Posted by Kimberly on December 29th, 2006 — Posted in Kipple, Just Like Riding A Bicycle, iVillage
Is it wrong to answer, “thanks! My boyfriend* gave it to me.” when the Creepy Neighbour Guy compliments me on the beautiful necklace I got for Christmas?
If it is, I’m in such big trouble. At least Diva Girl wasn’t there to bust me on the lie this time. We had a pretty good chat about fibs and white lies after last time; while other parents are having the sex talk with the technical details, I’ve breezed right past the mundane and onto advanced relationship tactics such as the graceful refusal and letting yourself off the hook with a little white lie.
I’m not sure what would happen if she heard me spin many more fantasies about this mystery man, though. And I’m not sure which would be worse, the awkward outing in front of CNG, or the even more awkward belief that I’m hiding some guy under the bedskirts.
*My brother and sister-in-law gave it to me; I don’t have a boyfriend. I also have no interest in providing CNG with any encouragement.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 25th, 2006 — Posted in Kipple, iVillage
After a day filled with family, food, and fun (a day that incidentally began at 5:25 this morning), I’d like to wish each and every one of you peace, joy, and the love of good family and friends.
Thank you for sharing a part of my life, and, to those of you who comment, thank you for sharing part of yours in turn. Shayna, Kate, Thordora, Mary P., landismom, Lady M, Lisa R., Teresa, Julia, Ann, and all the others who have become a special part of this blog, I hope your holiday has been as filled with laughter and love as mine (and that it started at a far more reasonable hour).
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Posted by Kimberly on December 24th, 2006 — Posted in The Ladies, Kipple, iVillage
The cookies have been baked (they’re surprisingly edible this year) and set out for Santa. The stockings have been hung and the magic key left on the doorknob (what? How else is Santa supposed to get into an apartment building with no chimneys?) Both The Christmas Story and A Visit From Saint Nicholas have been read and the children are tucked all snug in their beds (resplendent in their brand new Christmas jammies). No visions of sugarplums here though. Not yet.
Right now, The Ladies are too excited to sleep. NORAD says that Santa is in Peru, and Sabrina, at least, is practically vibrating with excitement at his imminent arrival.
Such is the agony and the ecstasy of Christmas Eve. Right now I’m putting in time doing the “If you don’t sleep, he won’t come” dance. Once The Ladies finally succumb, I’ll be able to get down to the real work of Christmas: breaking into those impenetrable boxes, undoing those interminable twist ties, and inserting enough batteries to power a small third world nation, and, of course, dealing with the dreaded “some assembly required.” Not really what I want to be doing during the wee hours of Christmas morning, but I’ve learned through harsh experience that I’d rather do it now, in the stillness of Christmas Eve, than during the hectic rush of Christmas morning. There’s nothing quite like trying to simultaneously wrestle a Barbie from a box and an overtired toddler hopped up on Christmas magic to inspire you to find the screwdriver on Christmas Eve.
Once I finish ripping packages, deciphering instructions, and disposing of the evidence, I get to indulge in my favourite part of the Santa experience. No, not the beverage, although I enjoy that too. After I’m done the scut work, I get to fill the stockings. For me, this is Christmas. It doesn’t matter that there’s no snow this year, or that I haven’t been able to find Christmas music I like; filling the stockings fills me with the Christmas spirit every time. The hair clips, lip gloss, stuffed toys, and odds and ends that go into them are my favourite gifts. They’re the ones The Ladies didn’t ask for. The ones they didn’t even know they wanted until the pull them out of the sock. I won’t get any credit for knowing my daughters so well; it, along with all the thanks for toys lovingly chosen (and assembled) will go to the big guy in the red suit, but I’m fine with that.
I know Santa’s been under fire this year, branded as a vicious lie that will cause children to lose faith in the parents who perpetrate it, but I do not agree with that assessment. I believed in Santa the Man until I was 12 years old. When I finally entered the inner circle of adult knowledge I didn’t feel betrayed that my parents had lied to me for over a decade; I felt incredibly loved and blessed that they had allowed me to live with magic in my life for so long. As an adult waiting to sneak presents under the tree so that I can pass them off as rewards from a world travellling elf, I believe in Santa the myth. I believe that magic is a right of all children, that the ability to believe is a gift, and I feel blessed that I can pass that on to my children.
If only they would go to sleep so that I can get on with it.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 22nd, 2006 — Posted in Kipple, iVillage
There are certain brand loyalties that people hold onto ferociously. These are those pop culture markers that define identities: Coke vs Pepsi, Cloth vs Disposable, Real vs Fake.
I’m old enough to remember when fake trees first made a splash on the Christmas scene. They were alternately embraced or reviled, seen as either a brilliant invention or a sure sign that Christmas was going to hell in a handbasket. To this day, people remain divided by their love of the fresh cut pine or their love of the convenience of plastic. When my mother brought home our first fake tree, no one was more appalled than I. Where was the pine smell? The needles that pricked you mercilessly as you attempted to hang tinsel on the tree and seemed to infest the entire house, jumping out at you from unexpected locations in the middle of August? The inevitable baldspot? A fake tree was most definitely not Christmassy.
But…it sure was convenient. Especially those newfangled prelit ones. And if there’s one thing I hate more than being the assembler of the some assembly required items, it’s stringing lights on the Christmas tree. Last year, when the top strand of lights on our handmedown tree blew a fuse, I could have gone in, untangled the whole mess, and restrung the tree with working lights, but I didn’t. We just had an unevenly lit tree.
This year, for the first time ever, I bought a new Christmas tree. I could have gone with a real one, but the prospect of wrestling a firehazard up to the eighth floor, combined with the idea of then stringing lights around those stinging branches, didn’t exactly fill me with the same holiday spirit as the 50% off all prelit trees sale at WalMart. So, I bought a new tree.
To bring home and decorate with pretty glass balls and candy canes and jingle bells in a house with a toddler and a kitten. I don’t know what I was thinking then, but after stepping on the 97th jingle bell last night, I’m thinking that they’re the fake tree equivalent of the pine needles. But, so long as I don’t have to string any lights, I’m cool with that.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 19th, 2006 — Posted in Diva Girl, Kipple, No Pudding Until You Finish Your Meat, iVillage
It may not show up in the pictures I post, but Diva Girl is a small kid. Tiny even. Half of the Grade Ones are bigger than she is, and even some of the Kindergarteners. Because she’s so little, it’s pretty much a given that in any grouping, she’ll be placed in the bottom row. But not this time. This time, she got to stand on the top riser. It wasn’t quite as good as getting to sing a solo, but it was still a pretty big deal to a kid resigned to life in Shrimp Row.
I ended up deciding not to be “That” parent. I didn’t talk to the the music teacher afterall. It was a difficult choice; nobody likes to see their child disappointed, and I really do think the teacher is wrong. But in the end, I didn’t see how Mommy rushing in to fix things would help Diva Girl learn to deal with the many injustices life will throw her way or to stand up for herself when it inevitably happens. So, instead of talking to the teacher myself, I encouraged Sabrina to speak for herself.
We spent a couple of days brainstorming what she should say, and then after she’d worked up her courage, Diva Gril went to the music taecher and asked her why some kids always get the good parts, no matter what. She didn’t really get a satisfactory answer, and she didn’t get a solo, but she did get the sense of accomplishment that comes from standing up for herself. And honestly, that makes me more proud than any solo in a Christmas concert ever could have.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 16th, 2006 — Posted in The Ladies, Diva Girl, Zen Baby, Kipple
Diva Girl is eight years old. How in the world did that happen?
I mean, I know how it happened, technically. The whole birds and the bees thing followed by the bad skin, enormous belly, pushing a fully functioning human being out of my body trick, and then that business of the earth having rotated 2920 times since then. But really, how did my baby get to be eight?
One of the best things about having a family of your own is the traditions–some fondly carried over from your own childhood, others that you create yourself as you go along.
From my own childhood, I’ve taken the cupcakes and a second verse to the “Happy Birthday” song that I’ve never heard outside of a family celebration. Diva Girl’s holiday birthday lead to the traditional Santa photo (always taken on December 14), and the nontraditional unbirthday celebration. And this year, the Shaolin Toddler’s inability (or unwillingness) to grasp the “Birthday Girl” concept has started a new tradition: the family birthday.
I guess the seeds of this particular tradition were planted during Regan’s second birthday, when I allowed Diva Girl to have her very own candle on her cupcake. They took root this year when, seeking to head off a toddlerific meltdown over the presents, I gave the Shaolin Toddler a gift of her own to open.
We’ve been working on the concept of birthday with Regan for a while leading up to her sister’s big day. Each time we talked about it, telling her that her sister’s birthday was coming up, she would chime in “yeah. And my birthday too!” To help give her a sense of time, we would then list off all the birthdays that happen between now and then until she was able to recite it as her personal birthday mantra: “First S’Bina, then Mummy, then Tyler, then REGAN!” I honestly thought she understood, until the big morning when she answered my announcement that it was Sabrina’s birthday with, “And Mummy’s. And Tyler’s. And mine.”
The entire day, Regan remained convinced that it wasn’t just Sabrina’s day, it was the whole family’s. Which really, when you think about it, is a pretty awesome way to look at it. Unless you’re the person whose birthday has been co opted, that is. But the Diva Girl was surprisingly zen about the whole thing. I thought she’d lose her cool when, after the second special verse of “Happy Birthday” was finished, Regan demanded “my turn!” She didn’t though; she drew a big breath and started to sing. And then they each blew out the candles on their respective cupcakes. After which Regan announced, “soon it’s my birthday. And Mummy’s. And S’Bina’s.”
I think we’ll be following this tradition for years to come.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 14th, 2006 — Posted in Diva Girl, Kipple, iVillage
don’t usually participate in things like Love Thursdays, but these cupcakes demanded it. These cupcakes are love. They are everything I feel about being Sabrina’s mother, every little ounce of maternal feeling I have, iced and topped with a Smartie.
We all have those non-negotiables; those purely personal markers we cling to to reassure ourselves that we are doing a good job, that we are good mothers. I’m not talking about the external things, the things that strangers see–a meltdownfree trip to the mall or a good report card. And not the intangible “raising positive human beings,” either. I mean that thing that deep in your mind you believe represents your success as a mom. I mean the one thing, no matter how frivilous or trivial, that you believe real mothers do, and that you yourself must do in order to be a “real” mother.
For me, it’s the cupcakes. You see, I hate cooking. And baking. The cooking is somewhat non-negotiable (although I’m not above caging meals off of my mom to avoid it), but the baking? The baking is utterly negotiable. But not really, because I pretty much only bake 4 times a year: Cookies for Thanksgiving, brownies for the class bakesale, and birthday cupcakes to take to school and share with the class. That’s it. Any other time of the year, and I’m all about the storebought.
But, for me, “real” mothers bake for the bakesale, and they certainly don’t send in storebought treats to celebrate their daughter’s big day. Real mothers bake cupcakes, even if they end up accidentally starting a fire in the kitchen (everyone’s fine! no damage to speak of.) or teaching their toddlers an exciting new word after burning themselves on the oven for the third time. Real mothers have beaters and bowls and spoons to be licked, creating sticky faced memories that will last long after the treats themselves have been devoured. Real mothers go the extra mile and add the candy on top of the icing , declaring to the world that these cupcakes are special.
I dread the annual baking of the cupcakes. It’s time consuming and messy and something inevitably goes wrong. But year after year, I pull out the bowl and the measuring cup, dust off the mixer, and bake cupcakes. Lots and lots of cupcakes. Enough for every kid in Diva Girl’s class to have one. Enough for her teacher. Enough for her grandparents and sister and whatever aunts and uncles and cousins might be celebrating with us. By the time I’m done, I’ve had more than enough of cupcakes, but I make one for me too.
I make them because I love my daughter. Because being her mother is the central core of who I am. And so long as those homemade cupcakes are iced, topped, and ready to take to school on the birthday morning, I can assure myself that I’ve got it together, that I’m not doing too badly at this whole motherhood thing. Because real mothers bake cupcakes, and if the cupcakes are baked, that must mean I’m a “real” mother, even if the kitchen is a mess.
(Sorry about the crap picture. I was working with an unfamiliar camera.)
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Posted by Kimberly on December 13th, 2006 — Posted in Kipple, Just Like Riding A Bicycle, iVillage
Creepy Neighbour Guy asked me out again.
I knew it was coming–we’ve been “accidentally” running into each other a lot lately, in the laundryroom, the elevator, the mailroom. The kind of encounters where a bit of casual conversation is required, where it would be rude to simply ignore him and go about my business, which is what I’d like to do. In fact, I try to, pulling my tried and true trick of making sure to involve the Ladies in conversation to avoid the encounter, but Creepy Neighbour Guy ignores my signals as studiously as I attempt to ignore his. I’m generally pretty clueless about these things, but not even I can mistake his interest; maybe it’s the scent of desperation mingling with his cologne. I desperately want to avoid this situation. Avoid his interest. Avoid the moment when he finally works up his courage and makes his move. Again.
At least The Ladies weren’t with me last time. Unlike this time. This time, they are milling about in the entry way, eager to see who has knocked on our door at 6 pm on a Wednesday (and no doubt hopeful that it will turn out to be the Pizza Man). It’s Creepy Neighbour Guy, returning the mitten I lost in the elevator earlier today, and taking the opportunity to make his move.
Last time, I let him down gently, a polite yet kind refusal (I am, afterall, Canadian.) This time, I grasp wildly at a reason to explain my refusal. A reason that will put an end to this. A reason that does not contain the phrase “Creepy Neighbour Guy.”
“I’m sorry,” I hear myself saying. “I’m already seeing someone.” I see the skeptical look on his face and realize he doesn’t believe me. After all, the only man who visits this apartment on a regular basis always arrives carrying a pizza. And so, I find myself elaborating, “He lives out of town, so he’s not around often. And when he is, he arrives pretty late and has to leave fairly early. You know, the commute. I’m not surprised you’ve never seen him.”
“Well, you can’t blame me for trying, ” he says, accepting the lie.
“You have a boyfriend???”
Busted. I’d completely forgotten about Diva Girl, lured to the hallway by the possibility of the Pizza Man, and rooted there by the drama playing out on her doorstep. But at least, at nearly 8, she had the tact and the patience to wait until I’d closed the door to question me. Last year, she would have said it right in front of the guy.
(To be fair, I’m sure that Creepy Neighbour Guy is a perfectly nice man–in a potentially “he was such a quiet guy; no one ever would have thought” kind of way. But he’s a weird sort of agressively milquetoast that just skeeves me right out. I imagine he’s the kind of man who rather pompously orders for you in the restaurant, but has a limp handshake. And if I’m going to go to the trouble of getting a sitter and shaving my legs, the last thing I’m looking for is to spend the evening with a limp handshake kind of guy.)
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Posted by Kimberly on December 10th, 2006 — Posted in Kipple, iVillage
My mom gave me an early Christmas present this weekend: An entire evening to myself. More than an evening, actually; she took The Ladies for a spontaneous sleepover on Saturday night and didn’t return them until after lunch the next day.
Best. Present. Ever.
When you’re a solo mom, you grab your “me” time on the fly. Outnumbered with no backup in sight, nap time, the day care commute, an afternoon playdate become your sanity savers. These are the times when you catch a few minutes peace, attempt to impose order on the toys that seem determined to stage a livingroom coup, or maybe read a couple of pages of a book that doesn’t contain pictures. It’s a break, but it’s an infinitely finite one; you always know that you’re working on borrowed time, that your reprieve can be revoked at any moment–the baby will wake up, the bus will arrive at its stop, the kid will come home from her friend’s hopped up on sugar and eager to share every moment of her time away. Times like these you may be technically off the mommy clock, but in reality, you’re still on. Still listening for the first stirrings from that nap, still thinking about the kids, and what to make for dinner, and whether or not anyone still has clean underwear in the drawer. It’s me time, but with a side of mommy.
When I left The Ladies with Gramma on Saturday, I felt like I left their Mommy there with them. My step was lighter, the air was sweeter, the world was filled with possibility. I felt free. Not that I don’t love my kids, but they’re work. A lot of work. And it’s been a long time since I’ve had that kind of break. The kind that isn’t born of any sort of situational need, but is just a break. The Ladies weren’t with Gramma because I had a birthday party to attend or a work thing to do (don’t even ask about a date. Seriously). They were just there because they wanted a sleepover and Gramma said yes. Leaving me with an entire evening to myself.
The apartment felt different without at least one of The Ladies present. Quieter. There was a stillness to it that is never there, not even in the silence of Regan’s naps. At first I was positively giddy with all the extra oxygen. What should I do first, bask in the sweet silence, free of the dulcet tones of Ruby and Dora, or shatter it with music that definitely earned its parental advisory sticker?
Dancing around my livingroom, it struck me that it was 8 o’clock on a Saturday night and I could do anything I wanted. I could see a late movie. Go out dancing. Take a bubble bath without anyone lobbying to join me or taking advantage of my incapacitated state to make an unauthorized run at the cookies.
What I found myself doing, strangely enough, was missing my kids. They’ve become so much a part of me that not having them with me felt a bit like missing a phantom limb; their absence was a presence all its own. I’ll admit I was surprised by that. The Ladies were with Gramma, safe, happy, and certainly not thinking about me at all, and there I was, unable to stop thinking about them. I even woke up at 5:51, the Shaolin Toddler’s normal waking time, convinced that she was inconsolable, wailing for her mummy. (The little rat fink slept in until 7:30 without making a peep.)
I guess it just goes to show you that you can never truly separate the “mom” from the “me.” But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take full advantage of the opportunity should it arise. Lord knows I did.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 8th, 2006 — Posted in The Ladies, Just Like Riding A Bicycle, iVillage
One of my girlfriends got forced out to see Apocalypto tonight. She really didn’t feel like going out to the movies at all–after a Snow Day, I’m thinking her preferred options were either bed or out for a couple of stiff drinks–and if she was going to see a movie, this one would not have been her first choice. Or her fifth choice, for that matter. But her husband really, really wanted to see this movie. So, she went. Because sometimes, being in a relationship means going to see a movie that you really, really don’t want to see.
Which is one of the reasons I love my solo life. I never have watch movies I don’t want to watch.
Well, not grownup ones anyway. Apparently being a solo mom does not exempt one from repeated viewings of that Mary Kate and Ashley holiday classic, To Grandmother’s House We Go.
See? The things we do for love.
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