Rebecca Cuneo Keenan is a writer who lives in Toronto with her husband and three children.
DAILY SNACK
She was so tiny as a newborn.
Her big brother sat up in the arm chair with a nursing pillow across his lap
And he held his baby sister and he was so much bigger and she was still so tiny.
Now, six months later, she slings one leg over his and leans into the arm of the couch.
She is robust, she is sturdy, she can hold her own.
And he is still the same.
Learning to crawl. I love this. L’il I flips over onto her front just as soon as she hits the ground. She lifts her head up high and reaches out toward a toy or some piece of junk that Young C’s hauled out of who-knows-where and left on the ground. She reaches and squirms and wriggles herself just a little bit closer. She starts screeching with frustration before long, I know, but her stamina is improving.
Young C never did this. He rarely rolled over and hardly played on his front at all. I do remember him sliding backward quite a distance over ceramic tiles once or twice, but he never did get the hang of moving forward on all fours. He was always focused on lifting his head up while on his back and trying to do little baby sit-ups. (Until he finally succeeded in rolling from his first sit-up into a somersault off the bed. But that’s another story.) He would insist on being pulled into a sitting position and did eventually develop a half-crawl, half-walk scoot move that would propel him a couple of feet toward a stray toy.
DAILY SNACK
“Hey, Mom? Has anybody seen a street called Mortimer?”
We just drove up Pottery Rd and are pulling across Broadview onto Mortimer. We haven’t been here for months.
“Yes, you’re right! This is Mortimer.”
This three-year-old can give you better directions than most thirty-year-olds. Direction is important in life.
Last Saturday Young C and I took our first solo trip (without L’il I). We took one bus and two subways all the way downtown to Roy Thompson Hall to go see a symphony concert. It was his first symphony and mine (I’m pretty sure). The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) schedules a handful of concerts aimed at children aged 5 through 12 each season as part of their Concerts for Young People Series. Even though Young C is only just 3, he is really way into music, and we were offered a complementary pair of seats at the last concert of this season, so I decided to check it out anyway. (This particular concert was also the only one performed by the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra in place of the TSO.)
I knew that the half hour before the concert would feature intimate pre-concert performances in the lobby, and planned to arrive in plenty of time. A truly amazing sequence of slips, spills, and falls just as we were getting ready to leave set us back, of course. (You can never allot too much time for travel with kids. Never.) We did see the last five minutes of an Africa-inspired drum performance that Young C absolutely loved. We then found our seats as I reminded him again that he really needed to be on his best behaviour. Sit still and listen to the music, this is the symphony.
DAILY SNACK
This is called the Thudguard and it’s really for sale. No joke.
Ever said, I should put a helmet on that kid? Of course. Ever really meant it? Of course not.
DAILY SNACK
It’s all in the sales pitch:
My three-year-old gets macaroni and cheese for dinner. My husband gets whole wheat penne, sauteed red onion, and crisp broccoli florets tossed in a creamy old-cheddar-spiked bechamel. Either way, it’s dinner in under half an hour.
Yes, my home is a mess. And I don’t just mean that I have a couple books lying out and the laundry still to be folded. It’s a real disaster. Now, nobody has ever accused me of being a particularly stringent housekeeper to begin with. Nobody has ever had to plead with me to just let something go and nobody has ever, ever made any claims about eating off my floor. I’ll even admit that we have lived in states of squalor worse than this back in our newly-wed days if only because we could all but abandon our apartment and only come home to shower and sleep. This may be the worst it’s been, however, since the children have arrived and since I’ve had to really live in my home.
DAILY SNACK
So, am I the only parent who throws balled up diapers and assorted garbage across the room and “into” the garbage can?
And then has to spend ten minutes picking up all the debris around the bin on garbage night because my free throw sucks fat rocks?
My goodness, there is a lot of hype out there over Mother’s Day. Every business under the sun is hocking something special for Mom. And every mommy blogger is jostling for a piece of the action: We’re moms! We know what we want. And what do we want? Bluetooth headsets, tote bags, teeth whitening and more. Now far be it from me to take the air out of anyone’s shopping sails, especially when shopping can be done in the name of economic recovery, but it really is a bit much.
If half as much time and energy were put toward forwarding some real mom-friendly initiatives as is spent on marketing for Mother’s Day, we might be lightyears ahead. So here’s a rare and uncharacteristically earnest call to arms at the Playground Confidential. All I want for Mother’s Day is:
Photo courtesy of tiffanywashko at Flickr.
So tomorrow is the big day. L’il I will no longer be exclusively breastfed. She’ll start with some brown organic rice infant cereal (seriously, it’s just, like, the thing to do) and before long be hoovering up all manner of food matter.
This is really one of the first big steps in a baby’s life. Especially if you wait a whole six months, like I have, before introducing solids. Because by six months, you’d better believe this baby is gonna be ready. In fact, if truth be told, her first food was almost a Giant Goldfish cracker. I took one out of ziplock bag yesterday to give to Young C. He ran out of the room, though, and L’il I just held out her hand like we’d done this a million times before and I gave it to her. I came to my senses just as she was putting it in her mouth. So while her first taste of non-breastmilk food was the salty processed cheese powder of a Goldfish, at least she didn’t actually swallow anything.