Category: Ah, me boys

Apple picking 2009

Apple picking is one of my favourite fall traditions. We’d never been before 2005, but now I can’t imagine going a year without a trip to the orchard. This year, we headed back to our first favourite, Kilmarnock Orchard. It’s the better part of an hour’s drive from Ottawa, but the drive is beautiful on a bright blue autumn morning, and if you make a stop at nearby Merrickville on your way home, it’s a lovely way to spend a day together.

Brothers

This tree is not indicative of the size of tree you’ll find at Kilmarnock, but I was charmed by it. It’s a Charlie Brown Apple Tree!

Charlie Brown apple tree

Lucas was even more adorable than usual. He loves apples, and calls any round-ish fruit an “abble” — nectarines, peaches, and tomatoes are all “abbles”. He was beyond excited to see not only the tractor-pulled “train” that took us out to the orchard, but the fact that there were apples as far as his eye could see. If he said “Abble!!” (you can actually hear the exclamation points) once, he said it five dozen times.

Lucas eating apple again

Why should you pick the apples way up there on those branches, when there are tonnes of apples just lying around in the grass, waiting to be collected?

Ground apples

(I’d like to assure you that in the picture above, he’s actually eating an apple I picked for him instead of one of the ground apples, but the odds are only about 50/50. *shrugs*)

I love the apples, I love the chance to get outside, I love to watch them enjoying themselves, I love to notice how much they’ve grown in the year since we last went apple picking. But what I really love? The chance to spend time with my menfolk.

Family portrait

(It’s not the best portrait, but I love the matching expressions on Lucas’s and Tristan’s face!)

I had better success with individual portraits. The orchard light in September is lovely!

My menfolk

(Lucas is in B&W because his skin tone was really uneven in colour, reflecting the red and green of the tractor we were in, and I haven’t figured out how to fix that in Photoshop yet! Besides, I like portraits in B&W.)

It was well after lunch time by the time we’d picked our fill, meandered the length of the orchard, gone for an extra train run, and picked up a home-made apple-caramel pie, so we scooted up to Merrickville for a bite to eat and a wander down the main strip.

fries and ketchup

Merrickville is a picturesque little town right on the Rideau Canal, a haven for the artistic sorts. These are just a few of the things we enjoyed.

Merrickville mosaic

So now we have three heaping serving bowls of apples, mostly Lobos and Macs. (I’m disappointed, my faves are Empires but because of the cruddy summer they’re slow in ripening this year.) Do you have any good apple recipes to share? I’m particularly looking for an easy apple crisp recipe. Mmmmm, abbles!

Perfect apple

(There are even more photos on Flickr! And about 150 on the computer that I didn’t post but don’t have the heart to delete…)

The one with the Pokémon backpack

Way back in early summer, Tristan saw a Pokémon backpack at Walmart, and every time the subject of back-to-school came up this summer, Tristan pined for that Pokémon backpack. He was due for a new one, as his Disney Cars one had held up remarkably well through both Senior Kindergarten and Grade One, so I had no problem with him getting a new one this year.

I was picking up a few things back-to-school items at Walmart (I do try to avoid it, but sometimes the siren song of convenience and cheap are hard to resist) one day, and saw the backpack with which he was so enamoured. I reached out to pick it up, and knew the moment I touched it that it was crap. It was thin, plasticky, and looked like it would fall apart in a hard rain. It was only $10, though.

For a few minutes, I played out possible scenarios in my mind. I bring home the backpack, and Tristan is ecstatic. It would definitely help overcome any potential back-to-school blues. The boy is seriously obsessed with Pokémon — not a day goes by that he doesn’t crank out two or three or eleven Pikachu and Tristan-the-Pokémon-Trainer drawings. $10 is easily worth that much joy.

But — the thing is going to fall apart inside of a month. Will he be heartbroken? Will we have to duct tape it back together on a regular basis, so that by December it’s more repair than backpack? Will we be able to negotiate an acceptable replacement? Will his homework be strewn all over the playground on a regular basis?

I decide on a carpé diem kind of approach, and figure we’ll deal with whatever repairs or replacements are required later. I pick the backpack up and put it in my cart, and that’s when the wave of chemical smell hits me. The thing *reeks* of that plasti-vinyl PVC stench that you just know must be toxic. (Oh look, it really is toxic. Lurvely.)

I put it back on the shelf. I can’t expose my kid to this. He’ll carry this every single day — and keep his lunch in it. I look at Pikachu. He’s been coveting this backpack all summer. Am I that mother, the one who denies her kid all the funnest stuff because of her personal agenda? I pick it up with the intention of giving it another sniff, but I don’t even have to get it up to my nose to smell it. I put it in the cart and pace around the store a while.

Eventually, I decide that I’ll buy it but not show it to him. I’ll look around online and in some other stores and see if I can find a Pokémon backpack that’s somewhat less nuclear than this one. I shop around a bit, but can’t find anything similar. I do find a really nice red and blue Roots backpack (I have a pathological addiction to Roots products, I’m not sure why) and buy that one too. It’s really nice, with lots of pockets and hooks and places to stash a seven-year-old’s treasures — but it’s not Pokémon. When I get in the car, I can actually smell the PVC smell from the bag sitting in the hot car, it’s that strong.

The whole way home, I agonize. I really, really don’t want him to have this particular backpack, but he has had his heart set on it for months. I can always tell him that they don’t carry them, that I couldn’t find them, but we’ll likely run into the problem all over again next time he’s in Walmart. He’s getting too old to trick. I get home and leave all the packages in the car. I surf eBay and a few other online places, all the while wishing (for the first and likely only time) that my computer had smell-O-vision so I could sniff the various wares for sale, but I don’t see anything remotely enticing.

Finally, I decide that I’ll leave it up to Tristan to decide. I’m not sure if I’m empowering him or chickening out. Maybe both? I tell him that I looked at the Pokémon backpack, but that I really thought it was a piece of junk. (He gets that his mother has quality issues. “It’s a piece of junk” is a frequent reason for being denied something shiny that has caught his eye.) I explain my concerns about the chemicals, and the smell, and the quality. I cross my fingers and tell him that I did find a backpack that I thought was really nice, but not Pokémon. I’m watching his face pretty closely, and have watched comprehension and disappointment flicker through his eyes. Now his face brightens as I suggest that maybe we can get a Pokémon keychain (see previous comment re: junk) to decorate this bag.

“Oh yeah,” he says, and enthusiasm lights his face like sunshine after a storm. “We can get some stickers, and I can draw some pictures.” And just like that, we’re good. I’m so relieved and so proud I want to cry.

The next morning, I notice the new backpack sitting by the front door. It has a Pikachu keychain dangling from one zipper, and a few other Pokémon tied to the straps with long bits of string. A fresh picture of Pikachu and Tristan-the-Pokémon-Trainer has been scotch-taped to the front, and there is a Pokémon trading card tucked in the mesh bottle holder. It is, by far, the most lovely Pokémon backpack I’ve ever seen.

We called him Lucas Sawyer, but his real name is Chaos

The word chaos keeps creeping into my life lately.

A friend recently asked me if the jump from two kids to three was really that much of a change. After I finished snickering, I replied, “You know how with two kids, life can have these intensely chaotic peaks, with streches of peace and calm in the middle? Yeah. Three is just all chaos, all the time. No peaceful stretches. Just. Chaos.”

And then my dad has taken up a new pet phrase. He says, “I don’t do chaos.” Interestingly, he seems to have adopted this pet phrase after spending a good portion of his summer with a house full of grandchildren. Coincidence?

Life with three kids is busy, true, but the chaos comes almost exclusively thanks to Lucas, my just-turned-18-months-old perpertual chaos machine.

I love the toddler phase, I really do. No parenting phase is so peppered with daily hourly delight, with instant gratification, with a deep and overwhelming exasperation. My jaw drops open in wonder regularly, and I am in awe of his capacity for learning, for comprehension, for love, for anger, for curiousity, for stubbornness. He is a living ball of excesses, and leaves in his wake a path of chaos and destruction that has very nearly broken our parenting spirit.

83:365 Mischief in the pantry

My boy finds mischief the way hogs find truffles — he’s biologically drawn to it. He has a radar that senses unlatched gates and cupboards, and a magnetic attraction to everything that’s inappropriate for a toddler to have. The latter includes choking hazards like Lego and peanuts and grommets, inedible consumables like shampoo and Wii remotes, and garden-variety trouble like pets’ water bowls, potting soil and permanent markers…. and that only covers the michief he found before breakfast the other day.

Sigh.

I imagine he keeps a daily tally sheet in his head. “Okay, so far today I’m up seven exasperating actions to five adorable ones. I better step up the cuteness, or they’re going to leave me at the curb with the trash. Hmmm, what have I got in the arsenal for today? Oh, I know, I’ll run up and throw my arms around her knees while yelling a gleeful ‘Mummmmeeeeeeeee!’ That’ll buy me at least three more transgressions before dinner.”

Living with a toddler is all about extremes. Or maybe it’s just this toddler. I’m so tired and wired and sheerly wiped out that I can’t remember last Tuesday, let alone going through this twice before. Or maybe the toddler phase is like childbirth: we’re biologically and psychologically hardwired to forget the trauma almost as soon as it passes, to ensure the continuing perpetuation of the species?

I can handle the relentless mischief, and I can handle the constant repetition. (“Lucas, no. Ah ah ah. Mommy said no. Lucas, NO. Lucas! I! Said! NOOOOO!” Lather rinse and repeat about 16 times every hour.) I can handle the tantrums, both his and mine. I can handle the need to anticipate, to intervene, to redirect, to substitute, to divert, and to mollify on a near-constant basis. I can even handle his new favourite game, “Let’s drop stuff like cheerios and Bob the Builder and things I found between the couch cushions into Mommy’s coffee and see if she notices!”

(Although that last one takes a Herculean amount of adorable-ness to counteract, I must admit. Lucky for him, he’s up to the task.)

What I can’t handle? The screech. He’s entered that whining, screeching phase that makes me want to stick knitting needles in my ears. He screeches when he’s vexed. He screeches when he wants something. He screeches because it’s been forty or even fifty seconds since the last time he screeched.

I can handle the chaos. Truth be told, there’s a twisted part of me that might actually like the chaos. The screeching? May well be the thing that finally separates me from my tenous hold on my sanity.

It’s just a phase, right?

Overheard at the playground

The boys are playing with one of Simon’s classmates at the park. I am hauling Lucas off the top of the highest climber when I hear Simon’s classmate say, “Gee, your mom is lucky. She sure has a loud voice.”

I can’t help but laugh out loud. As I’m wandering away, marveling that I hadn’t been anywhere near the top of my range, my ear translated what he *actually* said: “Gee, your mom is lucky. She sure has a lot of boys.”

It works either way.

Parent’s Day at the pool

Today is “Parent’s Day” at the boys’ swimming lessons. I hate Parent’s Day, I really do.

I think I’m a fairly participatory parent, as far as swim lessons go. I don’t bring a book or wait in the lobby. Nope, once a week, I’ll perch on an inevitably damp bench and sit in 900% humidity, paying careful attention for the sporadic occasions when one of them looks over so I can throw them my most enthusiastic thumbs-up and encouraging smile.

But why, oh why, do I have to get wet? Why can’t I just sit on my damp bench and sweat in peace? I’m happy to listen to whatever the teacher has to say, to reinforce the lessons whenever possible and offer ample opportunities for practicing the week’s lesson at whatever pool we’re lucky enough to inhabit during the week. But really, do I have to get into the pool?

I remember Tristan’s first set of independent swimming lessons… I’d (gasp!) forgotten it was Parent’s Day on lesson five, and was so mortified to be without a bathing suit when we arrived that I almost jumped in in my jeans. (I was such a pleaser back then.)(I’ve so gotten over that now.)(Mostly.)

No such luck this time around. The boys are beside themselves, torqued beyond the usual sky-high level of excitement, because today is Parent’s Day. (Simon already says Tuesday is his favourite day of the week, because it’s swimming lessons day. He said having me come in the pool is almost as exciting as Christmas. No chance I’m staying dry tonight.)

As if one Parent’s Day weren’t enough of a challenge, I’ve got concurrent Parent’s Days… I get to divide my half hour between Tristan’s and Simon’s classes, in two different pools (luckily, in the same complex at least.) Beloved gets to stay home and put the baby to bed.

Tristan’s class is working on jumping off the 10m platform. I think I might accidentally spend most of the half hour with Simon’s class, practicing my back float.

A shameless brag or a plea for reinforcements?

I’ve taken to calling Lucas “Sir Edmund Hillary” because there is nothing that he won’t try to climb. Why? Because it’s there.

I’ve gotten quite laissez-faire about chasing him off the stairs. I don’t rush to take him off the kitchen table any more. (But I do keep the kitchen chairs stacked on the opposite side of the kitchen from the table to discourage him just a bit.) And I’ve completely given up on trying to dissuade him from his “climb onto the end table, over the arm of the couch, crawl or lurch the length of the couch and then roll off the other arm” loop that he’ll happily run five or six times in succession.

We were at the playground yesterday, and he gave me quite the piece of his mind when I pulled him off the ladder (at a height of about five feet) on the big-kids’ play structure. He’s fearless, and relentless. It’s a terrifying combination in a third child!!

But man is he smart! Of course, I’m completely unbiased, but he seems to understand an uncanny amount of instruction for a 16-month old. He will get his own shoes or diaper if you ask him to, and although he hates to be interrupted from his adventures for a diaper change, he will settle down if I explain to him that it will only take a moment for a diaper change and then he can continue playing.

I don’t remember the other boys being so obsessively persistent. He has actually whacked me with a book as I type fiercely on the computer, trying to get something done, when he has decided it’s time for me to read the Busy Little Spider RIGHT NOW. (He’s also tried to push me away from the sink while I was washing dishes and has reached over to pull the camera away from my face. The boy knows his own mind!

My favourite thing about Lucas right now, though, is how he loves his toys. He will sit and play quite happily with any kind of action figure, but he loves Bob the Builder the best. He’s discovered Simon’s superhero figures, though, and it’s rather adorable to hear him say “Ba-Man” and “Spi-Man”. (He doesn’t, mind you, say Tristan or Simon yet, but he’s got his superheros down cold.

And let me tell you, there’s going to be hell to pay if that child says Wolverine before he says Mommy!

Big brothers, little brother

I’m endlessly fascinated by the dynamic (trynamic?) among my boys, and the way our parenting style has changed over the years.

When Simon arrived, Tristan was still less than two years old, and one period of babyness blended rather seamlessly into another. With a four year gap between Simon and Lucas, though, I was concerned that the larger gap would make finding a common interest far more difficult.

Even though Tristan was more of a Bob the Builder and Thomas fan, and Simon was more of a Wiggles kind of toddler, they were still largely in the same sort of phases at the same time. By the time Simon was four and Tristan six, their tastes were on a more or less level playing field, and they moved through mutual obsessions with Star Wars and Indiana Jones and straight into the current fascination with (sigh) Pokémon.

And that’s how I have a 16-month old whose first words included reference to Pokémon characters. What’s really endearing, though, is that Lucas calls all of them, from Pikacu to Darkrai to Turtwig, “Baby!” It’s really quite cute. He will gesture at one of Tristan’s multitude of Pokémon drawings (new ones added daily) on the wall, or the screen saver, or the book Tristan is reading, and exclaim “Baby!” I’m not sure why or how Pokémon characters came to be known, quite emphatically no less, as “Baby!” In fact, Lucas will pick the word baby out of a conversation and bring you whatever Pokémon accoutrement is lying nearby.

What’s really interesting to me, though, is how Lucas has drawn his brothers back to the toys and interests that they outgrew years ago. A couple of weeks ago, Lucas found some of Tristan’s old Bob the Builder toys and was immediately drawn to them, I think largely because of Bob’s happy yellow hat. (Lucas had an early fascination with hats, and “hat” was one of his first words. He will also run his hands through my or Simon’s hair and say “hat”.) So we hauled out all the old Bob the Builder toys, and a new obsession was born.

Lucas loves Bob the Builder. He calls all of the characters, from Muck and Scoop to Farmer Pickles and Wendy, “Bob!” He will happily sit and play with the various characters and play sets for long stretches, and my heart swells to see him sitting quietly cross-legged, all by himself, perusing the pages of the Bob book in his lap. He learned the power of his ability to command by gesturing at the TV and demanding “Bob!” When you sing the theme song and pause at just the right spot, he will interject “Bob!” with a vehemence that is utterly charming.

And to my surprise and delight, Tristan and Simon have rediscovered Bob the Builder, too. I thought the boys might resent sharing the TV and DVD player, forced to change the channel from Teletoon drivel like “Total Drama Island” to preschooler favourites, but they’ve been more than indulgent – I kind of think they like it. Tristan has far more patience than I could ever conjure up for imaginary play with the Bob characters and playsets, and my heart nearly bursts when I see him reading Bob books to Lucas.

I’d expected Lucas to be influenced by the tastes of his older brothers, but I didn’t expect Lucas to have such influence over his big brothers. We’re entering a golden time, when they are just the right age to start playing together and enjoying each other’s company. I’m sure it won’t last, but I’ll milk it for all it’s worth while I can.

Moments like these are too precious and too few, and I treasure them like gold.

137:365 Sand and water table

Fun at the Gloucester Fair

I love the fair. I’ve been going to the fair, whether London’s Western Fair or Ottawa’s SuperEx, for as long as I can remember. I love the fair so much that I even love those little mini-fairs they set up in the parking lot of the strip mall, with half a dozen rides and a stand to buy candy floss and caramel apples at outrageous prices. I don’t go on the rides anymore, but the boys are now at an age where they can ride by themselves, and I get as much enjoyment out of watching them as I ever did riding myself. It’s not about the rides, though. It’s about the whole thing — the games, the grime, the fat cables snaking across the ground, the carnies, the noise, the colours, the lights, the distinctive smell of fried foods and axel grease… what’s not to love?

Ferris wheel

We brought the boys to the Gloucester Fair yesterday with my mom. (The love of fairs is genetic. Almost every fair we attend, and we average two or three a year, we usually bring Granny and Papa Lou along for the ride.) It was one of those days where everything was perfect — warm and sunny but not hot, busy but the line-ups were short, and we had a darn near perfect late-afternoon-into-evening.

The boys had pay-one-price wristbands for the rides, but I think they like the games even more than the rides.

Fishing

That’s not to say they didn’t enjoy the rides!

122:365 At the fair

It’s rare that I get all three boys in the same picture, and I think this is their first ride together. (I’ve got a death-grip on Lukey’s thigh as I lean back and snap this with one hand — not an easy feat with an SLR!)

122c:365 Brothers on the carousel

Of course, an integral part of the fair experience is the food, in this case a pulled pork sandwich. I had a pogo and fries that left my stomach roiling as if I’d taken three spins on the Scrambler — but they were delicious.

Granny

I like the Gloucester Fair because it’s small, and because aside from the midway, there’s a stretch of fun stuff for the kids like a petting zoo, a stretch of hay-bales set into a maze, a fire truck for the kids to climb on, and other things you might find at a community block party. Lucas was so fascinated by this hula hoop near the hay bales that I didn’t think we were going to get him to leave it behind.

Lucas and the hula hoop

It made my heart swell watching him toddle around in that distinctively stiff-legged new-walker way, where it’s like they’re running downhill even on a flat surface because they can’t quite control the momentum of their forward movement yet. Such a short phase, but one of my favourites!

Not quite silhouette

And the caramel apples? Best I’ve had in years — perfectly tart apples with creamy caramel. Mmmmm. Every day should be so sweet.

(The Gloucester Fair runs the third weekend in May every year at the Rideau Carleton Raceway. Today is the last day.)

Talk to me about sleep training

First, I loved your comments on my last post, where I asked you your thoughts about letting my five- and seven-year-old boys walk around the block together alone. For now, we’ve decided to hold off, and I swear it’s not because my mother called me up the night I posted it and more or less told me I was free to support the idea of free range kids but I was not free to subject her grandsons to the philosophy. Well, not entirely because of that, anyway… (*waves to mom*)

So today, let’s talk about what psychological damage I can wreak on her youngest grandson instead. Yep, I want to talk about sleep training. Ah, the controversy never gets old around here.

Lucas is fifteen months old, and for pretty much each night of those fifteen months, he’s been cuddled to sleep. I think it’s time he learned to start falling asleep on his own in his crib. Can someone please flip a magic switch so I can get him to do it immediately, without any stress to him or extraneous effort on my part? No? I didn’t think so.

I’m not opposed to letting him cry it out, if I must. It worked with both Tristan and Simon, although they were each a little less than a year old when we tried it. It took about five nights of fussing with Tristan (you can read my CIO diaries in the archives) and about twice that long with Simon, but in the end, it was soooooo worth it to just be able to put the baby in his crib, kiss him goodnight and walk away.

It’s not that I begrudge Lucas his nightly cuddle, either. I’d still cuddle him before hand, but I still believe that it’s important that they learn to sooth themselves to sleep. He’s not a bad night-time sleeper overall, but he’s been waking in the night a lot lately, and I think he’d be less fussy when he wakes up if he’d put himself to sleep in the first place. A couple of times in the past week, instead of dropping right back to sleep when I re-insert his soother, he’s been wide awake in the crib. He’ll stay in the crib and eventually drift off again, but only if I’m standing there. While I’m pleased with this development, I’m not overly fond of standing stock-still in his room for fifteen minutes at a time in the middle of the night, pining for my bed the whole time. I’m thinking I can somehow parlay this into sleep training, but not quite sure how to do it or if I want to start down that road.

This is, after all, my last baby and I’m coddling him for all he’s worth. As much as I’m a fan of Ferber’s ideas and I totally agree with the theory — I just don’t want to put either of us through it all and in my experience thus far, there’s been no middle ground. It’s either CIO or cuddle to sleep, and I’m not sure either extreme is where I want to go next.

This is where you come in. I don’t particularly want to debate the merits of CIO, and you should know up front that I am deeply offended by Elizabeth Pantley so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t drag her into the conversation, but other than that — what have you found works or doesn’t work in sleep training? How did you get your kids to start falling asleep on their own? How old were they? As with all things mothering, I know I won’t still be rocking him to sleep when he’s on his honeymoon, but even on the third go-round, I’m still not sure how I want to navigate this one. And you know I get all my best mothering material from the bloggy peeps, right?