Little Things

Time, my old nemesis...

Max is really into Garfield these days. I mean really into Garfield: it's his favourite show on t.v.; he named his pet fish (and science-project beans) after Garfield and his trusty pal Odie; and pretty much every breakfast/dinner I have to wrestle a Garfield comic book out of his hot little hands to get him to focus on his meal. He's into Garfield the same way I was into Garfield circa 1982.

As in, 30 years ago.

I had to do that math three times. Not because I can't subtract 2012 from 1982; but because I simply can't believe that my son is into something that I was into THIRTY years ago. Or maybe it's just that I can't believe I am at the age where I can even SAY that I did something I still remember doing THIRTY years ago. Thirty years!!

I looked at my reflection in the kitchen window as I was doing up the dishes last night. I don't think I look like someone who was into Garfield 30 years ago. In fact, in the kitchen window, I think I look just about the same as I did when I was 20 - ok, maybe 25 - except for a few more prominent creases on my forehead. There might be creases in a few other places as well, but luckily the lights were quite dim in the kitchen, so all I could see were the creases on my forehead. I certainly feel the same inside as I did when I was 20 or 25. I'm the same in many ways, I think.

Age is a funny thing. My dear old Dad turned 70 last week. I keep telling everyone he just turned 60; then correct myself. How could Georgie Wall be seventy - almost a quarter of a century old? There must be a mistake. 

I don't want to be one of those people who spend their lives talking about how fast time flies. I don't want to be one of those Mothers who exclaims loudly, "Look how much you've grown!" to every kid I haven't seen in a few months. I don't want to be one of those people who opens every conversation with, "Where did the time goooooooooooo?"

But my God, where does the bloody time go?

I have an ongoing battle with time. There's never enough of it; unless it's 5:00 in morning and my turn to get up with Ben and Sam and each excrutiating minute goes so slowly I'm sure the clock must be broken. I'm always rushing rushing rushing to get to school on time, but we always seem to arrive on time; except for the mornings when we have so much time that we can do anything we want (so of course, we are inevitably late.)

Last night, before bed, I re-read one of my favourite pieces about Motherhood by Anna Quindlen. (Read it here.) It's a beautiful piece. In it she says that the biggest mistake she made as a Mother was not living in the moment enough. That she wishes she had cherished "the doing a little bit more and the getting it done a little less."

I can relate to this. I feel like some days we are just going through the motions; those motions add up to days which add up to weeks which add up to years and before we know it, we are celebrating our newborn baby's 8th birthday. How did this happen? Max was in my tummy 5 minutes ago. Maybe 5 months ago. Possibly 5 years ago. But certainly not 8 years ago! I haven't savoured 8 years worth of Maxwell James, not to mention the 5 of Sammy and the 2 and a half of Ben. How could I have let those precious  years, months, days go by without appreciating them more? I feel my heart contracting.

I want to savour them more in the here and now. Believe me, I do. I would love to live in a constant state of parental bliss and gratitude. It's just that, you know, that old life thing just keeps getting in the way again! It's hard to feel gratitude when you spend an hour lovingly cooking a dinner with all your son's favourite food in it and then he takes one bite, spits it out on the floor, and then yells, "Yuck!" Or you get awoken at dawn by your dreamy toddler who then proceeds to throw up into your hair. Or you feel like you are a hamster running on the wheel of life and when you finally step off that crazy wheel at the end of the day, you collapse, unconscious on your bed. No time for quiet contemplation there. What's a Mama to do?

Today, my friend Gayla posted a lovely piece by Glennon Melton called "Don't Carpe Diem" (read it here) on her Facebook page. Glennon writes about how the old "Carpe Diem" message we Mamas constantly get just doesn't work for her. She talks about two kinds of time - the time we live in (the "staring down the clock till bedtime time"), and the magical time  ("the time outside of time.") She believes that if she gets just a couple of minutes a day of the magical time, that's good enough for her. 

This makes me breathe. A couple of minutes of acknowledgment. Like when I sing the Cowboy song to Ben at night, with our faces really close together, and he smiles as he sings along, his sweet, high-pitched voice trying to form words he doesn't understand but knows by heart. And like when I walk to school with Sam, hand-in-hand, and he recites the show-and-tell order of the kids in his class like a song; and his bright eyes sparkle as he brainstorms what he is going to bring in tomorrow - tomorrow, the most beautiful word on his lips - because tomorrow he will be the class's special helper, his favourite job. And like when, at the end of the day, Max pulls me into his bed to lie with him just for five minutes, so we can talk a little bit more about the day, and I see a contentment in his being, and a confidence about him, where I catch a glimpse of the amazing adult he will be, even though he is still a boy right here, right now, lying next to me.

A few minutes of acknowledgment a day. I can get behind this kind of thinking. And not just because it helps to alleviate some of the guilt of not feeling gratitude every minute of every day, but because there is an underlying acceptance that washes over me when I think in these terms. An acceptance that seems to say, "You are enough, just like that; covered in puke or covered in kisses; exhausted and fed up, or energized and inspired; full of grumpiness, or full of love. It is all a part of your journey. It is all a part of being a Mama."

When I think about it this way, I can surrender to my battles with time. I can vow to try harder to live in the present and savour all the beautiful moments that come with being a Mama of three little boys; and I can also appreciate that it won't be like this forever...and some days, that's not such a bad thing.

And thirty years from now, when the creases in my forehead are even deeper, and Max and I will talk about the things he loved when he was 8 - The Canucks, Lego, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Calvin and Hobbs, and of course, Garfield - I'm sure I will smile and exclaim,

"Where did the time goooooooooooo??"

A few pics beause yes, I realize it's been a leeeeeetle while since I've updated my blog...(see "Where did the time go" comment above...)

Sam clutching his Valentine booty after school on V-day...Tangible love overflowing in his arms and heart...

My sweet, darling niece Lily turned 3...and Max and I were lucky enough to spend the morning with her (see my new invention: muffin-cupcakes...muffins packed with bananas and raspberries, with the usual iced decor on top. The kids never seem to eat the cake part anyway, so why not make it healthy? Mind you, it was breakfast...)  

He's the third child. We just take more pictures of him. How could we not?

A hopeful Mama and Max before a dreadful evening....maybe the Patriots didn't win the Superbowl this year, but you just wait....they'll win next year! In this photo you get a good view of the creases in my forehead...though Instagram helps to minimize the effects some. Gotta love that Instagram app!

Happy Thursday, y'all! As always, I will try to write in this space more in the days to come....wish me luck! If you'd like to add your thoughts about your own battles with time, I'd love to hear them...

 

 

 

Always moving...

About a month ago, at 1:00 in the afternoon, I looked at the clock, said, "Oh!", and put little Ben down to sleep in less than 2 minutes. A quick "Twinkle, twinkle"; a kiss; a "have a good nap" - and he was down. My friend Jocelin, who was visiting at the time, was amazed by my swiftness, my mothering finess, my je-ne-sais-quoi. I don't remember what I said, but probably something like, "Well, we just follow our routine; he's always been easy to put down."

Last night, for the tenth night in a row, I lay on the floor beside Ben's crib for half an hour, singing my whole repertoire of James Taylor, Puff the Magic Dragon, Cat Stevens- you name it - while Ben stared at me with wide-open eyes, a big, cheery smile across his very-awake little face. I took him downstairs to play for an hour, then back again to the floor and to the song, followed by some heavy breathing.

Lying there on the floor, pretending to be asleep (you know, to set a good example), I laughed. Isn't this just like parenting? The minute you think you've figured something out, or begun to establish a "reasonable" routine of some kind, the next day you wake up and everything has changed. Your child doesn't sleep. Or eat. Or play nicely with other children. And you are back to square one, trying to figure out what happened, trying to backtrack your steps to see where you went wrong - how you got from there to here in such a short time.

The truth is, I think the only thing I can safely say I've learned in the seven and a half years since I've been a parent is this: that every day - and every child- is different. That parenting isn't a straight and narrow path, but one that winds up and down and all around and sometimes even wanders off the beaten trail for a while. And until you've truly accepted this - until you've really felt it in the very core of your self - you will continue to beat yourself up for all of the things that you wish had gone differently in your parenting journey. For all the things that you swore would never do, but then find yourself doing one day. For all the times you thought you were that type of parent, or your child was that type of child, and then found out that - oh!- maybe you weren't, or they weren't, after all.

I have been both the Mama whose kids have eaten 14 different kinds on vegetables in one day; and the Mama who has fed her kids bunny pasta for lunch three days in a row. I have been the Mama who believed firmly in letting my kids "cry it out" so we could finally get some sleep; and the Mama who co-sleeps most nights with one (or two) of the little boys who somehow find their way into our bed. I have been the Mama in the grocery store who people smile at because my kids are so sweet or polite or adorable; and the Mama they shake their heads at, in digust or pity, because my kids are so wild or impolite or won't stop screaming.

The more this happens, the more I start to accept that parenting, like life itself, is just not black and white. It is not one way or another. It is not the same day in and day out, or from one family to the next. It ebbs and flows; always moving, always changing. Not unlike the very children we parent.

There is comfort in this movement. Knowing that each stage is finite helps us to keep pushing on; to remind ourselves that they are small for such a short time, really, and that all the struggles we have today will soon be distant memories. If we remember them at all.

And so, as I lie on the floor of Ben's room, night after night, singing him the Cowboy Song and watching him play the stand-up-lie-down-stand-up-again game, I will try to smile and ignore the fact that he isn't sleeping - and instead, savour his smallness and sweetness and the way his eyes crinkle up when he looks at me. This is what I want to remember.

 

 

Today

This weekend was the first time since the summer where we didn't have a single thing on the calendar. Imagine! No hockey, no soccer, no baseball, no cheerleading, no birthday parties - nothing! Instead, we went to the zoo, we went for a hike by the sea, we made robots out of boxes, we organized the basement, we watched movies, we had lovely meals...and we didn't rush anywhere (or anyone). 

Not once.

If that isn't the definition of a fabulous weekend, I don't know what is...

Benny, our shiny-eyed boy...

Sam at the zoo with the llamas and flamingoes.

Bashy in front of the weird North African giant rodents. This was the only place he agreed to pose for a picture (I tried in front of the cheetah, leopard and lions, but sadly, no. :)

Snacktime at the zoo. (We had lots of those). Oh yes- we also made rasberry muffins this weekend!

And here are Max and Jonah, who had a very different sort of weekend - in the snow in Calgary! In fact, from the sounds of it (in the few times he actually agreed to speak to me on the phone!) they had a whole wonderful Spring break week of lego-building, pie-making, sledding, hockey-playing, and Grandma-and-Grandpa-ing! Lucky boys :)

So truth be told, the very best thing we did this weekend was pick up our sweet Maxie at the airport.   It's lovely to know he can be away from us and feel secure enough, at seven, to not feel homesick. But it's also lovely to have him be back home in our midst. Because truth be told, his Mama was a little Maxi-sick while he was gone...

But then again, if you've met Max (or have a Max of your own) - I know you don't blame me.

I know you understand.

 

 

The Game of Life

Remember that board game called "The Game of Life", where you had to pick a little car that was either blue or pink, fill it with a partner and some little pink or blue children in the backseat, and head out on a journey called "Life"? The journey was filled with all kinds of ups and downs, backwards and forwards (depending on the spaces you landed on). I can't seem to remember what the conclusion of the game was, or how you won. Which means it must have really been about the journey (how nice).

I played this game a lot growing up. I remember liking it. I don't think I ever attached any significance to this game - I thought it was just a game. You know- something fun to play on a rainy day. 

For some strange reason, I've been thinking about it - the board game - again lately. I'll find myself in a situation where, for example, my neighbour rings my doorbell and says, "Hi, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but someone just smashed into your car out front and then drove away", and in my head, I hear, "Car smashed. Go back 3 spaces". Then the next day, I'm walking down the street, and someone, out of the blue, hands me a Tim Horton's gift card, and as I smile to the world, my brain says: "Free coffee. Move up 2 spaces" (I don't even like Tim Horton's coffee, but in the Game of Life, that is totally irrelevant).

It works for lots of things in my life. The kids getting sick (3 steps back); Max losing his first tooth (4 steps forward); Ben learning to walk - and run, and climb (3 steps forward); getting a flat tire (2 steps backward); finding myself a new passion/obsession (sewing- 5 steps forward); Someone spilling their milk (1 step backward); planning a trip to Italy (without the kids! - 17 steps forward!); shattering the glass on my iphone (doh! 4 steps backward); and going back to "regular" work a few days a week (though I still can't decide if that's 3 steps forward or 2 steps back). It seems like everything that happens to me could fit nicely on a little playing card.

Ok, well maybe not everything. The other night Ben puked up at least 3 cups worth of his dinner/bottle right onto my chest (I was still wearing my "work clothes" and a really nice new pink bra). You can't find a card that says that in the Game of Life! Nor do they have cards that say, "Bad morning: Your four year-old dumped out his cereal, ground it into a million pieces on the floor with his shoes, and then squeezed out an entire tube of toothpaste on top". What would that be - like 700 steps back? Come to think of it, much of what Sam does wouldn't fit on a little playing card (but then, would I really want it to?).

Of course, I recognize that what is happening right now in Japan and Libya - and many other disaster, war, and poverty stricken places  - could not fit on playing cards, either. It sure saddens me to think that for the children in those countries, these events are very much a part of their "Game of Life" right now. They don't have the luxury of thinking about the inconvenience of flat tires and spilled milk. Their life is not like a game at all.

So once again, I am left to ponder how lucky I am in so many ways. And though I sometimes feel like a hamster on a wheel, running running running around and around, if I can only stop every now again to really look at my little pink car and the lovely people who are on this journey called Life alongside me, I will see what incredible cards I have been dealt in this game called Life. And for that, I am thank-full.

A few recent pics of the kids, since it's been a while :)

This is Ben's cheeky face...he has officially turned into a "third child", and has figured out that to be heard in this family, you must scream and screech and yell until someone gives you what you want. So of course he gets what he wants quite quickly these days :) Smart boy.

Max finally lost his first tooth a little while ago, and here's the little tooth pillow we made together for the occasion. Did you know that the tooth fairy in these parts pays $6 a tooth? That's some serious inflation from the quarter I used to get, don't you think??

I'm going to try to be in this space more in the next weeks and months, so check back again soon!

Have a happy Tuesday.

xx s

 

Summertime...

..."and the living is easy"? Really? No. I do not concur. Not for me, anyway. Or anyone I know who has kids. But though the living may not be easy, it sure is FULL.

I've just started to sort through the hundreds of pictures I took in our last month away ~ where we visited les Grandparents in Hudson, and then spent a week with Pete's family on Savary Island (a beautiful, not-so-easy-to-get-to island just off of Powell River, B.C..) The task of sorting through photos is a little too daunting for me to even attempt right now. It's not September yet. I think that's a September kind of job. So instead, I will post just one pic...one picture that I think captures the essence of July for us:

Dear Sam. With his sun-kissed, mosquito-bitten cheek; his sand-and-dirt-covered hat; his sea-sprayed shirt...and a deep, from-the-belly laugh...(for no good reason, other than it's summer, and the sun is shining, and we are at the beach, with his cousins. And there are seagulls. And the water's warm. And the sand feels good on his bare feet. And we have snacks. And we have nowhere to go. And a whole lot of nothing to do.)

Oh no...that sounds like "easy" to me. But maybe the living IS easy for the kids. They don't have to think about the sun or the mosquitoes or getting the baby and/or stroller down the 100-foot sandy bluff or any of the other bazillion things that make the living not quite so easy for the parental units. And maybe that is just the way summer is supposed to be, for the little ones. Care-free. Loose. Unburdened by the routine that makes us hurry from one activity to the next the rest of the year.

Easy, even.

What a lovely thought.

sunshine at last...

 

We haven't seen the sun in these parts for a long time. I mean a seriously long time. So this weekend, when the sun decided to make an appearance, well, we headed outside.

This weekend was a lounge-around-the-backyard kind of weekend. The kind where you are just perfectly happy doing very little; just being outside.

Our "very little" included:

:: pulling out the baby pool and filling it up with the hose; then watching as the boys and their cousin stripped off their clothes and splashed around screaming like...well, little girls...

:: a big hunt around the house for hats, sunscreen, and water shoes...and such delight in wearing all three for the first time this year-

:: lots of joy-full bike rides up and down the block, and to the park down the street...

:: the picking of (oops) geraniums from the neighbour's garden by Sam, presented lovingly to the mama on the way to baseball practice Saturday morning...

:: many lovely hours playing with the cousins, including a very successful first sleepover for Jonah...

:: whipper-snipping, lawn-cutting, garden-watering (all by the mama)-

:: muffin-making, foccacia-baking, beautiful summery meal-making (all by the dada)-

:: homemade mango smoothie popsicles, the best ice cream sundaes ever, and the creation of a new, high-demand concoction named "Summer of the Hot Sun" (diced strawberries, cherries, blueberries, and plums in mango/apple juice, on the rocks)...

:: a successful "trial sleep" on the top bunk for Max, who didn't fall off or climb down the ladder in the middle of the night...

:: many picnics/snacks in the sunbeam on the front lawn, which included much staring at grass (Ben), and a few tastes of it as well...

After all is said and done - dare I say it - I think summer is actually upon us!

The (almost) matching table...

Well, we did it! Last week I wrote about the chairs that I painted when Max was 18 months old. Now, just a mere four and a half years later, they have an (almost) matching table to get pushed into! It took us a little longer than I thought it would (doesn't it always?), but we are all quite pleased with the final result.

We did the masking tape trick for the top so that both Max and Sam could participate. (If you don't know about this trick, you should try it! Just put masking tape across a surface or wall, criss-crossing it over and over so you get lots of nice triangles and shapes. Then the kids can paint the shapes different colours or patterns, staying within the masking tape lines. When you take the tape off after the paint is dry, you get lovely symmetry!)

My boys, it seems, like to paint with their clothes off (I had to insist on the underwear).

Things were going along beautifully for about 7 minutes: two boys in perfect harmony painting to their hearts content. Then Sam started getting a little too comfortable with the paintbrush, and it suddenly dawned on me that the house was really not safe with Sam armed with a paintbrush full of yellow acrylic paint. So I pulled the plug and got him to help me clean all the paintbrushes instead. Max and I finished things up when he was sleeping peacefully in his bed. (I dream of a room one day where it really doesn't matter what Sam does with yellow paint).

As the final touch, Max wrote the boys' names on the sides with a sharpie marker. At first, he looked at the chairs with the "dream", "laugh", and "play" on them, and said that since I wrote my favourite words on the chairs, he wanted to write his favourite words on the table ("He shoots, he scores"; "Roof Daddy"; and some long sentence that involved a guy who had a really good rebound or something.) But then he thought it would take him too long to write all those, and he was getting pretty tired, so he said he thought writing "Max", "Sam", and "Ben" was a better idea.

I was secretly thrilled. You see, those three little words are my REAL favourite words in all the world.

World Oceans Day...

Today was "World Oceans Day". Truth! I heard it on CBC radio, so it must be true. My personal "World Oceans Day" began at 5:00 am this morning, with Sam waking the baby and I by knocking over the water bottle beside my bed and dousing me with water, while shouting "Wheresa BaDada?" at the top of his lungs. "BaDada" - Jon - is away. Of course. Let's just say that by 6:00 am, I was already dipping into my "patience" reserves.

So when my fabulous sitter arrived at 2:30 to help man the troups, she hardly had her shoes off before I was out the door on my bike. It was sunny! The baby was sleeping! I had one hour before I had to pick Max up from school....aaaaaaand, it was "World Oceans Day"! Off I went.

I went to the ocean, of course.

I haven't ridden my bike for almost two years now, because I was pregnant all last summer, and I don't trust my pregnant self on a bike. I felt like a twelve year-old kid again - wind in my haiiiiii...well, under my bike helmet, that is; but still, freedom, pure freedom! It was fabulous. I rode along the sea to the end of Spanish Banks, to one of my favourite beaches (and not just because we got married there).

 

When I got there, there was this tree stump with flowers planted in it: it felt like a gift just waiting for me.

And then as I kept biking, I found more gifts: flowers planted beside every bench along the way. I don't know if these have been there for years and I just haven't noticed them, or if they are new this spring. But they made me smile; they made me glad.

A final spin across the "Fairy Bridge" (as I like to call it...don't you think it looks like fairies live under it?) at Jericho, and I had to head back home.

I said a quiet little "thank you" to this piece of ocean I am lucky enough to live by, and that brought my "World Oceans Day" to a close.

A lovely "World Oceans Day", in the end. June 8th. I think I'll mark it on my calendar for next year.

The Dreamer's Creed

   

Those of you who have known me for many years will likely remember 'The Dreamer's Creed'...it was something my old friend Michelle and I wrote together years ago when we were living in Victoria. We were just starting up our consulting company, Possibilities, then, though paying our rent by selling cards in the Sunday morning Government Street market. We loved our days in the market, squeezed between our friend the potter (a fifty year old teddy bear from "up island" who used to shake his head at us and call us only "the girls") and the lovely Scottish woodworker (who came over every five minutes to rant about the overly enthusiastic bongo player the next row over). I think there were lots of dreamers in Victoria - we sold many of these cards!

Our favourite game to play, as we whiled away the hours at our little table, was to choose someone throughout the day to give a free card to. Oh, how we loved this game! We had a sign we would give each other that said, "this is the one", and we would stand up and sound our fake trumpet and then announce to the person that they had won a card of their choice. Well- the delight that ensued! It made us want to give everything away for free!  (But we couldn't, as we had that rent to pay...)

Anyway- I was talking to Michelle the other night (from Cambodia, of all places) and I told her I was going to bring back the Dreamer's Creed - so here it is! As I dug through our old artwork, I also found a few card-sized prints of the Dreamer's Creed; so in the spirit of our days in the market, I would like to give them away! If you would like one, leave a comment at the bottom of this post, and on Wednesday night I will do a random draw for the winners.

In the meantime, I wish you all a wonder-full Monday! Dream on!

YES

This is the picture that is on my bulletin board, right beside my computer. It makes me so happy. It was taken when Max was 18 months old (the day before I cut his gorgeous wispy, curly hair, so people would stop asking how old my little girl was!). It was Canada Day, and Max and I and his Auntie played on the beach all morning, making castles. There was nothing special about the day, but it was perfect (you know those days?).

I like seeing this image every day. I know it so well that I can now go to it in my mind (for example, as I did tonight, while putting Sam to sleep, as he was kicking the wall and yelling repeatedly at the top of his lungs, "I not go to sleep!!! I not go to sleep!!!) and it helps me to remember the joyful parts of parenting. The up tumbling, turning, leaping out YES moments. They certainly don't come every day. But they come...oh yes, they come. And when they do, and I am lucky enough to capture them with my camera, I want to remember them. I want to squeeze them tight and put them in the pocket of my mind for safekeeping. Or on my bulletin board. Where I can see them every day.