Over emoting

July has been quite a month. Over at Chez Genie we've had some intense discussions around Our Future and What To Do and Where Shall We Go and What Will We Be Doing in Ten Years, due to some job crises and new possibilities, which has been exhausting even though the end result is actually NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER. Which is kind of amusing in and of itself.

If that weren't enough there was a lot of emotional storm going on. The Boy had some meltdowns. The Girl decided she didn't like daycare again, and needed BAYBEE all the time. She hasn't been sleeping as well due to molars, and the weather has been lousy.

One of my personality traits is that I tend to internalize emotion. My own, certainly, but others as well. Two blog posts of people I don't even know had such bad news it knocked the breath out of me and caused me to lose sleep; that's not even counting the two people I know IN REAL LIFE who are facing some of their own worst days. It's NOT my life, it's not even my emotion, but I seem to take it on and live it even so. I tell myself that it's what makes me a decent writer, this ability to slip into someone else's shoes and feelings, but the truth is that some days its just darned inconvenient; I have enough to deal with in my own life without taking on someone else's pain. They didn't ask me to, it doesn't help anyone, and just leaves me reeling in emotional fall out.

Several times this week I've sat in my office or home with a feeling of doom and gloom, a tightening in my stomach and a sick sense of dread, only to try to think about why I'm feeling that way and wondering what's wrong, and then having to repeat to myself "IT'S NOT MY LIFE. IT'S NOT MY LIFE."

This weekend I aim to spend screen free, with a good book, loving on my children and getting lots of hugs and love in return. And I hope that there's peace at the end of it.

Uh Oh. It's a toddler

Yesterday I bought crayons, to feed my daughter's increasing love of colouring. There's crayon on the BAYBEE. On my stove. On the wall. On the floor. And at one time on the back of my leg, when she hiked up my yoga pants and tried to see if "orange-red" would indeed make an impression.

She handed me that crayon afterwards, and said "lellow!". Points given for even naming a colour, kid! But not quite.

Over the course of the day I found her:

* on top of the couch, climbing on the arm
* climbing on the table next to the couch
* trying to climb the coffee table
* climbing on the stool in the kitchen and trying to reach things on the counter
* climbing up onto the seat of the stroller, standing there with a box of cookies I had bought earlier that day.


She said "dankg ooo" when her brother gave her a cookie. She said "bye bye baby!" when we left. She keeps giving us hugs and laughs when her brother plays with her.

The baby, she is all gone now.

And I'm so loving the toddler that I can't begin to be sad about that.

Conversations we actually have

"We have beautiful children."

"I know. They sprang from my loins."

"Fully formed!"

"Unlike how they sprang from YOUR loins."

"Yeah, they were just an idea."

"That they had to pitch to the egg. You know, like a salesman. 'Hey HEY! I've got a nice brown eyed boy here, brown hair, nice tanning skin, pretty smart too. And, let me tell you, WAY better than that blond kid that guy over there is selling.'"

"And the egg is all, 'well, they did say they wanted a smart kid, so ... sure ...'"

"And then the next time, she was all 'No, I have specific orders for a GIRL baby this time, so NO'"

"And there was a sudden cry out from all the male sperm."

"They had protests. 'Male sperm unfairly denied!"

"That's probably why it took so long."

"Yeah. There were little blockades in my uterus. 'HELL NO, WE WON'T GO!!'"

"Until the sexy little redhead came by. 'Hey boys, just let me through, ok?' wink wink"

"And that's how we ended up with a girl who is the most feminine child on the planet."

"Watch out boys!"

Quite clearly missing the fun gene

So today was Annual Team Building Day at Workplace today, so I got to drive my kids to Workplace Daycare and then drive *clear across the city* to go ...

Go-kart racing.

Believe it.

I arrived at 11, alone, the only one who missed the "actually we won't start until 11:15 memo". Watch the safety video, put on a helmet.

Walk out, climb in a lawn mower.

Seriously, the thing started with a pull cord.

And then? We drove around and around for 15 minutes. And I'm ... Bored. I just don't quite get it. By the 15th lap I seriously considered pulling in to the pit and just stopping. I mean ... What the heck is the point?

Anyway. Everyone else loved it. Had a great time.

Started planning for our next time.

But I got off easy. Boring it might have been, but the offered alternative was the Grouse Grind. Every bit as pleasant as it sounds.

(for the uninitiated: http://www.grousemountain.com/grousegrind. My favorite part: "mother nature's stairmaster". Nothing says "team building" like "dying on the side of a mountain.")

My inner weeping feminist

Friday night I found my daughter, as usual, in the daycare garden with all her friends and caregivers. She was playing happily, and I scooped her up and went inside. Near the door was an abandoned "baby" -- a godawful naked plastic thing. The Girl was very excited. "Baybee!" she exclaimed. I obligingly picked it up, absently noting it was a strange place for a toy -- the daycare cleans up pretty well before they go outside, and so the place is often neat as a pin when I get there. I went and checked all the charts -- toileting, eating, sleeping -- crossed her off sign in, grabbed her lunch. She was still holding baby.

"We need to put baby down!" I said cheerily. She obliged.

And then, as she realized that Baybee was going to be left there, the tears began.

"Baybee!" she wept as we said goodbye.

"Baybee!" she wept as we walked to the car.

"Baybee!" she wept as I put her down. She started walking back to the daycare. "BAYBEE!"

I picked her up, assuring her baby would be there Monday.

"Baybee!" she wept in the car. "Up!" as I strapped her in.

I sighed. We went back to the daycare. I am a softie, I spoil my kid. I know.

We picked up the baby. She smiled. My daughter, not the plastic monstrosity.

She was happy all the way home.

Saturday morning we woke up to rain. Lots of rain. Downpour of rain. We had no idea what to do with ourselves. The Boy decided to play with his playdoh. A great idea, since The Girl can join in. But of course the playdoh, long since played with, was rock hard.

We decide to go to the toy emporium for more. Sure, we can make more or rehabilitate the stuff we have, but we need an outing, something fun other than errands, so ... off we go.

And we find the baby aisle. And my daughter went. nuts. "BAYBEEZ! BAYBEEZ! BAYBEEZ!" ad nauseum.

We found a plastic baby. On sale. For $7.

My inner feminist wept.

I know this is such a small deal. Really, it is. A small deal. But coming home from the toystore with a nerf dart gun, a plastic baby (and some playdoh!) feels nothing like how I imagined my parenting to be. I hysterically texted a friend of mine. "It's a slippery slope!" I wrote. "It's only a short step from hideous baby to princess dress and heels and tiara!"

She laughed.

I think. It's hard to tell on text.

But here's the thing. She's SO happy. And so is my son, playing with the dart gun. She took the baby to nap. To play with in the afternoon. And she fell asleep with it close to her. She looked for it when she woke up.

I still don't feel totally right about it. I don't want to enforce genders on my kids. But the fact is that part of parenting is letting them be who they are, without any apologies. She LOVES the baby. He LOVES the dart gun. I ... I have to make my peace with it. I hate the dart gun as much as I hate the ugly baby, but they get to live their own lives.

I just need to love them through it.

I used to be so good at this

Oh. My. God. How long has it been since I was last here? 

Or rather: how is it that my life was still manageable with one child but with two has completely fallen off the rails? Do you know how long it has been since I answered a personal email? DO YOU? Weeks. WEEKS. If not Months. If I owe you an email, I'm sorry.

I said to The Man last night that every single Sunday I get to the end of the day and feel like I should be handed a medal. Because between the start of the day at 7am and the end of it around 9 the two of us do. not. stop. I mean the cleaning! The shopping! The laundry! The dishes! The cooking! oh, and the CHILDREN! For TWO DAYS! Yeah. It's just ... wow. And you know? I'm not complaining, not really. Life is full but full is awesome, and having little kids IS a lot of work, and it's just for a short time (you know. In terms of life length.) and we are SO privileged to have such great kids, such healthy kids, and to have each other and to have good jobs that are flexible. Yeah. Life is very good to us. 

But wow, could I ever use a nap.

My parents called the other night wondering why I hadn't used the cheque they sent for a massage. I laughed. The idea of having time off for a massage! The idea!

And then I wrecked my back carrying a 20 pound baby and 15 pounds of groceries and had a massage last Friday, which was blissful. But less so when one is being massaged for an injury, because it's kind of like someone poking a wound over and over for an hour.

SO. The state of things. So! Much! To! Write! So! Little! Time!

Part of the reason for the craziness is that my daughter has now started walking. And GOING. And expressing her opinion as well, which often involves going OUTSIDE, people, what's UP with being cooped up in his BORING LITTLE HOUSE. She talks, too, and says ... what, 20 words? More every day, and her articulation is pretty awesome too. In no particular order, she can say ...

up

out

off

baby!

mama

dada

hi

bye

eat

berry

cat

juice

uh-oh

yay!

shoes

And a few others that escape my memory. But time is precious! Moving on! Her receptive language is awesome too, so that now I can say stuff to her like "Let's change your diaper" and she'll come with me to where the change table is, or "let's eat" and she'll point at her mouth. If you ask her to touch her head she will, and she knows her fingers and toes and says "boop" when she presses her nose. Or in the vicinity of it.

She still has the world's tiniest feet, and wears a 6-9 month old shoe at almost 14.5 months. Keep in mind this is a kid at the 75 percentile for height; it's truly amazing she doesn't fall over more. But somehow she manages to balance on her tiny tootsies, and it's just up to me to find shoes that fit. Which is H-H-H-HARD because most 6 month old babies don't WALK, after all, so all the shoes they have are these little decorative ones, which means that I can't walk into the local cheap place and buy runners, I'm off at the specialty baby stores spending $50 a pop for her for shoes. Which is probably more than I spent on the last pair I bought for me. Two years ago. When I last bought shoes for myself.

Her hair is getting longer, finally, but she's still got that receding baby hairline which is leaving me in a quandary about what the heck to do about it -- cut it? Leave it? The hair on top will soon be in her face, but it's not hair that's appropriate for BANGS, per se, because it's from farther back on her head, but at the same time it's too wispy to go to the side -- at least, too wispy to stay that way, so. 

Yeah, I know. Me and my BIG PROBLEMS.

My son is approaching kindergarten with a great deal of excitement. He's been his usual mixture of wild delight and aggravating annoyance recently. How is it that a kid who can be so thoughtful one minute can be so obtuse the next? Oh, right: a work in progress, as ALL CHILDREN ARE. He's so TALL. And HEAVY! And full of his own opinions on things! It's just ... who is this person? And what happened to my baby? I look at pictures of him as a small baby and I can hardly believe it's the same person. 

We've had no more repeats of the "I'm bored and acting out" behaviour at daycare, much to my relief. It feels a reprieve, to be honest, from what might come next. I had a long conversation with a colleague / friend who I don't see regularly who informed me that last year while I was on leave she pulled her son from the school I was planning to send mine because they weren't able to deal with the fact that he "just wanted to sit in a corner and read!" I ... had no words. I'm trying now not to panic about sending my kid there. 

One thing that is delighting me beyond all reason is his "adoption" of another kid at daycare. It's that time of year that the three year olds start coming to the preschool centres; when The Boy came, two years ago, there was a kid there who was 5 who was SO NICE to him, and always invited him to play and included him, and I was just SO in love with this kid because the transition was hard and he made The Boy feel much more comfortable. And the other day when I picked him up the teachers told me that The Boy had really made friends with this little kid -- really little, he's tiny -- and had been helping him around all day, and even putting his shoes on and stuff like that. It's times like this that you start thinking that all the stuff you do to try and raise a human being instead of a savage is really going to pay off. Thank God.

One of the things I've been marvelling about recently is how stereotypes can be SO TRUE. I never realized this until I had both a boy AND a girl, but I distinctly remember my son, between 1 and 2, suddenly, with no prompting from us, starting to point out all the BIG! TRUCKS! there are on the road. And that morphed into construction vehicles and for the past year or so the kid has been SUPERHERO CRAZY, and we're buying him comic books as rewards for good behaviour. And my daughter? Obsessed with BABIES. OMG the BABIES. Every single picture of a baby she sees, she points out. An ACTUAL baby? OMG the words. She loves her baby doll. She carries it around. She hugs it. She kisses it. She plays with purses and cosmetics and loves to put on and take off her shoes. I bought her new shoes last week. Holy. Moly. The excitement and the Off! On! Off! On! WHO IS THIS CHILD? 

Now I know this isn't the same with everyone's kids, but it sure seems my kids got a how-to book on how to be stereotypical in the womb and / or a big shot of testosterone / estrogen or something because MAN. They are SO. PROGRAMMED. And I mean this not in a brainwashed way, but just in a genetic way. They are who they are, it's just how it is. And now I can buy the dollhouse I always wanted to have as a kid. SQUEEE!

In other life happenings I'm still trying my best to lend support to the friend whose husband just left -- it's still an inexplicable happening, to her, to her children, to her husband's family, and I find it all terribly sad. Another friend is finalizing a divorce; another is having child custody issues. And this morning I got the news that another friend's cancer has metastasized. The news-bearer didn't seem too concerned, didn't know much about it, but Dr. Google seems to think that prognosis is "good" -- but that's a relative good. Good as in 2-3 years, not as it used to be, in mere weeks, I suppose. She's 55. Sure, older than me. But still much, much too young. Another friend is staring down the diagnosis of a chronic illness, and I'm wondering: is this just a bad month? Or am I now at an age where crappy things start happening to people I know? I don't know. And I'm sad about it, very sad, while at the same time feeling oh so very blessed in my life, despite the fact that there are crappy things in my life too. 

The other day I was taking a break -- when a break means, not cleaning, and just paying attention to the children. I lay on the floor, on the playmat, as I often do -- I get to relax, the kids talk to me, and climb all over me, and we laugh and giggle and have fun. My daughter climbed upon me, sat straddled upon my chest. My son, following suit, straddled my legs. He made choo-choo noises, and shouted "ALL ABOARD THE CRAZY TRAIN!"

Such is my life, indeed. Crazy. Wonderful. 

Lucky

We sat in the comfy chairs, in front of the fire. We talked of a host of things, lightly and irreverently. Children. Work. Mutual acquaintances. Family. It would have been cozy, except for the nervous picking at the label of the bottle of beer she drank, and the sadness hanging in the air. And the short, sad laugh that would be interjected into the conversation. "It doesn't feel real," she would say, hiccupping slightly, eyes watery. And we'd move on.

 

We talked about it, of course. Of what was happening. Of what happened to me. Of the way through, of the disbelief, the unreality of it. Not of the future, it's too soon and too scary. Of how I moved away, of not speaking to him in years and years. Of the disconnect, of the healing. Of the lack of children that had to be taken care of, told, divided evermore. "You're lucky," she said softly, looking away.

 

I've long since ceased to think of it as the worst thing that ever happened to me. It's a history, a sad blip on my life, but something that turned out for the best. Everyone has a tragedy, mine is not so bad. I no longer feel like I have "failure" stamped upon my soul.

 

But I've never thought of myself as lucky in its occurrence. As small a tragedy as it was, it was still a Bad Thing.

 

But the thing is that perhaps one of the things that makes me the most sad is that yeah, I am. In comparison, our divorces – mine was better.

 

And I never wanted to be able to say that about it, especially in comparison to a friend.