Remembering

Since this summer, I keep thinking back and remembering.  One thing I’ve been remembering is my first pregnancy, where I was and how I felt at the various stages.  It was seven years ago, but it was an eventful time in my life and I remember it pretty well.  My due date this time (February 13th) is just over a week later than my due date then (February 5th), so it’s fairly easy to compare then and now by remembering month to month.

The other thing I’ve been remembering is what was happening last year with D, the little boy we were planning to adopt.  Only a few weeks after he moved out was the one-year anniversary of the first time we met him.  I remembered our early visits in August and the rather stressful transition period in September when I was still working but we were trying to spend as much time with him as possible.  October 1st was the anniversary of his placement with us.  We stayed home for Canadian Thanksgiving in mid-October to keep things calm for him.  Halloween was the first time he saw his grandmother after he moved in with us.  We started an Advent wreath tradition last year and he learned to sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”.  By this time last year, I was already sliding into depression but wouldn’t admit it.

For those who might be wondering, we haven’t seen him since he moved on in late July.  I exchange e-mail with his new adoptive mom about once a month.  She clearly is not comfortable with the idea of him seeing us, and we respect that; we’re not sure how we would feel about seeing him either, although I do think it probably would be good for him to see us.  I felt that seeing his grandmother after he moved in with us helped him understand that he lived with us and not with her any more.  The first few times he saw her, he would take her over to the door and try to say good-bye to her; after he saw her several times and realized that he stayed with us afterward each time, he seemed much calmer.  My gut feeling is that his new mom doesn’t want him to see us because she feels insecure about his attachment to her, but I think that seeing us again might actually help him with that attachment.  I tried to explain that to her in the summer, but I’m not sure if she got what I was saying.  Anyhow, she is his mom now and it’s her call.  From what she says by e-mail, he’s doing well.  He’s in a full-time junior kindergarten class, was in a floor hockey program in the fall, and is taking ice skating lessons now.  He recently had an appointment with his ear doctor as a 6-months-after-surgery follow-up, and all is well.  His new mom sent me some pictures of him in early November and he looked happy.  I’m glad to know he is well taken care of.

Rockets vs. Smarties

Growing up in the United States, I was familiar with Smarties candies.  In Canada, they have a candy called Smarties also.  However, Canadian Smarties are not the same kind of candy; they are basically knock-offs of M&M’s.  What I knew as Smarties in the US are known here as Rockets.

Because Peter participated in a “trunk-or-treat” event in Michigan and trick-or-treated here in Ontario, he ended up with both US Smarties and Canadian Rockets.  I took a picture of them next to each other to show that they are essentially the same (though if you look carefully, you’ll see that the colored stripes don’t exactly match).  The Smarties wrapper says that they are made in Canada, which I find confusing.  Obviously, they couldn’t call them Smarties in Canada if the M&M-like Smarties existed first, but why call them Smarties in the US then?  Why not just call them Rockets in both places?

7 Quick Takes Friday #12

I’m going to try really hard to stick to the “quick” aspect of these takes, something I’m not good at.  Maybe other people who do 7 Quick Takes Friday are more self-disciplined than I am, or maybe they just have less to say in general.

1

After losing their first four games, Peter’s hockey team has won their last two, the most recent of which was a shut-out (Peter wasn’t the goalie).  He was the goalie for the last game they lost, but it really had nothing to do with him–the other goalie was very obviously distracted while Peter was focused and tried hard, but the other team’s offense was better.

2

I am enjoying having energy and being healthy again after having a nasty flu-like illness from Wednesday afternoon through Saturday evening last week.  I actually took two days off work because I was pretty much incapacitated.  There’s nothing like being sick to make you appreciate how great it is to be healthy.

3

Since I was home sick and unable to do much other than lie on the couch, I watched the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa on tv.  I appreciate this annual solemn day for reflection, with its traditions.  Veterans Day never really meant much to me when I lived in the US; Remembrance Day seems more deeply ingrained in Canadian culture.  I think it’s partly due to the wearing of poppies, which are seen everywhere from late October until November 11th, and also because (in Ontario at least) all the public schools have Remembrance Day ceremonies (it’s in the law), so kids grow up with it as a part of their culture.  It’s the main November holiday here.  (Peter was looking at an American children’s book just the other day and exclaimed, “Thanksgiving isn’t in November!”)

4

Peter came home from school on Remembrance Day and shared his experience.  ”We had something like a Mass in the gym.  We watched a movie about war.  I liked the bombs!  Especially the new one they only used in World War II, that went up and went like this [gesturing like a mushroom cloud].”  What can I say?  He’s only six.  He’ll get it when he’s older.

5

Don’s in Boston for a conference, so I’ve been doing the single mom thing again since Wednesday.  Thankfully, it’s been going well so far.  I’ve needed help from friends for child care; one had to get Peter to his school bus on Thursday morning because Don usually takes him after I leave for work, and other was kind enough to watch him this morning because it was a PD Day, so I had to work but Peter didn’t have school.  We’ll be picking Don up at the airport in Detroit on Sunday evening.  It’ll be a long day of driving and Peter seems to have given up sleeping in the car, so he’ll probably be up late.  Monday morning will probably not be any fun.

6

The beginning of next week will be busy.  I have a midwife appointment on Monday afternoon and a dentist appointment on Tuesday afternoon, then I’m taking Peter to the doctor on Wednesday afternoon.  I’m going to have to get some grocery shopping done at some point as well.

7

We have not finalized baby names yet, so don’t bother asking.  We won’t know if it’s a boy or a girl until it’s born, so we need names for both possibilities.

7 Quick Takes Friday #11

I haven’t forgotten that I have this blog!  I’ve been successfully keeping things together by focusing on the work that has to get done and putting off other stuff, like blog-writing.  (Sorry.)  I decided I could spare a little time today to participate in 7 Quick Takes Friday.

1

Peter is doing well in grade 1, academically, behaviorally, and socially.  He seems to enjoy being back at the French -language school he went to for junior kindergarten.  His comfort in speaking French has definitely improved (I was amazed how much it dropped after a year in French immersion).  He’s in the highest reading level in his class, and this after his teacher sent home a permission slip for him to participate in their pull-out remedial reading program after only four days of school.  (I suspect because his oral fluency was low, not because they actually assessed his reading skills–he went for three days and they figured out that he didn’t belong there).

2

Our efforts to recruit more Beaver Scouts were successful.  Peter’s Beaver Scout colony is up to 12 (possibly 13) Beavers this year, after having only four last year.  Don has really gotten into his role as a Beaver Scout leader, particularly in taking on the responsibility of communicating with parents through regular e-mail bulletins and in planning games to play at the weekly meetings (while he makes sure to let the other leaders organize the crafts).  Peter is having a fantastic year of Scouting so far, with more great events to come, including a trick-or-treat tomorrow evening and a campfire on Tuesday evening (both for our wider region, not just his colony).

3

Peter is also enjoying hockey so far this season.  He’s moved up an age division, to Tykes, where they play full-ice games with officials and keep score on the scoreboard.  They also do off-sides at this level, which is new to many/most of the kids and a bit of a challenge for them.  The first game they played, I think someone was off-sides about every minute, leading to lots of whistle-blowing and practice in how they’re supposed to line up for a face-off.  They have played three games and they are getting better at it.  I think the aspect of Tykes that Peter was the most excited about is that the goalies get to wear real goalie equipment.  All the kids get a chance to play goalie; Peter hasn’t had a turn yet.  Unfortunately, his team has lost all of their games so far and he was a bit discouraged after the last game.  I hope they can win a game soon.

4

I’m also having a good school year.  I like my schedule this year–it helps that I’m with each kindergarten class twice a week, so I have gotten to know the kids better.  I enjoy teaching them gym because it’s easy and a fun class for them (though it’s getting harder to demonstrate things like crab-walking and jumping jacks).  With the grade 1 class, I’m only there once a week and not every week (I don’t go when we have our monthly school Mass or if there’s no school on Friday), and I still don’t have the kids’ names down 100%.  My French classes are going reasonably well.  Overall, I feel like I’m keeping up well and I’m less stressed than I have been in previous school years.

5

Things are also going well with my pregnancy.  Everything medical is just fine; I saw my midwife on Tuesday.  I’ve been making an effort to eat well and sleep enough, and it has been paying off.  I’ve reached the point where getting up and down is more difficult, putting on my socks is a project, and finding a comfortable position for sleeping is often a challenge, and I still have three and a half months to go.  I just keep reminding myself that it’s only temporary.  It’s much easier to go through pregnancy a second time, knowing that I survived the first time and everything worked out all right.

6

It feels like we’ve finally got things figured out and everything is going so well.  At the edges of my mind lurks fear about how it’s going to change early next year.  My memories of the first months with Peter are fuzzy from sleep deprivation.  How am I going to function as a decent mom to Peter when I have a new baby?  How is Peter going to adapt to having a baby in our family?  How are we all going to adapt?  We will, I know, but it will be another big change for us.

7

Don recently put up coat hooks in our foyer, including three down at kid-level.  This is something I had wanted for a long time, so that I don’t have to hang up kids’ coats in the closet every time we come indoors in cold weather (I got tired of doing it for two kids all last winter).  So my last take is a thank-you to him for getting that done.

The beginning of the end of summer vacation

This morning was the first staff meeting of the school year.  It’s the beginning of the end of summer vacation.  Tuesday is the first day of school.  It’s that time of year when my “to do” list explodes.  My mind is swirling with things I need to do to be ready for work next week, things I need to do to make sure Peter is ready to start school, and things to do to recruit more kids to Peter’s Scout group (Don and I volunteered to head up the recruitment campaign which essentially didn’t exist previously, thus why there were only four kids in his Beaver Scout colony last year).  Because there haven’t been any new registrations yet for this year, currently his Beaver colony has three Scouts and four leaders (one of last year’s Beavers moved up to Cubs).  All three returning Beaver Scouts are the children of leaders since Don is becoming a leader this year.

Things to do this weekend include: cut Peter’s hair, cut Peter’s finger and toe nails, acquire a transparent ruler and two packages of napkins (his school e-mailed a supply list yesterday, so now I know for sure what he needs), write a note to Peter’s teacher about a couple things she/he should know so we get communication off to a good start for the year (he won’t know who his teacher is until Tuesday morning), get all his stuff labeled and ready to go, print out my lesson plans for next week, buy some new work shoes (since we moved, I can only find a left shoe of one pair and a right shoe of another pair–both black Dr. Scholls but not quite the same), get a print of a photo of Peter from this summer (the picture of him on my desk is so out-of-date that I don’t want to admit how old it is), take Peter out to buy ice cream to celebrate his graduation today from the Little Stories for Little Folks reading program that I’ve been using with him for almost two years (not to brag too much or anything, but he hasn’t started grade 1 yet and he reads pretty solidly at a grade 2 or early grade 3 level–now he gets to go to school and learn to read in French), celebrate Don’s birthday (his actual birthday is Tuesday, but since that’s the first day of school, we’ll celebrate over the weekend), get some Scouting recruitment flyers out, and try to find some time to get my head in the right place and mentally prepare myself for next week.  Whew!

Some new routines

Okay, so I should probably post with stories and pictures from our week up north with my parents, but I don’t have the pictures on my computer yet.  Maybe later I’ll get there.

Instead, since it’s on my mind, I’ll share some recent attempts to make life go a little more smoothly.  While on vacation, I read/skimmed the book Simplicity Parenting.  While overall, I feel we do a pretty good job in most of the areas described in the book, there’s always room for improvement.  I jotted down several ideas, discussed them with Don, and this week we started implementing some of them.  While we haven’t been at them long enough for them to have become habits, so far they’re going well.  Here’s what we’ve started:

• Peter is now responsible for setting the table before dinner.  Today, he actually did it without protesting.
• Everyone now helps clear the table after dinner (instead of just me).
• Peter must pick up all of his toys/stuff that is outside of his bedroom and return it to his bedroom in the evening; I won’t read to him before bed until this is done.  (We used to do this before we moved, but we lost the habit a few months ago.)
• I set up a pattern for weekly meals to simplify meal planning.  For example, Monday is pizza night and Tuesday is pasta night.  It might be store-bought pizza or homemade pizza, spaghetti with tomato sauce or fettuccine with pesto sauce, so there’s both flexibility and some structure to work with.
• We now have a 20 minute quiet reading time after lunch.  This is working very well.  Peter enjoys looking at pictures in books and can read more and more things independently, so he can easily occupy himself for that long. I’m appreciating having the chance to do some reading myself.  I used to never read during the day, then I would often be so tired after Peter was in bed that I didn’t want to read anything intelligent.  Plus, I’m setting a good example by letting him see me reading.
• Peter is now eating his “night breakfast” (snack before bed) by candlelight.  It provides a soothing ambiance to help him settle down before bed.

I find that having good routines and habits makes life go much more smoothly.  In fact, the consistency of our routines was one of the areas that our homestudy social worker was very impressed with, and D certainly did appreciate and benefit from them.

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Swimming lessons

I really didn’t intend to write three blog posts tonight.  This is the one I was planning to write.

Peter finished his swimming lessons today.  While, for the third year in a row, he has gotten a report card recommending that he repeat the same level of swimming lessons (Salamander for two years in the Swim Preschool program, and Swim Kids 1 now that he’s 6), I am proud of the progress he made.  He is much more comfortable in the water than he used to be and he has gotten over his fear of lying back in the water.  He can do a nice back float, which makes me particularly happy because I have never been able to do a back float (and consequently, got stalled at the same level of swimming lessons for years until my parents finally gave up on them).  His main difficulty is that he is not comfortable putting his face in the water, even with the goggles I bought at his request.  Thus, he wasn’t able to do the front float, front glide, roll-over float, and roll-over glide that are necessary for passing Swim Kids 1.  Every skill that doesn’t require putting his face in the water, he passed.  He has developed a reasonably effective doggy-paddle; it’s not pretty (he bends his neck way back to keep his whole face up), but he swam 10 meters that way (he only had to go 5 meters to pass).  Maybe next year will be the year he finally graduates to a new level.  (I know, we could put him in more than one session of swimming lessons a year, but we don’t want to over-do it.)

The last two years, his swimming lessons were at the university pool.  It was a convenient location for us; we rode our bikes there.  He did two half-hour lessons a week for four weeks.  This year, since we moved, I registered him through the city’s recreation department for lessons at the aquatic center that we can walk to.  They do a half-hour lesson every day, Monday through Friday, for two weeks.  I think that schedule worked out better because going back day after day meant he stayed more comfortable in the water and there was less time to forget in between lessons.  A great thing about the aquatic center, in particular, is that they have a hydraulic floor in the shallow end so they can adjust the depth.  Because they have all these kids doing swimming lessons, they made it quite shallow; it’s about at Peter’s waist.  Even the short kids can touch the bottom.  It’s a great confidence-booster for Peter.  He’s much more willing to try different skills when he knows he can put his feet down and stand up if he needs to.  At the university, they put tables underwater next to the sides of the pool, so the kids could stand up there, but they couldn’t touch if they went off the tables.  Plus, with the different schedule, Peter got two more lessons in a session (10 versus 8).  So all in all, I’m very happy with the switch to the aquatic center.

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