Post 100

One hundred Sam stories in the archives. Wow. That makes me happy.

I no longer rue the fact that I didn’t start recording my impressions sooner, that I missed getting down the details of infancy and toddlerhood, so busy was I — what, with an infant and then a toddler on my hands. And there’s something nicely literary in starting this epic with Chapter 4 (years old), something satisfying in filling in the back story in brief glimpses as we follow our hero into his fifth and sixth years. Besides, everyone knows that doubling back to focus on those early chapters only disappoints an audience hooked on the middle part of the tale. Just look at the Star Wars series. So I’ll continue to indulge the odd flashback when the mood strikes, but I won’t continue to regret the missing portions and wonder what post I'd be on today if I'd created the blog the very first time I uttered the words "I should be writing this down."

I can forgive myself the long delay because I see how even 100 stories doesn’t do it, even 100 stories doesn't begin to convey who Sam is and what he means to us. I can’t believe the breadth and depth and detail of what I haven’t got to yet, of what came and went with no acknowledgement in I Have a Word for You. Sam played eight weeks of soccer this summer, and Jeremy coached his team (for crying out loud!). How could I not have written about that? Seriously. That’s blog-worthy.

Another case in point: Just five minutes after I started this post, Sam burst through the front door with a colourful Kung-Fu Panda stylized karate certificate declaring “Sam Arnold, You Are Great!” He puffed his chest out proudly, explaining “I had the loudest HUSSAH! and KEE-YI! in the whole class!” He graduated out of the Little Dragon program this summer and into the White Belt class, and he’s just starting to get his bearings there among the bigger kids and the new-to-the-sport grown-ups. Have I mentioned karate since he joined a year ago? I don’t think I have. It's a constant in the background of our lives, but the blog doesn't capture that. Well, except just now.

But, really, it’s the tiny moments that are hard to get down while fresh. Like Sam under the breakfast table hoping to pull off some sleight of hand and instructing Jeremy and I, by way of diversion, “don’t look over here: look at your chuther.” Your chuther. That’s funny. And yesterday morning he tried a new phrase on for size, telling me that, according to his standards, his knee didn’t feel so good. Only he said “according to my stempers,” mumbling the word he wasn’t so sure of. We were taking Huddie on his morning walk, and I squeezed Sam’s hand tight, so happy was I to catch the little vocabulary leap in person.

These are just the things I remember several days after the fact. There are so many more fleeting moments that I want to file away here for sharing with friends and family now, for smiling over later, for Sam’s benefit in the long run—a full record of how much he’s loved, how often he delights us. But those moments happen when I’m with my little boy, and I’d ruin them by fumbling for a pen and a scrap of paper. I know that. I’m content with what I have captured, and I’m already enjoying revisiting last year’s posts and imagining how an older Sam will respond to some of these tales. Already so many things have changed. The band-aid fascination of Spring 2007? Over. We’d likely have forgotten his brief addiction if not for this blog.

So I think I'll try to sit down here a little more often and sketch a short note when I don't have the time to craft a longer story. In fact, I’ll start with this photo. That’s a shot of Sam taken the day he figured out how to spider up the inside of the kitchen doorframe. Jeremy’s laughing in the background because he remembers doing just the same thing in his own kitchen doorway decades ago, and he loves the feeling of seeing his childhood self reflected in his exuberant little boy. And I love watching Jeremy love Sammy.

Enough said.

66 Days

Back in June, Sam was gobsmacked to learn that he had sixty-six days of summer vacation stretching out before him — that he’d be staying home to play or going to Carter & Anabel’s nearly every single day of July and August. Instead of logging long weeks in the child care centre, he’d pop in on Thursdays to partake of a field trip, a swim at the community pool or some other special event. I’m sure it was hard for him to fathom: Sam’s been spending close to 50 hours a week at Carleton Heights since he was three and a half. But this summer, there’s Arlene.

Arlene is Tracey’s live-in nanny, caregiver to her kids since last September and key to Sam’s summer break. Twice a week, she and the kids have been coming over to spend the day in our backyard, and twice a week we’ve been dropping Sam to spend the day in the parks near Tracey’s. The boys usually disappear into some imaginary pirate world, surfacing only for food. So most days it’s been a relief rather than a burden to her (I hope) to have Sam around to occupy Carter while she keeps up with the mischevious Anabel. Other days? Well, yes, there have been a some squabbles—but nothing so serious that the separated “brothers” aren’t begging to be reunited within 20 minutes.

This has been a summer in the sandbox, on the swing, in the “woods” and out in the parks. A summer of fresh-cooked lunches at the kitchen table instead of cold packed lunches in Room 5. A summer of waking up late and staying in jammies if that’s what Sam wants — no hurry up and where are your shoes and grab your knapsack, we gotta get going. A summer when “gross motor play,” and “drama time,” and “reading readiness,” and “tactile activity” aren’t predetermined by ECE staff, but rather unfold naturally in the simple course of solving a playground mystery.

Those are the summer breaks Jeremy and I remember, and we’re so happy Sam had a chance to experience the spontaneity, the self-direction, and the focused laziness of it all. It’ll be tough for him to re-adjust to the long, structured days at school, I’m sure. And we’ll have to skew his bedtime back towards 8:00, now that sleep-ins or sleepy days aren’t an option. Toughest of all, Sam’ll miss Carter when their play time is cut back to routine Saturdays and one, maybe two, short evenings during the week. But a summer break enjoyed makes all that “back to school” stuff worth it.

60 days down. 6 to go. Have fun, Bunny.

P's & Q's

I came across this drawing when sorting through Sam’s craft drawer this week. It dates back to the fall of 2005, when he was two and a half years old. We used to sit colouring together, and I’d slip in little lessons where I could. “Do you want me to draw a circle? Do you remember what a triangle looks like? These are stripes, and these are polka dots.” The colourful patterns of the world sketched across the palm of my hand. The page filled me with nostalgia. For those stay-at-home mom days, yes — but also for the sheer simplicity of my concerns when raising a toddler. It seemed important then that Sam knew his crescents from his half-circles.

I’m struck by the irony of having so much less time with Sam now, when the scope and import of what’s left to teach him has multiplied exponentially. He’s bound to learn the geometry in school; it’s the basic rules of social living that have to come from his working parents. But when? How do we squeeze in pointers on table manners, when dinner conversation is all we get in a day? How do we stress the value of good sportsmanship, when he loses the first game of Trouble we've sat down for in months? It pains us to have to pepper our quality time with lectures and rules, with coaching and correcting. Is it that important that he minds his P's and Q's?

Yes. Yes it is. I've had it up to here, I tell ya, with the casual “yup” in place of “yes, please” when I offer a snack, the impatient “wha-at?” shouted from his bedroom when I call him for dinner, the petulant slouch at the table once he’s declared that the food is yucky, and the dramatic "oh brother!" eye-rolling in response to being called out on any of this. Worse, he’s taken to offering his own snotty Miss Manners pointers when the opportunity arises: “You just interupted me!” he retorts, when I can’t bear his affected “Could I have. .. could I have …. could I have…” stammer another instant before breaking in and suggesting Mini Wheats as a fine breakfast option. Did I ever correct my mother’s manners? Oh, I think not.

Polite language and behaviour is only partly about courtesy and tactfulness. It's also tied to respect and appreciation — for property, for other people's kindness, efforts, experience ... a whole range of things it'll take a while to teach. There’s a lot more to it than knee-jerk please and thank yous (though we’re admittedly not at reflex levels there yet either). I'm happy that Sam says “pardon me?” when he doesn’t catch a question, that he asks to be excused from the table, rather than coming and going as he pleases throughout the meal. And I have seen a heightened appreciation for people’s unexpected generosity. When the neighbours up the street offered him some Spiderman fruit chews last week, he commented on it repeatedly: “That was so nice. So nice of them to give me this treat.”

But we have a long way to go when it comes both to practising social niceities in an increasingly rude world and to developing the more crucial character traits that are telltale signs of a child well raised. He’s only five, of course. Some would say there’s plenty of time yet before he's in danger of being labelled a rude brat. But it seems I traced my hand for little Sammy just yesterday, filling it with rainbows, stars and happy faces. It’s high time now to take him firmly in hand and show him how to spread a little of that in the real world. Oh, he'll likely roll his eyes at me for a while, but mark my words! He'll learn to do that when I'm not looking...

Bonne Time

And just like that, we are a camping family. We camp. In campgrounds. We get up with the sun, we cook delicious picnic meals over a charcoal bbq and a Coleman stove, we make friends with the forest critters (but don’t feed them), we explore dark pathways by flashlight, we fall into exhausted sleeping-bag sleep shortly after night fall. The three of us spent a beautiful long weekend in Bonnechere Provincial Park, and we’ll do it again. In fact, we’ve already scoped out our favourite sites—close to the comfort station, the beach, the water supply, the additional vehicle parking. Close, but not too close: forest and river in the foreground and amenities just out of sight. Perfect.

I don’t remember much about the planning and the packing and the set-up and the tear-down and the busyness of the this-and-that when thinking back to the summer camping trips of my childhood. Mom and Dad somehow managed all that without catching our notice, calling us in from sandcastles and air mattresses, from card games and random play when it was time to eat or sleep or climb back in the car. I’m not sure how they pulled it off, to be honest. Perhaps they had the routine down pat by the time I was old enough to form memories of our trips to Kilbear, Balsalm Lake and, later, Sable Beach. Or perhaps we didn’t hover at their elbows asking if it was time yet to head to the beach, finally giving up and throwing a casual “meet you there!” over our shoulders as we sauntered down a woodland path at 8:30 in the morning.

More likely it was the “we” that made the difference. Camping takes constant effort, but it’s not just keeping the site ordered and the meals coming; it’s keeping up with the Tasmanian Devil-like energy that bursts forth from an only child. Siblings spin towards one another, each bearing the brunt of the other’s “play with me” force. An excited only child on a camping trip — and a five-year-old boy, to boot — is practically unstoppable. We’d been parked at site 63 for all of two minutes when Sam finished his preliminary inspection and declared, “Yup! These are the right kind of woods! Who’s coming on a ninja hunt with me?” It was tough, but we held him off for long enough to throw up the dining tent in case of rain before tramping through the forest behind him, buying into each improbable sighting of Japanese feudal-era warrior spies in the foliage.

And so it carried on through the weekend. In and out of the cool (okay, cold) water, swimming out to “rescue” the buoys that mark the swim area, Sam riding on our backs for a good deal of the way. Over and back to the playground boat structures, playing Elizabeth and Gibbs to his Will Turner in an ongoing re-enactment of The Pirates of the Caribbean. Following a few strides behind as he scampers along the dark camp road tracking two different kinds of ghosts: the see-through kind and the ones with skeletons showing through their skin. Incidentally, they both leave shiny tracks that resemble bits of granite mixed in pavement.

That’s not to say Sam didn’t find shoreline playmates. He did. I loved watching him walk up to a little boy or girl playing near his or her parents and ask “How old are you?” before swapping names and agreeing to the terms of a game. Their age never actually mattered. He played as happily with two-and-a-half-year-old Janelle as he did with four-and-a-half-year-old Jake. Those interludes would seem to offer up a parent-play break, but instead they required a different kind of attention: overseeing the play from the sidelines, exchanging small-talk and knowing smiles with the other set of parents. We did manage to read maybe a chapter of our novels, but there simply ain’t no “put your feet up and relax” vacations at this stage of the parenting game. We were good and wiped when we got home!

Even still, it was really great to feel the full weekend as it unfolded—to let whim, inclination and appetite direct our movements—rather than to schedule as much as possible into those short days, planning for the moments when Sam would get our time and attention. He felt the difference right away. Snuggling in between us on Friday night, he sighed “What a great day!” and gave us both multiple “Good night, I love you” kisses, adding “you’re the best dad in the world.” Jeremy had gone for the firewood to make the s’mores. That was the title clincher, I’ll bet. In any event, I like to think that despite his privileged perspective from the centre of the universe (the rightful place of all small children), Sam appreciated our efforts to make this a fun family getaway, to indulge his existing interests and introduce him to new experiences.

Myself, I can't wait till next year.

Knight in Shining Tupperware

Rummaging through the kitchen cabinets one morning a few years back, Sam pulled out a pair of black plastic mixing bowls and stuck one on his head. That was the last day those mixing bowls lived in the kitchen. Right then and there, they became essential pieces of a makeshift knight costume that Sam (and Cargo) wore around the apartment for months. He’d have gone to the park wearing the black mixing bowl if I’d let him, but a sunhat seemed a better idea on a hot day.

The bowl-turned-helmet was always pulled low over his eyes in an attempt to achieve the look Shrek sports while rescuing Princess Fiona from the highest room in the tallest tower. Of course, this tactic made it rather difficult for Sam to see where he was going, so eventually I had to coax that length of metal dowel (where did that come from?) out of his hands in favour of the relatively harmless yard stick. From the kitchen, I often heard the sounds of helmet and sword bouncing off the walls, the radiator, the fireplace, the dining room table, the computer desk. Sir Sam’s valiant quests were tough on the décor, though he seemed to weather them well.

These days, Sam has an old steam trunk overflowing with costumes. A lot of it is cool head gear: pirate skull caps, a fireman helmet, a construction worker’s hard hat, scary masks, a sombrero, hooded robes—even a knight’s helmet (and visor!) complete with a matching breast plate, cape and sword. But I’m pretty sure that years from now, when I recall how much Sam liked to dress up in costumes to play as a child, the image that’ll first spring to mind is that of two-year-old boy with a mixing bowl on his head charging through an imaginary world and running headlong into the solid one.

A Little Piece of Navan

I’m always surprised by how quickly we find ourselves ‘in the middle of nowhere’ when we head off in search of some rural destination or another. Two quick rights from Tracey’s driveway and we’re soon skirting the boundaries of farm fields, marshes and forests—the cityscape fast disappearing in the rearview mirror. Ten minutes into the trip and we’ve slipped back in time to enjoy a little tour of pre-industrial Canada. Because once you’ve swung onto Leitrim Road and passed the community centre and the Canadian Forces station, there’s no there there. It’s countryside plain and simple, and it’s lovely.

Entering the nearby town of Navan last Saturday did little to destroy the time-travelling flavour of the drive. The welcome sign is carved in wood and proudly proclaims that the town was the site of the astounding “Fifty horse hitch.” Fifty horses on a single hitch, their lead reins nearly 170 feet long, were paraded down the quaint main street and into the world record books. In this very town. As we made our way towards the fair grounds, promising the boys that the heavy odour of fresh hay and fresher manure would subside, I realized that the past we had entered was my own.

This is Erin, circa 1982. The same small Irish village turning itself inside out to host a weekend fair, the same three long-time Lion’s Club members working the ticket booth, the same muddy assortment of John Deere and Massey Ferguson tractors lined up behind the agricultural buildings, the same cheesy glitz and laughter on the midway. Tracey felt it too, as she heaved Anabel’s stroller across the rough muddy tracks left by a horse trailer, jokingly calling the boys “city kids” as they screwed up their faces in disgust at having to pick around the ‘road apples.’ It’s a familiar scene to a pair of small town girls, but their children don’t know from rural fairs. We need to get them out of Centretown more often.

We let the boys have the run of the midway for an hour or so, following them from ferris wheel, to giant slide, to pirate den, to house of mirrors, to spinning strawberries. Carter even braved the Dragon Wagon rollercoaster, while Sam staunchly defended his right to sit out. They watched in slack-jawed awe as the big kids screeched their way through the startling drop zone ride, the speedy polar express, the gravity-defying tilt-a-whirl. Not this year for these two. Not next either. Much as they like to try teenager mannerisms on for size lately, declaring with conviction that they’re 18 years old, they look very much their age as they weigh their midway options and head for the cute stuff.

After a nice break in a shady playground on the edge of the fairgrounds, we walked back through the thick of it, explaining to the boys that the grown-ups wanted to see the exhibits. I loved that stuff in high school—the arts and crafts, the student projects, the baking, the prize vegetables. The sight of those ribbons pinned to the best in class still twists me up with irrational excitement. It’s nuts. I expected the kids to humour us, but they had a blast. Look at the scarecrows! Look at these bird feeders! Look at the Lego sets. Look! Look! Look! They ran circles through the exhibition hall and Anabel toddled after them, caught up in their excitement.

We’ve long been meaning to do the fairs, but they come early around these parts, with most towns staging them by Labour Day weekend rather than waiting for Thanksgiving. By the time my inner voice whispers “fall fair time,” we’ve missed out. But we’ll pay more attention now. It was nice to spend the afternoon out of the city, to participate in farm-based community events, simple celebration, and age-old fun that is all wrapped up in a small town fair. It’s the first time I got a strong sense of “Ontario,” as I know it, from anything connected to Ottawa. I like sharing that with Sam. Maybe next year we’ll catch the demolition derby, too.

Silly Fun

We kicked off the second half of the boys’ summer vacation by taking advantage of some of the free clowning around going on in Ottawa this August long weekend. On Sunday, Gatineau hosted the Red Bull Flugtag competition, billed this way: “32 wild and wacky teams from across the country will be strapping themselves to their totally outrageous flying machines and launching them off a 30-foot ramp into the wild blue yonder, and ultimately, straight into the Ottawa River.” Now that’s entertainment!

We figured there’d be a sizeable crowd, so we crossed the bridge a few hours before show time. Jeremy used beach towels to stake out a section of lawn next to the judging platform, while Trace and I took the kids to the nearby Children’s Museum to play for a few hours. The event kicked off with four skydivers spilling out of a Cessna overhead and then twirling through the air to land one right after the other on the launch platform—a few of them zipped low over the riverside crowds. Carter’s already asked where we can go to see that again (a tough question!).

We endured the hot summer sun for two hours, watching teams put on short comedy skits and then fling themselves off the end of the two-story high platform in a bid to fly. Sam had his money on anything shaped like a bird or a plane, but most of those machines flipped over and fell straight into the river. We did catch the winning team— Surf and the City—whose fashionistas used a cardboard taxicab to launch a pink handglider-type contraption 82 feet. The whole thing was hilarious! When I tucked Sam in that night, he enthused, “I loved the flugtag: if I didn’t get the chance to go, I would have cried my whole house down!” High praise…

The next day we headed downtown again, this time to the Sparks Street Busker Festival. We spent a couple of hours in the Kid Zone, alternating our attention between a pair of street performers and the large slide ride set up in the shadow of the Parliament buildings. Skateboard tricks, firey batons, sword swallowing, cotton candy and a slide ride? What’s not to love here? We spotted Nick & Debbie on the street and so added Michael to our little party: it was cute to see the three boys cross-legged in the front row chatting about the performers. “He didn’t actually swallow the sword … He just stuck it in and pulled it back out.”

I read later that 50,000 people flocked to the Flugtag and 250,000 people took in the 4-day Busker Festival, but somehow I still felt a little best-parent-in-the-world satisfied when we called it a day on the holiday Monday afternoon and tumbled the happy and tired group back into the car to head home. Sure, we made the same plans as hundreds of other families, but it still feels good to design a whole weekend around making the kids laugh.

Grand Time at Granby Zoo

While the minivan round trip was a zoo of one variety, le Zoo Granby (as the French say) was a delight! First of all, it's a manageable size, featuring animals from just two continents. We walked the Africa loop and saw most of the South America loop from the overhead train. The shady trails are punctuated by little kid points of interest—like crashed Cessnas and abandoned safari jeeps to climb on—so the boys had something fun to do when the sight of genuflecting giraffes at the waterhole or enormous elephants scratching their rumps on trees became passé. Even better, the grounds include a petting zoo, a small amusement park, a picnic area with playstructure and a big waterpark, so we could really mix up the entertainment over the two days. The boys all had a blast, though each of them named different highlights.

Charlie loved the hippos, the "jungle training zone" indoor maze and bouncy jumpers (our boys had the run of the place on their own); James loved the bat cave at feeding time, the ferris wheel, and talking about how much he wished he could ride the Anaconda rollercoaster; Carter loved the shark tank, the helicopter ride and the water slides; and Sam loved the zebras, the playground and hand-feeding the goats. They all got a kick out of popping up inside the in-pen plexiglass bubbles that offered an up close and personal view of the merkats and fishing cats. They also got a pretty good look at a massive gorilla slouched nonchalantly in the bed of a pick-up truck made to look as though it'd half-smashed through the enclosure: the boys scrambled into the cab, pressing their noses to the glass like little apes themselves. It was fun to watch them chart their progress through the park on the zoo map, to choose the places they still wanted to visit.

And we did try to create the sense of freedom where we could. Did they want to roll down the hill in their towels after lunch? Go ahead: try not to steamroll anyone's picnic. Did they want to ride the ferris wheel again? Why not? The line up is short. We tucked big snack bags into everyone's backpack and gave them free reign to manage them. Cheesies at 10:30 a.m.? It's your call. We stopped to watch the dozing flamingos because somehow they grabbed attention but passed right by the playful ring-tailed lemurs because somehow they didn't. We stopped for ice cream, we played fair games (Carter won a stuffed animal with a dart throw), we got giant lion-head souvenir cups, we let them have as much gum as they wanted. Zoo weekends seem the right time to let the world revolve around little boys, to keep the rules to a minimim. They thoroughly enjoyed it.