Category: Ah, me boys

Lucas the amazing interactive baby

I’ve always said that six to nine months old is one of my favourite baby ages. Old enough to sit up but not old enough to creep around; old enough to love you obviously and joyfully but not old enough to be prone to tantrums; old enough to babble but not old enough to talk back yet.

Lucas at almost nine months is a delightful baby – if you don’t mind the 32 minute naps. I forgot how early babies become interactive, instead of just slobbery little blobs. He is fascinated by the boys and the pets, and loves when the boys pay attention to him. The other day, I was putting his coat on telling him that we were on our way out to get Simon at school, and as soon as I said “Simon” he started craning his head around looking for him. Way too cute!

He’s very talkative. I’m really so very not surprised about that. Hell, you have to be vocal to be heard around our house. What’s cute is how he imitates us. He not only repeats one of three varieties of babble (ahhhh, ba-ba-ba, or da-da-da) but modulates his voice to mimic us. We’re working on ma-ma-ma, but he’s not quite there yet. And there’s no doubt he understands a lot of what we say. I just about fell over the other day when I said, “Lucas, where’s your toes?” and he reached over and grabbed them.

My absolute favourite baby trick, though, is this. About a month ago, I was rocking him to sleep and singing to him when I realized that he wasn’t just cooing softly to himself — in itself almost heartbreakingly endearing — but he was humming along with me as I sang to him. At which point I became a gelatinous ooze of maternal love and forgave him a years’ worth of 32 minute naps.

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Isn’t he delicious?

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday: First skating lessons

They’re Canadian; of course I had to sign the boys up for skating lessons!

They’d never been on skates before. The morning started out with a lot of this:

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After a while of crawling around on the ice, Tristan had progressed to this:

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I honestly never expected him to get to this during his very first lesson:

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But, most of the time was spent more like this:

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Simon was content to stay more or less like this:

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Guess which one said he wants to sign up for hockey lessons next year, and which one said he thinks he’ll stick with swimming?

Another parenting milestone: come pick up your bloodied child

I knew it was coming. I guess I should count myself lucky to have made it two years into his scholastic career before it happened. I certainly count myself lucky for having been home to take the call when it came in.

“Hello, this is the school. Your little guy is here — he’s fine, but he’s taken a tumble, and you might want to come and get him. His nose was bleeding pretty badly, and he has a couple of scrapes.”

I’d been on my way to the grocery store and almost missed the call. Luckily, Simon was already outside in his coat and shoes. I finished the diaper change I’d been in the middle of and bundled up the baby in his car seat, and we were at the school in about five minutes. Poor Tristan was still shaking, and his little heart was racing. He’d been rolling down the hill with his friend, got dizzy and lost control. Then hit the pavement. Ouch. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how a body hits the pavement to leave a welt two inches above his knee, on his hip, on the inside of his elbow and from the tip of his nose down his mouth to his chin. *cringe* Apparently his nose bled quite profusely.

I was highly impressed with the school. By the time I arrived, his teacher was there with another teacher who might have been a nurse. They’d bundled him up and were talking gently to him. His teacher had even given him a couple of Hershey’s Kisses, which had melted into chocolate-foil blobs in his clenched fist. His teacher offered to help us out to the car, and her concern for Tristan was obvious. A yucky thing to happen, for sure, but I was pleased by the reaction of both the school and his teacher.

Poor kid’s got his mother’s dexterity. He’s doomed.

Granny’s Revenge

I was flipping through Tristan’s baby calendar the other day, comparing Tristan and Lucas at seven months of age. (Heartbreakingly, I seem to have lost my 2004 kitchen calendar with all of Simon’s baby milestones. I have every other year since 2001; I’m hoping it presents itself out of the clutter one of these days.) It was interesting to compare my first and my third. I can see, for instance, that they’re nearly the same weight, give or take half a pound on twenty pounds. (Simon, I seem to remember, hit 20 lbs around four months of age!)

What really surprised me, though, was that Tristan was standing and “cruising the furniture” and up on his hands and knees rocking in a pre-crawl motion at this age whereas Lucas has only just reliably mastered sitting up. I’m sure this has everything to do with their own developmental clocks and nothing to do with the fact that every time Lucas begins to lift himself up I sweep his knees out from under him and squash him back down to the ground. Sorry, kid, I’m just not ready for you to get mobile. How’s two years from now by you?

On the other hand, my mother is on the cusp of getting banned from the house. Every time she gets near Lucas, she’s got him standing up on his feet, holding him while he bounces and encouraging him to walk. And muttering something about “Granny’s Revenge.” I don’t think she believes me, but so help me I’ll ban her from the house if she teaches that baby to walk before his first birthday!

I’m no longer welcome in the school yard

Second week of school, and I’m no longer welcome in the school yard. Well, not just me. In fact, no parents are welcome in the school yard. But, I have decided to take it personally.

I can see why the school has asked parents to drop their kids off at the school yard fence instead of walking them to the back door, as we have been doing. They have no idea who is a parent and who is not, and their first priority has to be keeping the kids safe. It’s only a couple-50 meters difference, and the school yard is supervised the last quarter-hour before the bell rings.

I still hate it. And worse, Tristan hates it. He said it makes him sad, which breaks my heart. He liked it when we hung around with him, waiting for the bell to ring. Now we kiss him off in a crush of kids bottlenecking through the gate instead of near the door where he queues up. Myself, I liked the time before and after school where I could scope out the other kids and their parents, and maybe even strike up a conversation with the familiar faces. It’s been nice being able to get to know the kids in his class and some of their parents over the last couple of months.

The funny thing is that in not traversing that final couple of meters across the school yard, we’ve cut a significant amount of our morning walk. If I’m only going to be escorting him to and from the school yard fence, I’m seriously wondering whether it’s worth doing at all. In other words, I’m wondering if at six he’s old enough to walk to and from school on his own.

What do you think? I’m torn on this one. Myself, I walked back and forth from the time I was four years old, and it was twice or three times the distance that Tristan has to walk. (And it was uphill both ways, in 10 feet of snow, and I had to park my dinosaur at the stable around the corner.) I don’t fear for his safety in any way, and I find that in general, Tristan’s a smart and responsible kid. I’m more than half-way inclined to let him try it.

But. But, but, but. It’s always the niggling little voice of worry that does me in. What if? What if something happened, what if he got lost (he can actually see the house for the entire walk and knows the neighbourhood like the back of his hand), what if something even more awful happened?

I’d be inclined to let him try it in the mornings (why do mornings seem less threatening, less full of potential mischief?) but I have to walk Simon over there anyway. It only really makes sense to let him walk home by himself after school. I’m sure he’d be fine, absolutely positive. But.

There are other options. I see tonnes of kids wandering by the house each morning and afternoon on their own treks to school, so I could try to find an older kid to escort him home in the afternoons. And I love the idea of the “walking school bus” so if I were feeling really keen, I could even try to organize something like this.

What do you think? How old is old enough to walk to or from school by yourself?

One dead mouse

I went out for an early-morning walk last week, and on the way back into the house I noticed that one of the neighbourhood cats had left a present in the driveway. One dead mouse. Cute little thing, too. I walked into the house, and asked Beloved to dispose of the poor little fellow on his way out to work. I’m all about equality between genders, but there are some jobs that just cry out for a manly touch, yanno?

I’d completely forgotten about it a couple of hours later when I was herding the boys out of the house to go to the grocery store. They were playing outside while I loaded Lucas into his car seat, and I remembered the deceased rodent at the exact moment they discovered it. I walked out and they were both on their haunches inspecting him, and I threatened them with nasty consequences if they even thought about touching the poor thing before I could pick it up.

I came out with a ziploc bag inverted over my hand and picked him up, cringing at the softness of his fur through the bag. I felt a little verklempt myself, which might be why I didn’t see coming what happened next. Not sure what else to do with him (we don’t – thankfully – get a lot of deceased rodents in the hood) I reverted the bag around him in much the same manner as I handle dog poops and zipped him inside. I didn’t realize that Tristan was right behind me as I walked into the garage and was about to drop him into the nearest garbage bag when he stopped me with a tiny voice.

“Mommy, what are you doing?” he asked, and I knew I was in trouble.

“Oh sweetie,” I said, my heart already breaking. “He’s , um, he’s dead, sweetie. I’m putting him in the trash.”

His face crumpled as he tried not to cry in front of me and was overcome nonetheless. I think it might have been the first time he really had an understanding of the finality of death. And his first lesson on the subject? Dead = trash. Good one, Mom.

I thought about burying him in the yard and making a bit of a ceremony out of it, but I was frankly afraid it would be a slippery slope leading to funerals for squashed spiders and road kill and who knows what else. So instead we just spent a little while talking about how he probably lived a good life, and how he’d go to heaven to play with all sorts of mousey friends in a big mousey field full of cheese. Eventually, the tears stopped and after a while, I even got him smiling. I was reminded that there is a big gap between four years old and six years old, and a big difference in the personalities of Simon and Tristan. While Tristan cried, Simon made jokes. Not mean jokes, but it was obvious that the dead mouse didn’t faze him in the slightest and he was perplexed by Tristan’s reaction.

Throughout the day, in quiet moments, Tristan would speak up again about the dead mouse, and I knew he was still processing it all in his little gigantic heart. Late in the afternoon, the boys were playing outside for a while, and when I came out later I found an inscription on the driveway in chalk: “I miss you moues.”

I wish I could wrap my arms around him and just hug him forever.

(I’d started writing this post a few days ago, and never got back to it. I was reminded of it again yesterday, when we got home from running some errands and Beloved noticed that a kitten had been run over in the road directly in front of our house. I am endlessly grateful to the city for their responsiveness. Within an hour of my call, while Beloved whisked the boys off on another errand, they had come by to scoop up the gory remains. Thankfully, they never saw it. I can only imagine the trauma that one would have caused.)

Grade One already

I never would have guessed that I’d be more worked up about Tristan going off to school all day long — Grade One already! — than I was when he went off to Junior Kindergarten the first time. At the end of June, I thought I would dance with glee when I finally sent him back to school. And yet here I am with a lump in my throat, thinking about how much I’ll miss him, miss the simple pleasure of his company.

I was so proud of him when Simon, Lucas and I escorted him to school. I’m so happy that I don’t have any serious worries about Tristan. He’s such a great kid. He found his buddy from last year, who is thankfully in his class again this year, and within seconds they were the centre of a gaggle of gangly Grade One boys. His teacher seems fantastic, and he already knows and likes her. She greeted the students she knew with a hug, and the ones she was just meeting with an effusive handshake. I think we’re in luck this year, again.

That’s not keeping me from fretting, though. Does he have enough to eat? Will he have the stamina to make it through a full day, every day? And, just to torque my anxiety a bit higher, he’s not feeling well. He spiked a fever yesterday, and though he was bright and energetic this morning, I think he’s still coming down with something. Sigh.

Who knew a house with three people in it could feel so empty? First Beloved left to go back to work, and now Tristan’s off. Simon’s integration into JK will be a little slower, but in two weeks, it will just be Lucas and I in the house. Much as I crave the quiet time and peace of an (almost) empty house, I feel sad and out of sorts right now.

I know myself well enough to know why I’m teary and regretful instead of excited to have my boys growing up and doing so well. Only a few short months until I go back to work. Whimper.