breaking him in one boo at a time

last night we went to a halloween carnival at the community centre. it was your standard fair of games and face painting, crafts and running around. there was even a haunted house. cohen's eyes lit up as soon as we got there, all of a sudden it made sense why we dressed him up in that ridiculous elephant costume. he ran over to the bowling game and waited his turn, he rolled the ball, laughed and then fell quiet. he didn't want to run anymore, he mostly wanted to hang out behind my legs peeking out every now and again. when i tried to coax him out he went for desperate measures and climbed into the back seat of the phil and ted's. i knew something was up, he hates the stroller, he would never go of his own free will, so i watched his eyes. turns out that he spotted a volunteer dressed as a ghost manning a game in the corner. he couldn't take his wide terror filled eyes off of him.

i thought i would be the good parent and take him over to show him that it is just pretend. i only made it five feet from the ghost and cohen broke out in screaming, clinging, shrieking, freaking. hmmmmm. really? my scared of nothing, dare-devil of a son is scared of a man in a sheet? how does he know this is scary? he didn't have fake blood on the sheet or a noose around his neck, nothing, just a sheet.

then he noticed the kid in a spiderman costume, the adorned nylon over his face. oh dear. then there was another spiderman with the same thing (there were four spidermen there, the most popular outfit i think). by this time he had resorted to total silence and standing by the wall. we thought it was time to go, but as soon as we got out of the gymnasium he grabbed marko's hand and pulled him back in. this was a mystery he wanted to figure out. so he sat there and stared. eventually another volunteer in a scream mask was wandering around. i was worried that it would be the straw that broke the camel's back, but it wasn't, again he just sat trying to understand it all. marko thought we should take him into the haunted house, a throw him into the deep end to teach him to swim kind of strategy i suppose, but if anybody was going to be ok, it was going to be cohen. i said, ok, but only if he promised to get him out of there if the terror became vocal. turns out he was starting to dig this being scared stuff. there were apparently several people in masks in the room, many of whom popped out at you. sure he was startled, but he also laughed and when they exited, he insisted on going back in. now that's the cohen i know.

we have a couple of masks here at home, and this morning marko thought it would be fun to put one on. cohen started walking backwards slowly until he was practically clinging to the wall when he first saw him wearing it, but when he realized it was just daddy and that he too could wear the mask (and look at his strange self in the mirror), well it became pretty cool. so all morning he has been wandering around alternating between masks. he has also tried putting one on galena and ada, and gets pretty insistent that marko or are should be wearing one with him and growling. i think there just may be an actor in him yet.

first we pick 'em

not to be confused with the carving, and the lighting, those will both come later.



here is a comparison with cohen at this age, in the same pumpkin patch. i don't know why i keep comparing them, i guess i am just trying to figure out if they really do look alike or not. everyone says something different.

i know that there are way more of ada than of cohen, but he wouldn't sit still, there are kids playing mom! let me go! turns out toddlers aren't really into photos, so i thought i might as well abuse the somewhat docile infant. the photo i took right after this last one shows cohen as a blur across the screen, he had had enough, it was time to run.

not one to break things

here i am, making good on promises made. the video is really quick so don't blink, you might miss it. it goes out with a bang! though, which is why i am so fond of it. aren't siblings the best?

6 months

the fact that it is now 9:30 makes me feel pretty cheated. i mean what the hell? i swear five minutes ago i was eating dinner, but it was more like three hours, two baths, one incredibly long hissy fit, teeth brushing, story reading, kisses and then more kisses, some feet stomping, and then laying beside the smaller one until she fell asleep, and then the back and forth with the other until finally, dear god finally, we are done. i shouldn't have said that, i know, and if you are a parent then you know it too. it will come back to get me every time, but for right now, in this minute, i am free.

today was ada's half birthday. i guess that is another way of saying six months, but the whole half thing makes an excellent excuse for cake, not that i need an excuse, i mean i am an adult which means i can have cake whenever i like. this one fact is sometimes the only thing that keeps me going, well that and knowing that there is a cold beer in the fridge. so happy half birthday to ada, yeah! i have this great video of her crawling, and i had every intention of getting it off the camera, uploading it and putting it here for you, so many lists. i'm with klay, let's just get rid of those damn things. the video will be here before you know it and just think now you get to have suspense as well, and it isn't even your half birthday! this means she beat cohen by almost three weeks in the crawling department. lucky me. it does make for some good times now though, i will put her down in cohen's room and then him and i will be down the hall eating lunch and we wait to see how long it takes her to get there. it really isn't as mean as it sounds.

six months of course means eating solid food. i started a few weeks ago, but have been fairly haphazard about the whole thing until this week. even now it is just once a day at dinner. all that spooning and shoving and shoving and wiping and airplane noises and googly faces. it seemed so exciting the first time. all the wondering, will he like this? will he like that? now it is, oh yeah i have to steam some veggie or cut up fruit on top of cooking, i wonder when i can just feed her what we are eating? i can tell you that it will be a lot sooner than it was with cohen. i am all about the easy in this world of difficult in which i live. so far she loves the food, not just the spurting of it everywhere, but sometimes actually eating it as well.

blogging has been on my mind, with lots of things worthy of writing bout crossing my path, but lately sewing has taken over my free time (hopefully i will be able to share some of that with you soon), as well as staring blankly at the wall in the evenings in the hopes of recharging my brain. speaking of which, i taped about 13 hours of television from last night, and today at the superstore (ahh there it is again) i bought general tao chicken flavoured ripple chips to go with my dark ale, because really how could i not? seriously, it is going to be, like, the best friday night ever. righteous.

swing low sweet ada

ada's blog video debut, i think she has star potential, what about you? oh and i guess i should warn you, this may cause sea sickness.

hasselhoff? really?

today wasn't such a great day. the sun was shining, and the suggestion was that it may be the last time such a thing happens until spring, so we went to the farm and to the park. it should have been a good day, but it wasn't. something isn't aligning in our house these days. something is just slightly off. cohen is having more and more bad days. i had no idea it was so difficult to parent a two year old. maybe i shouldn't lump him generically into a clump, since so many people before this have said "i don't know why they call two terrible?" screw them. i spend literally hours of everyday battling with the small human. it is has gotten ridiculous, and the rainy season isn't even here yet. at this rate if i make it through to april it will be a miracle.

still, he is doing all kinds of cute things, like singing to songs on itunes, breakdancing at the hip noodle restaurant, and saying "i love you galena, nice kitty" as he gently strokes her head. there is definitely a love hate thing going on over here. the bottom line is that as long as he can do whatever, wherever he wants then he is mr smiley go lucky, but the minute i put the breaks on running recklessly around the vats of apples at the farmers market while dozens of people attempt to buy produce, and he becomes mr hitty grouchy pants. my mom has always said that the cornerstone of good parenting is always being the boss, children don't really want to be the boss, they want someone else to be in control so that they feel secure. i need to work on that. i try, but i almost always buckle under strong resistance. i am thickening my skin as we speak.

the sleep thing with ada came to a head tonight as well. we co-sleep and i think it works great for us, but as we did with cohen, the idea was to transition her to the crib around 6 months, give or take. i would have been happy to keep the co-sleeping up a little longer, but in the last 10 days ada has been waking ten or more times during the night. sometimes just to kick a little, pinch my face and then teeter back to sleep, but every time i wake up and have to lull myself back. the result has been a very impatient and sleep deprived mommy. i have felt half dead most days and quite ill prepared to deal with mr hitty grouchy pants, so tonight i took a stand. i tried to rock her for a bit, but she is quite possibly the fidgetiest baby in the entire universe. i guarantee that she is going to be one of those kids that can't sit still. so then i laid her down in the crib and gently stroked her hair for five minutes, but still no sleepy sleep. it was past her bedtime, she was ready, her eyes were drooping off the edge of the crib, she needed sleep. that sounded like i was justifying, didn't it? i guess i am a little. of course you know what comes next. i let her cry. it took her all of 3 minutes to put herself to sleep and now that is where she is. i know when she wakes at midnight i will probably bring her into bed with me, but until then i can't wait to crawl in to bed and have more than 4 inches at the edge in which to sprawl out. i hope one day soon we all have our own place to sleep that works, and that bedtime isn't a two hour affair.

and yes, i know, i should totally change the name of this blog to "miserable and whiney".