Parenting Without a License

"Literary" Confessions

I can't believe I am admitting this -- but I have been reading non-stop the past two weeks. What piece of work has inspired this devotion to a comfy chair into all-too-late hours of the night? The classics? The latest New York Times bestseller (non-fiction of course), or a biography of one of the great women of our time?

Uh uh, I've been, like TOTALLY into the sweetest series that is, like, sooooo romantic. I believe that's how the preteen who directed me to that section of the bookstore described the books to me.  I've been glued to the TWILIGHT series.

And yes, I find this completely embarrassing. Well, not embarrassing enough to leave it off my blog. But I am in search of others. Any other adult that should know better but is still hooked, who hides the book under more respectable fare when leaving the store. Who finds herself discussing the finer points of Edward's character with the babysitter.

It's all my friend Lisa's fault. She always passes along book recommendations as we are both voracious readers with similar tastes. Seriously, I should make better use of my library card because I think Chapters is the second biggest line item after my mortgage on my monthly budget. Anyway, she had to talk me into it. First I had to get past the teen fiction aspect. Then she told me that it was about vampires, which is probably my least favorite topic of novels. What can I say, the undead just don't do it for me.

I bought the first one a couple of months ago but it sat on my bedside table and I finally ran out of respectable reading material. So I read it. And I haven't stopped. There's no book store in my town and I find myself coming up with reasons to go to Calgary just to get the next in the series.

And it's not like they're that well written. It's quite honestly cringe-worthy in some areas. It's very obviously aimed at young adults. The writer goes on, and on, and on, and ON about how beautiful the vampires are. The main character's obsession with the vampire and vice versa are actually stalker-creepy. And apparently everyone in this town can read the emotions of everyone else by their ever changing facial exressions.

But still I am hooked. I just finished the third and I now know through Googling everything about them that the final book comes out next week and the frenzied anticipation amongst the Clearasil set is out of control. There are midnight launches all over North America. There is a movie coming out starring a bunch of skinny girls who all look alike and that guy from Harry Potter -- the one who died.

But all I can say is...... 9 days and counting.

Galactic Pretzels

OK I have tried this four different ways. I swear I am following the instructions on Typepad and on YouTube. But we'll try one last time and then I give up. I've done this before -- why isn't this working??

Anyway -- here's Sam's take on playing with his food. Note my sarcasm at the end. I am not writing more because I am not expecting this to work.

Yeehaw

I am completely and totally wiped out from the weekend in Vegas. It was a blast -- but we literally walked, shopped, ate, drank and chatted for 18 hours a day. And outside -- oy -- it was like hanging out in a really hot blow dryer. But despite the exhaustion -- it was so rejuvenating. I would highly recommend a weekend or two of girltime every year for my fellow moms -- they really are good for the soul, well, at least my soul.

And because I am too tired to write anything of substance, here are some pictures from our annual visit to the  Calgary Stampede on Monday. Yes, after walking for two days I woke up and spent the day playing cowboy with the kids -- walking all day. My poor toes. So in case you don't get enough pictures of a girl milking a fake cow with her daughter, here you go.

4th of July in Vegas

I may be too late for this as all of my U.S. friends are already into the long weekend. But I have need of some advice. A friend and I decided to go on an impromptu jaunt to Vegas tomorrow night for the weekend. Being Canadians and all that, it was only after the fact that we realized that we will be arriving around 9 pm on the 4th of July.  I think it might be busy on the Strip?

So now we want to dance the night away. I even have good shoes for it. I MAY even wear a skirt. All that shocking news aside -- where would you go on the Strip if you were a 30-something, on the 4th of July, looking to dance until your feet hurt?

Thanks

p.s. I may end up looking like a science experiment, however. I went to do a Mystic Tan today -- my standby when travelling to places where I may wear a bathing suit (if I can handle 40+ freaking degrees). Well the damn thing BROKE when I was in there. It sort of squirted and shot little bursts of tanner, followed by lots of air. I won't know the extent of my striped-ness until sometime tomorrow, and then there will be LOTS of exfoliating going on. 

Market Research

I am really not a crafty person. I'll make things if I have to, but only then.  But every now and again I find myself learning something I quite enjoy. My latest thing is hair clips. 

I had been buying all of Tess's clips and I kept thinking to myself, surely I can do this? So I went on eBay and bought a bunch of hairclip making supplies. French clips in three sizes, and white plastic barrettes, along with a bunch of ribbon. I make mostly three different styles, all pretty tailored. I think the big bow vs. small bow is a Canadian vs. U.S. thing -- you pretty much never see the big bows and corkers up here.

As an aside, I've already mentioned I suck at girl hair, and so clips were a great default. Although my cousin also reinforced that I suck even at this simple style because I can't do a neat part. Well, Tess has been begging me to cut her hair -- it's driving her nuts. I didn't think a three year old would care? So I finally relented yesterday and it's just above her shoulders now. I admit it looks neater. Tess was like a teenager at the salon. She kept telling the stylist, "no shorter," and then finally, "that's how I want it." Sheesh.

Anyway -- so I have the technique down.  Found the best glues and vranishes. Here's a selection of what's in Tess's drawer:

On the suggestion of a friend, I started making some using seed beads.  Here's a closeup of those, along with some others using fancier beads.

I've given them to some family and friends, and someone has suggested that I set up an Etsy shop. So I ask you -- would you buy these? Or are there too many like this on the market? What would you pay for a set of two of the ribbon clips? What about the beaded ones (the supplies are way more for those)? Or one larger clip?

Thanks!

Non-Germ Phobia

I have a good friend who is super, super cautious about germs and dirt and possible food-borne illness. Like SUPER cautious. I tease her about it, goad her a little about it, but I am also a little self conscious about the whole thing. Am I too lax? Am I at the other end of extreme? So I thought I'd gauge your take on some situation, to see where I fall on the whole germ-o-meter.

Situation #1 -- you are out for a hike and you find a place to sit down in the trees for a picnic. It never even occured to you to bring hand sanitizer, although you do have wet wipes. How would you feel about chowing down to eat? There are communal bowls of berries involved.

Situation #2 -- you're baking chocolate chip cookies with the kids. Do you let them lick the beaters? And yes, there are eggs in the recipe

Situation #3 -- There's a boil water advisory on in your town following a recent flood (it's been almost a month now!!) You are obviously using bottled water to drink. But would you use bottled water to hand wash the non-dishwasher safe dishes? Would you use bottled water even to cook (involving boiling water) in?

As you can probably guess, these are all real situations. 1) think wet wipes are fine 2) lick beaters at will and 3) only use bottled water to drink and brush teeth, as the water keeps passing safety tests, it's just cloudy, not contaminated.

Where do you fall on the germ phobic scale?

Fuddy Duddy

So I went to see the Sex and the City movie last week with some friends. I had never seen the show, but I knew enough about it from magazines and from catching up on the plots online.

I enjoyed it -- but honestly the thing that stood out to me were the sex moments. You can hardly call them sex scenes -- they're just thirty seconds of jolly people at a time. Apparently this feature was also in the cable version of the show -- who knew?

I found myself blushing and thinking -- seriously -- is this necessary? What does it add to this movie?

Then I found myself thinking -- when exactly did I become a prude?

Sad, this aging thing.

Three

So Tess is now three. She tells everyone and anyone that she's a three year old now -- I think she believes this is a great accomplishment. We had a lovely party for her. At this age we still do the family BBQ thing. So we invited four families and we were fortunate to have another nice day for her party. Every year so far it's been beautiful out. No easy feat given this insanely rainy season we've been having (we even have a boil water order in effect due to flooding, which is so much fun when you are entertaining. I'll never take clean water lightly again).

Anyway -- my parents came from Ottawa, Doug's mom came down from Edmonton and we held the party in our yard. We actually have something resembling a yard now -- sort of. Much blood, sweat and tears went into turning the giant pile of dirt you've seen in our yard into a retaining wall. We've sodded the bottom level of the yard -- and if it ever stops raining we'll tree, sod and play structure the second level.

The kids didn't care though. We threw some sleeping bags outside and they ate like civilized little kiddos and then ran around with balls and frisbees. Here are some pics from the big day. (p.s. I close cropped out the guests, or tried to at least -- so there are partial kid heads in here. You know, privacy and all that). (p.p.s not sure why these pics are so big, or why the captions all over the place -- sorry)

A happy little girl

Testing the twirlability of her party dress

Blowing out the candles on Tinkerbell

Opening presents (tried the flat iron -- still hate my hair) -- check out the retaining wall!

Different but the same

OK, based on the comments in the last post, I feel like I have been given permission to write about aptitude. My disclaimer? Not bragging here. Talking about parenting my kids, their quirks, their challenges and joys. That's all.

One of the things I get asked a lot is if Tess is the same as Sam. By this people mean with the academic precosiousness. I'll answer right away -- no way. I also get asked when I knew Sam was different. I don't really know. I always knew he was quirky. He didn't play the same way other kids played. He analyzed to the point of ridiculousness. He got so, so frustrated with himself in a heartbeat. He did read really early -- we had short sentences under control by three. So the (not so) short answer is that I always knew he was a quirky one, but I thought he was just an early reader.

Once he hit preschool we started to get more of an indication that Sam was a bit more than an early reader. We also saw a lot more of the behavioural challenges as he went further and further outside of the box (I'll write more on the behavioural stuff later, I feel like being positive today!). Sam has what appears to be a photographic memory. I had heard about this of course, and I suspected he was like this, but it's neat to have it confirmed. For example -- have you guys seen the Worldwide Telescope on the Web? I would highly recommend it if your kids are into space. Anyway, within three days he had memorized every star, galaxy, constellation -- by their number, not their name! He knows the names, but he searches by number -- things like M82 and HC2436. It's bizarre, but it's a neat skill.

But Tess has always played more like how you'd expect a kid her age to play. She runs and leaps and jumps, without considering ground conditions. TV and books are interesting enough, unless there's someone to play with. She is a lot, lot more high spirited than Sam and that has it's challenges. But her behaviour and interests fall into that box of "normal."

We had Tes'ss first parent-teacher interview the other day as she goes to a Montessori preschool and they do that kind of thing. It was such a pleasure. Sam's interviews are so trying. They are always, "wow he's freaky smart but his behaviour is kind of wacky." Of course in more friendly terms, but you get the picture. They don't know what do with him acadmically and the focus is much more on his behaviour (he's hard on himself, not others -- I don't think he notices there are other kids in the room half the time). They told us how lovely Tess is (apparently she doesn't bully others like she does her brother!) and that they are impressed that she is starting to read when she's not even three.

What? Tess is starting to read? Really?

We came home and sat down and I wrote a list of words -- and she sounded them out. I had NO idea she could do that. Mommy guilt time. Am I pigeonholing my kids? Do I assume because Sam is different that way that Tess won't be? Do I purposely hold her back because Sam's been a challenge?

But you know what? I really don't think so. I think Tess is clever -- she has a crazy vocabulary and she'll likely be an early reader. Clever's nice I think -- and a lot easier to manage. I think Sam's intelligence is a unique thing and I don't think I've been neglecting Tess because I assume they both can't be like that. But I do think I have to be careful how I parent these two -- to make sure that despite their very different personalities, they may have some of the same interests (such as reading).

I took a video of Tess yesterday morning. I apologize for the messy kitchen and Tess's crazy hair. We had a bubblegum in hair incident and while getting it out we broke off a bunch of hair in the front and it just looks nasty these days.  But as you can see, she is in the early reader stage.

Future President of the Chess Club

It's hard to talk about Sam's academic precociousness -- I've mentioned that before. I would love to talk about the testing he's had, how the school's been great at adapting the curriculum, our struggles with behaviour etc.  But the only nasty emails/comments I've ever gotten is when I talk about this as there's this whole "my athletic star could beat your honour student's ass" attitude around academic discussions -- so I just basically don't.

But some of his, let's face it, geeky inclinations are kind of funny, so I'll share.

This weekend we went to the lake for the first time this year. It was hot out, 32C (90F) but as there was snow on the ground 10 days ago, the water is damn cold. Like 12C (54F). No adult would go near it, but the kids somehow didn't even feel the cold. But they couldn't stay in for long. Instead they were all building sand castles. Everyone was building turrets, drawbridges and moats. But Sam was buidling piles right next to the water. I had no idea what he was doing until he called me over. "Mom -- see this, I am doing an erosion experiment. The first tower is facing the direction of the wind, so that's wind erosion and it's slow. The second gets hit by the waves in the lake, and that's water erosion, and that's a bit faster. And finally, I'll slowly pour water over the last castle and that's weathering, it has the greatest impact on the structure." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Yesterday we headed to the mountains for a hike by a waterfall with some friends. The other two little boys were grabbing rocks and trying to smash other rocks, and trying to start rock slides on the steap hills. Sam? That child gave us all a running commentary on the different types of rocks, how they were formed, when they were likely formed and how strong they were. We eventually talked him into doing "normal" kid behaviour such as skipping rocks in the river. Even then, he carefully examined each rock finding the perfect sedimentary stone to keep in his Drawer of Special Things.

The thing is, half the time I have no idea if what he's saying is correct. He also waxes poetic about the different temperatures of yellow/red/blue stars -- space is  his other passion. So I just smile and nod and then go home and Google whatever he was talking about because apparently I am NOT smarter than a kindergartener.