stella is drawing

As you might have guessed.... yes this is Stella! With the ears and the curly hair and the teeth :-) I love this one. She can spell her name now, too. And best of all, in this pic it actually appears all in one line, as opposed to each letter on a different trajectory all over the entire page.

holidays are over

I woke up this morning, early as usual... so that I can get some work in before the kids get up. And I cannot resist the habit of turning on CBC in the morning... The first thing I head was :"The holidays are officially over!" and the next: "You are probably not getting enough sleep." Talk about psychic!!! I'd wholeheartedly have to agree with both statements, even if I do not like to admit either :-)

I was thinking about writing something about Christmas this morning and began to search for a picture of the kids, but strangely all I kept getting was ones of the kids picking each others' ears, noses, pulling lop-sided smiles or looking a little goofy one way or another. I guess the days of "normal posing" are over for now. Especially with Stella. She has this totally fake, goofy, forced smile she pulls every time I'm pointing a camera her way. And Kaspar just cannot keep still. C'est la vie!

We are back to school, back to daycare, back to work today. Yikes. I'm not ready for 2011 just yet. Is there no way to postpone time for a little ??? Happy New year everybody!

blur

Christmas & New Year at our house has passed in a blur. Oh, who am I kidding? It's been two months of blur... My two jobs (jewellery & office) tend to create total chaos right around the middle of November and it never ceases to end before mid January. This year on top of all the work and Christmas shopping there was the "week of SICK" at our house. We fell like dominoes. Kaspar began and Steve ended the chain of events. There were days when I was walking around like a zombie, dressed in three sweaters, wool socks, scarf (and would have worn mittens, too, if I could manage the tea and chicken soup with mittens) and still shaking from being cold, seeing green and yellow patterns on my walls. The kids went through several bottles of Tylenol AND Advil and then continued with antibiotics... and I'm afraid that we're still waking up at night with a cough and runny nose now and then. It's been one crazy kind of a flu!

December, as usual, began with sales, shows and orders for myself amidst which comes Stella's birthday. How unfair is that? Not only does she get most of her belated birthday gifts on Christmas day (or after), but she also has to compete with mommy's business for attention. UNFAIR! At least this year we did manage to get her a cake and a gift and had a birthday dinner. (Yes, I hate to admit it, but it has not always been so...) However, I will give myself a pat on the back about picking THE BEST godparents for her, one could ever imagine to have! Yes, her godparents (a.k.a. my sister Crystal & co.) single-handedly managed to throw Stella a birthday party with cupcakes, princess costume and all the bells and whistles (while her mother was working another week-end in December...). She was thoroughly impressed! So much so, that when the cake was presented to her at home, after dinner she simply looked at it and said: "This is not MY birthday cake! I already had PINK cup-cakes for my birthday!" Here is a picture of the birthday girl & gang.

levitating and other magic tricks

Stella announced to me one day that she can levitate. At first I was surprised that she even knew the word, but after a few minutes of intense discussion between myself and her, I understood that she knows the word, just not the meaning of it. It must have crept while playing magic with Kaspar. A neghbour of ours left a stack of games on our porch amidst which was a box called "Amazing Houdini's 100 magic tricks" (or something along those lines). It was a hot for the first few weeks! And then, this morning I just came up on this picture of Stella levitating (actually jumping on a trampoline). Could not resist a little post despite the fact that I have a deadline encroaching on November 5th and I did wake up at 3.45 am to work not to blog. So,back to work...

My favourite magic trick of Stella's is the "wipe the brow" trick. She hates to see me with a wrinkle in the forehead. So, whenever I do pull my face in a grimace of sorts and have wrinkles on my forehead, she runs over, asks if I'm sad and then with a sweep of the hand across my forehead tells me "Not sad any more! I wipe it away!" There is power in those words :-)

neighbours and such

We have awesome neighbours! I realize that I might be repeating myself here, have I said this before? Have I already done a blog about this? I'm going through a little "de-ja-vu". However that is spelled...

Neighbours then... First let me introduce you to the bigger picture. We live on a street where there are approximately 30 kids under the age of 15 in OUR ONE block! Most of them are 1-7 years old. We have street hockey games going on Sunday evenings, where not only the little ones, but even the teens and the dads (once in a blue moon I end up amongst the dads and that is a sight for sore eyes, but that story probably belongs to the blog "101 embarrassing things done by beta"...) play ball hockey. Then there are the nights of good wine and good food. We can always find a reason to get together! And the offers to babysit have been numerous despite my slightly snobby attitude of giving the night to a Latvian speaking baby sitter first. But it's only because I want to make sure my kids keep speaking the language. The "babysitters" on the street are amazing kids, too! Our street is not unusual due to the amount of kids living here, there are lots of kids everywhere in the neighbourhood, but it is definitely the friendliest bunch of people that surround us. The picture above, for example... is taken just a few weeks ago, when all the neighbours were invited for a week-end at Tony's (he's also a neighbour) farm and our friend Michelle is teaching Kaspar how to shoot with a bow and arrow.

Now to the real story. Kaspar has a buddy at daycare who is also a neighbour. I'll call him "O" in this post, because I have not asked his parents if I'm allowed to name him in a blog like this. And these days, you just never know. Some parents are very cautious, while others post pictures of their cute naked 2 year old for general pubic to see. I try to straddle somewhere in between. Kaspar's friend "O" lives on the next street and since their daycare time is limited these days due to morning vs. afternoon shifts at school we have begun to have play dates with "O" on week-ends. So, to put it simply "O" feel pretty comfortable at our house and knows his way around.

The other day we're walking home from daycare with "O" and his mom and Kaspar and me and Stella. The kids were being their usual goofy selves. Our walk can hardy be called a walk (the daycare is only 5 houses away from our house) so by the time we get to the front steps of our place the kids are not ready to part. Kaspar and "O" manage to run between the houses and hide in the back yard... then disappear indoors for a few minutes. Nothing unusual. I'm talking to "O"s mom. Stella is picking up some fall leaves. All is swell... but just before "O" is about to depart against the loud complaints of all three of the little rascals, of course... I notice this foul smell. Poo! Poo? Dog poo? No, raccoon poo!!! Yes, it turns out that the local raccoons have decided to use the narrow space between the houses (where Kaspar so much so likes to hide) as their toilet and both boys have walked right into it. I hate those raccoons! I pull out the garden hose and the scrub brush and make the boys remove their shoes and start scrubbing. Yuck, but what else can one do? The life of a parent... right? Once I've scrubbed them down and we have managed to say goodbye to "O" and his mom and we head indoors for some supper time and drawing and what not... but the smell haunts me.

I'm cooking and even the smell of the food does not drown out the smell of raccoon poo. I write it off as "my sensitive nose" and keep at it. After a while I check my shoes. Clean. Phew. I wash my hands for the second time and then the third. We eat dinner. Still... I can still smell poo. I check Kaspar's shoes and wash them one more time with soap. Good smelling soap. It will not go away. We do some homework. But poo haunts me. I make Kaspar take off his clothes. They do not smell. I'm perplexed.

And then, on my way through the dark hallway I step into / onto SOMETHING.

Oh, I was cursing under my breath and yelling and crying and screaming all at once. There was poo not only in the hallway. The boys had managed to spread it through the house at light speed. They had run up the stairs to the kids room, had climbed onto Stella's bed and on the carpet in my bedroom.... the bathroom floor, too. Everything was covered. Just little bits here and there, not immediately visible, but immediately noticeable, for sure. The smell was unmistakable! It took me the rest of the night to find all the spots, to scrub and scrub and use all those nasty scented products and do a load of laundry. Oh, what a mess!

The space between the houses is now a "RESTRICTED" zone, despite Kaspar's complaints.

Oh how I hate raccoons!

a man in her life

Stella woke me up yesterday with a frantic yell from her room: "Pino, Pino, good morning Pino! I just got up!" I walked into the kids room and saw her little face pushed against the screen in the window, arms waiving, big smile plastered across her little face, hair matted and sticking up in the air... cute really cute! She had opened up the glass herself and she really was greeting our neighbor across the street. He was really there, checking out the work that was being done around his place. She loves Pino!!! It's a love that borders on danger occasionally. For instance, the fact that Pino's house is across the street itself creates a bit of a dangerous situation, because Stella looses all sense of right and wrong, when she sees Pino... She simply runs to him. It does not matter if she has to cross the street or watch out for cars. Nothing matters, but Pino!

I think Stella is going through major daddy withdraw. Yes, daddy has been on the road a lot in the past few months, but Stella's first signs of "daddy withdraw" began already in Latvia, where she was in her godfather's arms (picture above) as soon as she saw him and would not give him up easily, trailing behind him most of the day, asking "upp-y, upp-y" and "more, more!" She was like a little suction cup half the time, attached to the nearest male figure or sitting in the lap of an uncle or even better climbing on the shoulder's of somebody and sticking to that spot until the chosen person had to leave.

It's interesting to observe changes in kids' attitudes. If I am the "parent of choice" for pain and bedtime stories and comfort of all sorts most of the time, then for sure, the first week that dad is back in our lives - I can no longer compete. It's all about daddy, especially for Stella!~

playing dress-up

My fairy princess was a fairy princess only long enough to take a picture.

I don't know if I should consider myself fortunate or not (I'm really not the type that was ever into princesses, barbies and pink things either...) but her mind is set! My daughter wants to be SPIDERMAN for Halloween! Of course it all begins with Kaspar and his power of persuasion. He needs a little buddy to play with and "fairy princess" just does not fit in his game of "Batman saves the world". (And if you were thinking what I was thinking.... yes, I tried the "Batman saves fairy princess". Batman might have gone along with it, but my fairy princess does not want to be saved, oh no! No way! She wants to be along side Batman! She wants to do the SAVING!!! She wants to save mommy form the "kakadeal"!) Besides, Batman needs a buddy and Spiderman is Batman's best friend. So, Stella is Spiderman and that is that! And I have been eating dinner with Batman and Spiderman for the last few days already. And it does not look like they are getting sick of it, either. The Halloween mania has begun and it's only the beginning of October! Yikes.

anniversary

Wow! Two months have passed since the last post? Where does the time go? We have been on breeze of a holiday to Latvia / Amsterdam, Steve has toured the entire Europe, East coast of Canada and now is taking on Australia and we're at home keeping busy with work / new FRENCH immersion school / daycare / raking leaves / trying to find gloves and winter jackets etc. etc. etc.

Here is a little slide show of what the kids have been up to in the last couple of months: Stella loves to ride the "kaka-deal" and has been talking about this "kaka-deal" ever since we got back from Latvia. It must have been a real high-light of the trip for her. These days she uses Kaspar as the "kaka-deal" to ride on. Kaspar has had a lot of "firsts" this trip and even the last month has been busy with a lot of new experiences. One of his absolute favourites was licking "ant pee". You can see how that would be a very appealing story for a five year old, can't you? Yes, here is a pic of him and his little cousin licking their grass straws after having dipped them in the huge ant hill. They must have spent the better part of an hour doing just that, while we managed to pick a whole bucket of mushrooms in the near vicinity of the famous ant hill. Yes - there were unbelievable quantities of mushrooms in the forests of Latvia this summer. That in itself was probably my high-light. I love going out in the forest hunting for mushrooms! I had not had a chance to do that in about 8 or 9 years, because I simply have not been back "home" in the right season for mushrooms. It was worth the wait. This year mushrooms could be raked with a rake. Hardly needed to look for them. It was impossible to walk in a forest for more then 5 minutes without spotting a mushroom. In fact there were mushrooms growing on people's lawns and in back yards. Totally strange and lovely! There is nothing more amazing then wild mushroom soup or good old sauce and potatoes!!! I could go on and on...

In fact I could go on and on about our trip, because every single day was literally an adventure. I cannot even begin to tell you how hard it was to come back to Toronto and get back to the grind of every day life. Well, I'm sure I will post more on our trip soon, but for now I NEED to catch some sleep. I've been doing these weird studio hours in the middle of the night and it's hard to get back to sleep after being awake and working at midnight.

Good night!

duck feet

We spent a superbly relaxing long week-end with friends of ours at their cottage. Kids were having a time of their life! Kaspar got a fishing rod from them as a belated birthday gift and that was pretty much attached to his hip for the entire week-end. As soon as he woke up, even before getting out of his pajamas he'd ask : "Can I go fishing NOW?" We were fishing with worms and leaches and "stinky fish" ... casting and trolling and just sitting on the end of the dock. I learned a thing or two myself. Stella also tried fishing, but her attention span lasted just long enough to sink the fishing rod to the bottom of the lake.

However, where Stella lacks patience she makes up in imagination. She played "duck" with garden gloves as "duck feet" (note: picture!) and fell asleep in the boat and went swimming, but somehow got away with never wetting herself above waist level. Such a perfect week-end!

not as innocent

Stella knows how to play the game. Oh, yes. She does!!! She's not as innocent as she seems...

I remember Kaspar at two and a half throwing tantrums... did he ever! But Stella beats Kaspar by a mile. I used to think that somehow... maybe... perhaps... hopefully I had paid my dues with Kaspar. Stella will be the perfect little two year old girl. Not a chance! She's just a late bloomer on the "tantrum throwing stage" of two year olds. She knows how to play the game!

Today I picked the kids up at daycare, just as usual, and we headed home. It's not much of a walk home. Maybe about a quarter block? We cross a street and pass four houses and land on our front steps. Yes, a blessing indeed!

Today it started about a meter outside the daycare door. Well, maybe it had started already at daycare, but I cannot vouch for that :-) She was not happy! And she DOES show it, when she's not happy. We managed to get out the door, when Stella erupted with her demands of staying on the sidewalk and not letting one of the other mothers pass with her stroller. After a lot of calm talking and "mirroring" (a technique I'm learning, and it seems to help, but it's hard on parents... it's hard to learn end even harder to practice in times of distress) she finally let the stroller pass, but the two of us were instantly on battle ground. And I knew we were in for some bad temper...

By the time we got to the street and had to cross it, she dropped a toy in the puddle (full of tire, gas and oil residue, I'm sure~) and as soon as she piked it up she attempted to put it in her mouth. Of curse, instinctively I stopped her hand on the way to her mouth and took the toy. But kids do not understand parental logic like that. No, they do not! Big mistake on my part. I probably should have let her lick and suck the toy bottle and not give a hoot. Right?

What do you think followed?
I'll let you guess... yes...

She dropped her body onto the middle of the street, limp, screeching, crying, frantic, face down in a rain covered and wet Windermere Avenue with cars approaching fast on both sides. I took a moment. Took a deep breath. Grabbed my kicking, screaming, wiggling child by an arm and a leg and carried her just like that, barely holding on to that one moving arm and one kicking leg all the way to my house. I'm sure the neighbours were baffled. I don't care much anymore what others think, but these types of tantrums with my kids still baffle me. And she's not my first! I should be more understanding, should I not? I should have tried the mirroring, the calm techniques. I should have... but sometimes we react instinctively. She continued her crying and kicking for another 20 minutes and then just as it had begun, it ended and everything was absolutely perfect, happy and good for the rest of the night. Maybe the temper tantrums are just an instinctive reaction to something that is happening outside of their control and understanding as well?

I really do NOT want to admit that I make MISTAKES as a parent, but I do.