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A proud moment in a mother’s life

Oct2

You probably haven’t noticed in my previous posts…I mean, I try not to make it too obvious…but I do have a slight tendency to make a certain type of joke.

Growing up in my family, there was no way of avoiding it, and as Ian, as well as others who have had the misfortune to become involved with members of my family, can attest, there is a definite indoctrination process and it can be a punishing ordeal.

As such, it came to pass that yesterday evening we drove home past the shoe tree, and naturally as we approached it, there was some shoe-tree-related wordplay. “Are we going past the shoe tree?” “We shoe are!” “Was that a tongue-in-cheek statement?” “Be shoe to look out the window!” etc.

And then Ian said, “Ben, are you watching?” and Ben replied:

“Yes. *pause* I mean – Yes, SHOE-ree!”

I teared up.

~ karyn

Paparazzi in training

Oct1

Ben has learned to read, which is really, really cool. Once he started learning, there was no stopping him since he suddenly realized that there was this secret code of letters and words all around him and he ABSOLUTELY CANNOT STAND TO BE LEFT IN THE DARK, so practically overnight he went from slowly sounding out words to reading confidently.

This has opened up a whole new world for him and for me, so the other day when he was bored I came up with an activity that turned out to be extremely successful: A photo scavenger hunt.

©PicklesINK 2012

Ian is an avid photographer so Ben has been interested in cameras practically since day 1. We tried the dedicated el cheapo “kids” cameras but they all have such long shutter lag that there’s no way a young kid can hold the camera still long enough to take a picture that looks like anything.

Ben with kiddy camera.
©PicklesINK 2012

Then he started using my point-and-shoot Olympus digital and took off. He has a really great eye and really enjoys himself with it. These are a couple of his pictures, taken in Quebec last summer (so he  was 4).

Sunset over the St. Lawrence by Ben.
©PicklesINK 2012

Grandad on balcony by Ben.
©PicklesINK 2012

Anyway, back to the photo scavenger hunt. Combining Ben’s love of taking pictures with love of figuring things out definitely turned out to be a winner and a grand total of about three minutes elapsed between my giving him the list and his returning with these pictures on my camera (the first two are both #1, something red):

Scavenger hunt results
©PicklesINK 2012

When he came back, he said, “Can you give me another one?” I’ll definitely be bringing this activity out again!

~ karyn

 

 

 

 

Toddlers and Tiaras and Toys

Sep11

This.

©PicklesINK

This really, really irritates me. More than irritates me – This really makes me mad. In case you can’t zoom in enough to see, on the left we have the “Fun to Fix Gift Set” and on the right the “Little Glamour Gift Set.”

Let’s break it down: As with most baby toys, you have two options, 1. Unisex; or 2. GIRLY GIRL WITH HEARTS AND SPARKLES.

The “Fun to Fix Gift Set” comes in bright, “unisex” primary colours and is demonstrated by a unisex model baby dressed in pale green waving the toy actively.

The “Little Glamour Gift Set” makes no pretenses about being unisex: demonstrated by a baby girl in a hairband passively smiling at her “diamond” bracelet, the toys are pink and purple with a splash of turquoise and of course a GIANT SPARKLY DIAMOND. The description at www.toysrus.ca reads, “3 glam accessories for that oh-so sweet little one! Give a little glam and – just to be practical – teethable, easy-to-grasp features. Set includes Baby’s First Purse, a Diamond Ring Rattle and two teethers where fashion style meets teething comfort!” (emphases mine). There’s no need to be “practical” of course when it comes to sweet little girls, but hey, they threw that in there as a bonus; “glam” on the other hand is clearly a necessity.

I hate the idea that someone buying a gift for a baby shower walks up to an eye level display that tells them that an appropriate toy for an infant “Aged 3-18 months” is a “diamond ring rattle” and “baby’s first purse!” It’s with only a little hyperbole that I say it’s a hop, skip and a jump, followed by a slow twirl and a flash of whitened teeth in a make-up caked face at the judges, to the pageant world of our favourite train wreck of a TLC show, Toddlers and Tiaras.

http://www.totallifecounseling.com/2012/04/toddlers-tiaras-healthy-or-harmful-are-moms-living-vicariously-through-their-daughters/

The show is considered by those who watch in amused disgust to be so ridiculous that there is even an app on the website where you can “Toddlerize” yourself:

Go for the Supreme Glitz Makeover!

Go from drab to fab with big wigs, sparkly hair-wear,

faux diamonds and more! Mix and match until you’ve

created the ultimate glam-over!

There’s that “glam” again – in this case, high-lighting the over-the-top-ness of “glamming” up your toddler to compete for “Ultimate Grand Supreme” or even better, “Living Doll,” (seriously. click on the link. it’s a real thing.) with its prize of “crowns and mon-nay,” but not so funny after all when you look back at the mainstream toy encouraging you not once but twice to give a little “glam” to your 3-18 month-old.

We have tried really, really hard not to raise a Disney Princess. Ben and Molly play together with their trains, blocks, dollhouse, Playmobil, toy kitchen, dolls, and dress-up chest filled with astronaut, pirate, doctor, chef, firefighter, and fairy costumes. But you can’t necessarily fight nature, and like it or not I have one of the girliest little girls who every reigned as Princess of Girlytown – at 2 Molly insists on choosing her own clothes and 9 times out of 10 her outfit will be monochomatic bubblegum pink. (That 10th time is when all of the pink clothes are in the laundry and I won’t let her wear PJs).

But while I’m happy for her (and Ben, but that’s a whole other post) to wear as much pink and sparkles as she likes (including pink sparkly skull and crossbones nails from the Sally Hansen Salon Effects Avril Lavigne collection. Just awesome), and I don’t think there is anything inherently damaging in sparkly dress-up and accessories in and of themselves…

©PicklesINK

…I still want to make sure she knows that looks and “glam” and diamond rattles aren’t the only important thing. And I’m happy that for the most part that we’ve “come a long way, baby”…

Photo from: http://www.smokernewsworld.com/tobacco-advertising-research-assignment/

…and moved beyond a time when girls concentrated on looking pretty and waiting passively to “make a good match” or packed their bags and went proudly (and prettily) off to university to earn an M.R.S.

But products like the “Little Glamour Gift Set” remind me that we still place a heck of a lot of emphasis on how our little girls look and dress, which teaches them that that is where their true value lies, and it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon or a sociologist to tell you that that is damaging.

So I will take this as a reminder to make sure to balance my “Aww, you look so pretty!“s with a healthy dose of, “You worked so hard on that!“s, “That was such kind sharing!,”s and “Wow, what smart problem-solving, Monkey!“s.

~ karyn

Sleep my child and peace attend thee…

Aug7

Between having bad sleepers (Molly in particular) to begin with, an unfamiliar house, and a time change the last few nights have been rather long!

Night 1: You’d think that having had a total of about 8 hours sleep (Ben) and maybe 5 (Molly) between the flight and the car ride, they would have fallen asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow the first night but no such luck. After many hours of crying (Molly), playing (Ben), playing (Molly), switching the light on and off (Ben), snuggling together (both), they finally crashed at about midnight (Ben) and 2:00 AM Germany time (Molly). And then, thank goodness, slept through until 11:00 the next morning. Hopefully tonight will go a bit better! (That of course, was written a few days ago in a vain fit of wishful thinking…now on to reality!)

Night 2: We did our best to get back to our usual schedule and put Ben and Molly to bed at about 7:00 PM local time, and it worked! They both fell right to sleep! And then woke up again. And again. And again. Molly was up around 8:30 PM and cried…and cried…and cried…until about 11:00…then, having  played that tactic out, she suddenly turned chatty: “Daddy! I didn’t brush my teethses! Daddy? I didn’t brush my teethses! Mommy! I never brushed my teethses!” No reaction. “Daddy! I have a poop! [not actually true] Daddy? There’s a poop in my diaper! Mommy? I have a poop!” Still nothing. And so on. Until 1:00. Ben slept beautifully for about 2 hours at a time, but every 2 hours he woke me up to ask if it was 6:00 yet (“NO!!”). He also finally crashed out around 1:00 and slept the rest of the night until Ian woke them both up at 9:00 AM to try to avoid a repeat. (He very kindly left me to sleep in until noon which was absolutely luxurious.)

Night 3: We got the daytime schedule back to normal with Molly having her afternoon nap and Ben having quiet time, then dinner at their usual time followed by bath and bed…and SUCCESS! Both kids fell asleep right away and slept right through until… ….9:00 PM when Molly awoke screaming. Another long night followed. Thank goodness Ben sleeps like a rock and Molly’s hours of screaming and crying did not pierce his veil of slumber. We tried putting her in a room by herself and Supernanny-ing her back to bed silently (“NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOO!! NOOOO!”), ignoring her (she pulled a Goldilocks and tried out every other bed in the house), and then watched How I Met Your Mother on the iPad and waited her out until she again crashed out at 2:00 AM.

Night 4: No nap for Molly today. She hit a wall at 5:30 and practically begged for bed, then fell right asleep. She woke up at 7:00 sobbing her heart out and we ignored her until we heard a furious shout of, “I WANT TO GO OUT GATE!!” (there is a gate at the top of the stairs) followed by the sound of the gate opening two small pairs of feet padding their way down. Molly was still furious at our treatment and Ben was disoriented and thought it was morning and cried bitterly on learning that it wasn’t. When I brought them back up the evidence informed me that Molly had climbed into bed with him, bringing her noonies, teddies, and duvet with her, and snuggled with him until he woke up. The new deal is that they are now in the room together and she can stay there as long as she lets him sleep (no crying or yelling). I’m not holding out much hope for it working since I’ve had to go in 4 times so far to remind her.

If it was only a matter of waiting her out until she falls asleep every night, we could trade off doing that and make it through this holiday relatively unscathed but unfortunately as of tomorrow other family members start arriving and we’re really hoping to be able to let them sleep undisturbed…

Any ideas?

Back on solid ground

Aug7

Travel day has come and gone. Apparently some people pack a week in advance, which I think is just plane crazy (heheheh). Why would you stretch that kind of stress out over the course of a week when you could just concentrate it all into a 6 hour period and be done with it? In the end I only forgot one thing, Ian’s tripod, so well done me!

We checked in and checked our baggage and then met up with my family for a lovely, leisurely dinner near the airport…a little too leisurely, perhaps, as it was followed by a full-on run across the terminal to our gate interrupted by a brief interlude of pretended calm to clear security. But we made it before they had even finished pre-boarding and got shuttled right on, set the kids up with the iPad and Innotab and sat back and tried to catch our breath!

©PicklesINK 2012

©PicklesINK 2012

Ben and Molly were absolutely amazing on the plane. Ben fell fast asleep within about 10 minutes of take-off. Molly held out for a while longer but eventually succumbed to sleep as well. Ben slept soundly until they turned the lights back on for breakfast. Molly was a little more fitful (and by “a little” I of course mean “a lot”) – she wound up sleeping for a couple of hours in my lap in various positions that were I’m sure very comfortable for her although not so much for me! She woke up after a few hours but was mostly content to snuggle and stare until “morning.”

When the kids woke up, they discovered that they could both fit in one seat and spent the next couple of hours watching shows on the iPad.

©PicklesINK 2012

As I mentioned in my last post, I was fully prepared with a backpack full of activities to keep the kids going through the whole flight if necessary. So here’s the summary of what we actually used:

©PicklesINK 2012

So yes, perhaps it was overkill, but I think it was still worth the backache for the peace of mind!

Finally, one important piece of advice that I picked up for traveling with young kids: Don’t be afraid to take a good stroller – it will be a great help getting through the airport and you can check it conveniently at the gate. Make sure you bring luggage straps, specifically bought for the purpose, so you can fold it and then secure it tightly:

All wrapped up in a nice, neat little package! ©PicklesINK 2012

That way all the baggage handlers have to do is pick it up and carry it to the hold and there’s no chance that anything could possibly go wrong and damage it. Then when you arrive at your destination, they will just bring it right back to you at the gate so you can pop it back open and use it right away!

😀 😀 😀 LOLZ J/K!!! 😀 😀 😀

Okay, for REALZ now! Make sure you use an el cheapo $20 job and don’t bother with the luggage strap crap since the airline will rip it off and leave it behind on the baggage cart anyway (which you know because you can see it through the plane window) and crush your very favourite phil&teds double stroller to a pulp and then send it into the “bulky items” baggage claim for you to pick up only after you wrangle your 2 exhausted and hyper kids plus 5 carry-on bags through immigration and customs on foot!

Snapped clean off. How did that even happen? It’s not a flimsy stroller! ©PicklesINK 2012

Squashed metal frame. The frame is also bent out of shape so that the seat back no longer lies flat. ©PicklesINK 2012

But we made it through relatively unscathed (except for my stroller…sniff), Tetrised the luggage into the car, and made the 4-hour drive from the airport to the house and settled in with some lovely European-style pizza (mmmmm…) and some German pilsner…

http://www.zoetler.de/index.php?plink=privatpils

…and a good night’s sleep. More on that later.

~ karyn

Come fly with me

Aug1

We are in the midst of preparations for our first plane trip with two kids. Ben is very excited for both the flight and the trip (to Germany to visit Ian’s family). Molly is extremely excited for the trip but is telling everyone that we are travelling by school bus, so the airplane might come as a bit of a shock.

I’m a little trepedatious since our last flying-with-child experience was an unmitigated disaster. Ben was about 1 ½. The trouble started at Heathrow when we went through security and the guy, who I’m pretty sure was modeling his look off of Ringo Starr circa 1964, told me that of course I was allowed to bring all of the baby food, milk, juice, etc. ON the plane; I just had to taste it first.

“Taste it?” said I. “Taste it,” said Ringo. “All of it?” said I. “Everything you want to bring on the plane,” said Ringo. “Bottoms up,” said I as I took a slug of lukewarm milk and chased it with a spoonful each from assorted jars of English baby foods, then bid a sad farewell to the junior-sized juice boxes and the shelf-stable tetrapaks of formula that I had counted myself so lucky to find at that Boots in Windsor (“Won’t these be perfect for the flight?” I had said happily.) “You don’t have to throw them out!” cried my obviously childless friend Ringo before I explained the physics of the opened tetrapak.

Having gained an appreciation for the surprisingly tasty quality of English baby food, we continued on to the gate where we gave Ben a dose each of Children’s Benadryl and ibuprofen (*on-the-paeditrician’s-orders-don’t-judge-me) and boarded the plane.

Once on board, we carefully secured Ben’s carseat in the seat between us, buckled him in, and watched his eyes droop as he finished his bottle and the rest of the passengers settled in around us. We (and by we I mean everyone who had realized that they were stuck on a plane with a baby for the next 7 hours) breathed a collective sigh of relief and sat back to enjoy a peaceful flight.

Then the flight attendant said those fateful words: “You have to move that.” “Move…the…carseat?” “Yes. The baby seat has to go in the window seat.” “Uh…why?” “You might not be able to get by in an emergency.” “Listen, my friend, if there’s an emergency, I’ll be taking the baby with me.” *shrug* “You have to move it.”

Well, it was all downhill from there. Ben woke up when we moved the carseat and did not sleep for the rest of the flight, in large part because it took me an hour to track down our favourite flight attendant to ask her to fill Ben’s bottle. *deep sigh* “I’ll have to see if we have enough milk.” By the time we landed I was pretty sure the rest of the passengers were plotting to toss us out the window, led by the angry nun who had the misfortune to be seated right behind us.

Credit: http://www.madeyoulaugh.com

So this time around we’re going to be prepared for anything. We fly out around 9:30PM so in an ideal world Ben and Molly should sleep the whole time, but we are also bringing a selection of activities to keep two kids (and their parents) distracted for at least 7 hours. Or possibly 7 days.

©PicklesINK 2012

Overkill? Maybe. Or just enough kill… I guess we’ll find out.

On further reflection, maybe I should pack a whole lot of chocolates and tiny liquor bottles to pass out to the other passengers as necessary. They’re under 100mL, right?

~ karyn

A Mother Life

But I don’t LIKE that!

Jul24

Food. Delicious, comforting, nutritious, not-so-nutritious, sweet, savoury, spicy, sticky, crunchy, chewy, bland food. Food can be a source of great pleasure…or, for the parents of a picky eater, agonizing despair.

Ben started life as a 4 lb. 10 oz. preemie, delivered at 33 1/2 weeks. Happily, aside from being teeny, he had none of the challenges one usually expects with babies born that early. He was fed first by nasogastric tube and then a combination of breast and bottle (the debate around which will I’m sure the topic of another post at some point).

Yes, he is doing “The Emperor” from Star Wars…
dun dun dun dun da dun dun da dun…
©PicklesINK 2012

We went on to start “solids” (purees) around 6 months and he ate ANYTHING. I was super-adventurous mom – I made my own baby food and mixed spices into everything (cinnamon carrots…curried chicken and broccoli…gingered squash). His favourite foods were kalmata olives, feta cheese, and anything with curry powder. I patted myself on the back and felt superior to all those moms who feed their kids boring purees and set themselves up for a lifetime of catering to their kids’ bland palates.

This was probably curried something.
©PicklesINK 2012

And then around 18 months, “More! More!” suddenly turned into “MMMMM!!” which is the sound of a toddler with his mouth clamped tighter than the trash compactor on the detention level of the Death Star. As an added bonus, always a bit of a puker (gastroesophageal reflux being one of his remaining preemie traits), Ben discovered the ability to barf on command to demonstrate his disinterest in eating something. Suddenly I had become a mom of a dreaded picky eater.

After I worked through the initial denial, anger, and grief (there is nothing quite like sobbing hysterically at the dinner table while Googling “How do I get my picky toddler to eat?” on your laptop while your 3 year-old screams, “NO!! I don’t LIKE that!! Why are you making me eat that?? I don’t LIKE it!!”), I slowly reached the acceptance stage.

A lot of the websites out there on picky eaters will tell you not to engage in power struggles – you choose what to put in front of your child and he or she chooses how much of it to eat and I wholeheartedly agree that power struggles around food can lead down an unhealthy path. The websites suggest offering a variety of foods, changing utensils, ignoring, removing distractions, using reward charts, etc. None of those tips worked for us and the list of things Ben wouldn’t eat grew: Raw vegetables were too crunchy. Cooked vegetables were too wet. Grapes and blueberries had skins. Ice cream was too cold. (ICE CREAM!! THE KID WOULDN’T EAT ICE CREAM, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE!) Just about everything else “didn’t swallow very well” (ie. led to puking). And the behaviour at the dinner table (both his and ours) got worse and worse.

Finally we realized that we were dealing with two separate issues at mealtimes: what Ben ate and how he behaved. We decided that while we had no power over what he liked or how much he ate, we did have a responsibility to teach him to act appropriately at the table, and for us that meant no yelling, no arguing, and no declaring that he didn’t like something without trying it first. To deal with the behaviour piece we implemented the “try a bite or you sit out rule.” For time-outs we used Supernanny’s Naughty Step technique: the CALM but firm warning – place in neutral time-out spot for prescribed time period – return to time-out spot – repeat as necessary – apology – hug and kiss predictability of this worked really well for Ben and for us.

To deal with the “what Ben ate” piece, I focused on offering him a variety of foods but making what I knew he would eat as nutritious as possible, which meant making my own fish sticks and chicken fingers breaded in crushed bran or corn flakes, pureeing vegetables like carrots, zucchini, pumpkin or spinach into tomato sauce and serving over whole-wheat pasta, and baking a whole lot of the best ever “blank slate” muffins using my sister-in-law-to-be’s recipe:

These can be customized pretty any way you can think of – replace the banana and/or the oil with applesauce or jarred baby food (sweet potato or carrot work well); add grated or whole fruits or vegetables like carrot, zucchini, or berries; spice it up with vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, or cardamom; use whole wheat flour or oat bran for the flour; or boost the nutritional punch with additions like yoghurt, powdered milk, wheat germ, or ground flax – just increase the baking powder to help it rise as you add more “stuff.”

Ben turned 5 in May, and as suddenly as the pickiness started, it stopped – just in time, too, because Molly, who is NOT AT ALL a picky eater had just started to imitate her big brother’s, “I don’t LIKE that!!” just like she imitates everything else he does. Ben will now try most things that I put in front of him with, if not enthusiasm, at least much less argument than previously, and has even been heard in the past few months to say, “Can I try some of that, mommy?” The majority of these taste-tests now elicit a grudging, “Well, don’t LOVE it, but I LIKE it,” and in the words of Abraham “Grampa” Simpson, “Hot diggety-damn, that’s good enough for me!”

Ben enjoying a surf-and-turf dinner of lobster and steak with fuzzy water in a wine glass – “I don’t love the lobster, but I like it.”
©PicklesINK 2012

Molly, on the other hand, loves it.
©PicklesINK 2012

Ice cream: No longer “too cold.”
©PicklesINK 2012

And for Molly, ice cream = food = LOVE
©PicklesINK 2012

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

Jul19

Let’s be honest – I don’t set a particularly conventional example for my kids when it comes to hair.

Image

©PicklesINK 2012

Which is how we’ve wound up with pictures like this:

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©PicklesINK 2012

And this:

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©PicklesINK 2012

So a little over a year ago when Ben said, “I wish I was a girl so I could have ponytails,” what else could I have said but, “Boy, have I got news for you!”

Around the same time as Ben and I were having this conversation, there was some media coverage of a family who were reported to be raising a genderless baby. The story ignited a “Storm” of controversy with a frankly shocking number of people suggesting that refusing to reveal the child’s biological sex to the world amounted to child abuse and that the children should be apprehended and the parents arrested(!). From the original article and the follow-up by the mother, we learn that the family consists of mom, dad, an older son who keeps his hair long and often wears dresses, a middle son about whom we don’t know very much, and gender-free baby Storm. A year ago I remember thinking, “Oh, look at those non-conformist, ultra-liberal parents encouraging their son to ignore the teasing of his peers and continue to push the gender envelope – what are they going to say when he finally has had too much and wants to cut his hair?”

Well, here I am now on the other side of that fence, and it’s not as easy as I thought! I’m finding myself amazed at what trumps what in this gender game, and Long Hair = Girl seems to top them all – which means that, dressed entirely in sports-type, blue attire (including hat and glasses), wearing dirty Thomas sneakers, and standing beside his pink-dress-bedecked sister with her hair in braids, Ben is now being taken for a girl more often than for a boy.

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Tea party in the pillow fort
©PicklesINK 2012

Fortunately, Ben navigates this world like an anthropologist studying a previously unknown civilization. When the lady at the farmer’s market says, “What a smart little girl you are!” Ben replies neutrally, “I’m not a girl; I’m a boy. Why did she say I was a girl, mommy?” (Field note: The natives frequently attribute the female gender to me. Further study will be required to determine why this is. Consultation with Dr. Mommy could be enlightening.) There was a great moment last year when a repairman (in the true, 1950s sense of the word) came to fix the dishwasher – Ben was playing with a pink toy mixer and the guy said, “What are you doing playing with that? That’s women’s tools! That’s for them to use to cook us dinner with!” Ben shot him a very confused look and said, “But I’m pretending it’s a vacuum.” (Field note: This guy’s a doofus.)

On the other hand, I am really struggling with it, and I can’t really figure out WHY. People aren’t making fun of him; they’re just assuming that he is something that he is not, and I can’t figure out why that bothers me. (Field note: Maybe I need to take a page out of Ben’s book and just chill about it.)  I have far more respect for baby Storm’s parents now, having had the smallest taste of what they go through every day with the non-gender-conforming oldest child. On a practical level, the hair is also a real pain in the neck (in this case, literally) because he screams bloody murder when I brush it, so there’s a part of me that really hopes he does get tired of being mistaken for a girl and decides to cut it soon.

Ben, whose opinion is really the one that counts here though, is enjoying his ponytail and will cut his hair when he gets tired of it. And informs me that if people laugh at it, he will just ignore them. And tomorrow would like to wear a hairband like Queenie McBear in The Berenstain Bears book The In-Crowd.

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©PicklesINK 2012

Addendum – July 21, 2012

…and then there are those days when you just can’t blame folks:

©PicklesINK 2012

A Mother Life

A stroll down memory lane – 2009

Jul17

Edited July 21,2012: My apologies for the redo – I just figured out how to get Facebook to give my all my statuses (statii?) instead just what it deems the “highlights.” But to sweeten the deal I added pictures.

And now for a little walk down memory lane – some Ben moments from 2009 (before Molly, when I just had one completely nutty kid to post about)!

June 2009

Daddy – “Ben, there is no jumping on the bed.” Ben, resignedly –“Only monkeys.”

August 2009

Some people have normal kids who have normal nightmares about normal things like monsters. I have a kid who wakes up in the middle of the night sobbing, “Mommy take keys out!” Clearly he’s either a creative nut or a genius; I’m not sure which. The other night it was, “Ben sleep in OTHER bed!!” and I have no idea to which other bed he was referring.

©PicklesINK 2012

September 2009

I am listening to Ben on the baby monitor singing the death metal version of “Twinkle Twinkle”– “TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STTTAAAAARR!!! HOW I WONDER WHAT YOU AAAARRRE!”

©PicklesINK 2012

This morning Ben had his whole outfit chosen. I switched the pants when he wasn’t looking for the ones I wanted him to wear. He said, “Mommy, Ben picked Ben’s red shirt! And Ben’s blue socks! And Ben’s green sweater! And…not those pants, mommy. Ben picked Ben’s BROWN pants…Ben wear brown pants, mommy,” and switched the pants back. I’m not going to argue with that!

This morning is not going so well. Ben is in his room until he decides that he is ready to get dressed, since the pyjama shirt and bandana wrapped around his legs like a skirt option has been deemed not acceptable by me.

October 2009

Ben – “Ben drank too much water at drandad’s house.” Me – “Yes, Ben did drink lots of water!” Ben – “YES! Ben had THREE much water at drandad’s house!”

©PicklesINK 2012

November 2009

I took Ben to the Remembrance Day ceremony at the cenotaph, where Ben spent the better part of an hour saying, “Now it’s time to be quiet! Now I’m being quiet! I’m going to be quiet over THERE, mommy! This is being quiet!” at the top of his lungs.

December 2009

I went upstairs this evening in response to yells and was greeted (again) by a naked toddler who smiled and said, “Mommy! Where is my poo??” Naturally, I replied, “Um, I don’t know…where is your poo?” Ben grinned and pointed at the floor and said, “There it is!!” and there, indeed, it was.

Ben just ran upstairs with his tape measure to measure his baby. It seems it’s baby’s birthday today and he wants to know how old he is.

©PicklesINK 2012

This year’s least successful Christmas present: A whistle-operated keychain finder that responds to the frequency of a toddler yelling. Right now it is hanging on a hook in the kitchen and all morning we’ve listened to, “NOOO!!!” *BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP* “I don’t WANT to put my socks on!” *BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*

~ karyn