Kite Flying

And some summer days are for hanging out in the park ...

The few times Sam's tried kite flying in the past, the wind had played peek-a-boo and the anemic take-offs and listless crashes had not been that impressive. "What's so great about a kite?" he wondered. Then, on a breezy Canada Day morning, Sam took his large pterodactyl kite—a gift from Lori and Greg—out for a test flight. Success! The bird worked perfectly (even drew a crowd for a while!), and Sam had a blast flying him.

I love this little video. I'd taken so many photos of the Sam getting the kite up and figuring out the wing flapping manouevre that he began to ignore the camera—so I could catch a little of his unaffected conversation, even though he'd asked me to make a movie.

Sam at 7. Flying a kite in the neighbourhood park with his mom, his dad, and his dog. And the wind.

Goodbyes

“Today’s my last day!” Brandon exclaimed when I showed up at the centre to pick up Sam after work. The two of them had been playing on the monkey bars and they both came running when they spotted me. That’s not unusual: Brandon often greeted Sam at the door when we arrived in the morning, to say good morning and to fill him in on the planned activities. In the afternoons, he often came over to show us a craft or homemade book on the go — sometimes even giving them to Sam. But today’s his last day.

I’d seen the For Sale sign on his front lawn a few months back and worried, vaguely, that he might be leaving the neighbourhood and the school, but I somehow didn’t expect that he’d be moving to Newmarket. Tomorrow. He was all smiles when I told him that I was born there and that it was a good hockey town and he’d love it. But his expression changed when it was time for us to leave. With a big hug, he said, “Goodbye, Sam — I’ll miss you” and pulled away choking back tears. Sam, blinking hard, said “I’ll miss you, too” and suddenly I was crying behind my sunglasses as well.

Not wanting to leave Brandon fighting his emotions at the edge of the playground (he had his back to the group, looking skyward, willing the tears not to spill over his eyelids), I told him a quick story about how I never even went to school in Newmarket, how I’d already moved a few times before I started kindergarten in Scarborough, and how I went from there to Winnipeg, where I changed schools twice and then moved back and changed schools two more times before I even finished grade 3 up in Beaverton. He was chuckling at how silly that all sounded and he smiled when I said that I loved all of my schools and I quickly made new friends every time. “It’s tough to leave one place, but it’s exciting to go to another one,” I assured him. Then we left with a final backwards wave.

Sam stayed silent throughout that exchange and lagged a ways behind me across the hardtop to the car. I was lost in my own memories of walking into new classrooms, trying to recall how much I missed the kids in my old schools. When I glanced back at Sam, I could see he was pretty upset. “He had the best ideas for games at recess,” he said, his voice cracking. “The best.” I tousled his hair a little and have him a sympathetic smile, saying “He was a really good friend. I know you’ll miss him.” Then we drove home in subdued silence. This is the latest, and probably the toughest, in a series of school and child care friends who have disappeared: Michael, Derek, Sai, Eden, and now Brandon. Looking into Sam's sad eyes, I realize it’s probably easier to pack up and move on than to be left behind on the playground missing a good friend and his games. The best games.

Two Minutes

I was dashing around the house this morning doing the usual readying-for-work chores, like making lunches, feeding Huddie, packing knapsacks, and planning ahead for dinner. And all the while I was catching snippets of Sam's playtime up in his room. In wildly dramatic tones, he was voicing a superhero-type threat: "You have two minutes to tell us where you hid the device!" or "You will tell us who your spy is in two minutes!" Sometimes his voice changed, and in gleeful disrespect for authority, he would declare, "All of this will be destroyed in two minutes!" or "You don't know what I can do in two minutes!"

Always with the two minutes.

I wondered if maybe he got that kind of countdown from me—from years of giving him the head's up, "Sammy, we're leaving in two minutes," "Two more minutes and the shower goes off," "Lights out in two minutes." But then I spotted the little prize bag from the dentist office, the one he got yesterday morning after his check-up. Sure enough, the mini hourglass timer was missing. Those sands measure the perfect brushing time. Two minutes.

"Sam? Are you playing up there with the toothbrush timer?" I called. He hesitated a second or so before admitting, "Yup! I'll remember to bring it back to the bathroom when I'm done." I chuckled, imagining how unlikely it was that those helpful blue sands counted down the seconds to city annihilation or superhero rescue in any other children's homes. Then I noticed we were running late and called, "Let's go, Bunny! Time for shoes." No surprise, I suppose, that his answer was "Okay! I'll be down in two minutes!"

Rite of passage

Sam picked out his first "big kid bike" this weekend—a Canadian Tire SuperCycle. That, the Sens shirt, and breakfast at Tim Horton's and there's no denying he's the quintessential Canadian Boy.

Sam-a-bel

Just a few days after Sam and I returned from Nova Scotia, Tracey, Carter and Anabel took their (longer) turn, enjoying 10 awesome days out there. With our staggered vacation schedule, the kids spent just 3 days in 21 together. We've come nowhere near that kind of separation since their births. Now Sam’s such an in-the-moment child that he made it most of the way through the full week in child care before saying anything about it. Then, two days before their return, he mentioned that he really wanted to show Carter and Anabel his alien craft, pausing just a second before adding “I miss my cousins.”

What struck me as especially sweet was that Sam factored Anabel in as an equal. Just like that, it seems, she’s stepped over a nearly imperceptible line. No longer an add-on baby cousin whose more an extension of Tracey than a real playmate, she’s become someone Sam can converse with about little three-eyed aliens named Ripper who are floating in a specimen jar filled with green water on the kitchen windowsill.

Of course, it’s been happening by degrees. As soon as she was barely capable of speech and stair climbing, Anabel was making her cheery way up to the boys’ rooms in the wake of their thundering excitement calling, “Don’t worry boys! I’m coming!” Back then, they barely registered her arrival, and any attention paid came in the form of steering her away from their pirate forts and towards something she might be happy taking downstairs with her. Alone. “ANA-BEL, NO!” we’d sometimes hear, just prior to a door being slammed and a rejected little girl bursting into tears. It’s tough being the baby sister, especially when it’s two against one.

But in the last couple of months, Anabel has become more sure on her feet and more articulate: she’s playing ball and hide-and-seek, and she can follow the pirate plot enough to act out some of Sam’s favourite books. “Let’s go to Sleepy Island!” is a common refrain right now as she angles in on the sailing adventure. It helps that she and Sam have had several solo playdates while Carter is out with his dad. The two of them get along like a house on fire, Anabel thrilled with Sam’s undivided attention and enthusiastic willingness to keep the game fun for her. So smitten with him is she that she’s been known to say that “Sammy is my best friend ebber-ebber-ebber!” We dubbed the happy pair "Sam-a-bel" on Sunday.

Add in summer playstructures and splash pads, where Anabel is just about as comfortable as the boys are, and the age gap between them is becoming less noticeable as the season wears on. These days, it's not so much "the boys and Anabel" as it is "the kids." At this pace, she'll be calling the shots next summer and Sam'n'Carter won't mind at all. Though there is some talk of a "No girls allowed" sign on the treehouse.

Hmmm. We'll see about that.

Monopoly

In the last month or so of school, we’d often arrive in the child care centre for pick up to find Sam playing Connect 4 or Battleship with his friends or one of the staff (depending on how late we were). Given that his interests in family-friendly games was growing, we figured it was a good time to add to our rather small collection and to make an effort to sit down more often to play with him. We’ve had Trouble, Perfection, and Cariboo for years—and we’ve pretty much played those out.

Yesterday, I picked up the Disney-Pixar version of Monopoly. Sure, the concepts of mortgaging yourself out of debt, raising the rents on improved properties, and calculating insurance premiums on demand are a little beyond his capabilities. But then, so is simply reading the name of the property he’d landed on. So we figure we’ll lend him a hand with the reading, math and money management this year and he’ll kick our butts next year.

As it turns out, by the time we called it a night on his first ever Monopoly game, Sam was well in the lead. He held 10 properties, had double safety cone “houses” on the orange lot—The Eiffel Tower, Gusteau’s Restaurant, and the Sewers of Paris—and had hundreds in the bank. He rolled doubles for extra turns like he was playing with his own loaded dice, and he was quick to demand his rent when his rent was due. It was so much fun to see him catch on to the object of the game and the spirit of the competition. Early on, after picking up his first two properties while his folks were either in jail or paying speeding fines, he graciously turned down the chance to buy Tow Mater’s Junk Yard. “No thanks!” he reasoned. “I don’t want to spend my money on junk.” The second time he had to hand me cash for landing there, he realized his missed opportunity. Junk pays.

Having sat down for a short demo following an evening of yard work, we ended up playing well past Sam’s bedtime. And his first question this morning was whether or not there’d be time enough to squeeze a game in today. After all, he didn’t get a chance to set up any Al’s Toy Barn “hotels” on his properties. He’s a Monopoly mogul in the making for sure. A chip off the Ashe block.

Here’s the mini album!

Sam's photo is the best of the bunch—a shot of my playing piece (Sully & Boo) passing by jail.

Sam buys his first property, the Parr (Incredible) Family home, from Banker Daddy. And he collects his first rent from Mommy...

It Was Sad When The Great Ship Went Down

I guess it started with the children's folk song, "Titanic"—which I'd learned at camp and sang every now and then when Sam outlasted the usual bedtime song repertoire. The jaunty beat and schadenfreude lyrics belie the tragedy: "Watersnakes and turtles, little ladies lost their girdles, it was sad when the great ship went down!" Sam loves the chanting conclusion: "Kerplunk. It sunk. What a lousy piece of junk. The end. Amen. Splash! Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle..." It's rather cruel, when you think about it. So, in a way, I blame myself for Sam's current fascination with all things Titanic.

He first brought it up himself at Hog's Back this spring. Something about the rushing water must have brought the bottom of the sea to mind. As it happens, I caught it on video.

The ship with the dent in it. Yes, well, there's more to the story than that. And, for some reason, I told him so. Over the weeks he asked and re-asked for the details, committing them to fastidious memory. If I confirmed that, yes, it sure was a bad idea not to have enough lifeboats for all 2000 people on board," he'd correct me: "There were 2200 passengers and crew." The thing is, he seemed a little too cavalier for my liking, a little too eager to reproduce the iceberg strike in drawing after drawing. He and two of his classmates banded together into a little Titanic Fan Club, each critiquing the other's art projects. "You can't see very many decks on this part of your ship because they're already under water. Cool." On page one of a scribbler entitled "Things I Like" Sam drew the sinking ship and captioned it, "I lc too play Titanc."

It all bothered me a little. Hypocritical, I know, since I'm the one who happily crooned to a three year old, "Uncles and aunts, little children lost their pants, it was sad when the great ship went down!" before wishing him sweet dreams and leaving him alone with his huge imagination. Even still, it seemed important that he realize he was celebrating a catastrophe. So I bought a children's book called All Stations, Distress! The Night the Titanic Sunk. Despite its cartoon illustrations, it was a rather staid account of the disaster. But the sinking just didn't sink in. So I bought the movie, too. We couldn't let him see all of it, of course. There's an almost-risqué love scene and a remorseful suicide, for starters; and the fear and panic levels ramp up a little too high for a 6-year-old. But we watched most of it in hopes that he'd see the story from a new angle. We wanted him to get a sense of how it must have been to go into that icy water. It wasn't "cool," it was impossily cold. When Millvina Dean, the last Titanic survivor, died on May 31, I called Sam to the computer and showed him. Look, a real person.

This did seem to sober him for a while. But the appalling scenes in the movie that truly touched his heart were the ones behind this verse: "They were off the coast of England when they heard a mighty roar, and the rich refused to associate with the poor - So they put them down below, and they were the first to go - It was sad when the great ship went down!" The idea of first class passengers getting first crack at the lifeboats horrified Sam. The injustice of class discrimination was something he could get his mind around. He brings up those scenes at random moments—the locking of the lower decks, the men who broke out and stormed the lifeboats, the families who gave up and tucked back into bed, even as the water was washing up the hallways. Not fair, he'd say.

It occured to me then that he never asked about drowning or hypothermia. Psychologists generally agree that children learn to grasp the finality of death at some point between age six and nine...so it's quite possible that he simply can't fathom that part of the tale. In fact, when I hear him playing in his room, he's acting out the rescues, not the failures. And there are never any people bobbing in the icy water in his drawings. In his homemade Titanic book, the pages skip from the sinking to the lifeboats to the return home. I expected too much of a boy who can say the words of death and destruction but can't know their import. For Sam, the Titanic is an exciting story of survival— a heroic shipwreck tale, in which hundreds of people escape with their lives and are left singing "It was sad, so sad (too bad!), it was sad when the great ship went down to the bottom of the sea-ee-ee-ee ... It was sad when the great ship went down."

Clear and Present Mommy

After holing up for nearly three hours in the Child Care director's office on Friday afternoon to discuss the ins and outs of saving Sam's school from the spectre of closing, I claimed my weary son and got him packed and fed and ready for an overnight at Carter's. Since the office door has a large window in it, Sam had been aware of my presence at the centre: he and the other kids are used to seeing me in the halls a lot more lately, since the "accommodation review" has ramped up and certain alarming writing has been on the wall, so to speak. He's aware of it, and he's more than a little tired of it.

As chair of the Carleton Heights School Council and a member-at-large on the Board or Directors of the Child Care Centre, I'm chin deep in this process and it's taking over more and more of my time, my brain space. When I kissed Sam good bye and wished him a fun sleepover, he responded "And have a good time ... uh, working on the computer!" Yeaaahhh. Between the school issues, my job, Garnish projects, this blog, my upcoming presentatations at Ottawa U, and keeping in touch with friends (sort of), I sit here a lot. A LOT. So I resolved right there to carve out a chunk of time for giving Sam my undivided attention this weekend.

We spent it at the Museum of Nature with Tracey & Anabel and Debbie & Michael. It was a beautiful, warm Crustaceous morning (a direct quote from the short film called "What happened to the dinosaurs?" — a warm Crustaceous morning... in case any of you kids out there think this sort of extinction-level event can happen on just any sunny morning). I had to be pulled out of a two-hour morning meeting with the neighbours (to prep for a big meeting tomorrow night), but I was glad for the call to my cell. "Sorry, ladies, but I made a promise to my son." We zipped to the downtown with the moon roof open and the radio on and met up with the others in the gift shop.

We spent about an hour and a half touring three levels of the museum—taking in most of the dinosaur and mammal exhibits and hanging out in some of the kid zones, where they create climb-friendly installations, craft spaces, costumes and puppets. And I stayed right there with him. Not just physically there, murmuring "really?" and "mmmhmmm" in response to his endless monologues while keeping my own train of thought on track. Nope. I parked my own thoughts in the train yard and cleared my mind of anything but the museum moment unfolding right then and there.

And it was really, really nice.

The Daddy-Sammy Holiday

While tidying the kitchen tonight, I noted once again the large sheet of paper held on to the freezer door by a Stanley Hotel fridge magnet. The page always makes me smile, but it's way out of date and needs to be relegated to the history books. This history book.

It's titled the Daddy-Sammy Holiday and it came about this way. A couple of days before I left for Colorado to be a bridesmaid in Lynnie's wedding (yay!), I reminded Sam that I was going to go on a holiday from January 1 to 4. As in the past, I had my "special occasion" arguments at the ready, but Sam cut me off before I'd barely begun to explain why he wasn't coming. "Can I make a plan for the Daddy-Sammy holiday?" he asked. Why certainly, small boy of mine who apparently no longer frets at his mother's vanishing acts. So we got out the massive tablet of craft paper and a pen and we made this list.

The Daddy-Sammy Holiday

Swimming lesson
See a movie
Wrassle
Play X-Box racing game
Order Chinese food
Watch hockey on TV
Walk Huddie
Tobogganing
Play Champion Battle Chess
Play Pirates
Take a nap
Go to Tim Horton's for a hot chocolate
Daddy haircut
Groceries
Connor's house
Have pizza
Get mommy at the airport (6:13 Air Canada from Toronto)

To finalize plans, Jeremy colour-coded the weekend: blue for Friday, red for Saturday and green for Sunday. They sorted out which things to do on what day. When I got home, everything had been crossed out, save for the dog-walking. Jeremy had penned in "too cold!" Seems Huddie preferred the indoor "wrassling."

While I think my holiday list tops the two (though we all would have killed for pizza at one point!), the Daddy-Sammy list makes me smile. Which is why it spent two months on the fridge under the Stanley Hotel magnet.

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.

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.

Impressions of Sam at Camp Hideaway

The hitch in Sam’s small shoulders as he gingerly picks his barefooted way down the gravel driveway before rounding on to the dewy lawn and breaking into an eager run towards the tree fort. Summer freedom. He nearly always comes back with a wild daisy for me, hidden behind his back.

The big, silly gestures, the too-loud voice, the sideways glances and smiley jokes: these are Sam’s overtures of friendship when playing in the vicinity of another small boy, an over-the-top performance offered with such confidence in his likeability that it hurts my heart a little.

Sam standing halfway up the rock with Jeremy, arms raised like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, as if he alone is summoning the dazzling display of Canada Day firecrackers. Cracking people up with his joyful exuberance, his theatrical commentary between rounds of explosions: “Who disturbs my village!?” — “Rise up, my minions!” — I am the most powerful wizard!” — “Did you like that one? Cuz I’m getting tired!”

The smell of light rain misting the tree canopy as Sam and I swing lazily on the lakeside hammock together, snuggled under a sleeping bag and playing 20 Questions. We’re hungry for lunch but don’t want to crawl out, not yet. And then we spot Jeremy coming up the hill with a platter of BBQ hot dogs to share. “You read our minds!” Sam shouts gleefully.

The slight strain in Sam’s voice as he stands alongside the fishing boat with Jeremy and Paul, declaring with false bravado: “Babies would probably think this boat is going to sink.” As they putter up the inlet, Sam clutching a fishing rod, a proud grin splits his face. Later, he’ll report, “We didn’t catch a fish, but anyways it’s still called fishing!”

Sam’s soft, contented hmmmmm as he drifts to sleep in the mid-afternoon, lake-cold limbs flung over me, a smile fleeting over his features as he considers the last thing he said before giving submitting to exhaustion: “I’m going to be the last kid to leave the campfire tonight.”

Midnight at the campfire, and Sam’s cuddled on my lap. The familiar camp-smell of his hair—a mixture of shampoo and wood smoke, marshmallow and bug repellant. The almost-forgotten feeling of his limbs gradually growing heavy and floppy with fatigue. “Time for bed,” he says. We finish the 12th installment of The Magic Tree House books by flashlight.

Sam playing on the floor at the foot of the couch where Jeremy snoozes away a rainy afternoon. I’m lost in my book and Sam’s lost in his imagination. But he looks up at his Daddy suddenly and whispers softly, thinking no one hears him, “I love you, I love you, I love you…”

Heads bent together as Sam and I examine yet another small rock he has pulled from the shoreline and rinsed in the gentle waves, the better to see its composition—its streaks and sparkles—and so identify which “family” it belongs to. Families of rocks build up across the sunny beach towel on my lap: little bits of the broken Canadian shield, briefly rescued from inevitable fragmentation by a small boy who will, like these beautiful pebbles, one day split from his family, be born away by the tides of his own life. May he always be compelled to reunite the matching pieces, to find beauty and comfort in the notion of rock families. May his own childhood memories make it so.

KW - Chapter 1: Sam Swims

Sam didn't have to think long and hard about his favourite part of our week in Key West. Was it the Dolphin Research Centre? The Pirate Soul Museum? The Butterfly Conservatory? Was it spending seven whole days playing in the tiki hut and on the ocean waterfront of his grandparents' beautiful RV lot, the centre of their attention — and his mom at his beck & call, to boot? Well, ya, that was all wonderful of course. He wouldn't have missed any of it. But the trip highlights happened at the Bluewater pool. Sam became a swimmer in Key West.

The pool was our first (and last) holiday stop. On day one, Sam was his usual tentative self. No water baby, this one, he claimed the sweeping stairway into the shallow end as his private playground. He was wet, but he wasn't "in the pool."Cautiously, however, he began to test our assertions that the water wasn't over his head at the bottom stair. Just 3 feet deep along the shallow wall, he found he could easily walk about, at least one hand on the side. By the time we packed up, he was expanding his territory, pinning his mouth shut and wading in to nearly-nose deep. Pretty impressive, considering it used to take a full day on Laddie Lane before he'd think about leaving the stairs. We had to coax him out, promising there'd be a lots of time for swimming.

But I had no idea how much time we'd end up clocking at the pool. We went morning and afternoon for the rest of the week, spending 3-4 hours total there each day. And, at that, Sam was always disappointed when it was time to go. On Day two, we brought the pool noodle down and it became Sam's "boat," taking him around the shallow end for hours and finally (horsey style) around the full pool, with one hand on me (I was cast as Elizabeth Swann to his Will Turner for the duration. Believe me, it's more than a little weird to be called "Miss Swann" and to be the object of hours of dramatic infatuation when you're trying to surreptitiously teach your son to swim...). Sam's sustained effort was exhausting, and he fell asleep in my arms almost every afternoon as we lounged in the tiki hut, restoring his energy for a second swim.

On day five, Sam agreed to waterwings—an unthinkable prospect in the past, treated as though they were inflatable concrete slabs, sure to cause swift watery death. Within minutes, he was repeatedly racing the length of the pool thanks to his "muscles," cheering over and over "Canada wins!" He wasn't simply bobbing about: he was "swimming" like he'd been at it all this time. If I tried to offer a suggestion—cup your hands, kick your legs under the water—he'd shout back "I know!" as though he'd been in lessons and had heard it all before. It was a joy and a relief to watch. A joy because he never stopped smiling and laughing, and a relief because I thought he was going to have to be forced to learn to swim ... when he was 10.

By the end of the week, Grandma and Grandpa had Sam jumping in to them, sending huge waves over their heads and soaking his own as well (this, the boy who can hardly stand having his hair washed: oh the horrors of a trickle of water down the face, the terrors of water in the ears!). Grandma laughs that he'll likely end up as an Olympic swimmer now that he's conquered his fears. While he may not become an international champion, he's a champion to me. I'll not miss the look of abject terror, the fingers clawed into my shoulders as we move about the shallow end locked in an uncomfortable embrace. Unexpectedly, our Key West memories mark the divide between the boy who won't swim and the boy who won't get out of the pool.

Sense of Snow

Watching the boys climb these gargantuan mountains—created by plows clearing the parking lot of the nearby public school—I come within a whisper of fully reliving my own school-age delight in the sheer joy of playing in the snow. I wonder how many hours I spent fashioning drifts and banks into multi-room snow forts, imprinting angels on a fresh field of powder, stacking the arsenal for a mock-ferocious snowball fight, and flying down the hills on colourful Krazy Karpets. A good snowfall brought the whole neighbourhood to life—and a bad one promised the thrill of a "snow day," the electrifying news crackling over the kitchen radio as my sisters and I ate breakfast. Who doesn't love snow?

Driveway shovellers. That's who.

We've already hauled some 10 feet of the white stuff out of our way this season, and it shows no sign of letting up. As I write, there is a Winter Storm Warning in effect that forecasts 40-50 cms this weekend. In fact, we're closing in on the city's snowfall record. Now that I have to push it out of the way so that the car can cautiously nose out from between dwarfing drifts, it seems to me that the weather outside is frightful. Perhaps if I saw the snow as Sam and Carter do, as a perfect canvas upon which to paint a new world, I wouldn't be thinking that this winter season has rendered them the "kings of the castle," and me the "dirty rascal" ...

Note from Danielle

After a gruelling semester at Ottawa U when Sam was not yet a year old (Jan-April 2004), I took the summer off and spent four blissful months with my babe exploring park, libraries, playgroups—the city in general. He'd begun walking at 11 months and was putting two-word sentences together, so it was a whole new world for us. In September, I picked up a Canlit course and so hired a girl in the building, Danielle Gendron, to look after Sam a few hours a week. She was an ECE student at the time, so she was especially thrilled to have the chance to see how the theories are apparent in one so small. Plus, Sam had a gorgeous smile and she'd been smitten from the moment we moved in! I recently came across a note she wrote one rainy afternoon in late October. I'd taken a stack of grading to my office, and she spent a rainy afternoon playing with Sam and Carter. They were 18 months old.

Angie:

Hi. I hope you had a good afternoon. I am having a great time with the boys. It's fun seeing Sam interact with someone his own age! Sam had a little freak-out when he woke up. He was not very pleased to see me. I told him I needed help with Carter because we've never met. He seemed to understand that and settled down. Lunch was good. Sam actually ate more than Carter! I just had a request for "Buzz" (Toy Story) and I couldn't turn it down. I'm getting sick of it too! And this is only my third time watching it this week! Poor you :(

I also wanted to tell you how amazing Sam's dramatic play is becoming. Did you notice how he makes things walk... like cars. It's pretty funny. We did about 20 mins of the car hiding and me saying "come back" then the car would come back and we would kiss, then Sam would say "bye" and hold the car up high. I say "come back" .. "kiss"..."bye" over and over. He was very interested in how I was making my car talk. I just wanted to share this with you. Sam amazes me every time I'm with him. His creativity is going to skyrocket over the next few months. I am so lucky to be part of it!

Well, I guess that's all for now. Have a great weekend! You can give me the cheque on Monday if you like. I don't mind. I'm not starving or anything!

Danielle

She still lives at 265 Daly. We really should drop by...

The cold, hard floor

Sam was pretty excited at the idea of learning a new Cranium game - a mini-sized kids’ version that came free with a Wendy’s snack that afternoon. While I was whipping up dinner, he began lining the cards up along the small Sam table in the kitchen so we’d be all ready to play the instant dinner was over. I pointed out that the tabletop was a little small for the three of us, and suggested he set up downstairs. By “downstairs,” I meant in the family room, where we play pretty much all of our games. However Sam chose to set up on the laundry room floor. The concrete laundry room floor.

I was a little apologetic, this time, when I explained that he’d picked another troublesome spot: he’d been meticulous in the playing card arrangement, and now dinner was ready and there was no time to start over. Chalk it up to a hunger, fatigue, or an alarming “stage,” but his anger went 0 to 60 and he vehemently replied with hot tears in his eyes that he was NOT moving the game, that we WOULD sit ourselves down in front of the dryer, and that if we refused then he would NEVER play this game EVER.

We attempted to reason with him a bit before deciding that it would be smarter to get a meal into him before preaching the error of his ways. Didn’t matter. He was unyielding to the end, fists balled up in anger, face screwed up in rage at the injustice of it all. So we put the game away. Too late to save the day, we cajoled him towards an early bedtime with the promise of innumerable fairy tales. We read for almost an hour together, through Beauty and the Beast, Rumpelstiltskin, The Frog Prince, The Little Mermaid—at which point he asked, “Why is there so much marrying in these stories?”—so we moved on to the child heroes in Hansel and Gretel, King Midas, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Emperor’s New Clothes and Pinocchio.

At the happy resolution of that last tale, I remarked: “Gepetto is happy that Pinocchio became a real live boy: he’s lucky to get a ‘boy-0’” to which Sam replied, “You and Daddy aren’t lucky to have me…” Gasp! I declared him to be the luckiest thing that ever happened to us and asked why he would say otherwise. “Because we had that big fight before,” he explained. So I took a few minutes to assure Sam that people sometimes have disagreements, and are sometimes upset with each other, but that families love each other and always find a way to work things out. Having arguments sometimes doesn’t mean we’re not always lucky to have each other. Sam seemed mollified. He snuggled down under the covers, flipped over on to his side, and sighed deeply.

But before I could congratulate myself on my superb parenting, I heard him whisper, in the quietest voice he could manage with conviction: “Tomorrow, we are all going to play that game on that floor!” My stubborn little boy. I guess it’s a tough lesson to learn—that all of that righteous fury amounts to so many pebbles tossed against the brick wall of a united Mom and Dad.

Same as it (N)ever Was

Sam and I started the day by reading, for the first time together, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. I don't know how many times I read it in grade school: it was one of my all-time favourites. My Grade 3 report card says "Angela can write interesting stories independantly. Her pictures include much action and detail." I'm quite certain those are kudos for my innumerous Mike Mulligan prequels. Sam's Scholastic book order included a DVD of four animated shorts, one of which was a dramatic reading of Mike and Mary Anne's story. Watching them, I marvelled at how lucky Sam is to be growing up in this techo-advanced world. He'd laughed at us the other day—thinking we were pulling his leg—when he explained that there were no DVDs, VCRs, TiVo or pausing live TV when we were kids. The tagline of a (really) old Milk-Mate commercial, introducing the revolutionary concept of a liquid additive to make chocolate milk, comes to mind—a 5-year-old boy lets his toddler brother know that "things sure are better than when I was a little kid!"

Then, this afternoon, I peeled four fresh strawberry-flavoured Twizzlers from the sticky bunch as a treat for Sam and Carter. The smell of the candy brought back a strong sensory memory of being on summer road trips through the interior of British Columbia, and mom passing Twizzlers to the sisters in the back seat. I used to nibble away at mine like a hamster, making it last. Funny that Sam does the same thing now. Later, when I spotted the boys engaged in a fast-paced game of Trouble, I realized that some things are exactly the same for Sam as they were for me 35 years ago. Trouble, Perfection, Lite Bright, slinky and Playdo are all among Sam's toys as they were mine. I'd have been perfectly at home with his craft buckets, too, stocked as they are with Crayola crayons and markers, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, Laurentian pencil crayons, and Elmer's glue. I loved all that stuff.

Sam and I have watched many of my favourite Looney Toons, laughing together at the "hello, my baby!" frog who won't perform for anyone but the man who discovers him in the time capsule of an old cornerstone, at the crazy antics of Wile E. Coyote, who just can't outwit the Roadrunner or Sam the sheepdog. And Sam shares our love of The Princess Bride, the early Star Wars movies, Swiss Family Robinson, E.T. and other movies from our youth. There are plenty of everyday things in common, too. He wears Levi's jeans, Converse shirts and Scooby-doo undies (okay, I didn't have the undies, but I loved Scooby-doo). He breakfasts on Quaker oats, lunches on Schneider's deli meats, smiles over a mug of Carnation hot chocolate, and savours the occasional vanilla cream Girl Guide cookie. And I've heard him humming "You can't always get what you want..."

Granted, it's unlikely he'll ever (be allowed to) play in the creek until the streetlights come on, see a drive-in movie, or take disco lessons (a-hem). But I bet I'll continue to be as surprised by the overlaps in our childhood experiences as I am by the ways his world has so widely diverged from mine. Time for bedtime milk (Neilson's), bubble bath (Johnson's), p.j.'s (Superman) and then one more reading of Mike Mulligan and his last adventure with his outmoded steam engine, Mary Anne. Electric- and deisel-powered shovels rendered her sadly obsolete. No mention in that book of solar power, hybrid technology, hydrogen fuel, or ethanol. I wonder if Sam's kids will read it, too.

A Thousand Words

And just like that, January is gone. I've missed a month of stories, but I have a nice little collection of photographs that I can caption to catch up.

Sam loves Lego. I think we went a good six months of hearing "I played Lego" as the sum total of the child care report. Nine, ten hour days of a fully structured program with a dozen other kids, and he only remembered the Lego. Not surprisingly, the lego pirate sets are the centre of his bedroom universe. And this Christmas, Grandma & Grandpa Arnold gave him a 380-piece Dinosaur set (but who's counting pieces?), and we've been building fearsome beasts. I took a picture of the beaming boy holding up our first creation, but this is the photo he liked best. It was his idea to pose dino as though he assembled himself and was now crawling out of the box to wreak havoc in Hudson house....

While rooting through a back seat pile of commuter-parent baggage (lunchkits, laptops, gym bag, backpacks, snowpants, groceries, art work) during a Sam drop-off a few weeks back, I spotted a colourful hexagon next to his booster. I spun around to ask Sam if he made it ... and broke his heart. He let out a wailing "ooohhh, nooo!" that made it clear I'd spoiled a surprise. Holding back tears, he explained: "I wanted to wrap that up for you!", the thrill of Christmas still fresh in his mind. I knelt down for a big hug, declaring my love of the little craft to help soothe his obvious disappointment. "Is this an ornament?" I asked ... and then had to stifle my laugh when he answered earnestly, "Yes. I wanted you to have something beautiful to look at while you washed the dishes."

Unlike the 'housework hexagon,' most of Sam's drawings are monochrome. He favoured a simple pencil for the longest time before moving on to the brown crayon. Then he went through a festive red stage through Christmas before settling on blues, where he's remained—aptly—for the chilly month of January. Before taking down the December bulletin board, I want to commit a few things to memory. First, Sam and made the wreath together during the Centre's "Annual Cup of Cheer" breakfast reception. Perched on the wee chairs together, we had a fun conversation about Christmas decorations. Another night, we coloured the Santa pic together, and Sam tried once again to decide if he preferred spelling his name with his left or his right hand. Finally, the figure at the bottom left that struck me as a lynched cowboy is Spiderman, lowering off a wall to battle the muscled stickmen in the centre of the drawing (click the photo to enlarge). I've developed quite a skill at eliciting details from him rather than guessing at the picture's content. I love these little Sam collages: I wish we could keep them all forever.

And speaking of wishes and forever, I will never tire of the sight of my slumbering son. Somehow in sleep, the infant's chubby cheeks, shallow breathing and tousled hair return and he's my baby bunny once again. He stays perfectly still through the night, with those small hands tucked up between face and pillow in a portrait of pure peace. I hope he always sleeps like that. I call this picture "Four Kisses," because that's how every day ends. Once the stories and songs are finished, I kiss his forehead and both cheeks before our goodnight kiss. And each kiss has its own statement: "Good night (kiss), sleep tight (kiss), sweet dreams (kiss), I love you (kiss)." Sleep well, Sammy.

Record-breaker

So it seems I may have offended the Winter Warlock a few posts ago by complaining about the copious shovelling in Jeremy's absence. Yesterday, he sent snowdrifts clearly designed to eat up my young son and his trusty pet. We got somewhere between 31 and 37 cms, depending on the news source. Either way, it's record-breaking and darn near back-breaking. I dug out four times during the storm, trying to stay ahead of the accumulation, but it doesn't matter: the plows haven't shown in Courtland Park yet and it's well past noon on a Monday. We're snowed in. Again!

This morning, I considered tackling the back deck to give us easier access to the freezer and to provide a secondary escape route in an emergency. This is the scene that greeted me when I flung open the garage door: 4 feet of snow and no where to put it! So I closed the door, grabbed some additional supplies from the freezer and figured that--if worse came to worst--Sam and I could easily flee the house by simply walking out his half story window and directly into the hedgerows. It's that snowy. I'm reminded of a long-ago winter in the Red River valley when a drift swallowed our Volkswagon whole.

Sam was joyful and triumphant at the sight of the street this morning. He did a little "no plow" dance on the couch to jinx my hopes of taking him to school and then attending our office Christmas party at the Heart & Crown today. He back-peddled a little when I countered with my "pro plow" dance, explaining that he just didn't want to see me out there digging the end of the driveway out since it's been "too bad for you," as he puts it. Very sweet, but he immediately followed up with a request that I crawl into his dining room table tent fort and play Tic-tac-toe with him. We did that, as well as some pages in his Ready to Read activity book. He's watching movies now and eating his lunch straight out of his optimistically packed lunchkit. I'm wondering what we'll do for the rest of the day on this, our third day home alone together. The snow's too deep to walk in and we've been through all the usual games, activities, crafts, puzzles, movies, baking and more. It's been fun, but I'm worn out!

I don't know how home-schoolers do it.

The Toy Maker

Because we're fan-tas-tic parents, we've managed to convince Sam that he can make any toy he wants and do a better job of it than the factories that crank out all of the advertised toys that viewers of Saturday morning cartoons covet the world over. Lately, he's been apprenticing as a ship builder, studying at the elbow of his accomplished father. His bedroom is overrun with a fleet of pirate vessels fashioned out of granola bar boxes, disposable dinnerware, straws, construction paper, styrofoam, duct tape and popsicle sticks. Sam designs each ship's "special features" and draws distinct Jolly Roger-style logos for their sails. The Bloody Eagle is still in dry-dock, awaiting the master builder's return.

What I couldn't figure out for the longest time was why he'd tape his ship "plans" up on the dining room wall for safe-keeping. Then it hit me one night while we were watching the Bugs Bunny & Tweety show together: Sylvester studies blueprints posted above a work bench whenever he's assembling some dastardly device or another designed to bring about Tweety's demise. Sam's following in Looney Toons footsteps. Now I find it especially funny to look at his two failed attempts to fit the name Ferocious Wolf across his first boat drawing. You can almost hear Porky Pig saying "Fero - .. Fero- ... Bad Wolf!"

The only downside to encouraging Sam's efforts to make better toys than he can possibly find anywhere else is that his imagination is running wild in all toy-related endeavours. Check out this picture of him proudly displaying his letter to Santa this year. In it, he asks for a Megatron transformer... but not just any Megatron transformer. He'd like Santa to fashion one that shoots cannonballs out of its head. If Sam can envision it, Santa can surely do it. Hhhm. I recall asking for Thumbalina and Spiral Graph and Digger the Dawg--all without special North Pole modifications. Never occured to me to invent a toy to test the talents of Santa's elves. Some fancy footwork will be required to dance around this one...

In the meantime, it's pretty sweet to hear him talk so enthusiastically about how he's "full of good ideas" about how to build robots and action figures and pirate boats and forts. I love his confidence, his imagination and the little foot to foot dance he does as we haul out the craft supplies to get to work on another project.