing again. It was messy enough last time. But I succumbed to the almost naked thing and the running began.

Apparently naked bodies feel good running in the wind. There was jumping on couches (yes, I allow that on the old basement furniture), there were races back and forth and finally there was jumping over each other. All excellent choices for the next Olympics. I think I will submit the idea.

The Endless Forest

This is totally plageurized from a web site that I visit from time to time. Usually the gaming information is both out of my league and out of my interest but I frequent there to spy on my spouse :-0.


Sometimes, an idea for a game comes along that is so breathtaking, so novel, that it stuns you.

Not necessarily in a good way, mind you.

And so it is with The Endless Forest.

Here's the game description
(from the website: http://www.tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest/):
You are a stag, a male deer. So are the other players. You meet each other in an endless forest on the internet. The setting is idyllic, the atmosphere peaceful. You communicate with one another through sounds and body language.

The Endless Forest is a virtual place where you can play with your friends. There are no goals to achieve or rules to follow. You just steer your deer through the forest and see what happens.

Currently The Endless Forest consists of a forest, a mysterious ruin and as many deer as there are players at any given time. You can play the game anonymously but we encourage you to name your deer so other players can recognize you. Although not goal-oriented, there are several activities that you can engage in. Nothing very demanding or violent. Just fun things to do in a nice environment.

Nothing personal, dudes, but if my friends are pretending to be deer in an online game, I'm getting new friends.

And what are the "activities" that can be "engaged" in? Why, white-knuckle moments like
--Lie down
--Stand up
--Rub a tree
--Hop
--Listen
--Roar
--Sniff

See, this is exactly why I don't want to be a deer.


I know what you're thinking: I made this up. How I wish I had.

Challenges with the Public Education System

The fact that I think there are huge problems with the current education system are only touched upon briefly here. I hope. In the light of yet another challenge with the school, I found this and absolutely love it. This was written by George Reavis, who was an assistant superintendent of the Cincinnati Public Schools.


Once upon a time the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of a "new world" so they organized a school. They had adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, better than his instructor. But he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming in order to practice running. This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school so nobody worried about that, except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running but had a nervous breakdown because of so much makeup work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down. He also developed a "charlie horse" from overexertion and then got a C in climbing and D in running.

The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing class, he beat all the others to the top of the tree but insisted on using his own way to get there

At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceeding well and also run, climb and fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian.

The prairie dogs stayed out of school and fought the tax levy because the administration would not add digging and burrowing to the curriculum. They apprenticed their children to a badger and later joined the groundhogs and gophers to start a successful private school.


I guess the moral is obvious.

Tic Tac Toe with a Twist

This is an awesome learning tool for the young ones! I hope I am not alone in the fact that I get stuck playing tic tac toe for hours.

http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/ttt.cgi

Moulding Developing Minds

My two year old is figuring out the world. He has an excellent vocabulary, though he is sometimes hard to understand. And he now has graduated to having his own thoughts, independent of the conversation at hand.

Driving home last night, with AC/DC playing in the van (a whole other story), he asks me, "Do elephants swim?" It sounded more like "epants wim?" It was out of the blue and extra points should be awarded to the translation expert who manages to deciper a question - in toddler language - that has nothing to do with the current conversation. In his defence, we were coming home from his swimming lessons.

I looked around frantically for that source of all information useless and settled knowlingly on my signigicant other. Yes, he assured me elephants can swim. I pass that information along to a satisfied response. But we were not done there.

"Epants fly?" he asks. No, I explained. Epants ... er ... Elephants do not fly. He has developed this thing when he gets excited: he stutters his "w's"; nothing else. But w-w-w-w-why and w-w-w-w-what are hilarious. I knew it was coming. I was prepared. I braced for it. W-w-w-w-why mommy? So, I intelligently explained the elephants were too heavy to fly.

Only to be quickly shot down by the know-it-all seven year old. Mom, he yells (to be heard over the blaring thrash music) planes are heavier than elephants. All three children look and me and there is the preverbial silence in the van. What will mom say? Rather than talking about the relative distribution of weight over mass and um, THE WINGS, I mention the super powerful engines that planes are equipped with.

Effectively shot down, the seven year old yells to his brother - let's play the opposites game. Elephants don't swim. Elephants fly. Poor, poor youngest brother. At two you have no idea what an opposites are. The poor thing looked at me confused and continued to thrash to the racket - er, music.

Week One Down

For those of you following the nanny saga, the first (and hardest) week was survived by all.

It is always hard to have someone else looking after your children during the day. Sage advice came to me early on to watch for changes in my children. This could signify problems that you cannot know about not being there.

There are changes in my children and I am not sure how to handle them. My children make their beds in the morning. My children are cleaning up after themselves. They got in trouble for something last week (fighting, I think) and they informed me that Banana had taken away the X-Box for the following day. They did not complain and whine and lament about how unfair life was. They told me: we did not listen and Banana took away the X-Box, matter-of-fact like.

Is she different from me? Yup, a little. But I am not sure that those differences are a bad thing. While I tend to allow my children the time to enjoy their youth and tend to pick up a great deal of their slack, it is a nice relief to have them being responsible for some of their own chores. It is not all about work though. The kids are doing crafts and baking muffins.

And she cleans. In the past, I have spent around four hours every Saturday morning catching up on chores that did not get done during the week. Instead, she vacuumed the upstairs (except my room) while the boys put their laundry away. I got a chance to enjoy my Saturday morning a little more than normal. I think I could get used to this.

Web Developers On Acid

The Hippo Song

Privacy Protection

The future is near.
Nothing is safe.
Your identity.
Your personal records.

It's like a bad Tarantino movie. Uh, I mean a good Tarantino movie.

Here's what ordering a pizza in the year 2010 will be like:

http://www.adcritic.com/interactive/view.php?id=5927

Interesting parenting approach

I have started to hate Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I love the bows and the wrap and the smiles. It is the colds and the flu that seem to go hand-in-hand with this that I find less than heart-warming.

Over the Christmas season, my youngest developed an ear infection. Of course, New Year's Day was when it reared its ugly head and there was not a doctor's office open for miles. So, my husband placed a call to the emerg of the local hospital and explained the situation. We were assured they were not busy yet (it was 6:30 am) so I trotted off with him in tow to get a prescription.

He was darling. Fully medicated and feeling no pain, he read a book in the waiting room, watched a little of the hockey highlights and played with the 1-2 toys they had. When it was our turn, he trotted along beside me (in his PJs to the triage nurse) and stopped dead in his tracks. He can be nervous around strangers. And remember, he is sick. And well, two.

The nurse wanted him up on a chair. He refused so I sat on the chair and pulled him up on my lap. The nurse, in her nursely authority voice informed me: " You know mom, it is actually good for them to say 'no' every once in a while."

A few years back this would have sent me into a tailspin. Was I being too lenient? Would I raise a delinquent because I did not force him to sit in a chair on his own at the Emerg department? Who was I to think that I knew anything about this parenting job?

Having done this before with other children I politely thanked her for her advice and (ok, maybe there was a 'tone' to my response) I informed her that Keegan was not my first little boy and I had dealt with two year olds with ear infections in the past. I was pretty comfortable picking my battles and this was not one that I was going to win. Nor was it really worth it.

Her response, while it sounds snarky, was honestly not. "Oh, so you're an expert," she said. "Three boys?" I quickly told her that I was not a parenting expert, simply a mother who had found the rhythm that worked for each of her children and their lifestyle. That I chose NOT to have a power struggle with a sick two year old.

Her following honesty surprised me: She told me that she too had three kids. Two girls and a boy and that she had had her children young. She wished that she had had the wisdom to pick the fights that are important to win and to let her children win a couple sometimes too. It might mean that they would now be a bigger part of her life.

I have no idea whether I am picking the right issues. I have no idea whether I am too lenient or too strict. I know that my seven year old is a wonderful child, well-behaved and liked by his teachers. My four year old can be a difficult work in progress but I have every faith that by seven or eight, he too will have learned the social graces needed for successful relationships in life. As for the two year old? Bets are still out on that one.

Day One: The Nanny vs. the Four Year Old

All children have their blessings. Some of them just make those blessings harder to see at the beginning. :-)

Aiden is very strong-willed. Of my three, he is the brave one, having to undergo oxygen masks and hospitals at a very young age. As he explores his environment and his personality develops this strength can show advantages and well, NOT advantages.

I had thought that the youngest child would prove to be the most challenging for a new caregiver. At only two, he is quite attached to my husband and I and certainly not used to be cared for by strangers. According to the sitter though, he was as good as gold yesterday. I could hear the tension in her voice when she spoke about Aiden though.

You see, there is very little in Aiden's life that HE has control over. The middle child of three boys he often gets hand-me-down clothes and toys and plays the same games with the younger siblings of Liam's friends. His reaction to this can be very difficult. He is stubborn, nee obstinate. And will argue the colour of the sky with you until you want to pull our his hair.

If the caregiver suggested going outside, he wanted to stay inside. When the caregiver made chicken wraps for lunch, (which he loves) he refused to eat them. He fought with (and hit) his younger brother repeatedly. Apparently, he sat on the cat, which I have never seen him do. All in all, he was in a mood.

I have offered coping strategies like "maybe Monopoly is not the kind of game that three boys 2 - 7 can play together easily" ... "sure, 2 - 3 hours of xbox is alright over the holidays". That kind of thing.

All in all, they need to find their routine together. The caregiver "banana" needs to learn to negotiate and explain to Aiden, differing greatly from the simply commands that Liam and Keegan will (sometimes) listen to. She will need to learn to see the huge capacity for love and the tenacity of his loyalty. And he will need to learn to cope better with others and learn the social graces that come from bowing down, even though you completely believe the sky to be pink.

I just hope this works out because the other boys seem to really like her.

Showdown at the Salon

I’m engaged in a showdown. There are many times in life where one needs to muster their strength and rally the troops. And now is that time in my life.

You see, I am a push over for hairstylists that “know” more than me. I have been given hair cuts that look terrible on me with the stylist (not hair dresser for the record) raving at how slick I look. And me handing over $75.

The last time was only a few weeks ago. I had thought I was strong but it seems these people with professional hair stylist credentials are able to brow beat and manipulate me. And, for the record, they are holding scissors while we are discussing the potential of my bone straight hair. Oooohhh…. Jennifer Aniston, I get... Oh, wow, if we could just layer/blunt/stagger cut this and use all the latest techniques ...

I ended up walking out of the salon with my mangled hair blowing in the breeze. For the umpteenth time, my hair is layered. It looks like a rat’s nest. While I requested professional, the stylist kept assuring me that the “just hopped out of bed” look is really sexy. I said I am grateful to finally be making as much as a hooker – not that I wanted to LOOK like a hooker.

It will take me months to grow this out. And I’ll learn ‘em: I will never venture back to that salon. Instead, I will find yet another butcher with scissors who “knows” my hair better than I do. Why is it that I can be strong and professional in so many other areas and I turn into a bowl of jelly in a salon chair. It must be the weapons.