DAILY SNACK
“Grandpa wears reading glasses. Do you wear reading glasses?”
“No. I wear sunglasses. To protect the sun from my eyes.”
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Month: April 2009
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Dangling Dancing Dinos
I have not historically been the most timely person. It keeps happening that I will set something aside for just a little bit with the best of intentions. That task will invariably become buried (both literally and figuratively) beneath all of life’s daily debris and become quite forgotten about.
It so happened then that the wooden dinosaur mobile Young C got as a baptismal gift from my grandmother when he was eight months old never got hung up. The fine fishing wire that holds the dinosaurs was badly tangled, so the box was set aside to be grappled with just as soon as we got the chance. And if Young C himself hadn’t found the box while nosing around in our closet the other day there’s no telling when we would have gotten around to it.
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How to Make Baby Laugh
DAILY SNACK
FAM!
Peels of baby laughter ring out.
So again he tears over to the other side of the couch and slowly drives his white convertible dinky car along the arm.
It turns the corner and heads toward us along the back of the couch.
FAM! he shouts.
And again she’s in stitches, laughing and laughing.
So we do it again. And again and again.
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Too Much Sleep?
Eleven hours of sleep. Holy cow.
I decided to take a long four-day weekend (like many of you) over the Easter holiday and return to the blog writing business refreshed and energized. The problem with holiday weekends, though, is that they’re exhausting. And I never think they’re going to be. I always think that just because this weekend is a day or so longer than most I’ll be able to catch up on all kinds of tasks and errands and trek back and forth across the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) visiting and still wind up feeling reinvigorated.
So when I lay down beside my extremely high-strung and caffeinated three-year old last night, (who’s idea was it to promise Easter chocolate as an after dinner treat?), my plan had been to help him settle down and then put on a pot of coffee and write a thoughtful treatise on the role of religion in the family in this new millennium.
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Native Narcissism
DAILY SNACK
He grabs at the camera, giddy and giggly with anticipation.
And there he is on the little screen,
Lying on the bed beside his sister, laughing and babbling baby talk right back at her.
He grips the camera tight and laughs so hard.
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Missed A Spot
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Rocking Rhymes
DAILY SNACK
“There ain’t no flies on me!
There ain’t no flies on me!
There may be flies on some of you guys,
But there ain’t no flies on me!”
With special thanks to Grandma Donna.
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Easter Means …
Easter means,
Winter’s last snow, more times than not, and coughs and colds and sniffles.
New running shoes and spring jackets and rolling up my sleeves for a good spring clean.
Fish and chips on Good Friday.
Lots and lots of chocolate.
Bunnies. Spring chicks and ducklings, too, but mostly bunnies.
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Seasons
DAILY SNACK
As winter spits out its last icy remnants,
And the deck is coated with a fine dusting of barely there snow,
A boy presses his nose against the screen door.
Can we make snow angels, Mom?
How about snow men?
I have got to be the only woman for whom clean floors and happy children are mutually exclusive propositions. Driven to
the brink of insanity today by the sheer volume of toys and toy bits on the living room floor, and by the crunching of various food stuffs underfoot, I got out the vacuum and hoped for the best. Luckily, Young C was still under the weather and taking a good afternoon nap at the same time as his baby sister. That’s how I managed to pick up 75% of the debris before said sister awoke. I knew my time was closing in then, so I plunked her in the playpen and made a mad sweep of the rest of the floor. She played happily until I started the vacuum, aka baby psyche torture device, at which time the crying began. I kept going, determined to at least finish a cursory course around the room, until the crying became so loud and heart-wrenching that no amount of ground-in Cheerio could keep me away. Now, rattled baby and messy floors and furniture pushed all akimbo, I needed a solution.