So two weeks ago, I dropped Mark and Oliver and Callum off at the airport, and bid them adieu until this Sunday.  They were headed to England to stay with Mark’s families.  (I say ’families’ because his parents are divorced and remarried)

I haven’t mentioned my two weeks alone, because part of the trip was meant to be a surprise.  Mark’s dad was turning 70 this week and he wanted to give him a heart attackplanned to surprise him for his birthday.  And I have no idea, due to my seriously limited wordpress-supplied statistics, whether or not Mark’s dad reads this blog.  It’s very possible that he has found it.  He is an avid computer and internet user.  But they are with his dad now, so the secret’s out.

Anyway, so…freedom, baby, yeah.  Despite my best efforts to talk Mark out of travelling overseas with both children (mainly due to the idea that navigating airports and airplanes with a toddler and a preschooler by oneself is one of the circles of hell, and I assumed he’d end up losing or killing one of them), he insisted.  He insisted he’d be fine.  Me, I’d be a bloody stress case.  But he got them there fine, and everyone is okay.  You know, out of routine, but enjoying time with their grandparents and other relatives, and whatever.  Oliver, despite telling me when he left he was going to stay there, has since told me he is coming home soon.   I am still worried about the flight back, but as Mark would say, it’s only 7 hours even if they are both screaming the entire time.  Seven hours in a life time is not much.

So I’ve basically taken the opportunity of alone time to just get stuff done.  We never seem to be able to stay on top of anything around the house.  We manage to get laundry done, to run the dishwasher.  To keep bodies clean and fed.  But in reality, not much more than that.  So every night after work, I’ve just been on various missions to do stuff around the house that is always on my to-do list and never checked off.  That is rather satisfying.  There’s still so much more I want to do, though, and only a couple more days to do it.

I’ve also been cooking more slowly than normal (rather than the 10-minute-frantic-throw-it-in-the-pan-because-the-kids-are-screaming-hungry type of dinner we are prone to), having a leisurely glass of wine with my dinner (or even a daiquiri), playing with the dog, reading, and sleeping so damn well.

The downside to this break from routine is that I’ve had to pick up some jobs that are on the husband side of the division of labour in our house.  Walking the dog every morning at 6:30am is not my favourite thing to do, particularly in a snow storm or when it’s -15°C.  I kind of hate using the snowblower.  It’s like a crazy powerful machine.  I mean, it’s amazing compared to using a shovel, particularly with our exceptionally large driveway, but I am afraid of the big machine.

And people keep saying to me “oh, you must miss them so much”.  Erm, no.  I have actually compartmentalized them.  I’ve put them away for 2 weeks.  I’ve shut their doors (except when doing stuff in their rooms).  I’ve put their toys away.  I’ve honestly just enjoyed my alone time too much.  I mean, I’ve seen friends, I had a weekend away in the US with my parents – but the best thing of all has been to spend some quality time with myself and my house.

Perhaps he should make this a yearly trip so I can recharge my batteries annually.

No, I didn’t start using re-usable bags (diversion – honestly, I am not there yet, because we use all the evil plastic bags we get.  Do you know how many uses for a plastic bag there are in a house with a baby and a toddler – oh crap, they got older! a toddler and a preschooler?!).

What I did do was hitch a ride with my parents, who were heading down to the suburbs of Cleveland for the weekend, and attack American retail full-on.

If Kohls, Target and Burlington Coat Factory had known I was coming that morning, they would have pulled out a red carpet.

I think I just single handedly saved the American economy.

And I was on a high while out there, hitting the stores, throwing stuff labelled $1, $3, $5, $11 into my shopping cart like there was no tomorrow (no tomorrow with credit card bills).  I was in a retail trance.

And then I came crashing down when I realized just how much I had spent.  Like about twice the limit for a 48 hour trip.

But I really don’t need to go shopping for anything again like forever.  Anything that I remotely needed (better ear buds for my ipod that don’t fall out of my ear, proper New Balance sneakers, a wool coat, summer clothes for the kids, clothes for Mark, kitchen stuff, stationary…) I found for a deal.  The deals really were incredible, even with the exchange rate.

Now I just need to figure out how I am going to pay that credit card bill…

The three of us close ourselves into a small boardroom. I’m armed with my usual notebook and a pen, wishing I’d picked up a hot drink or something on the way because my throat feels a bit rough after a brisk walk back to the office after a meeting.  I’m anticipating an animated discussion about a report we’ve gotten back from a consultant featuring some fairly major data and research errors, that the press will be interested in once it’s released – whether or not those errors are fixed.

Instead, she pulls out two 13 week ultrasound photos. Her partner is pregnant. After many tries, this sperm donation worked.  There’s the mouth.  There’s the round tummy.  They’ve been together a long time, wanting to have children for so long. And their absolute joy has been intermingled with fear (can we afford another try if it doesn’t take?) but passing the 12 week mark means a bit of relaxing can occur.

My other colleague has dealt with the devastating blow of her own infertility, and has been waiting for the finalization of an international adoption for years.  I’m not exaggerating; she likes to say she has been pregnant for 3 years.  This year, the end is near. Barring some unforeseen event, her and her husband will become parents of a baby girl by the end of the calendar year.  Maybe sooner; maybe December.  The bureaucracy and paperwork and cost are almost too much to comprehend.  “You’ve had to do WHAT in order to become parents?!?!”

I’ve got a reputation at work that I’m the person you talk to if you want to be talked out of having kids.  Starry eyed girlfriends, fiancés and the newly-married are pushed in my direction so I can provide my usual warning – just be prepared.  Be prepared to never be selfish again.  You’ll never anticipate what kind of impact this will have on your relationship with your partner/spouse.  Get everything you want to do out of your system now.  Travel.  Shower.  Sleep.  Work what hours you like.  Buy foodie food.  I can go on.  I won’t.  I’m not saying you can’t do these things when you have kids.  It’s just that it’s going to be completely different from when you didn’t have them, and it’s not usually moving towards the positive.

Instead, today, we must spend about 20 minutes discussing the best places to buy cribs, the pros and cons of matching bedding and bedroom themes, the for- and against-Ikea furniture arguments.  We talk about finding out the sex, about when to have siblings, about how the bureaucracy of the adoption experience means that one of these babies won’t have any siblings.  I can’t help myself – I start preaching some assvice about spending as much quality time with your other half as you can before the kid arrives because a lot of that is going to go.  And that for me, two years apart between siblings is too close.  And how I feel like I lost myself during my maternity leave – emphasizing that I was only speaking for myself and I totally worship those mothers that love it.

But mostly, I shared their bliss. I am so incredibly happy these two women are becoming mothers. It doesn’t matter what effect these children are going to have on their lives in terms of travel plans, or sleep deprivation, and mummy and daddy yelling at each other just a little bit more than before.  These children are desperately wanted and desperately deserved.  I can’t wait to meet them.  I can’t wait to see the gratitude and joy and fulfillment in these two mothers’ faces.  When they talk about their experiences, I start tearing up, I can’t help it.  When they can start complaining about their lack of sleep or toddler tantrums or potty training, and I can chime in without a pang of guilt in my stomach that I am talking about my children again, I will be so glad.

I need to write it on my hand, which is something that I still do when I really need to remember something – a leftover from my teenage years…

Be thankful.  Be grateful.

Callum, I haven’t written about you in much too long. I must document this time properly (particularly as your baby book is like completely blank). I had forgotten what a good age this is. This is like the bridge between baby and toddler, when you get the best of both worlds.

And Callum is also much more of a textbook baby than Oliver ever was – he seems to be following developmental milestones (particularly social and language ones) more closely to ‘average’ than Oliver ever did. I just checked some developmental screening tools for aged 12 and 15 months, and he’s almost right on track for everything. I was always just a little worried about Oliver – not significant enough to seek help, but with your first baby, you never know what’s normal and what isn’t.

So the baby in him wants a cuddle, wants to be held, wants his milk in a bottle, would still probably just drink milk all day rather than eat a lot of food. The baby reaches out for Mummy and Daddy, looks for us when he cries, is deliriously happy to see us at the end of the day. (Oliver was so not like that! Always Mr. Independent!)

The toddler in him is determined to cruise everywhere. He’s still not walking. He started cruising like 3 or 4 months ago and he seems to think that’s enough for him. He’s take a few steps on his own when we’ve forced him to but he’s not really making much effort to let go. And he only actually learned to crawl properly at about a year old, so that’s still new and exciting to him, too.

He’s very musical. Any music, particularly a song he recognizes, and he’s dancing and/or clapping. This is clearly something that’s been supported by daycare as we’ve never really played much music for them, other than when we’re all in the car, because Oliver’s never really been interested in dancing.

This was my attempt to get him to dance on cue. All it ended up demonstrating is that we subject him to WAY too much tv, and this shows you how much he’s into it. Sorry, buddy. Bad mom right here. At least at the end the proper dancing came from an actual song.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=4119461590770624002&hl=en-CA]

He really does love In the Night Garden, and he loves his book of Night Garden opposites that we bought for a quid at Tesco last time we were all there. And he got lots of Night Garden toys for his birthday and he’ll point out the characters on the show. When his brother actually lets him watch it and doesn’t demand more Dora and Diego.

He’s obsessed with his older brother. Anything he can do, he’s going to try. Daddy and Oliver indulging in some popcorn the other night?

Oh yeah, I’m all over that, even if I am probably going to choke on it.

He’s such an imitator. It’s very entertaining. If Oliver’s playing with his new kitchen, and making us some food, Callum’s right there bringing me oranges and pretending to eat ice cream.

And thankfully as he gets older, it’s easier and easier for them to actually play together. One of their favourite things to do right now is get into Oliver’s bed together and roll around giggling. I’m not really sure what the point is, but it’s great. And Oliver is usually pretty good about not hurting him. As we keep warning him, one day Callum is really going to be bigger than him. Like significantly bigger. They are 22 months apart, but only about 3 lbs. apart. Only about 1 clothing size apart.

He’s started talking. He can clearly say ‘Daddy’ and point at the right person. He sort of mumbles ‘mama’ but doesn’t say it to me directly (which is a huge improvement on Oliver who never made ANY mmmm sounds and didn’t say Mummy until he was almost 2). He can, of course, say ‘uh oh’ and something resembling ‘up’ and ‘thank you’. And he understands everything – can follow directions, etc.

I don’t really remember Oliver being so expressive – but Callum is. He’s already had a couple of tantrums about stuff. He’s tried to hurt me in retaliation when he didn’t like something I did. But he also hugs and kisses, which Oliver has never really been into.

My grandfather said to me, when we saw them over the holidays – “there’s something about that boy, I don’t know what it is, but he’s a special one”. Yes, he definitely is.

Oliver started complaining about a sore tummy on Friday night, then vomited all over himself and his bed just as he was being tucked in.  A quick bath calmed him down, and then he was okay.  On Saturday, he was a sort of slower version of himself, declaring often that he needed rest (which is like completely out of character), and he barely ate any food all day.  He did enjoy some flat ginger ale, however.  Around 5pm, he was suddenly sick again.  At that point, we thought we’d better take him to the hospital as with an inguinal hernialike he has, there’s a chance that his intestines could become trapped in the hernia, which is quite dangerous – and vomiting is a sign that this may have happened.

Mark took him to our local hospital, and I waited at home with Callum.  And waited, and waited, with no phone call (he said his battery had run out.  Grrrrrr.).  Until 10pm, when Mark called and asked me to throw a bunch of stuff together for him because he had to take him to the children’s hospital downtown for surgery immediately.

The doctors that saw him at the first hospital were extremely worried, would have operated on the spot, but had a policy of referring kids under 6 to the children’s hospital (the one where he has surgery scheduled for mid-February).

I talked to my mother, found out when she could come over (in the morning) so that we could both be there with him, but when they got home, Mark decided he would let me drive his car and take Oliver instead of freaking out at home.

So we got there, and there was no surgeon waiting for us as Mark had thought – we had to be assessed just like the 40 other people waiting (mostly babies with fevers, from what I could tell) but he was prioritized.  The on-call surgeon eventually saw him, showed me what he would look like if his intestines were compromised and sent us home at 3am.  Just a tummy bug after all.

I’m still trying to catch up on sleep.

*

My organs feel rough.  I guess it’s a sign of aging (okay, I’m only 31, but still).  I can actually feel in my body that I ate too much crap over the holidays.  I overdosed on cake.  There is finally no birthday cake or nanaimo bars left in the fridge.  I can’t even think about ingesting a baked good at this point (and that is a good thing).  I’ve been craving vegetables!  We probably have scurvy.  But anyway, to remedy this, I filled with the fridge with all manner of green things, and attempted a tofu stir fry last night featuring baby bok choy and snow peas and all good things.  I tried to eat it and gagged.

Why can I not make tofu properly?  In England, we used to buy this marinated tofuthat was spongy and tasty, almost like a really dry omelette  in texture.  Tofu I’ve bought here is like solid pudding, not in a good way.  I bought extra firm.  It was squishy and disintegrated in the wok.  Thankfully, Mark scarfed down both our portions and both kids ate way more of it than I did.  I think I’d better stick to beans and lentils for vegetarian protein.  Oh, and detox FAIL as I ended up eating half a bag of chips to supplement my non-existent dinner.

*

On Sunday night, Mark went down to the basement to set up our new treadmill, and discovered an inch of sewage in our laundry room.  Our septic tank had decided to vomit all over our basement.

This is one of those occasions where Mark redeems himself.  The night before, I wanted to kill him.  He didn’t update me as to what was going on at the hospital.  He yelled at me to yell at the nurses when we got to the second hospital that Oliver needed to be seen immediately because he had to have surgery – even though he’s never been there and he doesn’t understand the triage system that we were queued up for.  Hey, guess what buddy, we don’t work well in a crisis together.

But then Sunday night he dug up the hatch to the septic tank, unclogged the pipe of whatever gucky hair/waste/etc. was blocking it, and let the water flow again.  He mopped the sewage water down the drains, and bleached the concrete so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the stank anymore.  And he’s disinfecting the washer and dryer and whatever else came into contact with the water (thankfully, not much did).

Okay, I’ll keep you around a little while longer.

Three is cheeky.  Three is willful, disobedient, testing all the time. And yet, three also loves to tell everyone else the rules and what’s right and wrong.  Three is talking back like a thirteen year old.  Three is grammatically correct, asking lots of questions, listening and remembering EVERYTHING.

Three is finally using the potty almost consistently.  Not quite entirely there yet, but considering just a few weeks ago he was refusing to even look at a toilet, that’s progress.  He just suddenly decided he was ready.  Of course, getting more underwear for his birthday meant that he was given the opportunity to use them for their true purpose…

This was his idea, no one spurred him on

Three is mostly kind to his brother.  Three is wanting to help, always exploring.  Three is independence.  Except suddenly sometimes he wants to be picked up or spoon fed or some other baby-ish behavior.  Three is not quite entirely not a baby yet.

Three is still in love with books.  Three is making up stories.  Three is a vivid imagination.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5206697635205216730]

Three can recognize lots of letters and numbers, but won’t trace his name yet (apparently daycare thinks he’s ‘behind’ on that one – whatever).  Three is a social butterfly at daycare, with lots of friends (the same group of boys, like his gang), and an obsession with Disney’s “Cars” characters despite never having seen the movie.  His daycare friends bring in the toys, and he tells us he loves Mater.

*whining* I wanna Mater cake, not Diego (despite the fact he picked it out himself)

Happy birthday, Oliver.