Month: August 2005

We are on hour five of big boy undies. I’m so proud! Surprised, not quite sure how we got here, but proud nonetheless. (Yes, it’s rare for me to blog on a Sunday, but this parenting thing turned out to be a 24/7 kind of job.) Once again, pardon the euphemisms, but the google traffic on bodily functions creeps me out.

When he woke up this morning, Tristan remembered yesterday’s conversation about metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel. He had p’d overnight in his diaper, but told me he needed to P in the potty about an hour after he got up. Thinking, “in for a penny, in for a pound” I told him after he went that I had a surprise for him, and hauled out the Bob the Builder undies I had bought in a fit of unwarranted optimism maybe six or eight months ago. Despite the healthy coating of dust, Tristan was suitably impressed, and has been running about the house ever since in his Scoop skivvies.

I went for a run to WalMart and picked up some star stickers and some back-up undies. I like ÃœberGeek’s suggestion a few weeks ago of buying the cheapest undies you can find (can anyone explain to me why I can buy 3 pairs for $5.41 or 6 pairs for $6.58?) and just tossing them rather than dealing with cleaning a poopy accident. While I was gone, Tristan had asked to poop in the potty, and has since p’d again as well.

We instituted a star sticker system, where he gets two stickers for a P and three for a poop. When he runs out of stickers, we’ll take the page in and trade it for a metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel.

So far so good. But alas, I’ve become jaded in my old age. Things are never this easy. Aren’t you thrilled to be living this vicariously with us?

We were in the car, on the way home from dinner at Boston Pizza with my folks.

We were just pulling into the driveway and Tristan was talking, as he often does, about which trains he would like to get next. “I’d like to get metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel.”

I’m only half paying attention, because we have this conversation about three times a week, but instead of my usual, “Well, then, you’ll have to be a good boy and maybe Santa will bring them for you,” I say apropos of nothing, “Well, maybe when you go in the potty all the time, you can get metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel.”

Tristan is instantly and irretrievably fixated on this idea. By now Beloved has liberated him from his car seat, and Tristan runs to the front door, positively babbling about no more diapers and pee-ing in the potty and metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel, and I try my best to backpedal and rein him in just a bit by saying things like “If you p ALL the time in the potty, and no more diapers. No diapers, EVER. And you have to P in the POTTY!” I say, trying to head him off at the pass, knowing this will come back to bite me in the ass, but I know he’s not listening. I’m in trouble.

He rushes into the house and up the stairs, and by the time we make it upstairs he is half undressed for his bath, begging us to take off his diaper so he can P in the potty, and of course he does, for the first time in a month or more, and he hops off with glee and cries, “NOW I can have metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel!!” He’s now more willing to negotiate some of the details, and has at least entertained the possibility of pee-ing in the potty from now on, inasmuch as to his three year old brain “from now on” means for the next 11 seconds.

I have my doubts that this whole scam will work. The train bribe thing worked with giving up the soother, but that was a direct swap, soother for Gordon. This whole potty thing is a little less concrete.

I’m thinking madly tonight, trying to come up with a plan before morning when we’ll have to make some sort of decision on this. I can’t help but feel we’re on the precipice on this one, and if I step wrong, we’re in for another three years of diapers. I know how his little brain works, and am willing to bet that if we set a finite time that he has to use the potty to earn those trains, on the day we come home from WalMart with trains in hand he will walk through the front door and ask for his diapers back. I don’t want to pressure him with a “sticker for every dry day, 10 stickers equals new trains” scam either. On the other hand, my potty training strategy to date isn’t winning the Nobel prize either.

Crap, this parenting stuff isn’t as easy as it looks!

This is one of my favourite travel stories.

So I’m getting pretty good at this whole train thing by now. I stood for hours in Termini station yesterday to get information and make my reservation to Genova. I’ve spent some time thinking about this and I’m finally smart enough to request a window seat on the left (Mediterranean) side, non-smoking. Great! So I get onto the train this morning, looking for my *reserved* seat, and what do I find? A NUN! In my reserved seat. Of course, a unilingual Italian nun.

What could I do? Through a bit of sign language and an interpreter, I express my point (you’re in MY seat!) She smiles at me and pats the empty middle seat beside her. What can I do? I hate the middle seat. It’s a friggin’ nine hour ride, I don’t want to sit in the middle seat when I reserved a window seat. But God is watching, and I am just superstitious enough and far enough from home and have spent enough of my vacation to this point in churches to deal with this. So here I am, in the middle seat.

4:00 pm, same day
Genova, Italy

Okay, here I am in the train station in Genova. I was going to spend the night in Genova, but I just can’t stand being in Italy any more. So I’m killing two hours here to get my transfer to Nice and eventually Antibes. It’s been a long day and it won’t be over for another five hours or so, but when it is I’ll be on the Cote d’Azur! And I must say, I’ve earned my days on the beach.

Stuck in the train station, unable to convert my lire into francs because it’s Sunday again. Well, hopefully I’ll be able to find an ATM and a taxi when I get into Antibes…

Categories: Europe95

I’m not entirely sure why my boys are so big. Beloved is a perfectly average and accessible 5’10”, and while I’m tall for a girl at 5’8″, I’m hardly statuesque. My brother is a bit oversized at 6’4″, so I guess it is in our genes somewhere.

My boys are huge. Gigantic, almost. Both of them are 90th to 95th percentile for height. At not quite three and a half, Tristan is 43″ (about 1.1m) tall, taller than your average five year old. So far, Simon has been larger than his brother at almost every milestone. While we’ve joked about the upcoming difficulties we’ll face in keeping two towering teenage boys stocked with groceries some day, we’ve recently started discovering that there are other issues with big boys.

On the more banal side of the equation, I’ve lamented previously that unless we get on the potty training bandwagon soon I’ll be contacting Omar the Tentmaker to requisition some larger diapers. Pampers really should think of expanding beyond size 6 in the same way that women’s clothing manufacturers are finally waking up to the fact that a ceiling of size 14 is just not sufficient for a lot of the dress-buying public.

And having a three year old brain with a five year old body is a bad combination. They’re not at all aware of their own strength. I’m just grateful that they’re both large, so while they may barrel right over the other kids at play (I’m cringing thinking ahead to our days of organized sports), at least they’re well matched for each other. Wish I could say the same for my living room furniture. It may be ugly, but it doesn’t deserve the punishment meted out by 40 lbs of bouncing preschooler (times two!)

There is a Chinese buffet restaurant near us that allows kids under six to eat for free, and they’ve started to take long looks at Tristan when it comes time for the bill. (Not that he’s done any damage to their business. I think the one chicken nugget, three pickles and two bowls of ice cream are pretty reasonable. In truth, it’s Simon the bottomless pit they need to keep their eye on.) I see a day not far in the future when I’m going to have to carry identification for him, because nobody believes he’s only three.

Last week, we brought the family to Mont Cascades water park, and for the first time I started thinking about height restrictions at amusement parks, fairs and the like. Many kiddie rides and amusements are restricted to kids under 48″ tall. Since Tristan grew three inches in six months, it’s not inconceivable that I’ll have a four or five year old too big to play on the kiddie slides or ride on the kiddie rides. That’s just wrong, considering he’s just barely of an age where he can start to enjoy them.

But there are social issues as well. My caregiver has an eight year old who is by far the tallest boy in his class, and she and I have discussed this issue at length. Because he is so tall, people assume Tristan is older than he is and expect him to behave accordingly. The behaviour you’d expect from a three year old is a whole lot different than what you’d expect from a five year old. I’ve seen this on the playground already, where Tristan was a bit petulant (okay, threw a tantrum) about sharing something with another (obviously older) kid and the other kid’s mother’s gave me the hairy eyeball. When I shrugged my shoulders and said, “He’s three, you know how it is” she was obviously taken aback. But I won’t always be there to explain, and I while I don’t want to make excuses for him, I do feel bad that Tristan will constantly be (ironically) short of people’s superficial expectations because of his height.

This isn’t a complaint. I’d rather be dealing with too big than too little, to be honest. When my boys were born at 9 lbs (Tristan) and 10 lbs (Simon) and I struggled with nursing, I knew we had some wiggle room. And it’s probably much easier to be a large man in today’s society than a small one (or a large woman, for that matter). But it’s my job to worry over them. I’m good at it!

What do you think? Does size matter?

Today’s entry is only half an entry. My pen ran out and in the intervening ten years, I never got around to finishing it.

Surely I will melt into nothing but a pile of cotton clothing and tour brochures in this unending, incessant, infernal heat. The air itself doesn’t even seem particularly hot, but I sweat and sweat and become more and more impatient with the heat. No wonder all the shops and services close from 12 or 1 pm to 3 or 4 in the afternoon, or sometimes as late as 5 or 6. No one wants to be out in the mid-day Roman sun.

In 15 minutes, I’ll be joining an archeological tour of the Colosseum, then I’m off to explore the ruins of the Roman Forum. Yesterday, with 80,000 of my closest friends, I toured the Vatican – St Peter’s Basillica, the Vatican Museums and of course, the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was even more breathtaking than I expected it to be. The fresco with the hand of God reaching…

(ed. note: that’s where I ran out of ink. But I remember that I liked the fresco, so for the sake of closure, let’s end that sentence with “was nice.”)

Categories: Europe95

I’ve got mail!

I haven’t received a lot of mail from blog readers. Most people use the comments to get in touch or get their point across. And I don’t check my blog mail daily, partly because I can’t access it from work and partly because canada.com is just a cumbersome pain in the arse to use.

So you can imagine my delight when I checked my mail the other night and I had TWO e-mails from people who had found blog by looking something up on Google. (Can you see why I’m happy? It’s the intersection of all my favourite bloggy things: feedback, Google and the referral logs!)

One was a request from a family who had also been to see A Day Out With Thomas. They, too, had shelled over the big bucks for a professional (read: teen with a digicam) picture of Thomas with their kids, but had lost the contact info for ordering additional prints. I was happy to be able to provide the information to them.

But the second one was the one that really made me laugh:

Hi there!

I was searching for Krispy Kreme donut shop in the ottawa area and I came across your blog when searching for the words ‘petro canada’, krispy kreme’ and ‘ottawa’ on google.

I was wondering if you could let me know the locations of the petro canada’s with the Krispy Kreme donut shops in them – I’ve called petro canada’s information line to no avail and was so glad when I found someone else in canada who know where they are!

I’m getting married in September, and for my groom’s cake, I want to make a giant tower of Krispy Kremes with a little flag on top. ^_^ and until now, I thought I might have to make a treck out to Quebec in order to get the tasty treats…

Thanks in advance! Great Blog by the way – much more entertaining than most!

Cheers,
-J

A groom’s cake of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Isn’t that fabulous? In the ensuing correpsondence, she mentioned she was originally planning on making a castle out of Rice Krispie square bricks, but thought the doughnuts would be easier for guests to take home. It’s almost enough to make me want to get married all over again!

This is my Internet legacy. I’m not leaving a time capsule of life in the early 21st century, or creating an online baby book for my boys. I am a community service rep for Krispy Kreme and the Island of Sodor.

And, just a “wow – small world!” aside while we’re still (sort of) on the subject of Tristan’s day out with Thomas and feedback from blog. One of the comments on that thread is from the director of the St Thomas Railway museum, saying he was pleased that we had such a good time. Turns out he used to be a student of my dad’s, back when my dad was teaching drums for a living about 30 years ago. (My surname, Donders, is pretty uncommon.) He used to come to our house for lessons, and mentioned streets we lived on when I was six or seven years old. Cool, eh?

Categories: blogging

Hello bloggy friends. I’ve been asked to write an article on blogs for our workplace wellness newsletter. Not exactly writing for Salon, but it’s a start! I’ve tried to write this as a blogging 101, but would appreciate any comments, thoughts or suggestions. (The resources at the end had to be formatted the way they are listed because not everyone has access to the full Internet. Am I missing any good general resources?) Be sure to admire the alliteration in my title. Aren’t I clever?

Have you read a blog today? (Score additional points if you’ve blogged today.) If not, you’re missing out on perhaps the biggest revolution in the communication world since Gutenberg. Okay, perhaps that’s an exaggeration. But much like the ubiquitous Blackberry, while you might sneer at the concept, once you finally have a blog of your own you’ll be hooked!

What the heck is a blog?

A weblog, more commonly known as a blog, is a journal, usually informal, that is published on the Internet. There are as many reasons for blogging (the act of writing a blog) as there are bloggers (people who blog). There are political blogs, literary blogs, and celebrity blogs; blogs about knitting, blogs about pizza, blogs about babies; there are photo blogs and technical blogs. There are blogs written by professional writers, and blogs written collaboratively by people who have never met in person. You can use your camera phone to e-mail pictures to your ‘mo-blog’, and you can subscribe to a ‘podcast’, an audio-blog you download to your MP3 player.

Most blogs have a few common characteristics. They are updated frequently, often daily but usually at least once a week or more. Posts (individual blog entries) appear in reverse chronological order, with the most recent posts at the top of a page, and previous posts archived by date (and sometimes by category). A small biography of the blogger is usually present, and lists of “100 things about me” are a common feature of personal blogs.

Blogrolls and comments

Bloggers show their allegiance to or interest in other like-minded bloggers and blogs by maintaining a ‘blogroll’, a list of links to favourite blogs. In the world of blogs, a.k.a. the ‘blogosphere’, having a lot of blogs linking to your blog confers status and a certain respectability. One blogger has developed an entire ecosystem of over 30,000 blogs, categorizing them from Insignificant Microbes through Crawly Amphibians and Marauding Marsupials to Higher Beings, based on a combination of daily visitors and incoming links.

Most blogs feature a commenting system that allows blog readers to interact with the blogger. This is what makes blogs both unique and addictive! Especially in the early days of one’s blogging career, it’s a heady thrill to send something into the great void that is the Internet and know that not only is someone reading what you wrote, but has taken the time to reply to it as well.

Why do people blog?

So now you have an idea of what a blog is. What is more difficult to convey is the sense of community among bloggers and faithful readers of blogs. Blogging is more than just finding a forum for your thoughts, opinions and attitudes (although that is a large component of it.) Blogging, and reading other peoples’ blogs, easily becomes a daily habit. It is surprising how quickly one becomes addicted to hearing the minutia of a complete stranger’s daily travails. Personal blogs can keep guests updated on wedding plans, or act as an online baby book, sharing stories on the fun and foibles of raising children. Blogs can simply act as a place to vent, to discuss, to compare and to congregate.

How do I get started?

Although blogging got its start among the technically savvy, you don’t have to know much more than how to find the Internet and how to type to have your own blog. The Web giant Google provides a free online interface called Blogger, or you can subscribe to one of many popular blog-hosting services such as Moveable Type and LiveJournal. With Blogger, you simply choose a “look” for your blog from among a dozen or so standard templates and select a name for your blog (by far the most agonizing part of the process) and you can be blogging within minutes. For the more technically adept or adventurous, or those with deep enough pockets to hire a techie to make the changes, the customization options are limitless.

What makes good blog?

This, of course, is highly subjective. However, some principals seem to run through all types of blogs, whether political or personal. Here are ten tips for new bloggers.

1. Write often.

2. Write well. You don’t have to be Margaret Atwood, but you should be able to string together a sentence. Pay attention to grammar and punctuation. Your readers will thank you for it.

3. Open your blog to comments from others. At first, no one will comment. But then someone will, and you will be hooked.

4. Be brave and write what you truly believe. Don’t fall into the trap of writing what you think others want you to write, or writing to live up to someone else’s expectations.

5. Build a community. Join blog directories, and use them to find like-minded bloggers. Or follow blogroll links on blogs you admire. Read and comment on other people’s blogs, and link to the ones you really like through your blogroll. Most bloggers will return the favour.

6. Install a hit counter, but don’t obsess over it. Some really great blogs never get much traffic, but some really bad blogs are unfathomably popular.

7. Don’t try too hard. Not everything you write will be a masterpiece. Strive to capture moments, and convey them honestly.

8. Don’t be afraid to try something new. Post a poem, a picture, a letter to the editor, a short story, a rant. Blogging usually lends itself to shorter pieces, but every rule has an exception.

9. Be smart and be kind. Don’t blog about your boss or proprietary work issues – people have been fired for doing that. Don’t say things on your blog to deliberately hurt other people. Don’t steal other people’s words or ideas. Don’t be a comment troll (someone who intentionally posts nasty comments just to stir up trouble.)

10. Have fun!

Blog resources

Here’s an arbitrary and capricious list of interesting blog links. Please note that all of these sites are in the public domain and may contain offensive language or material. Also, all blogs listed are English only, with the exception of Blogger and the Blogs Canada directory, which offers some information in bilingual format.

Blogger, Google’s free blogging software
http://www.blogger.com/ (English)
http://www.blogger.com/start?hl=fr (French)

Blogs Canada, a comprehensive list of Canadian blogs.
http://www.blogscanada.ca/ (English)
http://www.blogscanada.ca/directory/default_fr.asp (French)

Ottawa Start Blogs, a list of Ottawa blogs
http://www.ottawastart.com/blogs.php

Truth Laid Bear’s blog ecosystem
http://www.truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php

DotMoms, a collaboration of mommy-bloggers (and a really long list of mommy and daddy blogs)
http://roughdraft.typepad.com/dotmoms/

Place and Thyme, an award-winning Ottawa photo blog:
http://www.placeandthyme.com/

A selection of Canadian political blogs
http://www.blogscanada.ca/politics/default.aspx

Rick Mercer, from CBC’s “This Hour has 22 Minutes” and “Made in Canada”
http://rickmercer.blogspot.com/
(For more celebrity blogs, visit http://www.icerocket.com/c?p=celeblogs.)

And finally, most humbly, the author’s blog about being a working Canadian mum to two preschool boys, called Postcards from the Mothership:
http://momm-eh.blogspot.com/

Categories: blogging

This is the part of my trip when I really started having fun. Disclaimer: this blog is really, really long!

On the rails again, this time from Venice to Rome. Just a few days ago, the prospect of this leg of the trip terrified me, but not anymore! I imagine that the intensity (for lack of a better word) is probably going to increase from Venice to Rome, but I think I did a good job of getting my feet wet and getting used to the Italian pace in general in Venice.

My favourite passtime in Venice came to be canal cruising. Since there are no cars, there are canal buses that transport you around. When I first got to Venice, I bought a three day pass, and I sure got my money’s worth! It’s a great way to see the city, albeit a LOT crowded on certain routes at certain times.

Wandering through these cities, I can’t help but wonder how anybody could live here. With the possible exception of Salzburg, all these cities seem to be a nightmare for the locals, with tourists everywhere. In Amsterdam, you have to haul your furniture up via pulley and shove it in through a window; in Venice, your moving van is a boat (I watched somebody move today.) And the parts of town that are not tourist hell seem quite run-down. Of course, that’s just what I saw looking around.

It’s been a great place to visit, but there’s no place like home.

5:45 pm, same day
The Colosseum, Rome

The Colosseum! The Pantheon! The Roman Forum! The Trevi Fountain! Oh god, what a wonderous, ancient, fascinating place this is! It is huge and majestic and solid and imperial! It is the embodiment of what I wanted to see on my trip. It is magical!

I’m sitting on the hot stone steps inside the Colosseum. I didn’t even mean to come here today – I was just wandering around, and had been to the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain. I was kinda lost when I saw the majestic ruins of the Colosseum from at least half a kilometre away. So I followed the Via dei Fori Imperiali past the Roman Forum and into the Colosseum. It is breath-taking! Even outside the Colosseum, everywhere I look are these spectatcular ruins, only some of which are addressed in my guide books. These ancient ruins are everywhere, and I have no idea what half of them are.

I can’t believe I was afraid of this! I love it! It’s all I wanted from this trip and more.

P.S. I’m officially in Rome/Italy now: I had my butt pinched as I hiked down the main street, hauling my backpack from the station to the hotel.

The hotel is absolutely fabulous, too – the best I’ve had yet. The foyer is off this dusty, crowded square, but it is all done in marble inside. My room is on the top floor (3 or 4, I don’t really remember. I just remember it was 40C and I had just hiked across town with my pack and the stairs nearly killed me!) But I digress – the room itself is tiny, but quaint, with a desk, phone, soft bed, sink and closet. The wonderful part is that it opens up onto a concourse two stories above an open courtyard garden! It’s completely enclosed by buildings on all four sides, but open to the top. I love it. I love Rome! This is great!

8:24 pm, same day
Albergo della Lunetta

I’ve just had the most wonderful, tasty, enjoyable dinner I’ve had since I got to Europe!

I was wandering homeward from the Colosseum, half-heartedly thinking about the McDonald’s I noticed a block from the hotel, when I saw a sidewalk café on the street leading to the hotel. I read the ‘tourist menu’ (a choice of appetizers, main course and a dessert for a fixed price – very common here) and saw it wasn’t four or five courses and trés $$$ like most I had seen. I really went to town and ordered wine instead of a soft drink. Hoo-ah! I had a ‘farmer’s salad’ with black olives and feta cheese (mmm) and linguini with fresh pesto sauce and a banana and a cappuchino. Bellissima! I lingered; I ate s-l-o-w-l-y; I took in the scenery. Emboldened, perhaps by the wine, I wandered around the square afterward, enjoying the twilight and searching for stamps.

So here I sit in my tiny home, beside the open window facing the terrace and the garden, relishing the occasional breeze that dries the sweat on my brow.

I do love Rome. Venice was nothing by comparison. A fading starlet, past her prime by many years, trying to recapture the fame of her youth with heavy but unflattering make-up. Desperate for attention, longing for the glory days, she is but a shadow of her former self, and all the more pathetic for the attempt.

But Rome! Ah Roma! Your majesty is enhanced with the passing of the centuries. The tourists, who own Venice and so many of the other cities I’ve seen, are swallowed; mere insects against your imperial form.

The legends of Rome in the modern day: everything you’ve heard about the maniacal drivers in Rome is true, and understated! The busier an intersection, the bigger (wider) the streets become. Traffic is a free-for-all with cars and mopeds going every-which-way. Most intersections have pedestrian crosswalks, but there are no lights. Pedestrians have the right of way, regardless of what the traffic is doing. Crossing is an act of faith if there ever was one. You step off the curb and proceed (with mock-confidence) with head up and eyes straight ahead, showing no fear. Hoping you live to see the opposite curb (but doubting it) you march across the road, and cars, buses and mopeds swerve in front of, behind and around you. A rare few actually slow down or (heaven forbid) stop to let you pass, but I suspect these are foreigners and tourists, unfamiliar with the local insanity.

And the Roman men? Well, all that seems to be true enough, too. Although I was asked out to dinner and a sightseeing tour in Venice, nothing compares to the appreciative charm of these Roman men. They are, however, at least in my experience, very sweet and quite harmless. They smile engagingly and compliment you (I’ve heard ‘bella Canadienna’ a half dozen times today) and I’ll return their smiles and keep walking. I imagine I’d have a ‘friend’ or two of I stopped or showed any interest, but I don’t and they’re quite nice about the whole thing. I haven’t yet resorted to Grandma’s wedding ring (worn for luck and protection where a wedding ring belongs) since that scary guy on the train from Munich.

And so, in case I haven’t been explicit enough on this point, I love Rome. If in fact one day (Beloved) and I do make it to Greece, I think a stop-over in Rome is a must. Now that I think of it, I forgot to throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain; I’ll have to go back.

The curtain of darkness has fallen, and I can hear a saxophone playing lovely jazz solos somewhere below me. This is too picturesque for me to describe, me in this tiny but wonderfually cozy and homey room, writing by the open window, with the lonely saxophone melodies carrying through the sweltering summer night. I feel as if I’ve fallen into an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel! What a wonderful trip this is…

Categories: Europe95

I am beginning to realize that I have done more than create two little boys. In fact, I have created a third entity known as brothers, and brothers have a personality all their own, the best and the worst of the composite parts.

I know a little bit about brothers. I have one. He’s five years younger than me, so we didn’t often have a lot in common growing up. I played with his Star Wars toys sometimes, and he played kissing games in the fort in the vacant lot with the neighbourhood kids sometimes. But five years and a gender gap is a lot to overcome. I may have a brother, but I’ve never been one. (Although I must admit, as adults my brother and I have discovered each other anew. Together we have populated my mother’s life with three grandsons in three years. We have more in common, and more respect for each other, now than we ever did growing up!)

When I was in grade 7, I made friends with two boys, brothers, who were one year ahead and one year behind me in school. These boys wrote the definition to the word brothers as I know it. They weren’t inseparable, and they generally annoyed the crap out of each other, but they had a bond that was clearly visible, tangible. When I think back to growing up with these brothers, who came to be among my closest friends, I remember not only the shit they disturbed (I have clear memories of them putting the cat in a pillow case and spinning her around over their heads) and capers they pulled off (one day we decided to play hookey and feeling the absence of the brother who attended another school, we liberated him by telling the principal his grandmother had died – without even asking the brother in question if he wanted to play hookey that day.) I remember most clearly the inconsequential time they spent together, throwing a baseball, watching TV, playing games on the Nintendo. It wasn’t that you never saw one without the other, and autonomously they were great friends and companions to me. But there was a depth to their friendship that I’ve never seen, before or since.

That’s what I think of when I think of my boys as brothers. That they will always have each other, even as they irritate the holy hell out of each other. And having them so close in age, just a few weeks shy of two years apart, means that they should have lots of common ground over the years.

But really, I thought I’d have a few years to spare before some elements of brotherly behaviour manifested themselves. At three and a half, Tristan gleefully goads 18 month old Simon into doing stupid things. The dumber the stunt, the harder Tristan laughs, and of course Simon is a willing patsy. Recently, Tristan has taken to goading Simon into biting his own shoe when they are buckled into their car seats. This is the pinnacle of humour to Tristan, who howls with delight, and I have to drive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on Simon’s foot to keep him from complying. Tristan made my heart melt the other day by asking over and over if Simon had finished his dinner yet, because he (Tristan) had just finished building a particularly lovely track and wanted Simon to drive the trains with him. On another day, I hollered myself hoarse at Tristan’s hysterics over Simon touching his tracks.

And shouldn’t we have been much closer to the teen years before I heard the first, “Mummy! He’s looking at me!”?

Brothers!