24

The following is an extremely biased account of the first 24 hours of Operation Re-Location, which took place on May 28th, 2008.

5:50 am - Eyes pop open. Mine and Mr. Blister’s. We proceed directly to the instant coffee and the cat tranquilizers. For the cat.

6:15 am - Sufficiently caffeinated, I cleverly hide the cat’s pill in a kitty treat. I call her, pat her head, and speak softly and gently as I offer it. Cat is very suspicious.

6:32 am - Attempt #1 at cat tranquilization is officially declared a failure. I think I came on too strong. Mr. Blister goes for a more subtle approach: Block off cat’s access to her hiding places, take away all of her food and leave only the pill-filled cat treat in her dish.

6:47 am - More eyes pop open. Neener, Roo, and Squiggles, followed by the special agents imported from the East Coast to help execute Operation Re-Location, my brother and his girlfriend. Code names Bro and Mrs. Bro.

6:51 am - Attempt #2 at cat tranquilization is officially declared a failure. I eat some toast that I do not remember toasting.

7:00 am - Mr. Blister and I formulate a plan to grab the cat and drop the pill down her throat.  Plan changes abruptly when we can not catch cat.

7:06 am - Mr. Blister pins cat on the floor while I shove pill down cat’s throat. Hopefully. Too early to officially declare the mission successful.

7:08 am - Mr. Blister calls Neener and Roo to come get their toast.

7:09 am - Mr. Blister is unable to find the toast he made for Neener and Roo. I pat his head, speak calmly and gently to him, and suggest he never made any toast. Mr. is suspicious.

7:28 am - Bro and Mrs. Bro, being young, attractive and childless, do what young attractive childless people do: Shower, brush their hair, and put on nice clothes.

7:40 am - Mr Blister and I, being exhausted, dishevelled parents, do what exhausted dishevelled parents do: Get the kids decently dressed and cleaned, then wash our own armpits with a damp facecloth, pretend our hair is invisible, and put on the least dirty clothes we can find.

7:46 am - Cat staggers into the living room with pupils the size of plates. Cat tranquilizing mission is declared a success as cat is poured into cat carrier.

8:00 am - 8 bags, 7 people, three car seats and one doped up cat in a cage get packed into the van and transported to the airport.

8:58 am - At the airport, Mr. Blister and Bro manage to bypass the long line up and get us checked in via the handicapped/special assistance line. Our check-in process takes nearly an hour, making it a damn good thing that we appeared sufficiently handicapped.

9:30 am - We learn that some genius in the airline reservations department has seated me, Mrs. Bro, Neener and Roo all completely and totally separately.

9:39 am - Advanced security screening makes us remove tripping-out cat from carrier so they can make sure we are not smuggling drugs. Clearly, we gave all the drugs we had to the cat.

9:55 am - We bid farewell to my Mr. and Bro as they return to finish packing and drive a huge truck o’ stuff half way across the country. Mrs. Bro, the kids and I go through security and on to the gate.

10:06 am - With baby Squiggles strapped to my chest, a monstrous backpack on my back, a diaper bag around my neck, boarding passes in one hand, and Roo’s hand in the other, I come heart-stoppingly close to falling down the escalator.

10:10 am - Having missed the advanced boarding call, we again have to jump ahead in line to try and get our seats changed so there is at least one adult sitting beside each child.

10:22 am - Mrs. Bro and Roo are seated at the front of the plane, Neener, Squiggles and I at the back. Squiggles promptly falls asleep and does not wake until 10 minutes before we land. I only hear Roo holler twice the entire flight. Neener makes fast friends with the Newf from Alberta sitting next to her. I breathe a sigh of relief, thinking we’ve made the right move. That everything is going to be all right.

1:00 pm - We land in the new city on the infamously friendly East Coast.

1:13 pm - With a wide awake and very hungry Squiggles strapped to my chest, the monster backpack on my back, and diaper bag around my neck, I manage to get our luggage off the conveyor belt and on to a cart while Mrs. Bro tries to keep very tired and extremely hungry  Neener and Roo from having meltdowns in the airport.

1:15 pm - I manage to get me and Squiggles pinned between the luggage and the cart. Another Newf from Alberta guy helps us get unpinned. It occurs to me that I should go find the cat.

1:17 pm - I don’t have to go far. Cat’s drugs are wearing off fast, and her yeowling can be heard all over the arrivals lounge.

1:18 pm - Our friend K arrives in her Mini to transport cat to swanky cat hotel.

1:21 pm - We go outside to catch the shuttle to our hotel

1:35 pm - We discover that we’ve been waiting in the wrong place for the shuttle.

1:36 pm - We discover that the shuttle could take a half hour or so to arrive.

1:37 pm - Neener, Roo and Squiggles begin simultaneous meltdown.

1:38 pm - I approach notoriously friendly East Coast cab driver in a van to take us to our nearby hotel. He refuses to take us because we have too much stuff and are not going far enough.

1:39 pm - With notoriously un-friendly East Coast language, I give the cab driver a piece of my mind. The piece that likes to curse a lot. I am thankful that Squiggles is the only child in ear shot.

1:40 pm - Standing in front of the airport, I join the meltdown and start crying. I sob, thinking we’ve made a terrible terrible mistake moving here, and wonder how hard it would be to travel back in time to when we made this decision, and smack myself in the head. Hard.

1:50 pm - I regain my composure and my sense of spite. K and Mrs. Bro stuff the Mini full of carseats and luggage. I stuff the taxi of an elderly gentleman full of kids, and we head to the hotel. I tip him a silly amount just to spite the arsehole taxi van driver who didn’t take us.

2:00 pm - In our hotel room, we discover that the restaurant is closed from 2-5. K and Mrs. Bro have the brilliant idea to go to the nearest Tim Horton’s to get us some food before anyone starts crying again. And by anyone, I mean me.

2:23 pm - K and Mrs. Bro head back to the city while the kids and I settle in to eat our sandwiches and watch a $10 pay-per-view movie. We discover that being an animated bee doesn’t make Jerry Seinfeld any funnier.

5:30 pm - We order and inhale room service dinner. We discover that the main ingredient of both the fish and chips and the chicken bow tie pasta is…salt. I conclude that this province’s slogan should be changed from ‘ Canada’s Ocean Playground’ to ‘Canada’s Hypertension Inducing Playground.’

6:27 pm - Give Neener and Roo an extended version of a bath.

7:40 pm - Remove very wrinkled kids from extended version of bath.

7:45 pm - Attempt to bathe Baby Squiggles in hotel bathroom sink.

7:48 pm - Abandon attempt at bathing giant baby Squiggles in tiny hotel bathroom sink.

8:00 pm - Kids beg for a snack. I find a mango and some candied ginger in my bag that I do not remember packing.

8:06 pm - Pick gooey hunks of spit-out candied ginger from carpet. All three children begin to get whiny.

8:30 pm - Saved by In the Night Garden on tv.

9:00 pm - In the Night Garden ends. Kids begin to get whiny.

9:10 pm - Saved by the arrival of Nanny and Papa, who spend the next 30 minutes laughing, playing with, and firing up all three kids.

9:40 pm - Nanny and Papa leave to get some supper and retire to their room for the night.

9:41 pm - All three kids start crying. Hysterically.

10:25 pm - I start crying. Slightly less than hysterically.

10:40 pm - Everyone suddenly falls asleep. Everyone except me. I’m still too busy crying.

12:00 am - I fall asleep.

1:00 am - Squiggles wakes me up.

2:00 am - Squiggles wakes me up.

4:00 am - I wake Squiggles up. To make sure she is still breathing. And out of spite.

5:48 am - Eyes pop open. Mine, Neener’s Roo’s and Squiggles’. We all get up and stretch ourselves into a good mood, and prepare for a new day, and the next leg of our journey: The trip to Nanny and Papa’s little house in the big woods.

I really should not be posting, but…

It is just after midnight, and I should be in bed. Phase one of the Blister Family’s official re-location is about to begin and I have to be awake in 6 hours. In 10 hours I have to get on an airplane with my 3 kids. And our tranquillized cat. I have to be as calm, cool, and collected as possible. I’m sort of wishing I could take the cat’s tranqs. But I know the cat needs them more than I do. In 13 hours, I’ll be trapped settled in a hotel room with my three kids. Our tranquillized cat will be at a swanky cat hotel. 36 hours from now, I’ll be in a van with my 3 kids and 2 parents, on the way to their little house in the big woods where we’ll be trapped vacationing for a few days. I’ll need to be on. Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. At the top of my game. I need to be able to sing silly songs, read stories, breast feed the baby, and deal with the outside world simultaneously. For hours on end. Able to carry kids and cats and baggage. Able to avert crises of all sorts before anyone else even realizes there is a crisis. Yeah, I should be asleep instead of writing this post. But my mind is racing. My adrenaline is surging. And this feels like the first moment I’ve had to myself in days. To hell with tomorrow, I need that cat tranquilizer now. But I’ll settle for a glass of wine. And for a few hours, my mind and my body can forget about what needs to happen when I wake. I can forget about boxes and bags and dealing with the outside world. I can just sleep in my own bed next to my darling Mister, which I won’t be doing for a while after tonight since he’ll be staying here to pack and drive our life half way across the country, then taking a few days to set up our new home before we officially move in. Tomorrow is just the beginning. I’ll do my best to get some posts up in a couple of days’ time. But right now, the cat tranquilizer wine is kicking in, so I really should be in bed. I’ve got a big day ahead of little old me. 

May Moving Mayhem

No time to write a proper post. No time to collect thoughts and string together words in coherent fashion. No time to go into a detailed chronicle of all the things I don’t have time for. The Big Move will officially be in motion this time next week, and despite the dozens of boxes we’ve crammed full of belongings, it seems like the ol’ Blisterdome is messier, more cluttered, more disorganized than ever. And it has certainly been an eventful few days. There have been many little happenings that I could have easily parlayed into a post. If only I could learn to write in my sleep. Add that to list of things to do. So, here’s a highlight reel, Domestic Blister Style:

Friday, Last Week: Took Neener to optometrist. Unsurprised to learn that she needs glasses. With the enthusiastic aid of two well-coifed, doting, middle aged women who, much to her pleasure, call her Young Lady, Neener selects her own specs: Chunky purple cat’s eye Nine Wests. The well-coifed women proclaim them adorable. Neener proclaims them ‘Her New Glasses.’ I proclaim them ex-pen-sive. But, like a good doormat, I shut my trap and pay the bill, only slightly jealous that my five year old now has nicer, more fashionable, more expensive glasses than I do. Or at least she will on Friday this week when we go pick them up.

Leaving without Her New Glasses proved a struggle for Neener. The walk down the street was accompanied by periodic wails of “I can’t see! I’m blind! I neeeeeeeeed my new glasses now!”

I encourage acting calm, like the Young Lady that she is.

“Yes, I am a young Lady.” she agrees. “And what’s the other thing young Ladies need?”

 I’m stumped. “Lunch?” 

“No. A purse. Let’s go get me a nice purse so I can be a real Young Lady.”

She settles for lunch at a hip Mediterranean Bistro. Young Lady likes her chicken nuggets and fries.

Saturday: In the pack and purge process, we open the Emergency Trunk we stocked in the wake of the Original 9-11. Have a good laugh at what we figured we’d need. A flask of rum. Birth control pills. Deodorant. Apparently we anticipated some post- apocalyptic date nights. Also find monogramed gas masks, coffee whitener and several jars of applesauce. Learn that jarred applesauce turns green after 7 years.

Sunday, 4 a.m.: Baby Squiggles and I wake up simultaneously. From between her crib bars, she looks me squarely in the eyes and says, clear as day, “Bub bub bub, ma ma ma.” Ma ma gets up and gives her a bub bub. Not sure if this means Squiggles is starting to speak human, or if I’m starting to understand baby. Either way, I am too tired to be sufficiently impressed or alarmed. 

Monday: Me and my BFF (a.k.a Second Wife) take Neener and Roo to Kids Festival thingy downtown. We proceed to wait in various lines. After 40 minutes, Neener and Roo finally get their balloon hats. we decide to forgo waiting in line at the food tent only to have to eat outside in the cold, wind and drizzle, and opt for a more civilized sit-down ladies’ lunch at a nice restaurant. Kids enjoy chicken nuggets and fries, Second Wife and I enjoy half litre of over-priced wine. The afternoon pleasentry comes to abrupt end when Roo tumbles backwards in her chair, smacking her head so hard on the concrete floor that she can’t stand and asks repeatedly where she is. I panic. Second wife stays calm, which is why she is Second Wife. I take Roo to a nearby ER, Second Wife calls the Mr, and takes Neener home. Mr meets me at the ER with Roo’s health card, and upon seeing him, she can magically walk and talk just fine. We look around at the throng of people, and listen to the loud complaints of a large, stinky family who’d been waiting for 2 hours. We talk to the nurse and decide to go home, where Second wife waits with Neener and Squiggles.

Working carefully around the massive bump on her head, I put Roo’s hair in rag ringlettes. Working less carefully around the bird’s nest tangles on her head, I put Neener’s hair in rag ringlettes, and we see the children off to bed. Mr. Blister, Second Wife and I enjoy a few drinks and a plate of nachos. I officially propose to BFF/Second Wife, in the hopes that she will move with us. She declines. I smile on the outside but cry on the inside as I knock back another vodka n’ soda.

Tuesday: Neener and Roo head off to school with a bevy of lovely curls in their hair. Roo proclaimes that she is now “A Real Girl With Curly Yellow Hair!” I don’t have the heart to tell her that her hair is brown. I worry that I may be forced to put their hair in rag ringlettes every night from now on. I wonder if perms are ok for five year olds?

  Roo and I go to Little India for shopping and lunch. I buy the first decor item for our soon-to-be new home: An awesome handmade wall hanging. We learn that paying with cash means paying no tax. We window shop a little, then go to a vegetarian Indian restaurant and gorge ourselves on chana masala, samosas, uthapam and mango lassi. When we arrive home, Roo proclaims our afternoon Beautiful! and informs me that I must learn to make mango lassi. Add finding mango lassi recipe to my to do list.

Wednesday: Mr. Blister informs me that Squiggle’s first word when she woke up this morning was ‘yoga.’ I tell him it is a sign: Either stop drinking beer for breakfast, or start doing yoga. 

Yes, life trudges along in spite of the chaos. The next week is bound to be even more hectic, and I’m sure I’ll have more stories to tell. Just not sure if I’ll get many chances to tell them here in a timely manner. But it is on my to do list. Ahhh, there are so many loose ends to tie up! Did I get the job? Is Squiggles really starting to talk? How does Neener like wearing her glasses? Did Roo talk me into perming her hair and dying it blond so she could be a real girl? Is Mr. Blister going to take up yoga? Stay tuned to find out.

5 Things Meme

Here’s a break from my usual blah blah blogging, as I’m playing along with a little game of blog tag. Thanks to lastcrazyhorn at Odd One Out for tagging me to post answers to these questions. Came at a great time, as I needed an easy post topic to get one up this weekend. Here’s my only problem…I am not at all well connected within the blog-o-sphere, so I don’t really have folks to tag to pass it on! I’ll see what I can do, but in the meantime, I invite you, dear reader, to leave a comment on this post with your own answers.

5 Things in My Bag

- Sunglasses 

- kleenex, used and unused

- 6 crayons

- band-aids, used and unused

- a handful of temporary tattoos that say ‘mother outlaw’

 

5 Favorite Things in My Room (living room…bedroom is too boring)

- homemade papier mache and cloth sun with furry black eyebrows

- artsy looking, nicely framed black and white wedding photo of mr. chasing me down the beach

- my 3 canvas zebra painting “Zephyr and the Sun”

- pair of hand carved wooden giraffes that I got for 5 bucks at a little store that was there one day and gone the next

- our super-mega ipod and portable i-fusion stereo dock

 

5 Things I Don’t Do Anymore

- smoke. anything.

- dwell on the past

- drink jack daniels

- sing in bars

- cut my own hair (at least, not that I will admit to my hairdresser)

 

5 Favorite Flowers

- lilacs

- wild roses

- pansies (I originally said violets, but I like pansies better)

- daffodils

- forget-me-nots

 

 

A Woman of Sensible Shoes

Some women hate tank-top season because it suddenly reveals their out-of-shape arms. Some women work themselves into a considerable sweat over swimsuit season because they have flab on their abs, or they despise their thighs. Me? I dread blister season. And I don’t mean that as some cute play on the name of this blog. I mean it literally. It’s the time of year when my poor unfortunate soles, toes, and heels should be rejoicing in the strappy sandaled, high heeled, toe cleavage-baring days of spring and summer. But instead, me and my wide, stubby, flat feet (that I think I inherited from a distant duck relative) are dreading buying new footwear, desperately trying to find socks that will look ok with sandals, and stocking up on band-aids. My feet and I hate blister season.

  I have several friends who are obsessed with shoes. They have closets full. High heels, low heels, sky scraper heels, and flats. Mary Janes, espadrills, hooker boots, and non-hooker boots. Black ones, red ones, brown ones, turquoise ones, gold ones. Casual, sporty, businessy, dressy, glam. Shoes for any outfit, any occasion, any season. These friends get positively giddy at the notion of shoe shopping, especially in the spring when all the cute shoes come out of hiding and go on sale. Me? The very thought of shoe shopping makes me nauseous, nervous and on the verge of tears. I only have a few pairs of shoes, and they fall into two categories: Ones that give me really bad blisters, and ones that do not. Which is not to say that the shoes in the latter category don’t give me blisters too…they do…just not really bad ones. The shoes that give me bad blisters create gaping, aching wounds the size of quarters that bleed through all manner of socks and bandages, in places where no blister had ever gone before. The shoes that don’t give me bad blisters just give me blisters on top of scar tissue from blisters gone by, so I don’t even feel those ones anymore. And that’s as good as it gets.

Shoes and I are arch enemies. In my memory, this hostile relationship dates back well over 20 years, to my Aunt Holly’s wedding, when a pair of too-tight shiny flower-girl dress shoes inflicted some pretty significant carnage on my tender young feet in a very short period of time. But my mother would probably tell you that even as a small child, finding shoes for me was an exercise in discomfort, which is why I spent a majority of my childhood barefoot. There was a brief period in the ’90’s when shoes and I declared a bit of a truce, when fashionable footwear and I were able to see toe to toe. Doc Martens, Birks, thick chunky heels and skater shoes were all the rage. I had a pair of green suede Converse One Stars that, once broken in, did not give me blisters or hurt my feet in the least. I wore them almost every day for about seven years, until they literally fell to pieces. I owned a few other pairs of shoes during that time that caused me little to no misery, and they too were worn until they could be worn no more. Then, things changed. Shoes changed. My choices suddenly got even narrower. Heels got high and spikey. Toes got tight and pointy. This happened around the same time that I had Neener and Roo, when pregnancy splayed my feet out to an even more duck-like width, and my legs and lifestyle put the kibosh on any type of fancy footwear, possibly forever. And it killed me because, despite my frequent quasi-feminist rants and ravings, I still like feeling sexy and/or pretty sometimes, and shoes are an easy way to accomplish that. I like the way high heels, pointy toes and fun, funky shoes look. I just hate the way they feel. And these days, I can not afford to suffer for the sake of cute shoes. 

Not long ago, a no-bullshit, get-things-done type, un-shoe obsessed friend of mine used the phrase  ‘a woman who wears sensible shoes’ in conversation. I thought about that phrase a lot, and once I had established that it was not code language for lesbian, I agreed that I was one too. A woman of sensible shoes. Yeah, I like that. It makes me feel better about my ancient sneakers, my socks and sandals combo, and my black ”dress shoes” that came with the ever-so-sexy claims of slip-resistant, no-mark soles, fully lined for comfort, and perfect for nurses, bank tellers and people who like to pace in a room all by themselves for hours on end. High heels, strappy sandals and cute cut clogs might say ‘Hey! Look at my legs! Look at my toenails! Don’t you just want to sit down on a nice couch and rub my feet!‘ to the world. But my shoes, my sensible shoes, say something to the world too. They say ‘If my kid runs away from me, I can chase her. If I step in a puddle, or a pothole, or some dog shit, I’m not gonna freak out. And if your fancy shoes give you a blister, and you need a band-aid, I’ve got one.‘ Especially now that it is blister season.

Don’t Take Your Guns to School, Boys. Leave Your Guns at Home.

Unfortunately, Neener and Roo are learning things at school. That’s right, unfortunately. I was actually hoping that they would not learn much there at all. Let me explain: Neener and Roo are almost five, and can already read. And I don’t mean read as in ‘cat, bat,hat.’ I don’t even mean ‘See Spot. See Spot run. See Spot run very fast.’ It’s more like ‘ Observe Spot. Take note of Spot physically exerting himself. It is grossly apparent that Spot is approaching the point of exhaustion.’ And they would be able to pronounce and understand that. When I am writing these posts, I have to be keenly aware of little eyeballs peering over my shoulder. We have to hide the newspapers when there are grisly headlines. I have to constantly divert their attention when we are on public transit if we’ve accidently plunked ourselves directly across from one of those lovely Men’s clinic ads with the words ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION written nice ‘n big ‘n bold. They can read, they can understand, and what they don’t understand, they have no qualms about questioning. Loudly. And they can print. And draw. And colour. And add and subtract, and I am pretending that they do not know how to do simple multiplication because frankly, it freaks me out. I can barely do simple multiplication. Sometimes I just curl up in the cozy arms of denial, and ignore the fact that my children are alarmingly smart on some levels. Thank god that they’re socially dumb as rocks. 

So when they started school, I told the teacher it was ok to not really teach them anything. I figure Neener and Roo could use a brain break for a few years, to let their peers catch up, and to let some of their overachieving neural networks wither and die. I told the teacher I would be happy if she could give them just enough academic stimulation to keep them from driving her crazy, and if they could spend more time connecting with and learning from their peers. Ohh, but be careful what you wish for…

It seems that Neener and Roo’s class is chock full of junior NRA enthusiasts. There are only a handful of girls in the class, and they are all Disney Princesses-in-training (see here for my feelings on that) so, the boys dominate the kindergarten social landscape. And that social landscape looks like a scene from Charlton Heston’s wildest, giddiest, most gun-toting dream. Little boys racing around, turning anything they can get their hands on into guns. Blocks. Play-doh. Disney Princess paraphernalia. (Cinderella’s Slipper! Now with more killing power!) For Neener and Roo, this is a whole new world. Before they started school, they didn’t know anything about boys. Or about weapons. But now, they are not only aware of guns and swords and what they are for, they’ve realized that boys think they are cool. And if they want to play with the boys, they’d better bone up on their weapon talk. Here’s a sample of a conversation I had with Neener the other day while she was drawing a picture:

Me: What’s that a picture of?

Neener: A rattlesnake attacking a hummingbird.

Me: Oh. And what’s that?

Neener: A gun coming out of the sky to shoot the rattlesnake in the head so it will be too dead to attack the hummingbird anymore.

And then there was this chat with Roo, while she was drawing:

Me: Whatcha drawing?

Roo: Me. With a sword. And a gun. And another gun. And another sword. And a princess dress.

 

Thank you, school kids. Now, I know most of these boys. They live in the neighbourhood. They are nice. Their parents are nice. I don’t think they are destined to be school shooters or gangsta thugs. They are just going through a gun phase. Or they are clearly reflecting the nonchalant attitude toward weapons that is so pervasive in the pop-culture entertainment offerings for young boys. Or they are all just getting a jump on constructing their phallic-symbol-centered masculine identities. But do they have to teach my daughters about it? Can’t they form some secret gun club for boys, and act out their little wars in somebody’s backyard, out of earshot of my already anxious, sensitive, too-smart-for-their-own-good daughters?  I guess not.

So I have to play the glad game. At least Neener and Roo are learning something. At least they are socializing. At least they are choosing to explore this world of boys and guns and violence instead of ignoring it, or worse, being terrified and intimidated by it. And you never know, this knowledge may come in handy some day. Afterall, my husband is facing his future as the father of three tall, beautiful, too-smart-for-their-own-good, socially-dumb-as-rocks daughters. He’s probably going to want a gun someday, to scare the living shit out of the throngs of boys who will inevitably come knocking on our door. Maybe Neener and Roo will learn enough in school to help Daddy decide which gun he should buy.

 

Does This Diaper Make My Butt Look Fat?

Baby Squiggles had her four month check-up yesterday, but due to her on-going case of the sniffles, she managed to avoid getting jabbed with a needle full of vaccine-y-goodness. My favorite part of taking her to the doctor was the weigh-in. I reveled in her transformation from 7 pound 13 ounce chicken-legged E.T to a 16 pound Stay Puff Marshmallow baby. In honor of this transformation, I decided that today was the day we would try on some of her ‘Grown-Up Baby’ clothes, and venture out in to the world more fashionably dressed than ever before. Up until now, Squiggles has sported a steady stream of utilitarian baby sleepers. They are comfy, cozy and easy to get on and off. Squiggles, like her sisters before her, has a great propensity for  craptastrophic diaper malfunctions, so easy escapes are a must.  But today, I cast all that aside and decided to dress her in a real outfit. I picked out something cute. A long sleeved onesie with bands of funky flowers and little folk artsy people on it. A very Urban Boho baby vibe, it made me long for a co-ordinating crocheted hat. For the bottom, I pulled out her very first pair of baby jeans, which were a Christmas gift. Dark denim with white stitching and a bit of a fade on the legs, complete with a woven half belt, the colors of which matched the little folks on the shirt. They are sized 6-12 months, maybe a bit big I figured, but I’d been saving them for the day I deemed her Ready to Wear Grown Up Baby Clothes. Today was the day. I  wriggled her into the top, then began the process of wrestling her squirming legs into the stiff jeans. I stuffed. I wrestled. I stuffed some more. I finally got them more or less in the pants, only to stop, stare, and mutter “Dammit” at the realization that there was no way I was getting those suckers buttoned. In fact, Squiggles could no longer move her legs because the jeans were like little straightjackets on her thighs. I yanked the jeans off, threw them on the floor, and hissed out something to the effect of “What kind of asshole store sells jeans like that? For anorexic babies?” Then I stomped on the offending clothing, just to make a point, just to punish them for suggesting that my baby was too fat for fashion.

In place of the despicable denim, I slid Squiggles in to a pair of comfortable pink elastic-waisted pajama pants. The hip, cute grown up baby look I had crafted in my mind was shot to hell in an instant, and I was more than a little bitter. But, off we trekked to our local parent-child centre to enjoy a singing circle, and some fresh toys and coffee to slurp on. While there, I found myself intensly aware of all the other babies her age, especially the baby girls. All the skinny, little girls. They looked like mini fashionistas in mini embroidered tunics, mini sparkly flats, and mini skinny jeans. They were dainty, delicate and feminine. They made my baby girl look like Bruiser the Beefcake. (It does not help that she is also totally bald, and the fashionista babies had heads full of hair.) Then came a few innocent remarks: “Your baby is only four months? She’s huge!” “Wow, you’re baby is so big!” “Look at those fat legs! Adorable!” But it didn’t feel adorable to me. It made me feel like I was carting around a Jabba The Hut baby. Like maybe Squiggles was already part of the dreaded obesity epidemic currently gobbling up kids and headlines. Like maybe I was doing something wrong.  

Granted, weight and size issues are at the forefront of my mind lately, which makes me a bit hypersensitive. I’ve never been petit, to say the least. The only way I can keep my weight in check is by meticulously watching what and how much I eat, and by exercising almost every day. Right now, I am pretty insecure about my own size, as I’m busting my ass to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight and shape. And I wonder how this affects my kids. I hope I’m modeling a healthy lifestyle, and not planting the seeds of disordered eating. Neener and Roo see me measuring food, tracking my food intake and working out. They hear me talk about calories, carbs, fats and protein. They like to weigh themselves on my fancy new digital scale. They were about the same size as Squiggles when they were her age, and even now, they aren’t small by any means. But they are strong, healthy and active kids. They jump on the Laz-E-Boy chair like it’s a trampoline while they watch TV, and their favorite breakfast beverage is fondly known as Scary Green Slime juice. It has fruit, vegetables, wheat grass and algae in it! Still, I wonder how they interpret the things they see me doing. I want to keep them from winding up obese, unhappy and unhealthy when they are older, but at the same time, I don’t want them to develop obsessions with diet and exercise, and poor self-images. Been there, done that, bought the baggy t-shirt. And that is why I know better than to listen to that little size-conscious fiend that lurks inside me, the same one that made me briefly and needlessly be concerned with the size of Baby Squiggles today.

So skinny baby jeans be damned. I’m taking them to the parent-child centre next chance I get and giving them to one of the little girl babies. They’ll look positively dainty with a pair of baby ballet flats, and that’s great. For somebody else’s daughter. Me and my Bruiser Beefcake baby girls will be jumping on furniture in our comfy pajama pants. In this pop-culture climate of ever-shrinking starlets and over-dressed infants, I constantly have to remind myself that my family’s brand of feminine just isn’t dainty or delicate or petite, but that is ok. It’s bigger, stronger, tougher. Too tough to be restricted by a piece of clothing. And on days like today, I take comfort in the notion that if there is ever a food shortage, the scrawny ones, no matter how fashionably dressed, will be the first to go. Baby Squiggles might not fit into little fancy pants, but if she had to, she could take down one of those skinny babies and eat her for breakfast. Along with a glass of Scary Green Slime juice.

Kids’ TV for the Hallucinogenicly Inclined

Forgive me if I seem a little loopy today. I’m dealing with a one-two punch of rotten headcold and serious sleep deprivation the best way I know how: A mouthful of Dayquil and a shitload of black coffee. Last night, Baby Squiggles developed a fever, and when she has a fever, she demands some specific things to keep her from ripping the roof off the place with her angry howls. First she wants a breast. The left one. Once satisfied with that, she wants to be waltzed around the living room while I rub her back and perform Jingle Bells in the key of cat.  Meow meow meow. Meow meow meow. Meow meow meow meow meeeooow. This Christmas-y version of a Whiskas commercial is her favorite lullaby. Finally, she wants to sleep. On my chest. With me sitting in an upright position. She wants this cycle repeated every hour or so, which allows me to rack up a whole three, maybe four hours of sleep, all taken in 20 minute chunks. 

With me in this state, and the girls still feeling under the weather, we’ve been parked in front of the TV a fair bit. We have a large arsenal of dvds to combat days like this, but Neener and Roo will have none of them. The other night, they accidentally discovered their newest TV love. It’s called In the Night Garden. I’ve always been pretty good about making sure that the shows they watch are age appropriate, but somehow, this time I’ve failed. They shouldn’t be watching this show, but I don’t have the will to stop them even though I know Neener and Roo are either too old for this show, or not old enough. On the surface, it appears to be aimed at the toddler set. It’s on Treehouse, after all. But upon closer inspection, I think it is more geared toward the university crowd. The giddy, pizza-eating, ‘hey-let’s-trip-out-on-kid’s-shows-at-3 o’clock in the morning’  crowd. The same crowd who watched Teletubbies. I am aware of this phenomenon because I watched Teletubbies long before I ever had children. My university roommates and I spent long stretches in our early twenties engulfed in a purple haze, and engrossed in the antics of Lala, Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Po, and that damn adorable baby face in the sun.

The two shows were created by the same folks, who also brought us the slightly phallic looking, frequent fart noise making BoohBahs. Compared to In the Night Garden, Teletubbies makes sense. Clearly the descendants of an illicit affair between a television and a troll, the Teletubbies goof around in their whimsical land until it’s time for Tubby bye-bye. They are the model of a modern family, complete with a man-purse toting Dad (Tinky Winky), a favorite family meal (Tubby Toast, which, as far as I can tell, is smiley-faced toaster pancakes) and even a pet, Noo Noo (a vaccum/dog who cleans the kitchen floor. I want one.) Sure, there are the weird little trips into their TV tummies that replay the same live footage over and over and over, but there was nothing really nuts. Even after I got over watching kids shows with an illegal smile, I got Teletubbies. In the Night Garden, I don’t get at all, and I’ve even gone to the website and read the explanations. The creators describe it as “a modern televisual interpretation of a nursery rhyme picture book.” Here’s how I describe it: a bunch of weird characters (Igglepiggle, Upsy Daisy, Makka Pakka, and the three Tombliboos) and a bunch of weird machines (like the Pinky Ponk, a gigantic farting zepplin) do a bunch of weird things. Igglepiggle falls asleep in a boat that takes him to the garden where he meets Upsy Daisy, and he falls over in a fit of anxiety every time something surprising happens. Makka Pakka comes along to inexplicably wash Igglepiggle and Upsy Daisy’s faces with a sponge. And soup I think. The Tombliboos’ pants fall down at random moments. The Pinky Ponk does a fly-by farting. All this action is interspersed with appearances by the Tittifers (crazy looking technicolor birds that just sit on a branch making weird noises) and the Pontipines (a family of 10 miniature dolls who share a semi-detached doll house with their neighbours, the mysterious Wottingers.) The 8 Pontipine children get lost in the forest on a regular basis, but all Mr. and Mrs. Pontipine can do is wiggle around making - you guessed it - weird noises, in response to the narrator’s repeated question “Where are the children?” The narrator sounds just as lost as any adult watching the show would be. Then, everyone says Pip-pip, onk-onk (which apparently means goodbye.)  I’m left feeling dizzy, hungry and confused. My kids are laughing their asses off.

Maybe it’s because I don’t remember what it felt like to be a crazy kid. Maybe it’s because I don’t remember what it felt like to be a stoned university student. Or maybe it’s because today’s crazy kids need crazier TV shows to hold their fly-like attention spans, and today’s university students are doing harder drugs and so need much more fucked up kid’s shows to trip them out. Whatever the reason, I don’t understand In the Night Garden. But my kids do, and on a day like today, that is all that matters. So, I’ll wash back another mouthful of Dayquil with another mouthful of black coffee and laugh along with them. And when Baby Squiggles starts crying, I’ll have just enough energy to pick her up and meow out another lullaby in the key of cat.