Every now and then a haiku comes in handy

NaBloPoMo means
Time to bring out the haikus!
It's a tradition.

Busy all day long.
Swim class, kid's birthday party,
Have friends for dinner.

About that last one...
We've invited friends to dine.
We're not eating them.

Sometimes I explain
Things that don't need explaining
Just to be silly.

That's all for now folks
I'll be back here tomorrow
With a real post...swear!

Snacks

During the 45 minutes or so that Hana was happily skating on the ice at Crosby Memorial Arena the other day, I had Jamie to keep me company. I'd thought of signing Jamie up for skating this year, but at 3 years old he's still a little young, I think. Next year...

Usually after we get Hana onto the ice at the back of the arena, then we go hang out in the front lobby for a bit. I bring a snack for him to enjoy while we wait—one of those mini juice boxes and some goldfish crackers or saltines. This week after Hana went skating off I realized that I'd forgotten the snack for Jamie in the car. When I told him we had to go get it, he shook his head.

"No car. No outside."

"You don't want to have a snack?"

"No, I want orange crackers."

"You mean goldfish crackers?"

"No, orange crackers."

Okay, I always thought goldfish crackers were orange, but nevermind.

All of a sudden Jamie started running alongside the rink toward the main lobby.

"I show you! I show you!"

I hurried after him, wondering what he was up to. Then I remembered that Ed mentioned a few weeks ago, when he brought the kids to skating, he forgot to pack a snack so he got Jamie something from the vending machine.

I called after Jamie, "I'm not going to buy anything, if that's what you're thinking."

"No mommy, I show you orange!"

He kept running ahead, then led me into the lobby, and made a bee-line for the vending machine. Quelle surprise! He pointed madly at a bag of nachos. "These ones!"

"Yeah, I see Jamie, except we have a snack in the car so I'm not buying them."

And then the meltdown occurred. It was short-lived, at least. I'm thankful for that. After a minute or so he let me pick him up and take him to the car to get the crackers I'd brought.

Oh, but Jamie wasn't about to let me win all the snack related arguments of the day. A little bit later, as he was happily munching a cracker while watching Hana skate, a piece of cracker fell onto the well-trodden lobby floor. I reached to pick it up, but he beat me to it.

"Don't eat it Jamie. It's got germs on it now."

He grinned at me then popped it into his mouth.

"I LIKE GERMS!"

By the book

Hana can be a bit of a perfectionist. She places a lot of importance in following rules to the letter, and gets very anxious if she thinks that she's gotten anything at all wrong. This perfectionism even spills over to things that are supposed to be just for fun. On Remembrance Day, the kids in her kindergarten class were told to wear red to school. In Hana's mind, that meant that she had to wear red and only red, from top to bottom. Pants that are mostly red with a few green pinstripes would not do.

"The teachers said we have to wear red!"

In Hana's mind wearing red and only red wasn't optional—it was absolutely necessary. She couldn't disappoint her teachers!

It's not just school teachers, either, that she needs to please. Last week at the end of Hana's skating lesson we were reminded that this week would be Pajama Week at the skating club. Kids were asked to come to their skating lesson dressed in pajamas. Fun!

Except my first thought was, "Arggh...how are we going to do this?"

Hana's still relatively new to skating, so she falls a fair bit. Since her body is making frequent contact with the cold, hard ice we like to have her dressed up in her nice cushioned winter coat and waterproof snowpants. If we put jammies on underneath, I knew Hana would be upset that no one could see them. If we put jammies on over top...well, that was pretty much impossible. I didn't figure her pajamas would fit overtop of her coat and snowpants. Sure, another option was to just "forget" about Pajama Week. But I know my daughter...she considers such theme days to be mandatory. It doesn't matter how many other kids around her are in their regular clothes, she'll still think she's breaking some all-important rule if she doesn't come dressed up in sleepwear.

I just didn't know what we could do.

And then, typically, we forgot about the whole Pajama Week theme until Tuesday night, just as we were getting the kids ready for bed. Then Ed remembered, "we're supposed to bring pajamas for Hana to skating tomorrow, aren't we?"

After a wee bit of mumbling under my breath and scurrying about, a thought occurred to me. We could put her nice big fluffy housecoat on over her jacket. That would work.

I ran the idea by Hana and she seemed to like it. Woohoo! That wasn't so bad after all.

We got to skating a bit late, so most of the kids were already on the ice as I got Hana changed. The housecoat fit over her jacket just fine. Hana seemed pleased as she stepped onto the ice and skated towards the other kids—some dressed in pajamas, some not. But actually, I was surprised just how many kids there were dressed in pajamas. I spotted a few others in housecoats, too, so that was a relief.

Hana spent the next 45 minutes smiling and having fun. Near the end of her lesson, though, she skated over to me, looking a bit concerned. I could see her lips moving, but it was hard to hear what she was saying through the Plexiglas walls surrounding the rink. Something about pictures and only pajamas, and then something about her housecoat. I glanced further down the ice and saw one of the instructors with a camera taking photos. A line-up of kids, all in pajamas waited to take a turn getting their photos taken.

And then I realized, ahhh...she thinks she's not allowed to get her photo taken because she's in a housecoat, not pajamas. I shouted to her, "it's okay...you can get your photo taken."

I could see her mouth forming words, "No mommy! No! She said pajamas only."

I knew there was no way the teachers would exclude her from photos because she was in a housecoat. "Yes, Hana!" I shouted and nodded, then gave a thumbs up, then pointed towards the woman with the camera.

"Hana shook her head, no."

I cursed the impenetrable walls of Plexiglas that were making it so damned hard to talk to the silly girl in front of me.

"It's okay, Hana. Get your photo taken!" Thumbs up, grin, point point, nod nod.

Hana started to well up. Oh man...

Luckily, the instructor with the camera finally noticed us. She called Hana over. It took some coaxing because Hana was absolutely convinced that she was not allowed to go near the woman since she was only wearing a housecoat, not pajamas. I saw the instructor hunch down to talk to Hana face to face. She patted Hana's shoulders and smiled. Then Hana skated over to the end of the line-up of kids. A minute later it was her turn to get her photo taken.

At the end of class, the instructor said to me, "I'm sorry...she heard me say pajamas and I guess she thought she wasn't supposed to get her photo taken."

I assured her it was okay. Hana's just very rule-oriented, I explained.

So it ended fine, but it made me realize that I really do need to work on getting Hana to loosen up about these things. I'm just not entirely sure how to start....

Family words

A while back Andrea at a peek inside the fishbowl wrote a post about the words they use within their family that might not make sense to anyone else. I thought it would be fun to list off the family words we use in our household and what they mean. Here they are:

• Silly Monkeys—Hana's name for the Animaniacs, a show she found wonderfully silly when I first introduced her to it.
• Hana Character—What Hana coined the Nintendo Wii. When we first got it, she was fascinated with the little Mii characters that we created for all of our family and friends, and of course the one we made for her. Now whenever the kids want to play Wii games, they ask to play Hana Character.
  
• Hogans—Jamie's name for the Backyardigans.
• McQueequeeCar—Jamie's name for Lightning McQueen, from the movie Cars.
• Drink a lid—When Hana was little and she wanted to drink the last bit of milk in her sippy cup without the lid on the cup she would say she wanted to "drink a lid." Somehow the phrase stuck, so the kids still ask to drink a lid whenever they drink from cups with a lid on them.
  
• Special cereal—Quaker oatmeal. When we first gave it to Hana, we figured it was a treat breakfast, so we called it special cereal. Then she ended up eating it almost every day for the next year because she LOVED the stuff...so it wasn't such a special occasion kind of cereal after all.
  
• Mommy cereal—My fave cereal...a mixture of Just Right and Oatmeal Raisin Crisp. After Hana got tired of special cereal, she moved on to eating mommy cereal.
  
• Auntie Mel's noodles—Bucatini #6 noodles, introduced to the kids by my friend Meline during our week at the cottage this summer.
• Slurpy noodles—Beefaroni, which the kids get to eat every once in a blue moon.
  
• I got 'ecret!—What Jamie says when he has a secret to tell (generally what happens next is that he leans forward, blows in your ear, then runs off giggling madly).
  
• 'Amily!—Family! A few months ago, Jamie went through a phase where he would announce all our names, "Mommy, Daddy, Hana, Jamie, 'Amily!" For a while we wondered who the heck this Emily person he was talking about was...then we realized he was just dropping the "F" at the start of family. Ahhhh...silly us.
  

Sleep deprivation and miscommunication

When the kids were smaller Ed and I were perpetually sleep deprived, like most parents of young children. We had good reason—the kids had us up several times per night, sometimes for long stretches of time. Week after week of interrupted sleep takes its toll on you.

That's mostly over with. The kids go to bed a bit later than they used to, but once they are asleep they tend to stay asleep. Oh, every now and then they wake up, but it's not very often and it's rarely for very long. By all rights, Ed and I should be getting quite a bit of sleep these days.

Except we're not.

We're not getting nearly enough sleep these days and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

The problem is that it's only after we finally have both kids down for the night that we have a chance to relax a bit. Nighttime is our time to watch an episode of CSI or Top Chef we have recorded, or work on our blogs, or read a bit. It feels so nice to relax that neither of us are in any hurry to head upstairs to bed. And even when I do decide it's time for bed, I'll find myself getting sidetracked along the way. I'll realize that I still have to pack the dish washer and get it running. Or I remember there's a load of laundry I need to fold. There's always just one more thing to do.

Sometimes the silliest things get in the way of a good night's sleep.

A few nights ago Ed announced he was going upstairs at 11:30, a bit earlier than usual. "I have some ironing I have to do before tomorrow," he told me.

I headed up stairs about 15 minutes later and Ed was ironing some shirts in our room. I figured if he was busy ironing, there wasn't much point in going to bed, so I started to putter a bit. I put away some laundry I'd done earlier in the evening. When I was done that, I realized Ed had just started another shirt, so I nipped downstairs to do a couple more things. When I came back up he was ironing some pants, so I continued to putter. Finally at about 12:30 I decided to brush my teeth and head to bed, even if Ed was still ironing stuff.

A few minutes later Ed finally came to bed.

I decided to subtly suggest that maybe he should have started ironing a bit earlier in the evening. "So...had you forgotten you wanted to do some ironing this evening until you were just about to head upstairs?"

"No."

"It's just that it took longer than you thought it would?"

"Not really."

"So you'd actually planned to stay up till 12:30 ironing?!?"

"Well no, it's just that you were still busy doing stuff, so I figured I might as well keep ironing."

"But I was only keeping myself busy doing stuff because you were still busy ironing!"

"I was just killing time till you were ready to go to bed."

"Seriously?"

"I only really planned to iron one shirt."

"Gah...I would've gone to bed ages ago..."

"Honey, we just don't communicate anymore."

Oh look! A bandwagon!

Just when I'm hitting the dog days of NaBloPoMo an Internet meme comes along to save me. Thank you, Internet! More specifically, thank you to Dee and Aimee for making me aware of this particular meme, and to Beth for coming up with this wonderful idea in the first place.

Here's a sample of my handwriting (if you click on the sample you'll see a larger, easier-to-read version).

Orange

Jamie is no longer all about mismatched socks. Nowadays, he's almost entirely devoted to wearing socks that are his favourite colour.

That's a whole lot of orange.

Book club picks

My book club has been going for over 10 years now, so we've covered quite a few books. Some books were fun to read but not all that interesting to discuss (like The Secret Life of Bees). Some were tough to read, but actually fairly interesting to talk about (hello, Mrs. Dalloway!). Some we hated reading and discussing (The Wasp Factory and On the Road). Other elicited such strong reactions of love and hate that we had a hard time discussing the book (like A Heart-breaking Work of Staggering Genius).

The following is a list of books that we've read in our book club that I really liked reading and that were also interesting to discuss. I would recommend any of these to people in other book clubs. There's a high level of Canadian Content in here. I can't help it—I love my CanLit.

• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• The Birth House by Ami McKay
• Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam
• Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (note: goes by the title Someone Knows My Name in the States)
• The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
• Consumption by Kevin Patterson
• Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
• Deafening by Francis Itani
• Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham
• In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
• Larry's Party by Carol Shields
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
  
• The Outlander by Gil Adamson
• The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
• Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
• The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy
• Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

So...what books do you recommend?