Without

This weekend, the girls went to stay with their grandparents.

They left on Saturday afternoon at around 4pm, and it is now just after 4pm Monday, and we are waiting for them to return.  It's a long weekend, and Etienne's mum wanted us to have some time to ourselves, to what we wanted to do.

For 48 hours, we have:

Gone to see a movie - in a theatre, even.

Gone out for dinner at 10pm.

Slept past 8 a.m.

Skipped breakfast

Eaten brunch twice, once with friends

Eaten asparagus without someone at the table whining about it

Wiped no one's nose/ass but our own

Lingered in bookstores

Lingered over coffee

Lingered over photographs

Lingered over books and magazines

And we have also missed them terribly.

It's fun having a break from trolls.

But it's much more fun having them back.

Can't wait.

Hither and thither

1.  Kids have been packed off to the grandparents' house for two nights and one full day.  The goal is for Etienne and me to have some time to work on the yard...but tonight we're going to a movie and then out for dinner.  

Stressed a little, mostly because Adele's one goal in life lately seems to be SUICIDE, and the 'rents aren't as used to chasing her EVERY FREAKING MILLISECOND but I remember this phase from when Eva was little, and expect they'll return her to us safe and sound.

Dinner is gonna be AWESOME...sweet little bistro called Lemeac.

2.  Have been spending looong stints at the park, now that weather is better.  Shocking how filthy trolls get.  The other day, Addie's face and hands were black from the wet sand, and I hadn't brought anything to wipe her off.  Loaded her into the stroller and arrived home to find her little black hands had a single thumb pristinely white from sucking.  GAH.

3.  Spent 20 minutes picking up remnants of a broken beer bottle under a swing.  WHAT IS WITH PEOPLE???  What jackass thinks that's funny?    You have to come from a pretty broken place, to smash a beer bottle and spread the glass under four swings in a playground.

4.  Funny how you can spot the first-time parents at the trendy park...they're the ones whose kid is wearing 16 layers of sweaters and jackets and hats and so on, in light pastel colours, despite the mild spring weather.   The kids look like the Pillsbury Doughboy.  Dude.  

Junior won't freeze to death if you take off a layer so he can actually BEND AT THE WAIST and SIT on the slide.   

5.  Bought three lobsters last night...they swam in our sink for a bit, before we sent them for one last swim in the "hot tub" on the stove.  Addie went to bed early so we had a sweet evening with our big girlie, tearing apart the lobsters.  Can't believe how big that kid is getting.  And how awesome.

How very awesome.

 

Forget mother of the year

Maybe her hearing needs checking.
Maybe we expect too much.

But I don't think so.

Eva's behaviour lately has been...less than acceptable.

In fact, I'd say she's actually venturing into "you little shit" territory.

In the past couple of weeks, her listening skills have gone even further into the toilet.
She's bouncing around constantly.

I don't think it's ADHD or anything like that; she's perfectly happy to sit at the table for 30 minutes doing math questions, then go read a book alone for 30 minutes, then colour quietly for another half hour.

But when we ask her to do something - anything - it feels like we have to repeat it 5-thousand freaking times...or get in her face and start threatening, before anything happens.

Leave your sister alone.
Leave your sister alone.
Leave your sister alone.
Sit still and eat your food.
And leave your sister alone.

We had friends over the other night and Eva was an absolute animal.
We were embarrassed.

She was rude, not listening, bouncing around, and being ridonkulously bossy with their toddler.

And it's not that we're inattentive parents...or yellers who wind up ignored because they yell all the time...or those annoying parents you see at the playground who kind of nasally drone at their children constantly to the point the kids tune them out because ohmygoshIcan'tstandlisteningtoyouforanotherminute.

We are involved.
We talk with our kids.
We give them time-outs when necessary.
We actively try to get them to behave.

SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME THAT AT SOME POINT, EVA'S EARS WILL UNCLOG and I won't have to NAIL HER ASS TO THE CHAIR to get her to sit still???

Tonight will be better.

Last night was ROUGH.

9:00...on my way to bed....tired...thinking it's going to be a long night because Eva's coughing..always a bad sign.  Then Evita stops by the bathroom hugging a full Tupperware container of orange-ish puke.  Clean her up, clean it up, feed her a bowl of Life cereal (hard to sleep on an empty belly)...brush teeth, off to bed.  

9:30...oh sweet blessed bed.  Alarm rings in six hours, exactly...but that's enough to get me through tomorrow.  Clean, fresh, 400-thread-count cotton sheets....bliss.

9:30-2am...Eva coughs.  And coughs.  And coughs.  Etienne and I don't sleep much...too hard with our sweet little one hacking and hacking and hacking.  Poor kid.

2:15 am...The inevitable happens.  Eva pukes.   All over her bed.   Etienne - bless my beautiful, wonderful husband - gets up with her.  She vomits into her hands and then pushes her hair behind her ears.  I see the bathroom light flick on and hear him calmly talking to her as he puts her in the shower...then I drop back into slumber.

2:30...the %&%*?%!!! neighbour's car alarm goes off.  For one solid minute, outside our window.  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.   There are not enough swear words in the English language to describe that f**ker so I'll use some French ones.   CALICE DE TABARNAK DE CRISS.  There we are.  That just about does it.

3:00...the %*?&#?@%!! cat decides to yak up a hairball AT THE FOOT OF OUR BED.  I repeat all those French swear words.  If I had some in Spanish or Russian, I'd toss those suckers in, too.   I wipe, disinfect, curse.

3:30...my %?%&$*!!! alarm rings.  And another glorious day begins.

And to make it all better...we kept poor Evita home from school today.  She and I lay down for a nap and she immediately started complaining about her ear.  We wound up sitting 4.5 hours at the hospital, surrounded by coughing, masked people (during a stage 5 almost-pandemic, according to the WHO) waiting for a prescription I could write myself, for an otitis media I could diagnose myself in about 30 seconds.  Poor Eva was so incredibly stoic, quiet, sweet...my hero...even while tipping her head left and right to alleviate the pressure and pain.  So proud of my girlie I could burst.  Four hours is a looooong time to wait to see a doctor...and Eva was absolutely marvellous.

It's been a long day, and my cognac is lovely.

Off to spend a couple of minutes parked beside my hero husband in front of the TV.

Trolls sleeping..........for now.

Tonight will be better.  

Parenting is the greatest job ever. 

And the most exhausting.

Good night.

To catch a thief

Adele and I went to the market yesterday.

I stopped at a nice little vegetable stand to buy some sweet potatoes.

We left...and had gone about 30 feet before I realized that Adele had done a little "shopping" of her own.

The vegetable-seller laughed very hard when we took the cabbage back to apologize.

Now, beat it

1.  The bathtub pooper struck again the other day in spectacular fashion.  And as usual, she chose to lay a log (well, three) when both girls were jammed in with six-thousand toys.  

Poor Eva has been very wary lately.    I'll put both in the bath and every 30 seconds, Eva will whine, "Addie looks like she's about to poo" or "Addie's STRAINING".  

I'm sure Eva's future therapist will trace any self-security issues directly back to the tub.

2.  Adele was shockingly constipated the other day.  Crying in pain.  Awful to watch.  And yeah, I admit, I threw her in the bath.  

But of course, Addie being Addie...NOTHING.

Perhaps I ought to have thrown Eva in, too.

3.  Was ridonkulously grumpy with Eva the other night.  I mean, mouldy green and living in a garbage can on Sesame Street grumpy.  Etienne was out and I was exhausted beyond exhausted.  Apologized to her and told her how tired I was, but I still felt awful.  

Felt even worse yesterday when I picked her up from school and she asked, "are you tired today, Mommy?"   Does Oscar the Grouch feel guilt?  I certainly do.  Sigh.

4.  Spent about a half-hour last night doing some very exciting math problems with Eva.  We did double digit numbers in columns (no carrying over, though) and you'd have thought she was picking winning lottery numbers.   What a NERD.  

I'm actually delighted because she clearly inherited the math gene from her dad, the Economics Major and not from me, the Literature Major.  I can barely count to ten.  On my fingers.  With a calculator.  While cringing because I dislike math so much.  More than that lump of trash Paris Hilton, even.

Anyway

Off to slam the lid on my garbage can.

GO AWAY.  Heh heh heh.

Thank you/ Merci

For some reason, I seem to recall smiling at an American Express ad involving Tina Fey.

She had been asked her biggest accomplishment and she said, "my daughter says please and thank you".

I thought it was rather cute.

And I do - to an extent - agree with her.

Polite kids are a worthy goal.

I love that at Eva's last parent-teacher meeting, the teacher told us that Eva might have trouble keeping her ass in her chair, but she is always polite.

And I loved it last night when Addie - at 21 months - said, "merci de l'eau, mama" when I gave her a sippy cup of water.

They may be a bit loud...a bit rambunctious...their noses may run constantly, and they may fart a lot. We're working on all that.

But dammit, they're polite!