January 3, 2015
Christmas Vacation
One of many reasons that members of our family are unlikely to ever take the world by storm is that our greatest talents really are for leisure—we’re experts at doing nothing, or just enough of something with requisite amounts of sofa-lying for good measure. We often visit cultural institutions such as museums and art galleries but rarely for more than an hour or two at a time, and never without a trip to the cafe AND the gift shop. Going out for lunch is our main occupation, and we always have dessert. We are really very good at enjoying ourselves, and so the last two weeks have been an absolute pleasure.
Two things: first, that I finished things up so that there was no work at all to be done for a week or so, and second, we turned off the internet. For a week, there was no checking of email or twitter, which opened up vast pockets of time in every day for all kinds of things—reading, playing, baking, carol-singing, and doing the Globe & Mail holiday crossword. On Tuesday we bought the newspaper because we were curious about what had gone on in the world, and it was odd to flip through the pages and discover news items we hadn’t heard about elsewhere.
We spent the first couple of days of our holiday trying in vain to kick the cold that’s been embedded in our heads since the beginning of December. On the Sunday, we went down to the Bay on Queen Street to look at the Christmas windows, which were wonderful, and then went into the store and realized that department stores were the perfect way to reconcile our hatred of shopping malls with the joys of Christmas consumption (glittery lights, perfume smells, shopping bags with string handles, and 1 kilo tins of chocolate. Also, I now own tights without holes in the feet). Speeding home on the subway in time for Iris’s nap and for me to meet friends for an exquisite afternoon tea at Dessert Trends Bistro.
On Monday, we went to the library (because holidaying doesn’t always have to happen on a lavish scale) and then had smoked meat lunch at Caplansky’s Deli. I also went out for dinner with my friends and drank far too much wine. On Tuesday, I don’t think we did anything, partly due to the wine. Throughout all of this, Stuart and I were watching movies and episodes of Midsomer Murders in the evening (because we are 85 years old) and Harriet watched How to Train Your Dragon Two during Iris’s nap times. On Christmas Eve, we went to the Art Gallery to see the Art Spiegelman exhibit and had a lovely brunch at the Frank Restaurant, which we save for the specialist of occasions. On the way home, we picked up our turkey, which we fastened into our stroller. That evening, we had chicken fajitas for Christmas Eve dinner for the 10th year in a row, and left a snack for Santa.
Christmas was so good. Not only did we not have to leave the house, but we got to have my mom come and visit! The children got excellent presents and had fun playing with them throughout the holidays. I received great books, nice clothes, and other lovely things, including a La Cruset butter dish I’d been hankering after and new Pyrex. We all also received new CDs (because are 85 years old and like to do 20th century things) and so the holiday has been extra-filled with music—some of which was even made after 1987, which is very rare for us. My mom arrived and played with the children (which was not very difficult—she arrived bearing her present of a trunk full of dress-up clothes) while Stuart and I set about cooking the best Christmas dinner ever. The joys of Skype brought us the company of Nana and Granddad in England, and our adorable Alberta relations.
On Boxing Day, we went to the ROM, and partook in a yummy dinner of leftovers—Stuart makes the best turkey sandwiches on earth. Iris also slept until 7am for the first time in her whole life, which was mind-blowing, but also a bit terrible because when her sleep for the subsequent week was abysmal, I wanted to pitch her out the window. The next day, my dad and his partner arrived, and we all had an excellent time with them. And they played with the children while Stuart and I cooked up another very good meal—the greatest turkey pot pie of all time whose secret recipe was duck fat. The day after that, we drove out to my aunt’s in the West end, stopping en-route to buy ice-skates for Harriet and I, which had the potential to be a boondoggle. And then we had a very fun dinner with the best kinds of relations on earth—cousins.
Monday was the best day—Harriet and I headed downtown to meet our friend Erin and watch the new Annie film, which we’d been looking to after avidly viewing its trailers for the past month AND after watching the old Annie every day last summer. The reviews for the new Annie were terrible and all wrong—the movie was wonderful. (That one of the critics referred to the 1982 movie as “an abomination” perhaps suggests that some people had no business reviewing either movie, both of which were masterpieces, in my humble opinion.) We all had such a good time watching it, exuberantly applauding as the credits rolled. And then we met Stuart and Iris and took the subway to Erin’s new house in Bloor West Village, which is very conveniently located near the new Book City (which was bustling and full of wonderful books.)
On Tuesday, I had to take a certain someone to a dermatologists to have a wart examined, which wasn’t so memorable, except that we got to stop at HMV on the way and buy the Annie soundtrack, a move supported by all members of our household. Iris can now sing “Tomorrow”, which is really something to behold. We also love Sia’s version of “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” and the bizarre and catchy “Moonquake Lake”, with its memorable hook—”she’s a fish and he’s a boy.” That night our friends Jennie, Deep and Lilia came for dinner and the best time was had. They were kind enough not to complain about our music selection.
Rumours of boondoggles were averted on New Years Eve when Harriet and I went skating at Christie Pits—Harriet had the best time and loved it, which was good but also troubling as it means that I have to keep going skating. We went again yesterday and both of us were vastly improved. A third jaunt is scheduled for tomorrow. New Years Eve was our traditional chocolate fondue and ringing in the UK New Year before the children went to bed. And then Stuart and I proceeded to play board games (and ping pong, until Harriet came out of her room and asked us to stop because the pinging and ponging was too noisy) until we were done, and then we went to bed and brought in the new year lit by bed-side lamps, turning away from our respective novels for a moment as the clock ticked over to 2015. Which is the best way to ring in the new that I could ever have imagined.
New Years Day was boring—what a wondrous indulgence is that in this day and age? Although we did have our first meal of the year at Fanny Chadwick’s for brunch, which was delicious, and Iris has been transformed into someone who is fairly respectable about restaurant behaviour from all her practice this holiday. And Harriet and I got to play Scrabble for Juniors, which is almost as excellent as spending New Year’s reading in bed. Yesterday we went to the ROM to see the Wildlife Photography exhibit. And yes, more skating. Today we’re doing nothing, which might prove to be a bad idea but feels pretty good from where I sit (on the couch, wearing jogging pants, watching snow falling outside). We’ve kept things a little special with scones with jam and Devonshire cream, because I had a jar of the latter in the fridge and we had to use it up—not the worst task to be charged with.
And I’m writing it all down now mostly so that I can remember it, the holiday we were so desperate for and which so delivered. I’m writing it all down because all these ordinary things (libraries and lunches) are so easy to forget, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to forget either that we’re so blessed with friends and family and each other. If how you spend your days are indeed how you spend your life, then these past two weeks are an indication that we’re doing something right. And it’s something to hold on to as the lights of December fade—let the next few months be something more than just a countdown to spring.
December 5, 2014
There comes a time…
There comes a time in every family’s life when their copy of Janet and Alan Ahlberg’s The Baby’s Catalogue needs replacing. “Uh oh,” said Iris, pointing to where the book had split in two, on the “Accidents” page, no less. Though we’d seen it coming—this was the book I took care to always have in my bag when Harriet was a baby, so that when Iris was born, the spine was already shredded, and she took great pleasure in furthering the damage herself. Until the whole thing had come to pieces.
It’s a turning point, and we’ve been encountering a lot of these lately. Iris turns 18 months old exactly today, and I’d forgotten what a huge turning point this age is. Her words are coming fast (and often furious): car, and truck, and yuck, and cheese, and banana, and please, and Mommy and Daddy and Hatty, and her grandmothers’ names, and shoes, and book, and most curiously of all is “hockey”. We have no idea where she learned that one. She loves cats and dogs and babies. I take her to the library baby program, where she ignores all programming and instead walks around the circle tickling the other babies’ feet.
She sees the whole world as a series of climbable objects, and while her compulsive climbing instills fear in all those who love her, it’s true that she rarely ever falls. She knows the right techniques for capturing out attention: teetering on tabletops, screaming in quiet restaurants, and placing tiny objects inside her mouth with a defiant gleam in her eye. She gives excellent hugs, is a champion napper, has her teeth coming in in all the wrong order, and usually tries to give gentle touches instead of hitting and biting (though she doesn’t always succeed). She gets less bald with every passing day. She is at that age at which sitting at the table for more than three minutes at a time is impossible, so she comes and and goes. She just recently learned to jump. We adore her, and are blown away by how smart she is and her insistence on doing everything herself—well, even. But we’re never having another child, because our children seem to get increasingly Iris-ish with every one, and an Iris who out-Iris’d Iris might kill us. So we’re just content to love this one madly.
A
nd then there is her very patient sister, who turned 5 and a half last week (which is 66 months old, for those of you keeping count). She continues to be excellent with just the right amount of naughtiness that we’re sure she’s a real child. She likes school and watching her learn to read is so exciting (and it’s also so exciting to see how useful Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books are in this process. We’ve enjoyed these books for years, and that such good books can also be the best reading tools is amazing). We’re reading Tom’s Midnight Garden at bedtime now, which is exciting because there’s a literary Harriet in it, and also because it’s the second book I read right after she was born, a time I was thinking about last night as Tom and his Uncle discussed there not being just one time but instead all different kinds of time (and his Aunt pointing out that it all leads to indigestion—it’s such a good book!). Harriet has reached this marvellous age where she wants to be helpful, and she actually is. I like her so very much, and adore her company. It’s not a lie when I tell her that picking her up at kindergarten is the very best part of my day. (Well, after bedtime, of course).
Technically, now that Iris is 18 months old, there’s no resident baby at our house anymore (though I don’t believe this, of course, and Iris’s baldness is permitting the illusion to be sustained). Just because we’re running low on babies though doesn’t mean we don’t still need a copy of The Baby’s Catalogue, so we bought another one, a pristine edition that is sure to get a bit battered, but probably not as battered as its predecessor. This wonderful book is full of the ordinary moments—all the incidents and accidents—of ordinary family life, and it’s such a part of ours.
I hope it always will be.
October 12, 2014
Family Photos
A few weeks ago, while looking for a family photo to accompany our contribution to the 1000 Families Project, I realized that we had no such photo, and then my attempts to come up with such a photo turned out to be futile, save for the selfie that made the grade only because the smiles were real (and that’s something, least). I also started realizing that both my children at the moment are more photogenic than they’ve ever been (I am still not sorry we never did professional photos when the children were babies and looked like ALF), and the colours outside are peak gorgeous. So I booked a session with the amazing Tracey Nolan, whom we all promptly fell in love with when she showed up at our door the other day, and who managed to trick Harriet into channeling her inner-model and not pulling the wonky face she usually turns on in view of a camera lens. And oh, did we have fun, walking up and down the streets and laneways of our beautiful neighbourhood, and then the results of the session turned out to be more gorgeous than I’d dared to dream. What a wonderful record—I’m so glad we did this; we never have before, and I’d always supposed that photo sessions were a bit canned, but I think I was wrong about that. I’m so glad to have photos of me I like so much, to have photos of the four of us together, photos of Stuart and I without the children, even. Photos of us being ourselves along the sidewalks of streets that we love—it really doesn’t seem so contrived. It’s just that we’re not usually quite so attractive…
October 8, 2014
California Dreaming at The New Family
The New Family is a really neat project by writer/editor Brandie Weikle that features all the wonderful ways that modern parents are remodelling family life, a project underlined by the challenge: “I bet we can find 1000 ways to be a family.” And I’m so pleased that today, my own family is in the mix, a family whose constitution is not unusual by any means, but I’m glad to tell the story of how our family began with a decision we made in 2008 not to buy a house.
“It was almost Copernican. Because there’s an order to the universe: we hook up, we move in, become property owners of an impossibly small space equipped with a windowless den. We wait until that small space acquires enough value that we’re able to trade up for a proper home, albeit a starter one. And only then are we ready to start pondering such a thing as the future, to put down roots and maybe even have children.”
But we decided to do it another way, and I am so happy we did.
October 6, 2014
Bunk Beds
“Do you remember,” I asked Stuart on Saturday, as we were assembling the bunk beds, the whole room in disarray around us, our baby climbing in and out of the half-built bed frame, placing her life in peril as usual, Harriet making up dance moves in the doorway, “Do you remember when we painted this room?”
When we moved in, this second bedroom had been blue with brown trim, ugly industrial shelving along one wall painted grey. It was terrible, but I had a soft spot for this room, which was the computer room, and where our books would live. I really had a soft spot for this room because it was going to be our baby’s room, although the baby was still 100% hypothetical. We spoke about the baby to nobody when we painted that room later that summer, but we were thinking about her. The couple in my mind who painted that room were ridiculously, impossibly young.
Although when the baby was born, she didn’t move into her room for almost a year—it was easier to have her upstairs sleeping with us. And then once she started sleeping, we moved her down, moved the books and computer out. We put up colourful curtains and a bright carpet, and those ugly shelves—now white and less ugly—were packed with books and toys. About a year later, we put away the crib and our futon became Harriet’s bed—our futon, which was the first piece of furniture we’re ever bought, just after we got married in 2005 when we were so poor, and it was the cheapest in the store and it would become our living room couch. And it’s been her bed ever since, the perfect size bed for the whole family to assemble on at story time, and it’s been a stage for her theatrical and dance performances, as well as the one piece of furniture that Harriet is permitted to jump on when friends come over (and why is it that any time a friend comes over, they all start jumping on beds?).
We love our apartment. We made the investment of a custom-built kitchen table last winter in order to make our kitchen a more liveable space for us, a space we can use in the long-term. And the next project would be the bunk beds, because we were determined to make it work in this place as a family of four, and it’s not impossible that Iris may one day not be sleeping in a crib at the end of my bed. (In the past week, Iris has slept all night twice. So there is a modicum of hope.) We finally bought the bunk beds last weekend on our way home from an apple orchard, from a somewhat dodgy showroom that was actually a garage on a dingy post-industrial stretch of Finch Avenue. But they had low-priced bunk beds with stairs, which were the bunk beds I wanted. Because one who climbs stairs to her bed is afforded a bit more dignity that she who must make do with a ladder. And it turned out to be legit, because the bunk beds were actually delivered, except that then we had to build them ourselves, which was the entire story of Saturday.
This is one of those “we bought bunk beds to create space” stories that turns into the bunk beds taking up the entire room. Yes, I intended there to be more space between the bunk bed and the window than there actually is, but then it could have been worse—for a few minutes, we were terrified that the drawers inside the staircase would not even have room to open. I guess this is why some people measure their rooms before they buy really large pieces of furniture, but we don’t like to worry about details in our family. The bunk beds have cleared up space on the floor, however, and the drawers in the staircase have enabled us to get rid of the Ikea dresser we built really really badly before we decided not to buy things from Ikea anymore. (Preferring dodgy garage showrooms, obviously.)
Harriet loves her new bed, which she refers to as “my cozy den”. She’ll move to the top bunk when Iris moves in, but for now the entire bed is her ship, and she is the captain, and the stairs are blocked off so Iris can’t climb them, even though the first step is too high for Iris to mount anyway, but if we leave her alone for a minute, she’ll sprout an inch and/or construct a step-stool out of her First 100 Words book. In even better news, Stuart and my marriage seems not only to have survived an entire day spent constructing bunk beds, to have grown stronger from the experience. We only said “fuck” a couple of times, and even had fun. We’ve gotten over our shock at having inadvertently bought the largest piece of furniture on the planet, and we’re pretty happy with it. We look forward to the day when the bunk beds actually do sleep the two children they’re intended for and our bedroom is our own again, though that’s looking a long way into the future, and let’s just take each day as it comes.
Mostly though, I’m just amazed, at how the years pass, and the memories accumulate, and the children grow, and how this house contains so many our stories, like layer upon layer of invisible paper on the walls, and there’s some crazy archeology at work here, scraping the surface to rediscover our ancient civilizations, right down there at the the bottom of it all that stupid happy couple with their yellow walls, and absolutely no idea of what the years would have in store.
October 3, 2014
30 Years with Anne Shirley
The last time I read Anne of Green Gables was in 2008, when I came away struck by how much it’s actually Marilla’s story, her own transformation, the softening of her heart. All the things she feels about her adopted daughter but will not say, but she feels them—the narrative articulates the complexity of her emotions. Reading it again now, I laugh at the paragraph from Rachel Lynde’s perspective about Marilla’s definite ideas about how to bring up children, and how only people who’ve never had children can ever have these. I also notice how silly Anne is; with all her big words she gets so many wrong (though whether these are actually typos is hard to tell. My edition is appallingly edited)—she’s a more realistic version of a 12 year old precocious child than I’ve ever noticed before.
This time, I am rereading Anne of Green Gables (the book I’ve been reading and rereading for 30 years now) as I never have before—aloud. It’s our current chapter book for bed time, joining a canon that includes the Little House books, Ramona, The Willoughbys, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Through the Looking Glass, and so many more. When we started reading it, I was surprised to discover I wasn’t sure it would work—there is so much description, so many words, in particular huge ones that no five year old has ever heard of. As we read through the first couple of chapters, it dawned on me that I’d come to the book at age 6 or so (first reading an abridged version) after being familiar with the Kevin Sullivan film—all the characters in my mind are precisely as cast therein. Would the story “take” the same without the cinematic precedence, I wondered? But it was the evening that we opened the book and Harriet had remembered the exact title of the chapter we’d left off at that I knew the story was resonating just as I’d hoped it would.
Reading Anne of Green Gables aloud is such a pleasure. So many words, as I said, but I get to say them. I’ve never had such a feel for the strength of Montgomery’s prose, and how effectively she communicates Anne’s incessant chatter. Reading aloud too, I get to convey the humour, of which there is so much, and it thrills me when the best jokes are met by Stuart’s laughter. Because he’s listening too, this being his first time “reading” Anne of Green Gables, as well as Harriet’s. He grew up in England, where Anne would be even more foreign to boyhood than usual. So I love that he’s enjoying this very Canadian experience, and Harriet too. (Iris spends story time entering and leaving the room, scattering chaos in her wake.) There are so many wonderful parts of the book that I’ve forgotten about, and when I glimpse an episode to come, I tell them, “Oh, this is going to be a good one.” When Anne turned her hair green, and jumping on Aunt Josephine’s bed, getting Diana drunk and saving Minnie May Berry, the mouse in the pudding and the lineament cake. The puffed sleeves. She’s just about to reconcile with Gilbert, and I absolutely cannot wait. We are enjoying this book so very much.
There is something to this book, which is far more than childhood nostalgia or attraction to a cultural touchstone. Anne of Green Gables is so familiar to us all that it gets written off more often than not, but that’s such a mistake. It’s a good-enough kids’ book, but there is so much going on in the text that a reader doesn’t notice when she’s young, and even when she’s not young. It’s a book that’s worth a reread every decade or so, at least.
September 3, 2014
Lottie Dolls and the Holiday Adventure Story Writing Competition
I have changed my mind about a lot of things I was quite sure when I first became a mother, but one principle I’ve been quite unbending about is the matter of my children’s toys. We don’t spend a lot of money; I like good, solid toys that last; we live in a small apartment; I don’t like crap that’s on the fast track to being landfill; I have strong feelings about the representation of women and girls in children’s play.
Another principle I’m pretty sure of: I don’t use my blog as a platform to flog commercial goods.
But when I received a PR pitch from Lottie dolls last week, I was really intrigued. Lottie is a doll made to look like a child, whose wardrobe doesn’t include fishnets and heels. The line from the promotional material that had me hooked was, “She can stand on her own two feet (always a useful life skill for all girls, big and small).” Lottie models include lighthouse keeper, karate student, pirate queen, robot scientist and butterfly protector, among others. She’s designed to stimulate creative play, to encourage girls not to grow up too fast. Her tagline is, “Be bold, be brave, be you.”
More than that, the pitch was about a Lottie story writing competition. Accompanying the competition is the Great Books for Girls list, books with strong female role-models. The whole thing was right up my alley, but I’d never heard of Lottie. For the sake of research (!), I ordered two dolls from an online toy retailer (and another appealing aspect of Lottie is that she sells for $19.99, a reasonable price).
The dolls arrived, and my children were immediately hooked. At first glance, the dolls aren’t so revolutionary, though this helps them to fill that Barbie-shaped void in my children’s toy box—and pivotally, the dolls aren’t Barbie-shaped. The dolls are also available in hair colours other than yellow (with dark-skinned ones too). They don’t stand up quite as well as I’d hoped, but Harriet wasn’t interested in leaving them unattended anyway. She was excited to play with them immediately, her Snow Queen Lottie engaged with elaborate plots of Autumn Leaves Lottie (whom I selected because I liked her tights). My only complaint is that the doll clothes are bit fiddly for tiny fingers, and that the fastening bead on Snow Queen’s fur cape needs re-sewing already.
We’re already quite besotted with our Lotties, and I have no doubt that Harriet will be able to come up with exciting Lottie tale to enter in the story competition, which closes September 12. The prize is ten titles from the Great Books for Girls list, which sounds good to me!
Find out more about the contest at the Lottie Facebook Page.
September 1, 2014
This is a bad idea
Just a little over two years ago, we took Harriet to Centre Island, and watched her go around on the little boat ride, ringing the bell and looking happy enough, but sitting alone in her little boat, while the other boats were filled with pairs of siblings. It was a pivotal moment, watching her ride by herself, one that cemented the fact that we were probably going to go forth and have another baby. For Harriet’s sake as much as ours, because Stuart and I are both so glad we have sisters, and we wanted to give Harriet a similar relationship. Because we wanted her to have someone to ride the rides with.
Never mind the absurdity that sometimes things really do work out so neatly—we were grateful that nature delivered us the baby we’d planned on. A healthy happy baby too, and also that Iris and Harriet already have such a close relationship. (I’d considered the irony of possibly delivering Harriet a sister who she’d hate, or who might destroy her life, in addition to just pulling her hair. I read too much literary fiction…) I will never cease to be amazed at the fact of getting what I wanted, and so it meant something to have travelled though all these weeks and months and come back to the island this weekend. Harriet and Iris rode around in their little boat together, and was hugely significant. The first ride of many.
But of course, that’s not the whole story. I haven’t told you the funny part. We were lined up for the ride and both Stuart and I sensing that this was really not the smartest plan. Iris can walk, which means that technically she’d be permitted on the ride, but Iris is only 15 months old, and is small so she looks younger than she is, so the attendant looked wary when Stuart led Iris and Harriet through the turnstile.
“I think she’s too young,” she told Stuart, about Iris.
And Stuart became even less characteristically un-English than usual, throwing caution to the wind and standing up to carnival authority (although he had stood patiently in the queue.)
“Nope,” he said, “she’ll be fine.” He put her on the ride anyway. He is not sure why he did this exactly, except that he had a vague sense that I’d be angry if Iris didn’t get to ride the ride as I’d envisioned. We’d travelled over 700 days to get here after all. It would be terrible not to have a photo to show for it.
So Iris was in the boat, and the attendant told Harriet to make sure she stayed seated. The ride began, and it was good for a round or two. Iris rang the bell, spun the steering wheel, and was thoroughly enjoying herself. I snapped the photos. They could have been the whole story. Until it became apparent to Iris that she was untethered. She stood up. “Iris, sit down,” said Harriet, shoving her back into her seat. They go by us again. We wave. Iris stands up again. “Sit down, Iris,” Harriet is shouting now, and trying to get Iris in a headlock. Iris starts to cry. We’re still waving. Everybody is looking at our children. Who pass the remainder of the ride with Iris crying as they turned round and round, Harriet shouting, “This is a bad idea! This is a very bad idea!”
June 15, 2014
The Difference a Year Makes
We have come very far since Father’s Day last year.
Which makes me think of this song, which seems fitting for Father’s Day since Mad Men, actually.
