in like a lion and out like an elephant?

we have had the car about a month and a half now, not very long in the grand scheme, and yet sometimes i forget what it was even like before we had it. i can't believe how quickly the progression from refusal to drive, to terrified but out there, to excited at the prospect, to resentful at the chore was. most days it seems like work now, not that i am complaining, i am not, the car has hands down made my life more enjoyable. our mornings are often filled with drop-in gym time at one of four community centres in our area, or science world, and tomorrow morning i think i am even going to go over to the west side family place (as recommended to me by a play gym mom). i have met quite a cross section of women at these places, and have even been accepted into a few groups of regulars. it makes me laugh, seeing myself this way. coffee in hand, kids in tow and a cheery "hello! how was the weekend?" or "how is he making out with the potty training?" so many tips and pieces of advice and knowledge, not just of parenting techniques, but preschools and gymnastics, breakfasts with santas and babysitters. they know the best ones and aren't afraid to share it. my life has opened up to this enormous world of motherhood just by having a car.

i should say that i am not totally open to seeing myself that way yet. you would think that having two kids, and being a stay at home mom would make me firmly grounded in mommy-ness, and yet there is this part of me that resists the identification. i suspect it is more to do with the denial of the other parts, the movie watching, book reading, live music going woman, who has an opinion about lots of things that have nothing to do with children, things that just never seem to come up at play group. still, it is nice to have others around that are going through the same thing. it is also nice to have somewhere to go where i can set the toddler loose and tire him out so that he passes out upon our return home.

one of our favourite community centres has become sunset. it is a beautiful new building with tons of natural light in the gymnasium and unlike some centres, their drop in equipment is always very clean and my kids never get sick. it is here that i think we might sign cohen up for preschool, and it was here that we spent the morning on halloween.

i think it might be the best community centre function we have been to. it was $3 for cohen to get in, and it included a ton of fun things. there was a pirate bouncy castle, and since the party was for preschoolers there was little worry of cohen being pummeled (and only a small worry about him pummeling someone). it had a hug slide you needed to climb bouncy steps up to. it was a dream come true. he would go in the little door and bounce bounce bounce and then up to the slide and weeeeeee. over and over and over. then there was face painting (which we skipped) and a bunch of play equipment (which ada loves), an area where you could decorate a sugar cookie with 5 different coloured icings and a plethora of sprinkles, they even supplied juice boxes to wash the cookie down. there was a crafts table with sparkles and cut outs and markers galore. they even had a table for the adults with free coffee, fruit plates and baked goods, all from desirable bakeries in town. then, to top it off, on our way out they gave cohen a goody bag with some candy, a sticker, and a child's toothbrush.

it was funny to see all the bouncy castle kids in their plush outfits, sweat dripping down their foreheads as they frantically scratched their hot arms and legs. by the end most people had taken the costumes off and there were kids running around in pajamas, or tights, or whatever they had on under there. it was easily the best two hours october had to offer.

i considered staying in at night, having been to the other community centre party last friday as well, but in the end i thought it might be a good opportunity to meet some neighbours and see how they celebrate it here on the south east side. we only went down one block but it was enough for cohen to master the "trick or treat" as well as the "thank you!" which really was music to my ears (thanks for encouraging him grandma). i was worried that he would realize it was candy in his bucket and would pitch a huge fit for it, but he seemed oblivious to what was actually in the bucket, he was far too focused on the other kids costumes and remembering his lines.

the night ended with us eating some pumpkin pie i made from a few sugar pumpkins i roasted, drinking beer and eating candy with a couple of our friends and my mom, while giving out candy and wearing masks for cohen. if you like pie, i highly recommend that recipe, it was the best pumpkin pie i have ever had. honest.

so our first halloween in the house was a success and the masks have finally been put away for another year. now we move on to the raking of the leaves. gulp.

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.

happy hallowe'en

give me something good to eat

i just want to start by saying thanks to everyone who read my last post and offered words of encouragement virtually and in person, although it is still sometimes strange to realize just how many people in my day to day life read this, it is at the same time wonderful to realize that i belong to such a community of people rooting for me, it's nice.

for those of you that don't know, i did get a call from the doctor the day after i wrote my last post and the tests results were troubling. we made an appointment to go in the next day and then spent the night worrying and biting our nails to the quick. worst case scenarios were pondered and the question "what if" got thrown around. in the end we decided not to answer the question until we knew what we were facing. what we are facing, it turns out, isn't nearly as bad as we had anticipated. the triple screen returns results based on probability and it stacks that probability against what is "normal" in your age category. there is a line that gets drawn as abnormal when the ratio deviates too far from the norm. for us it was down's syndrome that brought back the positive. for my age normal is 1 in 666, our number came back 1 in 333. this was enough for the bells to ring and the lights to flash, but for us it was a huge relief. next to 666 it may seem like a lot but 1 in 333 is still pretty decent odds considering. so our next step is a diagnostic ultrasound on monday to look for down's markers and then right after we will meet with a genetic counsellor to talk about the findings and what to do next. i am still in the wait and see mode. i still don't know the answer to the "what if" question, but my friend paul said to me today "perfection comes in many different packages", which i think sums it up well. everyone keep your fingers crossed for us.



in other more fun and less gloomy news, cohen, nicole and i went to the pumpkin patch in richmond on the weekend. it was a really good time. there was a band called "the country bumpkins" that played kids tunes while a huge stuffed strawberry, pumpkin and corn on the cob danced around in the hay. cohen, never one to miss the opportunity for some dancing swayed his hips and stamped his legs to the beat. we also went on a hayride complete with an accordion player, as well as travelled through a corn maze to get to the pumpkin patch where cohen helped pick out all of our pumpkins, he even helped put each of them in our bags for us. he loves to put things in containers and then take the out again these days. it was like the pne of autumn, there were even mini donuts and farm animals (which cohen didn't seem scared of this time). i would definitely go back, despite the ankle deep mud and that smell.



sunday was supposed to be costume day at granville island, but it was pouring rain and i just didn't have it in me to make the trek, but don't worry, i did manage to eat lots of candy. i am off tomorrow and the sun is supposed to shine so hopefully we will get out and he will be able to do some hopping in his frog costume. now if only we could get him to say ribbett...