SUPER STORE AND MORE

Tonight, I left for the grocery store at 9:30pm!  Jake phoned me at 11:05pm to make sure I was OK.  I was. (I was just finishing bagging my own groceries).  

I was trying to be efficient by shopping sans children and trying to be frugal by shopping at Superstore and not Wholefoods (my favourite).  

It's past midnight, but I was having blogging guilt, so thought I would post a few pictures I took yesterday.  My friend has this great pedal plane in her son's room and I thought it would be cool to take some pictures of the kids in it.  The bigger kids were more interested in the trampoline in the backyard, but the two wee ones love it. 

Sam said I could take only take 1 picture.  He has been quite bossy lately.

PLAY DATE CHAOS

My posts have been quite sporadic lately.  

Mostly, there is a whole lot of pointless tidying going on over here and a whole lot of following Will around.  Lately, he has taken to colouring the walls, floors and cupboards and himself.

And this is what Sam's room looked like after his play date the other day:

Pretty scary, eh?  

Speaking of play dates, this happened a while ago, but it has become one of my husband's favourite stories.  So, Sam had a little friend over from school.  Maybe it is because she has an older brother, but she loves to play Spiderman, race cars, play chase and ride Sam's green jeep. Consequently, Sam thinks she is the greatest.  I'm also obsessed with her English accent and love that she calls crackers "crisps" and sweaters "jumpers."

Anyway, her mom came to pick her up and I call down for them.  They both show up at the top of the stairs butt naked, and Sam is holding Jake's deodorant in his hand.  I am feeling slightly sheepish at this point, considering I hardly know the mom and her daughter has been entrusted to my care.  "Sam...what on earth are you doing with Daddy's deodorant, and why are you naked?" I dare ask.  He replies casually, "Oh, you know, we were just playing and putting this (pointing at deodorant) on our arms and face and butts" and then he proceeds to bend over and show us exactly what he meant by "putting it on our butts."

The mom has since let her daughter back over to play, so I guess we are OK, and Sam and I have since had a chat.

Jake has not used that particular deodorant since the incident, but he wonders how many times exactly Sam has applied it on his butt before that day.

I KNOW I AM LOVED

I know I am loved because Clara told me just yesterday, and I quote her:

"If there was a fire, I wouldn't take my Ballet Barbie, I would take you first mommy."

This morning I was invited to a Mother's Day tea at Clara and Sam's school.  I love these kind of things...LOVE them!  It was my 3rd tea, but my first one with 2 children since they are both in the same morning class this year.  I felt very special, I must admit.

They greeted me at the door with tissue paper flowers, pulled out my chair for me, placed a napkin in my lap and served me fruit salad, ice tea and an iced cookie which were all prepared, by them.

There was a singing performance as well, about how marvelous moms are, etc. Sam was not grooving to this...

He tried to escape, but was captured by Miss MacDonald and placed back into position.

This is not Clara's hat.  It is a prop.  But she was very purposeful and had to have something black and red to wear this morning.  I get it now. I didn't get it at 7:52am this morning.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY WEEKEND!!

DANDELIONS

When I asked Clara what she would like to do after I pick her from school, she naturally replied "go to a beautiful meadow somewhere and pick some dandelions."   We found this park just up from our house.  It was kind of like of meadow?  Clara danced around and picked some dandelions for a top secret Mother's Day present.  

I, too, remember picking dandelions for my mom when I was around Clara's age.  On our walk up the hill from school, we would stop and pick honeysuckles, long grass, dandelions and sometimes even the neighbour's beautiful flowers from her garden.  My mom would be so thankful for her, now limp, bouquet and and I would feel so proud as I watched her put them in a little vase on our kitchen ledge.

Will got some dandelion fuzz stuck in his mouth.

DANGER MOMMY

Will fell off Sam's green jeep.

Sam turned the wheel left, Will went right...on to the driveway and on to his head.

Lately, I have been questioning my parenting choices.  Maybe I really am a danger mommy?

When I became pregnant with Clara, Jake and I agreed that we would try not to be such nervous Nellie parents, but we would be more laid back, or what we like to call "hey sure" parents.  And then I read "Kid's are Worth it!" by Barbara Coloroso and my own motto quickly became "if it is not life threatening, morally threatening or unhealthy, than why not?".

Sure enough, you might find our kids licking a slug, barefoot in a mud muddle in the winter, splashing in a fountain, climbing up some rocks, sliding down those rocks, wearing their pajamas or fairy wings in the middle of the day, doing flying leaps off our couch, tightrope walking on the bathtub ledge, tasting wasabi, and what I like to think of as experiencing life.  

My mom can only stand small doses of the kids "experiencing life" before announcing her "heart can't take any more" and "she is out of here."

There was a report of an "unattended baby" (Will sleeping in the stroller in the shade not far from me) while we were in Hawaii.  The security guard and I had a chuckle, but still...

More recently, there were some glares and words spoken to me at a water feature beside Wholefoods.  I'm sensitive and I care what people think of me.

Maybe I do need to keep them just a little closer and say no just a little bit more...

DISENTANGLE

Bedtime Routine

After finishing dinner in 5 minutes (you know, the meal that took me 2 hours to prepare), the kids begin preparing for bedtime.  Their routine has changed over the years, but currently, this is what happens.  

The kids want me to chase them up the stairs to the bath.  They run ahead while disrobing, and jump into our bed naked.  I have to stomp up the stairs yelling "Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum."  If I'm too early they yell "freeze."  Once they are in position (naked under our covers) they yell "disentagle."  I have no idea where they got this word from, but it means I can now come charging into the bedroom looking for some children to eat for my dessert.  Then I have to hang them upside down a few times by the ankles, Will included, spin them around (not Clara) and essentially chase them around the room until I catch them and put them in the warm bath.

After the bath, 2 things can happen.  We either play a game of Fishy and Dolphin (that is a whole other post) or have a mini sports day, which admittedly is not the best before bed activity (it is not very calming).  Last night, we had wheel barrel races and running races.  Daddy joined in too!

Daddy likes to beat Sam.  

Sam does not like this.

The softy mommy likes to let Sam win.

Sam likes this.

There is more...

Like story time and cuddles and back rubs, but I think I will save that for another time.  The boys are looking for some lunch, anyway.

CAR GAMES

Sam had a sleep over at his Grandma's last night which also meant that I had to drive over 3 bridges and 1 tunnel to get there.  "Grandma lives too far away from us," I muttered to myself while inching along Taylor Way, not even close to the first bridge yet.  

I'm such a long distance driving wimp.  45 minutes of consecutive driving is my max.  

I think this is my mom's influence.  Growing up, "going out for a while" meant driving 1km down the hill to the General Store.  Going "ALL the way into town" was driving 10 minutes west along the highway, and if you had to go over the bridge...well, you might as well be driving to Seattle as far as my mom was concerned.   I think she still panics at the thought of driving "over the bridge" to Vancouver.  She is certain that it takes at least an hour more to get anywhere "over there" than it really does.  Although, truthfully, it does for my mom, since she inevitably gets lost in such unchartered territory.  Unless, of course, she is going to the airport.  She knows how to get there.  When we traveled as a family, we were always the first passengers at the gate, a few hours before our Domestic flight was scheduled to leave.

Now, I'm OK to drive over 2 bridges.  I think the real challenge, for me, is driving distances with my kids. Never mind that Will can only stay still when he is sleeping, even more challenging is Sam's current obsession with counting.  When I tell him it will be 15 minutes more, he wants to count it out...with you.  I know for certain that it takes 482 seconds to drive from the school parking lot to our driveway.  I know this, because we count how long it takes to get home together, 5 days a week.

Which brings me to the title of the post: car games.  In an attempt to make the car ride "more funner" and to distract Sam from counting out loud (or asking me why the sun is following us), the kids and I have a little repertoire of car games we play.

The first is the Alphabet Game.  We start with the letter A and we each have to come up with a word that begins with that letter.  Sam is really good at P words, like poop and pee and penis. In fact, this is his response to most of the letters.  When Jake plays with us, he thinks it is really funny to come up with something that totally confuses the kids like "gnarly" or "czar."  

The second game is called What Goes Faster?  I think the inspiration for this one came from one of Sam's many transportation books.  It goes something like this: "What goes faster, Daddy's boat or an ATV?." Or another popular question  is "what goes faster, Uncle Sean's car or Papou's red car?."  It always ends in "what goes faster, Uncle Sean's car or rocket ship?."

The third game is the Opposite Game:  I simply say a word and the kids take turns and tell me what the opposite is.  I love hearing their responses.  It took awhile for Sam to figure out what the heck was going on in this game.  Still, when I ask what the opposite of high is?  he might reply, "not high," which I suppose is quite true.

And the opposite of awake, is asleep which is what I need to be doing right now.  

A few pictures, first (although I have NOT been taking photographs lately).

On a beautiful Thursday evening, Clara somehow persuaded Uncle Josh to come over and (half) wash my van...

I love Will's pointy finger.  He does this a lot right now.

There was a whole lot of cleaning going on that night.  Will is also helping Daddy clean the boat.

**I know I was muttering about the drive, but I'm still very thankful that Sam had a sleep over and a visit with Grandma.  Thank you Grandma!!  By all accounts, he had such a fun time.  He even told me tonight he wishes he was still there.  I guess I'm the same old...

**My husband is away and I miss him.