Category Archives: Fleeting Time

T-9 to the Big K

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I have been fielding the following two questions of late: 1) Aren’t you SAD that your BABY is starting kindergarten?, and 2) Can you BELIEVE your BABY is in kindergarten?

Now first, I am not sad that Jake is starting kindergarten. In fact, I’m a bit worried that I’m not sad that Jake is starting kindergarten. I’m emotional about everything, so I don’t understand why I’m not more emotional about this. I was more emotional about a salesgirl telling me recently that grey washes me out; my drawers full of cozy grey sweaters are making me feel suddenly pallid and nostalgic. What is wrong with me? Am I broken? I wonder if I’m repressing something and that I’m going to end up one of those mothers curled up in the corner by the sandtable on the first day of school, sobbing. I HOPE not. In fact, my general feeling about school starting in one week Thursday is squee! The kids are going back to school! I’m going to miss them, certainly, the house is going to feel empty, but I am really looking forward to getting back into the routine.

One thing I’m also really looking forward to? Solo grocery shopping. I’m getting kind of tired of herding them through the aisles, remonstrating with them not to run and then scolding them for running and, inevitably, knocking into one of the more grumpy and elderly members of our community who will subsequently make a sour remark about my ill-behaved hooligans. The other day the boys spent an afternoon at my mother’s and I took the opportunity to go to Superstore. I felt so glamourous, like I was this fabulous woman of the world, strolling through the cereal aisle and blocking out the shrieking of children being pushed in carts by haggard looking mothers.

One thing I’m not looking forward to? The inevitable onslaught of illnesses. Hoo boy, just thinking about all the squeamy germs just made me shudder like the Howard Hughes I am. Also, I am not looking forward to the certain exhaustion and subsequent crabbiness of children going back to school.

And yes, it is hard to believe that Jake is going to kindergarten. Frankly, it’s hard to believe the summer is over, so YES, time flies, the cat’s in the cradle, pages are flying off the cartoon calendar, etc., etc. Mostly I feel excited and happy, but I’ll keep you posted if I find myself weeping, in the fetal position, snuggling with one of his newborn sleepers. It could happen.

Joy is an Inside Job

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I heard that quote the other day and it made me smile. Happiness, despite current thought, is not some gift-wrapped package we can open after following the lead of that Eat, Pray, Love woman. It isn’t something we can depend on other people for, although other people can certainly add to our happiness. I read this article, which is all about the happiness, or otherwise, of parents. According to a number of studies, parents are much less happy than non-parents, indicating that having children has a statistically significant negative impact on one’s happiness.

I read that, and the little statistician that lives deep inside my heart refilled the lead in her mechanical pencil and sighed. Studies like this irritate me, and not just because of the implication that birthing and raising children is – surprise! – not all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. They irritate me because happiness is subjective. How does one measure happiness? On a scale from one to ten? Or are there numbers assigned to certain categories – Very Happy, Somewhat Happy, Neither Happy nor Unhappy, etc. How do you compare “happiness” among populations? It’s not like measuring your BMI or income, it’s a subjective factor that is skewed depending on the day.

I do, however, feel sympathy for people who feel they are much less happy than prior to having children. I’m not one of them, but I do understand how the drudgery of day to day life can overwhelm a person; the never ending laundry, the mess and chaos. The sheer number of hours a week I spend procuring food, preparing food, and cleaning up the kitchen is astounding. Nonetheless, I am much, much happier than prior to having kids. Of course, my pre-kid life consisted of days at which I would leave for the office at 6:30 in the morning and return home at 7 or 8 at night, spending my days at a desk in a stressful environment in which I would frequently hide in the bathroom to cry. The highlight of my week would be ordering #15 at Vietnamese Village and my dreams would be all about spreadsheets. If I had to do that now, in addition to having children, you can bet that I too would be much less happy. If my evenings were spent frantically picking up the kids and getting dinner on the table and trying, desperately, to spend some Quality Time with them before putting them to bed and starting all over again the next day, I would be a wreck.

A few days ago, I was in a waiting room with Jake. He sat on my lap, colouring a picture of a police dog while talking about elephants. Across the room was a woman with a baby, probably 6 or 7 months old. I couldn’t take my eyes off the baby, who was wiggling and flapping her arms and happily kicking her feet. She played with her mother’s purse strap, she pulled on it and chewed it and smiled a giant, gummy smile. When my boys were very small, I did miss things from my pre-kid life, notably the glamourous things like wearing nice clothes and high heels, having pricey lunches on my expense account, and using the bathroom without having a screaming, sobbing child at my feet. But the time goes so fast. It did not feel like that long ago that Jake was a wiggling, flapping baby on my tired lap, and now he sat on my lap with his feet reaching the middle of my calves, his head bumping my chin. I understand exhaustion and the frantic tedium of life with small children, but it really does go by so fast. I wanted to tell those unhappy mothers that maybe, just maybe, it’s a matter of time.

How did these guys



turn into these guys so quickly?

Just to clarify…

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I feel like I should apologize, somewhat, about my kids not tantruming anymore. To be honest, they were never huge tantrumers; they were more like constant negotiators, or sulkers, or providers of long streams of very annoying complaints. It’s always something, though, isn’t it?

This week, marking the last week of school, has been particularly trying. Evidently Mark’s life is OVER. He is very sad to be leaving kindergarten, and, in particular, to be leaving his very lovely kindergarten teacher. He is spontaneously-burst-into-tears sad. He’s clever, that boy, he realizes that once he leaves kindergarten, the party is over. It’s all business from here on in.

Last summer I made lists of plans of things to do and marked them in my calendar in a nice, structured, “and at 11:00 we will have fun” kind of way. This year I have much less structure in mind but a whole lot of fun things to do, so hopefully Mark’s sadness will be left at the school’s Sports Day on Friday.

Sometimes I look at pictures from before we had kids and I think how young I look in them. I think that I must have rapidly aged, then I remember that my oldest is now six and heading for Grade One and it’s not rapid aging per se, it’s just that time is going fast and I’m getting older. Here we are at the beginning of summer, with the long, long days just ready to be filled. When I was out shopping the other day, I observed countless young mothers, pushing strollers and carrying babies in Bjorns, and doling out sippy cups and snacks to toddlers while simultaneously feeding babies, and I remembered exactly what that was like. I remembered the days that just dragged, where I scheduled something for each day, an outing to the mall here, meeting a friend for coffee there, because I badly needed something, anything, to fill my days. Now the days fly by and I feel like there is not enough time, not enough hours in the day to do what I want to do, the kids are up and dressed and the next thing I know it’s time to start bedtime rituals. My children are heading to kindergarten and Grade One in the fall, and I want to say I don’t know where the time went, but I do know. It was scheduled, and tedious, and filled with child-maintenance activities, and now it’s summer and I want to fill it with happiness and good memories, and be a fun mother to my rapidly aging boys.
October 2005.

June 2010

Fishing, but not camping.

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Another May long weekend has come and gone, bringing with it the chilly temperatures and rain typical of May long, and in Alberta, an alcohol ban in campgrounds around the province, all of which I’m sure made for some unhappy campers. It didn’t affect me though as I am decidedly not a camper. I am not of hardy camping stock. I love the outdoors but I greatly prefer sleeping comfortably within doors, as well as hot, non-coin-operated showers and the ability to apply makeup without being mocked for wearing makeup while camping.

Instead of camping I spent a very large portion of the weekend playing Go Fish. I was running errands and saw a pack of alphabet themed Go Fish cards, and thought, “Go Fish! That will be fun!”, which subsequently circumscribed my weekend. I’m not really complaining though, Go Fish is greatly preferable to the usual endless and arbitrarily ruled games of Bakugan, or the disturbing, circle-of-life games in which I am cast as the peaceful, plant-eating dinosaur who is being stalked and, eventually, killed by the vicious meat-eater.

I know a few parents who avoid spending time with their children, who view family time as some sort of unreasonable sentence and their children an annoying inconvenience. Such children inevitably become horrible little bastards who no one wants to be around which is somewhat circular. And this is so sad because one of the greatest joys of being a parent is creating someone who you can enjoy and want to be with, after all, the days of Go Fish and endless, tedious games of Bakugan and dinosaurs are fleeting indeed.

Advice and judgement

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A few months ago, Catherine Newman ran a contest in which entrants were supposed to share the best piece of parenting advice they had received. Someone wrote that, with respect to infants, it was okay to sometimes feel like throwing the baby out of the window, as long as you don’t actually do it.

A number of years ago there was a particularly horrific local incident involving a young mother – a university student from Japan – who killed her two young children. I was discussing the case with a colleague, an extremely kind and gentle man, a devout church-going family man with a penchant for corny jokes. As we discussed the tragedy, he related that when his eldest was a colicky baby, he and his wife were often at their wits’ end, and that sometimes he felt like throwing her out the window.

This revelation shocked and outraged me, a sheltered, pampered, twenty-five year old non-parent. I couldn’t believe a parent would feel like that about their own child. I couldn’t believe that someone could feel that way and still be a loving, effective parent.

Fast forward several years when I was at home, alone, with a toddler who was not yet two and a colicky, sleepless infant. Sometimes my baby would scream, uninterrupted, for hours regardless of my efforts to feed, rock, and soothe him. Hours. I recall one incident when he cried for five straight hours before exhausting himself, as I walked the floor with him, singing and patting and attempting to feed him, all the while caring for my young toddler, by myself, while my husband was working long hours at the office. I understood completely. I felt like throwing the baby out the window, grabbing the car keys, and making a break for it.

I love my children like any mother does, an all-encompassing love, my greatest fear is that something will happen to them, and yet in the moment, I felt like giving up. I felt that way, me with my loving husband and parents in town and supportive friends, me with no worries about paying rent or putting food on the table, privileged, lucky me. If I could feel that way, how much worse would someone feel who was not fluent in the local language, someone with a deadbeat boyfriend and two young children to care for, someone with no friends and little money.

Perhaps some people will be shocked and outraged and think that I am a monster, but perhaps some will recall moments when they felt they were at the breaking point, and how easy it is to become perilously close to a tragic result. It’s the easiest thing in the world to pass judgement.

Girls! Gone! Wild!

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Today is a full moon and I follow with yogic tradition to not practice but take rest on moon days, which means that I slept a full hour and a half later than normal. Pure luxury! Since it is Spring! Break! and we had nowhere in particular to be today, I fulfilled my dream of leisurely coffee drinking; sipping eight – eight! – cups while watching Breakfast Television, or what I like to refer to ironically and with air quotes as “the news”.

Digression: while in university I was friends with a girl who referred to Entertainment Tonight as “the news”.

Speaking of Entertainment Tonight masquerading as the news, remember the OJ Simpson trial? I…don’t really, at the time I was much too absorbed in the fascinating dual worlds of the history of economic thought and step aerobics to pay much attention to it, but I do remember that beach bum houseguest Kato Kaelin, in all his dimwitted glory. I was startled to discover, many years later, the numerous careers that were launched due to a grisly murder trial. For example, Star Jones?

Digression to digression: how strange is it that OJ was acquitted at that time, yet the vast majority of the general population believes him to be a grisly murderer?

Wow, how did I get there? Eight cups of coffee is too much, people, especially when coupled with ninety extra minutes of sleep.

So, spring break good news and bad news.

Good news: The zoo was fantastic yesterday, we had an incredible day. It was the kind of day that I don’t trust myself to talk to people because I would surely boast about my amazing kids and their fantastic personalities and how wonderful they are. I even said to my husband that I felt sorry for him that he is not the stay at home parent.

Bad news: Karma. Today the boys have been fidgety, quarrelsome, and moody. They are DRIVING ME CRAZY. Crazier than normal.

Good news: We made caterpillars out of egg cartons!

Bad news: The groomer was sick and Barkley still stinks.

Good news: The weather was decent enough to send Mark outside to play, which improved his mood immensely. I watched him run around the yard with several garden implements, pretending to shoot and destroy various imaginary aliens.

Bad news: He accidentally hit himself in the head with a garden implement and had to come inside, where he and Jake played for all of five minutes before the game dissolved into an angry argument.

Good news: I baked a yummy looking loaf of bread and a banana loaf.

Bad news: I am not enjoying playing endless games of dinosaurs and killings that the boys are requesting of me, but yet I am acutely aware that they will not want to play with their mother much longer. Melancholy.

Good news: We still have seven days left of spring break, and it is a full moon, and I am focusing all my positive energy on tomorrow; tomorrow is another day.

Good news: We are having a great time!

Bad news: You can’t tell from the picture that this is a parasauralophus.

Time keeps on slipping

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It’s been a big week over here at Girl in a Boy House headquarters. Mark started swimming lessons at school, and it has been great. He loves it. I will admit right now that I fretted a lot – privately – about school swimming lessons, although that may be partly due to the waiver that the school sent home. Evidently DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT, and INJURY are lurking everywhere, from the ½ block walk to the pool to the actual swimming lessons themselves. Of course, the same exact waiver was sent home when the kindergarten walked the ½ block to the library. “I absolve the school of blame for death, dismemberment, or injury from possible slipping on the ice/ crossing the street/ bleeding to death from a paper cut in the children’s book section”. I know they have to cover their bases but really. This does not help if you happen to be a nervous sort with a not-so-little phobia about public swimming pools and their change rooms. You might be thinking that I should probably tone down the crazy just a little, and you would be right.

So anyway, Mark is having a great time, swimming with his friends and reportedly doing just fine in the change room, unlike his crazy mother. The first time I enrolled him in swimming lessons, he was three years old and I ended up withdrawing him after two sessions because I just couldn’t take the crying any more. I also couldn’t take the other mothers, whose children were splashing and singing happily, who kept advising me to “just put him back in the pool, or he’ll never get used to it.” After withdrawing him, I fretted and worried and was convinced that I just contributed to a lifelong fear of water and that he would never learn to swim. I enrolled him again when he was almost five and he loved it, and he is learning to swim.

Is it me, or is our society programmed to start children in sports and activities too early? A friend was telling me about parents leaving their sobbing children on the hockey rink for an hour, refusing to take them off, because that would encourage a quitter’s attitude. These children were three and four years old. As my friend said, “Is that any way to introduce a child to a sport?” I vehemently spoke against starting a U4 soccer league in our community, for two reasons: a) we are constantly short of volunteers and a U4 league would require a high adult-to-child ratio, and b) if you want your three and four year olds to run rampant around a soccer field, surely you can do so in a non-organized way. I was reading that Olympian Chandra Crawford started cross-country skiing at age one, essentially as soon as she could walk. Well, I’m not too worried about quashing my children’s Olympic dreams; they are much more likely to be mathletes than professional athletes.

The other big event this week was that I registered Jake for kindergarten. Let’s all just sit silently for a minute to absorb that information. I recall Jake as an infant in the Baby Bjorn, where he lived for months, as I chased around his not-yet-two-year-old brother. I think about the cumbersome double stroller, the myriad diapers and gargantuan diaper bag, the way I frequently envied mothers of school aged children. There’s no need to make children do things before they are ready, because the time speeds by so swiftly, even when it seems to be crawling. That period of my life that seemed interminable at times is now rapidly ending.