Two weeks of random

Ahhhhh. Holiday.

Now granted, as I said, we'll be spending a fair portion of this holiday sitting around in our house sans preschooler, and not jet-setting off to exotic locations, but still. There will be friends and family and relaxation and good food (since The Man will be cooking while we're both off work and YAY!) and for me that beats out Bora Bora every time.

:)

We're on day two of the holiday and despite the torrential rain of last night, it's decided to clear up this morning and be sunny. The only thing we have to do today is sweep the entirety of the daycare yard. This is no mean feat; it took the two of us adults a good two hours to do it last time. Such are the joys of parent participation daycare. I could be the one in charge of saving popsicle sticks and old egg cartons, but nope. But it's exercise and the rain last night, despite ruining everyone's grand summer plans, has made it cooler. Given it was supposed to be 30 today and we were going to do physical labour in the hot sun ... I am terribly grateful.

We got The Boy a haircut yesterday. It didn't go well, there was much flinching and grousing and whining despite me shoving fruit bears into his mouth as fast as possible. He looks like a little man now. He's getting taller and losing those baby proportions, and noticeably, as one of the friends said last night, growing and changing at a rapid rate. He's taller and bigger and his vocabulary has increased and the fluidity of his language is better and all told he's just growing like a weed. And still tells me in bed at night that he needs me close by all the time. That he loves me. And when I pick him up, he wraps his little arms around my neck and holds me close.

I know that in future he won't want me to be his favourite person. He won't look to me to make it all better. But I hope that he'll still want to hug me and hold me close on occasion. And I know I'll always look at him and be proud.

And now I'm off to hang the laundry out and hope that the rain doesn't start pouring down again. At least in this part of the city the rain isn't likely to dissolve our clothes from the pollution.

July 25

Today was the 40th anniversary of our daycare, and there was a huge block party.

Tonight is also the "CElebration of LIght" with fireworks in downtown that is usually attended by 100,000 people or more.

Tonight is also the local "Illuminaries" lantern festival at a local park.

Tonight is also, as I've mentioned, our bbq.

*******

Tonight is also the first time it has rained in weeks. And not just rain, might I add. THUNDER and LIGHTENING and TORRENTIAL RAIN.

Excellent.

BBQ

Today we are hosting a bunch of guys from The Man's work for a BBQ. One of them is a co-op student. There are two guys who were in elementary school the year I graduated high school.

I feel ancient.

Small world ...

So the other week I bit the bullet, social phobe that I am, and approached a new (to me -- her kid's been there a while!) mom in the daycare about a playdate. She accepted with alacrity, and we made plans over email to have her and her son, a year older than mine, come to our house this morning for a short while. I was a little nervous about this .. I don't know her well, I don't know her son, and my son has been ... difficult, lately. I hoped it would go well. I knew that with people I know well, my son acting poorly wouldn't be a problem, but first impressions ... well, you know.

They arrived at twenty minutes before the appointed time, while I was still in my nightgown. First impression = AWESOME. We had to send them back around the block.

(And you all wonder why I feel socially awkward. Oh, I know, when someone says 10am and you arrive at 9:40, you have to expect that they won't be ready, and the arriver should probably be the one feeling awkward, but I feel like these kinds of things always happen to me, and I really should have been, you know, DRESSED or something.

Moving on.)

So the playdate went reasonably well. My kid is a tad more immature than hers, so while he (her son) was all playing with the toys and looking at the books like a good child, mine was running about like someone had fed him speed for breakfast (which I hadn't, incidentally). So I'm not sure if they will want to reciprocate, but ... meh. You know, I'm just glad I did it for me.

But they did play very well in The Boy's room for some time, so she and I did small talk for some time, during which time she mentions that her husband had also grown up in Victoria. And then we realized he went to the same high school I did. Four years ahead of me, we figure, but then she says ... hey, but I bet you know his sister!

Uhm. Yeah. I did in fact know his sister. I went to school with her for six years, in fact. We were in the same accelerated program, in fact. We used to, on occasion, RIDE THE BUS TOGETHER. (This is remarkable because it was a city bus, not a school bus ... a lot more chance involved.)

Good Lord.

You know, I suppose it's not all that amazing. There are tons of ex-Victorians living in this city. But still. To find someone living two blocks from me who has a child the same age as mine and who grew up blocks from me and who I know, tangentally?

Still a little weird.

Of superheroes and star wars

A year or so ago, we introduced our son to Spiderman. Oh, not the shows or (goodness!) the movies. The theme song. Easily found on YouTube, by the way. And we taught our two year old to sing it, which we thought was very cute. He knew the whole thing, beginning to end, and would sing it for us. We loved it.

We're geeks, I know.

Superheroes have been making a regular appearance here. I don't know what it is -- it's partly just that he's a boy, and they appeal. It's partly his older cousin who likes them and who hands down shirts and shoes with characters on them. It's partly the new daycare which has increased his cultural knowledge so much he now knows the name of the black spiderman, which of course has never made an appearance in this house in his knowledge. Until now, of course.

Spiderman and Batman are our favourites, apparently. I don't know where Superman fits in -- apparently he doesn't have the cache of the other two, since he is pooh-poohed. However, we aren't discriminatory -- this afternoon while playing Batman / Spiderman we welcome to our little clique SuperWhy, who is the superhero with the Power to Read! (Thanks PBS!) We take all kinds.

I think perhaps it is because of Superman's first "name". "Batman turns into a bat." I was told the other day. "Spiderman turns into a spider". And ... "Superman just turns into a super." Which isn't a thing, after all. At least, not something small and creepy.

The other day I was conversing with a colleague who mentioned that her son once received a cape as a birthday present that had Batman on one side and Spiderman on the other and -- you can tell I'm the mom of a boy obsessed -- my eyes actually lit up the way they used to when someone mentioned a shoe sale. Her son has grown tired of it and too old and we are now the proud owners of this cape -- so proud that we wore it to daycare on Friday and shared it with all our friends. And wore it out of the house today to Stanley Park. And in the car. And this afternoon in the backyard.

Another colleague saw it, and her own eyes also lit up, being the mom of not one but two small boys. She then confessed that her older son, heading to kindergarten this fall, is much more of a Star Wars fan. "Oh!" I said, interested. "So how old was he when you let him watch the movie?" Because we've been debating. Star Wars is part of our own childhood, which we want to share with our child, and we think three is too early. But five? Is five too early?

"He's never seen it." she said. It's all from daycare. This explains a lot. Like why I was creeping about my backyard earlier today pretending to be Venom.

Man, am I living the life, huh?

Aftermath

Yesterday there were only four of us in the office -- vacation time -- and I spent time in my office with a closed door with two of them, one of them a storm of tears. I think that the planets have aligned so that I am just a magnet for emotional distress these days.

I went for a walk at lunch with one of those colleagues, and I asked her about her sweet and sensitive but emotionally volatile son who is almost five.

"Oh yeah," she said. "Tantrums like that are a regular feature at our house. They're less frequent now and last less long, but definitely. A regular feature."

Knowing that her child, heading into kindergarten, is perfectly socially adjusted and normal, I felt enormously better about my own child's emotional well being.

I do have a tendency to overreact about these things.

Ironically when I dropped off The Kid at daycare yesterday morning, they remarked that he'd had such a GREAT day the day before. So I guess it was just all saved up for me.

Anyway. We shall not dwell on this issue longer. Today it's gorgeous and we're off to the little train in the park ... I think. Providing we can battle our way through the tourists.

Tantrumy

This afternoon before I left work I called and ordered Thai food from our local pick up place. They don't deliver. I mentioned it to The Boy who was nonplussed ("I don't WANT Thai food") but seemed fine. We got there. I managed to find parking next to the beach which was no small feat in a crowded city on a hot summer day. We got the food. He said he wanted to sit in the restaurant and eat. I said no, we had to go home.

And then I entered the realm of insanity.

He cried. He screamed. He kicked. He flailed on the ground. He ran away from me. I ended up carting him back to the car, half a block, by his arms, shutting him in the car and locking it, and going back for the sandals he kicked off on the way. I thought to myself that I would sit in the car until he calmed down and then drive home.

But the car was filled with more screaming. Attacking of the parent. Attempts to bite, kick, claw, and then climb out of the car. Once through the sunroof. (Which I had opened in an attempt to prevent us from roasting in the sun and heat.)

He didn't calm down for half an hour, and then when I attempted to get him back into his seat, thinking he was mostly calm, there was more screaming. I had to hold him down to get him into the seat, and I didn't get him strapped in properly and he got out half way home and I just kept driving.

With my child loose in the car.

I am officially pinning on my "World's Worst Mother" badge.

Not for the tantrum. For the driving with an unsecured child. For not being in control enough to get him into the seat.

There's a part of me that's really worried about this. First the hitting at daycare, then the more aggressive behaviour with me and The Man, and now this. The anger of this child is actually scary. And it's getting worse. And it's horrible. He's been clearly more upset at home recently, clearly more prone to anger and upset, with a hair-trigger reaction to anything negative that is wearing on my patience.

And then there's part of me that realizes that he's three, and this just happens. And a single bad tantrum with some episodes of age-appropriate undesirable behaviour is hardly a behavioural problem. The fact that it's been unremarkable at daycare recently at least seems to indicate that he's getting it. I know that he's still acting up a little here and there, because if I ask they tell me, but clearly it's nothing out of the ordinary because they don't mention it unless I ask.

It's a big transition for him, from 12 kids to 24. It's overwhelming, the number of children. I'm working more, so he's been going every day instead of two days with a break and then two more days, and that's clearly hard on him. And he's not emotionally mature enough to remove himself from the other kids when he feels overwhelmed and play by himself for a little while, and so by the end of the day he's emotionally just worn out.

I guess the only real problem that remains is that I just don't know how to help him. I'm sure that I would have found full time daycare too much at his age too. And while he's a smart kid, I can only talk to him so much about taking a break from the other kids before he gets too overwhelmed -- there's such a huge difference between talking and acting, at this age, especially when the talking by me is so removed from the situation at the daycare.

I suppose that so far this evening there hasn't been a word of protest against bedtime should be a good sign. And I also suppose that this too, like every thing else in life, shall pass and get better and change.

But I sure as hell won't be getting Thai food again any time soon.