Like Mother, Like Daughter

What can I say? We're both artists, free spirits who choose to express ourselves boldly, fully committed to our oeuvre.

Plus, blue paint tastes awesome.

Toothy Trauma

My poor girl had a bit of a dramatic return from our vacation last weekend.  Lately she loves to climb into, onto and under things, pulls herself up with ease and cruises around the couches and cupboards.  She's a busy lady.  Don't forget this is the kid who wouldn't stop jumping and jiving throughout her sojourn in my belly.  So on Saturday morning, Elly was performing her usual exercises, moving in and out of her car seat which was on the floor at my feet.  But of course I hadn't stabilised it by pushing the handle down onto the floor, thus making it quite tippy.  Can you see where this is leading yet?  You guessed it.  The whole thing tipped forward and down went Elliot Anne, face first onto our very hard kitchen tiles.  She cried, naturally, but was soon comforted, and since I saw no signs of blood, I assumed it was nothing.

Fast forward two hours later, as I get Elly up from her nap and place her on the change table.  She smiles up and me and OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO HER TOOTH???!!!

She broke it. I found its smashed remains on the floor.  I cried my eyes out, called Mark at work, called my dentist and then calmed down.  Then I cried some more.  Elly of course, was fine - a chipped tooth really isn't that big of a deal - but the shock of seeing it all rough and jagged and not at all the way it was before and oh! the pain she must have felt when she hit her mouth and I am a terrible mother how could I let this happen to my sweet, sweet girl....you get the picture.  I was upset.  

Thankfully a trip to the dentist that afternoon calmed me down, as she reassured me no nerves were poking out and was able to file down the sharpest parts so Elly wouldn't cut her tongue or her forever-jammed-into-her-mouth-fingers.  The dentist told me what to watch for over the next few days (the tooth turning black - a good sign, although it means its dead;  the tooth turning pink - a bad sign, it means the tooth is eating itself; a bump or bubble on the gumline above the tooth - a bad sign as it means infection or nothing at all, which is obviously a good sign) and so far all has been well.  

And the evil car seat is not allowed to play with Elly anymore.

My little Pirate Princess, quite content with her new look

 

And a close up of the snaggle-tooth.  

 

Fleeing February

We took a family holiday at the beginning of the month to escape the February Blahs.  It can get pretty cold and grey in Toronto at this time of year and when my dad invited us to join him and my step mother  and their daughter - my sister - Laetitia in Florida, we RSVPed with a resounding "yes please!"

SIDE NOTE.  I don't think I've written about my new little sister on the blog before.  She was born about four months before Elly, in November of 2009.  I'm still getting used to the idea of having a sibling who is thirty-one years younger than me, of not being my father's only daughter, of the boys being four years older than their Aunt, but I suppose this is the new modern family, right?  Anyway, she's awfully cute - takes after me, clearly - so that kind of eases the strangeness of the situation.  END OF SIDE NOTE.

We went down to Captiva Island on the South-West coast of Florida, to the South Seas Island Resort.  What a great family resort!  Clearly run by people who have young children.  I felt like they'd thought of everything.  Our condo had not only been equipped with all the necessary child safety devices needed to keep an 11 month old safe, but also had a bath seat for Elly, a crib with pink sheets (they could have just gone with unisex, but I liked the fact that they made the effort to make them gender-specific, you know?), a change table and a high chair.  The boys got their own room with twin beds and a TV (you cannot imagine their joy) and my dad arranged for tshirts and hats with the hotel logo to be laid out for them, as well as some candy (gah! I hid most of it and ate all the Jelly Bellies, but did save them the gummy shish-kabobs), pirate journals and colouring books.

Since we arrived quite late on a foggy night, Mark and I couldn't see anything from our room.  We were delighted when we woke up the next morning and opened our shutters to take in our view:

 

We got ourselves organised and then went for a walk to get our bearings.  Two minutes from our condo and it was wildlife-a-palooza!

 

We saw dolphins in the water

pelicans giving us the stink-eye on the rocks by the path,

 

lizards bathing in the sunshine on the curb,

 

  

and the heron from our cottage on holiday down here! We also saw Manatees in the marina, but I didn't get a photo, and Osprey flying past our window with fish or snakes in their talons.  It was all pretty spectacular stuff.

We found the pool, where we spent most afternoons if the weather was warm enough - the boys loved swimming and Elly really got into it too.  The pool was what is known as zero-entry, meaning that it gradually sloped into the water from the deck, getting slightly deeper with each step.  So El could quite happily sit in the shallowest part and splash about whilst the boys put on floaties and, well floatied about in the deeper end.

  Of course, I didn't get any photos of the kids swimming.  But I did get one of the boys chillaxing:

 

Its hard being four.

 

 And here's the pool, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.

 We spent a lot of time on exploratory walks, soaking up the sun when it was sunny, admiring the views and the sunbleached colours around us,

 or else heading the beach to look for shells, chase - and be chased - by the waves and happily digging away in the sand. 

 

Happy William making sandcastles.  I think playing on the beach was by far their favorite part of the holiday.

and probably mine too!

 

Laetitia and her niece and nephews got along really well - She would follow Elly everywhere saying "bebe, bebe" with a little French accent, as though she herself wasn't still just a wee thing.  I wonder if they'll be friends when they grow up?

 Elly did a pretty good job of not eating the entire beach.  She was quite bemused by all the gritty stuff around her, and definitely did taste it a couple of times, but it wasn't quite as bad as I'd feared when I first plopped her down.

The boys loved winding "May-tee-see-ah" up (we're still working on the pronunciation of Ls).  I think she was pretty happy to have some playmates for the week.

 And this is one of my favorite photos from the holiday.  It was a gorgeous day at the beach and the boys just played and played and played.  All the happiness of being a kid at the beach...its contagious.

We had plenty of ups (boys being absolutely wonderful and rather blase during their first flight on an airplane) and downs on the holiday (car ride from hell on the way back to the airport, with both boys throwing up in the rental car and Elly screaming her head off), but all in all it was a really nice family vacation, and perhaps one we'll be able to do again next year. 

A Tale Of Woe

Do you have kids?  Do you remember your life before them?  Do you ever think back to those wilder, crazier times, where everything was about you and only you?  Do you miss any of it?

I don't remember too much about my early twenties - pregnancy and childbirth apparently killed off a good number of my brain cells - but I do remember going to brunch on Sundays without a care in the world, meeting friends for coffee and then deciding to take in a movie and drinks, going for long runs along the lake, road trips with my music playing.  It was a wonderful time and in my romanticized memory of it all, I recall a feeling of lightness and energy. 

But lately I have these strong waves of longing for this one particular thing I used to do all the time. 

I miss sleeping. 

Sure, I go to bed at night and close my eyes.  But its not sleeping by any means. Its just resting until the time when someone, and by someone I mean our youngest child, starts crying for me.  Note that its not an if, but a when, because her nightly siren song is something inevitable these days.  And she plays two or three gigs a night in that crib of hers.  

I long, yearn even, for the days when I used to sleep uninterrupted until 9am.  Heck, some weekends when Mark and I were DINKS (that's Dual Income No Kids, dontcha know.  Although we might just have been dinks too.  Kids make you better people, perhaps, lack of sleep and all) we slept in until lunchtime.  I used to sleep so hard I would drool all over my pillow.  Man, I miss waking up after a drooly sleep, hair plastered to my cheek, sheet lines etched into my face.  Those were some good times, my friends.  Good times. 

And now?  Now I'm crawling into bed, wonderful, delicious bed, only to be rudely awaken at midnight or two in the morning, or four, or five-thirty by a very loud and very demanding wail that goes "Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah!  Ah! Ah!  Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah!  Mam-mam-mam-mam!  Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah! AAAAAAAAAAH!!"  I usually jerk out of bed, and into El's room where she greets me,  two little hands white-knuckling the top of the crib, with more tears and yells until I pick her up.  Instant silence.  But don't be fooled, the silence does not mean its safe to return the package to its rightful place.  We've tried that before and its a big no no apparently for Her Ladyship.  If we thought she was loud before, that move only served to show us the full capacity of her lungs. 

So instead I end up sitting in her rocking chair, chilled to the bone, whilst my girl squishes herself tightly into me and inevitably starts pawing and pinching and patting and pulling away at my neck and arms.  To be honest, I don't love this part of the night.  What I love is drooly sleep.  Mine and hers.  What I'm getting is hyper-sensitive chaffed skin from pokey little fingers that won't stop jabbing at me.  And ice blocks for feet.  And a deep resentment for all the people out there sleeping soundly in their warm beds. 

But more often then not, the prodding and pinching slow down, finally coming to a stop, little hands rest lightly on my chest and I hear that wondrous sound of slow, steady breathing.  This is my cue to carefully raise myself up from the chair and ever so gently lay the sleeping child down into bed.  Holding of my breath to see if it takes and...yes!  I can sneak away to my own room, making sure to avoid all the creaky floorboards on the way.

I ease myself into bed, stick my ice blocks against Mark's shins and try to find some sleep myself.  Ah, here it is.  I relax into it and

"Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah!  Ah! Ah!  Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah!  Mam-mam-mam-mam-!  Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah! AAAAAAAAAAH!!"

Sigh.  I miss sleep.