Halloween Fun

 Cole's friend Evan visiting us.

 Everyone in the crib.

My nephew the lion.

Holding On to Peace

My sister has a friend from her church named Sarah. And this friend now has four children under the age of three. She has a son who will be three in January, twins who are a year and a half, and a newborn who is only a few weeks old.

I have been reading Sarah's blog. And it is very unlike mine. Instead of ranting and raving a lot about how difficult it is to be a stay-at-home mother for a while, she talks about her faith and her spiritual journey. Lately, she referred back to a post she'd done a while ago called Hold Onto Peace. She said that when she and her husband decided to start a family, they decided that this time of raising their children would be a time of peace.  And they bought a wooden dove to hang in their nursery to remind them.

I've read that post several times a few weeks ago and I've thought about it every single day since then. I guess because I rarely think about this time of raising my kids as one of peace. This morning, Cheerios are littered like land-mines all over the kitchen, while Amelia gags on the wrong end of a wooden spoon and Cole roars around the dining room table on a riding toy.  Is this peace? After nap time when Cole wakes up cranky and crying and wakes up Amelia who then screams and when I try to put Cole on the toilet he does the "plank" in resistance, is this peace? At supper time, when Mark is negotiating with Cole to at least TRY the specially made mashed potatoes if he wants a chance at a cookie and I'm shovelling mush into Amelia's mouth but she's grabbing the bowl and smearing it on her face and her eyes and in her hair and now she's doing the "plank" and our gourmet meal is getting cold, is this peace? I look around several times a day at the discarded toddler socks in the kitchen and under the couch, at the crayons and stickers and playdough stuck to my son's knees, at the train tracks all over the coffee table, at the pile of Little People houses and buildings "hiding" behind the arm chair, at the mountain of picture books that my sons has removed from his book shelf, at the laundry folded into piles on the piano bench and the next load awaiting me in the laundry basket by the baby gate, at the scribbled to-do list next to this computer and I wonder, is this what peace looks like?

Sarah's house must surely look similar to mine.  Even if she's the most diligent and organized house-keeper and mother, surely her children all cry in synchrony too and surely they wipe their boogers on the underside of the table too and surely, surely, SURELY there must be moments when she thinks she's losing her mind. Is this peace?

I guess peace can exist in small moments, snippits throughout your day when no one is talking or throwing anything or screaming. I guess it can happen when your kids are entranced in a television show instead of fighting over a toy and you and your husband exchange an appreciative glance across the table and finally have a chance to savour dinner. Peace can be a place you go to in your heart when you're standing in the mall and your son has thrown himself onto the ground in a screaming fit of rage over the injustice of not getting a second timbit. It can be an inner retreat and you can hold onto it with all your heart when the turmoil of being a parent rages around you.

Peace can be opening your front door and seeing your mother's enthusiastic smile and gently handing her your baby and going to have a shower.

We don't have a wooden dove in our nursery. But I guess sometimes, we do have peace too.

Mommy Triage

Motherhood is the most uppy and downy of rides. It's the most bipolar of states I can ever imagine.

There was a moment last night when both of my kids were in the bath tub and Amelia was sitting there splashing and Cole was giggling and tickling her feet.  Then he reached over and gave her a hug and said, "She's so cozy!" It was one of those precious moments where I felt like I had exactly the most wonderful version of the life I've dreamed of.

Then there was another moment earlier in the day, during nap time.  I'd just put Cole to sleep twice and he was kicking his wall and yelling that he hates naps.  Amelia was screaming in her bed and my heart was racing.  The house looked like ToysRUs threw up in the living room and the counters were littered with dishes from lunch and breakfast. Every surface was sticky or crumb-coated and I was just praying for the strength to make it until Mark got home.

Being a mother is definitely like a roller coaster.  But being a mother of two is like being an Emergency Room Triage Nurse every hour of the day and night. There is a constant state of triage when you have more than one child. Snotty noses, ingestion of dust bunnies, licking the undersole of daddy's slipper - these are all very low on the totem of importance. Nearly anything else will trump these everyday occurances. A toddler saying he has to poo when he's not wearing a diaper trumps an explosive shit by a diapered baby any day. If the shit goes up the baby's back and makes an orange stain on the onesie, this ups its importance but it STILL gets trumped by the toddler.  If the explosive sound is accompanied by a mess that escapes to the child's outside (i.e. the leg holes) and the child is somewhat mobile and then able to spread it around, then this trumps the undiapered toddler's claim about needing to poop.  These are the types of decisions you need to be able to make on a moment to moment basis. Each time someone cries or yells, "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah-Meeeeeeeeeeeeee!" you will ask yourself: Is this life or death? Is someone going to get hurt or terribly maimed? Is this going to make a big mess? Is this going to result in more work for me in the short term or long term?

Hundreds of times a day, you need to decide to put down one child in a safe place, to tend to the other one. Baby's crying in her crib is very low on importance when all you want is a shower and it's quarter to four in the afternoon. Not turning your toddler's brain to mush by watching too much t.v. was very high in importance about seven months ago, but since the new sister arrived, it has dropped off the scale. Because wearing clean clothes requires laundry and not becoming an episode of some freakish TLC program requires some daily tidying and cleaning and when the baby is sleeping, this is probably as high on the triage list of importance as it gets. Do nearly anything to keep the other kid from waking his sister is the mantra at our house.

It's easy to get caught up in the chaos of it all. But every now and again I try to step back, take a deep breath and remind myself that this is Cole's childhood.  And this is Amelia's babyhood.  They only get to live it once.  I only get to live it with them once. I only get one chance to be the parent I wanted to be. And every moment, good and bad, is a chance to be that.

Does it almost look like I'm juggling?

Sunglasses

Cool Cousins

Grandma

This is me and my sister Maryann probably on the big rock at the Loftus cottage in autumn. Every time I see the perfect maple leaf I think of my grandma. Amelia has her smile, and her name. Marguerite, but everyone called her Peggy.

This Green Pepper

My mom came to visit me yesterday and she spent the night.  What a nice visit we had! She helped me with the kids and filled the house with laughter and music and energy. And I helped her learn how to send text messages and perfect her Sudoku skills.

This morning, we were eating some leftover turkey burgers and I was puttering around in the dining room with Amelia when I heard her call from the kitchen, "Is this green pepper hot?"

I had picked a handful of unripe peppers from my garden.  They seemed like green peppers, but they were supposed to be sweet red peppers.  Anyway, they had kind of a bitter or unripe taste, but they were perfectly edible.

Without paying her much attention or looking at what she was holding, I said, "No. Not hot. Do you want to take it home?"

But she was just asking so she could add something to her turkey burger. Then she took a bite.  Then she was spitting it out and I was laughing.  She said, "It's hot!"

I said, "I told you I microwaved it a bit long." (Referring to the patty)

"No, it's a hot pepper!" She went over to the sink and started to drink water from her cupped hand, "Where is my tea?"

I took her mug from the piano and brought it to her, giggling despite myself. "It's not a hot pepper, Ma.  It's just an unriped pepper. It's a bit sour but..."

"No! It's a hot pepper!" She was spitting into the sink now.

"It's just a sweet pepper that hasn't ripened yet," I explained. Then I remembered what she'd called my little daughter as she threw a tantrum this morning and I teased, "Look who's being a drama queen now?!"

Then I looked up and her eyes were watering and they were getting a bit puffy.  Her nose was turning red and she was obviously uncomfortable.

"It's not a sweet pepper!  It's a HOT pepper! Hot pepper!"

I turned to the fridge to get her a glass of milk, remembering somewhere that milk is better than water for things like this and when I opened the fridge door I saw, on the top shelf, the hot peppers my neighbour Paul had brought over the other day.  They were green, maybe scotch bonnet. But one was missing.

"Oh my.  You DID eat a hot pepper, Ma!" I realized suddenly.

She looked at me with tears streaming down her face, "I KNOW!!!!"

As Kids

 Maryann, Jay and I when we were young at the Loftus cottage.

The latest Loftus family pictures - Summer 2010

more October 2011

 Cole and I made these two Mr. Potato-Heads. Once we added the moustaches, he decided the one on the left was Grandpa Mike and the one on the right was Grandpa Dave.

Dad and his kids. 

When she smiles, the whole world smiles with her.....

Real Crawling October 2011

Amelia crawls at six and a half months.

Amelia sits

Inclination to Disassemble

My little brother was inquisitive from the very beginning.  Long before he realized his dreams of being an aerospace engineer, he was taking things apart in order to examine them and discover how they worked.  And long before he was adept at putting them back together, he was not. And that resulted in many, many broken contraptions.  Sadly, one year he disassembled his little magnetic race cars, the remote controlled ones that zoomed along the track and up walls and stuff.  When he put them back together, they didn't work any more. I don't know if my mother ever complained.  If she was anguished by his inclination to disassemble, she hid it well.  All I ever heard her say about her son were words of praise.  Things like, "My son is SO curious.  He is so creative and smart.  My son is going to be an engineer."

This past weekend, I took my little family back to Peterborough for Thanksgiving.  We spent one night at my mother's house with my brother and his wife. My brother, or Uncle Jay as we lovingly call him now, is very good at playing with my son Cole.  At our place, we're always busy trying to get supper on the table or feeding Amelia or cleaning up drool or folding laundry.  But when Uncle Jay is around, Cole just hungrily devours all the attention Jay dotes on him. They play and play and play.

At some point, they had discovered my mother's stash of flash lights and they were playing in a darkened bedroom with them.  Then, suddenly, Cole was upstairs with me in the kitchen with the futuristic flashlight.  The one that works on kinetic energy.  You pump it in your hand and a little magnet inside slides up and down the shaft, through a coil of wires and then the flashlight works. Suddenly Cole was unscrewing the face of the flashlight, removing the black rubber seal and the lens and then all the little pieces were falling out onto the linoleum.  I scooped them up quickly and tried to put them back into the flashlight in the order I'd seen them tumble out, but when I clicked the switch, the flashlight no longer gave light. 

That is when my brother came upstairs.  He took the flashlight apart again and reassembled it.  He asked if there were any other pieces lying around.  And when it still didn't work, Cole began to look worried.  He said to his uncle, "Porpor's going to be mad." Uncle Jay, still examining the flashlight said very calmly, "She'll be alright."
Cole smiled and looked at me and said, "Uncle Jay said she'll be alright." Uncle Jay explained to Cole in a way only his sister could understand, "I took a lot of things apart when I was a kid, Cole.  I broke a lot of stuff." Cole smiled at this reassurance. Then, as if to justify all of the "broken stuff" Jay had left in his wake and all the learning he'd done in his youth, suddenly he reassembled that flash light to its proper working state and Cole grabbed it up and ran off. Sometimes he's so much like my brother that I accidentally call him Jay.  I hope I can embrace his inclination to disassemble as much as my mother did Jay's.

Saucy Speller

Sometimes Cole resists going to bed at night.  He will call us into his room to give him a toy.  He'll call us for a drink of water.  He'll call for us to cast out the monsters using various methods (flashing the lights on and off, putting the monsters in jail, or using flashlights to chase them away).  Sometimes he'll just call "Mommy! Mommy! Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Last night, he was pulling one of these routines when suddenly, as if he was fed up, he called saucily, "DAD! D-L-L-D, DAD!"