Genetics Strikes Again!

It's always amusing for me to see what features, traits and mannerisms each of our kids get from Ken and I.  Kaycie has Ken's lips.  Knolan has my nose.  Kaycie rolls her eyes up and to the side like I do when she's thinking.  Knolan rubs his nose just like Kenny.

One thing's for sure, though.  Their accident prone genes came from their mama!

In the past 36 hours alone, Knolan has already chipped his front tooth while cruising around the only room in our house that is completely baby proofed, and Kaycie came home from school with a fat lip and the bridge of her nose swollen because she wiped out while she was walking.  Knolan has managed to infuriate himself by hitting himself in the face with a toy, and Kaycie, who has the advantage of more years under her belt, has also previously somehow run into a tree, tripped herself with her own feet many times, and - one of my favourites - come running to me in hysterics because she got her arms folded back on themselves and trapped in her shirt sleeves. 

Thank goodness that playing "Medical Centre" seems to distract Kaycie long enough to stop the tears, and fortunately, cuddling is still an effective treatment for Knolan's injuries.

I had hoped that I could pass along my love of music, or my mad spelling skills to my children - and maybe there is still time and room for those traits to take root.  But for now, I can see my clumsiness in them plain as day, and all I can do is batten down the hatches.  I'll be honest... I do fear for them a wee bit if they have truly inherited this part of me.

I've always been accident prone.  At one point I was seriously considering whether I needed to get tested for some sort of spatial perception disorder, but eventually, I settled in on believing that there was just constantly too much going on in that little ol' noggin of mine and that I needed to learn how to focus a little harder on what my arms and legs were doing when they were in motion.

Via

I think back on my various wonky mishaps with fondness.  Ah memories...

• There was the time I stabbed myself in the hand with a steak knife while trying to separate beef patties.  All I remember is a spurting fountain of blood and a trip to the emergency room (and a lecture on using knives to separate frozen hamburgers!).
• In related news, there was another time that I jabbed a pencil tip into the palm of my hand and it stayed there.  And so did a little dot of graphite... for at least 8 years!
• I also managed to flip my entire bicycle up and over myself one day when I was biking along and a plastic bag full of who knows what dangling from my handle bars got caught in the spokes of my front wheel.  As I picked myself up and dusted myself off and dragged my mangled bike home, a kid walked up to me and said, "Are you ok?"  I thought it was sweet of them to be concerned, but I was quick to reassure him that I was just fine.  And I was, until he slowly said, "Are you sure?  Because you are totally covered in blood."  Then I looked down at my shirt and saw blood everywhere and touched my face and it was coated in blood and I immediately burst into tears and went running for my mom.  (Moms make everything better!)
• There was also the time when I jumped up in the air and landed completely splits-style (think Mary Lou Retton!) on the suspension bridge that joined two parts of  the play structure in our school yard at recess.  I am seriously surprised I didn't break a limb that day.
• Hmm... oh yes!  We were forbidden to slide down the bannister in the house we grew up in.  Although I still maintain to this day that I was NOT going to slide down the bannister, but I was merely trying to cool off my leg by laying it along the railing because it was hot in the house (*eye roll*), I did manage to flip over one side of the U-shaped bannister, grab hold of the far railing before I fell to my untimely demise, and hold on for dear life until my parents excecuted a perfect tag team rescue.
• I walked full tilt into a tree once on a school field trip.
• I ended up with a face that apparently "looked exactly like Donald Duck" in university when I played on a soft ball team.  Cause of the duck face?  I was the relay player catching a ball being thrown in from outfield.  The last thing I remember before I was cracked in the teeth with the ball as it passed in front of the blinding sun was, "Wow... that looks like a solar eclipse!"
• I was rewarded with an extensive WSIB claims process after I managed to completely wipe out at work after my sweater got tangled on a cubicle wall.
• I fell face first on the sidewalk outside of one of my previous workplaces and tore my pants as I was walking in to meet with my old boss and my thesis advisor to propose a published study with them.  I was mortified.
• I had to go to a job interview with a scorch mark on the palm of my hand after the end of my hair dryer kind of exploded in my hand.
• And... my piece de resistance:  I slammed my own head in a car door.  I think it could have happened to anyone, but Kenny begs to differ.  It was all very innocent, really.  He and I were on a road trip and he didn't feel very well.  We stopped at a convenience store so I could get him some Gravol or something, and as I held the driver's side door open with my left hand, I leaned my head into the car to ask him if he wanted something to drink while I was in there, and when I was done talking to him, I slammed the door shut before I managed to pull my head out of the way.  I don't think I'll ever forget the look on his face when he realized what I had done!  By the way, about a year later, it must have been such a proud day for Ken's parents when they happened to hear their daughter-in-law describing the whole embarassing incident on a call-in show on weird self-inflicted injuries on CFRB 1010.

Now that I think on it, we might be smart to start wrapping most of our house in foam and bubble wrap.

For the safety of the children, of course!  LOL

Stress-tastic!

They say that certain amounts of stress are good for you - that there is good stress that drives you to succeed and good stress that is a crucial component of the fight or flight stress response.

I think I definitely have a fight or flight response.  I would also argue, however, that I have a third response.  I think my response 'toolbox' contains a fight response, a flight response, and a fashion-a-new-alternate-reality response.

I think my husband would back me when I say that night waking hallucinations, talking in my sleep and what my mom would probably call "extreme open mindedness"  play a key part in how I process stress.

Poor Kenny has awoken to me sitting on the edge of our bed, halfway between the worlds of wakefulness and slumber, doing things like chairing work meetings, talking about lasagna, pointing out insect infestations, grabbing at falling babies... the list goes on and on.  He's even had early morning chats with me when he thought I was awake and engaged until he heard me give some sort of ridiculous answer to his question like, "Yeah, my bonus is going to be at least $500 thousand, so our mortgage payment should be fine on Friday."  Umm... I work for a nonprofit organization.  :-)

I really freaked him out one night when I kept pointing in the corner saying there was a man standing there.  Poor guy.  Once he's freaked out, there is no sleep in sight for him.  Meanwhile, I generally drift right back to Sleepytown and don't even realize what's happened.

Recently stress and I have become reacquainted.  In the last month I have gone through a laundry list of stressors:

Annual large scale nationwide fundraising event at work?  Check.
Separate health scares for me, my mom, my dad and my grandmother?  Check.
Everyone in our household gets a cold?  Check.
Mom gets pneumonia?  Check.
Son screaming, coughing, teething for 3 nights straight?  Check.
Daughter diagnosed with asthma?  Check.
Daughter gets ear infection?  Check.
Son driven by a frantic me to hospital gasping for air at 3am?  Check.  (Croup, thank goodness!)

Needless to say, I'm starting to wonder if there is an end in sight! 

But, I will say that I have been entertaining myself by observing my reaction to all of this stress.  For example, I would say that I responded with the "fight" response when Knolan recently started wheezing and gasping for air.  Poor Kenny had to just do his best to do exactly as I said or risk me freaking out.  When your kid is in peril, it's amazing how the most mild mannered of us can turn into momma bears!

I observed a "flight" response when we were all sick and I just couldn't handle it all anymore and sent my kids to daycare and just hid under the covers with a box of Kleenex, my precious, precious Tylenol Cold tablets and a bowl of chocolate ice cream.

My "fashion-a-new-alternate-reality" response finally reared its strange head a few times during the last 2 weeks of this insane month.  Kenny has reported a few odd conversations he's had with me during the night, and I have noticed that I've had to literally shake my head and wake myself up a few times over the last few weeks when I caught myself sitting bedside re-setting my alarm clock for crazy waking times like 3:11am.  I vaguely recollect that one of those times I thought I had a conference call at 4am.  Um yeah... I do a lot for my employer, but I think I'd draw the line there!

But fashioning alternate realities isn't limited to my sleeping hours, and I guess I can say that it isn't limited to times of stress either - it's just exacerbated when I'm stressed!  I was a bit of an odd kid, and I think some of that has lasted well into my adult years.  I recall one span of a few months where I had myself basically convinced that I was the only person with a tongue.  I kept trying to sneak glimpses into people's mouths to reassure myself that yes... other people had tongues too.  So weird!  I went through another phase where I was uncertain about mirrors - I basically kept trying to catch my reflection not doing what I was doing.  Likely a result of too many episodes of Twilight Zone or something like that (and at the risk of opening myself up to ridicule, I'll confess that I was at least 16 when this was going on!).

Anyway, while I was at my parents' house recently I think that the stress in my life lately created the perfect foundation for another one of my weirdo moments.  I was at my parents' house to help them out after my dad had been rushed to the hospital with chest pains (he's fine, phew!) on the same day that my mom was still suffering from pneumonia AND had a medical appointment at a hospital in a different city that she needed to find a way to get to.  I did my part to help them get through that day and stayed overnight to make sure they had someone to count on if things got worse overnight.  I woke up much earlier than Mom and Dad the next morning, and I didn't know what else to do besides cook.  So, when my parents eventually woke up after their tour of southwestern Ontario hospitals, they found me in the kitchen with their counters covered in muffins, coffee brewing, and soup ingredients everywhere.  I kind of feel like it looked like I'd snapped, but I was honestly just trying to use my time there wisely and do something that would help them get through the next few days while they were both recovering from different things.

What they didn't know, though, was that I had just had the strangest moment!  I would argue that it was because I was feeling so stressed out and not thinking straight, but anyone who knows me well might counter-argue that I'd have a moment like this on the best of days.  This is where my mom's "extreme open mindedness" theory comes into play.

When I went to the basement to look for soup ingredients, I opened the chest freezer and was face to face with the weirdest looking bag.  It was kind of frozen/stuck to some other stuff in the freezer and I wrestled with it until it came loose and set it aside while I looked for chicken and frozen corn.  Once I found what I needed, I went to put the bag back and I noticed another weird looking bag.  They were white bags, so you couldn't see what was in them, but they were long and kind of weirdly bent.  I found myself trying to figure out what on earth was in these bags.  They were too big to be pork tenderloin... what were they?!  Art projects?  no.  Paint rollers?  no.  Frozen compost?  no.  Cookie dough?  Please, please, please be cookie dough!  no.

Then, before I realized what was going on in that poor, vulnerable little brain of mine, a thought drifted into my head 2 seconds before I realized what was in the bags.  I wasn't really seriously considering this option, but there is no denying that this thought fleetingly popped into my head.  It was kind of like a stream of dozens of options were scrolling through my head, and this just happened to be one of them.

For an instant I thought:  serial killers? 

Yup... that's right... I went there.  What kind of daughter lets that thought cross her mind!?

Thankfully, I suddenly realized they were fish from my dad's fishing weekend up north.  I quickly abandoned my plan to sneak out the basement window into the backyard, grabbed the chicken and the corn and headed upstairs.

I didn't feel relief because I wasn't seriously considering the serial killer option, but I did have a big nerdy laugh all by myself about it.  I probably needed one at that point!

I, of course, couldn't resist telling my parents, and although I caught a glimpse of shock pass over my mom's face before she broke out laughing, they fortunately thought this was pretty funny, and figured it would be a good story to share with Dad's fishing buddies.

So, I really, really hope that my son's trip to the ER is the grand finale to this latest string of events - it will feel good to get back to a normal routine and normal thought patterns.  :-)

I have to wonder, though... am I the only one whose brain works like this?

Kaycie Sez... The Halloween Edition

Happy Belated Halloween!  I've been on a wee bit of a hiatus, but thought I could ease back into my regular blogging.  Hope you get a kick out of these little quips we heard Monday evening as she and her brother enjoyed a beautiful Halloween night:

Upon hearing the doorbell - "Oh my! More customers!"

When we rang the neighbour's doorbell and the dog came to the door along with our neighbour - "Ooooooh!  That's a lovely wolf you have there!"

After a little girl dressed as a rooster walked away from our door and down the street, Kaycie shouted out after her at the top of her lungs - "I sure do like your shoes!"  (the girl had great chicken feet on!)

As we walked past a fake graveyard - "If you are a witch and you go in there, I hope you know that you will turn into the slimiest goo you ever saw." (it's worth mentioning that Kaycie and I went out as witches. LOL)

And, I may be risking future embarassment for my little noodle, but it was pretty funny when she grinned widely and declared - "I just had a witch toot!"

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! 

My extremely talented nephew, Ben, carved this awesome Batman pumpkin!

RIP Lolita... we think?

Oh life.  It sure has its ups and downs, doesn't it?  Everything can be going along smoothly and then out of nowhere, life taps you on the shoulder and whispers, "Sorry to catch you off guard, but here's something for you to deal with.  Toodles!"

That's how I felt when I tucked Knolan into bed one night not too long ago and then went to feed our goldfish, Lolita, while Ken was reading stories to Kaycie in her room before bedtime.  I grabbed the container of fish food and went to feed the fish when I saw her laying motionless on the bottom of her fishbowl. 

My heart felt a pang.  This was Kaycie's pet.  The childcare provider she stayed with every day for 2 years had given her Lolita as a special gift, and Kaycie really did love that fish.

It popped into my mind that maybe she was just sleeping.  I reached out and gently jiggled Lolita's fishbowl, hopeful that maybe she was just dreaming away.

Nope.  Poor Lolita just floated softly with the rocking of the water.

I quietly walked upstairs to see if Ken was done putting Kaycie to bed.  I met him in the hallway, and just as I opened my mouth to tell him the sad news, he said, "I know... Lolita, right?  I noticed she was gone earlier tonight, but I thought Kaycie might handle the news better in the morning."

So, the two of us sat down that night to think about how we were going to help our little cutie process the sad news.  We figured we would tell her in the morning, keeping all of the emphasis on what a great pet Lolita had been.

Lolita's death did not come as a big surprise to Ken or to me.  She had been around for a long time, and even my mom was unconvinced that Lolita was the same fish we had got years ago - she was certain that we were trying to pull one over on her with a stand in for the original goldfish!

So, off to bed we went with heavy hearts.  I know... So dramatic!  I know she's just a fish, but this was our little girl's fish and we just didn't know how she would handle it.

The next morning we steeled ourselves to tell her the bad news.

First thing I did was chicken out and called my mom - the retired social worker - for advice.  Surely she had come across this kind of thing before!  She would know how to handle this!

Mom - ever the caring professional - asked me a battery of questions related to Kaycie, her relationship with Lolita, her level of connection with animals, what our plans were for the day, how long Lolita had been dead, etc.  It kind of sounds funny as I write it, but at the time I was literally hanging on her every word, and nodding my head enthusiastically at every bit of advice she shared.

So, we armed ourself with all of Mom's good advice (best things I learned were not to flush the fish and not to dispose of the fish without letting Kaycie know, as this can lead to weird associations with the toilet and paranoia about more important people and things in her world disappearing on her) and slowly walked into the living room where the kids were playing - Kaycie blissfully unaware of the devastating news we were about to share with her.

As Ken sat down and started to fashion a makeshift coffin for the impending funeral, I pulled Kaycie up onto my lap, put my best soothing, maternal arm around her and decided I would just cut to the chase.  Like ripping a bandaid off.  Yeah... that would be best.

"Kaycie, honey."

"Yes Mama?"

"Are you having a good day?"

"Yup!"

"Are you having fun with your brother?"

"Yup!"

... Ok, bandaid plan not happening!  Must...rip...bandaid!

"You've been good friends with Lolita for a long time, right sweetie?"

Slow nodding.

"Honey, Lolita died last night."

Big, questioning eyes suddenly looking right at me and then at Ken. 

"But sweetie, Lolita had a good long life and you were such a good friend to her.  It was just her time to die.  We could have a little funeral for her and we could bury her in our garden if you want - you could even say a few words about her and sing her a little song if you want. Would you like to do that?"

Kaycie nodded and said, "I would say to her that I love her, and that she is a beautiful fish, and that every person in the world - even the tiniest tips of all the rice - love her with all their hearts."

I looked up just in time to see poor Kenny hide behind his coffin as his eyes welled up and I couldn't help but picture a character in a Mortal Kombat video game delivering their final crushing blow as the electronic voiceover bellows, "FINISH HIM!!!" 

Then Kaycie says quietly, "Can I see her?"

I quickly gave her a big hug and assured her that she could go see her and then we would have our little funeral service for her.

We began our sombre march up the stairs to the family room.  The silence was so unnerving as I held her sweet little hand.

We walked through the door into the family room and walked over to Lolita's bowl where she was happily swimming away.

What!?

How the hell had this just happened?  Was this for real?  What was going on?

Then I noticed the little blue eyes looking up at me with bewilderment. 

Ok... My mother's crash course in pet bereavement did not cover what to do in the event of fake death!!!  What had just happened here!?!

Scrambling for something to say, I finally blurted out, "That silly Lolita!  She tricked us!"  Luckily, Kaycie thought this was great and burst out laughing and then smushed her face up against the bowl, saying, "Lolita, you little trickster!" in a high-pitched falsetto voice.

It was at this point that Ken walked  into the room with his lovingly handcrafted coffin, took one look at Lolita, rolled his eyes and with defeat in his voice groaned, "Oh for the love of God!" and without stopping did a U-turn and left the room.

So, we had a miniature coffin and a funeral service all planned out, but no dead fish!  I swear, these things seem to only happen to us!

So, we decided to carry on with our day, and Kaycie elected to move Lolita's bowl into the kitchen where we could keep a close eye on her.  We cautioned her that Lolita might be sick and to try to understand that she might not be alive for much longer.  Kaycie turned our kitchen into a visiting centre for Lolita and positioned dolls all around her bowl to keep her company and plastered her fish bowl with heart stickers.

Then the doorbell rang.  My parents had been on their way to visit us when I called them that morning, and despite my best efforts, I hadn't been able to reach them since our bizarre discovery to tell them that Lolita had faked her own death.  "This should be interesting," I thought to myself as I opened the door to let them in.

When we opened the door, my parents got right down to Kaycie's level, spoke to her in soft comforting tones and asked her how she was doing.  I felt so guilty for finding so much humour in this little scene.  When Kaycie declared, "Lolita is ALIVE!" the confused look on my poor mom's face was priceless.  To their credit, my parents were lovely to Kaycie, and although it might have been fun to let the confusion linger, I offered up a quick summary of our morning so that everyone was up to speed.  Then Kaycie invited Gramma and Grandpa to come visit Lolita alongside the ever vigilant Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and the roller skating girl from a Happy Meal of days past.

Anyway, to make a long story short, after a few more days, as we suspected she might, Lolita finally did meet her maker.  Kaycie presided over an awkwardly sweet memorial to Lolita, and Ken and Kaycie picked out a special rock to mark her final resting place in our garden next to the hosta.  And we learned a lesson about how resilient kids (and goldfish, apparently!) can be - at the end of Lolita's memorial, I asked Kaycie if she wanted us to sing a song, and she said, "No Mom... it's just over, so let's go have a snack, ok?" 

I'd say our first of what I'm sure will be many life lessons for our kids went pretty well!