Almost the end

For four years now, I have left work, hopped in my car, and drove five whole minutes to the daycare to pick up my son. For four years, it's been my favourite part of the day. When he was a toddler, he'd run over to me, covered in smiles, shouting my name. (sometimes my actual name, because he had sussed out that everyone had a mama, and no one else had a myname.)

I went to years and years of parent meetings and daycare potlucks. I emptied and filled cubbies and water bottles, enjoyed and endured small talk with other parents (mostly the former, thankfully!). We went from one centre to another, talked about friends and friend mishaps and joys and sorrows. I've picked him up happy and found him, once, on the couch sobbing "mama! mama!" which nearly broke my heart. The caregivers and teachers became friends, and in some circumstances were a lifeline, a resource, when I needed to talk and figure out this thing called parenting. It's been an amazing experience, because the daycare was such a great place for him: the most amazing part has been watching my shy, unsure, book-loving toddler morph into a confident, happy, outgoing boy.

Today I am home baking cupcakes. For his goodbye day. Tomorrow is his last day, and next week he starts kindergarten orientation.

Truth be told he's still going to almost the same place. He's going to the private kindergarten offered by the same organization, which means I will still pick him up five minutes from my office, around the same culdesac. I will drive by his old daycare twice a day, every day.

But it still feels like a huge freaking deal. And I am feeling sad, like I am losing something, like something is being left behind. A milestone reached, and overcome, and passed into memory.

And yet at the same time, I am kind of excited -- he's my first born, my first baby, and he's grown and changed so much from the big fat baby into a long lanky boy with messy hair and his first loose tooth. He still has the same big brown eyes, and now he talks non-stop, with new ideas and things he thinks are funny, and I just can't wait to see what my wonderful 5-and-a-half year old will do next.

You know, besides singing me a song about doo-doo, and laughing uproariously.

Nursing gymnastics

So apparently there's an international nursing symbol. This:

And then there's the international symbol for nursing a toddler:

And ... oh, but it's true.

See, I'm still nursing my daughter. She's 15 months. A toddler. When we go to bed at night, I lie with her on the bed. I'm on my left side, she is on her right, to my left. (Yes, always. She has a preference. I will not even mention what this has done to my bustline.) She nurses like that for a minute. Maybe a minute and a half. Then she heaves her little body up on top of mine, so she is lying on me, I'm flat on my back, she's now looking at where she was lying. I am not allowed to touch her at this point. If I put my hands on her body, even to steady her, she lifts her head, finds my hands, and pushes them away. I don't have to tell you that this is not pleasant for me.

Sometimes in this position, she lifts her right leg, twisting around in a way that would make my yoga teacher very proud. It's detoxifying!

Lately she then moves from the top lying position back over to my left side, but she arranges herself at a 45 degree angle, lying length wise down my left arm, on her belly. Got that? I can't even draw it for you. Her head on my shoulder, her feet at my hand.

Should I let you know here that she does all of this without delatching?

Because she does.

And then? For the next twenty minutes, she switches back and forth between these positions every minute or two. You may think I am exaggerating; I am not. Up. Down. On the arm. Off the arm. Do not touch me mother. You are just the vessel, you must just lie quietly.

Sometimes, when she gets bored, she plays. She bites softly, and giggles. And is puzzled when I get mad. It's fun! Really!

There are times I think this is not worthwhile, let me tell you.

But.

For the times when she's sick, when she won't eat due to teething, when she needs the comfort and the closeness, for when I need the same, it's incomparable. She reaches up, touches my face, looks into my eyes. Smiles. Pats my chin to make sure I'm still there. It brings us together after we've been a part, and is probably the only way I can cope with being separated from such a tiny thing for so long at work.

And despite feeling like a jungle gym, it's so, so worth it.

It's not a vacation when there are children

Last week we were on vacation. Kind of. Sort of. Kind of in the way that there was a weekend, and then Monday. We took the kids to daycare. I got my hair done (wheee!) and we had lunch, but then I went to work due to a deadline, and The Man went home to pack, clean, cook, shop, and get us prepared for the trip.

Monday evening we put the kids to bed and tried frantically to get ourselves finalized, when The Girl woke up with That Cough. You know, the seal-barking, fever-accompanied CROUP cough. She tossed and turned and coughed all night, a burning hot little body near mine.

We called the airline the next morning, and they very kindly changed our tickets from 10am Tuesday to 10am Wednesday, but cheerfully charged us an arm and a leg to do so.

We medicated, rocked, soothed, and comforted. We packed some more.

We left Wednesday, still ill. Still sneezing and needing immediate kleenex, OMG ew. We organized The Boy and The Girl on the airplane with books! and toys! and babies! and snacks! and an iPad! and sat back and endured 1.5 hours of airplane, got a rental car, drove three hours (through which The Girl, mercifully, slept).

And then there were grandparents. The next day, cousins and aunt and uncle. And there were beds to be made and children to feed and soothe when cousins didn't want to play, and clothes to clean and naps to procure and safety to oversee. There was a girl child who still was sick and not sleeping and a boy child who couldn't quite keep up and who doesn't enjoy the same outdoor pursuits as his cousins, and there was a grandma who didn't know that bedtime was 7pm and that dinner at 7:15 would throw a spanner in the works, to say the least. (Or rather, it just meant that I fed one kid early, coped with a really overtired kid the next day, and didn't get any dinner.) There were games to play and acreage to explore, and swings to build. I played basketball for the first time in 15 years or more.

On the way back there was much screaming on the flight, to the delight of my fellow passengers.

Tomorrow we are taking them both to daycare, and I feel immensely guilty about it. But Oh My Lord, it's two days, two days of not having to constantly be on for someone else's needs, two days of the year when it's just us, which we haven't had since April of 2010. So.

Vacation.

Two days, but I'll take it.

The latest in femininity

I am always on the lookout for new shoes that fit my daughter, she of the tiny feet and difficulty with hard soles. So when I was out for a walk the other day I went in to a nearby (really really expensive) baby store to see what they had, and was pleased to find two brands I hadn't seen before, with soft soles, in her size.

My daughter was with me, sitting in the stroller, and when she saw I had picked up the BOX of shoes -- how she knew what was in it, I have no idea -- she immediately started pulling off her own shoes and socks, saying "shooz! shooz!" She held up her foot for me to try them on.

I obliged, of course -- I mean, I was thinking of buying them, after all. And once on, she held up her foot, twisting it this way and that to admire the new footwear. She cooed over them. The saleslady was agog.

"It starts this early, does it?" she asked.

"Apparently," I replied.

Thankfully, at least this time, there were no temper tantrums when we left the store new-shoe-less.

Femininity

My daughter learned two new words yesterday: airplane! and truck! and she said them every time she heard said item pass our house last night. It was either a very busy night or we're just completely used to the number of large transport vehicles pass our place.

As a side note, seeing the delight on her face when she gets something right is just melt-worthy.

* * * * * *

The Man took The Girl out to the store on his own over the weekend. "She needs shoes," I said. "Soft-soled ones." She has foot issues -- the tiniest feet ever known on a 15-month-old, and obvious trouble with hard soled shoes. (As an aside, every single woman I have ever mentioned this to has gasped in delight and said "But that's GREAT! She'll get all the CUTE SHOES! On SALE!")

He arrived home with a pair of pink Mary-Janes, complete with decorative holes, which are completely impractical for daycare, given her predilection for sand and water, but are of course adorable. I kinda rolled my eyes, because it seems so daddy-like, you know? To buy her pretty things? And the fact is she can wear them a lot -- home, and inside daycare. So it's not like they are useless.

What's even more fun is how much SHE loves them. The next morning they were the first thing she asked for, and she wore them around all day, for part of it in her diaper. Diaper and pretty shoes. So. Yeah. It's clearly a girl I'm raising. In contrast my son has had a two pairs of shoes for the past six months, a worn out pair of runners and some sandals. I asked him if he wanted new runners, and because it involved going out of the home i.e. away from the computers and books he said no.

Sorry about the stereotypes I'm suggesting here but as I've written before, I live in the house where all stereotypes come true. Look for me to morph into June Cleaver over the coming months. I did find my pearls the other day (while searching for something else).

* * * * * *

Speaking of stereotypes, my daughter has been calmed from upset over the past two days once with a promise of lip balm and once with a promise of lotion. Not just the containers, the actual stuff. I ... I can't even ... Yeah. It's like -- I GET IT, universe. SHE'S A GIRL.

You may wonder why I find all this so surprising, and the reason is this: there's a photo in my old school things of my class from kindergarten. It's a small class. The girls are all in front. The boys are all in the back. The front row is a pretty row of all little dresses. Mostly pink, some frilly. Until the girl in the middle, who is sitting there in worn denim overalls, bright yellow socks and runners.

Which is, obviously, me. Me, a little girl who spent her weekends playing in the garden and climbing trees and playing with Lego and refused -- REFUSED -- to wear dresses for almost her entire growing up life. People, a childhood friend of mine who I hadn't seen in years came to my wedding and was SURPRISED to find me wearing a dress. AT MY OWN WEDDING. THAT'S how much of a tomboy I was. I never owned barbies, I never wore pink, I never wore dresses. I distinctly remember cutting a dress with scissors as a toddler because my mother made me wear it. It was a knit dress. It was ruined.

SO. It's all the more surprising to me that my own daughter wants to wear stuff on her lips and loves lotion and dolls. And disconcerting. I mean, what kind of feminist am I to encourage my daughter to play with babies and wear lip balm at FIFTEEN MONTHS??!

Having said all that?

The other day I was exclaiming over this appearing ultra-femininity to one of the ladies at the daycare, and I commented about how I just didn't understand it! Where had it come from?!

She looked at me in surprise. It was only then that I looked down at my clothing for the day and saw a black pencil skirt, a fitted shirt, a jacket, and heels.

I know. I know. Guess I know who to blame.

And I guess the apple doesn't fall that far from the tree after all.

What I'm thinking today ...

One of the ways I give myself a little "pat on the back" as a "good mother" is by packing my kids' lunchboxes with fresh fruit every day. It feels like the responsible parenting thing to do, you know? All those nice little vitamins and minerals, there's nothing better than fresh fruit. And veggies. But neither will eat those raw. But that's another story. Moving on!

So: fresh fruit! Go mom!

But here's the thing: sometimes, due to time restraints or picky appetites or whatever, the fruit doesn't get eaten. And then by the time it comes home, the nicely cut and washed fruit is often gross and mushy (and, in the case of a hot day and washed raspberries, already molding, I kid you not) and then it's either eaten (by me. on occasion. because God knows the kids won't touch it) or thrown out. And I hate wasting the food.

Enter: the canned fruit, single serving. This has always seemed to me to be such a cop out on lunch. I mean, it requires no effort, it must be, right? REAL mothers cut their childrens' fruit each morning! Not this canned stuff! But survey says that canned fruit is very nearly as nutritionally sound as fresh -- sometimes moreso in winter because the canned stuff is packed when it's at its freshest. And I buy the kind packed in water, not with extra sugar, so that one main concern is negated. And -- what's more -- if the kid in question doesn't get around to eating the fruit, I can just pack it again the next day, no problem at all. No more food wastage! YAY! I mean, that alone is worth a lot of cut fruit, am I right? The added expense of canned fruit is kinda offset through the amount less wasted, I would think.

I really need to get over this mindset, you know? The food is every bit as nutritious, and I don't waste precious time in the morning cutting fruit that I end up throwing away that night. It's a GREAT solution.

(NO, don't talk to me about single serving packages and the environment. It's bad, I know.)