Trekking with the Next Generation

How important is it to see in theatres something I have watched countless times on television? I can close my eyes and picture the scenes in my head.  In fact I have. As a kid I would invent new episodes, played in my mind for my own amusement.  Of course, none of these were in high definition; none of these were on the big screen.

How important? Very.  Important enough for me to cancel all my other Monday commitments.  Important enough to do laundry for the specific purpose of washing my Star Trek shirt.  But, for some reason, not important enough to enlist the help of a babysitter.  Yes, I made the mistake of bringing my children. To be fair, I wanted them to come.  I wanted to share this thing I love with them.  I wanted my offspring to experience the awesomeness that is Star Trek.

The show began with a behind the scenes look at how the show was remastered, how they had to go through warehouses of film footage to find the scenes needed to recut the show.  I drank it all in, while William whispered "When's the show actually going to start?"

William seemed interested in the first episode, watching wide-eyed as the Enterprise sped to the edge of the universe, pointing out the Traveler's chubby fingers. Though while the second episode played he was preoccupied with his "hunger".  Adam eventually bought the kids some candy, and William pouted because this was rationed, and we didn't let them have the entire bag.

Jadzia didn't even pretend to pay attention.  Though she was quite good at pretending to be a cat.  She also spent a great deal of time fiddling with her broken arm rest, hunting for bits of stale popcorn on the floor, and finding creative ways to position herself in her seat.  She had three bathroom breaks during the show.  Her brother had one.  My husband and I took turns escorting.

William wore light up sandles, which bathed the theatre in flickering light whenever he kicked the chair.  I took them off, but we kept accidentally jostling them anyway.  And, of course, he needed to put them on to visit the washroom.

I've seen the show enough times that I wasn't worried about catching plot points, though during one washroom break I missed most of the completely redone 3D rendering of the crystalline entity. Also I got pee on my Star Trek shirt.

If you've ever been annoyed by young children in the theatre, take solace in knowing that they are annoying their parents 100 times more.  And sadly, I now have to spend $700 buying the complete Next Generation series remastered on blu-ray.

Battle of the Haircut

My first born's hair was getting rather shaggy and he inherited from his father a tendency to sweat profusely at the slightest rise in temperature and/or physical activity. Thus, today I took William for a haircut.

He asked if he was going to the place where you sit in a car while your hair is being cut, but that place is twice as much money as the cheap place on the corner, so the cheap place on the corner is where we went.  He got in the car without protest.  He happily entered the establishment and began playing with their bucket of broken Power Ranger Zords.


When his turn came up he doddled at the toy bin. Jadzia came right up and said "I want to do it" so her turn was first.  I'm growing her bangs out and she likes pony tails so we kept the back long too.  In other words her hair ended up looking exactly the same. If she didn't have a brother, Jadzia would never enter a salon of any kind.

William's turn, take two.  He refused to sit in the chair because "He didn't know how he wanted it."  I got out the boys haircut book and went through it with him.  He answered "No" and "I don't know" to every selection.  He repeated over and over that he just didn't know what he wanted and started to cry.

The stylists tried to help by offering a lollipop and telling him it wouldn't hurt.  He knows it won't hurt.  He's had hundreds of haircuts.  He did fine every other time, including his first cut when he was a baby.  Why the protest?

We let four people go in front of us.  William stopped crying and seemed calm, but he exhibited passive-aggressive-on-the-verge-of-tantrum behaviour; rocking in his chair, stomping his feet, evil-glaring at me.  I told him I wasn't going to leave until his hair was cut.

Finally I dragged him kicking and screaming to the chair. Since he was fighting, the stylist had limited options.  I held his arms while she buzzed him with #2 clippers.  This was one of the worst experiences of my life, right up there with treetop walking and childbirth. He behaved as if he was being tortured.  Even though we all know that haircuts don't hurt, he screamed "Ow!" over and over.

The result was perfect for an army private or prison inmate, and actually kind of cute on my brown-eyed little man.

The fight didn't end there.  He tantrumed while we went to buy toilet paper (because I need to wipe bums more than I need to avoid making a scene in a store).  He told me he didn't like me no less than four times. By the time we got home, the fit had become about him wanting to have a bath.

Alas, to get to the bathtub, William had to pass a mirror, which set him off again.  "I don't like my haircut!" "I don't want to go to school with this haircut!" "I want my hair back right now!"  Jadzia enjoyed his bath while he tantrumed, only getting in when the water was cold (and probably peed in).

Later, I messaged my husband to tell him I would never ever ever ever take William to get his haircut ever again.  It should definitely be a father-son thing.

The Jekyll and Hyde Phenomenon

This morning Adam and I went for a parent-teacher meeting at William's school.  Mrs. L raved about our boy. He knows most of his upper and lower case letters, and about half of the sounds they make. He can write out the numbers between one and ten all by himself.  He spends most of the time building things out of Lego and always has a new creation to show the class during share time.  When he does get around to putting pencil to paper, he creates wonderfully imaginative drawings with fantastical stories to go along will them. He's independent, cleans up after himself, and is happy playing with his friends or by himself.  I was pleased with the meeting, not because any of this is a surprise, but because Mrs. L seems to get William and genuinely appreciate him.  She also gets the sense that he enjoys his time at school.

So why, then, is it now our routine to have temper tantrums every school day? Sometimes he fusses about school itself, other times he invents other reasons to throw a fit.  Today he wanted to bring a toy that shoots missiles and we asked him to choose a more school-appropriate toy or even just leave the missile at home.  Giant meltdown.  He became way too upset to pick something else.  I ended up dragging him to school screaming.  I pulled him by his jacket, his back pack.  If I let him go he ran in the opposite direction.  When he made his legs go limp I had to pick him up. Then he punched and kicked me in the face.  He bit my knuckles to get me to let go.

This isn't separation anxiety.  He isn't being bullied.  There's no reason for this other than torturing his parents on a semiweekly basis.  Mrs. L says that the routine might stop when he's had a break for the summer and Jadzia goes with him in the fall. Anyone have a quicker solution?

W is for William

I doubt in this short blog entry I can convey to you the awesomeness that embodies my son, William.  In many ways a stereotypical boy, he loves Hotwheels, swords and guns. At the age of five, his Lego-building skills have surpassed mine, and he often presents me with creatively-constructed and beautifully-symmetrical spaceships, complete with guns and spoilers.

Despite his boyishness, he's not afraid to wear fairy wings. He points out sparkly costume jewelry in stores and tells me how beautiful it is.

He excels at computer games.  Too advanced a player for educational preschool games, he uses the same sites I do.  Unfortunately, I have yet to find a zombie apocalypse shooter that also teaches reading and writing.  I suppose I'll leave those skills up to kindergarten to teach him.

He loves stories.  The worst punishment I can give him is to not read him books at bed time.  He chooses his books carefully, and is even particular about which one I read first.  When the lights are turned off I make up another story for him, or draw from my short list of memorized fairy tales.  He doesn't ever want his own name in the story, or even the names of anyone he knows. I'm not sure why this is, but if a character is named William he will refuse to listen until I change the name.

He is capable of carrying on insightful, intelligent conversations on any topic, with the possible exception of "What did you do at school today?".

He's loving and sweet to his sister (except when he's not) and he's loving and sweet to me (except when he's not).  He's polite, even thanks me for making dinner, which I don't recall teaching him.  After his bed time stories he tells me I'm the best mommy in the world.

R is for Riding

Last Saturday marked an incredible event.  No, I'm not talking about the Next Level improv workshop, although that was  cool.  I'm referring to the training wheels being removed from my son's bicycle.

Adam and I took turns holding our son upright while he mastered the art of balance.  At first he was listing to one side and then the other, toppling despite his parental assistant's grip on the bike buddy.

 Once he got up to speed, however, we barely had to touch the handle.  Adam even worked up the courage to let go for a second:

William wasn't the only one learning to ride:

Of course, Jadzia rode with training wheels, but this was still a big moment for her.  To date, she's only ridden tricycles and has been quite timid about pedaling herself.  This was her first chance to really try out her newly-acquired princess bike.  She pedaled it all by herself.

Later, Adam bought William some knee and shoulder pads and that really boosted his confidence.  By Sunday, he only needed help starting.  Then on Wednesday we went to the park with his friend Aedan.  He realized that he couldn't keep up if he always had to wait for Mommy to push him, so he figured out how to get going without me.  Now he can totally bike on his own, and it took less than a week for him to learn!

H is for Hike

Saturday we went for a hike at Spencer's Gorge, an area characterized by beautiful waterfalls and hazardous cliffs. While my children were never actually in danger of falling to their deaths, I found myself constantly shooing them further away from the cliff's edge.

We saw several waterfalls, people walking their dogs, lovely stone bridges, a pit full of leaves to play in, and a field for rolling. I'm not sure who was more tired, the adults or the offspring, but only my husband had a nap afterwards.

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.

My baby is FIVE YEARS OLD

My son William turned five today.  Here's a picture him when he was just a month old:

Here's a picture of him with his sister, taken just before his birthday party on Sunday:

He sure has transformed! (Get it?) Yes, he opted for a Halloween party for his birthday. I borrowed some Halloween decorations from a Halloween-obsessed friend and we put them up together.  He also helped decorate the cake, too. Here's the cake:

William chose all the icing colours and sprinkled the candy stars.  The orange happy face in the middle started out as a pumpkin, in keeping with the Halloween theme. Also, according to William, the red corner is  "blood from where somebody died".  Spooky. And what cake would be complete without three random cars?

Here's a picture of the kids playing bean bag toss:

The idea was to get your beanbag to land on that pumpkin. William asked for a beanbag game to be included in the festivities so Adam made that poster especially for the occasion. Later, William had fun sliding on the slippery print, and jumping off the stairs onto it.

Here are all the kids waiting for their food:

After all the hoopla about the cake, William had exactly one bite of it. He didn't even eat his ice cream.  He did have a popsicle though (he made me buy those).

Here is William opening presents:

One day he'll get the process of opening each present one at a time, reading the card first, and then thanking the gift giver.  That is not what happened here. Presents were being thrust at him by helpful party-goers and he tore at them like a gift-starved animal.

I spent all of Monday putting together Lego flying saucers and army vehicles.  None of these are still together now that it is Wednesday.

After the party goers left we went to visit my in-laws in Niagara Falls. Here is William opening the Innotab they got him:

He calls it his iPad. The thing is pretty cool. Of course, in about an hour both my kids had passed the games that came with it, including the difficult level. I can see how this thing could easily become a money sucker (and a battery sucker).

Here's Babcia, wearing William's Bumblebee mask:

Today (after William opened his presents from me and Adam) I spent about an hour trying to find a friend for William to play with on his birthday.  Having been unsuccessful, we headed to the Early Years, where we saw noone we know (other than the staff). The kids had a good time anyway.  They sang Happy Birthday to him in circle and he blew out a candle (no cake, just the candle).  

I promised my kids McDonald's for lunch but when I got to the McDonald's next door to the OEYC I realized I had forgotten my wallet at home. We went all the way home, then went to a different, closer McDonald's that had a play place in it.  I climbed through the tubes with Jadzia because she was too cranky to do it herself. The entire structure was hard plastic and tough on the knees.

We went home eventually, then went outside and played baseball in the snow. (William got a bat, ball and glove from Adam).  I pitched, he batted.  He didn't do too badly considering I'm a pretty terrible pitcher.

For dinner we went to my Mom's house, where he got gifts from his grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Here is a picture of the monkey cupcakes my Mom made for him:

He ate the digestive biscuit off the top, and also had some strawberries.  He's not much of a cake person, as you may have gathered.

In conclusion, my son is five. The tiny zygote that lived in my belly is big grown-up boy. 

Happy Birthday William!

Snow!

Perhaps it's global warming, or perhaps snow has always been elusive in the month of December, when the Christmas season has us collectively wishing for a blanket of white. We got rain instead of snow on Christmas Eve and then, a few days later, a tease. A thin layer of crunchy icy stuff that is no good for snowballs, snowmen, snow angels, or sledding.  We went outside anyway.

Yesterday we had a real snowfall, I threw snowballs for Worf on our evening walk.  The temperature threatened to climb above zero before the morning.  I awoke today relieved that the snow was still here, packing snow, snowman snow.  I got the kids dressed in their snowpants, mitts and hats.  I told them that if the tobogganing hill was too sticky and slushy, plan B was to build a snowman in the schoolyard.

Fortunately, the hill was covered in slippery snow, if a little muddy at the bottom.  The stark white maple leaf on the palm of my mittens is now beige.  Looks like it was meant to be that colour.

I immediately wished I'd brought a camera.  Jadzia helped to straighten the sled before they got in, making sure they would go down at just the right angle. William held his sister, protecting her as they slid down together.

I went down a few times with the kids, but then my eldest made it clear that it was better without a grown-up. He was right, I slowed them down and caused the unbalanced sled to spin out of control.

I was just getting bored of watching others have fun, when William exclaimed the he had to go pee.  He wanted to pee in the bushes, but since he was wearing snowpants and a jacket I wasn't sure how that would be accomplished.  Nor did I want to try.  It was time to go home anyway.  When he started to fuss, I lured them both away from the hill with a playful snowball fight.  I pretended to be attempting to evade their attack, using the toboggan as a shield.

Despite William's repeated insistence that he "couldn't hold it", neither he nor his sister walked any faster than they normally would.  To be fair, they were both dressed like astronauts.  However, since he didn't seem to be in a big hurry, I made him wait a minute longer so I could run inside and grab my camera (they looked too cute in their snowsuits).

And he didn't pee his pants!

Oh, Christmas Time

Having junked our artificial tree at the end of the season last year, yesterday we went on a mission to chop down a real one. We took a tractor ride into forest of pint-sized pines, whereupon a grumpy farmer told us he was only making one trip because the ground wasn't frozen enough. We looked at three different types of trees; green ones, blue ones, and more green ones.  Finally we settled on green.  We wandered through the rows of pines, rejecting some, picking out maybes and then forgetting where they were.  All the while Jadzia was kept in low spirits due to the cold, a lost candy cane, and general three-year-old crankiness.  We finally found the perfect tree (we got cold and hungry).  Adam sawed it down and then we bought hot dogs and chili at the farm store.

It's been a week of Christmas memories.  On Friday we had lunch with Santa at the community centre.  By we, I mean William and Jadzia. Santa doesn't feed grown-ups.  My children were the only ones who opted for food before seeing Santa. It meant that Jadzia had chocolate brownie up her nose when I snapped the Santa photo, but I don't think you can really tell in the picture.

Thursday was William's Christmas concert at his school. He chose a bright green shirt to wear and stood out beautifully.  His class recited a poem called "I don't want mittens for Christmas" and sang "Mittens and Gloves". Not exactly old chestnuts, but they did very well.  I was able to enjoy myself despite the overtired three-year-old on my lap, who wanted desperately to go on stage with her brother.

In other news, I was sort of tagged in a Christmas Meme (as part of my writing group) and it seems appropriate (appropriately lazy) to answer those questions here.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?  Hot chocolate tastes better, but egg nog is more Christmassy. Never make hot chocolate with water. That's blasphemy (and not in a good way).

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Both.

3. Coloured lights on tree/house or white? Coloured.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?  Nope.

5. When do you put your decorations up?Sometime in December/ when we feel like it.

6. What is your favourite holiday dish?Christmas log.

7. Favourite Holiday memory as a child? The memories I had this week are right up there.  I guess I`m not technically a child though.  So I`ll go with this one: My grandparents celebrated on Christmas Eve. On years that we stayed at their house, we would hide in the kitchen, then Santa would ring a bell.  We would run into the living room and all our gifts would be laid out.  We never saw Santa, and I swear the whole family was in the kitchen, all adults accounted for. It must have been the real deal.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I consider myself a Santa Claus agnostic.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?Except when we went to my grandparents, we usually opened Christmas morning. Although we got one gift (always a book and occasionally a book and pjs) on Christmas Eve.  My inlaws also celebrate Christmas Eve, so there is present opening at their house then, but at our house Santa`s presents get opened on Christmas Morning.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? The Christmas decorations box pukes all over the tree and we call it done.

11. Can you ice skate?Since I was two.

12. Do you remember your favourite gift? My daughter, Jadzia. Born 5:15 am, December 25th.

13. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Family. Warm fuzzies.

14. What is your favourite Holiday Dessert?I told you! Christmas log.

15. What is your favourite holiday tradition?I love everything except the financial stress.

16. What tops your tree?A slightly dilapidated red star from an Ikea ornament set.

17. Which do you prefer giving or receiving? Both.

18. What is your favourite Christmas Song?I used to like `We Three Kings` because of the camels with sneakers.  `Santa Baby`is a good one.  Also `Here Comes Santa Claus`. Edit: Oh! I totally forgot about Tim Minchin's White Wine in the Sun, which is both funny and touching and very well captures the meaning of Christmas.

19. Candy Canes: Yuck or Yum?I can take them or leave them.

20. Favourite Christmas Show?Will Vinton`s Claymation Christmas Celebration which my family watched every year from the time it came out in 1987, until it faded into obscurity.

21. Saddest Christmas Song? Christmas songs should not be sad. They should be joyous.  Songs about war and hunger are okay as long at they are upbeat. There should never be any songs about a little boy using a sob story about his dying mother to scam someone into buying him an expensive pair of shoes.

Merry Christmas everyone!

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.

Aquatic children

I should have posted this on Sunday but I was too busy getting my creepy dead body on a beach story ready for the campaign challenge deadline. So without further delay, I must tell you how amazing my children were at swimming lessons.

I knew William would be great.  He's a fish.  He goes underwater.  He's fearless.  When I told him I had signed him up for swimming lessons he said "But I already know how to swim."

Jadzia was another story.  She always holds tight to me in a white knuckle death grip whenever we're in the water. When I took her to the pool with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, she stayed on the edge of the pool playing with the water toys.  She became frightened when the drain made a funny noise. My friend agreed she might not be ready.

On Sunday, when we tried to get her to shower before leaving the change room, she backed away in fear.  Of course, the first thing the instructor did was lead the kids to the shower.  It's all over, thought I, she won't do it.  Instead, she ran under the spray without a care in the world.

Of course, it helped that William was in the same class.  Jadzia looked a little terrified she was asked to grab onto the teacher's arms and swim, but since big brother was doing it, she didn't protest.  By the end she was enjoying herself immensely, splashing, laughing, making Mickey Mouse ears, and behaving less timidly than some of the older children.

And William, as always, is a fish.

I am so proud of both of them.

BTW: There were also scuba divers in the pool that day. (You can see them in the background of the first picture). We were watching them while we waited for the kid's lessons to start.  William says that after he learns to swim, then he can learn to scuba dive.

Memories last forever (if you put them on youtube).



I was at Chudleigh's Apple Orchard today and I got to thinking of all the times we've been there before. I went down the slide with William and remembered going down the slide with him as a toddler. Then he was in my lap; this time we were racing. I recall an infant Jadzia sucking on an apple, not enough teeth yet to take a bite. Though she has teeth now, the apples are still as big as her head and she carried one around for an hour without finishing it.

We can really only afford to go to Chudleigh's once a year. From admission to lunch to apples, our wallets are gouged at every turn. So the kids change dramatically every visit. The place stays oddly the same; our family keeps evolving.

I took my trip down memory lane to youtube and found this:

That's William at the age Jadzia is now, eating an apple pie.  Yes, I know I keep misunderstanding what he's saying in the video.  Could that be a reason he can't be bothered telling me about school now? Anyway we didn't make an apple pie this time. Honey crisp apples are way too good to waste on such an endeavor.

In other new, I am getting a cold from being around allergens too long. Is it really necessary to bed the entire playground in hay?  Really?

Meet the Teacher

Today was William's first meeting with his new teacher, Mrs. Leonard.  Though I attended with him, I was quickly shuffled into the corner to fill out forms while William was assessed on his drawing skills, his knowledge of letters and numbers, and his coloured-bear sorting ability.  I think he did well and Mrs. L agreed, but William was disappointed that he only got to "do boring stuff".  Next week, he was promised, there will be playing and there will be other kids.  Man, I wish I was going to junior kindergarten, it sounds like a blast.

After we got home, I tried to discuss the visit with my son.  I couldn't observe everything he and the teacher were doing and was curious. 
"I just don't remember!" William exclaimed.
"But it was only twenty minutes ago," said I.
Shades of years to come.

William goes to kindergarten

Yesterday we took William to the kindergarten open house.  Before we went William put on his new backpack and said "Are we going to school now?"  So after dinner my Mom came to watch Jadzia and the rest of us walked the short distance to William's school.  William was immediately greeted as he came in and given a ziploc bag with stuff in it.  We were told that we had to keep the ziploc and not lose it before September.  Our first test as school parents, I hope we don't fail it!

The kindergarten room was similar to the Early Years, lots of toys, blocks, train sets, colouring sheets, educational doo-dads, etc.  And all over the wall the room also had enough charts, posters, numbers, letters, and artwork to give me ADD.  We met the two kindergarten teachers, but because of bizarre regulations we weren't allowed to know which would actually be teaching him.


William was excited by the magnifying glasses and nature things ("Science!") but he ended up spending most of his time building a totally awesome truck out of lego.  Reading over the info for parents, I saw that William has pretty much already met all the educational goals for JK and SK, so I figure he's going to totally ace this whole school thing. Also, the rest of the kids that were there seemed much smaller, so he'll rule the playground aswell.

When I told William it was time to go, he said "Then why did we even come?" I think he wanted to play all day.  Well good, soon he'll be forced to.

Oh and this morning he asked me "Can we go to school today?" 

William's Dream

William: I had a Power Ranger dream and people were taking our car.
Me: Power Rangers were taking our car?
William: No, we were Power Rangers and someone else was taking our car.
Me: What did we do?
William: It was just a dream, we didn't do anything.
Me: Oh.
William: And I saw that you were eating something.  You said it was cat food and it tasted like cheerios.
Me: I was eating cat food that tasted like cheerios?
William: Yeah, and it was cheerios.

About two minute later...

William: I like Power Rangers

William the Scholar

My son is awesome at building with lego, and playing video games.  He has the uncanny ability to say the most insightful things, and hold his own in discussions of life and death, evolution, astronomy and the possibility of extra terrestrial life.  However, he is notorious for his unwillingness to put crayon to paper.  While his sister colours on every available surface, William has only recently (and only occasionally) let go of his perfectionist tendancies long enough to attempt a happy face or racecar (the latter often followed by the remark "This is not actually a very good racecar. Can you do it?") .

So a couple of days ago when I bought a kindergarten printing book at the dollar store, I had very low expectations.  I showed it to him, but I didn't even suggest we try it.  Imagine my surprise then, when today I saw this:

He got out a marker and started filling out the book all by himself.  He did most of the capital letters and then went on to the small letters, at which point he declared "I'm not very good at the small letters."  I told him he was doing fabulously, but his standards for himself are much higher than the standards of others.  He takes after me that way.


And yes, he is left-handed.  How cool is that?

Independence is good. Right?

One of my very few house rules is that food must be eaten at the table.  Food must not be eaten downstairs (with pop corn being an occasional exception).

I think these guidelines are perfectly reasonable, but William finds them the height of unfairness.  "But I'm hungry and I want to watch Treehouse," says he.

Well today I gave the kids some grapes for snack, and the moment I wasn't looking my son carried his plate downstairs.

"Where's your plate?"
"It's already in the sink," William said while attempting to block my view of the basement.  Then, when it was obvious that I could see the plate sitting on the couch: "Jadzia brought it down there."

I told him he could not have anymore grapes because he broke the rule about not eating downstairs and then lied about it.  He was upset for a short while, but then I considered the matter settled.

Later, my son came to me with his face covered in yogurt.
"What's that all over your face?"
"Jadzia just put yogurt on my face."
Apparently my two-year-old daughter had also brought a chair from the dining room to the kitchen, removed an entire package of single serving yogurts, and eaten them/spilled them on the downstairs carpet. 

Right.

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.

For the Love of Sugar

Today my friend Cara and I enjoyed the maple syrup festival at Bronte Creek.  We ate maple sugar candies, maple toffee and pancakes with maple syrup.  In case that wasn't enough sugar, William drank the leftover maple syrup.  Yum!

William's favourite part of the day was the tractor ride to and from the pancake house.  That, and playing with his friend Leyla, who he's still excited to hang out with even after all these years. Jadzia enjoyed climbing the bleachers and wandering as far as she could away from the grown-ups.  Also the pigs.

Below is a shot of William hanging the sap bucket during the educational portion of the trip. Leyla drilled the hole; they make an excellent team.