Category Archives: The Boy

Day Off

The boy went into preschool today and wasn’t sent home, so I assume all was well. I gave myself a well-deserved day off, which means I practiced the cello twice (once this morning and once this afternoon), wound off the yarn I’d plied last night (237 yards), spun some more single and plied it with the remaining single (another 43 yards, for a total of 279! and I still have some original single left), washed both to set the twist and hung them to dry (the second little skein is positively the best yarn I’ve done so far), made bread (twice, because the first one went horribly wrong because I forgot to turn off the low heat I’d set in the oven to warm it up before leaving it to rise, so the heat killed the yeast), made stew, and caught up on some web episodes of things.

There is a train horn stuck on at the bridge near us. It’s… insidious. It’s almost not noticeable, until one notices it, and then it’s Very There.

I feel so relaxed. Apart from the irritating tickle in my throat that has caused me to cough all day, that is, and the resulting headache. It felt so wonderful to sit down and actually play again. The cello sounds fantastic, with excellent ringing tones and nice sustain. Part of that is I’ve forgotten how good it sounds, but I like to think part of it is also due to my use of back muscles to direct the bow and keep an even weight on it.

Oh good, the train horn stopped. You never really appreciate silence until it falls after a very long stretch of constant noise.

Speaking of noise, it rained quite hard in the early afternoon while I was spinning, and I opened windows so I could hear it. It was coming straight down, and it sounded lovely.

Tonight I am off to watch another two OVAs of Maria-sama ga Miteru with Marc, and then tomorrow I will do the little freelance assignment that’s waiting for me. We were told that accounting was behind and so the cheques that were supposed to be cut last week and mailed out today will in fact be a week late, which snarls up my budgeting somewhat. I am annoyed, but there’s nothing I can do. Accouting promises that it’s an isolated incident and the rest of the invoicing/payment schedule for the year won’t be affected, but we shall see.

Aha, the boys are home. As I just took the bread out of the oven, I suspect we shall all indulge in warm bread with butter melting off it and onto our fingers before supper proper.

Weekend Roundup

So very tired. This cold is kicking me, and dealing with the boy’s cold and being home 24/7 is draining me even more. Plus it was a packed weekend (of course).

Before the weekend roundup begins, it is important to note that on Thursday night, I rejoined the Thursday night gaming group for the first time in, oh, possibly almost a decade, because HRH rearranged the basement office to make room for a table and chairs and the gang came over here so that both HRH and I could be in the game at the same time. I’d originally dropped gaming because I was burnt out, and then there was the boy and someone needed to be home with him, so even though the spirit was willing, getting a babysitter every Thursday night was not remotely possible; besides which, the fibro over the past handful of years (pre- and post-diagnosis) makes evenings out doubtful. But the compromise of being in one Thursday night game a month(ish) and in my own home is very doable. MLG has launched a new Star Trek game which promises to be very exciting, and it was very flattering to have so many people thrilled that I was back. I’ve missed the gang, and it’s great that they’re willing to move that one game in the four-game rotation to a place where I can participate.

I got an e-mail Friday afternoon from the freelance coordinator, who congratulated me on my patience and courage in handling the horrific project I’d handed in Thursday night. And my new assignment landed, which is a lovely little 23K word general fiction manuscript to evaluate, which I suspect was cherry-picked for me after the nightmare, bless them. HRH came home at lunch on Friday, and Friday afternoon we went to HRH’s parents’ house to belatedly celebrate his mom’s birthday. It was much more relaxing than I expected it to be, and I got another inch knitted on my lace scarf. I had a good cello lesson on Friday night, too, which helped. I was upfront about my lack of energy and focus, so after we worked a bit of Mooney we sight-read the Mozart duet that M and I are playing for the recital this December. It’s just lovely, and amusingly/conveniently enough it hits all the things I need to work on: smooth bow changes, listening, timing, and expression. I didn’t hate everything I played, which I tend to do when I’m tired and can’t remember new instructions from one moment to the next. The pretty melody helps a lot with that. I love to play it. I’m so fortunate that my teacher understands that I have a condition with fatigue and focus issues, and is willing to work with me through them.

Saturday morning we did groceries and I baked. I made a double loaf of herb bread with half white and half whole wheat flour and an apple cake to take to the harvest ritual at Rowan Tree Farm that afternoon. HRH headed off belatedly to deliver things and pick Amanda up and didn’t get back till half an hour after I’d wanted to leave. As RTF is an hour and a half away that means we got there an hour later than the suggested target time. We had a lovely harvest ritual in which we counted our blessings, and then t! and Jan feasted us with local venison and boar sausages, lamb sausage, locally sourced beef, and the side dishes the guests had brought. We had to flee around seven-thirty because the boy had to get home and HRH had a bachelor party to attend back home. I felt rushed, which on top of the cold and increasing fatigue due to said cold and small boy being home sick made me disinclined to be social.

Sunday morning was Pagan playgroup, which HRH attended with us because I was too fatigued to drive safely. The coordinator was delighted to see him, especially since half the kids were missing. It was a really nice low-key day. On the way home we stopped at a pharmacy so I could finally pick up cold medication for myself. After a chat with my mum and a light lunch I napped while the boy did, and then Ceri came over for a wonderfully quiet afternoon of knitting… which neither of us did. I spun another threeish ounces of Corrie, and she crocheted. And the boy learned how to use the ball winder, an event he has been looking forward to for ages. (How many four year old boys do you know who can correctly identify a ball winder in a catalogue?)

He was very excited about making ‘yarn cakes’, and stacked three of varying sizes into a wedding cake-like configuration. Ceri got to use the skein winder in conjunction with the ball winder too, which was very exciting once we figured out the angle necessary so the thing would actually turn to wind off the skein while she wound it into a centre-pull ball. And we discovered that if I mount the skein winder on the wheel post backwards, I can keep spinning while it’s being used. Efficiency!

HRH handled dinner and let me have a bath, for which I was extremely grateful because the fatigue was getting worse. After dinner we put the boy to bed, Blade came down to be the Designated Responsible Adult On Site, and we headed out to our monthly steampunkian horror game chez Tal. Everyone was tired, so it was a very brief focused game in which yet more puzzle pieces dropped into place and important info was added to the clues we already had.

This morning the boy is home yet again, because his nose is still unpredictable and every few hours there’s a nasty coughing jag. As bronchitis popped up at the school twice in the past couple of weeks, I’m taking him to the doctor today (if there’s an appointment free; can’t call till nine, and the line will be swamped with everyone calling in after the weekend, grr) to make sure all’s well with him. If I can’t get an appointment, I’ll try sending him in tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I’m off to brave the phone lines. Wish us luck.

ETA: Forty minutes to get through… and the doctor’s not in this week. The nurse asked if he had a fever (no), if there was anything alarming (no), was I giving him anything for it (yes, an expectorant syrup), said that a lot of the viruses (virii?) going round left lingering dry coughs that weren’t indicators of anything serious, and to take him to a clinic if it hasn’t cleared up by the end of the week. Fine; Plan B it is! Keep him home today, send him in tomorrow.

Speed Bump

The boy woke up with a horrific asthma attack around eleven on Tuesday night. He hasn’t had one in two years. This was eerily reminiscent on that previous attack, too: suddenly waking up in a panic almost incapable of breathing. The good thing is that he’s two years older and understands that the mask and inhaler help him to some degree almost immediately. So that plus a glass of water and some cuddling got him calmed to a point where he eventually fell asleep again, although he woke up again four hours later for a repeat of all treatment. I had trouble getting back to sleep every time, so I think I clocked a total of three or four hours. When we got up at six it was obvious that he wasn’t going anywhere, so I called preschool and let them know he was staying home. Both his teacher and I were mystified as to the origins of the attack, as there had been no signs of a cold or anything triggery the day before. Mid-morning he developed a very low-grade fever (just two- or three-tenths of a degree above average), which led me to suspect that he was indeed fighting some kind of cold or flu.

We went out to pick up refills on his inhalers and an expectorant syrup, and ran other errands as well. As the day went on it became increasingly hard for me to breathe as well. The weather had done a drastic switcheroo and went super-humid, which may have been a major factor in the asthma. As the day went on, however, it became increasingly evident that there was a major impressively icky full-blown chest cold developing. This asthma attack, like the one two years ago, had been an early warning response to the imminent pulmonary-focused illness.

With the lack of sleep, I tried to nap when the boy went down for his rest, but I was wide awake, which did not bode well for the rest of the day. I did get some spinning done, though, and when the boy woke up he climbed into the chair next to me (along with five cars and Blackie), followed closely by Gryffindor. Let me tell you, the chair was pretty crowded, and drafting was a challenge. But the boy took pictures!

I finished spinning the Blue Faced Leicester fibre I had left over from the spindle workshop I took in May, and I knew there wasn’t going to be enough yardage for the project Ceri needs it for. So I called Ariadne Knits, and they had both half-pound bags of both Corriedale and Merino top in stock. The boy and I popped down to pick up a pound of the Corriedale (much less expensive than I was expecting!) so I’ll have enough for all the yardage required (have to start over again, as I discovered that BFL is “hard to felt”, which is ungood for the particular project Ceri has in mind) plus extra for people to try it out (crafting weekend in Alexandria coming up, hurrah) and dyeing experiments. Using the commercially prepared BFL top is a blissful experience. It’s like night and day when I compare it to spinning the unknown bits of wool I carded and dizzed into sliver myself. This is more even, smoother, and easier to draft. It shouldn’t be a surprise, of course; you get what you pay for. And as Ceri pointed out to me, this is why people stress that you should work with the best stuff you can afford, whatever your craft. The less expensive stuff is less expensive, but you never know when the fibre is working against you, and when it’s your technique that’s causing the problem. One should also really enjoy what one’s doing, and using the best material you can afford contributes greatly to that.

In this case, I am so glad that it was the quality of the fibre that was the problem. My beautiful BFL singles, let me show you them:

I can’t wait to ply them. Except if do that, I use up my last free bobbin, and I can’t spin my Corrie. No, wait, that’s stupid; if I ply them, I end up with two free bobbins at the end. Never mind. Or one free, anyway, because there’s more on one bobbin than the other, so there will be leftover single. And my last attempt at Navajo plying was amusingly disastrous, so perhaps we won’t to that again. Or, well, why not; I have to learn, and this is as good as anything else to practice on. Or I can just skein the leftover single and wind it into a centre-pull ball on Sunday when Ceri comes over to play. (This example of stream of consciousness thought is brought to you by slowly shifting into work mode from early-morning mode.)

Needless to say, I got no freelance work done yesterday; then again, I didn’t expect to. Although I really wanted the project done and gone so I didn’t have to think about it any more. Ah, well; we all encounter speed bumps. The boy’s home again today, as he will be for the rest of the week. The glamour of being home sick has worn off, and now he is cranky, irritable, and whiny. And I have to work today regardless, as today’s my deadline. HRH is going to try to come home early, around the end of the boy’s nap, so I’ll have at least naptime and a couple of extra hours to polish the report.

I didn’t make it to orchestra last night, as the lack of sleep, my own developing cold (yes, another one; the boy’s ambushed me while my immune system was still down form the last light cold), and the running around all day had taken its toll. I was achy, dizzy, and couldn’t hold things securely with my hands, so in the interests of not totally running myself down and making myself and everyone around me at orchestra miserable I called and let them know I wasn’t going to make it. And wow, did I ever sleep well.

So today the boy is enjoying cartoons in his pyjamas for a good long time, and I am opening the freelance document, and work shall be done. He knows to leave me alone as much as possible, and so far so good.

Weekend Roundup With Bonus Monday Material

Sushi Friday night! This was a long-awaited treat. We went to our favourite sushi restaurant with Jeff and Paze, and as we went out after the kids were in bed there weren’t tables when we arrived. We chatted at the bar for about half an hour or forty-five minutes, and when we finally got a table the chef sent over a treat for us as a thank you for being so patient. It was one of his personal creations, not on the menu, and was delicious: a roll of salmon around tuna and what may have been red snapper, all wrapped in nori and lightly sauteed so that the first five millimeters or so of the salmon were barely cooked, all drizzled with a gingery sesame-chili-green oniony sticky glaze that we all scraped up with our chopsticks after the roll was gone. Oh ye gods, it was all heavenly. The tiny bit of cooked salmon contrasted so beautifully in taste and texture with the raw. I want to be kept waiting for half an hour every time now. We also learned that they’re expanding! Finally, after a decade of going to this tiny restaurant that seats maybe thirty people, they’re taking over half of the next space in the mall, so we’ll be able to bring a party larger than four people, which currently strains the seating. (Perhaps they will also take reservations. You never know.) We’re very excited about this, not only for our benefit, but because it means the restaurant is doing so very well. They opened two new locations over the past few years, one in Vaudreuil and one in Laval, but this one has stayed tiny and intimate. I can’t say I’m thrilled with their switch in music from jazz classics to modern pop, but everything else more than makes up or it. Dinner was, of course, delicious.

Saturday morning I headed out to my cello lesson, which was pretty intense in the focusing department. It was also very physical in that we spent a lot of time talking about back muscles and doing various exercises in order to isolate their movement. I also got to choose between two pieces for my solo in the upcoming Christmas recital, and I chose another duet with M, a lovely two-cello arrangement of Mozart’s ‘Canzonetta sull’ aria‘ from Le nozze di Figaro. I get to play Susanna! The lesson was good, but by the time I headed home I was drained, exhausted, and dizzy, and when I got in I knew that I was going to be useless for the rest of the day. This was problematic because I’d scheduled a very necessary grocery run and various errands, most birthday-related, and then had to drive to the south shore through a detour around the reserve to get to my in-laws’ house for HRH’s mom’s birthday dinner. (HRH was being picked up by his dad that morning in order to go help put a new fence in.) Well, the day got shafted because I couldn’t focus enough to drive, which made me even more irritated than the original irritation about being downed by the fibro. The boy and I stayed home all afternoon, napping together, watching movies, and making cupcakes. In the end we rescheduled the birthday dinner for next Friday night and HRH’s dad brought him back home again, going above and beyond the call of duty by crossing the bridge and traveling the associated detour four times in total.

I was climbing walls by that point, so HRH insisted that we head out to make an appearance at Scott’s birthday gathering after the boy was in bed. As I didn’t have to drive I agreed, with the proviso that the moment I felt not-good we had to leave. Things went rather well, and there was excellent company. I spent a couple of hours watching people play the new Beatles Rock Band game while HRH drummed or sat out, and he even pulled off a very impressive vocal performance of ‘Yellow Submarine’. We came home to bed at a reasonable hour. Blade is to be commended for being the Responsible Adult On Site two nights in a row.

Sunday morning we went apple picking! I have never done this before. Formally, I mean; I’ve pulled an apple here and there from people’s trees to eat as a child, but I’ve never done the full-out trip to an orchard. We met the Murphy-Aubin clan at an “apple forest” near Oka and had an absolutely fabulous morning. The weather was glorious, the company was excellent, the apples were delicious, and the kids had a great time running around, up and down ladders, in and out of branches so laden with apples that they bent to touch the grass below. It was spectacular. I ate more apples in one day than I have over the past year, and every single one of them was indescribably delicious. We now have twenty pounds of apples. It was a lovely way to celebrate the first day of fall, although one day early.

Back home we napped, and then the boys took me to my group cello lesson, which was great fun. While I was there they did the groceries, then they picked me up and brought me home again. We had sausages and eggs for dinner, I called my mum to chat, and went to bed. I slept poorly again, though, and only got about four hours, which made Monday kind of hard.

The lack of sleep wasn’t the only thing making Monday hard. I opened my latest freelance assignment to find a 172,000-word manuscript presented in a font composed entirely of capital letters. (I am serious. The author screamed this novel. All five hundred pages of it.) Not only that, the classification was wrong; it wasn’t a fantasy novel, but religious fiction, which isn’t one of the areas I work in. After calming down I debated sending it back, but figured no, I would just be focused and ruthless like I’m supposed to be. I tend to give a lot more time to these evaluations than I ought to, and I need to learn how to be more precise and efficient. This is as good a place as any to begin. And I began by changing the damn font to Times New Roman and putting a big note on the front of the evaluation saying that in order to be read and evaluated the font had to be reformatted, and all page references were according to the new pagination. (I am still incandescent about it.)

Last night we had a Harvest ritual, focusing on celebrating our achievements over the past year. B brought a small bottle of ice cider, and we used our horn for the first time (although we offered the horn to the gods, ancestors, and spirits and used small glasses for ourselves, as most of us had colds). I am really enjoying how our coven is exploring a different way of celebrating, rather than using standard Wiccan format. We’ve chosen to explore the Germanic aspects of our tradition and heritage, and we’re finding that the philosophies reflect our goals and directions very well.

Today I finish up the evaluation, and if I have time, I may prep some more fibre to spin, or I may crack open the black roving I got with the wheel, or even try some of the silky BFL I have left over from spindling.

Fifty-One Months Old!

Oh, there was great emotional trauma this past month. The boy was playing out back with HRH and wailed when he discovered that he’s too big to make the little ride-on tractor he got just before he turned two move through the grass by pushing with his feet. He just can’t get the leverage any more, because his legs are so long that his knees are up around his ears. He was very distraught. The thing comes up to below his knee when he stands next to it; he can pick it up and tuck it under one arm. HRH said, “See, that’s new. You could never do that before.” And he tried to tell the boy that it was super awesome cool that he could carry a tractor, but the boy as unconvinced. He’s too big for the sandbox now, too; we haven’t told him that it’s being dismantled this fall. More resisting the growing up…

One of the three new fish died, of no discernible cause. This is the first time that he’s really been aware enough or present when we discovered it, and he had a minor breakdown, despite the fact that he ignores them most of the time. The only way he could work through it was to imagine that a shark was going to eat the flushed fish corpse. How this made it okay, I will never know. I’d have thought it would be more traumatic.

He made up his own Transformer and described it so HRH could draw it, then he sat down with his pencil crayons and coloured it. Unfortunately this has led to arguments and tears when he gets dressed because he has a shirt and a pair of pants in those colours, so he wants to wear them every day so he can pretend to be that Transformer. One day I told him he’d just have to use his imagination, and he stomped his feet and said, “But I can’t use my imagination!” Which amused me, of course, as that’s exactly what he’s doing when he wears those clothes.

He’s developed a very sweetgoodnight kiss routine. First he kisses me and hugs me, then I kiss and hug him, and then we both kiss and hug one another. There are specific words that go along with it: he says, “First me [kiss and hug]; now you [kiss and hug],” and then we both say, “And now, both of us, together.”

Fave songs these days include “Hickory Dickory Dock,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and “E Eats Everything.” We are anxiously awaiting the Canadian street release of Here Comes Science by TMBG. We have a couple of the new videos from it thanks to podcasts and YouTube, so everyone has “Electric Car,” “Paleontologist,” and “Davy Crockett (In Space)” stuck in their brains.

He’s so tall that all his pyjamas are too short in legs and arms. I’ve gone through a lot of his clothes, and we’re going to need new boots again (probably a size ten) and likely new socks as well. Good grief.

There are tougher things going on that he’s struggling to wrap his mind around, too. There are new kids at school, one who is a classic high maintenance child and who tells him on a regular basis that (a) he can’t play with her or be her friend, (b) she is his friend and therefore he can’t play with another already established older friend, or (c) if he plays with someone else he doesn’t like her. He is utterly confused, and often hurt by these statements. “But why would she say something like that, Mama?” he asks, usually at night after our story when we’re snuggling in bed. Trying to explain insecurity and fear of being rejected so one attempts to manipulate and arrange everyone’s relationships to a four year old is challenging, to say the least.

“What’s that?” he said when we were in the yarn store. “A ball winder,” I told him. He gazed at it hungrily, standing as close to it as he could, and I explained how it worked. “Can we get one?” he said. Recently he asked if he could help me knit and was upset when I asked him not to, so I got out the size 11 needles and a ball of rainbow yarn, and cast ten stitches on for him to knit. At the moment we’re at the ‘Mama holds her hands over his hands’ stage, but he is very enthusiastic about wrapping the yarn over the RH needle to make the new stitch. He has decided that he is knitting a scarf for his teacher (first it was a hat “because hers is getting very old”, but I suggested the easier scarf instead and he took the suggestion readily).

We ‘goed’ and ‘wented’ places, and it feels like I’m constantly correcting him on that one point of grammar alone. He used to say ‘went’ correctly, so I suspect either the new kids at school are misusing them, or he’s consciously trying to conjugate and getting it wrong because English follows so many different rules.

There is great excitement at breakfast now. On weekends we set up a bowl of cereal, a small finger bowl of raisins, and a spoon at the table, and turn a big plastic mixing bowl over it all so the cats don’t have a festival with it at night. We put a glass of juice in the fridge, and a half-glass of milk. When he gets up in the morning he comes and crawls into bed for a cuddle, then whispers that he’s going to go make his breakfast, patters into the kitchen to take the milk and juice out of the fridge, uncover the cereal, pour the milk and raisins into the cereal bowl, and have his breakfast. He adores it; he feels so grown up and important. And the bonus is, HRH and I get to sleep in a bit longer.

Fearsclave and his wife got a new kitten this past month, and she’s so tiny she needed to be fed from a bottle for a few weeks. They called her Maggy, and the boy was absolutely enchanted with the short video Fearsclave posted of the kitten being fed. I dug out a squeeze bottle and he ‘fed’ his own stuffed Maggie:

Things you can do with knitting needles other than knit: conduct!

Weekend Roundup, Labour Day Edition

As it has been many many months since my hair was cut, I booked an appointment for Saturday morning at 8:30, and an appointment for the boy at his ‘haircut store’ (his term, not mine) for an hour later. My stylist moved salons, so this was my first trip to the new location. It’s closer, it’s more posh.. and also more expensive. Still, I’ll pay it gladly to keep working with a stylist who doesn’t condescend to me and who actually does what I ask her to do. My hair is now even shorter than it was at its shortest last year. Heh.

There was a Tim Horton’s two doors down from the new salon, so the boy and HRH headed there for a treat while I got my hair cut, then we moved on to the boy’s appointment about five minutes away. The boy loves getting his hair cut, so that wasn’t a problem, either. Then we wandered to the bookstore, where the boy found a Transformers collector’s guide that we told him to save up for, because it was fifteen dollars and he had already chosen an early reader book to buy. He kept insisting that he had the money, and we kept telling him that he didn’t, and that lots of coins in his money box did not necessarily translate to a large total sum of money, especially when they were mostly nickels and pennies. He was not pleased with this, to put it mildly, which necessitated his removal to the sidewalk outside the store while I paid for our books. I was apologized to when I emerged from the shop. We then stopped at our local Best Buy to pick up a birthday gift certificate for HRH’s dad, where the boy found a Wii terminal that was demoing the swordplay game from the Wii Sports Resort kit and proceeded to do a creditable job for a four year old player while giggling madly. While he did I checked out the webcams (no luck), and the cases for iPod Touch (finally, win!). We coaxed the boy away from the Wii and took a quick turn through the two video game shops for a secondhand copy of Sports Resort, but again, no luck. We’ll put it on the list of things to surprise him with at Yule.

Sunday morning we joined Ceri, Scott, and Ceri’s parents for brunch. We haven’t seen Aubrey and Carmel in eight years (almost exactly, as it was for Ceri and Scott’s wedding!). It was lovely to spend time with them again. The boy thought them very fine as well, and gave them huge hugs and kisses when we left. He spent lots of time digging through an old box of Lego and action figures that Scott had unearthed, and playing on the play structure in the backyard. Brunch was delicious. After the boy’s nap we headed to the south shore for HRH’s dad’s birthday dinner, which was also wonderful. We had a lovely time relaxing in the backyard, and then indulging in a huge pile of barbecued ribs. There was no traffic on the bridge, which was surprising because there had been several warnings about closures, which didn’t seem to be closed after all either there or back. And then when we turned onto the street before ours we saw emergency vehicles, and as we turned onto our own street we saw that one of the duplexes in the building across and one over from ours had burned out during the three hours we were gone. HRH and I were a bit freaked out for the next couple of hours. The shock of coming home and seeing it so drastically changed was bad, but being here while it was happening would have been worse. Our next-door neighbour told us that there was so much smoke it was like night-time. Somewhat reassuringly, the flat above the one that burnt and the ones beside it were relatively undamaged, if one discounts the hole the firefighters had to punch in the floor and roof of the flat above to vent the smoke. Good construction.

Monday we’d left blissfully unscheduled and open. Good thing, too, because my back was so bad by that point that I was pretty much bed-bound. We went out late morning to the pharmacy to buy tiger balm (ours has gone AWOL) and lotion and such things, and we discovered that tiger balm now comes in a lotion form dispensed from a pump. It’s heavenly. I spent much of the day reading or asleep thanks to the muscle relaxants I was taking. I was able to get up and do a third round of tomato canning mid-afternoon, and then made a really nice spaghetti sauce for dinner.

Over the weekend I also managed to reknit all the stuff I’d frogged on my short-sleeved sweater, which makes me very happy. The boy asked if he could help me last night and was upset when I asked him not to, so I got out the size 11 needles and a ball of rainbow yarn, and cast ten stitches on for him to knit. At the moment we’re at the ‘Mama holds her hands over his hands’ stage, but he is very enthusiastic about wrapping the yarn over the RH needle to make the new stitch. He has decided that he is knitting a scarf for his teacher (first it was a hat “because hers is getting very old”, but I suggested the easier scarf instead and he took the suggestion readily). I also managed to read three books over the long weekend. Amazing what being stuck in one place can do for sedentary pastimes. The weather over the weekend was lovely, too; clear, not too hot, nice and cool in the mornings.

Today I’ve been very, very careful. Sudden movement is bad, as is twisty side-to-side motion. If I sit down and stand up very slowly and remember not to turn while I’m doing it, I can get around. I proofed, polished, and handed in the freelance project I’d pretty much completed on Friday this morning.

And… I just got a call to tell me that orchestra is beginning tomorrow night! Which means I have to scramble for my augmented dues, about which I’d entirely forgotten. There’s a silver lining to my spinning wheel being delayed; I have extra money in the bank.

Fifty Months Old!

I’m totally blanking on the monthly update. I kept horrible notes this past month. So much of it would have involved the trip to Nova Scotia, so I point you back there.

His caregiver came back from Toronto Trek Polaris with a miniature sonic screwdriver for him, and he adores it. He ‘fixes’ things with it, including people’s teeth and ears. ( “Because I am fixer guy who fixes things,” he explains.) We put the kibosh on ‘fixing’ people’s eyes the first time he tried it, because the thing has a blue tip that glows when you press a button. He also loves to help in the garden with HRH, which is great. He helps water the plants, and tidy things up. He was thrilled to be able to help HRH paint the hallway, too.

We are running into an irritating problem with food. When he asks what’s for dinner and we tell him, he immediately says, “Oh, I don’t like that.” Now, this is patently untrue a lot of the time. We tend to prepare meals that we can all eat together, so the automatic response really, really gets on our nerves. Both HRH and I have blown up at it once each this past month. Part of it comes from his conflation of the terms ‘want’ and ‘like’ – we have to point this out to him sometimes – and part of it comes from the fact that if he could live on chicken nuggets, he would. Except his memory hasn’t caught up to his tastes yet, because when we give him chicken nuggets these days he sort of half-heartedly nibbles them, then decides he’s done. We just need to keep reminding him that the kneejerk reaction isn’t helpful to anyone.

The biggest drama of the past month happened the day or the day after we came home from Nova Scotia. I’d unpacked everything and placed a travel-sized tube of hand cream on the toilet tank next to my hair stuff, to remind me that I wanted to take it out to the car. He used the bathroom and flushed the toilet, then spun around… and knocked the hand cream into the bowl as it was draining. There was a shriek and screaming and he ran into my office crying so hard that we couldn’t understand him. HRH came running from wherever he was, and I had the boy by the shoulders trying to calm him down. We honestly thought he’d hurt himself badly somehow, although we couldn’t see any blood. We finally got him calmed down enough to understand that he’d knocked “the sunscreen, your sunscreen, Mama” into the toilet and it had vanished. He was deeply distraught, and we had to kind of hide the snickers while I hugged him and told him that it was okay, that it hadn’t been irreplaceable or expensive, and that we knew that it had been an accident. We talked about how important it was to close the lid before one flushed, and gradually the sobs stopped. HRH told him that when he was little he’d done the same thing, only he’d knocked his mother’s hairbrush into the toilet, and he’d been afraid his parents were going to be mad, too. “Did you get it back?” the boy asked, interested. “Oh, no,” HRH said. “Long gone.” And then we had a talk about where the drains go, and the boy decided that if we got a big net we could go to the water filtration plant and scoop out both the hand cream and Grandma’s brush.

The language. Ye gods. I live with him and I keep being surprised at how he expresses himself. One morning he came to my side of the bed with a small stuffed rabbit and said with pathos, “Mama, Snowball is sad. He is very sad. Tears are dripping from his eyes, do you see?” And his storytelling is evolving, too. The stories he makes up to tell us are becoming increasingly developed and complex. It’s really interesting to listen to him. His expression and inflections are making a large leap forward now, too; he knows how to modulate his volume, pacing, and delivery to enhance what he’s saying really well.

Let’s see, other firsts this month… riding in the canoe, riding in the motorboat, swinging in a hammock, roasting marshmallows, learning how to skip stones. Uncharacteristically, Nixie is allowing him to pet, kiss, and hug her. I still can’t get over how good he was on the two-day trip down to NS and back. I’m so proud of him.