Nice Try, But No Cigar.

I thought that when you got married, your husband would still come tripping through the door every so often with a bouquet of flowers. You know, birthdays, anniversaries, the birth of a child or two. You get the picture.

Right.

I married the anti-flower man. I now think he goes out of his way to avoid buying me flowers.

So last week David was away on a business trip and came home with this. I think he thinks it's worth a few dozen bouquets. It's a nice token, I'll give him that. But dammit I'm still holding out for the roses. Or peonies. Or hell, even gerberas.

Somewhere along the line I was sold a bill of goods.

Of course, don't even get my husband started on what he thought he'd still be getting after we got married.

Bad Things... Threes... You Know the Rest

Okay, so bad things happen in threes right. (Or we find the third thing to make it work.)

Here's my list:

1. The dog has a hot spot. I feel some sympathy for him, except that the damn thing is self-inflicted. And it cost us a hundred dollar trip to the vet. Okay, the hundred could've been worse (my friends have had $1000+ bills for their animals over the years). Still, that would've been about 25 lattes from the coffee shop if I think about it.

But more depressing is seeing the dog, with a cone on his head, mope around the house, refusing to eat or drink. We've been syringing water into his mouth, and giving him cheese-wrapped pills. He's a sorry sight.

2. I didn't listen to the news yesterday and missed the fact that there was a major snowfall scheduled for today. I woke up today to least a foot. And since Vancouver owns about 3 snowplows for the whole lower mainland, the roads won't be clear anytime soon. Since David gave up his car in favour of a scooter, I know have to give up the car in favour of the snow. Okay, I could drive him in, but that would be taking my life and my children's lives into my hands.

Vancouverites are only happy about snow if it's on a mountain under their skis or snowboards. In all other situations, they panic. Now, having grown up out east, and David having grown up on the prairies, we know how to drive on snow. It's the other idiots out there who cause the problem. They're either causing accidents by driving at 2 km/hour (I think that's a negative mile/hour rate for all you Americans out there), or they're causing accidents driving at 70 km/hour because caution in snow is for whimps.

So with a moping dog, and a baby who woke up with a wet, croupy cough, I'm going to be housebound with an energetic toddler. The joys.

3. This morning as I was blearily making coffee at the kitchen counter I saw something move along the base of my cupboards. It was out of the corner of my eye, so I wasn't entirely sure I saw it. But I figured it was not a good thing. We have spiders in this place the size of small frisbees, so I worried that it was one of those. David has a spider phobia so I knew I'd be on my own dealing with it, if I found it.

When I staggered back into the living room, I noticed that the games chest had been pulled out from the wall. Asking David about it when he stumbled from the bedroom (we are sleep deprived parents), he said, "Yeah, you don't want to know." Right then I knew. We had a mouse. Our terrier, who by genetic nature is a ratter, couldn't have cared less about the mouse. David said he just watched the mouse scurry across the floor. That dog has a $100 debt to us; he'd better start earning his keep.

Unfortunately, we've been battling a phantom mouse for months (first in the crawl space walls, more recently in the furnace area). We set traps back in the winter when we heard a mouse in the crawlspace area. Yeah, they don't like peanut butter or cheese. All I can say is thank god we are renting and it's not our permanent problem, and thank god we're moving in two weeks.

I think I need another cup of coffee. It's going to be a long day.

The Potty Wars

We're in the throes of potty training Nate. After much reading and debate on the subject, we've taken the casual approach that's one step above "letting him decide when he's ready". After all, as most literature and friends will tell us, we don't want him to develop "issues" around potty training.

I bought a potty. We put it in the living room. Nate liked to sit on it clothed, even without a diaper, but little waste ever actually made it in the bright red bowl. Rather, Nate found it a convenient storage spot for his Tonka toys.

Next, I read a timely article in my Today's Parent magazine, so we instigated a star/reward system. Get so many stars, dole out a treat. But while Nate was motivated to collect stars, that's gone the way of the dodo too.

So it's currently:

DIAPER: 4,297 POTTY: 8

And none of those 8 represent the highly sought after number 2.

A month ago, a friend of mine was in town. She has two boys, so I asked her how she trained the first one. Her suggestion was to buy underwear and prep Nate for his third birthday by saying that on that day, he was going to be a big boy and big boys wear underwear. And then just use the underwear instead of diapers.

Thus, David and I have been prepping Nate for his exciting (upcoming) change of apparel. Nate's consistent response is, "I don't wanna wear underwear. I like diapers."

So you can imagine my surprise and delight to find Nate wearing his Diego underwear today, a few weeks before his third birthday.

It's Your Birthday... Gonna Party Like It's Your Birthday

The title only works if you can sing along to 50 Cent in your head...

Nate's birthday isn't until February. But since we're out here visiting family who won't be in Vancouver for the actual event, it only makes sense to have a party out here. Makes perfect sense to me I should say; David didn't sound so convinced the next day on the phone. I already feel guilty about the fact that Nate does not have a ton of little friends his age in Vancouver and that I don't seem to be doing the "playdate" thing that all other moms do. So, I decided to have an early birthday party for Nate. Purely to make up for my own feelings of inadequacy as a mother. I'm pretty sure Nate doesn't realize what birthday parties are yet, or even if he's had them before. (Here's a kid who insists that he wants to be 6 this year and is equally insistent that he has no last name, so he's not really grounded in reality anyway.)

Mom bought some inflatable helium balloons, one with Bob the Builder; we got a plastic Thomas the Tank tablecloth, and blue cups, plates, and utensils. No pink in sight, no sirree bob.

My plan was to have a cupcake decorating party, which was a fine idea except that logistics, and a late arrival by the cousins, meant that the kids would be decorating right before dinner. Try telling a nearly 3 year old he can decorate a cupcake (or 6) but then has to wait 2 hours before he can eat it.

The party was a great success though and culminated as all parties should with three kids running around the house, screaming at the top of their lungs, whacked out on sugar and adrenaline.

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Decorating crew

 

 

 

 

 

Birthday boy

 

 

 

Toy Envy

The last time Nate and I were out in Ontario to visit his grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins was this past summer. At that time, Nate did something which, to this day, David is still shaking his head about.

He wore his cousins' tiara. Repeatedly.

I called it a crown to make it seem more manly, but let's face it. It's silver. It has big purple and pink jewels. It has teeth to attach it to the bearer's head. The thing ain't a crown; it's a tiara. Miss Universe would be proud.

(I don't know if Nathan's love of the tiara or the fact that I scrapbooked a picture of him wearing it bothers David more.)

So last week we flew out to Ontario for a two week visit. From the moment we arrived, Nate was begging to go to Maddy and Olivia's house. Why? Well, I could tell you that Nate was dying to rekindle the bond with said cousins. But really, it was for the booty.

Within two minutes of arriving, Nate had straight-armed his cousins aside while he rushed upstairs to the playroom. (Here's a kid who can't retrieve his boots from the same spot every day, but can remember six months later that the playroom is up the stairs and to the right.)

What was the first thing he pulled out? No, not a tiara. A battery-powered pink vacuum cleaner. (Pottery Barn Kids 'cause I asked). The girls proceeded to go outside and play in the snow while Nate vacuumed the upstairs. Hell, he was doing a better job than I usually do in our house. I considered taking a photo, but thought better of it knowing what David would think.

Eventually the vacuuming stopped. The girls came in from outside. It was quiet upstairs. We went to investigate.

Nate was busy setting up a tea party with the dolls in their chairs and a "fine china" floral tea set proudly laid out in the middle of the table. I thought about taking a photo, but I worried that, at this point, David might want therapy for our son.

I returned to chat with the adults and when all grew quiet again, I made one more trek upstairs to investigate. Maddy and Olivia were quietly playing with a puzzle while Nate was taking a stuffed animal for a ride around the bedrooms in a pink plastic stroller. At this point even I was wondering what had happened to my truck/plane/train obsessed son.

When it was finally time to leave, Becky went upstairs to gather the kids. We heard shrieks of laughter coming from upstairs. What now I wondered? Would Nate be painting fingernails with his cousins?

"You've got to see this!" Becky called. "Nate's chasing the girls with the vacuum."

Ah. Order had been restored to the universe.

The learning curve

Yesterday I did something that no parent should ever do. I guess I should know better. It's not like I haven't had nearly 3 years of parenting experience with Nate. In fact, I thought I could've been nominated as "parent of the year"... but no. I'm loathe to admit what I did.

Okay, deep breath. Here it goes. Yesterday, I...

... replaced all the batteries in Nate's toys.

Big mistake. BIG mistake.

The house is now replete with whirring, beeping, honking, buzzing and enough electronic melodies to make anyone wish they were deaf. Seriously.

It started because the dying batteries in the Crocodile piano made the auto tunes (like Auld Lang Syne) sound like a cat was slowly being tortured. And Nate had exhausted the flashlight batteries. That's a potential hazard, no?

So I bought huge packs of AAA, AA, C, and D batteries. And now I'm paying the price.

Today's shopping list? Earplugs.

* * * *

BTW if anyone wants to delurk (friends, family members, that means post a comment so I know you're reading my blog) today's the day you're morally obligated to do it.

Or so says Chag.

How to Embarrass Your Son When He's a Teen

Dude, that's some serious bed head.

I am a Wimp

On New Year's Day, David and I decided to drive up the north shore mountain, Mount Seymour to be exact, for a little winter excursion.

Now, I grew up in Ontario, in the snow belt. I know snow. I played in snow. I skated, skied (cross-country and downhill), tobogganed as a kid and eventually froze my ass off in university walking to classes during wind chill factors of negative 30 degrees Celcius. And yes, I will be telling my kids I walked uphill to and from school in six feet of snow with only cardboard shoes and a sweater stuffed with newspaper to keep me warm. But that's a different story.

As we drove up the mountain, lush green lawns gave way to some light dusting on the ground and finally, near the base of the ski hill, 10 foot snow banks. Nate, David, Chilco and I couldn't wait to get out of the car. Jake was sleeping, which was a good thing because awake, he ain't too fond of that car seat.

We trekked over to the tobogganing area. After about 15 minutes of snapping photos, I noticed that I was cold. Really cold. Now, I had on a winter ski jacket, bulky and padded enough to take me to the Antarctic, along with winter boots and woolly hat and mitts. While the sun wasn't out, it was pretty mild. In fact, except for the occasional gust of wind, it was darned near balmy. At least, that's what the car thermometer told me.

However, my body was telling me it was negative 20 degrees, give or take. I beat a hasty retreat to the car to wait while Nate played on, oblivious, with his dad.

There's nothing for me to do but admit that I have become a wimp. In fact, I'm sure that if the Canadian gov't read this post they would revoke my citizenship. What kind of Canadian can't stand more than 20 minutes of snow? And what the hell will I do next year when David wants to take the kids skiing in Whistler?

I guess there's always the ski lodge. And hot chocolate. And a good book. Hmmm. I think I'll just hand over my passport now.

Great Way to See in the New Year

David and I just watched Once. Phenomenal movie. If you do anything this month, rent it. Best movie we've seen in years.

And read David's post. It's so true: http://www.davidrdgratton.com/blog/why-people-steal-music-you-keep-pissing-us-off

Happy New Year everyone! Best wishes for 2008.