Category: Ah, me boys

A love letter to Tristan

(Editorial note: I promised that I’d write this post 20 days ago on Tristan’s birthday, just like I wrote one to Simon on his birthday. It took me a long time not just because it’s been a crazy month, but because it’s hard to pick and choose among all the wonderful things that define Tristan to me. Also, for the first time I am aware of Tristan as a possible audience to this post, at some future date, and that has made me inexplicably self-conscious in writing this.)

My darling Tristan,

You are five years old. The rounded cheeks of your babyness have melted away, revealing the fine cheekbones and strong jaw of a handsome young man. Your unfairly long eyelashes frame your gorgeous eyes, gray one moment, then green, then blue. Your eyes take in the world, and I see the world in a different way because of how it is reflected in your beautiful, thoughtful, searching eyes.

You are a joy to me, every single day. I love your companionship, the simple joy of getting to know you and spending time with you. I love that we can sit on a quiet afternoon and play Uno together and I don’t have to help you or let you win. I love bringing you with me as I run errands, simply for the pleasure of your company. I love to talk to you, to discover that you have opinions and ideas and perspectives that are uniquely your own. I love your sense of humour, and I love to laugh with you.

You don’t need me to take care of you at every moment anymore. You can open your own seatbelt and car door, and put on your own boots and coat, and I can trust you out of my sight for more than a minute or two at a time, and while I am greatly relieved by much of this, it still surprises me. You have grown up so much in the past year, your first year at school.

School. You are doing so well at school, and I am so proud. You are so clever, my Tristan. I’m glad that the learning comes easily for you, and that you seem to enjoy each new task. By all accounts, after our first meeting with your teacher, you’ve thrived. You’ve taken to school like you’ve always belonged there.

You are kind, and thoughtful, and considerate. A few weeks ago, you took it upon yourself to put away folded piles of laundry you found on my bed. In the past week, you’ve taken to making your own bed – without anyone asking you to do it. And when you saw how pleased we were, you made your brother’s bed, and made a good stab at making our big bed, too. You, like your mother, like to please people. I can see you absorbing our praise and approval like a plant absorbs water and sunlight.

You are even considerate of your brother. When the two of you are colouring endless pages of your favourite Toy Story and Cars characters printed out from the Internet, you are careful to write Simon’s name on all his pages for him. The other day, tears ran down my cheeks from supressed laughter as I peeked around the corner from the kitchen and watched you try to help your brother put his pyjamas on, because you had yours on and of course he wanted to be just like you. You are surprisingly patient with the number of times you are asked to relinquish something or share something or give your brother the first turn at something, simply because he is younger than you. You are an ideal older brother.

You also have your mother’s obsessive tendencies. You have moved in the past few months from fixations on Thomas trains to Cars toys to Toy Story characters. You have also inherited your mother’s attachment to the computer, and if we let you, you would stand for hours in front of the cabinet that holds the family computer, playing video games and looking for new colouring pages. Well, maybe you get that from your father, too.

You are, son of mine, a little bit on the obstinate side. You know your mind, and you know what you like, and you are quite sure that you know more about the ways of the world than your doddering parents. Which most likely is true, but I was hoping for a few more years before you figured it out.

You still love to cuddle, thank goodness. You are endlessly affectionate, and free with hugs and smiles. You love to share a blanket, or a bed, or simply curl up with us on the sofa. I love the way you rest your head on my shoulder as we read a book together, and the way you will rest your hand on me with affection and ownership.

You are a miracle to me in so many ways, my Tristan. You are the oldest, breaking new ground with every day. I often feel like we are learning as much from you as you are learning from us. It falls to the first child to teach the parents how to parent, I think, and you are a good teacher. As you grow up, I am constantly delighted by your emerging personality.

I love you more than I could ever tell you, my son. From your bright smile to your warmth and affection to your growing independence… you find new ways every single day to endear me, to charm me, to win me over. I love you, Tristan. More and more each day.

The littlest enforcer

We’re in the car, driving back from our favourite hamburger joint. Simon and Tristan are recounting the day’s adventures, and Tristan tells us how he was playing basketball in the driveway with one of the kids from daycare.

Tristan: “It was fun, but then he pushed me while he was trying to get the ball and I fell down.”

Simon (two years younger and four inches shorter than Tristan), fiercely: “If that guy ever pushes you down again, I’m going to teach him a lesson!”

I suspect that may in fact set the tone for their school years. Don’t mess with Tristan, or his little brother will beat the snot out of you.

Tristan’s recipe for a successful birthday party

It’s the fifth anniversary of my due date with Tristan. To celebrate, we had a party!

After considerable angsting on the subject of birthday parties earlier this year, I think I’ve stumbed upon a winning combination.

Take eight boys, ages 3 through 6, and give them some hula hoops.

Add a bunch of foam cubes and a high platform.

Throw in a trampoline, a rope that swings, and a a balance beam.

Make sure there’s some pizza, and of course some presents.

And of course, the icing on the cake is a cupcake cake.

A good time was had by all!

Outnumbered

It is becoming increasingly obvious that I am outnumbered, a single XX chromosome in a sea of XY chromosomes. Not only are my babies getting bigger, but they are exhibiting more of their inherent boyness with each passing day.

Evidence of the first part:

This is the curtain rod in my living room, held in place by one of those anchors that pops open like an umbrella after you shove it through the hole.


Note the damage to the drywall. That’s about a seven inch divot. Despite these industrial-strength anchors, the boys have still managed to pull the curtains half off the wall. Would this happen with girls? I suspect not.

Evidence of the second part:

Simon and I played outside today. After watching for a while, I eventually had to join in to try for myself the game that kept him occupied for the best part of an hour: scrounge around the side of the house for fallen icicles, impressive in size from the mid-week thaw, and smash them to smithereens on the bricks. We must have pulverized 20 lbs of ice. I can’t believe it kept him engaged for as long as it did, but the very best part was the evil giggle that burbled from him every single time he smashed a hunk of ice to bits. Wanton destruction not only sanctioned by but actually accompanied by Mommy – he was in heaven.

Evidence of the third part:

As I type this, I’m curled up on the sofa while Beloved and Tristan are a few feet away, playing the Cars video game on the Xbox console Beloved just rented from the video store.


They’ve completely forgotten I’m here, father and son bonding over a video game. Tristan, not even five years old, has already beaten his father in at least one race. He holds the game controller like he was born with it in his hand.

I have this sneaking suspicion this is only the beginning…

The saucy gourmand

Dinner last night was spaghetti. I like spaghetti, Beloved likes spaghetti, the boys like spaghetti. Spaghetti is cheap, healthy, and so easy to cook even I can’t screw it up (although I’m not so good with the quantity thing. We either have too much spaghetti and not enough sauce, or too much sauce, or enough spaghetti and sauce to feed a platoon.) We eat spaghetti for dinner every single week.

So, as I said, dinner last night was spaghetti. Actually, it was spaghettini, because they were sold out of the whole wheat spaghetti. It’s okay, I have a modicom of flexibility. I can deal with spaghettini instead of spaghetti – it just takes less time to boil the snot out of it. And even though it was a weeknight, we even had sauce with meat because spaghetti sauce is one of the few foods the ONLY food I ever even think to make in bulk and freeze, like all those magazine articles about organizing your life suggest you ought to do.

We had a salad, too, because I loves me a salad with my spaghetti, but truth be told, the salad was a little on the pathetic side. I only had about a cup of leaves left in the bottom of the box (what, you don’t buy your lettuce by the box? It’s so much better than the stuff in the bag, I kid you not) so when I tossed on a can of mandarin slices and some almonds, I think the mandarins and almonds outweighed the leafy bits by about two to one.

So we had spaghetti, and salad. I put some pasta in the bowl for Tristan, and gave it a spritz with the Becel non-fat butter substitute (again you laugh, but I’m telling you, that stuff is good!) and cut his spaghettini into manageable bites. It’s at this point in the story that I have to make clear the point that nothing even remotely resembling sauce may touch Tristan’s pasta. Butter, margarine, and various oil product imposters may be added in small quantities, and parmesan cheese will be added liberally by Tristan himself and ONLY Tristan himself. But for the love of all things holy, do not even attempt to sully his noodles with sauce. This has been the lay of the land in our family since he was old enough to hurl a bowl of pasta right back at the chef, and we’ve come to an entente (an al dente entente, matter of fact) under which we all can live happily.

Simon, on the other hand, likes his spaghetti sauced. It’s messier that way, you know. And frankly, adding a spoonful of sauce to one bowl and a spritz of non-butter substitute to another is not so much of a stretch of my culinary capabilities.

And so we sit down to eat, Beloved and I and even Simon with our proportional bowls filled with noodly, saucy goodness, and Tristan with his bowl of plain pasta. That’s when Tristan upset the balance of the universe forever by asking, “Can I have some sauce?”

After a moment of stunned silence, and a few very slow blinks on my part, I stuttered, “Um, sure. You mean, like, on your pasta?”

“Yeah!” he replied brightly. “Sauce! On my pasta!”

Now, it just so happens that yesterday was one of those days that I made enough pasta to feed Outer Mongolia, so I knew there was leftover spaghettini in the collander, should this be some sort of nefarious plot on Tristan’s part to get out of eating his dinner. So I put a small spoonful, really more of a dollop, carefully on the pasta in his bowl and brought it back to him. And damn if he didn’t eat every last speck of sauce, and ask for more half way through the bowl. And then he finished that off and asked for more pasta and more sauce, and I started scanning the kitchen for hidden cameras, wondering when the ghost of Allan Funt was going to leap out and accost me.

And through it all, Tristan the Notoriously Fussy Eater, the boy who insists YOU pick off the bits of the pizza he doesn’t like, including the toppings and the cheese and the sauce, the boy who once barfed up an entire meal because I forced him to eat a single green bean, this boy of mine regaled us throughout the meal with an ongoing Ode to Sauce.

“I love sauce, Mommy! It’s really great! Mmmm, it’s so good, this sauce. I could eat sauce every day. I really really love sauce, Mommy! It’s a little bit great.”

Tomorrow, he’s getting spaghetti sauce on ham for dinner, and the next night I’m going to whip up some mashed potatoes and roast beef – with sauce. This mothering thing, it’s all about going with the flow, and apparently what’s flowing is sauce.

Send laundry soap!

I mentioned yesterday I stayed home because I was under seige by a nasty virus. Just so happens that Wednesdays are the days that the whole crew is also home. Frankly, I think it would have been more restful to go to work!

Late in the afternoon, I was making dinner and the boys were playing upstairs when I heard Simon crying the distinctive ‘ouch’ cry, but what really set me running up the stairs was the tone of panic in Tristan’s voice when he called for me. Tristan had bonked Simon in the nose with a book, and there was blood *everywhere*, streaming from Simon’s nose.

It took a couple of minutes to get it under control (thank god I don’t have issues with blood) but Simon was relatively calm and we got him cleaned up. Load of laundry number one = Simon’s yellow comforter, two towels, a facecloth, Simon’s shirt and socks, and my shirt.

A few hours later, I had just settled into bed myself when I heard the distinctive sound of retching from the boys’ room. Tristan had been sick in his bed, setting in motion load of laundry number two, comprising sheets, blankets, the waterproof bed cover and a couple of stuffies.

He was sick again at 11 pm, 1 am, and 4 am. Sadly, he was neither coordinated nor awake enough to use the bucket we’d provided for him. We have four sets of sheets for two beds, and by luck more than design, the load from the first round of barfing was washed and dried in time for the 4 am sheet changing.

He’s bright-eyed and energetic this morning, but the laundry machines and the laundress are exhausted. My cold, Simon’s blood, Tristan’s barf – that’s three, right? Right?!?

An ode to naps

Isn’t it ironic that for Simon, the number one way to ruin an otherwise lovely afternoon is the intrusion of a two hour nap, and yet for me, the number one way to make an otherwise lovely afternoon absolute perfection is the indulgence of a two hour nap.

(Did you hear that the French government is even considering making a short nap official government policy? Somebody ought to feed this to Harper as a way to appease all those alienated public servants.)

It’s to the point that I have to actively deceive Simon into taking his afternoon nap. Embarrassing though it is to admit, he’s three years old and I’m having a harder and harder time outwitting him. First, he figured out the bed was a danger zone, and if he let me entice him in for a ‘cuddle’, he was doomed. Once he caught on, he started resisting going in to the bedroom after lunch, then resisting any motion toward the second floor of the house.

I’ve had to work hard to keep ahead of him. Today, I resorted to tempting him with old photographs, one of his weaknesses, to lure him into the bedroom. Once I got him into the room, I tried to convince him to join me in the bed, “because I’m so tired after working hard all morning, and I’d really like you to come and help me have a little rest.” Clever little monkey would have none of that. Eventually, through a combination of persistance, insistence and obstinance, I finally coerced him onto the bed, with Simon protesting the whole time.

I knew I’d won a battle once I got a soother in his mouth, and victory was mine after a few short minutes of lying together in the darked room, my arms wrapped tightly around him to discourage fidgeting. I think less than five minutes passed before his breathing was deep and regular, and his body was calm after the wave of tiny twitches that are always a harbringer of his deepest sleep. The hardest part was deciding to extricate myself from his warmth and get on with my afternoon, rather than giving in to a nap myself.

He awoke two hours later in a foul mood, entirely too aware of my duplicitousness. “Mommy,” he whined, yawning and indignant, “I didn’t want to take a nap.” I couldn’t help but laugh. Sadly, I may be the first, but I certainly won’t be the last woman to use my wicked ways to trick the poor boy into doing my will.

***

Bonus conversation!

Tristan has suddenly discovered the Disney movie Toy Story and runs around the house shouting things like, “To infinity and beyond!” and “I’m Buzz Lightyear. I come in peace.”

Today, while I was pulling on my boots and coat to come to work, the boys were bouncing about nearby.

Me, enveloping Tristan in a bear hug: “I love you, Tristan. Have a great day!”
Tristan: “I’m not Tristan, I’m Buzz Lightyear!”
Me: “Right. Okay, Buzz, have a great day.”

Me, turning to Simon: “And you, Woody! You have a great day, too.”
Simon, indignantly: “I’m not Woody! I’m Mr Potato Head!”

SImon’s birthday party

Have you been breathlessly waiting for the update from Simon’s birthday party yesterday? I know, you haven’t been able to sleep for the suspense. Well, I’m thrilled to be able to report that despite the words you never want to hear your husband say when you have more than a dozen friends and family in the house (“Don’t worry, it’s only a small fire in the oven”), the party was nearly perfect.

I had set my goal for the day at a rather lofty “I’ll be happy as long as nobody cries”, and managed to not only pull that off, but I think everyone had a great time while they were at it.

We managed to play one game, but the kids were content to raid the snack table and play at their own pace.

Simon had a lot of helpers when opening his gifts, and he was surprisingly tolerant of them!


If you want to make a three-year-old really happy, I suggest a drum, a doctor kit, a dollhouse, a pirate ship, a handful of books, a floor puzzle, and some new clothes. (Okay, so mommy probably appreciated the clothes more than he did on the spot – but he’ll be happy when I discard the flood pants that are grazing his shinbone instead of his ankle!)

And Papa Lou makes a very patient patient!


All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning, watching the happy children that make up our extended family romp through the house while the adults relaxed nearby. They’re the people I love most in the world, and having them all in the same place was more than enough to make it a perfect morning; the rest was just the icing on the cake… the brightly coloured Wiggles cake, of course.

A love letter to Simon

My darling Simon,

You are three years old today. Three years old… no longer a baby, but not quite done being a toddler yet. You are still my baby, and your babyness shows in your fat baby feet with their pudgy baby toes, and in the way you still have a traces of the bowlegged toddler waddle when you walk, and in the way you wrap your body around mine when I pick you up. Your skin, too, is the flawlessly soft skin of a baby, fresh and dewy.

But every day, another remnant of your babyness disappears. You speak in full sentences, and it’s only occasionally that we don’t quite catch the waterfall of words and ideas spilling constantly forth from you. We had a little confusion with ‘shovel’ and ‘trouble’ yesterday, for example. Most of the time, when we don’t understand your words it’s because you’re busy thinking your own thoughts and you surprise us with your out-of-the-blue observations and opinions.

You are charming, my son, and you love to work that charm. You flirt shamelessly, and yesterday you kissed the back of my hand when trying to convince me to do something for you. Of course, I acquiesced; how could I resist? You are free with your kisses and hugs and declarations of love, and you have a way of meeting my eyes just before you tell me you love me that makes me think you realize exactly what you are saying and what it means to me. I fear for the hearts of a generation of girls who will look into those deep brown eyes, crinkled with laughter, and be lost forever!

You are a happy little boy. You are almost always cheerful, content, and easy to get along with – unless you are hungry or tired. Much like your mother, when you are hungry or tired, you are – well, I was going to say you are a little bit cranky, but ‘an angry tyrant’ might be a little closer to the truth. But once those basic needs are met, you are a pleasure to be with.

I have to admit, you seem to be the more mischevious of my two sons. You find small ways to get into trouble every day that would have never occured to your brother. You like mess, and you like chaos, and you love to play with water. Personally, I’m not so fond of those things. It was you who dunked the blanket in the toilet, and you who coloured on the fridge and microwave with magic marker, and you who found Papa Lou’s scissors and started practicing your cutting skills, luckily with a scrap of paper. I think you’re getting used to hearing your name said with an exhalation of frustration: “Si-mon!” as your daddy or I follow in the wake of your mischief, our eyes rolling as we try not to laugh – or yell! And yet, you are so lovable that you are forgiven for your transgressions, and we learn to live with a little bit more chaos and clutter in our lives.

You love music and you love to dance. You are going through a drum phase right now, and we can’t help but laugh at your energetic “dum dum dum”ing as you drum on an imaginary drum. Last week, Papa Lou dug out some of his old drumsticks and turned over a bowl to use as a makeshift drum, and you were not only patient of his teaching but showed an impressive aptitude for rhythm that must have made Papa Lou feel better after the abysmal lack of rhythm that I’ve always displayed.

You are so very clever, and you have no idea that because Tristan is two years older than you, there are things that he can do that perhaps you cannot. You’ve recently learned from him how to work the remote control for the DVD player, and you display your prowess with the remote by watching at most three minutes of every feature on your many DVDs, flicking with abandon through the various menus for special features, advanced settings and scene selection. Who knew I would pine for the days when we simply sat down and watched an entire 30 minute DVD from start to finish? You still love the Wiggles, but you also love Scooby Doo and Garfield and Spot, and you have been indoctrinated by your father’s love for old Superfriends cartoons and your mother’s love for old skool Sesame Street.

I can’t think of a day in recent memory that hasn’t begun with you creeping quietly into my room before dawn to crawl under the covers and cuddle into me. For such a small person, you take up a lot of bed space, often sleeping with your arms thrown wide to either side, or sleeping sideways across the bed with the top of your head pressing into my back. You also like to sleep with your hand twisted through my hair, and as you sleep you twitch the hair at the back of my neck, keeping me just awake to be aware of you but not awake enough to move out of your reach.

You are so unfailingly sweet, and can be surprisingly well-mannered for a three year old. This morning when I picked you up and told you it was your birthday, you said, “Oh, thank you, Mommy!” in your most gentle voice. And when I sang a quiet and private “Happy Birthday To Simon”, you beamed and blushed and said “thank you” again.

Tonight, we will celebrate your birthday with Granny and Papa Lou by having your favourite food – guacamole and cheese roll-ups, and I won’t even try to hide any extra vegetables in it in honour of your birthday – and cupcakes with candles for dessert. We’ll celebrate again on Saturday with the whole family – even your cousins from out of town.

So let me end this by saying for all the world to see how much I love you, Simon, and how much you make every single day a joy with your quirky sense of humour, your endless affection, and your boundless energy. Happy birthday, my sweet Simon!

Recommendations from the kid lit shelves

I’ve often thought about reviewing a couple of kids’ books here. Trouble is, by the time you get 10-pages-in, you’re mostly done. Maybe I should switch to a 20-words-in format for kids’ lit? We struck gold on our last trip to the library and through random luck ended up with quite a few books that were clever enough to engage me while still appealing to the boys.

In university, I took a Canadian Literature course that eventually became one of my favourite courses of all time. The first day, the prof asked us to contribute, anonymously, a few books we would like to study. I don’t remember which books I said I did want to study, but I do clearly remember him laughing as he read out loud my plea: “Just about anything is fine, but please – no more Margaret Atwood.” I’ve since changed my mind about her, and Margaret Atwood is in fact one of my favourite authors, one whose prose I savour and whose writing I hold as a standard to strive towards. I have not, however, warmed entirely to her poetry.

With the charming book Up in the Tree, even her poetry is appealing to me. (The fact that I am only drawn to poetry for beginning readers must surely say something about my level of literary sophistication.) The book was recently released to the US for the first time, and the new edition contains a small note from the author says that in 1978, when the book was first published, it was considered too risky to publish a children’s book in Canada. To mimimize costs, Atwood not only wrote and illustrated the book herself, but she hand-lettered the text and used a simple two-colour process of red and blue ink. Between that and the thick, glossy pages, I think I enjoyed the tactile experience of reading Up in a Tree as much as I enjoyed the words themselves.

The same day, we also got Judith Viorst’s Just in Case. It’s a lovely little book about a little boy named Charlie who likes to be prepared “just in case”. He does things like making 117 peanut butter and jam sandwiches just in case the food stores are all closed and bringing a net and some oars to the beach “just in case” a mermaid grabs him by his big toe and drags him off under the sea to play. It’s quite charming, and the prose has a lyrical quality that makes reading it out loud a pleasure. And the repitition at then end of each section works for both the almost-three year old, who hears it coming and likes to say it along with me, and the almost-five year old, who recognizes the words and likes to say them along with me.

Also on the same day, we got a silly little mystery book by Karma Wilson and Jack E Davis called Moose Tracks. The narrator wonders, in perfect verse, who has left the moose tracks all over the house. The bear hair is explicable, the wood chips are from the beaver, and the chipmunk is responsible for the shells. But who has left the moose tracks? We also enjoyed the witty, cartoonish illustrations in this book.

Care to share a few recommendations?

(Edited to add: for a comprehensive list of toddler-approved books from a toddler who happens to be the daughter of a librarian, not to mention a “cultural nationalist in training”, be sure to see this post from the Mad Hatter!)