cold winter days

Oh, it's cold. Cold, cold, cold... out there!!! Especially, when we have to wait for a school bus for 20 minutes or more. (Most days it's more then 20 minutes, it seems!) Yup, we have been blessed with this strange bus driver, who is either extremely late or suddenly one day way too early or in a foul mood... I just don't understand this woman. I generally don't like complaining about people, but this week I have considered filing an official complaint with the bus company. The only saving grace is Kaspar, who has not whined, complained or been outraged (like myslef) by the wait (or the cold) once. Bless that kid! :-)

I was actually thinking of writing about LEGO, but after the long wait in the cold, I needed to get this out of my system!

Lego is amazing! On these cold winter days, Lego has become our life. I remember being absolutely amazed by Lego when I was a kid and it seems like my love for it has lasted and been rekindled through my kids' enjoyment of it. And the company is amazing at marketing the stuff, too, because on a certain level it becomes addictive not only for the kids, but parents, too. For example, the little Lego "surprise mini figure" packages (and they're not cheap, almost 3$!) are hard NOT to buy! And it's not only because Kaspar will beg and plead and even offer to wash dishes or clean the stairs, if I let him have a new mini figure. No, no! I like the thrill of collecting them as much as he does. I want to buy them just as much as he does. I want to see what's in the little green bag, too! And then there are Lego computer games and Lego magazines and Lego books and Kaspar and Daddy are even shooting a Lego stop action movie. Yes - Lego rocks!

superheroes and beef

My kids have gotten into super heroes. Yes. I have no idea how it happened. I did not promote it. But they have caught the bug and there is no going back. I cannot say that I have a problem with the idea itself. I mean, having "superman" and "bat girl" running around the house chasing bad guys is as fun as playing "house" or any other imaginary game. And my "spider woman" and "iron man" are very creative dressers! (see the picture!) At times the creativity even goes further as in playing imaginary superheroes. Last night Kaspar was "shiny-man" with a list of super powers that never ended, including all the super powers of all super-heroes know and recognized by a 5 year old. It's hard to keep up with the two of them and their games!

However, I have a beef with the violence it promotes. All that comes with the territory super-heroes is in one way or another violence promoting! All the shooting and fighting in the cartoons... The video games (even the ones for 4-6 years old) are about shooting, stealing, blowing things up or catching bad guys with guns and bombs and such. I just don't like that part of our culture.

I'm not one of those parents that pull all the plugs and tell their kids "You will have none of this, no matter what all the other kids are doing!" I know that living in a large city, where all the other kids are watching these violent cartoons and playing the games, it is pretty much impossible to avoid them coming into contact with this culture. And being forcefully deprived of it would just make them rebel. I speak from experience :-) But I struggle every single day with the dilemma of how much to allow? How much to deny? How to explain it to them? How to show them a different way, a different view...

Parenting is just so bloody HARD!

fun and not so fun stuff

Argh. We have been sick again. It seems like at least one of us (adults included) have been sick every single day since mid December. We seem to be passing some bug around from one another. I hate it. The dreaded SICK month of January. But February just arrived and I'm hopeful that with this month comes some relief.

However, on a happier note... I made a pig costume for a play at the kids Latvian language school while sitting on the couch and nursing my very sore throat. Stella loved it! And I kind of loved it, too. It was fun making a costume from scratch. I had not done something like this in years. And the best part is that we get to keep it, now that the play is over and done with.

Today is a snow day, but since the daycare was open, I am at work. Catching up with work that has piled up during my sick leave. I would much rather be outside watching the snow fall!

ballerina

Stella began ballet lessons last week. She just LOVES it! She loves it so much that we have to change into the ballet clothes for a little while before we put on pajamas at night. I wonder if it's the clothes she loves or the actual lessons :-) I don't know, can a three year old can tell the difference? What she can tell, though... and has pointed out to me several times... is that her tights, body suit and slippers are all different pink colours and they DO NOT MATCH. Ha! I could not believe my ears, when she first complained. It is quite adorable watching her lessons, these little mini ballerinas, all in a row walking on their tip-toes. And Stella is a very focused little "ballet girl" as she likes to call herself.

too fast, way too fast

I have this very, very clear memory from my childhood of my aunt saying "where does the time, go?" whenever she met up with us. And I remember thinking to myself that it must be something old people say. I must have been about 5 years old at the time.

Two days ago Kaspar lost his first tooth and I found myself standing in the bathroom by myself, feeling extremely sad. All I could think of was - where does the time go? He is growing up too fast, way too fast... I must be getting old! Very old by 5y old standards, for sure!

Kaspar's baby tooth on the bottom had been moving for a while now, but a couple of days ago he surprised me by asking if I can pull it out. It turns out he had conversed with some of his friends at daycare and school and decided that if he does not get it removed he might swallow it while he's asleep and then WHAT WOULD HE GIVE TO THE TOOTH FAIRY? That was a much more scary thought then having mom remove it, as it turns out.

I was not really into it. I tried with my fingers, it moved, yes. It moved a lot. But... I could not really grab onto it. It did not come out. I breathed a sigh of relief. But Kaspar was not about to give up. A few minutes later he brought me the nail clippers. "Can you pull it out with these?" I laughed. He got mad. And then I tried to scare him by saying that I will have to use my work pliers. Do you think he was scared? Not at all! He thought it was a spectacular idea. He even offered to go and find a pair for me and a few minutes later came down with a very large pair of vice grips. This time we managed to have a laugh together and I came to the conclusion that he was not going to give in and I was going to be pulling out a tooth tonight, like it or not! I tired with a pair of tweezers... and then another pair of tougher tweezers... and finally with a pair of my fine detail pliers I was able to grab on an the tooth came out very easily indeed. Kaspar was thrilled! He was beside himself!

We HAD to call daddy at WORK IMMEDIATELY. And when daddy did not pick up right away, Kaspar proudly told me that he was much braver then daddy. "Is that so?", I asked surprised. And he went into the details of the story how last summer daddy was afraid of letting me pull out a sliver with my tweezers, but you see, he was not afraid to let me pull out his tooth with my pliers. What could I say, but agree that tonight he was braver then daddy. It's amazing how well kids remember details and events. Even if it isn't from a very recent past.

They do grow up too fast and unfortunately I do not have such perfect memory... and I'll probably forget a lot of these little details too soon.

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!