DAILY SNACK
I cannot believe I’m saying this,
But.
I am dying for some routine around here.
I mean, I’m the super flexible,
Spontaneous, anything goes type.
But everything is so much easier when the kids know what to expect.
And never knowing what or where we’re having our next meal,
Or where the freaking laundry detergent is,
(Um, yeah, that’s more me than them.)
Or when we’ll have the time to go to the park,
Is taking its toll on us all.
Maybe tomorrow?
I’ll try.
DAILY SNACK
“Mom?”
“Yes, Colum.”
“I wish I was fat like Chris*.”
Chris is a decidedly plump neighbour boy.
“No, honey, you don’t want to be fat.
I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with being fat.
People come in all kinds of different body shapes.
It’s just that, uh,
You should be happy being yourself.
And from a purely health perspective,
It’s just healthier to be skinny like you are.
Colum? Are you listening?”
Nope.
Totally lost in the world of dinosaur figures.
Go figure.
*Not his real name.
DAILY SNACK
Now nobody loves pretend horsey rides more than me.
Seriously.
Nobody.
But when I’m on my hands and knees trying to clean up the assorted food stuffs under the table,
And then one of you jumps on my back,
And then the other one does too.
Enough is enough.
DAILY SNACK
The walk from here to there,
Is much, much further,
When you have to stop to pick every single dandylion.
I’m trying to remember that picking dandylions
Is really what this is all about.
DAILY SNACK
It felt like my head had just hit the pillow,
When I awoke to Colum jumping on our bed,
And Irene screaming from her crib,
And the morning sunlight streaming into our as yet uncovered windows.
I think I whimpered.
I got Irene dressed and fed in the time it took Colum to get out of his p.j.’s.
Of course.
Then he tried to escape out the front door rather than put on his shoes.
Rather than go to the doctor, really.
There was much cajolling and pleading and remembering,
“Hey! The doctor has stickers.”
There was tripping over boxes and gulping back coffee and prying random bits of kitchen hardware out of toddler hands.
There was wrestling into car seats and rush hour traffic and $6/hour parking.
But we made it! Just in time!
“Good morning. I have a 10 am appointment for Colum and Irene.”
“I’m sorry. But I don’t see that here.”
“Oh, but I do. I have a card that says 10am, May 5th.”
“I’m afraid it’s only May the 3rd.”
“Oh, I see.”
In two weeks we are moving into our first house. That means we have two weeks to finish installing a freaking kitchen, stripping vinyl tiles off hardwood and then refinishing the floor on the second floor, painting the entire house and maybe even opening up a doorway or two. There are more finicky, technical jobs to be done, too, of which I am only vaguely aware.
That also means that I need to pack all of our belongings into neat, organized boxes while caring full-time for two young children and working part-time. My husband and his father and an assorted crew of volunteer helpers will be doing the reno work, so I need to take care of things on this end.
It a lot, right? It’s more than enough, isn’t it? But then I start to think about how shouldn’t I be feeding the guys who are working? The house is right around the corner from our apartment, after all. Wouldn’t a good wife and mother be preparing home-cooked meals anyway and shouldn’t she just be able to accomodate a couple more mouths? And this is where I do myself in. Because the truth is that feeding two small children a healthy meal is WAY easier than feeding two or three hungry men who have been working all day. The truth is that it would take me all day to plan and shop for and prepare food for everybody and I simply cannot do this.
Of course, I didn’t arrive at this truth until I attempted to defrost an entire pot roast in the microwave and then cook it in the slow cooker while running errands across town with the kids in the car and then running behind schedule and needing to stop at Loblaws for prepared sides to go with the roast. $6.50 for a medium container of green beans! WTF, eh? I then told my husband and father-in-law to come over for a home-cooked meal only to find that the roast wasn’t nearly done. Insert near break down here over the fact that it is now 8 pm and there is no dinner ready. Potato wedges and beans for dinner! Dig in!
So I think I will buy some sandwich fixings to leave at the house for the guys. Then maybe, maybe, every once in a while I’ll be able to throw a proper meal together for them. But if I can’t, then I’ll just tip my hat to all those women before me who manage to accomplish a full day’s work and feed lots of hungry people and acknowledge that I am not one of them.
And then there’s this blog. It never fails that the busier I am in my personal life, the more it seems to call to me. There is so much I want to write on, so much I’d like to share, and so many ideas I have for taking this little corner of cyber space in different directions. There are also so many PR people and emails and preparations for Blogher knocking on my virtual door these days. And I can’t. I just can’t.
So, insofar that one of the purposes of this blog is to document my failings so that you won’t feel so alone in yours — to break down the unattainable expectations of perfection that we set for ourselves, really — I want to let you know that it was only through a fit of hair-pulling and hyperventilating that I came to the conclusion that I need to take a break. It was only while wading through teetering baskets of clean and dirty laundry, crushed cereal underfoot, and cardboard boxes full of toys that the kids have “packed,” that I realized that I need to take care of myself and my children and my household first. Then and only then can I think about feeding other people.
And this blog? It’s a going to have to wait. I’ll be back in a couple weeks with more vim and vigor and – hey! – an office with a door that closes. I’ll be posting my Daily Snacks and some reviews and happenings and opinions and reports. I’ll be launching a new page that will be super duper uber cool (I hope) and I also hope you’ll all come back to me then.
DAILY SNACK
After a solid week of two sick kids,
We got to enjoy a relatively healthy Easter weekend.
Then BAM!
It’s 2am, of course, and Colum is calling out in a panic.
He’s burning up and we practically have to pry his mouth open to get him to take some Tylenol.
He winds up spending most of his near-sleepless night in bed with us.
Which is great because I just got Irene to stop coming in at 5am.
All day long, my boy is burning up.
And groggy and lethargic.
And Irene is needing to get out,
Both running around wildly and demanding to be held.
It was easily one of the most exhausting days of my life.
PLUS.
It was the day we were supposed to close on our first-ever house.
But then the tenants didn’t vacate on time,
So the date got bumped forward two days.
UNTIL.
They did move out just in the nick of time and the keys were dropped off at 4:30pm.
At the lawyers office in Markham,
Which is a good one and a half hour drive in rush hour,
Which I know because I did it the day before to sign the papers.
But wait!
Our lovely and talented real estate agent picked up the keys and delivered them to Ed,
Who in turn arranged for someone to sit with the kids after they went down.
So we got to see our home together.
And it needs a lot of work.
It is in serious disprepair.
I knew that.
So it’s hard to believe,
How much I love it.
I mean, LOVE-love.
All we could see was potential and character and our family growing up there.
And it’s ours.
DAILY SNACK
It started on Sunday afternoon,
When Colum hung out in bed rather than visiting with company,
And threw up all over his bedding and himself.
He then threw up a couple times that night,
Which was to be expected.
The next day he seemed better.
Low on energy, but in good spirits.
He ate a bit and kept in down.
Until the middle of the night,
When WHAMO!
More vomit.
And then again yesterday he seemed much, much better.
Cue 2:30am and VOMIT ALL OVER THE BED!
What is this?!
Not one solitary episode of vomitting has managed to hit bare flooring,
Or any other surface that doesn’t involve vast amounts of laundry.
And only at night?
Yesterday, Irene started to run a fever and I thought, “Oh no.”
She’s a bit sick, sure, but no vomit.
None.
Has anybody ever experienced this strain of nocturnal regurgatation before?
I mean in their kids, not after a night at the bar.
(Because I’ve done the field research on the latter, thanks.)
DAILY SNACK
Sitting up late at night,
Pushing myself to keep working through my fatigue,
I hear a wail.
“Mommy!”
Not again.
After a day of keeping what little he ate down,
Colum is throwing up in his sleep.
So I scoop him up and let him finish in the bathroom.
We wipe off his face and hair and put on fresh pajamas.
Dad changes the bedding,
And we brush his teeth.
Then we cuddle and whisper words of comfort.
And all the world stands still and deadlines don’t matter and all there is this moment.
DAILY SNACK
Yesterday morning,
My husband woke up with a hankering to cook eggs benedict.
Not to eat them, mind you,
(He dislikes eggs.)
Just to cook them.
For us.
That’s two poached eggs sitting atop a thin, crispy slice of back bacon,
And a perfectly browned potato latka,
Covered in homemade hollondaise,
With asparagus, fruit salad, and a croissant on the side.
It doesn’t even matter that it took all morning to make.
Dinner was all me, though.
The angel hair prima vera with jarred pesto sauce I whipped up,
Was not exactly blog-worthy.
But I did stumble upon one culinary discovery.
Behold the poor man’s mandolin:
That’s right.
Vegetable peelers, not just for peeling anymore.