Category Archives: Cute Kid Quotes

Lazy pants and life mottos.

Posted on by

You guys, did you know Ashley Madison was a thing? I always feel badly for hacked websites but I had no idea this was a thing and I am as shocked as a little old lady learning for the first time about Brazilian bikini waxes. They do what?

The boys now have a two week break from karate; last Friday they had a mini-tournament to finish off their camp week, and then there was a shiah on Saturday. I was a bit worried since Mark had what I thought was the beginning of a cold, but which I now think was maybe a bad allergy attack. Thursday night he was up coughing much of the night, and for those of you who have known me for a while, I have some kind of PTSD from when he had pneumonia at age 7, and so I didn’t sleep at all. This also coincided with my hormonal pre-ladies’-holiday insomnia, so I felt like I had been run over by a truck on Friday.

Does anyone else suffer from this? I find about a week or ten days before Ladies’ Holidays, I have a few nights where I can hardly sleep at all. This is very unusual for me since I’m generally a solid sleeper, albeit one who wakes up at four in the morning. Anyway, I find this hormonal insomnia very annoying and it makes me fear for my menopausal days.

Thursday and Friday were terribly cold – 8 degrees Celsius – and rainy and windy as well. One of my heavy lawn chairs blew over and rain came down in sheets. Therefore, I was a bit surprised to hear that they went swimming at the outdoor pool at camp on Thursday. I feel fairly sure this didn’t help Mark’s cough, but after almost twelve hours of sleep on Friday night he was basically recovered and full of his usual energy.

Hilariously, because of the cold, the boys had to forego their shorts for track pants. They wear track pants very rarely; basically only for long plane trips and not much else, but they were perfect for cold days at camp. Mark sighed a bit when he came home, and said “I like track pants, but they really make me feel lazy.” I thought this idea could be extrapolated to any elasticized pants: yoga, track, sweat. In fact, maybe this could be a classification system: lazy pants versus non-lazy pants. I am currently still wearing this morning’s sweaty yoga pants. I know of what I speak.

Speaking of camp, my husband took the kids actual TENT CAMPING yesterday. He is a fairly outdoorsy kind of guy, and being married to me probably doesn’t help his outdoorsy-ness. A few months ago the boys decided that an annual boys’ camping trip would be a fun idea, starting now and continuing, apparently, for the rest of time. It sounded good to me, especially since I wasn’t really invited. They’ve been preparing for this for the past few weeks, gathering the things that they need and making lists of the food they wanted (all meat, all the time). Amidst all this merry chatter, my husband looked at me with concern and wondered if I was feeling sad or left out. Um. No. It’s no hardship for me not to go camping.

It is a hardship for someone in our house, and that someone is Barkley. Poor puppy. They’ve been gone less than 24 hours and they will be coming home soon, but such a sad thing has never happened to him in his life. WHERE IS EVERYBODY. Every weeknight at 6:30, Barkley sits at the top of the steps and stares out the back door window, waiting for my husband to come home. He did this yesterday, slowly slumping to the floor by 8:30 pm, when I decided enough was enough and put him to bed. This morning he went to all the empty bedrooms and flopped sadly back into his crate. It’s heartbreaking!

Meanwhile I’ve enjoyed my solo time by eating food no one else really likes (kale salad and roasted chickpeas), watching TV shows no one else wants to watch (NYPD Blue), and reading Gone With The Wind. I last read Gone With The Wind in 1989, when I was fourteen, and I can safely say it reads very different now. For one thing, when I was fourteen I had zero concept of US politics, the economy, or industrialization. I mostly just focused on the sexy romantic parts, of which there are many. I’m finding that I feel a bond with Scarlett, which is something I have sort of mixed feelings about. It’s not like we are the same person, but the line “Even if you think such things, why do you say them? If you’d just think what you please but keep your mouth shut, everything would be so much nicer.” speaks to me. I feel like that could be the entire basis of a life motto. Maybe Margaret Mitchell was clairvoyant, seeing into the internet age and the comments sections of sociopolitical columns.

Hashtag “Blessed”

Posted on by

Yesterday the kids really wanted to go to the amusement park, and although that meant TWO big outings in one week, I agreed. It’s Stampede Week and the amusement park is always quiet at this time of the year, we have season’s passes, and also it was a beautiful sunny day. I was preparing snacks and water bottles when I got a call from my husband: his building had a small fire and the office was closed for the day, so he was on his way back home.

Score!

As soon as he got in the door the kids immediately begged him to come with us. This NEVER happens, since we usually do our outings during the week when he’s at work. The four of us piled into the car and headed off, and we had the best time. There’s nothing like going to the amusement park with both parents to showcase which one of us is the “fun one” (hint: it’s not me). I did, however, agree to go on the bumper cars with the kids and although at times I felt like Marge Simpson, driving neatly in a clockwise direction, it was a blast.

I maintain that there cannot feasibly be two really fun parents in a relationship, and I’m okay with not being the fun one. I don’t really want to go on the log ride, for example, and I certainly don’t want to get shot with water in the bumper boats. And yet sometimes this can be hard on my non-cool ego. A few weeks ago we were discussing over dinner which Star Wars character best represented each person in our family. The boys had agreed that their father was most like Han Solo, Jake was most like Luke, and Mark was just like Anakin prior to going over to the Dark Side. When I asked which character I was most like, they both thought for a moment, and then agreed – IN UNISON – that I was most like C-3PO.

I related this to my friend Hannah, who soothed my soul by saying I was Princess Leia in a gold bikini, and I shouldn’t let anyone tell me otherwise. I would like to think that I could choke a giant slug with my neck chain, but sadly I’m now convinced that I am most like the second-lamest character in the entire Star Wars series.

Leia copy

Have you ever had the experience of sharing something from your childhood with your own children, and you build it up and build it up and then it’s a total letdown because they are bored or uninterested or politely concede that it’s “okay?” I’ve had that experience numerous times, but this week was different. I discovered Top Gun is now on Canadian Netflix.

Longtime readers know how I feel about Top Gun. If not, please read this post right now. I’ll wait.

I decided to watch it Wednesday evening, since my husband was going to be at a Stampede event and I wanted something fun for myself. I asked the boys if they wanted to watch it with me, and they said yes. Mark watched and enjoyed the first and last thirty minutes, wandering off mid-movie to do something else, as is his wont. But Jake. Jake LOVED it. He loved the story line. He loved the flight scenes. He loved the call signs and the lessons learned and Maverick turning into a Team Player after all. I skipped through the sex scene, but other than that he watched the whole movie and was glued to it the whole time. He analyzed it extensively, saying things like “I don’t think Maverick is really mad at Sundown. He’s just upset because Goose is gone now.”

We have now perfected the double high-five – up high, and backwards down low, and he says that he wants this to be our playground goodbye, instead of the fist-bump that we’ve been doing for years. He is now saying things to me such as “Mom, you can be my wingman anytime.” It brings tears of joy to my eyes.

This morning, when he woke up, he asked if we could watch Top Gun together again soon.

YES, YES, A MILLION TIMES YES.

The Hippo Whisperer

Posted on by

It’s Stampede Week in Calgary, and on Friday my husband headed into the office, wearing cowboy boots, a plaid shirt, and jeans. He looked pretty hot, by the way, but his usual work wear is a suit and tie (which is also hot. Hello? Hooters for women would just be guys walking around in suits holding up their credit scores, am I right?). In any case, Mark was hugging him goodbye and then stopped. He looked at my husband, and the shock and confusion on his face was impossible to hide. Um, Dad? Are you…going to work? Is this…casual Friday?

Then yesterday my husband brought out his cowboy hat, to wear to a function, and Jake gave him the side-eye. Dad? You don’t look like a cowboy. You just look like some dude in a cowboy hat.

My poor husband is going to have some self-esteem issues by the time the week is over.

Stampede Week is a great time to get out and do non-Stampede-related things around the city, so this morning the kids and I went to the zoo. They have a Dinosaurs Alive exhibit that was last there in 2010. This was me and the boys looking at a Parasauralophus in 2010:

para

And this is them in front of the Parasauralophus now:

135

I THINK THEY’VE GROWN.

One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is Jake’s deep and abiding love of hippos. Remember Foggy, and how deeply we mourned him? Jake has grown to love Ghost, Foggy’s grandson, just as much. As a side note, Ghost is no longer actually called Ghost, but Lobi; however, in our house he has remained and forever will remain Ghost.

141

143

And I don’t know how it happens, I honestly don’t, but every single time we visit the zoo, something occurs that deepens Jake’s belief that he and the hippos are inextricably bonded. Today when we visited Ghost, the giant hippo turned around, looked at Jake, and wiggled his ears. When we were leaving, Jake said “Bye, Ghost,” at which point the hippo honked loudly. Cynics may think this is a silly coincidence, but I am not going to dispute Jake’s belief that he and the hippo are communicating. This is the kid who never believed in the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny, and who stopped believing in Santa when he was in kindergarten. If anyone tries to tell him that he is not the Hippo Whisperer, I will stab that motherfucker, I swear I will.

On a much less violent note, yesterday I was invited to a Ladies’ Lunch in honour of my niece’s fifth birthday, and it was so nice! There were eight of us: her grandmas, aunties, big sisters, and her mom. Her other auntie also has two boys, and between the two of us, I thought we might steal the gifts to play with ourselves. I had given her a paper doll/ sticker book, and it was all I could do not to cut out the dolls and start dressing them up. The boys and I went shopping last week to pick it out and they could not have been less interested.

Me: Should I get the pink puppy one, or the dolly one?

Jake: Puppies.

Me: Really? Because this dolly one is really cute too.

Mark: Then get the dolly one.

Me: I’m just not sure which is cuter!

Jake: JUST PICK ONE. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Mark: I’m going to look at the Percy Jackson books, come on, Jake.

Maybe I should have gotten the pink puppy one for myself.

Spring Flings, and Love The One You’re With

Posted on by

You guys! Remember the shampoo incident wherein I went to Costco, didn’t buy shampoo because it wasn’t on my list, and then that very night my child informed me that we were out of shampoo, and I discovered I didn’t have any in the pantry, and I had a premenstrually-induced semi-breakdown? The other morning I was drinking my first of many cups of coffee when my husband called to me from the bathroom. He was in the shower and I hurried in to see what was so urgent. Was he okay? Was he having a heart attack? No, he just wanted to let me know that we were getting low on shampoo and could I check to see if we had more, if not, could we put it on the Costco list? He didn’t, he said, want me to get upset again.

He said this while giving me a look that one might give when encountering an armed-and-dangerous, mentally disturbed prisoner on the lam.

Many years ago, we had a rickety wooden deck outside our back door; when Mark was a baby my husband decided to take it out and replant the area with grass. There was a great deal of gravel, but did I mention Mark was a baby? We were quite sleep deprived, so he put top soil over the gravel, planted grass, and regretted it for the next eleven years. The grass always started out the season just fine, but would dry up and go brown once the warm weather hit, and no amount of rain or watering would change that.

My husband talked about digging it up but I confess, I discouraged such action. The affected area was maybe 30 square feet, and I just didn’t feel like it was worth it. Translation: digging out gravel is hard. But this year my husband was determined, and since we have two boys who are – as yet – eager to help out with any and all yardwork, I went out one evening and came home to the three of them digging up the grass. The die was cast, and the next few days, every spare moment was devoted to the Project. I even helped, although my gravel shovelling skills are somewhat suspect.

dirt

Many wheelbarrows full of gravel, loam, and sod later…

012

So that was exciting. The boys and I also bought some more flowers, mainly for the front yard containers. I allowed the children to choose and Jake wanted to buy white geraniums for a particular container, which I gently tried to discourage, as I prefer more colour. He insisted and I capitulated, thinking what the hell, it’s only flowers, and how many more years is he really going to want to be at the garden centre with his mother? It turned out really nicely, as they go with the snowdrop anemones, and will look lovely once the white-and-green variegated hostas come up.

white

Speaking of hostas, my backyard is south facing; the garden in front of my detached garage is north facing, and gets almost zero sun exposure since the house shades it in the morning, when the north-facing gardens usually get some sun. It’s planted with hostas, and I fill in the spaces with impatiens, and it’s just beautiful – for about three months out of the year. This is the garden that I look at the most often, since it faces my kitchen window, and this is what it currently looks like:

020

In other words, the least attractive garden is the one I look at the most. I have beautiful colour and plants all over the front and back yards…except there. Tragic!

028 029 buddha flowers osteopermum

Speaking of tragedies, Jake brought home The Big Book Of Why from the library, and he and Mark have been enjoying reading it in the evenings. Mark was deep into one of the “whys” when he asked me who was William Shakespeare? Well! I chatted on and on about playwrights and the Elizabethan era, and then talked about some of his plays. “Have you heard of Romeo and Juliet?” I asked, and when the boys said they’d heard of it, but didn’t know anything about it, I gave them a brief synopsis. At the conclusion, they were silent for a minute.

Jake then blurted out, “That is SO STUPID. I mean, the parents are jerks so you KILL YOURSELF? That’s so dumb! Why don’t you just get a new girlfriend? There’s so many girls!”

I sense that we do NOT have a future playwright in our house. I also sense that Jake is going to be a “love the one you’re with” sort of guy.

An interview with my kids about ME

Posted on by

I haven’t been sleeping well this week, which is very strange for me, so my general tiredness, coupled with upcoming ladies’ holidays and concern over the appalling disgrace that is Alberta politics, has me feeling quite gloomy of late. I find myself sighing to myself a lot, and staring off into space, like I’m Eeyore in a black sweater.

And so I turn to my blog to cheer myself; I needed a diversion, and also I don’t have any good chocolate in the house to munch on. I came across this post by my colleague Andrea, and I thought it would be fun to ask my kids 21 questions about ME, since Mother’s Day is fast approaching and all. This is a fun and kind of eye-opening little quiz; since the kids are 9 1/2 and 11, the answers were surprisingly astute. I encourage you to play this game with your own kids; with small children it would be a hoot. For example, when Jake was in kindergarten, he was tasked with writing down two things that I loved the most. His answer: baking and volunteering, accompanied by a picture of me at the book fair with a giant cookie in my hand.

Here are the unabridged answers from my children. Since they often answer in unison, like Forrest Gump and Bubba (ALABAMA, SIR!) there is generally just one answer for both of them.

1) What is something I always say to you?

I love you!

2) What makes me happy?

US!

3) What makes me sad?

Politics.

Note: It’s true. Politics are very, very depressing to me. I have a very dim view on politicians in general, and yet I still watch House of Cards.

4) How do I make you laugh?

Jake: Lame jokes.

Mark: Totally. Lame jokes about math.

Note: Again, true, but maybe not so flattering? THOSE JOKES ARE NOT LAME, BOYS.

5) What was I like when I was a kid?

Jake: I have no idea.

Mark: I think you had short hair.

tricycle 001

6) How old am I?

Um…uh…I think…………forty?

Note: They took WAY too long to answer, given I just turned forty LAST MONTH and we had a party and made a BFD about it.

7) How tall am I?

Mark: Ooh! I know this one! Five foot…seven?

Note: He’s right!

8) What is my favourite thing to do?

Mark: Drink wine.

Jake: Yeah. Drink wine. And watch Elf.

Note: True. Possibly this sheds a bad light on me, since they didn’t say “hanging out with us” and perhaps this will be a topic of discussion in future therapy sessions, but I hope not.

064

086

9) What do I do when you’re not around?

Mark: Walk the dog.

Jake: Uh, I don’t know. Work?

10) If I become famous, what will it be for?

Cooking!

11) What am I really good at?

Mark: Math!

Jake: Math! And Just Dance.

Note: Not to be immodest, but I am really good at Just Dance. Especially the YMCA and I’ve Had The Time of My Life. I’ve perfected the spins and everything.

YMCA

12) What am I not very good at?

Jake: Video games.

Mark: Totally. Video games.

Jake: You’re TERRIBLE at video games.

Mark: Well, except Just Dance.

Jake: Yeah, you never know where you’re driving or who the characters are.

Mark: You do die a lot.

13) What do I do for my job?

Jake: You’re the Meatless Mummy at Yummy Mummy Club!

14) What is my favourite food?

Mark: That salad you make on Fridays.

Jake: With pitas.

Mark: What’s that salad? Greek salad.

Jake: AND PITAS.

Note: It’s true, almost every Friday I make this Greek salad with a version of this hummus, and pita. It is my favourite meal!

GreekSalad

15) What makes you proud of me?

Jake: When you bake things.

Mark: Totally! Baking things.

16) If I was a cartoon character, who would I be?

Mark: What kind of cartoon are we talking about? Like, a specific cartoon? Or one of those ones on Teletoon Retro? I can’t answer this.

Jake: Linda!

Note: Jake compared me with the mom on Phineas and Ferb. And Teletoon RETRO? I’m not sure I want to know where Mark was going with that.

17) What do you and I do together?

Mark: Um…fun stuff?

Jake: Like, gardening?

Note: Do more fun things together.

18) How are you and I alike?

Jake: We live in the same house.

Mark: We also argue for fun about lame stuff, and math.

Note: Mark is correct. It’s a hereditary thing, since my dad and I regularly get into long, involved, spirited arguments about ridiculous topics. It starts when one of us says “Did you read this about x?” and the other takes the polar opposite view. When this happens my husband leaves the room and my mother opens the wine.

19) How are you and I different?

Jake: I am great at video games and you are terrible.

20) How do you know I love you?

Jake: You tell us?

Mark: You hug us a lot.

21) Where is my favourite place to go?

MAUI!

Nicole

The show is about NOTHING.

Posted on by

Another book fair in the books! For those of you playing along at home, that was number fourteen, and it was by far the most successful book fair ever! We raised over $4700 for the library, home reading program, and English as a Learned Language program, which means that the total for THIS SCHOOL YEAR is $8200, far and beyond what our fundraising has been in the past. Yay for book fair! Now that I’m slowly coming to the final chapters of my years as Book Fair Lady, I’m starting to already feel nostalgic for it. The posters are five dollars, I said starting at 9:10 on the first day and then repeated that mantra many times over; this isn’t unusual, but it was unusual how unbothered I was by the question. Is this one hundred dollars? a child asked, holding up a highlighter shaped like a bottle of nail polish? No, I assured him, It’s one dollar.

100dollars

But it has two zeros at the end of it and that means one hundred! the child argued. Not wanting to get into a whole decimal point explanation with him, I sold him a pencil sharpener shaped like a fish.

I ran into a friend on the way into the book fair, and we laughed about the nail polish highlighters. But you can polish your nails with the highlighter! she joked, unwittingly foreshadowing the very first conversation I would have about those highlighters. How did she know?

Anyway, I’ve been feeling pretty good about the success about the fair, or I was until someone mentioned to me that it might be worthwhile to run another one, so we could have three a year. I stared blankly for a minute. Blink. Blink. I don’t think so…

In addition to the great excitement surrounding the book fair was Pink Shirt Day. I always, always vow to finally find or make a pink shirt for my kids, and I always, always forget until the day before, when it’s too late. Do your kids have Pink Shirt Day at school? It’s an anti-bullying movement sparked by a boy wearing a pink shirt. I feel that it’s a great thing to raise awareness about bullying – of course – but I have to tell you, it’s the bane of my existence. As I said, I never remember to buy/ make a pink shirt. I feel slightly weird about the whole thing, kids wearing their pink shirts with pride while I meanwhile know about certain girls pulling that emotional bullying stuff that only tween girls do so well. Also, one year one of my sons burst into tears at his lack of pink shirt; he assumed that everyone would consider him a bully for not having one. That year I had to pin a piece of pink paper on his shirt, frantically, because explanations were just not working. I also feel weird about the families who maybe cannot afford to buy a pink shirt that will go unworn for the remainder of the year. And yet, I don’t want to be the person who is NOT for Pink Shirt Day.

Our amazing principal saved the day, however, declaring that red and purple shirts were just as good as pink. Now that is some good leadership. I was relieved…until I discovered that for Jake, blue and green are the new black. What my drawer is for black sweaters, his is for blue and green waffle weave. We had to improvise with a karate t-shirt that had a red flag on it.

pinkshirt

Yesterday after school, Jake came out saying he couldn’t find one of his mittens. We do have spares at home, but these are not cheap mittens, and so I hustled him and Mark back to the school. We grabbed a door as someone was coming out just before it closed – the doors are locked for safety reasons – and as we waited for the kids to come out so we could go in, Mark leaned on the closed double door. The door snapped open with a child eager to get the funk out of school, smacking Mark directly in the face. Eeep! He had a huge lump on his forehead and has had a headache since then, but otherwise seems okay. I’m just happy it didn’t hit him in the nose, because it would have probably been broken. Small mercies, but with the help of Tylenol, an ice pack, and an episode of Seinfeld – which he currently professes to love – the swelling seemed to go down a bit.

Now, about this Seinfeld thing. I’ve seen every episode ever made, and I love that the kids are interested enough to watch with me. They think Kramer, Newman, and George are the funniest characters on TV – which they just might be. However, there are some adult themes (“It has come to my attention that you and the cleaning lady had sexual intercourse on your desk.”) that are slightly awkward, but the kids aren’t interested. Ew. If this is about sex, can you fast-forward? Yes. Yes I can.

bookfair

Happy weekend, everyone. I for one will be enjoying my wine, and also the new season of House of Cards! xo

Cash Cab, Here I Come.

Posted on by

I’m so glad there are so many of you on the same page as me, in the “ladies’ holidays” way. It makes me feel much less insane, although the word “peri-menopause” is coming up a wee bit more than I would like it to. As an aside, my grandma had some very helpful advice regarding alleviating those menopausal symptoms: a late-in-life pregnancy. Apparently, getting pregnant in your mid-to-late 40s is a guarantee that your menopausal symptoms will be minimal.

I feel like this advice isn’t really going to work for me.

In any case, I am having a much better week and I’m in the throes of excitement since bright and early tomorrow, I leave for The Big Smoke, for the Blissdom Canada conference. All indications point to this being a very enjoyable time, except maybe from the point of view of my husband and children. The children in particular have said several times how SAD they are going to be and how much they are going to MISS ME, and while I appreciate the sentiment, it’s not like I’m throwing them to the wolves. Jake offered me the remaining quarter of his strawberry Tic-Tacs, and Mark gave me a partially consumed package of Ice Breaker Sours, so I would have something to eat on the plane; this, along with my husband offering me his fancy noise-cancelling headphones, makes me feel like I’m travelling in style.

Although the boys are going to MISS ME SO MUCH, they are pretty excited about one aspect of me visiting Toronto: Cash Cab. The Cash Cab is in Toronto and I will need a taxi, therefore I could be on Cash Cab. I don’t have the heart to tell them that the likelihood of a taxi at the airport being the actual Cash Cab is very small, since exhausted travellers would probably not take well to being dropped off in the middle of the highway with all their luggage, in the event that they give three incorrect answers. Secretly (or not so secretly) I wish I could be on Cash Cab. I think I would totally rock it.

The boys seem to have inherited my love of game shows. During the Christmas holidays I love to watch The Price is Right with them, and not just because Christmastime seems to be the time for Firefighter’s Day. Much to the irritation of my husband, we like to watch Wheel of Fortune and, less often, Jeopardy. I have never told them that I once was on a game show: Spelling Bee. Anyone who grew up in Calgary in the 1980s might remember our beloved Ed Whalen hosting the game show for kids. Our team made it three rounds before we were cut, and I’ve always been a little disappointed we didn’t go all the way. I’m not sure, exactly, what we would have won had we become Spelling Bee champions, but I’m sure it would have been amazing.