Category: Tristan

Young love

It started with a note in Tristan’s communication folder, the yellow laminated folder we send back and forth to school each day containing notes from me to his teachers in one direction and notes from the school, art projects, and homework in the other direction.

“Tristan, did you draw all these hearts?” I asked, admiring the page covered with a rainbow of carefully coloured hearts.

“No,” answered Tristan, barely looking up from his Lego.

I was about to conclude that the teacher accidentally put someone else’s artwork into Tristan’s folder when he continued, “(A girl in my class) drew that for me.”

“Ohhhh,” I said, biting back a grin. “And why did she do that?”

“I dunno,” he said, with distracted annoyance at my interruption of his Lego creativity. “She just did. She and the other girls are always bugging me. They keep asking me who I’m going to marry.”

lovenotes

On the days I drop Tristan off at school, I’ve noticed one little girl in particular goes out of her way to stand near Tristan. She doesn’t actually speak to him or look at him or otherwise acknowledge his presence, except that every time Tristan moves she quietly rearranges herself to be next to him again. Tristan is, of course, completely oblivious to her proximity and perhaps her existence. Men!

It’s been fun watching Tristan’s awareness of and tolerance of the girls evolving over the school year. At first, we heard about how the girls pester Tristan and his buddy to play house with them. While he seemed perplexed and annoyed by their attention at the beginning, as heart-covered notes have become more common the girls have been getting almost daily mention in the recounting of Tristan’s daily activities. He shared his crazy carpet with one for an afternoon of sledding, and was chosen by another to be her special helper when it was her turn to bring the attendance sheets to the office. And then, when we made up a list of classmates to invite to his birthday party last month, the girls actually outnumbered the boys invited by three to two. (Unfortunately, due to the record-breaking snow dump that weekend, only one of the five could attend — and it was one of the girls.)

The sweetest thing has been Tristan’s contribution to the flow of love-notes. When I asked him to make a thank-you card for the birthday gift he received from his classmate, I melted when he drew a picture of himself hugging the gift-giver on the outside and wrote (with no help from me) “I love you” on the inside. Then he made a similar card for two other girls in his class and insisted I send those to school for their communication folders, too. Six years old and already a player. That’s my boy!

The next day he made up two more cards, complete with drawn hugs and “I love you” inscriptions, and insisted I send them to school for his to best male friends. At least he isn’t shy with his affection!

If I don’t blog soon, I’ll burst

So! Many! Bloggable! Moments!! And no time to blog them all. Oh, it’s like bloggy constipation, and if I don’t get it out soon, I’m quite sure my head will explode.

Here are things that I’d dearly love to blog about if only I had the time. And trust me, in my head, they’re all most excellent posts.

  1. Last Friday, Tristan turned six. SIX! My beautiful baby boy, my first-born son, is six. And I will write him a proper birthday post one of these days, I swear I will.
  2. On Saturday morning, we woke up to the sounds of Simon barfing. Of course. Stomach bugs and birthday parties just seem to go together, don’t they?
  3. Also on Saturday, the snow came fast and furious. Oh my sweet lord, the snow. We’ve had 86 cm of snow (that’s somewhere around 20 inches, I think) in the past week, including a spectacular dump of 56 cm on the weekend. I’ve never seen so much snow at one time. And to make it even more spectacular, we’ve added it to a near-record four METRES of snow that’s already fallen this winter. That’s more than 13 feet of snow, people.

    This was my house on Sunday morning:

    Way too much snow

    Those snow banks on the side of the driveway are about as tall as me. I had to use the shovel as a catapult to heave the snow up higher than my head with every. single. shovelful. Oh, my aching shoulders! Really, I’ve never seen anything remotely like it.

  4. And what else was Sunday? After two hours of shovelling (after Beloved had shovelled for an hour the night before, and I had shovelled for an hour the day before), you might ask? Why, it was Tristan’s sixth birthday party!

    Tristan is SIX!

    Even though half the guests couldn’t make it because of the storm (the sidestreets were impassable until late in the day Sunday and even the parking lot of the party place — Starr Gymnastics, and I can’t say enough nice things about them — wasn’t plowed until half way through the party) Tristan still had a wonderful time, which is good enough for me.

  5. Unfortunately, my brother and his family were trying to make the trek up from Toronto on the weekend, in the midst of the blizzard of the decade. They wisely waited an extra day until the snow stopped falling, but it still took them more than eight hours to make what’s normally a five hour drive on Sunday…. missing the party entirely, unfortunately.

    The good part is that we had all day together on Monday to enjoy Ottawa’s gorgeous Children’s Museum which also deserves a post of its own, but this photo of cousins Brooke (age 14 months) and Simon will have to surmise a fun afternoon.

    Brooke and Simon

    You have to be just a little bit crazy to visit the children’s museum on the first day of March Break, I think, but it was surprisingly easy to get around and have fun despite the crowds.

I’d love to blog it all in detail, but I have another weigh-in this morning with the midwife (Lucas is doing well, gaining slowly but steadily) and Tristan now has the barfy virus. Thank you, supreme ruler of the universe, for heeding my “Please, just not on Sunday!” plea on that one.

Thanks to all for your comments and e-mails wondering how we’re doing. The answer is crazy, but in a good way. If you could find someone to either do my endless piles of laundry, or blog what’s in my head, or both, I’d be most grateful!!

At least my daughter-in-law will be obedient

Tristan has been thinking a lot lately about how things will be when he grows up.

First, there will be a new set of rules. Nobody will ever have to cut their fingernails, or go to bed if they don’t feel like it, or share with their brother.

And he’ll be financing his long-nailed and sleepy lifestyle with a variety of career options. These are the things he has told me he wants to be when he grows up, in roughly the order he announced them:

  • an elephant trainer
  • King (I love this one)
  • a fry cook (curse you, Sponge Bob)
  • an animal doctor
  • a hairstylist (!!)

Last week, he looked at me with those stunning, clear gray eyes of his and confided, “Mommy, I know who I’m going to marry when I grow up.”

“You do?” I asked, my heart already breaking with the cuteness of it. “And who might that be?”

“Katie!” he announced with assurance.

I could only laugh. I mean, she’s a gorgeous blond with soulful brown eyes, and she’s as loyal as the day is long, but I don’t think it will ever work out for them.

Did I mention Katie is our dog?

Katie in the sunshine

Dr House at the Children’s Hospital

Yesterday, I put 157 kms on the car: 50 kms round trip dropping Beloved off at work and going back home to pick up Tristan; 25 kms round trip to CHEO (the Children’s Hospital) for an appointment; then I dropped off Tristan at school, dropped off Simon for his first day of nursery school (!), picked Simon up an hour later, picked Tristan up, and drove another 50 kms round trip to fetch Beloved.

Seriously? We need a second car.

***

The appointment at CHEO was kind of funny. I’d finally gotten around to asking Tristan’s ped about a spot that he’s had at the crown of his head back at his well-baby five year appointment in the spring, and the ped suggested a pediatric dermatologist take a look at it. It was actually a pinpoint scab that I noticed the day Tristan was born, and the nurse tried to tell me it was likely where “the probe” broke the skin, despite my insistence that there was no probe (I may have been in the throes of labour, but I was still paying pretty close attention to what came and went between my legs!) Over the years, it has become a hairless raised blistery bit about the size of a blueberry, and although I’m not overly worried about it, I figured we should get it checked out. Over the summer, he also developed a rather ugly black mole on his leg that we also wanted to have checked.

We’re puttering around the house getting ready for the appointment, and Tristan is loagy, hiding under a blanket and reluctant to get his shoes on. I finally feel his skin, and am not sure whether he feels flush because of the blanket or because of something else. Sure enough, I finally get him up and moving and realize he’s got that distinctive glassy-eyed look that spells fever. I debate for a few minutes, think of the five-month wait for this appointment and the work stuff I cancelled to stay home, and make the executive decision to tylenol him up and head out anyway.

We wait for more than a half an hour at the CHEO clinic, and though he’s subdued, he’s also fidgety and not terribly warm. He’s off, but not dealthy sick.

Finally, we get called in. A moment later, a very young woman (or maybe I’m just very old now) comes in with his chart and introduces herself as the resident, and asks me if it’s okay if more than one doctor does the examination this morning. I’m thinking she means her and the senior doc, so I’m fine with that.

She takes the case history, leaves, and a few minutes later comes back with not one, not two, but three other people, and Dr House, the Pediatric Version begins. There’s one obviously senior doc, and three very young (they still had student cards!) associates. He lays out the scenario and solicits their best guesses as to the diagnosis. Meanwhile, each of them paws through Tristan’s hair to prod his scalp, and then pokes and squeezes the mole on his leg.

Remember, Tristan is not feeling well in the first place. And, I don’t think he even knew about the spot on his head. He is tolerant of the attention, but barely.

The doctor and his acolytes bandy about some very scary terms and some long Latin names. The perky blond with freckles suggests one thing, and the senior doc tells her, “No no, that usually presents as red, lace-like adhesions.” The lanky brunette with the eyelashes suggests the spot on his leg might be a residual foreign object imbedded under the skin, and blushes furiously when the senior doctor shoots me an inclusive look and says, “Don’t you think the mother might have noticed a trauma severe enough to embed something in her child’s leg?”

Just when I think we’re done, the senior doctor asks if we mind if the next group comes in. I blink silently, my brain still trying furiously to file away the various diagnoses for later consultation with Dr Google, and in the end nod faintly. It’s hard not to laugh when FOUR MORE student doctors file in and begin to poke, prod and generally irritate the snot out of poor Tristan.

Finally, we get a confirmed diagnosis. The spot on his head was likely a simple absence of skin that formed in utero, and the bump itself is just a cosmetic scar that may or may not resolve itself. Removing it would introduce the possibility of worse scarring, so we agree to leave it alone and I am silently grateful that at least Tristan is taller than all his classmates and so at least it won’t be terribly noticable if we keep his hair longish. The spot on his leg is a Spitz Nevus, which Dr Google tells me is a benign tumour that is often misdiagnosed as a melanoma. Melanoma and tumour are the only two words I’ve grasped all morning, and I am happy about neither, although the “benign” keeps me from truly panicking. The doctor suggests we remove it as a precautionary measure, and sets us up with an appointment next Wednesday. While my brain grapples with the implication of the speed with which he wants it removed (this must be more serious than his gentle manner is letting on, cries the hypochondriac in me) the more logical part of my brain protests aloud the date. “Does it have to be Wednesday? It’s truly the worst day of the week for us.” Sure enough, this doctor only visits CHEO on Wednesday mornings.

Another Wednesday, another day of missed work, another 150 kms of driving. But at least I got to watch a live version of Dr House’s pleasant alter-ego. That counts for something, right?

MotherTalk book review: Bob Books for Beginning Readers

I have a confession to make. I didn’t read a single book in the boxed set I’m supposed to be reviewing today for my stop on MotherTalk’s Bob Books blog tour. In fact, I had them read to me – by Tristan, my five year old son.

(pause for gasps of delight and surprise)

Yep, it’s true. Neither one of us imagined he could read a whole sentence, let alone an entire book, and yet by the end of the first day, HE had read to ME not one, not two, not even four, but FIVE books of the twelve book boxed set. And they say boys tend to have trouble with reading!

BOB booksThe Bob Books are designed for beginning readers. Each book in the set of 12 introduces a few new letters and increasingly complex sentence structures. The letters seem to roughly follow the same introduction schedule as the Jolly Phonics program they’ve been using at Tristan’s school – first M and S and A, then D and B, then G and H, etc. Book one starts with simple constructions like “Mat sat.” By the fifth book, he was sounding out full sentences like, “Dot and Mit sit on a mat.” A little thin on plot, maybe, and they lacked character development. But it was really something to watch Tristan sound out new words and assimilate familiar ones with only a little bit of coaching from me, and the look in his eyes as he realized he was actually reading was truly a great moment in my parenting career. His attention span is a little sketchy sometimes, so I was delighted when we finished one book and then another and he continued to ask me if we could keep reading. It was his idea to continue through the box, not mine, and he was eager to continue reading books to Beloved the next night at bedtime, too.

It was also a good way for me to see where we might have to do a little more work. He was having trouble distinguishing between a lower case “n” and “h” for a bit, and confusing his “b” and “d” (I’ll give it a bit before I start to panic about dyslexia, which does run rather rampant though my family.) Like his mother, he wants to be able to rush ahead without actually reading the letters themselves, and I had to keep reminding him to slow down and read the words and not just guess based on the picture. “Trust the letters,” I told him. “The pictures can be tricky, but the letters will always tell you the truth.” I was really astonished at how quickly he assimilated entire words. By the end of the fifth book, he didn’t have to stop to sound out “the” or “and” or “is”.

I was really impressed by the first set of Bob books, and was pleased to see that there are four additional sets we can work through. (You can read more about them on the official Bob Books website.) Might be a good way for me to invest the $20 Amazon.com gift certificate I’ll be getting for this MotherTalk sponsored review!

Yay day!

See how nice I am to you? I’m about to brag blatantly, but I’ll turn it into a yay day so you can brag, too.

We got Tristan’s report card this week. They ‘grade’ them on a four point scale, from “needs to work on this skill” to “beginning to develop” to “meets developmental expectations” to “exceeds expectations”. He met developmental expectations in most areas – math and science and art. He knows all his letters except for Q, and can count past 40 in English and to 28 in French. He can also follow simple directions in both languages, and remembers his vocabulary in both languages well.

(I must admit I’m still just a little bit entertained that they grade four-year olds in junior kindergarten on math and science and art, to be honest. I kind of expected to get a report that said either ‘does’ or ‘does not’ eat paste and colour within the lines. They take this educational stuff pretty seriously right out of the gate.)

He got a few “beginning to develop” in some areas where we already knew he needs to put in a little more effort – writing his letters, for one, but mostly in areas like following instruction and social skills. He still follows his own mind a little more often than the teacher’s instructions, but he’s come miles and miles from that first week, where we got called in for “the talk.”

So while I’m proud that he did well overall, and the comments reflect a bright, happy little boy who is a pleasure to have in the classroom, who enjoys role play and music and story time and interacting with his peers, there were two areas where his teachers said he excelled. He got a ‘4’ for exceeds expectations in oral communication and reading. I’m really not surprised that my boy is particularly literate, given that I can say without modesty that he comes from exceptionally literate people, but I’m proud nonetheless.

We survived the first year. The lovely part is not so much that I’m looking forward to the next year of challenges, but that Tristan is. That’s my boy.

And now, after all that, I turn the microphone over to you. What makes the sun shine in your world today?

Colour me impressed

Originally uploaded by Dani_Girl

Someone left a brilliant comment recently about saving kids’ art to Flickr. I love this idea and have decided to start uploading the boys’ art the lazy way, via the digital camera (as opposed to the scanner, which I haven’t yet mastered.)

Is it just me, or are these pretty darn good drawings for a five year old? The one on the left is Woody from Toy Story, and the one on the right is (cringe) Sponge Bob Square Pants. He drew them freehand, without any reference material at all. You know I’m all about the words, so he didn’t get it from me, but Beloved is a classically trained animator with a degree in fine arts, so I’m guessing Tristan has Beloved to thank for his artistic proclivities.

P.S. This is my first post-from-Flickr blog entry. How cool is that? And I’ve just realized that I now have to upgrade to a Pro account because I can only have three sets on the basic account. Now at least I know what to ask for for my birthday this year! Does anyone know how I can add more than one picture per post when blogging through Flickr?

Birth of a hockey fan

So we’re not exactly sporty people. Beloved, bless his literate artsy heart, couldn’t care less about the difference between an infield fly and a hanging curveball. The athletic education of the boys has fallen largely to me, which, if you know me at all, is pretty darn funny. Pity my poor boys, who are just now learning how to catch and have yet to have their first experience standing on ice skates, let alone actually learning to skate.

But this exciting spring, with playoff fever spreading like malaria through the capital, I’ve taken it upon myself to teach them the finer points of bandwagon hockey fandom. I’m a professional in this particular sport. I can count on one hand the number of regular season hockey games I’ve watched in their entirety, but each year as the lilacs bloom I find myself glued to the screen, cheering on the home team. (In no small part, I’m sure, because in my heart Sens playoff hockey is hopelessly tangled with one of our best family memories.)

I’ve never lived in a city with a championship team before. I was a rabid Blue Jays fan in 1992 and 1993 when they won the World Series – I barely missed a single game of the entire 162 game regular season in 1992 – and when they won they weren’t just Toronto’s team but Canada’s team. But we were still five hours down the road from Toronto and although I made my way downtown to the massive victory party in the Byward Market when they won, it still wasn’t quite the same.

There’s something charming about how a winning home-town team brings the community together. The plethora of cars with Sens flag whipping in the wind, the home-made signs on lawns and windows, the otherwise staid civil servants wearing hockey jerseys over their business suits. The Sens are within a single victory of their first-ever Stanley Cup playoff in modern history; how could an irrepressible joiner like me resist feeding off of – and feeding in to – that energy?

A couple of weeks ago, when the Sens made the first round of the playoffs, I started talking to Tristan about hockey, and about the Sens. I knew his schoolmates would be talking hockey, and I wanted him to be able to join in the conversation. Yesterday, with the Eastern Conference final on the line, I asked they boys if they wanted to watch the game with me. (Simon used to be a Leafs fan, back in the day.) To my great entertainment, Tristan was beside himself with excitement, counting down the minutes to the puck drop.

We stood together in the living room, trying to sing along with the national anthem. Well, Tristan did a fine job singing along, but I could barely croak out the words around the lump of pride in my throat. The national anthem chokes me up at the best of times (I’m such a sentimental patriot), but standing there hand in hand with my boys, watching the Sens in front of the madly cheering hometown crowd, was just one of those moments.

The goal nine seconds into the game didn’t dampen Tristan’s enthusiasm in the least. He watched the first period with a rapt attention that surprised me, and in between muttering encouragement to the players on the screen he even composed a little song about the Sens winning. It was, in a word, adorable.

He only agreed to go to bed at the end of the first period after I promised to tell him the score as soon as he woke up the next morning. His disappointment at the loss was mollified by the promise of a daytime game on Saturday, one he could watch in its entirety.

Make room on the bandwagon – I’m off to see if I can find a Sens jersey, size extra-small.

My big boy keeps getting bigger

I’ve just been to Tristan’s annual check-up, something that has been delegated to Beloved the past few years. (So much so, in fact, that I showed up at the wrong building. Good thing we were running a bit ahead of schedule – in the year or two since I’ve been with the boys to the pediatrician, apparently he moved his practice across the street.) I feel the need to reassert my maternal ‘ownership’ of appointments every now and then. Who me, control issues?

I adore our pediatrician. He has the reputation as one of the best in the city, and it’s well-deserved in my opinion. He makes me feel like a wonderful parent with every visit. He earned my undying affection and loyalty way back in the early days, when I had to bring newborn Tristan in every week for the first month for a weigh-in because he wasn’t latching well and wasn’t gaining enough weight. It seems we were in the ped’s office endlessly that first year – Tristan had an EKG when his eyes were doing a weird little roll-back-in-his-head thing around 6 months, then he had a UTI with a fever so severe that we were in the ER for all of Christmas Day – and of course each had a series of follow-up appointments. No matter how anxious or neurotic I was, Dr Bialik’s calming manner not only reassured me but bolstered my negligible parenting confidence.

That long, skinny baby, who was almost failure-to-thrive before we figured out the whole breastfeeding thing, is now a whopping 3’10” and 51 lbs at five years old – more than 95th percentile for height and for perhaps the first time, more than 50th percentile for weight. And five years later, Dr Bialik still finds ways to reassure me with the most casual observations. I didn’t even pointedly ask any questions, and yet he managed to allay my concerns about Tristan’s social development (he seems painfully shy to me, and I worry just a little bit about his lack of interaction with the other kids) and to completely put to rest any nagging fears I had about hyperactivity and ADHD.

While Tristan flopped around on the examining room floor like a carp and bounced around the room like a pinball on Red Bull, Dr Bialik assured me that he could see clear evidence, in this short appointment, that although he has a high energy level Tristan has the ability to reign it in and concentrate on a task when asked to do so – exactly what you need to see in your average engergetic five year old.

I feel like a good mommy today. I wish I could stuff this feeling in a jar and keep it under my pillow for the next time I need it!

Tristan on two wheels

This post was inspired by MotherTalk’s Blog Bonanza called “Fearless Friday”, to support the paperback launch of Arianna Huffington’s book On Becoming Fearless.

In thinking about what to write about, I chewed over lots of times when I’ve been fearless: travelling for a month by myself through Europe when I was 25 comes to mind (except, I wasn’t so much fearless as terrified and too far from home to to anything about it except keep going), as does when I left my ex-husband. Even choosing to undergo the IVF treatment that lead to Tristan begged a leap of faith, and more than a bit of fearlessness.

That’s not where I want to go with this, though.

Last Saturday, I took the training wheels off Tristan’s beloved bicycle. We had been talking it up for a while. Since the middle of last summer, I’d been asking him if he was ready for me to take off the training wheels, and he’d answer unequivocally, “Not until I’m five.”

He turned five this March, and I think we both knew it was time. It’s been a funny season here, and we’ve had snow on and off enough that he’s only managed to ride his bike a few times – although I’m sure he asked for it every single day. Finally, last Saturday was one of those gorgeous days that vault over spring entirely and instead more closely resemble early summer. Tristan and I decided early that morning that it would be the big day, the day the training wheels came off, and he pestered me with endless enthusiasm as I tried to get a few quick things done before we set off for the school yard with its wide expanses of flat, untrafficked pavement to try it out. In the end, it was just easier to drop what I was doing and indulge him than to keep putting him off. He practically flew into the house when I told him to go find not only his helmet, but a set of knee and elbow pads, too. (He is my son, after all. We’re not graceful people by nature.)

Somehow, I thought it would be difficult to take off the training wheels – I’m always thrilled for an opportunity to haul out my toolbox – but the bolt holding the wheels in place twisted off in my fingertips. Just a few twists, and suddenly my oldest son was the proud but nervous owner of a wobbly, unpredictable two-wheeler.

Used to a bike that didn’t fight back, he was having trouble controlling it even in the driveway. We only made it as far as the stop sign at the corner, him not sure how to maintain his balance and me not sure how to impart my knowledge on to him, before he started losing his patience.

“I can’t do it!” he whined. “It’s too hard.”

“Yes you can,” I said through gritted teeth, hot and frustrated and more than a little impatient myself. We stumbled on for a few more meters, but both of us were rapidly losing interest.

“I think maybe I have to be six,” said Tristan, now pushing his bike and walking beside it.

“You know,” I replied, getting my breath and composure back incrementally, “nobody can ride a bike without training wheels perfectly the first time. It’s a little bit of work, and you have to learn to balance yourself. But if we practise a little bit each day, I’m sure you’ll be able to do it.”

He remained unconvinced, and politely declined when I suggested we try again. Later that afternoon, I suggested we have another go at it, but he again declined. We’ve had the most gorgeous, mild weather this week – perfect for bike-riding – and yet Tristan’s bike has languished, abandoned in the garage on its kickstand.

He’s so much like me, Tristan is. He doesn’t like to fail, doesn’t like to do it wrong. He doesn’t like to be anything less than perfect. This, I think, is at the root of – among other things – my endless troubles with acquiring the professional level of French I’ll need for my job if I want to get a promotion some day. I don’t like looking foolish, don’t like taking the risk, don’t like facing the possibility that I won’t be perfect the first time I try.

I found myself thinking about it over the last few days, this fear of failure. It’s a strong fear in me, perhaps even more so than my near-legendary fear of change. If I can’t do it perfectly, I’m often too embarrassed to try it at all. In thinking of all the things in my life that would not have happened if I hadn’t been afraid to screw things up royally, I’ve realized that the best things have come from throwing that fear to the wind. One can only ride with training wheels for so long.

Wednesday night after dinner, I suggested to Tristan that we try again with the bicycle. He’d had it in the driveway a couple of times to practice his balance and scoot about by himself, but we hadn’t really tried any long distances since that first day. To our mutual surprise, half way around the block some synaptic/physical connection was forged and Tristan was suddenly pedalling madly with me running beside him but no longer holding the bike seat. If I lagged behind, he would falter, but as long as I kept up with him, panting heavily at his shoulder but not touching him, he was able to maintain his balance.

We were both delighted. “I did it!” he cried, pride and surprise mingling in his voice. “I can’t wait to tell Daddy. I did it!” Just before the final stretch to the house, he hopped off his bike and started to walk it the rest of the way home. “I can do it if I want to,” he assured me. “I just need a little rest.” He knows his limits. I don’t know many adults who have acquired that skill yet.

It never fails to amaze me how much our kids teach us about being parents, and about being people. Sometimes, you just have to suck up that fear of gravity, that nauseous uncertainty, that reluctance to risk an ungainly crash. Sailing down the street with the breeze in your face for that first liberating ride is a lot more fun than sitting on the porch, watching the other kids whizzing by on their bikes while you wish you were brave enough to try.