Friday, May 29, 2009

Oh Woe is Us. (AKA, The Troubling Tale of the Baby in the Van)

My lapses in timely posts are almost always due to two things: illness and or pure lethargy. Since I have returned to work (and my children back to the germpool otherwise known as daycare) we have had far too much of the former. Really, it seems like every time I turn around someone is coughing and feverish or...something.

But this time was a doozy.

I'll be brief because I'm not quite self-centred enough to think that people want to read a minute by minute account of the week of vomit, but it started innocently enough with Kaya throwning up all over the kitchen floor mere seconds before we left for daycare last Friday. By the time Eric and I had pulled into his parking lot at work an hour later, the babysitter had called to say Kaya had barfed twice more and that was their limit, so I turned around and went home.

Downhill from there, to say the least. The baby seemed a bit better on Saturday...we had a fair amount of socializing on the weekend...family members from out of town, a BBQ at our house with friends and their three kids, yada, yada, yada. A few days later and all innocence is lost. People around us have dropped like flies from this little stomach bug, so please accept this as a blanket apology to all who know us and who may be cursing our very name.

I started to feel violently ill during our BBQ - the friends we had invited over were people I did not know well so I didn't really feel like telling them that the reason I was leaving for the bathroom every 10 minutes was NOT due to my raging coke habit like they surely must have presumed. (Although I was pretty good at using the baby as a shield...she needs a jacket! A diaper! A bottle!)

The night ended, well...it never really did end. But as I was lying on our bathroom floor in the wee hours of Monday morning, wondering if there was any point in dragging myself back to bed (there wasn't) these are the things, in no particular order, that I was thinking:

"Please don't let this violent retching wake-up the baby." Naturally, this was followed immediately by a plaintive and increasingly insistent "WaaaaaaaAAAA" from her bedroom.

"Oh! I'm so glad that we had company tonight! Aside from the fact that I was practically barfing into their laps, this bathroom is really freaking clean." This thought is a pleasant change from any other time that I can remember sleeping on bathroom floors (usually in my university years) in which the thoughts were more along the lines of...is that black thing on the floor over there alive?

"Hmmmm....that particular shade of vomit is the EXACT colour I had hoped Eric would paint the bedroom last summer." Which, for those of you who might be interested. is a greyish blue colour that emerges from the innards somewhere after bile, but before dry heaves.

That's really just the tip of the iceberg, but as I'm sure most of us can attest, when doubled over with a hideous virus most rational thought is well...absent.

To make matters worse, much worse, a few short hours later Eric had taken up residence in the bathroom and I had moved back to the bed.

In fact, rational thought was absent for the next 36 hours at least. On Tuesday, I thought that since I was feeling marginally better I should go back to work.

A rather large mistake actually.

I was packing the kids up for babysitter, Eric was still sick, and I went out to the van with Kaya, the daycare bag, my purse, etc. As I was wrestling with everything and getting Kaya in the car seat, I put everything on the floor of the van. Kieran was yelling something at me from the steps of the house and so I was talking to him, finished buckling in Kaya and slammed the door shut.

In the second that I did that, I realized that the car keys - I had grabbed Eric's from the table beside the door to save myself from digging mine out from the bottom of my purse - were on the floor of the van. And the van doors had inexplicably locked. And my purse , with MY KEYS was also now locked inside the van as well. Along with the baby.

I did what any other rational person would do. Or at least, I mean anyone who hadn't eaten, drank or slept for almost 48 hours. Someone who was still nauseous, headachey and in no condition to be driving, going to work or looking after children and who has just realized that they have locked their one-year-old in the car with no way to get her out. I totally lost it.

I was bawling and freaking out. Kaya, who seemed to of course immediately realize her peril, was also screaming inside the van. Kieran was just totally freaked out at what was going on and kept telling me that my keys were in my pocket (they weren't).

Anyway, Eric called CAA. Thankfully, they do consider a baby locked in a car to be an "emergency" and said they would have someone there in 15 minutes. I continued to freak out for the next 10 minutes, trying to knock on the van window and get poor Kaya to stop wailing. Anyway, the next thing I know, Eric walks out of the house with my car keys. I have never been so happy. They were, strangely enough on the fireplace mantel and I have zero recollection of putting them there or why they would be there, but at least they were.

Crisis past. Baby was rescued. No need to call the authorities on the poor parenting (in this instance at least...)

We're all better now but, let me go find some wood to knock on.


Friday, May 15, 2009

Space for Rant

Now that I am back in the "real world" (as opposed to the temporary fake world of play dates and nap times) I feel like I am assaulted by Pop Culture Reality. I guess because since I currently spent my daytime hours sitting at a desk with ample access to the Internet, with a huge TV right beside me, and grown-ups (well...maybe that's a stretch, but I mean that as a compliment to my co-workers) to converse with on a reliable basis I am more in touch with world at large.

And guess what? Real life is damned annoying.


Twitter, Dancing with the Stars, Swine Flu, People in the Tim Horton's lineup who order coffees and breakfast for the entire office. people asking me if I'm pregnant (or going to be), Jon and Kate Plus 8. These are just some of the things that now irk me on a highly regular basis.

In fact, I'm going to add Twitter to the list again because it's the most annoying and ubiquitous of all. Twitter was quite entertaining when it was only funny people who tweeted (God, did I just use that word? Kill me now). But now everybody is tweeting (retch), celebrities, teenagers, bloggers, journalists, the elderly. I live in mortal fear that one day I'm going to get an email from my mom telling me to "follow her on Twitter!". (Which is almost as frightening as the mere thought that she might one day find this blog. Almost.).

Dancing with the Stars I just don't, and never will, get. I'm not going to debate the lax and inappropriate use of the word "stars" (I'm sure there are tweets (gah!) galore on that subject). It's just the fact that it , along with its (to me at least) slightly less annoying cousin, American Idol, are actually covered on the news. As if it were actual news, people. The local morning radio segues right from Tamil protests into Adam Lambert clips. Its a bit alarming really.

The Tim Horton's people are just things that I had forgotten about while I was gone. I, along with just about everyone else in the country, go there on a semi-regular basis for my morning coffee and Tim's (at rush hour at least), is a well-oiled morning mat-cheen. Even the addition of a myriad of breakfast foods hasn't really slowed down the rush hour, the line moves quite swiftly with lightly toasted 12 grain bagels arriving in patrons hands mere seconds after their double doubles. Until you notice some schmuck ahead of you in line holding a piece of paper and the feeling of dread and annoyance settles in. Long lists of individual prepared coffees and breakfast sandwiches bog down the entire system, especially since, let's be honest, most people who are sent out to fetch large coffee orders are seldom the companies most efficient, indispensable employees. It's the interns and the newbies who are slow to count money and usually forget to ask for a receipt. It can throw off the entire day.

Anyway, it had been awhile since I had used this blog space to truly rant about the inane. Glad I got that all off my chest.

Now, off to enjoy the long weekend!!!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

What Little Boys are Made Of

So, we're in the middle of our weekday scramble to get out the door in the morning. Eric is off getting the Papaya dressed and I'm busying getting the kids daycare bag together. Bottles. Asthma puffer. Hats. Sunblock. All Check.

Kieran has put on his sandals and gathered up Spunky and is standing near the door impatiently wanting to go outside. Suddenly he runs over to the door, bangs it open and leans outside.

Me: "What are you doing?"

Him: "Spitting."

Me: "What?! Spitting?! We don't open the door and spit outside. Ever!!! That's yucky!"

Long pause. Kieran stares at me blankly, clearly trying to process something.

Him: "Sooooo I spit inside on the floor?"

Ah Little Boys. Apparently, if they aren't peeing on the toilet seats and laughing at fart noises they are horking out the door. Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails indeed.

I look over at Kaya, who has emerged from her bedroom with Eric, in her jaunty denim jacket with the embroidered flowers and a little tuft of hair tied neatly in a pink band. She is all clean and shiny for the day ahead. She's too young obviously to be anything other than pure sugar and spice, but I hope it holds.

Because, for the record, I HATE fart jokes.

Monday, May 4, 2009

But the Levy Was Dry. Also known as the 100th Post!!

So, my blog manager thingy tells me that this is my 100th post. Very exciting. So exciting in fact, that anything I write will obviously be a major letdown. So, really, I apologize in advance for not living up to the 100th post hype.

It was a lovely weekend. I went out BOTH Fiday and Saturday nights, which may be a first since Kieran's birth back in 2006. It would also explain why I'm so tired today...I'm not used to such late nights. I mean, I think I was out until 11PM two nights in a row. Pass the Red Bull, I can barely keep my eyes open...

Kieran wanted to be outside all day yesterday which was totally fine. Last spring was hard because he was just turning two and if I didn't watch him 100 per cent of time he would either be careening uncontrollably down the driveway on his bike, or once he gained control, he'd be on the sidewalk, but halfway down the street flash. Now that he understands the meaning of words like "dangerous" and "ambulance" I don't really worry about him riding out onto the street as much.

His newfound obedience was nice because it gave me time to turn my attention to getting my garden ready and also our total disgrace of a lawn. I fail to understand why our lawn is always a giant weed-patch while almost everyone else's on the street has sprung up like a lush, green blanket. I assume they must have years of experience in lawn maintenance that I just lack, but we went into the backyard and overnight it seems there are weird weeds that are as tall as the Papaya (who is probably as tall as three ACTUAL papayas). Those are tall weeds. So, while the kids were playing around I went to work pulling up Dandelions and other pesky things.

Now, our backyard in the spring is an odd place. Before all the trees have their leaves and the shrubs have filled out, I can see quite clearly into both next door neighbours yards. As I may have mentioned before, both of our next door neighbours and the house directly behind us all have pools. The house behind us has a sloped backyard, so what they have apparently done is put in an above-ground pool and then built a huge raised deck around it to give it the appearance of an in-ground pool when you walk outside their patio doors. However, this raised deck means that they are standing level with the top of the fence. It's always jarring in the spring when they are out on their yard/deck and looking down at us as though we are polar bears at the zoo.

Last summer there was a young couple with a two year old daughter in that house. A few months ago the house went up for sale and the new owners are, apparently, a young couple with a two -year old daughter. They were also outside yesterday (scoffing down at our embarrassing weed-infested back yard, no doubt) and listening to music. When we first went back there, they were listening to the song American Pie, which I've always considered to be more of a summer-time campfire song than a spring-cleaning song, but, whatever. However, the longer we stayed in the backyard I realized that American Pie was the ONLY song they were playing. Like, it was on repeat. For an hour. Maybe longer because I could tell that Kaya was getting sleepy to the repetitive sounds of the Chevy driving to that stupid Levy for the what must of been the kabillionth time and, oddly, I was dying for a whisky and rye.

So, back inside we go. It's gonna be long summer....