parenting hard

i woke up this morning with a short fuse.

the kids took turns kicking and jabbing me awake and there wasn't any coffee in the house. (and by no coffee, the wife usually makes it for me as i'm not allowed to touch the espresso machine because she is afraid i will break it. and she was at work. tea just doesn't do the trick in the morning.)

i refuse to grumble grumble grumble away this opportunity to collect my thoughts and find some sense of serenity before awaking tomorrow to the grind of a regular work week (+ parenting drama + housekeeping + other miscellaneous responsibilities). so i won't. 

i will simply say that the weekend was productive and restful, with overcast patches of the grumbles. momma the hulk was most definitely around. a lot.

i will also say that the mouthy, argumentative, and insistent nature of a certain aries 4-year old (who eggs on his little sister to do inappropriate things) does nothing but fuel the fire. 

disciplining requires discipline itself: rigour, consistency, a willingness to be both repetitive and practically unforgiving. rudeness is unacceptable. violence will not stand. blatant disobedience masquerading as ignorance cannot be tolerated. all of which are hard lessons, even for grown-ups. but it's in these early years that these lessons have to stick. there needs to be consequences - as much as there needs to be many opportunities to start again and make better choices.

the measure of my success in parenting isn't so much the hopes and dreams i have for my children. their lives are theirs to live. their hopes and dreams are theirs to own entirely. my intention is simply to give them roots and wings to fly. my success in motherhood lies simply in the fact that on most given days, when in trouble or doubt, happy or sad, brave or afraid - that both my children allow me an opportunity to be there. i want the honour of having a place in each of their lives - not out of obligation or need - but out of a sincere desire to stay connected to me. 

i've been struggling with the lines that blur kindness and discipline. when does my willingness to forgive become an open invitation to be bullied by the impetuous reflex desires of a toddler or two? 

is the answer simply to summon up more patience? take an extended (more than 5 hours) break from parenting? permanently extricate the television from existence in our home? burn  hide all the toys? i'm not sure.

there are good days and there are bad days. the weekend was peppered with some good and much bad.

photo taken by the wife

i love my children. it's my job to teach them right from wrong. it's my duty to influence the choices they make while in my care.  and i will bust my butt do my best to help them become good people: kind, happy, healthy, fulfilled. 

photo also taken by the wife

i love myself, too. i am human. i have limits. and for my children to respect the boundaries of their strengths, i have to stand up to my own weakness for their little hearts. for my children to respect me, i will have to be ruthless about showing them what it means to respect myself. 

hard lessons indeed.

"isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is another day with no mistakes in it yet?" - lucy maude montgomery

here's to a clean slate and a peaceful start to the week for all of us.

the first day

i have this print i bought online last year. 

i haven't quite figured out where it goes in our home but it was today that i truly felt the spirit of its message.

i know it's late february. and that it rains at least 5 days a week in vancouver right now. but today was warm and sunny and just lovely. full of blue skies and backyard discoveries. 

today, i felt what it was to be outside and look forward to a spring and summer of growing: growing gardens, growing memories, growing up.

i can hardly wait.

favourite things: on valentine's day

:unexpected treats (thank you, thank you, thank you my darling wife. you know just how much you've outdone yourself.)

:handcrafted valentines from us to the kids

:handcrafted valentines from the boy. 

:valentines for the boy's preschool class; potato-stamped hearts by me, typewritten words by the wife and the girl, and the boy glued on the hearts himself.

mothering soundbytes: girl talk

just last week, i found myself at a comic book store near my office where i thought to call the wife to be sure that i would be picking up the latest instalment of the buffy season 9 (priorities, you know). 

the call went like this:

me: hello? hello...? hello?

her: hello!

me: hi my darling daughter! how are you? 

her: good.

me: whatchoo doing? 

her: nothing.

me: can you give the phone to mom  please? 
her: okay.

[silence. shuffles. screams at her mom. phone is passed to the wife.]

wife: daughter, who did you call...?

 

[shuffles]

wife: ... hello?

me: hey. did you know the girl had your phone? 

wife: no.

me: you mean she answered the phone? 

wife: i guess so!

me: huh. 

my baby turns 20 months old tomorrow.

she baffles me everyday with her smarts and her smile, that one.

she can sing her abc's. in fact, she sings all day. we often sing together, and she finishes my verses for me. she may not be able to pronounce all the letters and words but her sing song is usually nearly in tune.

she can count to thirteen.

she tells you when you don't quite understand what she's saying with a  patronizing, "no."

she surprises me daily with the breadth of her vocabulary - especially at this stage of her development. 

she's already so strong, opinionated, assertive, and brave. sassy. funny.

my littlest babe is growing up so fast. and something tells me it's going to be quite the trip learning from her, as well as with her, in the days and years ahead.

chin up and muddling through

i had to move my work area to our living/dining space tonight because of some unforeseen project deadline-related circumstances.


so if i must be working late, i may as well keep some creature comforts close by: hydrangeas from the garden, candles, and just a little knitting. which reminds me, some tea would be nice.

and the olympics. this is the only time of day i ever get to catch up on the olympics. 


i swam competitively for the philippines when i was little. all the butterfly events make my heart race. all of them.

us being us

just look at her!

she's at the beach and all she wants to do is get back inside the stroller. (practicing her parade wave, perhaps?)

just look at him!

it's all build, dive, and destroy all the time. (what is up with that?)

just look at the wife!

well... she is always lovely. but she does look a bit... mama bored shovelling sand into a pail (it was my turn to relax and do what i wanted. i think i took out my knitting and didn't actually knit.)

just look at me!

i've got that hands-on-hip, perma-exasperated look on my face, mama thing going on. (it was the wife's turn to relax. she read for a bit. but missed us so she walked up to where we were and snapped this photo.)

just us being us, really. 

i'm bracing myself for a difficult week full of deadlines and reviews at the job-that-pays. couple that with family life and well, let's just say that if i get some whole cooking in at all, and even a tiny bit of quality time with the wife, that'll be enough to make my week.

i'll be back tomorrow with some knits to show you. in the mean time, hope you have a fabulous start to your week!

favourite things: home in the summertime

being away was so good. 


but the lovely truth is, there's no place like home.

local strawberries

flowers from our garden

after-dinner walk

walking through the coop to check on our garden

visting the train tracks

our neighbours grow such pretty gardens

washing the gift of newly ripened raspberries

he spat the raspberries out after this shot. "it was too much."

 happy weekend! 

{gorgeous moments} at the river beach

this week  has been mostly wretched with rain. we're getting a little sun today but the next few days promise to be wet, as well.

and the reason for my weather report is because i was looking back at my favourite moments from last weekend. 

when it was like the summer it should be now (you know, that we've arrived at mid-june). so we found ourselves, once again, in fraser river park, where we enjoyed some time in the sun and sand.

the boy was in heaven.

the girl (who has missed almost every beach trip we've made because she was fast asleep) was in curious discovery mode. having just woken from a nap, this was the first time those little bare feet have been allowed to touch sand.

we stayed at the park all afternoon. and we vowed to pack a beach bag so we are always ready to go to river beach-combing whenever we felt like it.

but come july and august, when the weather gets properly hot, it's to the ocean beaches we'll head. i already know it will be quite the trek, being without a vehicle, as we are. but it will also be worth the blissfully tired sun-soaked bodies at the end of the day. 

it's been quite the busy week. i longed for this friday as soon as it began. now that it's here, i am so grateful. and looking forward to the moment when i can officially breathe in the weekend and exhale the work-week. 

wishing you a lovely weekend! 

knit parade: sock tangent

the very first year the wife and i lived together was 13 years ago. we were in our mid-twenties. we were both still in university. we had three cats. and everything we owned was a hand-me-down.


we had just survived a very hard summer of making and losing friends. we were both still very much in the infamous closet. we had very little money. and we worked all the time. at one point, the wife even had three jobs.


our first place, just the two of us, was right in the heart of the toronto "village:" church and wellesley.  and we loved living there, in the heart of it all, protected by our community. we danced in the space we sectioned off for our living room. and in that little bachelor apartment full of melting walls and falling tiles, we found out we loved to entertain.


but as anyone who loves to entertain will attest, it can take its toll. 


one night, just minutes before friends were coming over for dinner, the wife and i had a fight. i don't remember about what, but it was probably one of our first heated arguments in that first apartment of ours. we got it together just before our guests arrived. and of course, all was well and presumably, a good time was had by all.


unfortunately, we had also done a load of laundry that day, which we completely forgot about, because of said fight. a load full of socks. for days... or even weeks we wondered where some of our favourite pairs were. 


when we finally went to the laundry room, optimistic the socks were still there, waiting ever-so-patiently for us to claim them, they were gone. and we were devastated.


you see, my wife has a thing for socks. she loves socks. and that load of socks was a collection of gifts and carefully selected impulse-buys full of brand names and special beloved designs. that load of socks was nearly our entire sock drawer. we had no money to replace the lot. and to this day, we sort of haven't recovered from the loss. (if you've ever asked me what to get the wife for a christmas or a birthday gift, and you ever wondered why my answer is always socks, now you know why.)


over a decade later, i find i am finally able to begin to redeem that moment in time because i am a knitter. and i have discovered a love for making socks.


after knitting the wife's 17th anniversary socks, i immediately cast on for my own. and when i finished my pair,  i thought i'd try and knit my grandmother a pair of socks. surely she'd appreciate them since she used to be a knitter, herself. (and if she doesn't like them, she won't tell me, so it's all good.) here they are.

yarn: spud and chloe fine

then the designer of the pattern i'd been using mentioned on her blog that she has drawer-full of hand-knit socks. and ever since i read that, i was inspired to work towards a similar goal... in lieu of all the socks we lost that-time-we-had-a-fight-right- before-our-dinner-party-oh-so-long-ago.


and then the same designer decided to host a patchwork sock-a-long on ravelry using only scrap sock yarn. and... well, i couldn't resist joining. you know, because every pair of socks i knit works towards my drawer-full goal. 


anyhoo, check out my first sock entry!

isn't it crazy? i adore it. i'm usually such a colour wimp but socks are so wearable, whatever they look like, because they are easily hidden. i thought i'd just trust in the process of just putting the colours together and have fun. 

yarn: (left column, from the top) mystery yarn, koigu kppm
(right column, from the top) auracauna, knitpicks stroll handpainted, tosh sock

the yarn i used for this project are all scraps from projects past - socks i made the wife, the boy, and the girl; a sleep sack i made for the girl, her newborn hat, a failed project for the girl, and fingerless gloves for me. 

weaving the ends in were kind of a saga. but such is the small consequence of a truly unique pair of socks full of family memories, hand-knitted by me. 


surely a drawer-full of these should make up for that lost laundry load of socks, right? 





well, they better!

(gorgeous moments)

a friday weekly ritual (modified from its original inception), where i share a photograph or two (or more) featuring my favourite moment(s) from the week.

i know i haven't been around of late. and i can't really apologize for it much because there is only so many hours in a day. and some days, there is just no room to blog.

i do have lots to share. and i will, once i get a moment to myself to organize an entry or two.

today, i simply want to share the first hydrangeas of the season from our garden. 

this lovely little bouquet was delivered to be me by the wife and the boy, as i was wrapping up some work for the job-that-pays. all the while, the girl was napping just behind me. 

a gorgeous moment i want to remember. 

happy friday!

{gorgeous moments}

a friday ritual (modified from its original inception), where i share a photograph or two (or more) featuring my favourite moment(s) from the week.

there really is nothing better than watching these two play together. the moments of collaboration and cooperation last for like, seconds, what with toddler and baby communication skills being what they are. but man, those seconds are gold.

happy friday!