D is for Drawing

My three-year-old daughter, Jadzia, has always enjoyed putting crayon to paper. She has recently become more prolific and also more able draw stuff that looks like something.  Below are a few of my favourites.

 Elephants are probably Jadzia's favourite animal to draw. This one is standing on a Mr. Potatohead and a pretty bow.

This is a wooly sheep.

My husband feeding the ducks. She used to draw arms and legs sticking out of a head, but as you can see her people now have bodies. And this actually looks like my husband.  Also, if you look closely you'll note he is holding some bread to feed the duck with.

Pig.

This is our family standing by our fridge, while our friends Columbia and Garrett hang out with our dog Worf. Columbia even brought popcorn!

Here's another picture of Columbia, which she uses as her facebook profile.  It really looks like her in an abstract way, because she is always smiling. That's the thing about Jadzia's portraits, they have childlike simplicity (of course) but at the same time somehow the people she draws are recognizable.

So as not to show favouritism, I'm also posting two of my son William's drawings below. William's art is more fantastical than Jadzia's, and most often involves laser guns, monsters, robots, and aliens. His style is similar to mine in that way and I'm delighted that his taste seems to lean toward Sci Fi.  He's not as prolific with creating, however, hence why I'm only posting two.

 The angry sun-like thing is actually a spiky monster.  At William's instruction, I added the lobster-clawed super hero shooting lasers from his eyes. Not sure what the other stuff in the picture represents, but it adds great atmosphere.

This is a robot that William drew in his reading response journal for school. I'm not sure why a book about farm animals prompted this particular response, but I find it delightful.

The most stressful part of my day.

I live a two-minute walk from my son's school. It lets out at 3:15ish.

At 2:30, I get my daughter dressed. Regardless of whether I dressed her in the morning, by 2:30 she is without pants. This involves chasing her around the house waving a pair of pants and a pair socks and yelling "Come here Jadzia!"  She does not come when called.  The dog does though and he will always attempt to eat the socks.

Jadzia poos around the same time and I'm trying to toilet train her so that means rinsing out a pair of undies.   She will not poo on the potty. Ever.  A lot of the time she defecates immediately after I've dressed her and I have to dress her again.

Today she wants to wear her new one-piece snowsuit.  Once I start dressing Jadzia, our 50-pound puppy gets wind that we are going and runs up, wags his entire body, knocks my daughter over at least twice, and attempts to eat our hats/mitts/boots.  I leash him up in a harness that he hates but theoretically discourages him from pulling.

The alarm on my watch is set to 3 pm, just in case I forget the time.  It goes off just as we were heading out the door.

After five steps, Jadzia stops to play with the rocks in my neighbour's driveway. This patch of gravel is unremarkable to me, but she will not leave the area voluntarily.  At this point I have to carry her.  Have you ever tried to carry a three-year-old that doesn't want to be carried?  How about one wearing a one-piece snowsuit?  How about one-handed while holding the leash of a 50-pound puppy?

I somehow manage to carry Jadzia to the corner.  I put her down as soon as we cross the road.  Immediately she runs to examine something so close to the street that my heart does a somersault.  This time it was a branch.

The rest of the way I "hold Jadzia's hand", which in this case is code for holding her by her forearm to keep her from running into traffic.  She falls to her knees like a rag doll forcing me to drag her.  Of course I can't really drag her, so I have to pick her up again.

Meanwhile, Worf, the 50-pound puppy, jumps on every person that passes by. Children, parents, whoever. I chant "Sorry. Worf! Leave it! Hey! Sit! He won't bite. He's friendly. Sorry. Sorry" all the way to school.

I put Jadzia down once we reach the kindergarten door.  She does not stay near me, but we're not near the road so whatever.  She watches William get ready through the window, but when he comes out she runs into the fenced off area for kindergarten recess, or hides behind the fir trees next to the door.

By the time I gather her up, William is way ahead of me.  He either doesn't pay attention to where I am or doesn't care.  He wants to walk with his friend whose mother is much more efficient at wrangling children. In fact, all the mothers are better at wrangling their children, and their kids stay near them and listen to them.  Even their dogs behave.

I tell William to wait and Jadzia to hurry up.  I'm yelling into the wind and no one hears me.  I concentrate on Jadzia because I know William will not run into the road or do anything crazy. Jadzia stops to lick a metal signpost (seriously).  Luckily, it is not cold enough for her tongue to stick. I worry that it will be soon.

I'm so visibly frustrated at this point that a random woman stops to ask me if I'm okay.  I mumble that I am. Worf jumps on her daughter. I feel like the worst mother in the schoolyard.

When we finally get home the children dawdle at the end of the driveway.  They can tell I'm stressed and this makes them less obedient.  I have to count to five to get them to come in the door.  Once inside, they do not  give me space.

I need a freezie mommy

I can't wait to be done that box of freezies.  There are less than ten left in the box, mostly white ones because until recently my son thought white meant "no flavour".  Everyday my daughter tiptoes up to me and informs me in her sweet voice that she needs a freezie.  If I refuse, which I usually do after the third, forth, or tenth freezie, then the sweet voice changes into the whining, crying, yelling, sound of  a self-entitled toddler.

William always asks for a freezie thirty seconds to a minute after Jadzia asks for one.  This is exactly enough time for me to get back into whatever I was doing before only to be interrupted again.

The freezies are small, basically sips of sugary juice frozen in narrow plastic sleeves.  This is how I rationalize giving them large quantities of sometimes food.  I tried to limit them to two freezies at a time, but I the strength of my resolve is no match for a two-year-old's tantrum. In the time it took to write the first paragraph I had served out five freezies (two to William, and three to Jadzia).  My daughter is currently throwing herself on my lap in whiny desperation, because I haven't responded fast enough to her request for another.  Ah well, the more she eats, the faster they will be gone.

Educational Opportunities with Gore

After this morning's ketchup incident I decided it was time to get out of the house, so my offspring and I took a walk to the library.  On the way home, two large crows blocked our path.  The birds were so enormous, in fact, that William first identified them as "a dog or a cat".  It looked as though they were enjoying some kind of snack, but at a distance I couldn't tell what it was.  Since we were by a school, I thought it might be someone's recess snack.

The crows flew away as we approached and I realized that the snack was something a little more gruesome.  It was some sort of rodent; a rat, I think, more specifically half a rat.  The hind legs and tail were basically intact, though not much else was.  Intestines were strewn about the the side walk, some bunched up, some stretched out, culminating in an unidentifiable organ that I guess must have been the animal's stomach. 

My immediate instinct was to usher the kids along, but it was too late.  William had seen it and he was fascinated.  We've talked before about how food goes from our stomachs to our intestines before turning into poop, so it was quite the educational opportunity to have that concept illustrated so graphically across the concrete.

"I thought the birds were eating something but they just killed a mouse," said William.
"The mouse was probably already dead," I explained. "Those birds eat dead animals that they find."
"So how did it die?"
"I don't know," said I, racking my brain for a non-scary method of death.  "Maybe a cat killed it.  Or maybe it died of old age."
"Or maybe it was from the olden days and then it died," William added.
"Well, mice and rats don't live that long, only a year or two."
"It was from the olden days, that's probably what happened."
"Probably," I agreed.

The topic was revisited later on in the walk, and we began discussing the animals that humans eat for food.  William already knew that pork came from pigs and beef came from cows.  Now that he'd actually seen an animal being eaten, though, he grasped the concept at a whole new level.  His face held a look of horrid fascination.

Ketchup

On the train table.

In the drawer of of the train trable.

Covering Jadzia's block puzzle.

All over Jadzia and William.

My two-year old can now reach the fridge. Yippee!

Extra Children

Here's a video blog showing off the extra children I was watching today.  BTW:  Eat brie.  It tastes like butter and cheese had a baby.  Delicious!

Edit: For those of you who are so concerned.  I lied when I said that I don't know where Natalie went.  I know the details but it's none of your business.  Mwah ha ha!

Also, Luke did not seriously injure himself, he just needed a wee cuddle.

Mall Fair 2010!

This time of year a fair randomly sprouts up in the mall parking lot and starts charging ridiculous prices for food, rides, and games.  But what is normally a useless money-vacuum, is a worthwhile and wonderful experience when children are involved (of course it helps to share a bulk pack of ride tickets).  All the kiddie rides are variations on the same thing; kids drive around in a circle in some sort of vehicle (car, boat, worm).  Watching them is hilarious.  Zoe concentrates as though she is taking a driver's test.  Aedan performs over-the-shoulder blindspot checks.  William, in full road rage mode, growls "Go faster!"

Speaking of looking silly while on a ride, my husband took a video of me riding the ferris wheel in an attempt to capture my fear of heights on film.  As you can see though, I was fairly calm and collected the whole time: