Here's just a few happy snaps of Connor for those of you wondering what he's up to. He's always very close by during all the Kai shenanigans either on my hip in the Ergo Carrier or sitting on the floor watching the chaos (and taking notes). Connor can often be found chilling amongst a sea of toys. Being a second born child, he needs to learn how to play on his own, reach his own toys and amuse himself for periods of at least 10minutes at a time and even then a quick check-in often yields the addition of one more new toy to keep his interest. He has a funny expression on his face in this picture and bright red cheeks as he adds his top 2 teeth. Connor rotates through a variety of "toys" or more realistically, "child restraint devices" on a daily basis. This is one of his favorites, the exersaucer. He loves swirling around in it and follows Kai from all angles. He's always happy in the Jolly Jumper. He loves getting his jump on and we never get sick of this cute little face. He's one of a kind and totally his own person. We love watching him as he watches Kai and we also love seeing him explore and discover on his own.
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We've been uping the ante around here. I'm not only a crafty Mom, I can also bake (with recipe provided!!). Today we did crafts, cookies and a walk to the library. I am tired and ready to retire (9pm) but it kept Kai happy and busy i.e., No Dora required. Have you ever looked at your child and seen yourself?
For me, this realization is also a sobering acknowledgement that although he looks nothing like me, when he opens his mouth, he’s all me? That’s Kai! And here it is… Sorry Mom and Dad. Was it as painful for you as it is for me? Now don’t get me wrong, I do love it! Kai is a talking “genius” in my eyes, but it’s exhausting!! His incessant talking creates not one second of peace in this house unless Dora is on. Now I'm told, "no more than 3 hours of Dora a week" but I can’t help but think: It’s either Dora intoxicating his brain or me blowing mine! Dora = peace! Here’s an example of typical conversation during approximately 1 minute of my entire 840minutes (14 hours) with Kai each home day! Kai: “hey Momma…” Q Mom: “Yes Kai” Kai: “watch me”, “what you doing?”, “wanna play hockey?”, “can I have a cookie?”, “where’s baby?”, “what’s baby doing?”, “wanna do puzzles with me?”, “I have to go pee pee”, “I need a drink”, “where’s daddy?”, “why’s daddy at work?”, “ did Daddy bike today?”, “watch me”, “watch this”, “did you see that?”, “come look”, “I wanna watch a movie”, “ I have a question for you?”… Q Mom: “What’s your question?” Kai: "When I was a little baby I had a puppy named Jack. He ate a cookie and liked to play ball catch with me." Q Mom: “But that’s a story, not a question...” Kai: silence…staring at me, thinking… eyes slanted up to top left corner of his eye balls… “ooopppffffff, boink, poopy poops” while bopping self on head, wiggling eyes back and forth with tongue sticking out. Q Mom: sign… close eyes, deep breath, count and return to reality. This kid is exactly me with the non-stop gift of gab, and exactly Jeff with the silly actions, facial expressions and vocal intonation. He’s a wonderful collision of our two personalities…and I think to myself: this kid has a bright future ahead of him! I’ve been watching, listening and taking notes on how Jeff participates with Kai’s bedtime routine. Jeff takes the lead, but Kai always wins...
Step 1: Syringe vitamins into mouth then plead with Kai to brush his teeth in less than 30minutes. Step 2: Beg Kai to get his pajamas on; race him or physically manhandle him to get them on. Step 3: Lay down the law with stern Dad voice: “2 short books Kai.” Then come up short in negotiations and commit to reading 2 long books (i.e., greater than 10pages) and a third book requiring a… CD. Make mental note: this kid can barter better than his Mom on a Mexican beach. Step 4: Scrimp on the long reads by making up a story according to pictures and previous knowledge of story. Make colossal mistakes by skipping too many pages at once, fumbling with story plot, lesson and ending. Then spend time agreeing with Kai when he tells you how the story really goes. Step 5: Perform a “big boomer” by tossing Kai into his bed thereby riling him up again and then spend another 10minutes reading another book to calm him back down to a sleepy state of arousal. Choose a quick read such as one of Connor’s picture books. Step 6: Contend with Kai coming out of his room till 10pm for a myriad of reasons. Example: “I need to go poo poo”, “my tummy not feelin’ well, I need something to eat”, “I need fresh water”. Deal with them all in order of appearance since they’re all considered "necessities of life" and therefore can’t be ignored. Momentarily feel proud to deal with growing boy and then start coping with the creative excuses: “I need my socks on”, “I can’t find my blankie”, “I need to give baby a hug”, “I juuuuuussssst wanna watch a moooooovie”. Step 7: After placing Kai to bed for the 10th time. Surrender to the reality that it’s now your bedtime and you never had a minute to relax and catch up on your sports highlights. Make a mental note to join Kai in bed at 7:30pm tomorrow night. There are several "pearls of wisdom" being passed down from father to son in this House of Q. I just had to share a few. Now envision these lessons being taught typically in the "heat of the moment" i.e., during a hockey game, shower, or toilet session. Disclaimer: You may or may not be impressed especially if you are related to the Q Dad (i.e., Gramma Lizzy)
1. “If you want to play sports, you gotta be tough Kai”, then “shake it off, that’s it Kaisey”. 2. “Aim for the back of the bowl” 3. “Only pee in your own shower” 4. “Make sure you build a nest on the toilet seat after stripping down any existing nest structures” 5. “No punching the wiener” 6. “No squishing Chubs” (Chubs a.k.a Connor) There is no end to the lessons to be learned, taught and reinforced in this Q house. Only one question remains: Who's learning the most? Kai or me? It's a tie because there’s nothing quite like learning from your husband some of the deep rooted boy lessons that you never learned being from an all female house. One thing’s for sure: there are some things I wish I never knew! Yesterday ended with a bang! Jeff was out and I was on my own. It was as if my day blended right into my night, all one big and disturbing blur. Kai decided to take advantage. He didn’t touch a speck of food for dinner, and instead demanded that I play hockey as the “hitter” and when I said I’d be there in 5, he completed his 3rd “accident” of the day.
It was just after Jeff left the house, and with no shame, he headed downstairs and pooped in his big boy undies and then yelled that something was smelly in the basement!! Finally, when I thought my head would explode with furry, I put him to bed. He screamed and cried but stayed willingly in his bed until he passed out 10minutes later. So you can imagine how successful I felt...that is until I entered his room to check on him at 9:30pm to find him naked with his pull up and pajamas in a heap of on the floor beside his bed. It was as if to say : “Take that Mom, I won!” So there was no 4th “accident” but Jeff and I had to wrestle him to don his pull-up because we weren’t interested in a middle-of-the-night 4th accident to clean up. We knew he’d get cold but he was fighting us... so we weren’t surprised when he came into our room at 12:30am looking for his pants. Jeff dealt with it as I was on strike! For all of you wondering... Where’s Connor during all this time? He’s as lovely as usual but he loves to scream as his main mode of communication. For all of you who know me, you’ll guess that my solution is to teach him some sign language… so I’m into repetitive signing trials. Example: Me: “More? more? Connor, more?” with the sign to accompany. Then, Jeff and Kai start following my lead. Mid-dinner, all 3 of us are doing the “more” sign with exaggerated intonation and large arm and hand movements. Hilarious right? Connor just stares, smiles and then screams louder. I start the hand over hand “more” signing to learn the action. The poor kid just screams louder and louder but if we don’t meet eye to eye I’m gonna be screaming too!! I’ve gotta win something around here! Ahhh thank goodness It’s Friday! I am ready for some two parent parenting! Check out the new page I started: “Q Mom loves…”
It’s just for fun and I hope you’ll read, enjoy and find some ideas, inspiration or good reads. More to come but please add and share any thoughts, ideas or good reads with me! On Sunday, I told Jeff, “I wanna to get rid of the microwave”...that was... before the week started. Before the chaos of my demanding Q boys that causes my tea to cool before I've even had one sip. The last 3 days have forced the realization that the microwave is currently a glorious invention. It heats up my tea a hundred times a day, it warms my mediocre lunches, taunts me when I haven't thought ahead about dinner and warms my bucky bag to soothe my aching muscles at bedtime.
So I know its toxic, circulating harmful fumes and radiation and I do love the idea of trashing it - but it's sanity saving in the House of Q. Some days it feels as if it's the only one of my reliable friends in my cozy 1960s kitchen. Sure there's the oven; an apartment sized cube that sits 24 inches wide, accommodating 1 pizza pan at a time. Then there's the portable dishwasher- affectionately not named! Loaded to the gills 1-2 times a day; it requires manoeuvring to hook up and run. Now I can’t leave out the single sized sink and on-the-fritz kettle- these two devices are necessary evils serving to complicate most moments during my day. Yep! I wish I had a million dollars! I would renovate the life out of this awesome 1960s get up and lay down some sweet new bamboo flooring, stainless steel appliances and a countertop of the most state of the art material I can find. I'd also trade in my iced-up aluminum slider kitchen window for one that I can see out of. I get frost bite standing too close to it i.e., doing the dishes. So you might’ve guessed the kitchen is on the house renovation list but a new faucet doesn’t help our New Zealand budget and so today I’m embracing it and … patting the microwave on the side, whispering sweetly; “Thank you friend for the warm drink!” and I think to myself: You’ll be around for another day. Walks will never be the same. What used to be considered a light work out for me is now a “work in”. Me, inside my head, trying to keep my cool.
I used to be a marathon runner, then after having Kai I started to work the power walk and since having Connor both seem like distant memories. I still make it outside daily but I rarely get my sweat on. So, I am trying to embrace this new outdoor “adventure”,its occasionally painful and always dependant on my Q boys’ moods. We walked to the library on Saturday and Kai walked the whole way. It usually takes me 20 minutes but on Saturday it took me 60 minutes with Kai bringing up the rear. He’d run for 20 paces and then stop for what felt like 20 minutes and then repeat. Now, I was smart enough to leave the hockey stick at home but he still found diversions including "pucks" as we walked; hard chunks of ice that he insisted on carrying with his paper thin gloved hands. Kai’s hands were soaking wet, frozen cold but that didn't dampen his sporting spirit. Everywhere he looked he saw hockey; "Look Momma, a puck on the back of that car" (think: spare wheel on a Honda CRV), then branches as hockey sticks and of course the ice "pucks" we were collecting every 10 steps. So for me, there was no "workin' it", no "getting my sweat on". I think those days are gone, for now. Yep, this momma is destined to tap into the slow muscle burn by way of the "lunge walk", or squat repeats as I wait for Kai to finish picking up some other hockey item discovered out in nature. The voice inside my head reminded me: “Silly Momma, these walks are not for you, these are Q boy adventures that you might as well embrace!” So there are a few things I like to complain about with regards to my stellar husband. He's wonderful in every way except for remembering details and specifics. No problem right? Sure, except that our life is ALL about details and specifics at the present! The House of Q exists because of the details and specifics.
So you can imagine how pleased I was when I found this in a back corner of my kitchen cupboard today. Do you know what it is? Yep, that's one mouldy orange! It's so mouldy, it's powdery and stiff. It actually smells not bad compared to some of the other smells occupying my life at present (see previous post Toilet Questioning). But, this was great! This is just what I wanted to find in my cupboard this fine Friday morning. So, I did what any self-respecting Q Mom does, I called Jeff at work (the moment got the best of me). He claimed he "forgot", "didn't know where that lunch bag was", then he got confused: "Wait, what orange?" and "what lunch bag?" Then, he started back pedaling and he wanted to end call asap asking me: "Is this what you called me at work for?" My response: "Hell ya it is...!". In my mind, this was just one more forgotten detail that I had to clean up today. Living in the House of Q requires some nit-picking occassionally, and it was a particularly slow day for me. Jeff's response: "Oh, okay, gotta go then". And that was it, end of conversation and I didn't feel one ounce of bad that I'd taken away from his productive work time, because instead of cueing up the music videos I watch all day long (according to him), now I had to deal with this crusty, powdery orange. I wondered if there was some therapeutic or medicinal use for it but nah...I told myself: "Just face it, this is just another mouldy, stinky, Q boy mishap". Ahhh, life is glamorous when surrounded by Q boys! |