Category: Rants and rambles

The baby has a new game. It’s called “soother, soother, who’s got the soother” and involves him waking up every 20 minutes to an hour all night, whimpering because he can’t find his soother. I give it to him, he rolls over and goes back to sleep, I’m up for 20 more minutes grumbling. Lather, rinse, repeat. We played that from midnight to four in the morning, give or take, then Lucas decided to serenade the house. For an hour. Not crying, not even fussing, just hollering to enjoy the sound of it echoing through the darkened but no-longer-sleeping house.

I finally nursed him around 5:15, just to stuff something in his mouth to keep him quiet, and he promptly fell back asleep.

I did not.

Around 6:15, I got Beloved up. As he was showering, I fell into a fitful sleep. At around 6:45, a cacophony not unlike the sound of 150 recycling boxes full of wine bottles jarred me awake. The neighbours one door over are getting a new roof today, and it was the sound of a dumpster being installed in their driveway. Joy.

Beloved goes to work, I get the boys ready for school. Garbage leaks mysterious sticky substance all over the kitchen floor as I change the bag. Syrup gets knocked over and spills onto the table. Dog tracks what can only be her own poop she has stepped in across the floor. The baby is miserable, won’t let me put him down but complains when I pick him up. Doesn’t even enjoy his breakfast, which he usually loves. I manage a four minute shower, and he howls throughout it. I pull on a fresh shirt, pick him up, and he spits up all over me.

Get all three boys in coats because it is one degree above freezing this morning (no, really!) and out the door, only a couple of minutes late for the bell.

Get back to the house with Lucas, give him a bottle and bring him upstairs for a desperately needed nap. Rock him and wrestle with him for 30 minutes as he resists sleep to the point of tears. (His, not mine.) Remain remarkably calm despite growing headache from clenched jaws. Baby has been asleep just long enough for me to consider putting him in his cradle when goddamn roofers start throwing what sounds like anvils from top of roof into empty metal dumpster. You can imagine the noise. I jump, baby jumps and cries… and we start all over again with the wrestling and the rocking.

Finally get baby to sleep, creep downstairs, microwave cold cup of coffee because in the fray I’ve managed only one cup so far… and there is no milk.

Whimper.

Edited to add: nap lasted 18 minutes. Long enough to write this post, pee and empty five plates from the dishwasher.

Whimper.

I acknowledge that the first mistake was mine. When we used the ETR toll highway to bypass highway 401 last May and you sent the bill for $20, I paid it through online banking without stopping to think that my account was attached to the old car and not the new van. So when I got a collection notice from you in June, I called right away to resolve the issue. A nice lady at the ETR office could quite clearly see the credit sitting in one account and the debt sitting in the other, so she offered to amalgamate the two accounts and transfer the payment.

All was well, or so I thought.

Imagine my surprise when I received a bill the next month for 24 cents. That’s right, you spent 55 cents to send me a 24 cent bill. Never mind the fact that I paid the bill on time, just to the wrong account. I’ll admit, I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to send you your 24 cents, but neither was I in a hurry to give you another call to resolve the situation. With three little boys at home, my time is worth a lot more than 24 cents.

And imagine my further surprise when I got an automated collection call the very next day at dinner time, during which you impelled me to call your toll-free number to resolve an important collection issue. And I’m sure you can imagine my annoyance when you did not even give me the opportunity to click through to an agent, but simply repeated the telephone number. Since you called me at 5:15 pm, when I was making dinner while feeding the baby and unloading the dishwasher and removing the dirty tupperware from the boys’ day camp backpacks and chatting with my husband about his day, I didn’t exactly have a free hand to write your number down. So I hung up.

And you can imagine my growing consternation when I got the very same phone call the very next day at exactly the same time and you probably won’t be surprised to hear I was busy doing the exact things that prevented me from writing down your number the day before. But you can bet that I dropped everything to do just that, and in fact I immediately called that number, where I waited on hold for seven minutes before being disconnected without actually speaking to a human being.

And by that time I was righteously frothed and it’s a very good thing that the agent to whom I spoke was pleasant and understanding of my annoyance. That agent informed me that HER computer screen showed a balance outstanding of $20.24, even though your now-one-week-old bill showed a balance of $0.24 and even though more than a month ago another agent reassured me that the balance was nil. Lucky for you, turns out she was even more appalled by the snafu that was my account that I was, and she assured me that she would take care of everything.

That was last week. I have no idea what my current account balance is, nor do I really care. You have, it seems, at least one kind and intelligent employee working the phones. Thanks for that. On the whole, though, I think putting up with the traffic on the 401 at rush hour may have been less of an annoyance than paying the 407 ETR toll.

(*) 407 ETR is a toll highway across the top of Toronto, one of the few if only toll highways in the province.

Imagine the amount of laundry generated by your average family of five.

Imagine the amount of laundry generated by your average family of five, including two busy preschoolers.

Imagine the amount of laundry generated by your average family of five, including two busy preschoolers when enduring back-to-back stomach viruses.

Imagine the amount of laundry generated by your average family of five, including two busy preschoolers, when enduring back-to-back stomach viruses, when one of those family members is a newborn.

Imagine the amount of laundry generated by your average family of five, including two busy preschoolers, when enduring back-to-back stomach viruses, when one of those family members is a newborn, with diaper-leak issues.

Imagine the amount of laundry generated by your average family of five, including two busy preschoolers, when enduring back-to-back stomach viruses, when one of those family members is a newborn, with diaper-leak issues and spit-up issues due to reflux.

Imagine the amount of laundry generated by your average family of five, including two busy preschoolers, when enduring back-to-back stomach viruses, when one of those family members is a newborn, with diaper-leak issues and spit-up issues due to reflux, when the dryer starts taking two to four HOURS to dry a single load.

Imagine the amount of laundry generated by your average family of five, including two busy preschoolers, when enduring back-to-back stomach viruses, when one of those family members is a newborn, with diaper-leak issues and spit-up issues due to reflux, when the dryer starts taking two to four HOURS to dry a single load and suddenly the washer is leaving the clothes sopping wet.

I went out this week and blew almost two grand on a high-efficiency washer and dryer to replace the ancient ones (more than 15, perhaps as old as 25 years) that came with the house when we bought it. Hello and goodbye tax refund.

Imagine the amount of laundry generated by your average family of five, including two busy preschoolers, when enduring back-to-back stomach viruses, when one of those family members is a newborn, with diaper-leak issues and spit-up issues due to reflux, who have just purchased a new high efficiency washer and dryer — and the NEW dryer still takes three runs to dry the clothes.

Did you know neither the dryer repairman, nor the dryer installer, nor the dryer salesperson, nor the duct cleaning people, will come over and check your dryer vent? Did you know that they all claim they have no idea who will do such a thing, even though your new dryer manual says you should have it done once a year or so? Did you know that when talking to the dryer service people on the phone, after talking to all the above professionals and only shortly after your visit to the pediatrician finding out your six week old son is still not quite gaining enough weight so you’ll have to increase the daily amount of formula, if you burst into tears of utter frustration the service people are suddenly far more helpful? And did you know that you can actually run your dryer without it being hooked up to the outdoor vent hose at all (for a short time, at least)? But of course the service person can’t make it over until after the long weekend. And either the new dryer doesn’t work properly, or you just spent two grand on a new washer and dryer when the problem was with the vents all along.

It’s been a very long day.

So it’s “Family Day” in Ontario, also known as Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s ill-planned if not well-intentioned vote grabbing proposal. And I’m sure there are more clever scribes than I with rants against this silly holiday, but I can’t help myself. I too must rant.

It may be “Family Day” – but, according to one article I read, only about 40 per cent of people in the province are actually entitled to the day off to be with their families. Large stores and malls are closed, municipal and provincial government services are closed, and most civic places like libraries are closed. (Which, to me, begs the question — what the hell are we supposed to do with our families then? Stay locked up in the house for the whole day? That’s a recipe for disaster if I’ve ever heard one!) Beloved works in Quebec, so he doesn’t get the day off. If I weren’t on maternity leave, I’d be working because Federal government employees don’t get the day off, either. So, if I weren’t already off, we’d have to either pay double-time to a daycare provider willing to work on the stat holiday, or use up a personal day and stay home. Not a huge deal for us, but with city-run daycares closed, lots of families will be SOL and scrambling for care, or explaining to unimpressed employers why they need an extra day off.

Tristan already has a PD day scheduled for this Friday, and both his school and Simon’s nursery school are closed today. What never crossed my mind until late last week was that our nanny is also entitled to today as a paid holiday. Luckily, she took pity on the look of abject terror that must have crossed my face as I realized I’d be facing an entire February day stuck in the house with two rambunctious boys and a 10-day-old newborn, and agreed to my plea that she take the boys for a couple of hours in the morning.

But what I really want to know is what the heck the province is doing by imposing this “family” time. Are we really so overworked, so overscheduled, so out of touch with each other, that we need the province to step in to save our families? Granted, my boys are still only 4 and 6 years old, but we still have dinner together every single night. We still play together on weekends, and when I’m not ridiculously pregnant or tending to a newborn, we go on lots of family expeditions large and small. We can have fun going to the grocery store or the mall together, and we play games together. Why are the ‘experts’ always lamenting the loss of family time and why do people find it so hard to connect with their families?

Sometimes, I feel like a bit of a slacker for not having the boys scheduled in more activities. They have swimming lessons in the summer, and last year they went to a week of gymnastics daycamp. I’d’ve had them in skating this winter, if I weren’t pregnant. But that’s only one night a week. Am I at fault for underscheduling and not challenging them more? I don’t think so. Tristan’s report card just came in, and he’s exceeding expectations in reading and mathematics, and meeting expectations in every other area, so I’m confident that he’s being appropriately challenged. Moreso, he loves school, as does Simon. I’d be afraid that pushing too much on them would backfire, and that they might resist and lose their natural love of learning if too much is forced on them.

I digress. What I wanted to say when I started this little screed is that this whole Family Day thing seems bogus to me. If we can manage Family Time without the province leaning on us and causing us to have to scramble for daycare and employment arrangements, I think most people in the province can do the same thing.

And seriously? If you really want to tempt me, I’d be a lot less likely to rant if that day off were in the summer time, with green grass and sunshine. February? No thanks.

I’ve vacillated quite a bit about what to post today. Late last night, tears still stinging my eyes, I was going to turn off the comments and not post anything until after Christmas, or at least until after the weekend, to take a little break from blogging. The level of judgementalism in some of the comments yesterday really got to me. (When I re-read them this morning, I could clearly see that it was only a few – but once I was feeling defensive, hurt wasn’t far behind.) Lying awake after my 4 am pee break and unable to go back to sleep, I thought maybe I’d try to make a joke out of it. An hour ago in the shower, I thought maybe it was best to just ignore it and write about something else entirely.

Since my muse has deserted me, you get this stream-of-consciousness instead. For those of you who are curious (or, in some cases, disturbingly judgemental) about our choice to send the boys to Catholic school, beyond this post here’s the gist of it our reasoning.

I like me. I like who I am, how I am, how I got to be here. I am content with myself in many ways, and by extension, I’m happy with how I got here. I have such fond memories of my childhood that it makes perfect sense to me to raise the boys in more or less the same way I was raised. Beloved and I both went to Catholic school, and I don’t know about his parents, but mine had the same doubts and questions and concerns about Catholicism, and even Christianity, that I do. I’ve posted many, many times about this, and maybe that’s why yesterday’s comments caught me so off guard.

So, back to the rationale. The bottom line? It was good enough for me, good enough for Beloved, good enough for my parents, to go to Catholic school and have that fundamental set of beliefs, and then make our own choices as we grew up — and we believe it’s good enough for the boys, too. I may have issues with even some of the most basic precepts of the faith, but that doesn’t mean I discount the whole thing. I’m not anti-Catholic, it just took me a long time to reconcile my own fundamental beliefs with that of the Church. Over the years I’ve learned to have the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept those I cannot. It’s a philosophy that works for me, despite my occassional ponderings otherwise.

Kerry sent me an article on what I was really thinking about when I posted yesterday that gets to the heart of the matter much better than all the subsequent comments, so I wanted to share that with you, too.

I’m off to another ultrasound, to ground myself in what really matters to our family heading into this holiday season… the fact that we have each other.

I was ahead of the game this year. No really, it’s true!

When the first mittens started appearing in stores this year, unceremoniously elbowing the beach towels and sand toys off store shelves (probably back in July or something ridiculous like that) I started buying them and ferreting them away.

Before I even knew what colour the boys’ coats would be, I was buying mittens. Fleecey mittens, woolen mittens, waterproof thinsulated mittens. Whenever I was out and came across a stash of mittens, I bought a pair. Or two.

Just before the first snowfall, I even cleaned out the top of the front hall closet and sorted out all the mittens left over from last year. I had the boys try them on, washed them, and tucked them back into the basket so we’d have an accessible and reliable place to go for back-up mittens.

And last night, as we stood in the front hallway with our boots and our skipants and our coats and our hats on, ready to go out for a little after-dinner fun shovelling the driveway and playing in the newly fallen snow, I searched high and low and was completely flummoxed.

It’s not even the first of December, and we are mittenless.

How could this happen? Where did they all go? More than a dozen mittens sucked into some giant mitten black hole.

In the end, Tristan wore two left-handed gloves and Simon struggled with a too-small pair of overstuffed mittens that fell off every time he moved his arms and prevented him from using his hands to pick things up.

And you can take my word for it that it takes a really. long. time. to shovel the driveway when you have to stop every second minute to replace a three-year-old’s ill-fitting mittens, especially when you have to stop on the alternate minute to reach under your own coat and hike your ill-fitting maternity pants back up over your ass to prevent frostbite on your exposed tailbone.

Is it springtime yet?

I’ve written before about my love for the original, unadulterated Sesame Street of my childhood, and how Simon and I have spent hours enjoying the old clips – first on YouTube and then on our Sesame Street Old School DVD collection. I’ve even added the latest collection (Old School: 1974 to 1979) to my Christmas wish list. Not Simon’s wish list, mind you. Mine.

What I didn’t notice was that apparently somewhere on the DVD collections there is a disclaimer that states: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Seriously?

I mean, you only have to watch some of those old episodes to see how they are fundamentally different – and, IMHO, far richer – than what’s available on PBS today. But not suitable for a preschool child? What, because of the psychedelic colours, the folky music, the blissful naivety, the 1970s peace-and-love groove? Granted, it’s a little disturbing that Oscar the Grouch starts out as orange and Big Bird has obviously had recent exposure to a malicious barber in the very first season, but in general I find the oldest episodes are by far the most engaging, intelligent and entertaining of the lot.

And what’s not to love about the old episodes? I pine for the days when the Count’s counting ended in thunder and lightning, not confetti, and when Snuffleupagus could only be seen by Big Bird. You might argue that preschoolers like the predictability of routine, but did they have to make the show so painfully formulaic? And really, can anyone explain what on earth is the appeal of Journey to Ernie, let alone the pedantic and overwrought Elmo’s World, and why they are given so much air time every. single. episode? I miss the old days when they’d mix it up a little, and you never knew if the next clip would be Kermit the Frog reporting live on scene, or a flashy clip of Hindu-inspired animation, or Maria and Bob and Gordon bursting into song on the stoop. (Oh, how I wanted a stoop when I was a kid.)

Yeah, I know, I’m just a bitter old curmudgeon pining nostalgically for my youth. But I can guarantee you that Simon would much rather sing “C is for Cookie” than “A Cookie is a Sometimes Food” and that my preschoolers will always be encouraged to watch the earliest episodes of Sesame Street.

Some things are just better old school, yanno?