(note: I realized today that I've had this sitting on my hard drive for about a month, so I'm sending it off without updating it. Other stuff has happened since, but it would take too long to write just now. Maybe some other day.)
One day the kids and I arrived at a mall just as Justin had fallen asleep, at 10:45. So I gave Daniel my watch and a book and told him that when the big hand reached the 12, we could wake up Justin, but until then he had to be very very quiet. 15 minutes later, I turned around and said, OK, Daniel, it's time to go, and took my watch back. I noticed that the big hand was pointing to the 3, and realized that other little hands had been at work. "Daniel", I said, "Did you move the big hand on my watch?"
Serious and slightly defensive brown eyes watched me, trying to decide whether or not he would be in trouble if he confessed.
"Daniel,I'm not mad at you, but I want to know, did you move the hand on my watch?"
"...yes?" he ventured.
I suppressed a smile and said, "Sweetie, you know, that won't work. If you move the hands instead of letting them move on their own, it won't make time go faster, it'll just make the watch tell the wrong time."
"Oh."
"Besides, I can tell what time it is for real, even without my watch. See? I have a little clock on my cell phone."
Daniel took the cell phone and stared in amazement. "I can't believe the phone has a clock too. That's pretty amazing!" I had to laugh. He sounded about 90 years old, flabbergasted by a newfangled gadget.
****
Justin still goes around pointing at things, saying DAT! and wanting them to be named. One day he pointed to Daniel, said DAT and I said, "That's Daniel."
"I'm not a 'that'. I'm a 'who'", Daniel immediately corrected us.
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Justin is in love. In love with our cat, that is. He finally has some words that he uses regularly, and Chris and I find it rather humbling that while he almost never says Daddy and often confuses the word Mama with "food" or "want that", he is always perfectly clear when he's looking for the cat: CAW!! CAAWW!!
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Daniel has started Little Dragons karate. Oh my god there is nothing more adorable than a whole bunch of little people in oversized gis, running around and yelling Kiay! It's like a concentration of cuteness.
However, ever heard of over-scheduling? Danielis in karate and swimming, and seems to enjoy both. And when I start to think that maybe we're over-scheduling him, I think of two other parents at karate who said they had their kids in hockey, skating, karate, and music. They hoped to get them into a select hockey skills camp. "It's not for the faint-hearted", they said. I looked at the kids and wondered if they were as eager to get in as the parents were.
Oh, and here's a question I often wonder about at the YMCA: why on earth would anybody take their kids to a public pool during family swim time and then try not to get their hair wet and look annoyed whenever children splash around them? Does this make sense?
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Random Quote of the Day from Daniel: "You know what I would like? I would like to jump up really high and take a big bite out of the sun!"
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I had one of those "Oh, that's why" moments in parenting, when you realize why your parents acted in a certain way.
I had once determined as a child that I would be sensitive to my children's creations or works-in-progress, in marked distinction from my own mother's attitude, which I judged to be rather insensitive. For example, I would be hard at work on a masterpiece of architecture or art, take a two-day break, and she would callously throw it in the garbage just because it resembled, to her, a pile of dirty paper.
Well. Daniel started to make structures out of leggo. So I, being much wiser and more patient than my neat-freaky mother ever was, carefully left his structures alone and tidied around them, congratulating myself all the way. And I continued to congratulate myself while he built traps out of kleenex, guns out of papers, towers out of pens, and... then I realized that our floor space (and couch space and table space) was quickly disappearing and that I was hearing dismayed yells of HEY! JUSTIN BROKE MY CASTLE (gun, bridge, river, tree, dinosaur, hotel) every 5 minutes and I couldn't find a damn thing because all of our clothing, books, papers, cutlery and dryer lint was stacked up and arranged just so in piles and piles of crap.
Aaah. NOW I see. I mentally begged my mother's forgiveness for every bad thought I'd sent her way as a child and as a self-righteous adult, assigned two shelves in the basement to hold Daniel's creations, gave him time to save whatever he could fit onto them... and swept the rest away. His creativity may be stifled, but at least now the rest of us can navigate safely across the living room.
I think I mentioned before that I've thought about going to law school. I applied to Ottawa and Western, did well onmy LSAT, and started to receive courting letters from a whole bunch of schools. Come hither, (or at least,apply hither) they said, from U of T and the Richard Wilson school of law in Rhode Island, and CUNY (unfortunate name, that) in Flushing, NY. However, Western and Ottawa are conspicuously silent. I'm thinking that if they reject me I'll send them photocopies of all my other letters and maybe a note saying, "AND my mom thinks I'm cool!"
Although I think I might be in at Ottawa. I was filling out an application for a bursary, but got stuck on the "student number" part of the application. So I called, asking what I should write in that box. The Admissions officer looked up my file and told me, "Your student number is 452-9002."
Hm... Student number. That's what you usually give to... students, isn't it? I think. Wait. Maybe she means the number given to my application.
"Do you mean the number on my application?" (please say no!)
"Yes, that's right." (darn!)
"So that's what I put for student number?"
"Yes, that's your student number." (wait, she just said it again! maybe that wasn't a tongue of the slip. I decide to think about this later and ask about other stuff)
"... I was also wondering if I can find out about my application before it gets here. My partner is going for a job interview in Ottawa and if he's offered a job he may have to decide where we are going to move, right around the time that you said the acceptances will be mailed out. So I was wondering, if they've already been sent out but haven't yet arrived, would it be possible for me to call and find out?"
"No,I'm sorry. We can't give out that kind of information over the phone."
So at this point, one of three things is happening.
However, this all happened weeks ago. No word from them yet. So maybe Ottawa just likes to give out student numbers to anybody who applies, regardless of whether they let them in or not. Seems a waste of good numbers to me.
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I recently got hired as an occasional teacher with the Thames Valley school board. It was so weird - instead of needing a B.Ed with a Master's in child psychology, glowing letters of reference from everybody who has ever met you, a multimedia presentation and a Nobel Prize in Education just to be considered for supplying, I walked in, talked for 15 minutes with a vice-principal, and was told OK, when can you start?
What a difference five years and a teacher shortage makes.
Although one of the things she said was that she was pleased to see that I had 5 years teaching experience, in a prison of all places. She figured if I could handle inmates, I could handle anybody, and discipline would obviously be no problem for me. I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to burst her bubble by explaining that I had always been backed up by big guys with guns, a personal alarm, the inmates' desire to be in school, and the final option of firing any student who really caused me grief. I have no idea what I'll do with the first mouthy 10th grader who decides he's not going to listen to a bleeping blanking 'sub'. I guess I'll have to find out.
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Did you know that Chris's MD is not species-specific? The other day one of our fish bent its tail. Chris, figuring the thing was probably dead anyway, fished it out, unbent it, and put it back in the tank. Darned if it didn't survive, unbent and happy. So now we think Chris should hang out his shingle as Dr. Christopher J. Rae, Orthopedic Ichthiatrician. Has a certain ring to it, doesn't it?