Toast-crust torture.

If you took the time to watch the video, you saw a tortured dog.  Poor Jett.  Poor spoiled, babied puppy, who goes through his pampered life thinking how underfed, neglected and unloved he is.  Sigh.

Haven is at the stage where animals are squeal-inducing fascinations.  Any time she gets near Jett, she just wants to grab him and get her mouth on the nearest bit: tail, paw, collar, ear.  Jett is patient, but more than that, he is accustomed to suffering in silence, his pleading eyes searching for Peter or me, wordlessly appealing for rescue.  He is simply amazing with the girls and I do my best to teach them to be gentle and not to overdo it; Jett is part of our family, he has feelings and he needs to be respected.


The one area where Jett gets little help or sympathy from me is when it comes to the kids' food.  He is allowed to clean up table scraps, but only after everyone is finished eating.  Jett sees this as cruel, I am sure.  In protest, he sits at a distance from the table, watches all the food dropping onto the floor, and drools continuously in hopes that I will walk through his drool puddles in my bare feet.  I seldom disappoint.  Jett's drool has a texture and viscosity reminiscent of a slightly-thinned-out slug slime (having once stepped on a slug in my bare feet, I can attest to this).  As it is his only means of effective protest, I simply scrape the bottom of my feet with paper towel and chalk another one up to Jett.  But he still has to wait until supper is completely over; I don't budge on this rule, drool puddles or no drool puddles.


Before Haven was eating solid food, Jett often got to eat Sonja's toast crusts.  I would either cut them off and give them to him, or he would get them when she was finished, since she seldom eats them.  But now Haven quite enjoys toast crusts, so I almost always cut a couple off Sonja's toast and give them to her.  Jett is understandably unimpressed with this arrangement, so when I filmed the video of Haven gnawing on Jett's favourite treat, it was easy to describe it as torture.


Just watch as Haven keeps dropping the crust on the floor; see how Jett watches every move.  Notice also how he keeps looking over in my direction as if imploring me to do something to rectify this ridiculous situation.  In Jett's mind, the toast crust is rightfully his.  This kid doesn't even know how to eat it properly for goodness sake!  Eventually I take pity on him and toss him the last of my own toast.  He swallows it and quickly refocuses on Haven's crust.


One of my favourite parts of this video is when Haven tries to grab Jett's paws over and over and he keeps pulling them away.  He's so gentle about it, but he keeps his eyes on the crust and licks his chops.  It's as if he's trying to tell Haven "no paws until you hand over the crust, Kid."  Just cracks me up.  


Near the end of the video, Jett moves his paws out of Haven's reach, and looks at me in disgust.  So demeaning.

Small kids, big stuff.

Our kitchen just got a bit bigger.  For the last few months, we have had to weave our way around our kids' furniture in order to cook and wash dishes.  It's maddening.  But as of last week, we finally put away the Exersaucer.  If you're not familiar with Exersaucers, they look like this:

Sonja, five-months old, in the first Exersaucer we owned.
It is now up at the Grandparents' house.

Haven, five-months old, in our newest Exersaucer.

I remember when we put the Exersaucer away when Sonja was younger and it was a glorious day.  Putting it away for the second time is just as sweet; we no longer have to manoeuvre around this toe-stubbing, road-blocking, behemoth contraption.  

Don't get me wrong: the Exersaucer is a wonderful invention and our kids both loved it in small, manageable doses.  Neither of them would last more than twenty to thirty minutes at a time, but it was a fun way for them to be upright before they were able to stand on their own.  Both girls loved the toys, and let's face it, it gave Peter and I a chance to cook or clean, but bruised shins and sore toes get a little tiring after awhile.

If the Exersaucer was a space hog, it's got nothing on the Learning Tower, or as Sonja calls it, her Big Ladder:

May, 2010.

The Learning Tower is fantastic.  It allows Sonja to be up at counter height so she can be involved with baking, cooking, washing dishes and just observing and feeling a part of what's going on in the kitchen.  It's a double-edged sword in some ways, as I'm sure you can imagine, what with getting into drawers and sticking fingers into batter, but it's been such fun for Sonja and I'm sure Haven will love it just as much.

Now if only it wasn't a broken toe waiting to happen.  Seriously, I feel like it's just biding its time, waiting for me to let my guard down...

Cheap entertainment.

And the number one reason why it's pointless to spend a bunch of money on an eight-month-old at Christmas: flyers are free.

Haven loves to crinkle flyers.  It's as if she can't help herself; she finds them irresistible.  I'd say crinkling flyers is her favourite activity at the moment and she gets very focused on it.  She really gives it her all, going from flyer to flyer, shaking them and crinkling them and listening intently to the sound each different flyer makes.

 

I want to say, "wouldn't it be great to be so easily entertained?" but the truth is I am: I could watch her crinkle flyers all day.

That kind of longing.

I have discovered "Billy Connolly: Journey to the Edge of the World", a four-episode series that follows the acclaimed Scottish comedian as he travels the North West Passage.  If you haven't seen it, you must.  I have watched two episodes and am salivating to watch the rest.  

The second episode takes place in Nunavut, mostly on Baffin Island and as always when I see documentation of Arctic life, I was taken aback by the beauty, the difference in culture from my own, and the permeating sadness at the deterioration of that culture.

What does this have to do with Once Little?

There is a particular scene with a particular person that hit me with an almost physical blow; I had been watching the show folding laundry and I had to sit down, tears in my eyes.  Connolly was in Iqaluit and he paid a visit to an Inuit museum.  There he met an Inuit man who lives at the Salvation Army and comes to the museum almost every day to watch old documentary films of Inuit life.  The man's grandfather and great uncle are in the film, but he points out that everyone is now dead.  

The footage is incredible and colourful and vibrant.  It shows the man's forebears dressed in their traditional cold-weather wear, smiling and laughing, holding their children, aware of the cameras, amused.  Connolly comments at how happy they looked, how at ease, how they knew their place in the world, they had a sense of belonging about them.  What sharp contrast to their lives today, where he notes that people seem displaced, ill-at-ease, unhappy.  The culture is eroding in the face of what some call progress and leaving generations upon generations of wealth and pride in tradition to slowly die off with a few passionate elders.  The man watches these films over and over and when the camera showed his face, I was overcome by the longing I saw there.  

The life displayed in these films that he knows by heart seems so simple and yet so intangible.  He is not a young man, but as I watched, I saw the face of a child who just wants to go home and be folded into the loving arms of his family.

I realize I have absolutely no experience with Inuit and Native life and culture and I know how arrogant and even ignorant this entire post may come across.  But when I see the eyes of someone who would seemingly trade everything he has ever known in this life to be able to step back into history, to a way of life that may never be again, it is beyond powerful.  It shames me, it makes me want to live a better life and it spurs me to give everything I can of myself to ensure my children never know this kind of longing.  

Images found online.

One giant noggin.

I took Haven for a check-up a couple weeks ago and it was both predictable and hilarious.  It was predictable because I knew everything was fine: Haven is growing, eating, teething, exploring, everything an eight-month-old child is supposed to be doing.

It was hilarious because of the doctor's reaction when he was comparing his measurements of Haven's weight, height and head circumference against the percentile growth charts.  I wasn't surprised to hear that Haven's height and weight are in the 20th to 25th percentile and I don't think the doctor was either; she's not a huge baby.  But when he consulted the chart regarding her head circumference, he paused.  He looked back at the measurement he had written down.  He paused again.  He looked at Haven and back at the chart.  I actually laughed a little and asked what the matter was.  He told me that her head circumference was in the 85th percentile.  Then I laughed out loud.

In Peter's family the Erickson Head is legendary.  Peter's nephew Judah had the biggest head circumference ever seen in the small hospital where he was born and Peter's brother has been reminded of that fact time and again.  Peter himself was meant to be born at home, but had to be born in hospital due to his big ol' head.


Sonja has the Erickson Head and it seems that Haven does as well.  I don't think she looks disproportionate, but she does have one giant noggin.

The best part of Haven's gargantuan cranium is being able to call her "HEED", in reference to that fantastic scene in "So I Married an Axe Murderer".  

...she'll be cryin' herself to sleep tonight on her huge pilla.

Gifts and blahs.

We had a fabulous visit and a delicious supper with Peter's family at his parent's house in Mill Bay.  Breaking with tradition, presents were opened before supper and all the gifts were given out and unwrapped en masse.  

It was a cacophonous chaos of ripping paper and ceaseless chatter, with Sonja and Haven receiving a pile of loot so big that it took Peter several trips to get it all out to the truck.

At one point Sonja came up to me in the single moments she had to wait between gifts and said, "I want to open another one, Mama!"  I had barely opened my mouth to answer when another gift was laid in front of her.

Time to pack up a bunch of her old toys to make room for all the new stuff.  For real.  Today I filled a big blue Rubbermaid container with stuffies and dolls.  They will put stored in the attic and perhaps they'll make a reappearance at a later date, or perhaps they'll be given away.  We'll see.  


And thus begins the Post-Christmas Blahs, when there are no more presents left to open.  I went through this as a kid year after year; as much as I loved the gifts I'd received, I was always somewhat sad that the build-up, the anticipation, the sheer excitement was all over for another whole year.  Sounds ungrateful or even greedy, but it had more to do with the thrill of Christmas than the getting of things.  


As I've aged and especially since I've had kids, the Post-Christmas Blahs have flipped to the giving more than the receiving; I look forward every year to the gifts I'm giving (as stressful as it can be to think of what gifts to give).  For example, this year I was so excited to give Sonja her dollhouse.  I imagined her reaction for weeks and it was everything I had hoped for, but now it's over and I've lost that feeling of anticipation that I enjoyed so much.


Good thing for me that Sonja's third birthday is less that two months away, and Haven turns a year old less than two months after that.  I do love having something to look forward to.

Christmas morning.

To bed at 1am, up again at 6am.  Must be Christmas!  

It was well worth all the work and wrapping and last minute running around.  Haven's first Christmas was an exciting, if confusing mix of joy and overstimulation that was so fun to watch.  Sonja got the dollhouse she had been hoping for... well, it's not pink, but she seems to have forgiven that in a hurry.  Her love for Santa and Rudolph is boundless.

Happy Christmas, Everyone!

Opening stockings before breakfast.
Jett is helping, much to Sonja's delight.

Tiger flashlight with internal hand-crank recharging mechanism.
Sweet, no batteries!

One of Haven's many flash-induced facial expressions.

Another present??  Yippee!!

New amber necklace.

Stacking rings are fascinating...

Haven's new Fraggle Rock puppet.  This is Wembley.
Dig his Hawaiian shirt.

Haven's new drum.

Sonja's new dollhouse.

Yes, it is pretty much the coolest dollhouse around.

Covered in icing.

I spent the entire day yesterday baking.  I have one more small batch of non-fiddly cookies to make today and then I am DONE.  But yesterday was all about the fiddly cookies.

Post-cutout, pre-baking.

Post-baking, pre-icing.

Post-icing, post-exhaustion, pre-passing out in bed.

Thoughts, observations and helpful hints from my first time using a piping bag to ice cookies:


1 - Those people on those baking shows make it look like it's no big thing.
2 - It isn't no big thing.
3 - Icing that is too thick will drive you nuts and seize your hand into one big cramp.
4 - Icing that is too thin will squish out of the top of the bag and run down your arm.
5 - You will not realize icing is squishing out the top of the bag until it is running down your arm.
6 - Eating mistakes sounds like a perk and an all-round yummy idea.
7 - There will be so many mistakes that your teeth will start to hurt from eating them all; get a damp cloth to wipe mistakes onto.
8 - There will be icing all over your kitchen.  I mean it: every surface.  Again, damp cloths are your friends.  
9 - You will be tempted to start piping angry and/or crying faces instead of smiley faces to match your mood.  Resist.
10 - Breathe, wipe brow and push toward the finish line, you are almost there.
11 - Your smiling child will appreciate your efforts.  Repeat as mantra until finished.  
12 - Take some photos for proof that you actually did this crazy thing, since it may never happen again.

Photo op.

I've been telling Sonja for weeks that she and Haven will have their photo taken with Santa Claus.  I've been planning to go to the mall and brave the crowds and do it.  I have.  But Peter and Sonja were Christmas shopping at Hillside Mall the other day and Sonja saw Santa and well, she just had to have her photo taken.

Seeing as tomorrow is Christmas Eve, I don't know if I'll have the chance to take both Sonja and Haven back to the mall to have another photo taken, so I'm so glad we have this photo of Sonja with Santa.  

Peter told me that when Santa asked Sonja what she wants for Christmas, she told him she wants a dollhouse.  I'm so proud that she felt comfortable enough to speak to Santa, let alone remember what she wants for Christmas; I think my mind went blank every time I talked to Santa as a kid.  Not only that, but she looks so happy sitting on his lap.  Check out that smile.  She doesn't look at all intimidated or afraid.  

Bright, independent and confident.  What a great kid.

The Up-Up Bed.

Things are changing in the Erickson house.  Haven has finally graduated from her smaller, bedside crib into the full-sized crib, and since the full-sized crib was converted into Sonja's toddler bed, we needed to find Sonja a new bed.  Luckily for us, Peter's parents had just the bed.

Sonja sleeping in her old crib, now Haven's new crib.

Haven and Sonja in the toddler bed.

Most households with two or more children go through similar growing pains and when Peter was little, things were no different.  For that reason, Peter's Dad Jeff built Peter a special bed so that his younger brother Zac could have Peter's old bed.  And what a beautiful bed.  It became known as Peter's "Up-Up Bed" for good reason: it's around three feet off the ground, with plenty of room underneath for playing and fort-making.

The Up-Up Bed.

Jeff originally built a ladder with the bed, but it was broken some time ago when the bed was loaned out.  He is working on fixing it now, so in the meantime, Sonja is using a metal step ladder and it's working just fine.  But really, I don't think Sonja cares what type of ladder she has, she just loves her new bed.  In fact, she spent most of the day yesterday playing in her bed.  She carried a whole bunch of toys up the step ladder and gave them all a chance to be tucked in and have a nap.

Playing doctor to one of her dollies.  I believe she's writing a prescription.

I think the best part of having the Up-Up Bed is the history: this is the same bed Peter slept in as a child.  Of course, Sonja has not grasped the concept that her parents used to be a little as she is now; I don't even think she believes that we have Mommies and Daddies, she just looks at me with a disbelieving look on her face when I say it, just like when I told her my first name is actually Sara, not Mommy.  But personally, I love to imagine Peter as a wee little boy, climbing up into his special bed, snuggling underneath the covers while his parents kissed his little rosy cheek.  


Rosy cheeks, snuggly Babes, sweet dreams.  

Ego a go-go.

Since Sonja is my first child, every new stage she enters is also new to me.  And no amount of anecdotal advice from well-meaning friends and family seems to make a difference, since I still feel like I'm alone out here, making shit up as I go along.  And I suppose that (sigh) this is what parenting is really all about.  

I just wish my mind wasn't always straining to think ahead ten or twenty years, wondering if all my screw-ups now will come back to haunt me.  Most of the seasoned Moms I know (including my own) assure me that it will definitely feel that way once my kids become teenagers.  I expect that.  But what matters most to me and what I fret about endlessly is a simple, ego-driven desire: I want Sonja to like me. 


My ego is a troublesome imp.  At the same time that it wants desperately to be liked, it also can't stand being challenged by the likes of an almost-three-yearl-old girl.  I honestly wish it would butt out of this whole parenting thing, because when it gets involved, things tend to deteriorate quickly.  I do have some success: I've gotten good at taking deep breaths and even walking away momentarily in order to calm down and view the situation rationally.  But I also have total breakdowns where the situation plays directly into my ego's impish, whiny hands.  Luckily I have no problem explaining to Sonja that I'm not perfect and I get frustrated and I'm sorry.  She is always gracious and ready with a kiss.  

The reality is that when Sonja loses her temper, it looks a heck of a lot like when I would lose my temper as a kid.  ...not that different than when I lose my temper now, if I'm being honest.  And my tantrums aren't that different from the ones I remember my Mom having.  Damn it.


I just keep telling myself that as long as I remain as genuine and authentic with my kids as I possibly can, everything will work out.  ...but I still hope they like me.  

Photos of Sonja and me taken June 17th, 2008.

Old friends, new friends.

I haven't eaten at McDonald's in many years because it no longer fits into my lifestyle, but that wasn't always the case.  When I was a kid, the best thing about McDonald's was the Happy Meal and the best thing about the Happy Meal was the toy.

In the mid- to late-eighties, McDonald's was giving away Muppet Babies in their Happy Meals and I collected a bunch of them.  They came in a little plastic bag and you got a figurine (Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzy, Gonzo or Animal) and a vehicle of some type (big wheel, car, airplane, hobby horse, wagon, skateboard, etc) for them to ride, drive or fly.  They were great because the figurine was akin to a Smurf figurine: solidly made, brightly coloured, and fit well in your hand.

I know a lot of people who saved (or their parents saved) all their childhood toys and now their own kids are reaping the benefits.  Then there's folks like me, endlessly scouring eBay, rapt with nostalgia, wishing I could afford to buy my kids all the toys I remember.  ...and realizing they might appreciate them as much as I did, which wasn't always very much.  Suffice it to say I don't have many of my old toys and the Muppet Babies Happy Meals toys are long gone.

I'm going to make a long story short and just say that I came across some of these Muppet Babies toys recently and got a few for Sonja (for free, I might add), thinking she may find them fun.  Sonja doesn't have the longest attention span for toys; she loves them all, but she rarely fixates on any one toy for more than a day or two before moving onto a new toy, or back to an old toy.  So I've been pleasantly surprised that the Muppet Babies have become the be-all and end-all.  She plays with them constantly.  She has taken a particular shine to Gonzo (always a favourite of mine as well) and carries him with us when we are walking the dog, or going to the grocery store.  She runs with him in her hand in the park, then tells me that while she is running, Gonzo is running too.  They run everywhere together.  

It's funny that in a few days, Christmas will be here and Sonja will have who-knows-how-many gifts to unwrap, all new, all bought in stores with her in mind.  Funny, even paradoxical, that lots of people are spending all this money on her and yet a few old toys bought decades ago in a Happy Meal bring her so much joy.  Fantastic.

Gonzo, Man of the Hour, in his red wagon.

In our house, Miss Piggy (or "Miss Pig" as Sonja calls her) always rides the big wheel...

...while Fozzy drives the pink car.  

Kermit on his red skateboard.

Pink tree.

Although Sonja is extremely excited and happy with our Christmas tree, she originally insisted that she wanted a pink tree.  Peter and I both told her that we would do our best to find a pink tree, but since most trees (we're talking real trees here, not artificial trees) are green, a pink tree might be hard to find.  In the end, she started saying she wanted a green tree and everyone was happy.


Well, my best friend Kate and I were on the phone a few weeks back and I was telling her about Sonja's request for a pink tree.  Kate said she had seen a small, pre-lit pink tree for sale and asked if she should buy it for Sonja.  Why not?


I was expecting a table-top tree that Sonja could put in her room and perhaps use as a night light over the Christmas season.  I was not expecting it to be four-feet tall, but here it is, in all its pink glory:

I thought the tree looked very retro, so it looks fantastic next to Sonja's red, retro kitchen.  Needless to say, Sonja is thrilled.  She has her big green tree in our living room and her pink tree in her little kitchen.  What more could a girl ask for?  Thanks Auntie Kate!

Dance to the music.

The effect of music on babies isn't surprising, but it's still amazing to behold.  I know I'm not the only Mom who has "dance parties" with their babies.  When Sonja was a wee Babe, she calmed down to reggae, particularly Bob Marley, Toots and the Maytals, and Katchafire.  But the one song that she loved above all others wasn't reggae, it was KT Tunstall's "Stoppin the Love".  I can't tell you how many times I played that song and sang and swayed all over our house when Sonja was around three or four months old.

Haven likes anything upbeat.  I've previously mentioned her taste for Paul Simon and Nikka Costa, but she really just likes anything you can dance to.  Once a slow song comes on, she fidgets and cries.  This morning, we danced to Fleetwood Mac's "Secondhand News", one of my all-time faves.  Haven is all about action: she loves to make sounds of her own and is always banging her toys together and shaking her little maracas.

Sonja adores singing.  She is the loudest and most enthusiastic singer during Circle Time at Strong Start, much to my delight (and the delight of her teacher).  She also loves to sing along to the theme songs of her DVDs, most notably the theme for "Franklin", which happens to be sung by Bruce Cockburn.  I like being able to say that my daughter knows all the words to a Bruce Cockburn song at the age of two.  I look forward to hearing Sonja and Haven sing along together.

I'm so glad my kids appreciate music and I fully anticipate they will want their own iPods (if they're still called iPods) when they are older.  I will be one of those Moms unplugging the earbuds out of my kids' ears in order to get their attention and ask my question, or repeat my statement for the umpteenth time.  So be it.