Toddler Art School: Lesson 1 - It's all in the name

One thing I learned from art school is that it doesn't matter what the art object looks like, it's all about the title. I saw way too many examples of feces art (seriously were all the artists in the 60's and 70's artists completely stoned?) that really had nothing to do with visual art at all. Some of my snapperhead classmates picked up on this and would draw a giant X as their final drawing assignment, calling it 48:34 (the time it took them to draw the X until their pencil was all used up).

My young grasshopper has learned early the importance of naming his work. This of course thrilled me to bits! Woo hoo! A drawing developmental milestone! Behold:

"Airplane" Which really sounds more like hairplayne.

"Sunshine!" Sunshine is always an exclamation.

It's really cool to see when that hampster is working in that brain of his. He's processing information and putting words to it.

Box kite, bee blocks, birthday planning.

Box kite, a photo by Pinkbrain and Mr.Chicken on Flickr.

I've been sewing. A lot. Bee blocks. 80's swap. A quilt for a friend. A Hawaiian shirt for my brother-in-law (he loves Hawaiian shirts and he loves golf and I found the perfect fabric...I don't usually sew for him), and this bad boy.

A kite. A box kite. A very large, we-only-have-space-to-store-it-on-the-ceiling kite. A kite designed by an engineer with the help of a program from NASA. We went to fly it on Friday afternoon but the wind vanished when we went outside. Then it was too windy on Saturday, and it rained all day Sunday. Maybe next weekend.

Alex has been napping well most days. He's grown two more teeth (they were fast and painful this time, as opposed to the slow and painful molars). We're at the park almost every day (I know the local daycares and nannies schedules at the park quite well now) and Alex is full of words. Sentences! Three word sentences. My favourite from this week "Daisy, window. Funny" when Daisy was lounging in the track for the windows.

I'm trying to figure out what to do for his birthday party. Low key, maybe in the park, perhaps a cake with a cement mixer on it. I don't have any of that "awww my baby is turning 2 years old" that some of my friends are experiencing. Am I a bad mother if I say that I like Toddler Alex a little bit more than I liked Baby Alex? He's trouble sometimes, but also very sweet and generous with hugs. He keeps me on my toes (literally...I had to break into a sprint to catch him after he escaped from the fenced off playground).

He's a monkey alright!

Freckles, Fresh Air and Flying Insects

The weather has been getting nicer and warmer here. Most days anyways. We've gotten into a nice routine where we go to the park in the morning, come home and have lunch then Alex goes down for a nice long nap. My freckles have exploded from all this outdoor time. Of course, just when I start planning things for me to do during his great naps, he gets sick. Again. Poor kid. Another cough that keeps him up at night and doesn't even let him nap during the day. It's getting better now but the past weekend was rough. No sleeping, no napping and an exhausting trip to Grandma's house. Doesn't matter how crabby he is, he always has fun at the park.

Someone is happy about spring.

More someones happy about spring as well!

Before he got sick I was getting a lot of sewing done. Actually finishing some stuff too!

 Here's some of my works in progress (there's actually more than this too, I'm a busy bee).

More on this one later.

This bad boy just need to be quilted and bound and then it's done

. I think it'll make a nice picnic blanket!

This fun little pillow was easier than I thought it would be!

(Tutorial here).

First thing Alex did when I gave it to him?

 He stood on it. Then threw it. Then hugged it. Toddler approved.

Another doll quilt almost done. Super secret project.

Last weekend we went with my friend to see the butterflies at the Botanical Gardens. Those butterflies were not shy, swooping by our heads! Alex loved seeing them, even if he got a little crabby with all the crowds (I was pretty crabby about the crowds too).

 This past weekend we went to the petting zoo at a local mall. Best part was the peacock.

Why did the chicken cross the peacock?

To get to the other side!

An encounter with the Terrible Two Monster

It exists. I met it yesterday, I'm not a fan.

Alex and I went for a lovely walk to the park. It was a nice spring day and the playground was open! Alex got to play in for the first time since November. Happy kid! The monster came when I tried to get him to leave. He started to fuss so I gave him a few more minutes. No go. He freaked out and had to be carried all the way home. I even got some celebrity stink eye on the way home (from a local politician). For my readers without kids let me describe the TANTRUM (totally needs all caps):

Picture yourself on Survivor. It's day 27. You're hungry, you're smelly. Tribal council is tonight. You go for a nice walk to clear your head. You're walking through the woods when you spot a wild boar. Score! Instead of going back to camp to get big strong hulky Colby to hunt the boar you have the brilliant idea to catch it yourself. Amazingly you catch it and pick it up. The boar is smallish, but still about 25-30 lbs. It starting kicking and squealing furiously in your arms, but you're not letting go, you don't want to get voted off the island. After 5 minutes of struggle as you walk you think, the boar's tired. Maybe he'll just walk nicely beside me, like Babe. He's a good pig. So, stupidly, you put down the wild boar. It tears off in the opposite direction of course, because hello?? it's a wild boar! You miraculously catch it again and continue carrying it back to camp. Kicking. And. Screaming. Once back at the camp? That boar does in fact turn back into Babe the pig, with all his please and thank yous. Baaa ram you!

Not fun. I was however rewarded though with a three hour nap after that. Sooooo tired.

In completely unrelated news (umm there were trees at the park, so it's sort of related if you squint...)
I'm doing a guest spot on Curiosity's blog Emotional Umbrella. Willing guinea pigs are submitting trees they've drawn to my semi-expert analysis. Draw a tree, get analyzed. If you want to submit a tree you can find out details here. Curiosity is collecting the trees until this coming Wednesday April 6th if you'd like to get in on the fun.

Winter, the tribe has spoken....

Yet another blizzard, and yet another toddler illness. I am sooo done with winter. Alex has a double ear infection and a cough that's lingered for almost a month now. Oh the boogers and the whining and the not sleeping. Poor chicken is so tired and fed up too, he had his first full on temper tantrum on the way to the doctor's office on Tuesday. I struggled to get on the bus with the stroller and the banchee kicking and screaming in my arms, as I had to lift my 30 lbs stroller up and over the snowbank to get on the bus. Fun. Oh and as a PSA, don't stare at the woman with the freaking out toddler. That doesn't help anyone!

Alex and I are both summer babies. We'll be much happier when the snow melts.
Despite all this, Alex has had moments of being very sweet. He surprises me every day with new words. Words that I had no idea were swimming around in that head of his. Moose, ostrich, kite, oatmeal (he'll say it but then doesn't want to eat it,,,somethings don't change). His personality seems to be emerging. He likes arranging things or lining them up. He seems to have a sense of humour. He likes drawing and painting, and he's a ninja with the shape sorter. He's continuously spinning, falling down and spinning again as I write this.

He's a funny little bird.

Cut up pancake yuck. Whole pancake with Mama's fork. Yummy!

He likes pressing all the buttons. I just need to teach him how to use it.

My First Sweat Shop.

I went to get him out of his bed and found he had been redecorating.

(Those pathetic stickers are all that remains of a wall full of animal decals we had put up when he was born)

Teddy bear time out?

Twenty five pound obstacle

How is my I Spy quilt going?

Um yeah. Progress is slow.

In the studio: Finger painting

The first couple of times I tried finger painting with Alex he didn't seem to like it. He was like an unhappy restaurant patron. Um, miss! My hands are DIRTY. Uh hello? This is not what I ordered! It tastes like PAINT.
This time he got the hang of it and enjoyed himself. I knew he just needed some time to figure it out, it's a new experience for him. I'm glad I tried again. It was fun for him and FUN for me. I got him to try using his hands, the paintbrush and even Thomas the Train got into the action.

I taped up the paintings on the window to dry and the results are luminous! The paint is actually quite faded and dull when it dries, but with the light from the window it's something else. Like my husband said, that's a keeper.

Hmm interesting...

Getting into it...

Really getting into it!

 Figuring thing out.

Painting with Thomas!

"Campfire in the woods"

"Ocean storm"

Detail of Ocean Storm.

 It's really magical with the light coming through.

Doing a (silent) happy dance

Alex's sleep is getting better. He's sleeping longer and it's getting easier to put him to bed. For the most part. Two nights ago, he didn't want to fall asleep. I tried all my usual methods, but it was a no-go. After an hour of rocking, singing, bum patting, shushing I needed a break. So I left Alex's room. "Mama" he called out. There was a long pause, then another "mama". Not loud, just like a "hello? you still there?". "Mama is still here" I called out to Alex from the kitchen. Then there was another pause, longer this time. More than a couple of minutes went by. "Mama?". I again reassured him I was still around. He did this maybe two more times. Then something completely miraculous and happy-dance worthy happened. He fell asleep.

He. Fell. Asleep. On his own. This is the first time he's done that at bedtime (He did it once a week ago after being up in the middle of the night for 3 hours).

Most of his little toddler friends have been falling asleep on their own for ages. Almost since birth for some of them. He's not like other babies. He's never let me put him down in his crib, happily babbling to himself as he drifts off to sleep. It was more like screaming. Wailing. Acting like I'm forcing him to listen to Nickelback all day long. Almost a year ago we tried Cry It Out (CIO), but after 2 hours of crying we couldn't do it. My bookshelf is full of baby sleep books. We called our method the No-Sleep Sleep Solution. Months later when he still wasn't sleeping through the night, my sister said the only way is the dreaded cry it out. She's a strong believer in it. I asked her "so once you get them to sleep finally at night, do you have to let them cry it out in the middle of the night too?". Hmm, she said, by then her kids were already sleeping through the night on their own when she did CIO. I just felt like there had to be another way. Dr Sears, attachment parenting guru, wrote that you should do what works for your family. Cry it out did not work for us (especially while Alex was still in our room with us). Eventually we were able to make a bit of space in our apartment, and we moved out of his room. At the same time I weaned him from breastfeeding. Then he started occasionally sleeping through the night.

We went from singing every song our sleep-deprived brains could think of. Then for the longest time I nursed him to sleep (which is BAD according to all those damn sleep books). Now he usually takes the bottle to sleep (BAD again). It's 15 minutes usually to get him to sleep. It won't last forever and soon he'll be too big to cuddle in my lap. I know he'll eventually fall asleep on his own, just like the other milestones. He'll get there on his own time, in his own way.  *If not, I'll have to be like the creepy mom in I love You Forever and sneak into his house and sing my grown son to sleep.

Come on it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride...

Alex woke up super early this morning so I decided to take him out in the sleigh to tire him out before trying to put him down for a nap. This was the result:

Collaborative art: Toddler edition

Alex is really getting into drawing. He seems to like it. This makes me very happy. I keep going back and forth about introducing finger paint. Hmm. Maybe I'll wait a bit longer. He refuses to draw on a blank white page I call it Colouring Book Syndrome (not that he's ever seen a colouring book).

Fox in fall foliage. Crayon on paper.

(The fox, by the way was supposed to be a zebra. My drawing is a little rusty)

Northern Lights at the North Pole. Pencil on paper.

Detail of Northern Lights.

A day in the life of Mr. Chicken

Not impressed. Not with the snow or the amount of clothes he has to wear.

Catching snowflakes on his tongue. Notice the robots on his snowsuit.

Just Chillin'. Maybe snow is not so bad.

Walking back home. The three block round trip took 45 minutes.

I'm here for the Cat Sitting job you advertised...

Helping mom make cookies.

Expert taste tester.

After his nap he came to the balcony door to look out the window.

 I said it's snow. He said "NO!". I feel the same way.

Doing a little vacuuming before dinner. His word for vacuum is "dah gue".

(Oh and it's the same day, different outfit.

 He was playing with some water in a bowl like he normally does,

 but stood in the bowl, and then tossed catfood in the water.

 I was too busy with damage control to take a photo of it)

and then off to bed. Rinse, repeat.

Old New Baby Smell

Smell is the sense that has one of the most direct links to memory. You smell something, like apple pie and it brings you back to your grandma's house as you eat the apple pie with a big head of vanilla ice cream from those delft blue bowls of hers. There's this study that showed that students exposed to a scent while studying and then the same scent during a test did better than other students without the smell-enhanced memory.

I've switched Alex's shampoo a few times, trying to save a bit of money. One bottle was supposed to be "lightly scented" which apparently means "old french whore perfume". I missed how he used to smell. So I went back to the expensive stuff. I smelled his head tonight as I fed him the bedtime bottle. Mmmmm, that's better.

 Before Alex was born I remember buying the baby shampoo and thought I might not even need this shampoo for months. My baby could be bald. Hoo boy I was wrong. He was born with a full head of dark hair. That was such a shock when I first saw him. All that hair! It was completely unexpected. He had his first haircut when he was six weeks old. Silly baby was pulling his hair in his sleep and then waking up and crying because someone was pulling his hair. The more he'd cry the more he'd pull on his hair. Silly baby! He's had four haircuts already. If we hadn't cut his hair he'd be sporting a head full of elastics and sparkle hair clips.

So getting the old shampoo did the trick. I remember holding my freshly washed teeny tiny baby. Wrapping him up in his hooded towel that's now way too small for him.  Being terrified of giving him a bath because he was so small, such a bobble head, so slippery. Having to move the baby tub into the big bath from the kitchen counter because his splashing was soaking the whole kitchen.

New baby smell is the best. Even if the baby isn't so new anymore.

Toddler tales!

So, it seems that my baby is much more toddler than baby. I know he hasn't been a baby for a while, but today cemented that fact. This morning I wanted to go out with Alex to the park but worried about the cold. It went below 0C today and it was windy. My dilemma was keeping the mittens on mister Whee-Look-How-Fast-I-Can-Pull-Them-Off!!! I posed the question to my facebook friends. There was more than one mention of duct tape. I also got a lead on some crazy long mittens or ones that are like a shrug with mitts attached. Seems kind of crazy but still not as bad as this the device to strap your baby to the bed to prevent SIDS. I have a lock on my fridge, I need to install the one on the toilet, we had to move the coffee table away from the window, I regularly have to stop Alex from pulling the cats around by the tail, and now one more thing to worry about. Cold hands. Freezing cold hands. So until I order those mittens that go up to his shoulders I need something, anything. My temporary solution? I safety pinned the mittens to his hoodie and then put the hoodiemittens on him. Hmmm. Hoodiemitt? It could be the next Snuggie! I then put his coat over the whole hot mess, securing the clothing. I then had spend the next seven minutes reassuring him that "hey hey! Lucky you! You've got MITTENS!". It worked! The only real snafu was the damn spiderman ball that he spotted underneath the stroller. Poor kid, desperately trying to pick up that ball like someone with greasy hands picking up a wet uncooked turkey.

Later today we went out to the grocery store, which was uneventful. I released him from the stroller as we came inside the apartment. Instead of his usual climb upstairs, he lingered on the first floor and entertained a neighbour as she left the building. Then he wanted to go head first down the stairs to the basement (since the basement door is always open). Umm no. UPSTAIRS. He was not impressed and started crying and even pulled a wet noodle as I tried to pick him up. Really? Isn't too early for this kind of behaviour? I hauled him upstairs as he flailed, leaving the groceries downstairs while I got him to settle down.

Now, tonight while I made the bedtime bottle he was drawing with his crayons with Daddy. Then he was in the hallway next to the kitchen. Wait. What was that sound? Crayons being scribbled on the wall since it's so much easier to draw standing up. Mental note. No more crayons. Must buy Magic Eraser type substance.

Oh and the constant furniture climbing? Stressing me out.

Mama: 1. Reluctant mitten clad toddler: 0.

 

Rockstar!

Alex had his first professional photo shoot on Friday. It was a charity event where you get a 20 minute photo session and one professional photo (or more if you pay for each photo) and they donate the proceeds to the new children's hospital they're building (a couple of blocks away from my house, constant dump trucks on parade for Boy's enjoyment). It was in a shopping mall but it was a really slick setup. Two studios, a viewing area with a few computers and a lounge area. It had leather couches, red walls and even a couple of black chandeliers. I had booked the first appointment on the first day, not intentionally, so it was pretty quiet when I got there.

The photographer was very sweet. She said she was a little nervous because it was her first time (uh oh I thought) but then explained she did it last year. Some of her poses were great while some seemed a little forced. She kept telling me to kiss Alex on the cheek but he wanted none of it. Those photos were, um, awkward with me making a big kissy face while Alex avoided and made a stink face. Nice. There were also a lot of Alex pointing photos that got nixed right away because I can only handle so many of those. The twenty minutes went by very quickly. I asked for a couple more shots because I wanted Stanley the sock monkey in some too.

We went back to the lounge and were given cookies and juice while we waited! The photographer chose the best photos and then I got to choose from there. My intention was to get one or two photos but there were so many I liked. It's a bit of a splurge but I've wanted some nice professional photos forever so I caved, and well the money does go to a good cause. I'm really happy with the results. A bit more expensive but way better than some stilted Sears portraits. Oh and there was no Photoshopping done. Pretty cool.

He's got that rockstar swagger.

Blue Steel

Mama hugs!

Who me? It was the monkey!

Is one enough?

I've had this struggle going on in my head ever since Alex was born. Before he was born, I said I wanted just one child. The only child. Now I'm not so sure. I go back and forth almost daily.

The pressure to pop out a second one seemed to start early. From family, from friends, even strangers. Even before I was given the okay for heavy lifting after my C-section, people would ask if a second was in the works. My answer then was "HELL NO" (put more politely for the nosey grannies on the street who had no business asking me that in the first place). Then this person of mine became hard to handle. Something was wrong. He cried an awful lot, as did I. A second child seemed impossible. Not in the cards. Around the same time that Alex had a seriously messed up sleeping schedule, waking every hour for a few weeks (maybe longer, it's not something I put in his baby book) a dear friend told me she was pregnant with her second. It made me queasy to think of myself in that position. It seemed to me, to be good timing for her, she makes motherhood look easy.

I have an easier time with Alex now, but adding a second child into the mix? I struggle to get him out the door on time, to get him dressed or make supper without either of us melting down. I'm told it's easier with a second. Sure, you know the basics, but just when you think you have babies figured out, the next one that comes along says "ha ha ha, not so fast!". Managing two people with different needs at the same time seems daunting. Yes, I know, there's plenty of people that do it, heck even Octomom is able to hit the gym and do her makeup, but me? Am I up to the challenge? Getting through the newborn stage is what scares me the most. The fog, the lack of control, the crying oh the crying.

Why only one? My answer is quite simple. More time. More time with Alex. Losing my mom early, I am very aware of the lack of time I had with her. True, I can't control when I die, but I can control how much time I get to spend with my son. Dividing my time, at his expense for a second child. I then wonder if adult Alex will spend years in therapy because he had too much time with mom ("she puts the mother in smother" he says to his therapist). That's not what I want either.

However I don't worry about the stereotypes of the Only Child. The spoiled brat who doesn't know how to relate to others, to share. It's more about upbringing than birth order. Sure it matters, but so do many other factors as well. I'm also not worried about having a Spare. The kid you have so that in case something BAD happens to one, you still have another one left. Oh yes, I swear I've heard mention of this one.

Where the decision becomes more difficult, not as clear is the issue of a sibling. Someone who understands you, and fights with you and who will help you up the stairs in your drunken stupor so your parents don't find out you've been drinking. That is where my problem lies.

So I sit on my hands about the issue for now. Deciding not to decide just yet. If only I had more time to decide. Hmm, time.

Eco Museum!

We went to a local zoo that houses animals native to this area. It was sunny and warm out (ha ha warm for mid-November). A good time was had by all. It was so nice getting out, our little family day trip. It's been too long.