Looking Even More Like Christmas

Way back in October, I decided to make Christmas stockings for the family (or at least the kids). Daniel's fell off my knitting needles in less than a week and I promptly started in on Claire's. Then I got sick a bunch of times and we had company for most of November and the whole project sort of ground to a halt. This past week, I got back at it and Claire's stocking is finally done:



It is unblocked and the ends aren't sewn in yet. I also haven't gotten eyes put on the snowmen. In retrospect, I should have knit beads in for their eyes and not had to worry about duplicate stitching them on afterward. Oh well.

I decided that the girl stockings would all be mainly red and the boy stockings would be mainly green. So far, so good. Here are a couple more shots for the interested:





I started at Jillian's the other night and that was going along swimmingly till I got hit with a case of stomach flu. Yuck. I'll get back at it again today but I had almost convinced myself I could get hers and the two for hubby and I done before Christmas Eve. I don't think that is going to happen anymore. As long as the kids' are done, I'm happy.

In other news, Sir Daniel was 8 months old last week. I can't believe how big he is already. Where is the pause button? I always take a photo for every month and I'm especially pleased with this one. He was so happy and cooperative through our little photo shoot. Such a great little dude (I can't believe he's going to have to be three at some point).



I had a lot of fun making the snowflakes. I wanted them to be nice six-pointed snowflakes and I found a lovely online tutorial here.

Conversations About the Holidays

#1:

Claire has been sneaky lately. She will whisper things she want said or done to Jillian and gets Jillian to say or do them. Usually these are things she thinks will get her in trouble with us. I am onto her but this has not stopped her yet.

Additionally, like many parents, we have been trotting out the "Santa is watching!" line when anyone steps out of line. It's not nice, I know it. But for one month out of the year, I can get some good behaviour with one simple sentence. I'm no angel, it's ok.

The other day, Claire and Jillian were in the kitchen and I heard Claire starting to whisper to Jillian. All of a sudden, she popped up:

Claire: Mommy? Daddy? Can Santa hear me when I whisper too?
Me: Oh yes indeed he can!

#2:

Yesterday, Jillian came home with a stack of worksheets that she has done at school over the past little while. Included was a colouring sheet of a menorah that Jillian had coloured in a bunch of really crazy, vibrant shades. The quality of the colouring was great (Jillian, till recently, has been a scribbler) and I decided she deserved a pat on the back.

Me: Hey Jillian! This is really great colouring! Did you do it?
Jillian: Yes! I did!
Me: What is it, a menorah?
Jillian: Yeah...I thought it was a rainbow, but really, it's a menorah.

I nearly choked on my coffee. If I turned the page upside down, it really did sort of resemble a rainbow. That explains the colours, I guess. In fact, on further inspection, she had coloured one of the spaces between the arms of the menorah. I think she DID have it upside down and her lack of knowledge together with all those curved lines made it hard to tell positive space from negative space and away she went - colouring the rainbow.

#3:

Daniel can't talk but the girls got airtime so he should get some too. He is honestly the calmest, most gentle (recent eye-gouging aside), good little fella in the universe. He got his first two teeth a couple of weeks ago. Now, his tongue is always out (I think he likes the feel of his teeth on his tongue) and everything goes into his mouth. He's 8 months old today and I've found that around this age, every object in the universe is worth investigating, first with hands, then with mouth. It's cool.

The other day, I was sitting with him on my lap, drinking a Starbucks coffee. He watched, very closely, as I would raise the cup, sip and lower the cup. Once in a while his little hand would shoot out and scritch scratch at the side of the cup. When it was gone, I let him have the cup for a bit. He LOVED the lid. The moment was cute so I got him spiffed up in Christmas sleepers and took his photo:

It's All Fun and Games Till Someone Loses an Eye

"It's all fun and games till someone loses an eye!" is a phrase I'm sure I heard a fair bit as a child. If not that exact phrase, some variation of it. My mother was, rightly so, very conscious of our eyeballs when we were children and I can remember that whenever I had a sharp pencil, pair of scissors or a needle in my hand, I got a gentle reminder to be careful with those things around my eyes. The thought of losing an eye or going blind scares the living daylights out of me and I try not to even think about what that would be like for too long else the walls feel like they are closing in on me. So, needless to say, I'm pretty annoying with the kids about their eyes. I have been known to yell at them if they are walking at any speed with a pencil, have taught them the 'proper way' to hold scissors and I will snatch any pointy objects out of their little hands before they can get into trouble with them. Eyes are precious. We take care of our eyes. Period.

So I feel a little sheepish that I'm the one with the eye injury. Sigh.

Daniel has been going through a bit of a separation anxiety thing at night. The second I turn my back on him after he goes to bed, he starts wailing. I have figured out how to convince him to go to sleep at night but if he wakes up, he will sometimes lose his mind till I appear by the side of his crib. Some nights I just have to put his 'sucky' in his mouth and he'll go back to sleep. Some nights if I ignore him for 2 or 3 minutes he'll get over it and go to sleep. Some nights I have to take him out of his bed and love on him and cuddle him before he'll even consider going back to bed.

Wednesday night at half past dark (I think it was about 4 AM but I'm not sure) he woke up in full squeal mode. DH was away on business and my Tuesday had been a long, difficult one with the girls and I was exhausted. I didn't feel like arguing with a clingy 7-month-old so I plunked him in my bed with me. I calmed him down then rolled over so my back was to him, and eventually drifted off to sleep with him scritch-scratching at my back and saying "dadadadada" and blowing raspberries. Eventually, he fell asleep too.

At about 7:30, he work up again and started making semi-unhappy noises. I woke up too and chatted at him with my back turned but he didn't quiet down. It was still pretty dark but I could see a bit and I figured he just wanted to stare lovingly at me for a bit (we love each other...it's all good). So I rolled over. About three quarters of the way over I felt a POKE and then a SCRAPE right in my left eye. OW OW OW OUCHIE OW OW SONOFA...!!!! Daniel's natural reaction to feeling anything make contact with his open hand is to scratch it. He scratches the fabric on his carseat, he scratches my pants when he sits on my lap, he scratches the couch when he's on it, and apparently he will scratch an eyeball if you are stupid enough to put one in his way.

At that point I rolled back over and muttered to myself for a while and waited for the pain to ease. Usually, a little poke near an eye will hurt for a few seconds and then be ok. Well...this wasn't going to be ok. I couldn't see right out of that eye, it felt like there was a boulder in there, it was watering constantly (and when my eye started watering, my nose decided to join in the fun) and the pain just wasn't going away.

I thought I'd get up and 'walk it off'. I went downstairs and tried to get breakfast for myself and the girls but I was having trouble even doing that. At that point I started to freak out. I called Dad and asked if he'd ever had a scratch on his eye and he told me that he got a sliver of metal in there once. I asked him more questions and he recommended I look on the internet to see if it were scratched and what to do about it. But the light from the monitor hurt and I couldn't read with all the blur and the tears and the pain. So I called my brother to look it up. By then I was really freaking out and I may have lost it a little on the phone with him. He tried to downplay the whole incident to make me feel better but I was too far gone. I hung up with him and called my friend Anne. I started out with "Hello Anne, sorry for the early call, it's Renée, Daniel scratched my eye" and she said "Do you need to go to the hospital?!" and then I sort of dissolved in a mess of sobbing and sniffing and ouching and...well...it was ugly. "I'm putting on my clothes and I'll be there as soon as I can" she said. I love Anne. Thank heaven for Anne.

By the time she got here I was a fair bit calmer. I decided I needed to see a medical professional and it would all be fine. We put the kids in the car and she drove us off to see the doctor. The doc took one look in my eye, did one of those sharp intake of breath sounds that mean "Holy Cow that hurts!" and sent me to an optometrist. By this time it was aching and I was getting a headache and Anne was trying to keep control of the girls (who were being a little wild) and the whole ordeal was taking its toll on me (Anne too I think). Eventually I got to go for "pretesting" where I had to stare (even though that made the watering worse) at an image of a serene little barn at the end of a road and stay very still while pretending that my baby hadn't just tried to pluck my eyeball out. Then she sat me in front of another machine, sent straight from the Spanish Inquisition, that blew a puff of air into each of my eyes while I tried not to kick the optometrist's assistant in the shin.

Then I got to see Mr. Optometrist. He promptly put some strange dye in my eye and then once I started wincing said "oh yeah...it might sting" (thanks for the warning). Then he looked in there and told me I had a scratched cornea. The bad news is that corneas have more nerve endings per unit of area than almost any other part of your body so if it gets hurt, it HURTS. The good news is that it is the fastest healing part of the human body and in a day or two I should be back to normal. He then told me to go home and take a good two or three hour nap. When I laughed out loud, he thought about how many kids I had brought with me and offered to patch my eye. As goofy as that sounded I thought it was a good idea. Instead of patching it with an eye patch a la Pirates of the Caribbean, he put a non-prescription contact lens in my eye to keep my eyelid from irritating it, told me to get antibiotic drops for it, not to do much of anything for the day and to come back in 24 hours.

I was so happy to be told I was going to be ok that I didn't even ask how extensive my injury was. I didn't much care at that moment. Anne piled us back in the van and brought us back home and I prepared myself to try to function home alone with three kids. At that point, my brother called and told me he could take half a day off work to come and help out. Awesome. Excellent. While your at it, brother, how about getting McDonald's for everyone for lunch so I don't have to think about it?

My brother was great. He sat and watched movies with the girls so that Daniel and I could go have naps. My eye still hurt and I still couldn't see but I had help and I was told I was going to be ok so I was cool.

Today, after a good night of sleep, I feel much better. My vision is still blurred in my left eye but light doesn't bother it and I don't feel like there is anything in it anymore. When I went back to the optometrist, he told me it is healing really well, took the contact lens out and told me I should be back to normal by Monday (please let it be so). While I was there, I asked exactly what sort of damage had been done and he showed me a little drawing that looked like this:


The circle is my cornea (the clear bit that covers the coloured part of the eye) and the grey bar is the scratch...pretty much exactly the width of Daniel's fingertip. Again...ouch.

When my brother came, he brought me a really sexy eye-patch in case I thought that might give my eye some relief. I tried it out but it just made my brain hurt so I abandoned it pretty quickly. The moment I discarded it, the girls adopted it. This morning they made a pirate ship out of a big plastic bin and used a blanket for a sail and the horse-on-a-stick as the plank and drew out treasure maps -the whole bit:


To get her to smile she would say "walk the plank!" or "scallywag" or "land-lubber" but not "arrrrrrghh matey!".

And here's Mr. Gougy Gougerton himself, ready to fight dirty any time it is required:

Looks harmless, eh?

Claire Turns Five

We have been busy here so I've been behind on the blogging. I'll get caught up soon, I'm sure.

Claire's fifth birthday was on the 15th of November. We love celebrating birthdays in this house and I think Claire looks forward to hers more than anyone else. The 15th of November is far enough from Christmas that her birthday doesn't get squished together with that big event. But, it is close enough that all the fun stuff happens for her in a short period of time. Halloween, birthday and Christmas all two months. Then there are 10 months of waiting for more fun (punctuated by Easter and other people's birthdays). Patience has never been one of Claire's stronger points so she can drive herself crazy looking forward to her big day. So, when it finally comes, we're all pretty happy for her.

Personally, as much as I wanted her to be happy, this was a bittersweet event for me. I was in no hurry for her to turn five. I don't know if it really is, but five seems like a real milestone. She's not a 'toddler' or a 'preschooler' anymore and I can't even pretend that she's my baby. I've been subscribing to the Baby Center website since I was first pregnant with Claire (I think before they even had a Canadian version of the site) and they send me weekly emails. It started with "Your Pregnancy This Week" then "Your Baby This Week" (I get these for Daniel now) then "Your Toddler This Week" then "Your Preschooler This Week" (I get these for Jillian now) and then, all of a sudden, when I was at my most vulnerable I opened my inbox to a "Your Big Kid This Week".

And so she is. She is in senior kindergarten this year and that's 'real' school! She has the vocabulary of a much older child and can express herself quite well (and even 'talks back' - make it stop?). She also has reasoning abilities that both amaze and frustrate me. She has a perfectionistic streak that I recognize from my own childhood (it is rough being that sort of kid). She is contrary and we can't suggest anything to her. If we go to the library I cannot even show her a book because she will reject it without even looking at it because it wasn't her idea. She knows right from wrong and has a notion of justice that some lawyers don't even possess. If she gets caught doing something she shouldn't, she takes her punishment like a pro. If she feels she's being treated unfairly...watch out! Her motor skills are so good that we rarely have to help her with the fasteners on her clothes, or with anything else really. She draws pictures that are recognizable from a dozen paces and some are better than anything DH can draw (sorry dear). Her hair has grown long and thick with just enough body to make it manageable and lately, when we wipe her hands down after dinner we marvel at how big they've gotten. She really, truly, isn't a little kid anymore and even though I enjoy seeing her grow up, I don't like her being 'big'. Not one bit. Sigh.

Here is the big kid on her big day:


As is becoming tradition, a fancy cake was required for the occasion. My cousin Tanya was up visiting from Cape Breton and together we made something awfully cute. Claire told me she wanted something 'pretty' and I tried to keep her from giving me more ideas than that so I could have some creative control. Character cakes are fine but they are a bit of a challenge and a bit of a bore at the same time. I was happy to be able to go wild with this one:



The white, polka dots and little balls around the edge are made from homemade, marshmallow fondant. Cousin Tanya made a big block of purple modeling chocolate, which I cut into a five and promptly cracked. Tanya, being the expert, managed to fix it twice before it was presented to Claire (Jillian claims it was delicious - I didn't taste it).

The best thing about the cake is that we baked a surprise inside. Here she is at first glance:

A rainbow!

A better view:


We used two white cake mixes, measured out six lots of batter with 1 1/3 cups each, dyed each bowl of batter with 1/2 teaspoon of Wilton food dyes (violet, royal blue, leaf green, lemon yellow, orange and no-taste red). We baked each layer at 350 for 12 minutes. There was enough batter left over for nine white cupcakes (mainly because I didn't want it to be too high).

We only had four kids here to celebrate but they were all gobsmacked (and they all ate a LOT of cake). Here's our little gobbler in action:



We also decided the cat should be festive:



He didn't mind the hat. There is a reason why Remington has no similar photo (So. Not. Impressed).

After cake, it was time for presents. She got a lot of great stuff but had been asking for a "Ribbon Unicorn" since she saw one at the store a few weeks back. I convinced Jillian that she wanted to give Claire the unicorn. I figure Jillian could use a few brownie points with her five-year-old overlord (she can be sooo bossy when she wants to be). I think it worked out:



Although now, two weeks later, she says that "It's funny how the things you want soooooo bad don't always turn out to be that cool. My ribbon unicorn is sort of boring...she just sits there". Again, the apple doesn't fall far. I was NOT a make-believe, stuffed animal loving kid so I get what she means. Jillian, on the other hand, is all about the pretending and would have a much better time with a unicorn than Claire seems to be having. Ah well...she'll figure this out about herself and next year will ask for books or art supplies.

One of her favourite gifts was a pretend school set that I managed to find for her. It came with a pointer and a bell and worksheets and attendance sheets and hall passes and a clock and a weather map and a calendar and is basically just like her class at school on a smaller scale. She likes playing best when she can have real, live students and so Jillian and Daniel obliged her. In this photo she's giving a lesson on CLOCKS. Really. It was only after I uploaded the photos that I saw the spelling error. Eeeeek!



She had a really great day. I think this is the last year I'll be able to get away with a tiny little party with just family and friends (and their kids). She is rumbling about wanting to have something more elaborate next year. I guess that's what being a big kid is all about. Sob...

For the record, that means that this blog also turned five a little while back. It isn't a little kid anymore either, I suppose. It seems to have a lot of identity issues and maybe a few problems with consistency but that's ok. It's my little corner of the universe and I like it fine. I'm considering another year of photo-a-day, starting on January 1. Back in 2007 when I did it last I ended up with a really good record of things that happened from the mundane to the monumental and I want that again. So I might try.

A Conversation at Storytime

DH was sitting reading "Harold and the Purple Crayon" (Crockett Johnson) to Jillian (great book, we highly recommend it). She picked the book out herself a couple of weeks ago and wants it read quite frequently. She has obviously thought a little about it. He read her this page:



DH: But, luckily, he kept his wits and his purple crayon.
Jillian: Daddy?
DH: Yes?
Jillian: Where are his wits? Are they inside his pyjamas or in his pocket?