Hereditary TSN-itis

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Originally uploaded by Nimcheena.

Okay, let's try uploading a photo.

Here's the aforementioned putter Husband bought for Baby Boy. I've put one of Daughter's Barbies as a size reference.

Eggs are cheaper in the country

Last week, I went to Kitchener. Gas was 94 cents. I had gassed up in town here and, lucky for me, it was 83.9. Still is. So we went on a road trip.

Our little movie theatre will not be carrying Sharkboy and Lavagirl so I took the older kids to see it in London. They loved it, as I knew they would. Meanwhile, Husband took Baby Boy to a huge golf superstore where he killed the entire two hours in.

He bought two gloves (one regular and one for rain), a towel, two boxes of balls because the one he got for Father's Day wasn't on the "recommended" list by Golf Digest. Oh, and he also bought the world's tiniest putter for Baby Boy.

Yes, it's cute. Yes, if there ever was a little one who could use a putter properly, it's Baby Boy. But, yes, it was expensive. Quite the toy for him, it set us back $40, excluding tax.

Husband now has ideas that he'll take Baby Boy to the club's practice green. The kid still wears diapers and he wants to take him golfing?!

And if I can ever figure out how to post images, I'll take a photo of Baby Boy's newest addition to his arsenal of sporting equipment.

Meanwhile, Middle Child is home talking my ear off. He's explaining, with self-drawn illustrations, how a cactus retains water. The kid is a sponge. Sure, he can remember all the planets in Star Wars, but in that same chamber in his brain, he has the ability to remember other details of life.

Maybe I should teach him the periodic table this summer...

Why I need coffee

I snuck in a quick nap with Baby Boy this afternoon. By quick, I mean I may have been out for 10 minutes. I could have used more sleep but I woke up after having a bizarre dream of people I really only know of.

And let me preface this by saying I fell asleep watching an Oprah re-run; the infamous one with tom Cruise jumping on her yellow leather chesterfield.

In my dream, Katie Holmes was on some red carpet tugging at the arm of a very unshaven Tom Cruise. Thinking, "That girl is smiling a mite too hard" I look closer behind her and there are plastic surgeons holding her together. One of these doctors takes off her mask and it's Brooke Shields holding a uterus.

I, in turn, step forward and take this uterus and give it to Tom Cruise. "Here," I said. "Shall we transplant this one in you or do we wait for you to grow one? Maybe after that, and when you go through all the physical, mental and emotional pain you get from babymaking, then I can stand to hear your opinions on post partum depression." My breasts start to leak milk and I can even feel the once-familiar dampness in my dream.

And then Tom Cruise morphs into James Van Der Beek.

It doesn't take much to thrill me

I was at Winners the other day to buy teacher gifts (with five to buy at the nursery school alone, I was all about the bargain). In between the $20 Silpats - which was very tempting - and the stacks of Bodum coffee and tea stuff was a french fry cutter.

It's niiiiiccce!

I used it for the first time yesterday. The kids thought it to be as groovy as I did.

You put a potato into this chamber, throw back this lever which presses the potato through a metal grate and, voila, perfectly cut french fries.

I tossed them in a little olive oil, threw on a bit of sea salt and baked them. Good stuff. Husband enjoyed them on many levels: good because they're fries, good because I made them with salt (I very seldom cook with salt), and good because they were natural and therefore healthier than the stuff McCains puts out.

The next time I may parboil them and then bake them, just to speed things up a bit.

I could probably use this with carrots and zucchini. Oooh, I could make sweet potato fries too, not that I'd eat it mind you, but it would fit nicely into my "make one new thing each week" vow.

And after showering last night, I used something called a Soft Coeur made by Lush that my sister V gave me for my birthday last week. It was kinda like rubbing chocolate on you but was invisible. It left such a nice feel to my weary skin and it smelled mmm-mmm-good. Middle Child sat on my lap and just snuggled his face into my neck. It was a sweet moment but imperfect as I could hear from his breathing that the boy had some big boogers up his nose.

The four-day long birthday

Middle Child's Star Wars birthday on Saturday went swimmingly. The three kids arrived and I introduced myself as a Jedi Master and they were all Padawans here for Jedi training. The weather held up and we did a lot of running around outside. We only went in to play "Pin the Staff on Yoda" (which I did a damned good job drawing). This way, Husband could fire up the Wookee Cookies (hamburgers) with no fear of kids running into the hot barbecue.

I made a cake. Just a sheet cake with white frosting but I got some stuff that's like black spray paint for cakes. I made a stencil of Darth Vadar's head, sprayed it and then piped the details in black icing. Not quite as divinely creative as the cake I made to look like a box of crayons (with iced twinkies as the crayons!), but Middle Child was very tickled.

The next day, my parents, sister L, and sister V and her whole crew came over to celebrate Father's Day/Middle Child's birthday/my dad's birthday. I wore a dress and got a ton of backhanded comments. Anyway, sadistic humour runs on my mum's side of the family, a bunch of big-time teasers. We had middle child open all his presents and promised him that his Auntie V got him something extra special. He opened up a couple of pairs of shorts and a striped shirt. We made it look like that was it for his gifts and I asked him to stand up and make a speech of thanks. Then, as arranged Daughter and my neice, in Oscar-worthy performances, announced they found another gift under the table. He opened up his most coveted Darth Vadar Voice Changer mask. And all was well in the world.

The next day, Middle Child's real birthday, he woke up and asked to open his gifts from his immediate family (and grandparents from far away). A change from tradition, but it worked out because when he came home from school, he konked out on the chesterfield.

That put a damper on our other family tradition of the Birthday Dinner. This is where the birthday person gets to choose what they want me to cook or go out to a restaurant. So we saved that for yesterday where Middle Child picked a diner that serves Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes. This kid can pack away a half-dozen pancakes, I swear.

And all this and my friend and I put together the elementary school's yearbook and put it to press. Crazy.

Everybody was kung-fu fightin'

We were able to have a relatively civil birthday celebration. No more hands in cakes.

Daughter made me a vase from a paint-your-own place, but it's not ready yet. I also got a very decent digital camera and if I can ever learn how to post photos on this blog, ooh, the creative messes I could get in.

Another very excellent gift was from Baby Boy who announced he had to pee and took off his diaper and had a wizz in the potty. I should probably be more pro-active about his potty training. But you know, it's always something.

Like on Monday, despite my rule of No Bringing Toys to School, Daughter smuggles her Tamagotchi and...she lost it. Oh, was she ever miserable, I was told. I actually saw her at last recess, walking the perimeter of the school yard with her friend, searching and searching. I was at my friend's house working on the school yearbook (holy time-sucker) and her backyard faces the school yard.

Anyway, at dismissal, she comes out, sees me and starts to cry. I suggested she ask the principal to make an announcement in the morning to see if anyone found it. So she went back into the office and explained to the temp secretary. "A pink Tamagotchi you say? Does it look like this?" The look on Daughter's face could have supplied electricity for a dancehall. She still wanted an announcement: a note of thanks to the anonymous finder.

Yesterday was more running around for the yearbook. We had asked for candid classroom photos from teachers months ago. We received a scant few so I just went in and started snapping. Wouldn't you know, the teachers then all reached into their desks. "Yeah, I was meaning to get these to you..." Now we have too many photos.

This morning was spent looking for black icing for Middle Child's Darth Vader cake (I found some!) and general doo-dads for his little party. Maybe I should have held off because just after I picked him up from nursery school, I got a phone call from his "big school" principal.

It turns out he and Daughter, along with two boys in Daughter's class got into a fight with three Grade 4 boys. And would I please bring Middle Child to the school during third recess where this will all be sorted out and dealt with?

The principal had them all discuss the fight together. They shook hands and for detention, they have to write a letter of apology and future course of action. Then he got them alone to see if there was anything they were hiding. Well, Daughter let it all out.

Her best friend brought a Lego figure to school, which he was not supposed to do because his parents would ream him out if he did. Anyway, he, Daughter, another boy and Middle Child were playing Star Wars with it when these "big boys" walked by and grabbed at the figure, taking its cape. The biggest stuffed it in his pocket. Now this kid and the other boy Daughter was playing with (we'll call him Todd) have been known to fight eachother before. Some teasing, game playing went on, when Todd said, "I know karate" (which he doesn't). Of course, Daughter, her best friend, said, truthfully, "So do we." Grade 4 boys teased them for not being able to retreive the cape so they said, "We're like black belts then. Bow down to us." Not to be outdone, Middle Child said, "I know karate too. Wanna fight?" And they did. Punches, shirt pulling, taking off the little kids' shoes and throwing them over the fence. Then the bell rang and that was that.

Thank goodness I cut their nails this morning

What was that Chapters-esque smell up here in the attic? It was coming from the new portable air conditioner which was leaking water and soaking the carpet. Turns out Husband set it up incorrectly but he won't let me touch it. I didn't get a close look but it appears that he followed the instructions, but we still called in a technician to have a look. And since it's still under warranty, the wait will be two weeks!

Meanwhile, it just got blisteringly hot up here. The kids were just bummed because this is their playroom.

However, yesterday, Husband decided to celebrate my birthday early. He mistakenly bought a huge Dairy Queen cake, so he figured we may as well stretch it out a couple of days. We'd do the cake thing and then spend the afternoon out and about.

He set the table with my precious Fiestaware which Middle Child decided to play Old West Saloon with, sliding plates down our dining room table like shuffleboard disks. None of them broke because we caught him doing it just as one was precariously perched on the edge.

Daughter decided she was going to sing at the top of her lungs, despite our pleas for "normal voice." Worse off, she thinks she sounds good when she tries to sing operatic, which for Daughter, translates to some weird high-octave that doesn't even sound like her. Oh, and she was doing this while dancing.

And Baby Boy took all the birthday candles and started to bite them or snap them in half.

We managed to get the cake to the table, find an unbroken candle and light it. Baby Boy kept blowing it out. After the fifth match was blown out, we tried moving things around, but that, I guess, made the kids think they could get their keisters off the chairs and start chasing each other...

...which ended when two hands went into the side of the cake.

Birthday over.

Husband and I cleaned everything up. The cake is salvagable so we said we'd try again tomorrow. Daughter started to cry hysterically, "Give us one more chance." Nuh-uh, as we explained that we asked each one of them to settle down many times in that past few minutes, including a reminder that my top request on the birthday wish list I wrote was "well-behaved children". Anyway, Daughter flew into a rage and ran up to her room screaming, "I want cake! It's no fair!"

This crying of hers went on for about five minutes, when I finally went into her room and said, "You know what is most disappointing about your behaviour now? It's that you're not crying because I missed out on a nice moment with my family. You're crying because you didn't get sweets."

She shut up after that and came back downstairs where the boys just went on playing X-men meets Sharkboy. And I gathered up my stuff and went grocery shopping.

When I came back, their rooms were relatively clean, they were quietly watching a video together, and Husband was in the attic, put a huge bin under the portable air conditioner to catch the still leaking water, and had painted the bathroom ("Bermuda Pool", which I bought two weeks ago but never got around to the job).

Today is my actual birthday. We'll see what is in store. I'm not expecting much.

Possibly the most mangled Lord's Prayer ever

Middle Child did the morning announcements over the school intercom yesterday. Though he can read very well for a 4-year-old, the principal read the announcements. He just read a cute little prayer and then said the Our Father.

It went something like this:
Our Father, whose art's in heaven, hello be my name.
My king has come and will be done on "erf" as a heaven.
Give us today a daily bread and (mumble, mumble)
As we forget those who dress past again us.
And (mumble, mumble) but deliver us some email. Amen.

And this is the child who, last Christmas, put on a play and then came around and blessed us all. Or the one who makes us genuflect in front of my mom's Mary statue every time we pass by it in my parents' garden.

Oh, and then they played the national anthem off of a CD player. The principal holds the mike near the speakers which was also near Middle Child. The little patriot sung O Canada REAL LOUD.

I walked with him back to his classroom, wiping the remaining tears of laughter I peeled with the school secretary out in the hall. Teachers popped their heads out of their classroom giving Middle Child high-fives. "Best announcements EVER!" "Great job!" and "That was worth coming to work for!"

Hot monkey love

Can't sleep. Too hot. And this room smells like Chapters with that mix of paperie and ground coffee. Don't know why, though.

Daughter had a field trip to African Lion Safari yesterday. Nothing like riding on a school bus for hours in a heatwave. And then, they stay on the bus while they drive through the zoo, letting monkeys climb all over. I'm told the kids loved it.

Apparantly, the driver inadvertantly left his window open and a monkey got in. I would just freak right out if that happened to me...but it wouldn't! Hello, guy. Though I appreciate the fact that the bus is hot, think about it: open window + monkeys = not good.

Thankfully, there was a splash park. It was about 30˙C and then something worse with the humidex. Initially, I was worried about the actual travel to the park (field trips just aren't the same after "The Sweet Hereafter". Damn you, Atom Egoyan). As the day wore on, I was just praying that Daughter was wearing her hat and drinking enough fluids.

She had to be at school by 7:45 (which was a major undertaking because it also meant that I had to get the boys ready too). They returned at 4:30. A long day, to be sure. Daughter ended up sleeping the whole way back.

There are better places to sleep in public. My middle sister, Charming Husband and I had to sleep once at YVR once. Long story. Husband's fault. The description of the Victoria, British Columbia airport is bang-on.

Jesus Kenobi

I bought myself my own birthday present for Charming Husband to wrap. I picked up this swell red handbag - nothing too large. I'm looking forward to the day when I don't need to carry around my diaper bag, however much I love the corderoy zebra print with the hot pink lining.

I also picked up some gifts for yet another birthday party daughter is invited to this Saturday and Middle Child's birthday present. I bought the Star Wars game that you plug into the tv and challenge different characters to light sabre duels with an actual one the player holds. Middle Child has it in his head that he'll play with it while he's wearing the Darth Vader voice changer mask.

My middle sister said she'd get it for him. "I'm his godmother so let me be the hero this year." My mum heard about her plan to get it so she volunteered to pick it up at the department store she works at because toys were 10 per cent off.

She called me the next day and told me she picked up something else instead. "I didn't want to get him that evil mask! It's all about darkness. It's horrible!" Yeah, but it's what the guy is truly hoping for. "It's okay. I picked up a Star Wars spacecraft instead. It belongs to the one who looks like Jesus." Of course. However, Middle Child doesn't have the corresponding Obi Wan Kenobi action figure and, well, anyone who knows Middle Child would remember that the kid has no interest in vehicles of any kind. Weird for a boy, I know, but we go with it.

Anyway, my sister said she'd just return it and get the voice changer mask herself. I'm dying to see Mum's reaction when Middle Child will end up trying to blow out his candles with it on.

This probably dashes her hopes of him becoming a priest.

Why Middle Child and Woody Harrelson would get along

Husband took the two older kids to see Madagascar at a big jumbo multiplex on Saturday. I guess we're just used to our small town theatre where one adult, two kids and popcorn and slushies would come to $25 total. When he came back to my parents' house where I was visiting my grandmother (who was also visiting), the first thing he said was, "I can't believe it cost me $50 to see such a mediocre movie."

The next day was better. We took his grandmother to her favourite place in the whole world: Centre Island in Toronto. This woman is 86 and she went on all the rides with the kids. She was just hilarious. And she kept up with us all. The kids were angels, which is also nice.

Saw lots of people there bringing their bikes on the ferry. Man, that would be so great. I'd love to cycle through, go see the hippie houses there (I'm sure they aren't tie-dyed or anything, but that's what my dad always called the island residents. Yet, I'd love to live there). Sure enough, as we were getting back in our car, some guys were lighting up a spliff. I should be scared because Middle Child exclaimed loudly, "What's that nice smell?"

Yellow stripes and idiotic moves

The older kids were awarded their first yellow stripe in karate today.

Why do I encourage them in karate? I owe it all to my love of Hong Kong Fooey, number one superguy.

As a congratulations gift, I got them these awesome 3D t-shirts of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, which they loved. But, get this. I left my car keys in the ignition and then locked the car. Thankfully, I called the Mazda Roadside Assistance number and some guy came within 10 minutes to jimmy the lock, free of charge for my bonehead move.

I've never done that before but when I was pregnant with Baby Boy, I once left the minivan's door wide open while I took the kids to the toy store for an hour. Nothing was amiss when I got back, except my self-esteem.

Will Frodo slay Vadar?

I tried to upload a photo I took of Middle Child's homework assignment but I just couldn't figure out how. I'll keep trying, then I'll bother a very computer-literate friend of mine.

Anyway, his assignment was to draw a picture of himself under an umbrella. He drew himself with...a light sabre. This Star Wars obsession is something else.

My sister was a little upset because she worked really hard to get him a Nightcrawler X-Men figure for his upcoming birthday. In her defence, she bought it at a time when he was koo-koo for X-Men. He'll still love it, though. The X-Men obsession is still there but it's waning a bit. That's the thing with Middle Child; he goes through fits and starts.

I can already see the end of Star Wars. Husband let him watch five minutes of The Lord of the Rings and now he has a million questions about it.

But in the meantime, I've gone price-checking on various Star Wars toys for Middle Child. Man, Toys R Us ain't cheap. Their big ticket items were a good $10 more than Zellers'. Mind you, the selection was vast.

While I was there, Baby Boy saw a toy garbage truck. I ended up buying it for him. He slept with it.

I actually spent a bit of cash yesterday: gifts, a Star Wars t-shirt for Middle Child, lunch, money for field trips, a cushion, postage, and then Husband suggested we all go to Dairy Queen after dinner. Poof! It's just about gone now.

See where your Wilfrid Laurier has been.