Siblings

Tags

brothers, new baby, siblings, sisters

I’m an only child, and my parents rarely fought.

That means that I am completely alien to any kind of family discord. A sharp word is devastating. A disagreement is the end of the world. I have never had to fight for what I wanted with an equal. The only people at home were my parents and they outranked me so if I asked for something and the answer was no, well, that was the end of the matter.

It may have led to a peaceful childhood, but I’m not sure it did me any favours.

So I always knew that I wanted two kids, and Owl’s personality confirmed that before he turned two.

But I am dreading sibling rivalry.

PH is the youngest of 5 kids, so he probably won’t be horrified when the kids fight and hit each other and claim to hate each other, but I will. Such things simply NEVER HAPPENED IN MY HOUSE when I was growing up. They are not normal to me.

We did a lot to prepare Owl for the baby. We explained how babies were made when he asked, although we refused to give him a live demonstration despite his repeated and eager petitions to witness one. Instead we got him a book.

We explained carefully what babies are like. The baby won’t be able to play with you. It will cry and dirty its diaper and that’s about it. Murmel Murmel, by the way, is a great book for explaining what babies do and what they are for.

We explained the importance of being a big brother. One of my friends didn’t want to make her son into a second parent and placed a lot of weight on him NOT having to help, but we decided to go another way and tell him how important it was for him to help us and help her. He likes to help.

He was very pleased with the idea of having a baby sister and showed no signs of anxiety before she came, but I was still worried about how he would deal with the change. I braced myself for acting out, jealousy, all sorts of stuff.

Guys, he LOVES her.

In fact, his behavior has actually IMPROVED since she was born. He loves to hug her (unfortunately he grabs her head and squeezes so she doesn’t really appreciate his hugs) and coo over her and he will drop whatever he is doing rather than miss a chance to come upstairs with me and hand me a clean diaper when I change her.

He even tries to play with her. One of his favourite games is to  pretend that one of her flailing fists has hit him. He then throws himself down on the bed as if she has just sent him flying.

It’s adorable.

Better yet, in the last month or so she has started noticing him and she loves him right back. When he is in the room she watches him and smiles, and sometimes she’ll just stare at him and chortle, and then he chortles back, and it is SO CUTE.

I know that she’s going to get bigger and start knocking over his block towers and messing up his stuff and she’s going to start pestering him and their dynamic will change.

But for now, they love each other and I am SO, SO, SO RELIEVED.

On Our Own

So, our inlaws flew home at the end of July, and we’ve been hacking it on our own for the first time since January.

That’s right. We haven’t had to be proper, full fledged adults in EIGHT MONTHS.

I’ve forgotten how I did it all – how did I get dishes washed and Owl’s face wiped and keep him entertained ALL ON MY OWN?

Luckily, PH’s mood is more stable these days. He’s still struggling, but he’s further from the edge. He has a bit of energy – enough to get Owl his breakfast in the morning and help him into bed at night, and sometimes help out during the day either with laundry/tidying/dishes or simply taking our extrovert out of the house. Of course, he still thinks that he isn’t doing enough but compared to what he was able to do eight months ago, I consider this level of help freaking miraculous.

Besides, we’ve organized a bit of help for ourselves.

Last week we put Owl in a preparing for kindergarten camp which took him from 9 am until 3 pm every day, which was fantastic.

This week we could only find a gymnastics camp from 1-3 pm, so that’s where he is.

It’s wearing us out, but we’re managing.

PH deals with Owl in the morning and lets me sleep until Fritter wakes up between 8 and 9 am. Then I get up, shower, dress, have a diet pepsi, put Fritter in a carrier and her and Owl out on a looooong dog walk with Beloved Dog. Sometimes Fritter falls asleep on the long walk and so when we get home I can do some dishes and clean a bit while she snoozes.

The biggest problem is not the baby, although she complicates things and fills my arms for the majority of the day. It’s TALKING TO OWL. He wants to talk all the time. He wants to move all the time. If I take him out of the house it’s not so bad, but in the house he wants to be bouncing or swinging or climbing within my personal space while saying “Mom? Volcanoes esplode lava, right mom? Lava is hot rocks. Mom? The rocks are hot. Right Mom? Hot rocks make lava. The lava is so hot. Mom? What if lava esploded IN YOUR HEAD?”
It’s exhausting to introverts like PH and me.

So we take him out places. 

  
On really good days, I can arrange to meet a friend for a playdate, and then I can stand around and cuddle my baby and watch Owl playing with his friend and it’s adorable and I feel happy.

  
On days like that, I have time to reflect on how lucky I am. I’m lucky that so many of my friends have boys about Owl’s age. I’m lucky that I live in such a beautiful place. I’m lucky that Vancouver hardly ever has rain in the summer and so I can take Owl outside because otherwise I don’t know what I would do.

  
I was lucky to have so much help for so long.

And I’m lucky to still have a husband who can take Owl for a couple of hours in the morning, and help him brush his teeth at night, and sometimes even clean the house while I’m out on a playdate.

We have each other.

So really, we’re not on our own at all.

In Which I Feel Both Geeky And Fabulous

It all started with this Mugglenet article. 

It was full of photos of amazing Harry Potter related babywearing wraps and I fell in love.

As you may remember, I wore a colicky Owl as a babby frequently. He hated the car and screamed, so he rarely slept in his car seat. He was much happier in a carrier, so I wore him in a hand-me-down Sleepy Wrap until he got too heavy for it, and then transferred him to an Ergo.

I loved wearing Owl and joked that my carrier was “baby bluetooth – hands free”. I even wondered why people bothered with strollers for tiny babies, because I found them bulky and annoying compared to the lightweight, hands free freedom of a carrier.

But I never felt PRETTY.

Whether I was wrapped in yards of grey cloth, or wearing Owl in what is basically a front backpack, my carriers were utilitarian.

I occasionally mooned over a stock photo of a woman in a classy ring sling, but I couldn’t justify spending extra money.

My mother made me a faux rebozo, which was not as useful as the Ergo but much prettier, so I used that occasionally.

But now my eyes were opened to a whole world of nerdy babywearing and I WANTED TO BE THAT COOL.

Unfortunately, so do a lot of people, and these quality woven wraps are pretty niche and hard to come by. Used ones actually cost MORE than retail because the wraps are broken in and often limited edition. We’re talking HUNDREDS of dollars.

I shared a photo of some beautiful woven fabric, a Natibaby “Indivisibility Cloak” (get it, because you wear your baby and you two become INDIVISABLE) and bemoaned the fact that they are so expensive.

Then I got a facebook message from my cousin.

I love my cousins. As an only child, they became my surrogate brothers, and I miss them a lot. I keep trying to cajole them out here. The older one is single with a good job as a computer programmer. He was offering to buy me the wrap.

I was like “I SHOULD SAY NO BUT OMG YES PLEASE”.

I asked him for a ring sling, since I don’t have one, and they look so pretty. A wrap would be more versatile, but ring slings are easier for in-and-out sorts of trips, and I already had an Ergo for long treks.

It arrived the week before a friend of mine got married and I worked frantically to break in the fabric in time.

  
It’s purple. I also happen to have a purple dress. The purples totally match. I went to that wedding feeling SO coordinated and geeky and over all fabulous. I can’t remember when I have worn an outfit that made me feel so together.

  
This must be what it feels like to be one of those fancy, with-it people who wear coordinated outfits all the time. It is amazing. I highly recommend it.

  

  

Neighbourhood Friends

Tags

childhood, free range parenting, friendship, neighbours, old friends

I met up with an old friend the other day.  She lives in Ontario, but her father and step mother live on Vancouver Island, so she and I got together for lunch while she was passing through Vancouver on her way to the ferry.

“I’m trying to remember when we met,” she said.

I couldn’t remember either. I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t in my life.

We lived down the road from each other, on different streets but only a two minute walk away, when I was a young girl in Ontario. I’m pretty sure I was playing in her bedroom and she was swimming in my pool when we were three and four years old.

I remember the names of her Siamese cats and I remember the crisp, British voice of her live-in grandmother. I remember playing in her back yard and sharing popsicles on my back deck.

We haven’t lived in the same city, or even the same province, since we were nine years old.

We aren’t particularly close nowadays. We don’t call each other for a chat and we don’t know the intimate details of each other’s personal lives. But we send Christmas cards, and get together whenever we find ourselves in the same city. She visted me in Nova Scotia when we were teenagers, and again when we were in University. She came to my wedding.

She’s my friend, one of only two people from that time in my life with whom I am still in touch.

I had other neighbourhood friends. The boy next door, Joey, into whose house I often burst without knocking. Colleen, who was my bike riding buddy. I have lost touch with them, but they fill my childhood memories of hot summer days, trick or treating at Halloween, and building snowmen in winter.

It’s funny how you make your own community when you live in a big city. A small city block becomes its own small town. These neighbourhood friends were not my only friends, but they were special because they were also my community.

Now Owl is getting old enough to be able to run and play outside without my direct supervision. Our housing complex is made of clusters of townhouses, doors facing each other, with green quads in between. They make perfect meeting places where children can play and neighbours can talk.

We are lucky to have several fantastic neighbours, and even luckier that the family directly across the quad from us has two small boys right around Owl’s age. One of them is 5 months older, and the other is less than a year younger.

Not only can we swap babysitting, but our boys are starting to realize that they have ready-made playmates living just steps away.

“Owl! You’re my friend, Owl!” is a constant refrain whenever Owl is outside and the neighbour boys spot him through the window, and if Owl hears their voices outside he drops what he is doing, tugs on his shoes and runs outside to greet them.

Sometimes they play tag outside. Sometimes they crash into our house and sometimes they barge into the other house. They fight and make up, run and shout. Screen doors bang and small childish voices fill the air, and I am just so, so, grateful.

I’m grateful that these boys provide distraction for Owl, whose constant need to interact sucks me and even my doting mother in law dry by the end of the day. Heck, by the middle of the day. Okay, by mid morning.

I’m grateful that they are good kids from a loving family, and they don’t fill Owl’s head with corporate characters or guns or gender stereotypes.  If anything, they run around in Ramones tee shirts and have little familiarity with many of the things Owl brings home from the kids in his daycare.

I’m grateful because there is something inexplicably peaceful about sitting on one’s stoop at eight in the morning, sipping a Diet Pepsi (normal people can replace that with the word “coffee”), nursing my baby and listening to the joyful shouts of small children.

But most of all, I’m grateful that Owl has neighbourhood friends. Maybe they’ll still be in touch 30 years from now. Maybe they won’t be close. Maybe they won’t even live in the same provinces.

But I like to hope that if one of them is in town, Owl will meet them for a lunch and a drink, and they can sit back, and talk about old times.

Maybe Owl will say, “hey, remember my bouncy castle?”

Maybe they’ll say, “hey, remember going out on our Dad’s boat?”

Maybe they’ll ask each other “when did we meet?” and then realize that they have known each other since birth, that their parents witnessed each other’s pregnancies, and that they are part of each other’s life stories.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the peace.