Road Trip: Timelapse Audio

From the back seat : Rama Road to Hudson Avenue

Don't do that with your feet: it's bugging me. Stop it. Stop it! Move your arm! Arghhhh! (elbow, wiggle, smack). You're annoying me. That's my armrest! Mine! HE SCRATCHED ME! I can't hear the movie. Beeeeee quiet! Ouch! OWWWWchhhh. He's kicking me! (kick, wiggle, smack) You're hurting me! AM NOT! YOU ARE! You're bad!! No: I'm the goodest!! Can I have a treaaaaatt? Ya, can we have a treeeeaaatt? Please. PLEASE. Okay - Please can we have a treat? Yuck: not that treat. I want something else. Yup!- I can be good! Deal. I'll be good. Me too. The goodest.

(chocolate dipped soft serve ice cream pause)

Put your fist down! I can't ignore it: it's bugging me! He pinched my boo-boo! On purpose! IT WAS AN ACCIDENT! Was not (slap, wiggle, smack - smack - flurry of smacks). Move your head: it's on my side. Move it! Hey?! You're not supposed to have your penis out! 'I love my snowwwwboarrrrrrrddd: I love my skaaaattteeboard' -- I am not singing. It's not singing! 'I looovvvee (ow!) my snowwwbooarrrd (ow!!)'. I can't stop! It's my song! HE BIT ME! He did! Here are the marks! I never never never want Sam to come in my car again!! Never! And I never never never want Carter at my house again!! Ever!

Anabel's crying. She's annoying! ANA-BEL!! It's hurting my ears. Mine too! She's TOOOO loud! There. She's sleeping. Took a long time to stop crying. Did so! 15 minutes is a super long time! Okay: we'll be good. (whisper, whisper, smack). He's BUGGING me! Stop poking me! HEY!

{6.5 hours later}

What? We're home?

Can Sam come over now? Why not?!

I wanna go to Carterrrrrrr's!!

"Listen, All You Kids Out There ..."

Sam played his first game of “pick up” ball hockey on the driveway last weekend. He heard Lucas out in his back yard and, after hole-in-the-fence negotiations, they secured management approval for the historic game. Daddy helped them set up and suit up and agreed to officiate. Game on!

This player’s mom was in the kitchen for the duration—whipping up lasagne for a pre-playoff game dinner for eight—but the whoops and laughter drew her outside for a little second period action. Shot some candid ice-level moments, catching this great save by our future Vezina trophy winner. A casual stance, to be sure; but great net protection, eh? (squint: that's the orange puck bouncing off his red blade). Way to keep your stick on the ice, Sammers! Shut down what looked to be a dangerous rush.

Unfortunately, a few plays later, left-winger Lucas scrambled for a bouncing rebound and inadvertently slashed the goalie across the top of his Birkenstocks (the training choice of all flat-footed NHLers). While he suffered injury only to his sense of bare-toed entitlement, the goalie verbally retaliated. In fact, one might say he was Sidney Crosby-esque in his over-the-top reaction to minor provocation. Chalk it up to adrenaline, maybe, but he couldn’t let it go.

The referee gave him 2 minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct, but the now incensed goalie refused to head to the penalty box. He took it up a notch, threatening physical retaliation. That’s a game misconduct, Buster. Howling, pummelling protests at the injustice of this referee, who is clearly biased in favour of the visiting team! Ejection.

Took a while for the little hothead to calm down. When he finally recovered and issued public apologies for his behaviour, he also announced that maybe he wasn’t up for any more hockey playing that day. He and the sole member of the opposing team ran upstairs for the light sabers instead, and the two pretended to whack the crap out of each other until dinnertime.

Boys...

Raising a Reader

Let the record show that on May 8, 2007, Sam and I began reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Though he was born too late for this fantasy series to be the story of his generation, I can’t imagine another phenomenon like this one sweeping the world of Kiddie Lit in his lifetime. In 10 years, the 6 Harry Potter books have been translated into dozens of languages and have sold 375 million copies, making J.K. Rowling a billionaire. She’s closing out the series this July with a book that has so many pre-orders the first print run will be an unprecedented 25 million copies. Is she that good? Well, we’re hooked.

I began sharing books with Sam when he was but a foetus, and we started frequenting the library programs when he was 6 months old. While I’ve enjoyed the tiny board books and then Dr Seuss and then classic children’s fairy tales, I’ve been looking forward to working through longer plots with Sam. Harry Potter will be his fourth chapter book, after James and the Giant Peach, Charlotte’s Web (twice) and The Secret World of Og. These are all wonderful stories to fire the imagination of a young boy who’s not keen to give up completely on picture books (in fact, when I told him I’d be picking up Harry Potter this week, he asked “Who illustrated it?”).

Tellingly, though he was rapt with attention and full of questions through the first two chapters of this child wizard’s adventures, he later searched his shelves to find My First Big Book of Colours and asked me to read that as his “one more story” before bed. When I reminded him that there was no story, that it was just pages of pictures, Sam corrected me with direct quotations that are surely drawn from the deepest recesses of his memory. “Ask me ‘where’s the horsey hiding?’ Ask me ‘what do bees say?’ Ask me ‘is this your favourite fruit?’” So I did. I worked through the colours book just as I used to back when Sam listened with a soother in his mouth. He smiled the whole time.

And I think I understand now why he wouldn’t let me give his baby books to Anabel a few months ago. I’ll never forget his distraught look of panic at the sight of the stack by the front door and then his staunch determination as he hauled those long unread volumes back upstairs declaring, “I’m NOT finished with them!” I thought he was angry at me for failing to consult him before rifling through his belongings for give-aways. I didn’t realize then that his memories of reading with Mommy are attached to the books themselves, or that these simple and oh-so-familiar books might provide a comforting balance to the new and intricate tales we’re exploring now. I’m happy to mix Harry and horseys for Sam. Happy that he loves his books.

Gather Ye Rosebuds

While I puttered among the shady greenery of my flower gardens on Sunday afternoon, Sam played “Beach,” a game that consisted of periodically moving his new Power Rangers towel around the lawn and then curling up on it like a contented cat to bask in the sunshine. I snapped a quick pic from the deck, catching my beautiful potted plant in the frame. My heart smiles at both elements of the picture: at Sam’s cuddly adoration of that beach towel, and at the sight of our backyard filling with colourful life as spring warms to summer. And I silently thank my sisters again for these thoughtful gifts to mark Sam’s 4th and my 40th birthday celebrations. They’re perfect.

I’d been busy all day, moving among the pleasant tasks and appointments of garden shopping, brunch with friends, walking the dog and the like. Sam had cheerily accompanied me through it all. But after viewing this snapshot in the digital camera preview screen late in the afternoon, I put aside the last of my yard work plans and crawled up alongside my son to enjoy some rest on the beach. Sam was thrilled to point out the imaginary lapping waves and circling gulls for me, and I pointed out for him the burgeoning tulips and spreading ground cover. Together, we gained a heightened appreciation of the magic of our own backyard. Did I stop to smell the roses? Damned straight. Forty year olds have these things figured out. (thanks, Sisty Uglers, and thank you, too, Sam I Am) ...

Measuring out his Life in Pancake Bites

Sam loves Elgin Street Diner pancakes. With the possible exception of beef & bean tacos, I can’t think of anything he consumes with more gusto or hearty appetite than the plate-sized flapjacks they serve up at our favourite breakfast spot. My own recipe isn’t a satisfying substitute for the diner’s thin, hint-of-vanilla, griddle hot treats—but then I haven’t tried that hard to imitate greatness. The pancakes are only part of Elgin Street’s Saturday morning charms. Sam loves it all: spotting the façade from the street while we’re parking; the self-conscious pleasure of walking alongside the crowded booths as we’re led to our table; the moot moment of deciding what to order before shyly requesting “pancakes and chock-lit milk please.”

He and I went on our own this past Saturday (Daddy is in Vegas on a “holli-trip,” as Sam has termed an absence that isn’t a business trip but also can’t be a holiday, obviously, since it doesn’t include him). As per tradition, we crayoned in the figures on the kids’ menu, Sam asking for the umpteenth time why it features a pig and a chicken (making me explain once again the origins of bacon and eggs: and if you think the pork convo is awkward, try explaining why a chicken squeezes out breakfast food!). With an anxious eye out for the arrival of pancake goodness, Sam strikes and re-strikes deals with himself about how much chocolate milk he’ll drink before his meal arrives. Same as it ever was.

But just as I’m thinking that this is a deja vu repeat of every diner visit we’ve ever enjoyed, I spot a toddler in the next booth peaking mischievously over the barrier. And I suddenly realize that I can’t remember the last time I had to give Sam the “bum down” reminder to sit while he eats. When did he stop standing up on his seat? Stop soliciting the smiles of strangers with his sticky grin? Stop trying to crawl under the table to see if anyone had dropped anything interesting and gummy? He was sitting there across from me, just chatting and colouring and waiting for breakfast.

While it was certainly strange for Jeremy and I to frequent this diner during my pregnancy and then in the early months of our baby’s life because the place had historically been associated with a raucous 2 a.m. pit-stop for poutine on the way home from the clubs up the street, I must admit that the chasm between Sam’s babyhood and his pre-schooler status sometimes gapes wider than that first rift. Another example, I suppose, of how ‘the years tell much of what the days never know.’

But then we cross Elgin to spend an hour or so in St Luke’s Park (the “Second Cup” park, as we termed it when Tracey used to drop Carter there with me & Sam on her way to work years ago). It was the first visit of the new season and Sam took an excited tour of the almost forgotten play structures, bravely trying the rock wall and checking to see if he was tall enough yet to survey the sights through the railing-mounted spy scope (yes!). All the while, he narrated his discoveries to me, pretending that he was a wizard and that he had built this castle for himself. As he rattled off its features, he paused for a long moment at a series of staggered Frisbee-style steps that ascend straight up to the second level and have always spooked him in the past. Then he turned, in character, to explain bewilderingly, “I don’t know WHY I built these in my castle. I can’t even use them!” before dashing for the safer staircase.

Baby steps, my little wizard. You’ll be scaling those heights this summer, I’m sure. And you’ll probably be cutting your own pancakes, too.

Stuck on Band-Aid

That’s Sam exhibiting his IN-JUR-RIES for the camera. While his bare chest, belligerent pout and gang sign gesture portray him as the neighbourhood toughie, make no mistake: those Dora the Explorer band-aids mask the minor scratches of everyday life as a sensitive preschooler.

Sam’s just stuck on band-aids.

He used to be a little wary of the whole bandaging procedure and would sooner hide an ouchie than have it examined and treated. To add interest to the First Aid kit, we stocked band-aids of assorted shapes, sizes and designs—Dora, Spiderman, Incredibles, Batman, Curious George, Pirate patches. He wasn’t interested. Each tearful conversation about the latest mishap would end abruptly with my offer to band-aid the boo-boo: “No thank you. It doesn’t hurt that much.” And off he'd go.

Then this spring sprung and suddenly everything hurts that much. Sam’s been sporting multiple band-aids for weeks, a superhero convention drawn across his knuckles and the tops of his feet. The comic relief is ironic, given the high drama of each event. Sam no longer uses the usual vocabulary of minor injury, for these aren’t simply “cuts,” “scrapes” and “scratches.” Rather, he comes flying in from the backyard with the blood-curdling announcement: “MY SKIN is OPEN! You can SEE RIGHT INSIDE!” He often defines the barely-there red line of a light scratch as “blood” and argues that even the mere impression of a zipper trail pressed into his flesh requires bandaging.

And he puts on quite a convincing show while we wash up and inspect the site of alleged injury: he’s all splashy tears, stamping feet, bugged out eyes, and sucking intake of pained breath. Then, like the little addict he is, he visibly relaxes at the sight of the band-aid box, cheers at the offer to choose his next one, and skips back to play with a fresh badge of this new playground honour. That’s the end of it, for the most part.

Last week, though, a barbed thorn found its way through his Sens jersey and had to be plucked from his chest with tweezers. You’d have thought we suggested open-heart surgery, so frantic was he at the sight of the surgical instruments. After the procedure, he stuck his hand up under his shirt to hold it protectively over that hard-won skull & crossbones band-aid. And he kept his hand there for 3 days. Seriously. We called him Napoleon (how could we not?) and shot a short movie of him awkwardly going about his business as a one-armed boy. "I can't use my other hand now," he'd explain, refusing to carry his dinner plate or fumbling with the clicker...

Eventually, I convinced him that he might need that tucked-in hand to break the fall of a serious stumble, and it's possible he tested that theory at school the next day as he came home with two Elastoplast bandages across the base of his palm, bringing the left-hand total up to 4. So pleased was he with this tally that I’m half watchful now for signs of self-injury and am a tad concerned that last night he dreamt that Carter’s penis came off in the tub and flushed away down the drain and so he needed a BIG band-aid. He spoke rather matter-of-factly about the penis loss and focused enviously on the glorious band-aid reward. Now THAT would be some band-aid… (dream analysis? that's for another post!)