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Either I haven’t quite figured out how much food is required to feed my family of four, or we have two little piggies on our hands. Maybe both.
Jason gets home later on Mondays because of class. So last Monday I made dinner – sundried tomato and artichoke pasta – and ate with the boys at their usual dinner time. I figured I’d save the leftovers so big daddy could eat when he got home.
He walked in the door sometime after 6.30. I handed him a plate. ‘Here’s your dinner.’ He looked at the small salad plate containing approximately ten butterfly pastas….visibly wondering if I was being sarcastic. ‘Did they eat all the food?’ he asked. Yes. They did. ‘I didn’t get much more than that’ I offered as consolation.
These days I feel hungry after most meals. Last night I made the kids some Annie’s mac and cheese because it was getting late and I didn’t have any better ideas. They ate all of it; the entire box. And the Hen out-ate his brother. I noticed after the carbo-loading-extravaganza that the kid’s diaper was coming apart. Bursting at the seams.
Later, Jason, kind and gracious man that he is, made some spaghetti for ME and HIM. He set my plate before me and before I could even lift my fork to my mouth, I had two kids beside me; like unfed puppies, begging for whatever was on my plate. The Hen climbed onto my lap and G ran off to the kitchen to get himself a spoon, scooting his chair close to mine upon returning so we could ’share’.
I’ve ceased being bitter about this, now I’m just resigned….and hungry. We went on a family walk by the river yesterday. We stopped on the way to get the kids a little ice cream cone and some juice. We had nothing. Driving home, J stopped at a coffee shop so I could pick up a ‘replacement latte’ – to make up for the nasty coffee we’d had for breakfast. Since I was a little hungry, I grabbed a rice krispie treat, too. The second I opened the door to the parking lot, I saw ‘them’: sitting in the car, staring at the door, waiting. And pointing at the ‘thing’ in my hand.
I got in the car; their arms and open palms extended in a hostile salute from the backseat, accompanied by an incessant: ‘I want some of that. Can I have some of that. I want some of that. Mom, can I please have some of that?’ from the preschooler and ‘Heeh, yaaah, huuh, mmmm, aaaagh’ from the other one.
Resigned, I broke off a piece and extended my arm behind my head – handing it to the older one. I’d just finished giving the baby his piece when the next chorus erupted: ‘I want some more, can I have some more, can I have another piece?’ And the Hen, always following suit,…no matter that he was still chewing and still had a chunk of treat in his hand. ‘Eeeeh, yaaah, mmmhhhh, ummp’ while reaching towards me from the backseat.
I looked at Jason the other day and asked: ‘have you lost weight?’ He later confirmed he had, in fact, lost 5 pounds. I have not.
But maybe that’s because I bake cookies after the kids have gone to bed and eat them all.
I wouldn’t say we are coffee fanatics, but we do like to drink good coffee at home. For the past four years we’ve bought our coffee from Alliance World Coffees, which also happened to be located in our church. So every other week, we’d pick up a pound of freshly-roasted-reasonably-priced beans.
But then we moved to Calgary. And found ourselves without our trusty coffee supplier. We’d brought along a couple of extra bags to see us through the first month, but the last of the Decaf Sidamo ran out this week. I’d checked at the Farmer’s Market where the artisanal roaster ‘Phil and Sebastian’ has set up shop. But their price tags ranged from $15-18 for 3/4lb bags. And the Vancouver-based Caffe Artigiano wanted me to part with $19 for a pound of beans. That was a little more than I’d envisioned spending.
So I hit the Canadian Superstore thinking we could maybe, dare-I-say, Starbucks it for a while. Just until we could find our new coffee beans of choice. But the only Starbucks at the store was already ground which, I believe, makes it only slightly better than Folgers crystals. So I decided to go with an enormous bag of Italian Espresso beans with an interesting font.
I have this theory about font. Call me a ‘font-snob’ but I often make decisions about supporting businesses or products based on the font of their signage or packaging. It may seem random, but it’s helpful in many traveling situations when you don’t know one restaurant from another. Go with the one that has a nice sign in the front, or a classy looking menu. It seems like whenever I’ve compromised this deeply rational standard, I’ve had to suffer the consequences.
So I picked up the bag of Caffe Gioia; tastefully presented in a silver bag with bold red and black font and bonafide Italian text. It cost $10.99 for a kilogram – less than $5 a pound. The saying ‘you get what you pay for’ flashed through my mind, but, I held out hope that I’d secretly stumbled upon the dark horse of the coffee industry. The unknown, future Illy, if you will.
And then I brewed the first pot. The lingering taste of cigarettes in my mouth suggested my frugality and aesthetic preferences had let me down. And Jason, pleading after the second day: ‘can we please buy some different coffee? I almost threw up a little in my mouth just now.’
We took a quick trip to Kananaskis Country last Friday. Canadian Jason, it seems, is a bit of a Clark Griswold. Eager to explore the land. All of it. As quickly as possible. So we headed west, in search of nothing in particular. Determined to be back in Calgary by 1pm so G could go to preschool.
Well, the trip turned out to be a bit of a bust, as one might have guessed from the lack of itinerary and hurried nature of the journey. Also, it had been less than a week since our previous excursion. The junior Griswolds were a little tripped out.
We stopped at Canoe Meadows which, if memory serves, is where crazy kayaking types can test their skills on a water-obstacle course of sorts. Think meandering water with rapids. And lots of wires overhead. I took a few pictures. And we drove on to Kananaskis Village.
Apparently the G8 summit was held there in 2002, a fact mentioned in every piece of tourist information I came across. I’m not entirely sure why the G8 chose the Village as the site for the summit, since it appeared to be a fairly dull place. Aside from two conference centers and their accompanying restaurants, a tiny general store and canoe outfitter, there was a whole lot of nothing. Hopefully they got a good deal on lodging.
After a quick stop to take pictures of the river-runs-through-it scenery, we started the drive home. But instead of going back the way we came, J saw a gravel road which connected to the same highway…eventually. It was apparent that he desired to take the rocky road, so I relented. Personally I didn’t understand the allure of driving on a bunch of tiny rocks, but it made him happy.
As we were driving along, G muttered: ‘what kind of road IS this?’ Preparing us for the teenage years, no doubt. And then we passed a road sign I’d never seen before: Caution: Cattle Roaming on Highway. It might have said near highway, or around highway, but the implication was the same: cows were imminent. Sure enough, less than two minutes later, there they were:
Right beside the gravel road. Staring us down without a trace of fear. J pulled over so I could take a few pictures and they didn’t even flinch.
Crazy place, this Canada.
I love my children fiercely and really do believe that they’re reasonably smart..but their actions belie their intelligence.
In the movie ‘Parenthood’ – Steve Martin’s family has ‘bucket boy’, the kid who puts a bucket over his head and bumps his head into the wall, repeatedly. For fun. And Steve Martin’s sister has a child who is studying flashcards and karate and Japanese.
I’m convinced we’ve got a couple of ‘bucket boys’.
Maybe it’s because G likes to hit the top of his head with his hands like a monkey while laughing maniacally whenever you put him in front of a computer on ichat. Or that he sits in the jogging stroller and manually rotates the front wheel backwards, scooting himself out of the room. Or that he stands at the top of the stairs, suspending a wooden train from a piece of yarn….’fishing’…for sharks.
And good old Hennie, well he’s not a walking advertisement for MENSA either. Maybe it’s the semi-mullet he used to sport, or the Playmobil hair his mother just gave him. Or maybe it’s that he sits in his carseat, or walks around the house, bringing his hand to his mouth repeatedly while making a whooping sound. Stopping periodically to check that we’re looking…and laughing. His latest trick is standing and turning around as many times as he can; his mouth colored pink from the chalk he’s been eating.
J commented a few weeks ago: ’that kid (in reference to our youngest) is Chris Farley.’ And ever since then whenever I look at my little cherub cheeks, I see that Saturday night live skit with Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze where they’re auditioning to be Chippendale Dancers.
It’s not that the Hen is chunky or wearing black tights.
But the hair…and the cheeks…. and the way he thrives on making us laugh.
Total ham slash drama queen.
Technically, this is round 3 of the hair cutting extravaganza. But the maimed ear is in full view here. You can see I’ve learned something already – now I’m cutting hair wet, instead of dry.
The finished product. ‘My mom cut my ear,’ he told our landlord on Saturday.
This was after the Hen’s first hair cut. It’s so bad he’s crying.
The finished product (after yet another round of cutting). I should have left well enough alone. ‘The kid’s got Playmobil hair’ Jason remarked. Not in a good way. Personally I thought he looked a little more like He-man. By the power of grey skull!
I almost died on Wednesday.
And not because I drove the wrong way down a one-way street, again.
Because I exercised.
G goes to preschool three times a week, which both of us enjoy. The only bummer is it’s in the afternoon and only for two hours – which really messes with the Hen’s nap.
So this week I decided to take the baby for a walk in the stroller after dropping G off at school, figuring he would get just as much of a nap ‘on-the-go’ as he would at home.
Monday worked out well – I drove to a trail and parked my car and we walked for about an hour by the river. Afterwards we stopped at a coffee shop for a snack before picking up big brother. It couldn’t have been more pleasant.
Wednesday I had to quiet the little voice in my head that said – ‘go home and take a nap, it’s too hot to walk’, – and we ventured out. This time we stayed close to home because I wanted to see if I could get onto the river trail from our house.
I checked the map and figured out the most direct way to said trail.
It started downhill. Literally. The street after ours slopes downward at about a 45 degree angle. Which doesn’t feel good, especially if you’re behind a stroller that would like to go faster than you. It felt like I was taking a Mastiff for a walk down a mountain.
After the downhill, ‘we’ walked up a steep-ish ramp to the pedestrian bridge that crosses a six-lane road. And down again on the other side. Eventually I found the start of the trail, which snaked down to the river at an incline so steep it almost made me cry thinking about the return journey.
The Hen and I had a lovely walk beside the river. A gorgeous day, lovely foliage. The only problem is I wasn’t wearing a watch. Mostly because my watch battery has been kaput for the better part of four years. So after it had been a while, I asked an elderly gentleman what time it was. ‘Quarter to two’ he replied. And I had to pick up G at 3. So we meandered on a few minutes more and then began the journey home.
It all went swimmingly until I arrived at the point of no return: where it would be ‘onward and upward’ the rest of the way. I looked at what lay before me and wanted to die. I tried to soothe my panicky self with the promise of an icy Frappuccino afterwards. But I was tired after walking for an hour. And pushing a stroller up an incline that steep was more than this physically UN-fit person could contemplate.
But the mental picture of G, last one standing at the preschool door, waiting for his mom after all the kids had left, kept me going. That and the reality that no one was going to airlift me out of the situation. I was breathing embarrassingly hard after the first major hill, which probably kept me from crying. I had another uphill ramp to the pedestrian bridge and then three more hills to conquer before I’d get to our house.
By the time I got to the car (to see what time it was) my face was redder than a tomato. I felt the same as after childbirth: ‘I will NEVER do that again.’
When I told Jason about it he said: ‘Yeah, that’s what Dave told me – you can go down that way but you can’t go back up the same way…you have to go around.’
Would have been nice to know.
I’ve recently had the bright idea that I should buy a pair of shears and just cut the boys’ hair myself. Mostly to save some money and also because 90% of the time when G gets a hair cut, it looks pretty bad anyway. The Hen has not yet had his first haircut. But his little wispy strands are covering his eyes and the little mullet in the back isn’t doing him any favors. He’s basically a ticking (hair) bomb.
So Thursday, en route to Costco, I stopped at the beauty supply store to pick up some shears. I guess I was a little surprised by the fact that they cost $70. Swedish technology and lifetime guarantee notwithstanding. I was hemming and hawing about buying them, but being new to town, I didn’t know where else to go, and the time spent researching the matter and gas for driving elsewhere, probably would negate the savings. Or so I told myself.
It was nap-time for the babe and G was playing downstairs with some lentils and Bob the Builder toys. Because that’s what all the cool kids are doing these days. ’Can I cut your hair?’ I asked him? Before he could decline, I proposed a deal: ‘I’ll let you have two popsicles if you let me cut your hair.’
Well he wasn’t going to decline two frozen treats. I combed and started cutting. I didn’t dare wet his hair, because that always ends in tears. So I cut it dry.
The last stylist gave him some sort of weird, across the ears type of hair cut, closely resembling a bowl cut. So I decided to start by the ears and see if I could shape the hair more. Or something.
I’m guessing dry hair is harder to cut than wet hair? I really don’t know, but I was having a hard time cutting all of the hair with one motion. I finished the (first) cut anyway, despite the resistance…only stopping when my son started wailing loudly…..and I realized I was having a hard time, because I was cutting his ear.
With my brand-new, super-sharp, lifetime guaranteed expensive scissors.
I’m not sure which was worse – knowing that I’d maimed my boy, or that I’d somehow have to convince him to let me finish cutting his hair. A bowl cut is one thing, but a random chunk of hair missing around the ear – on one side?
One bath, two band-aids with neosporin and three popsicles (total!) later…..his hair….looks good from far away, if I’m not wearing my glasses.
As J helpfully pointed out, we’re not really saving money if we have to take him to the hospital to stitch up his ear.
‘We don’t need to pray…..we only pray for good meals.’
Such were the encouraging words proffered by my dear preschooler the other night. Honestly, I don’t make this stuff up. When he hesitated after saying ‘we don’t need to pray’…I knew exactly what he was going to say. I practically mouthed the words as he rattled off the last phrase.
This is the same kid who, when I told him after repeating a particular infraction multiple times that he had until the count of 1 to correct the behavior, replied: ‘that doesn’t even make sense.’
Despite disparaging the meal I’d made, he ate all of it. It’s a fabulous recipe for people who have to make a meal while someone is tugging at their legs, wailing. Or for people who don’t have the ‘time or inclination’ to cook an elaborate meal. [And you can listen to this while prepping and eating, which makes the whole process that much more enjoyable. Of course, if you like it a lot you should order it online - I think that's the point.] And if you have a gynormous bag of frozen thin green beans from Costco in your freezer, you can serve them (cooked) on the side.
This recipe, which we had last week, is also tasty. However, if you have kids and want them to eat the food you make, I’d highly recommend you omit or significantly reduce the amount of cayenne pepper called for. Unless of course your kids hail from Texas and were born eating fire.
The first chickpea I tasted didn’t even seem that spicy. But when both kids were crying, refusing to eat the food, and I was drinking copious amounts of water…..
So, there you go. I made two dinners in two weeks. And played 12 plus hours of Scramble in the span of four days.
Can you say ‘mother of the year?’
I knew it would be trouble, but I did it anyway. And now I’m paying for it.
When I’d log on to facebook (or ‘the bane of my existence’) I’d see in my mini-feed: (friend’s name) just found a six-letter word in Scramble. Can you do better?
The competitor and Boggle lover in me wanted to try, but I resisted for many days because I knew ‘out-of-control-Nicola’ would take over. And it would get ugly.
My resistance crumbled about a week later. I decided to add the Scramble application figuring I didn’t have much time to play, anyway. One hundred (100) or so rounds later….three nights of staying up past midnight….I’d say I have a problem.
The profound waste of time has certainly bothered me, but I knew it was bad when I went to bed last night (around 12.30am) and kept visualizing different word formations before finally falling asleep: Spin. Pin. Pins. Nip. Nips. Pine. Pines. Etc. And I woke up, very reluctantly, this morning and started going about my day. While cleaning and putting away laundry, the same patterns ran through my head: Lid. Lie. Lies. Lids. Core. Ore. Ores. Roe.
A touch of obsessive compulsive disorder? Probably. But I took the bull by the horns and vowed not to touch Scramble for 24 hours.
Remarkably, I have. (So far.) Hog. Rug. Tug. Hug. Hour. Through. (Unless you count ‘mental Scramble’.)
Now if only I can get my partner-in-crime to do the same. The one who is intent on defeating me; who, in fact, started these three-hour-long matches on our respective computers.
The one who has only won 5 matches to my 19.
We headed to the ‘Badlands’ yesterday, Johnson-style. Which means we tentatively decided the night before that we’d take a trip the next day – without agreeing on a destination. We woke up the next day, ate breakfast, loosely talked about the trip – unable to commit to a destination.
Finally, around 10.45am we emerged from the house. No cash. An empty gas tank. Stomachs empty from breakfast. Ready to go to ‘the land before time’.
It was another hour before we exited Calgary and close to 2pm by the time we pulled into the Visitor Information Center in Drumheller, Alberta. Judging from the enormous dinosaur statues around town, this was the stomping grounds of dinosaurs about 5 million years ago. The kids were delighted – almost as if the colorful statues had been our final destination. Well, they were delighted until the Hen touched one and burned his hand – apparently big dino had been baking in the sun all day. Picture lots of screaming and me, trying to comfort a baby while perched upon a dinosaur leg.
Next, we drove to the Royal Tyrrell Museum which is, as far as I can tell, a museum about dinosaurs or fossils or something like that. I didn’t actually get a lot out of the museum because of keeping an eye on our darting preschooler. But it looked very interesting and had some excellent displays. And, it has a room where you put nerf balls in tubes with forced air and blow the balls everywhere. A major highlight for all- judging by the adults in the room without any kids.
We stopped at the cafeteria on the way out, which resulted in a couple of minor crises. J somehow dropped a bottle of apple juice on the floor, which broke and spilled all over the place; and G chose a vanilla soy milk (despite our saying ‘are you sure’) – hated the taste of it and had a little screaming fit as a result. After polishing off the remains of the pound cake we’d bought that morning, we got back in the car and headed for the ‘Hoodoos’.
In the guidebook the hoodoos appeared to be impressive rock formations, similar to the recently collapsed ‘Delicate Arch’ in Utah. But when we pulled into the parking lot, feeling every bit like the Griswold family, J looked at me and said: ‘Did you think these were going to be a lot bigger?’
Yes, I did. Blame it on a weird photographic angle, but the hoodoos are about the size of a very tall person. Nonetheless we walked around and took pictures, and G and I climbed all the way to the top of one of the ‘badland hills’. Which he called ‘the mountains of Canada’ – despite having seen the Rockies up close and personal. I was rather impressed by my little man, who was a better climber than the teenager behind us. We had almost made it back to the car with nary a tantrum when, for no apparent reason, G stepped in the one pile of mud in the entire place. Luckily his parents who had wised up over the last four years, brought extra pants and shoes. Avoiding another incident like the summer of 2005, when I had to push G in a stroller down Chicago’s Magnificent Mile wearing a diaper and a sweater. We learn from our humiliation.
After a quick stop at a grocery store for some snacks we hit Dinosaur Trail, which is a 56km drive with some noteworthy sights.
First stop was Horsethief Canyon, a miniature northern version of the Grand Canyon. We also got to see a ‘prairie dog’ which I personally thought looked more like a squirrel-rat-meerkat combination, but what do I know.
Then we drove to the world’s smallest ferry – which accommodates about 3 cars and crosses a river that’s no more than 200 yards wide. Still, it’s fun stuff for little people.
Our final destination on the trail was the Orkney Hill Viewpoint, which had some beautiful views of the valley below. And a terrific view of an unofficial dumping ground for washers and dryers.
On our drive through Wheatland County, G and I got out to take pictures of the haystacks while J stayed in the car with a tired, screaming baby, eventually honking the horn to summon us back inside.
The last hour or so was filled with more meltdowns than I can, or want to, remember and made me question why we try to do anything with these little creatures. But, to be fair, we’d had a pretty good day.
Next time I’ll pack earplugs.
