I'm a FIRECHICKEN!

You know what our parents didn't have to deal with? "On Demand" and PVRs.

Yes, they can be sanity-saving on occasion. I know some parents use Treehouse on Demand to avoid shows they don't want their kids watching (ahem... Janice... he WILL see Barney someday...)

When your child is obsessed with a certain show (as most toddlers and preschoolers are at some point) they will watch episode after episode after episode after... you get the idea. Often, if their desire for "MORE 'magination Movas" is thwarted, there will be a tantrum of epic proportions. This is when PVRs and On Demand services come in very handy.

Right now, though, I am not happy with my On Demand. At all. At least when we were kids, you either watched a show, or you missed it. You didn't have the option of watching it over and over and over and OVER. And over.

I'm pretty lucky that the toddler in this house likes a few different shows. However, in the past two weeks, he has become obsessed with one particular episode of one particular show. And I'm about to lose my mind.

Dora's Hallowe'en. In my head, at all hours of the day, I hear: "Hallowe'en, Hallowe'en! Trick or Treat! Our costumes can't be beat!" I start randomly chanting it, just because I have to get it out of my head. One night I shouted, "I'm a FIRECHICKEN!" in the van, driving home, before I even realized I'd done it.

It reminds me of my oldest, when she was just a little bit older than this. Her father, well-meaning man that he is, had recorded (back in the days of VCRs) a ton of different Christmas shows. One of them was Barney's Christmas (yes Janice: Barney.) EVERY SINGLE DAY at lunchtime, I would put in that damned tape while she ate lunch. It was how she knew it was naptime: "When Barney's Christmas is over, what time is it?" I'd ask. "Bedtime!" she'd cheerfully respond. I still cringe when that video comes out at Christmastime.

But back to Dora: seriously, Kid, this has to stop. Mommy has a very tenuous grasp on her sanity on a good day as it is. This may just push me over the edge.

Help... me...

Actual Art Work from a Four-Year-Old

Okay, so it's REALLY cheesy to use your blog to post your kids' artwork, but in this case, I just had to.

Last Sunday our home church visited another congregation, so the two Sunday Schools were merged. I'm not sure who was looking after the area that my two middle kids were in, but they did a Thanksgiving art project (for my American readers who may not know, Canadian Thanksgiving is this weekend coming up.) It was a turkey with "feathers" pointing up on which the teacher had written the things that the child said they were thankful for.

This is my five-year-old's turkey:

Isn't that nice? She's thankful for cats & dogs, family & friends, her brothers & sister, and church.

Now here's the four-year-old's. Read it VERY carefully!



In his defense, I'm pretty sure that the teacher misheard the one on the far left. Honest!

Actual Conversation with a Four-Year-Old

Because he's not three anymore, so I can't call it that...

In the van, listening to the radio.

A: Who is that?

Mommy: Wham!

A: But what's her name?

Mommy: That's a boy; his name is George Michael.

A: He sounds like a girl.

Mommy: (Pause) Yes, I suppose he does.

Portrait of a 364-Day-Old Human

Forgive me if I'm a little mushy tonight. I cannot believe, though, that my teeny little (okay, 9lbs 10oz isn't so little) baby is going to be one year old tomorrow.

With 3 older siblings, Joshua alternates between being completely doted upon and almost ignored, but with his big grin and contagious laugh, it usually ends up being much more of the former.

Today I spent about a half an hour just sitting on the kitchen floor beside him while he pulled kitchen implements out of a drawer, handed them to me, took them away again and threw them back in the drawer, grinning the whole time.

It's hard to believe that this is the last day I'll spend with one of my kids when their age is measured in months, instead of years. I look forward to seeing him grow, and meeting the person he becomes, but it's still hard to think that my days as the parent of an infant are done.

Happy birthday Baby Boy. You'll always be my baby, even when you're a 6'2" football player. Don't forget that.

Ear Infections SUCK!

My son, Andrew, has been plagued with ear infections the past two winters. Last year after five in a row, we got a referral to a local ear, nose and throat doctor. After two visits, he declared that Andrew had "survived" the winter and didn't need any further treatment.

So far this winter he has had another five - three since Christmas. I took him back to the ENT, who said that the pressure in his ears was normal, he was okay. Well of COURSE the pressure in his ears was normal - he'd just had his eardrum rupture! Anyway, when he started to say that Andrew would be fine again for this year, I stopped him. I don't want my son to just keep "surviving" the winter. His quick answer: okay then, we'll do tubes. Go up front and book the surgery. No discussion, nothing. Just surgery.

I booked the procedure and almost immediately started to freak out. Partially because it's my 3.5 year old, and we're talking general anesthetic, and no matter how "routine" it is, it still is a horrible thing to think that my baby is going to be "put under". I hate to think of him scared, or upset. As his mommy, it's my job to keep him safe.

The other reason I freaked out was that I didn't know if it was really necessary. If there's no fluid build-up in his ears right now, will it do any good? Am I putting him through unnecessary surgery? With no chance to really discuss it with the doctor I had no idea.

I have to take him to our family doctor tomorrow to fill out pre-op forms. I decided that I would talk to her more in-depth then, and if I changed my mind I could cancel the surgery as long as it was more than a week beforehand.

Then my ear started to hurt. I don't know how many of you have had ear infections at an age that you can remember them, but this is AWFUL. the urgent care doctor told me it was a bad one, but I already knew that.  I was in so much pain I was praying for the eardrum to rupture, just to relieve the pain. Even after two days of antibiotics I was still curled up in a ball on the couch last night, praying that the way too many painkillers I had taken would FINALLY kick in so that I could sleep, and even then I was up every couple of hours looking for something else to take. And anyone who knows me knows that I don't like painkillers. I still have half the bottle of heavy duty stuff I was given after my c-section last year. I can't even close my jaw all the way, which certainly makes eating difficult.

I honestly feel like someone is trying to tell me that my son needs this surgery. As much as it may kill me as his mommy to have to hand him over to a surgeon, even if only for half an hour, I need to do it, and I need to be strong for him.

The purpose of ear tubes is to ventilate the area behind the eardrum, which keeps the pressure equalized. Bacteria and viruses can enter the middle ear from the eustachian tube, which connects the ear to the nose. This causes pus to fill the middle ear, putting pressure on the ear drum. Thus, the pain from the ear infection. Plus, because the eardrum has a harder time vibrating (which is how we hear), there is often a temporary loss of hearing in the ear.

The tubes (usually done in both ears, unless for some reason the patient only seems to have one ear affected) are intended to allow the fluid to drain, rather than build up behind the eardrum. They generally stay in place for anywhere from 6 to 18 months, although I've heard from a lot of parents that they often fall out and end up needing to be replaced.

You can see a short video on ear tube surgery here. It's does show the insertion of the tube, but it's not all that graphic. I've got a pretty queasy stomach for this stuff, but i found it interesting.

March Break

Here we go again: another school holiday. Teachers everywhere celebrate! Parents who can afford to actually GO somewhere (like my friends who go on a cruise every year!) are looking forward to time off from work. The rest of us parents shudder to think how we will entertain our kids during one of the most BLAH months of the year. Playdates? Excursions (preferably free ones)? Way too much television and computer time? Praying that Grandma and Grandpa want some quality time?

There are pros, of course. Sleeping in sounds awfully good right about now. Although Dad will still have to get up for work, it's quite likely that after a day or two my kids will crash and actually start sleeping past 7am. It's good for me, because I don't have to get up so early, and good for their sleep-starved bodies to get some rest. I also had the giddy thought earlier tonight as I was loading the dishwasher that I don't need to make a single school lunch for the next 9 days! And I even remembered to unpack the lunchbags so that there's no nasty surprises next Sunday night!

Hopefully we can also manage to spend some quality time together this next week without any bloodshed. There's a doctor's appointment on Thursday morning, but other than that, our time is our own. If the weather is nice maybe I'll be brave and venture to the park. If the temperature stays up where it's been, they can play outside in the backyard, and maybe we'll even drag out their bikes a bit. Hopefully we'll also manage a few playdates that just seem too much to handle in weeks that are already packed with school and activities. My oldest has a few friends from our old neighbourhood that she seems to only have time to see at birthdays and on holidays.

Still, by next Sunday night I expect I'll be doing a little dance of joy around 9pm. That is, if I have any energy left after all of that "quality time."

Another Actual Conversation with a Three-Year-Old

This commercial came on television earlier:



Andrew and I were watching it.

Andrew: Hippos don't live in houses.

(I should mention that hippos are a favourite animal in this house, because of Not the Hippopotamus and I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.)

Me (thinking how smart my kid is): No, that's what the commercial is about - how not everything on tv is real, and you have to be able to decide what's real or not.

Andrew: Hippos don't live in church, either. God does.

Well, all right then.

There's Nothing Better than Kissing a Soft Baby Head

Joshua just fell asleep in my arms while he was drinking his bottle. As I kissed his soft little head it reminded me how quickly this all passes. In a few short months he won't be having bottles anymore. I'll have to chase him just to pick him up, much less get him to sit still long enough for cuddles. He won't fall asleep in my arms like that. He's my last baby. I need to be drinking in everything. Sometimes I forget that.

Emma will be nine years old in less than two weeks. It seems like a million years ago that she was that small, and yet I don't know how so much time can possibly have passed. Next week I have to go and fill in the registration papers for Andrew to go to Junior Kindergarten in the fall. This weekend we watched videos of Charlotte as a baby. I feel awful, but I barely remember those days already.

I never understood what grownups meant about time passing more quickly, the older you get. I'm so excited to see what they will be like as teenagers, as adults, as parents, but at the same time I just want the earth's rotation to slow things down just a little bit. I don't want to lose my babies!

I just have to remember: I'm a very lucky woman.

Phew!

Your feelings about Christmas truly change when you become a parent. You no longer really care about what you're going to get and get more excited thinking about what your kid(s) will look like when he/she/they open their presents. You finally get to play Santa. You get to stealthily plan out Christmas presents, hide them, figure out how to put tags on them so that the kids won't recognize your handwriting (this occurs later in childhood though, of course.) You get to force your kids into those scary Santa pictures!

But it's not all fun and games. You have to figure out how you're going to PAY for all of those presents, and the more kids you have, the more you have to decide: do you scale back and get fewer presents for each, or do you have to keep scrimping and saving even more to do the same as you did with only one child. I remember how full our living room was one Christmas when we only had the two girls. That was the year that we decided that it was time to scale back. Not just because of finances, but because it was honestly scary to see our kids getting so much STUFF. We had a pretty large living room at the time, and honestly half of it was filled with gifts from Santa, from us, from grandparents, aunts and uncles... it was kind of terrifying. So in recent years we've scaled back, and I really don't think that the kids have even noticed.

There are other parts of Christmas that change with kids, too. The Christmas parties. An office Christmas party either means having to find a sitter, or if it's a family affair you have to drag young kids out way past their bedtime to hang out with a bunch of strangers for the night, hoping and praying that they won't embarrass Mom or Dad in front of their coworkers. Friends without kids who have Christmas parties often want them to be adult-only, so you find yourself turning down invitations. You can only afford a babysitter so often if you're going to afford all of those presents! You feel terribly anti-social, but at least you know that friends with kids understand.

And here's the part that we all forget as adults, before parenthood: kids go WRANGY at Christmas. Oh yes, we all THINK we remember it, but we remember it from our own perspective as kids. As the parent, it is a completely different scenario.

I haven't posted here in almost a month. It wasn't for not wanting to, it was because I was either trying to keep myself from killing them, or keeping them occupied, ferrying them here and there, or just trying to calm meltdowns.

There is something in the air at Christmastime for kids. It seemed to start earlier this year than ever before. Maybe because of the addition of an extra child, who knows? But nonetheless, it was NOT enjoyable. A simple, "No, you cannot have licorice for dinner instead of green beans" could result in a full-fledged screaming on the floor meltdown. Night terrors and nightmares abounded. The whining, especially from our four-year-old, made me want to stick forks into my ears.

And then, just when I couldn't take anymore: Christmas vacation. The positive was that I could, most days, take the kids downstairs when they woke up, give them breakfast, and then go back to bed for an hour until the baby woke up. They even started sleeping in on a regular basis! I didn't have to play taxi driver nearly as much without having to take the girls to one school at one time, then Andrew to another school at another time, with pickups all over the place. There were no dance lessons, or practices. In short, it was a whole lot of home time.

The negative: it was a WHOLE LOT of home time. I'm essentially an only child, so I never really dealt with the sibling stuff. It can be wonderful, but when they're fighting, it's hideous. "She hit me!" "No I didn't!" "He took my toy!" "She won't get off the computer!" "When is it going to be MY turn?"

So today, I am officially celebrating. Despite the fact that I'm back to getting up at my usual time, despite the fact that it was -16 degrees Celcius when I took the girls to school this morning, I am celebrating that today I had only the boys here. Andrew had no one to fight with. Josh had a nap. I got to do my WiiFit somewhat uninterrupted. There were not four different lunch orders to make me feel like a short-order cook.

Heavenly!

Actual Conversation with a Three-Year-Old

Me: So which of the Imagination Movers is your favourite?

A: Smitty, Scott, Rich, Smitty...

Me: What about Dave? Is he your favourite, too?

A: Yeah, Scott. I like their pants, and their shirts, too. And their underwear.

Me: Their underwear? Really?

A: Yeah. Can I play on the computer?

Avoiding the household pandemic

In my humble opinion, having a sick kid is one of the hardest parts of being a parent, at least in terms of the day-to-day problems. It's not just that it's hard to watch someone you love feeling miserable, it's the logistics, too. If both parents work, who stays home with the ailing individual? Or are they lucky enough to have family nearby who are willing to risk being infected themselves?

Then there's the whole handwashing thing: not just yours, but theirs, too. Usually to the point where your skin will crack and bleed profusely if you wash them one more time. And the sanitizing... ugh! I can barely keep up with normal, everyday cleaning, much less disinfecting everything my child could have come into contact with or potentially breathed on.

When you have more than one child, though, the difficulties of a sick kid can become reason for panic. How do you keep the first sick kid from becoming the second, third or fourth sick kid? Suddenly cracked and bleeding hands are a small price to pay for avoiding an epidemic. The dreaded cleaning becomes the only line of defense against the dreaded "germies."

And, if by some miracle, you only have one sick child amongst your bunch, the logistical nightmares can multiply exponentially. This was my situation a couple of days ago, and the reason behind today's rant.

I was out with my two youngest yesterday (Andrew needed a "cool dude haircut") when my cell phone rang. I don't have call display (I know, dark ages, right? I am also severely deficient when it comes to texting skills) so I answered with a pleasant, if somewhat confused (no one EVER calls my cell phone) "Hello?"

"Where are you?" my loving husband's voice demanded. I informed him that I was at the grocery store, in a somewhat put off tone, given his lack of pleasantries.

"I've got Emma on my cell phone," he informed me. "She says she's sick." And so it began. I paid for the groceries, loaded them and the two youngest into the van, all while trying to get them to hurry by telling them that Emma was sick (which only resulted in hearing about 15 choruses of "Emma sick?" from Andrew) and drove over to the school to pick up my sick kid.

I put her on the couch for the afternoon while her brother and sister slept (and me, too, truth be told - I am, after all, VERY pregnant and VERY tired) and all was well. She didn't look very good, but no actual puking occurred, so that was positive. By bedtime, though, she still didn't look as if she was going to be up for school the next morning. Problem was, Charlotte had nursery school the next morning.

When we lived in town, this wouldn't have been a big deal. I would've just loaded everyone into the van, taken Charlotte to nursery school, then brought Andrew and Emma back home until pick-up time, when I would've loaded everyone up again to pick up Charlotte, and then we'd be done for the day.

But we don't live five minutes from the nursery school anymore. It's a 30-40 minute drive each way for a 2 1/2 hr class. I drop her off at school, then find some way to keep Andrew and I occupied until pick-up time. Usually on Thursday mornings I take Andrew to "Little Feet Fitness and Fun", a preschool "gym." Obviously this wasn't going to work with a sick 8 year old. I really didn't know what I was going to do with her. Even if we didn't go to Little Feet (and Andrew woudl NOT have been happy at missing his favourite outing of the week) where could I possibly hang out for 2 hours with a sick kid?

I lucked out in that my father-in-law (who lives all of 400ft away) was okay with me dropping her off there for the morning, but I didn't actually find this out until about 30 minutes before we had to leave in the morning. I was still stressing about what on earth I was going to do right up until that moment.

Emma's mostly better now, although she still looks pretty rough. She went to school yesterday, but I don't think she's 100% yet. Time will tell if we've managed to avoid an epidemic, though.

A mom can only hope.

Welcome!

Welcome to “Climbing Up the Slide”. It’s an idea I’ve had for a long time now. I wanted a place where I could offer my own musings on parenthood, but hopefully where other parents that I know (and maybe some that I don’t!) could offer theirs, too. Many of my friends and acquaintances have very different takes on parenting than I do, and personally, I like to hear about them. Sometimes I shake my head, but sometimes I learn from them.

To me, being a parent is like climbing up the slide at the playground when you’re a kid. It’s more work than going down the slide, but usually a lot more fulfilling if you make it all the way to the top. The other reason I chose this as a name was that so many parents now are afraid to let their kids do things like climb the “wrong” way on the slide, but that was such a big part of being a kid when I was young. It sort of sums up my parenting philosophy: I want my kids to experience life, not be wrapped up in bubble wrap all the time. Yes, they’ll get hurt, but as Dory says in “Finding Nemo” (and how many of us parents quote from Disney movies and shows on a daily basis now? Can I get a “hell, yeah!”) “If nothing ever happens to him, then NOTHING will ever happen to him.”

When you have your first child, it seems like it can’t be THAT hard – after all, a good portion of the human population does it at some point in their lives. There are zillions of books out there that tell you EXACTLY what you need to do, while you’re pregnant, with an infant, with a toddler, a rebellious teenager, so as long as you know what you’re doing it’ll be smooth sailing, right?

WRONG!

I remember coming home from the hospital with my oldest daughter, Emma. It was February of 2001 and I was 24 years old. I put her into the cradle beside our bed, stared at her for a while, and then thought “Oh my God – they actually let me take her out of the hospital! What do I do with her NOW?”

I still feel like that some days, and Emma is 8 years old now. I have two other kids, Charlotte, born in July of 2005 and Andrew, born in August of 2006. In 41 days we will welcome baby #4 – supposedly a boy, but I guess we’ll know for sure in 41 days. Every one of my children is different from the others in their own way, while at the same time being just enough like his/her siblings to confuse me!

Some days I feel like an awesome mom, but other days I feel like I’m drowning. I do some really cool things with my kids, but then I’ll turn around and do something I SWORE I’d never do. I have been known (*AHEM) to raise my voice occasionally. I even give a swat on the butt now and then, despite the fact that, in theory, I don’t believe in it. I always feel a raging sense of guilt whenever that happens.

I guess I wonder what makes us believe that even though human beings are inherently fallible, we should be perfect as parents. My husband and I have sort of become gypsies over the past few years. We’ve moved houses 3 times since June of 2007, which has meant that Emma has been to four different schools in four years of school, and only in her first year of school did she actually finish the year in the school at which she started. You want to talk Mommy Guilt? Try taking your kid out of a school that they’re happy at and having her say, “It’s okay, I’m used to it.” I’m convinced that she’s going to end up in therapy later on, raging about how horrible we were for never letting her stay in one spot. Then again, I’ve had people tell me that she’ll grow up to be really adaptable and comfortable in any setting, which could be a big plus, I suppose. It doesn’t stop the guilt, though.

I’m looking forward to sharing more of my kids with all of you. The site is still “under construction” while I learn more about how Blogger works, so have patience with me! I just really wanted to start getting some content up. I hope that you enjoy what you find here in the coming days! If you’re interested in contributing, please feel free to email me at 8thCyn@climbinguptheslide.com.