Sunday, January 26, 2014

Teleportation and follow the leader

Many of you may have experienced this.  Either with children or with pets.  For some unknown reason, you cannot be in the bathroom with the door closed.  I've given up when I'm home alone with the girls.  This morning it wasn't me that was interrupted.  It was Hubby.  In the ensuite.

Now he'd already been in there for a bit and no one noticed.  Then I went into our room to see if I could convince Monkey to have an early morning nap since she'd decided that 4:30 was a good time to start her day.  So I laid down with her, Sergeant wanted to lay beside me too and hear me sing, then Girlie came into the room too.

"Mom, where's Daddy?"
"In the bathroom." I say
She turns and bangs on the door "Dad, are you in there?"
"Nope" Dad replies.
"Daddy, what are you doing in there?"
"What do we do in the bathroom, Girlie?"
"Go pee and poop.  Are you peeing and pooping, Daddy?"
"Nope, I'm not in here"
She starts banging on the door even louder and harder.  Sergeant starts laughing and decides to join her.  So they are hitting the door, kicking, I'm reminding them to be gentle so the door doesn't break, Hubby is trying to convince them that there isn't, in fact, a secret tunnel leading out from the bathroom to parts unknown.  They eventually lose interest and decide to play in the bathtub in the other bathroom.  (I seriously don't see the draw to playing in a dry bathtub, but they can't seem to get enough of it).  When Hubby comes out of the bathroom he looks around, glances into the other bathroom.  Then he comes back into the bedroom, closes door to the ensuite, and lays down on the bed, back to the door.  A minute later Sergeant comes back into the bedroom, sees the door to the bathroom shut and tries to open it again.  Of course this time he's successful, but the light is off and there's no one in there so he closes the door and looks confused.  Hubby turns and asks who he's looking for.  The look on Sergeant's face was priceless!  "You teleported!?"

They go back out to tell Smarty what Daddy had done and while they were doing that, Hubby closed the door of the bathroom again, and this time hid on the floor on the far side of the bed.  They came back, looked int the bathroom, on the bed, in the other bathroom, starting to go down the hall, looking in bedrooms, and just as Hubby went to see if they were far enough away to let him hide someplace they'd already looked, they came back and saw him in the hallway.  "Daddy, where'd you go?"

And this turned into follow the leader.  Smarty and Sergeant followed right behind Hubby wherever he went, so he led them outside.  But they didn't go outside, they closed the door on him instead and came back to tell me, while chuckling to themselves, that they shut Daddy outside of the house.  Then they left him in the spare room downstairs.  It was a fun morning!

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

crazy life

Our children are crazy.  I know every child has some form of it, but I'm not sure everyone would believe what happens in this home daily.  From house rules like "no light sabres at the table" to "kitty's need to pick up their toys", we have some real doozies!  

And I love the playfulness that surrounds us.  A few weeks ago, the kids were all up and playing nicely so Hubby and I were still laying in bed.  No one had asked for breakfast yet, no one was yelling or crying.  Rare moments.  Monkey came up and into our bed because she was feeling ignored by the parents.  So she was lifting our shirts, blowing raspberries on them, giggling like nothing on earth.  All of a sudden the room was overrun by ninjas!  

Two ninjas jumped into our room, arms and legs flailing, followed by the cutest pink poodle you've ever seen on all fours.  They may even have been singing "My Inner Ninja".  "Can we watch Kung Fu Panda?"  And the poodle saying "I'm a ninja puppy!"  Then one of them gator crawling along the bottom of the bed with such speed that we just looked at each other saying "did he really just do that?"

Or yesterday, they brought up their knight figures.  Complete with battering rams, catapults, and canons.  All four of them playing nicely.  Well, Monkey was more trying to eat the pieces, but still...

After meals it gets pretty loud here, too.  Smarty is usually done first, then Girlie decides she's done, then Sergeant, and by that time Monkey is very loudly indicating that she wants to be out of her chair too.  Then the chasing begins.  I can never really tell who starts it, but soon Sergeant and Monkey and Girlie are running around the table, down the hallway and back again, through the kitchen and around the table again.  Frequently Smarty is right in there too.  That's usually when we say "Go crazy downstairs!"

The weather has been so weird this month.  Even for the natives!  Heavy snow, rain, more rain, freezing, more rain, snow.  And now we have a blizzard warning on for tonight and tomorrow.  And it kinda bugs me that the kids have fewer outside recess days here than they did in Alberta in January.  

Tomorrow Hubby has his first visit with the oncologist, so I've arranged for our girls to be watched so I can go with him.  And his CT scan is on Monday, for those who'd like to know.  Just trundling along, finding out what the next steps are, if any.

This weekend I made a super tasty seafood lasagna.  Boiled some lobster tails to add to it.  And you know what?  It didn't bother me that the kids hardly touched it.  More for Hubby and I!  And yesterday I did up some white chocolate chip cranberry cookies.  Wow.  Just WOW!  The ones I did last time were peanut butter chocolate chip and I thought those were irresistibly good.  These ones are more so!  It is much more difficult to exercise that self control right now!  

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Three days in

Back to school and all that that entails!  Three days in and so far we've done pretty good.  Hubby started running again on Sunday so he's back at it.  For a brief note here: he stopped running in December because he had an orchiectomy.  There was an unknown mass in one of his testicles that had to be removed to find out what it was.  Followup appointment last Thursday confirmed that it was Seminoma, so now we are waiting on a CAT scan to see if it's spread anywhere or if it was contained.  Hopefully it was contained.

But Hubby started running again.  He's going slow and not as far as he'd like, especially since he is only 5 weeks post surgery.  But it's getting him out of the house and a bit more active and he's happy to be back at it, and it is helping us get back into a familiar routine.  Daddy gets up for his run, comes home to an awake house, and the day starts.  I don't think I'll ever get used to this time for dismissal, though. I really don't like having to wake the girls up from their naps, but that's the way it's done here.

The other night we were watching the news and there was a story about a  5 year old boy found dead in Saskatoon.  Poor Sergeant's ears perk up at hearing this and he said "A 5 year old boy in Saskatoon died?  Good thing it wasn't me!"  All I could do was hug him and tell him I was glad it wasn't him too.  Then last night he woke up in a panic saying he couldn't breathe. Yelling and crying, I rubbed Vicks on his chest to help clear his nose but he still wouldn't settle.  Finally I asked what else was wrong.  He had had a nightmare.  A bad dream where I died.  Poor guy!  So a cup of water and some prayers later and he slept soundly for the rest of the night.  But this morning when I asked him about his dreams he remembered what that one was.  He didn't tell me details, just asked for hugs and kisses.

Smarty is practicing reading out loud.  Part of their assignment this month is reading a book aloud to the class and answering questions about it.  As well their show and tell will be presenting a favourite toy and telling three things about it then answering three questions from the class.  Tonight he briefly mentioned that he should have practiced more.  He doesn't present his book until the 22nd and his show and tell is the 23rd.  Good that he wants to put the time into it!  He's taken to hiding beside the bed when Daddy is in the shower.  The idea is to sneak up and either scare Dad or attack with snuggles.  It's very cute and this morning when it backfired on him he was very disappointed. But there are always other opportunities!

Girlie has had a few days adjustment to Daddy being back at work.  I'm slowly moving my way back up in her favour.  I didn't do anything to fall from her grace, aside from simply not being her Dad.  She now has stopped pushing me away and laying at the far end of the bed, practically falling off to get away from me at nap time.  She'll pull me closer and tell me she loves me.  I'll never quite be up to where Hubby is, but I'll take what I can.  For as attached as the others are to me, I guess it's alright to have one firmly attached to him.  They all love him but Girlie takes it to a whole other level of affection.

Monkey is a regular monkey.  She's sleeping better (finally!) and she's kinda sorta trying to talk.  Okay, it's still mostly communication with squawks and squeals, but I can sometimes get her to mimic at least the starting sound of some words if no one is around.  But she is crazy smart!  She hears and understands everything and certainly knows what she does or doesn't want!  A couple evenings ago she was playing with Hubby after supper.  And not playing the way she normally does.  She was being cuddly and affectionate.  He was weirded out by that.  She usually yells at him, not pulling his face closer for kisses or climbing onto his lap for hugs.  She was back to normal today, so it may be a slow change.  She is trundling along well, though.

Yesterday I got the Christmas decorations down and into boxes.  Well, for the most part.  I"m sure I'll still be finding some things around for a few weeks if not months.  That's just the way it seems to go here.  And wow, the weather is funny!  Blizzard last Friday, sunny Saturday and Sunday, rain warning for Monday, then freezing up Tuesday and Wednesday so far.  Quite a bit of the snow we got on Friday is already gone from the sun followed by the crazy rain.  Then yesterday we had such loud wind!  Now I'm used to the prairie wind.  This is different.  Sounds and feels different than the 120 km winds of the chinooks.  Simply crazy.  But that's enough for now.