Things I don't want to forget

 Every night when I lie down for bed I begin to think of all the things that happened that day that I don't want to forget.  In the moment, forgetting them seems like an impossibility.  But, as the passage of time and the failing of my memory, prove, forgetting them is far more possible than it is the opposite.  And so I promise myself that I will write them down on the blog and then another day passes and I have failed to commit to print what remains so momentarily within my consciousness.  So, here is a short list of things I do not want to forget:

1.  Simon bites his nails.  I realize that this is a habit that one should dissuade but it is incredibly cute when it is done by a three-year-old.  He is genuinely biting his nails but he looks like he's been instructed by an acting coach to pretend he's scared by biting his nails.  I will have to make sure to get a photo of this.

2.  Sarah's bouquets:  Sarah loves to pick both wildflower bouquets and bundles from my garden.  She has an eye for beauty, proportion and form and I find lovely bouquets distributed throughout the house.  She also tells me that flowers never meant much to her but because of my flower garden, she doesn't think she could live without flowers.  Mission accomplished.

3.  Ben teaching Matthew to ride a bike.  Ben's great passion is long-distance biking and he grew understandably frustrated that we had yet to teach Matthew to bike especially as Matthew's 6th birthday is tomorrow.  So, this week Ben tuned up the remaining John Deere bike as Matthew and Simon watched avidly from the sidelines.  Then Ben, with the patience and gentleness of Ben, taught Matthew to bike night after night until we were finally summoned outside to watch as Matthew rode down the street with Ben yelling, "Look forward!  Look forward!"  I got home from Pembroke last night at around 9pm and Matthew and Ben were still outside working on bikes and practising with short trips down the driveway.

4.  Along the same lines, Ben rode in his first 97 km bike tour last Sunday.  Mathew has grown so used to watching Ben watch the Tour de France on the internet that Matthew asked Ben if he would be able to watch Ben on the computer and if there would be cameras along the route.

5.  Joe cutting Ben's hair.  This is just one of those memories that stirs my heart because cutting hair was always my task and it is both relieving and heartwarming to have someone else shoulder part of the burden.  It's also simply beautiful to watch brothers side by side joking with one another while performing a task.  Also, these two were little boys for so long and now they are undeniably young men, and particularly fine ones at that.

6.  Mariana's body movements.  How to describe these?  They are unexpected and make me laugh and reveal a drama within this little girl that I was unaware of.  She moves like my maternal grandmother and seems to have the same penchant for drama that comes down from the Thomas side.  I often feel like I'm watching a swan mature.

7.  Simon is in the stage where he doesn't use the pronoun I.  Instead he says me love dat instead of I love that.  My particular favourite is when he says, "Me want something to eat."  And then he asks for more, "Me want something other to eat."

A Simon Post

 This is a photo of Simon from sometime in the summer.  His hair is now Polish brown and I understand why people who haven't seen him a while ask me if I've started dying his hair.  The change certainly is dramatic.  Simon is a huge part of our life, occupying a space so graced that one wonders at its non-existence only a few years ago.  The phenomenon of every child seems to be that once they have arrived, they have always existed.  How could anything else be true?  Simon's sense of self is so secure that I am sure he feels similarly.  Now that I have finally sat down to type out things that I don't wish to forget about Simon, I have forgotten all but one of them.  That's ok, this post can grow as memories come to mind.

1.  Every morning when Simon sees me upon waking he immediately asks for a "dottle" and tells me that he is cold.  The last part is to indicate that he would like to sit on my lap and be wrapped in the old grey cardigan that I wear as a housecoat.

2.  If I happen to have a cup of tea when Simon is drinking his bottle, he insists on clinking cup to bottle and saying Cheers.  Or does he say Cheers?  I'm actually not sure.  Maybe I just hear it in my head.

3.   Yesterday Matthew was acting up and verging on throwing a tantrum.  Simon picked up a dead cell phone and said, "I phone mine daddy!"  He understands far more than I give him credit for.

4.  He went through a stage recently where he labeled all members of the family as either a waffle or a pancake.  Hearing him say waffle is absolutely adorable and we implored him again and again to attach labels to siblings.  Dave and I were pancakes and all the children waffles. Simon was adamant about the distinction and I don't think Jacob merited a place in the hierarchy

5.  Simon found the hardcopy book of the blog from the time when Joe was Simon's age and was delighted to find a book entirely about himself.  They do bear a striking resemblance and Simon simply changed the characters in the book to match those now present in his life.  Hannah became Sarah, Ben was Matthew and Jacob was largely ignored as a passing figure of little importance.  One day you will love your oldest brother, Simon!

This is a belated November post

Joe turned 16 at the end of November.  Amazing, because I started this blog when he was not yet one.  On his first birthday, he climbed out of his highchair and sat on the tray eating cake.  This would be telling of things to come.  On his sixteenth birthday, I drove him to get his Learners license in Pembroke.  (I'm still hopelessly lost on what level of G licensing this is, so Learner's it will remain.). We arrived only to be told that he needed a passport or birth certificate as proof of identity.  We had neither and we were 45 minutes from home.  Since it was Joe's birthday, I wasn't allowed to get angry at him.  Ben came to our rescue and drove more than halfway to meet us with a roadside birth certificate handoff.  It literally was a handoff because we found Ben parked on the side of the highway with his hand extended out the window and a birth certificate at the ready.  We brought him a hamburger in exchange and, dear Ben, is always satiated and dutifully thanked with food.

This little lady turned 8 at the start of November.  I managed to buy her a LEGO set that wasn't really LEGO.  Sigh.  I learned my lesson and will never not check the fine details on Amazon again.  Or, rather, I will have Sarah do all the shopping, which I should have done in the first place.  I also managed to buy Mariana three of the same LEGO sets at Christmas which we then had to gift to various friends who now own replicas of LEGO Friends Aliyah's apartment.  I doubt I will ever learn.  I can't find a birthday shot of our November girl, so this one will have to do.  Judging by the ceiling, it's from our fateful trip to Shediac.

 And these delightful puppies, ten of them, also share a November birthday.  They have all gone to their forever homes but their stay with us is always a lot of fun and great joy, especially over the Christmas break.  This year there was no snow until my birthday and raising the puppies was happily easy for Joseph.  Joseph and Ben do a tremendous job of raising Rosie and Bosco's litters.  Rosie's contribution is definitely at the front end and she gratefully watches her pups leave as she smokes her well-deserved cigarette while lounging on her settee.  Bosco kicks in with the role of fun father at about four weeks and is quite incognizant of the fact that he is in fact a father of 19 and not an overly large puppy himself.  He's not yet old enough for a cigar and we are surprised that Rosie deigns to enter into a relationship with him.  But he's pretty cute and a really nice guy thus proving that Rosie isn't much different than most women.

Matthew and Simon

Seeing how sorely neglected this blog has been, Matthew and Simon, being among the more recent children of the lot, haven't had much attention paid to them here.  As a partial remedy, here are two stories. 

Matthew asked me for hotdogs at lunch a few weeks ago.  I told him (in an act of immature parenting) that hotdogs were quite unhealthy and lead to cancer.  Knowing that Matthew was yet ignorant of that disease, I qualified what I had said by adding that Grandma Anne had died of cancer. He immediately looked circumspect.  With an arched eyebrow, he asked, "And did Grandma Anne eat a lot of the hotdogs?"  I wasn't quite sure what to say because Grandma Anne really wasn't a voracious eater of hotdogs and I didn't want to lay at her feet the blame for the disease that killed her.  Instead I just looked puzzled.  Matthew jumping on my uncertainty, and knowing that the rest of Grandma Anne's family was still very much alive, asked, "And did the rest of the family eat these hotdogs?"  And just like that he had outed me with a swift and precise cut of his sword of detection. Well done, little boy

I gave Simon a bath today at noon after a very early spring led to a very dirty little boy.  He asked for bubbles and I provided.  After the bath, I pulled him out and wrapped him in a towel and told him that I had wrapped him up like a little pancake.  When I came back with a diaper, he was still lying on the bed thinking:  "Waffle, mama.  Me little waffle." 

I then told him that I was going to take a shower.  He asked if I would use bubbles.  I responded that I would not.   With great effort and his growing mind, he formulated the next question, "You hate bubbles, mama?"