Easter and Earth Day

It seems the monotony of the last month has caught up to us... or maybe it's because the snow's gone... but the last few days have been packed full of activities.

We don't usually do much for Easter. We used to decorate eggs like crazy when I was younger and we've dried them and kept them because some of them are pretty outstanding, but because Toby is allergic to eggs I've never really pushed the egg decorating thing.

This year though, he's old enough to look at it as an art project and not just as something he's left out of eating.

First of all he reminded me that we bought baby animal cookie cutters to make Easter cookies, so we did that. He keeps staring at these photos of ornate cookies and lamenting that we never put icing on ours, so we decided to paint-ice these ones.

A lesson in colour mixing before we begin.

Our masterpieces.

After our eatable eggs were painted, we coloured our real eggs.

Toby's first time dying Easter eggs.

I wanted to use natural dyes, but didn't plan ahead on this one at all so I scrounged together what I had. I found some frozen blueberries that we used for blue/purple, we used tumeric for yellow, and I tried to used some leftover artichoke water for green, but when you mixed in the vinegar (to act as a fixative on the eggs) it turned a horrible shade of apple juice.... so we used green food dye for green...

Ended up looking pretty good!

(Toby's favourite colour is green, can you tell?)

I hard boiled the eggs, foreseeing one being dropped, which it did. Toby was mortified, but I said it was ok because we could do something cool with it.

This Martha Stewart Spiderweb Eggs idea is in a book I have, so we tried it.
You're supposed to cook the eggs with the blueberries, so ours wasn't as dark, but still cool!

Because we used vinegar in the egg dye, Toby eventually piped up "Isn't vinegar supposed to explode or something when you put stuff in it?"
I confirmed that he meant baking soda, so we experimented with the leftover dye and a big bowl of baking soda.

SCIENCE!

The reason I've included Earth Day in this post is because Toby, knowing that the eggs we did would need to be broken so we could eat them before they went bad, still didn't want to get rid of the shells.
I said they're hard to take off in one piece when they're boiled.
He said he knew that, but maybe we could make an art project out of them instead of throwing them out.

So today he drew a picture of the Earth and we made an egg shell mosaic.

Our Earth Day  activities also included a clean up of the road in front of our house and discussions about littering and looking after the planet.
We thought we'd maybe wander around and get a couple grocery bags of trash, but we ended up with 6 grocery bags, plus three garbage bags we found in a ravine and a bucket full of dried cement. GROSS PEOPLE.

Happy Earth day everyone!

"Candy Day"

I have always always always loved Halloween. I have always loved dressing up. I love pretending. I love fall and pumpkins and witches and cobwebs and brooms. I loved trick-or-treating and getting stuff, but we live in the country and only drove to about 3 houses so it wasn't the 'loot' that you hear tell of most kids.
My mom has always rolled her eyes and said she hates all the the candy nonsense, and obviously when you're a kid you don't get it, but we also weren't bombarded with it in our house.

Being an adult now you 'get it' a bit more. You see the Halloween candy before Thanksgiving has even arrived. The grocery store aisles are almost literally piled to the ceiling with boxes and boxes of assorted chocolate bars from competing companies.

I can't pretend to imagine what it's like to have a kid who is allergic to peanuts in among all the fine print, but I do know what avoiding gluten and egg is like. And most everything contains gluten. Plus my adverse reactions to dairy that I usually ignore should be considered at this time of year, which nixes out pretty much everything but Skittles and Rockets.

Halloween parties at school were awkward because I knew I couldn't eat any of the stuff, but I wanted the stuff, and there was no other stuff, so I ate it anyway. I'm so thankful  now that schools are taking food allergies and nutrition seriously and not handing out treats as rewards as was common when I was a kid.

I like having treats at Halloween, but eventually you have to ask yourself: Is it the candy or the holiday you love more?
If it's really the holiday, then there are LOADS of things to do that don't involve the sweets.
It it's the candy you're in it for, there are also lots of things you can do to cut down on the sugar content in your house, especially for the kids.

My treat bags this year consist of glow sticks, a pencil, potato chips and organic jelly beans.

Adults tend to roll their eyes at the Halloween toys out there, but handing out glow in the dark vampire teeth, goofy tattoos, bubbles, or spider rings ensures that you're the house on the block kids will remember.
If you live in a neighborhood, handing out pre-cracked glow sticks is not only fun, but is a safety measure for visibility as your kids walk the dark streets.

Making up a treat bag with a toy, chips and a small apple or juice box is a good way to be 'fun' while avoiding the mounds of sugar as well.

Raisins have a bad rep, but I loved getting them. They're sickly sweet but no added sugar.

A pack of sugar-free chewing gum will last a long time for the child you give it to, just also read the package for artificial sweeteners like sucralose and aspartame, which are harmful to your body over time.

If you really want the chocolate stuff to be part of Halloween, make the effort to find locally made or fair-trade products.

If you want to avoid food all together, you can join the Books for Treats movement to give out gently used children's books instead of candy. Ask friends and family if they're getting rid of any kids books or pre-teen novels, or even go to Garage sales and Value Village through the year and pick some small appropriate ones.
On Halloween organize them into boxes by age and let the kids choose their own book when they come to the door.
http://booksfortreats.org/  - for more information.

Homemade goods have become frowned upon to hand out at your door due to food allergies and the crazies in the world, but you can make then for your family and friends. Host a Halloween party for your kids and friends instead of going trick or treating and serve home made treats instead of setting out bowls of candy.
Make personal pizzas and decorate them into a spooky face before you bake.
Have olive 'eye balls' to snack on.
Make your own cookies or muffins and ice with plain or strawberry cream cheese.
Have carrot or cheese 'fingers' and serve them with creepy green guacamole.
I've seen pictures of "boo-nanas" being posted - half banana with chocolate/carob chip eyes and mouth stuck in.

Do Halloween crafts with your kids and make them just as, if not more, fun that the food treats.

Research and talk about the historical origins of All Hallows' Eve, to enforce that this holiday exists for a reason other than treats.

If you think your kid will balk at the idea of not being able to collect and eat their fill of candy the night of Halloween, keep in mind who their role models are. You can set an example of a 'one-a-day' treat, or alternatives to them.
If "That's what Halloween is!" at your house, then let them pick their favourites (healthiest ones?) out of the mix and encourage them to leave the rest for the Switch Witch, who will come late Halloween night to exchange the rest of their candy for a kick-ass toy.

In a time of obesity, mis-diagnosed ADD and increased awareness of food allergies, make the effort to turn 'Candy Day' back in to 'Halloween'.

Happy Solstice

Why I celebrate Winter Solstice:

Ok, so maybe 'celebrate' is a loose term...maybe consciously recognize is better...

I decided when I was pregnant that Solstice was going to be our celebration day because Christmas Eve, Christmas day and Boxing day we're already covered by other parts of the family. In my head, we'd be living in our own house, have our own celebration and presents then, and then celebrate with the rest of the family later.
Since that 'living in my own house' thing hasn't worked out, we just do presents on Christmas day with everyone here and a big dinner that night, but I still like to recognize the Solstice.

Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, meaning that every day after that until Summertime just gets longer and sunnier.
Winter Solstice has long been thought of as the time of the last time for Autumn feasting before the cold days of hunger ahead. It was the time when the livestock was slaughtered so they didn't have to be kept fed in the winter, and therefore it was the only time of year when fresh meat was available. Wine and mead that had been fermenting from the summer and autumn harvests was now ready to drink. Firewood was cut and stored to keep everyone warm against the winter winds.
What better time for a party?

For me, Winter Solstice is about thanking the Earth for a good growing year and enjoying what she has to offer. It's about the celebration of daylight as the Earth begins it's new year around the Sun. It's about family, food, warmth and love.
And this particular Solstice marks the end of the Mayan calendar, which obviously didn't end in the apocalypse, but does mark the end of an era. The 'old ways' are behind us and new and better things are hopefully on the horizon.

Happy Solstice, Merry Yule.

Christmas Hangover

Christmas Hangover: The period of time immediately following Christmas where all you seem to be able to do is sit on the couch and stare into space towards the mess of stuff that needs to be cleaned up, and the only food there is to eat is turkey and chocolate.

See: Arrogant Worms - Christmas Hangover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97ZVwdP9iho

It wasn't actually that bad.....
We start the season with the season, on the Solstice. I had decided years ago that I wanted to have a Solstice dinner as a family, so that Christmas could be spent at my parent's, or wherever, and we wouldn't be trying to be in 3 places at once. The last couple years I've been so preoccupied that we havn't done anything, but I actually had the foresight to think about it this year. We had a clove ham, potatoes, sweet potatoes and broccoli. SO yummy, and very 'wintery'.

     I remember last Christmas Toby really had no idea what to expect, and each time he opened a gift he played with it for 20 minutes and didn't really care to open anything else. After Christmas he was a tantruming two year old for weeks from being so overwhelmed even though we play Christmas pretty quiet here.
This year he knew what to expect. Every morning for two weeks he asked if his stocking was full yet.
I keep trying to emphasize the GIVING and CREATING of gifts FOR people, but his one track mind keeps going back to asking how many presents under the tree were for him.
I was expecting the same mess-of-a-post-Christmas-kid as last year, but he's actually been really good so far. He got a lot of books and PJs and things and only a couple really cool toys, so he's been playing with them and not seeming overwhelmed.

Before Christmas, however, was when he had the big meltdowns.
We woke up at 5 am Christmas morning because he had a nightmare (I'm assuming due to the yelling and thrashing in his sleep) and he wouldn't settle back down. He kept demanding I get up and he didn't want to be in bed anymore. I don't even think he knew it was Christmas, he just didn't want to be there. I kept saying we weren't getting up until the sun was up, but he never went back to sleep, just yelled and hit and kicked and sobbed all over me. A couple times I said that he needed to chill out and I was trying to help him and that if he's getting to overwhelmed then we're putting all the gifts away and we're not going to have a family Christmas time if he's being rude. I got hit some more and yelled at some more and sobbed on some more. I was, at this point, not in the Christmas spirit at all. I was completely prepared to pack up the gifts and only let him open his stocking, MUCH later after he calmed down.
I think at this point he started realizing it was Christmas morning and further demanded to go downstairs. I made him wait til 7 and then carried his sobbing overtired self down to the couch where he immediately demanded to nurse while I had a melt down. *Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay Christmas*
He eventually got very quiet and was being very deliberately polite...
"Ohh, mummy look how pretty our tree is"
"yep"
"And there's a note pinned to it!"
"yep"
"Can we read it?"
"whatever"
He turned on our tree lights and 'ooh'd' and 'ahh'd' at it again before bringing me the note from Santa. We read all about what a GOOD boy he'd been this year and how SMART and HELPFUL he was.... I was still half debating just telling my family to put off presents for another day.
He opened his stocking and then ran up to show stuff to Grampa. They had breakfast and read some books while I grumbled away on the internet trying to cheer myself up.
A few hours later everyone was up and the mood was better and we started opening a few things. He actually handled it all pretty well. The day ended up pretty good.
We Skyped with family in Holland.
Turkey dinner.
Lots of chocolate.
Not too bad.

Halloween

I love Halloween. Most people know that. I don't love it in the sense of wanting to scare to poocicles out of young children... I"m not a fan of horror movies and don't care much for gore... But there's something about the stereotypical fairy tale witches and wizards, black cats and bats, and spiders and skeletons that I LOVE.

I love dressing up. I love being creative. I love Halloween baking. We implemented a Halloween Tree in our house for decorations because it's creepily fantastic without being scary.

I had long dreamed of dressing a baby in magnificently adorable Halloween costumes each year. I have costume patterns that I bought long before I was even pregnant. Fairies, Pirates, Scarecrows, Witches.... I had to stop myself from making them all before I even knew if I was having a girl or a boy.

And then I was blessed with a child who greatly dislikes clothing..

Halloween #1 wasn't too bad. He was almost a year old and crawling, and although the addition of a vest with a turtle shell sewn to it was a slight nuisance at first, it quickly was dismissed as outerwear and donned for a long period of time.

Halloween 2009

Halloween #2 was slightly more difficult. It was a struggle to get him to wear jeans instead of pajamas, but we made a big deal about his Farmer Vest being the coolest thing on the face of the planet and eventually he agreed.

Halloween 2010

This Halloween I knew I was in for a battle. All year he's been fighting the notion of wearing pants or anything that resembles a nice shirt. I have two or three pairs of pants that he's deemed comfortable enough to wear in public, but wont go near jeans or khakis with a ten foot pole.

This year his interest lay more with construction than farming. He has a yellow hard hat that he already wears everywhere, so i figured I'd make him an orange vest and he could be a construction dude.
Then he was introduced to Bob The Builder. The obsession escalated and I thought 'Perfect! Same general idea as mine, but now a more focused Halloween costume!!'
I pitched the idea to Toby and he seemed enthusiastic. We went to Value Village for overalls and an orange shirt. I made him a tool belt. We hyped it up for ages.
Except that whenever it was suggested he try on his costume, he politely declined. Once I got his arms in the shirt but when I tried to button it up he immediately burst into tears and tried to rip it off.
On Halloween day my mom convinced him to try on the overalls, but the shirt and tool belt were a no-go. He muttered and complained the whole time but mom got a picture for me as proof of a half-victory.

 Halloween 2011

We hadn't planned to go out Trick-or-Treating because the last year had been short lived. Late, dark, cold walks are not high on Toby's 'like' list.

I knew we were staying home to hand out our treat bags so I wasn't too hyper about getting him dressed up. I just wished he'd wear it.
He wore his skeleton pajamas (that he's been able to wear for three years now) and a hard hat.... We drove to visit a friend's house and stayed there for a while.... And that was about the extent of it.

I'm sure it's a phase. I"m sure he'll like dressing up some day. Or maybe he won't.
Some people say that after age three things get easier. Some people say they had 'terrible threes' and not 'twos'.
Maybe I should just take a page out of Toby's book and realize that it's not how you appear, but your attitude that counts.
Only 363 days until next Halloween!! :)

Jealousy and Acceptance

The relationship between Toby and my dad sometimes makes me jealous.

When Toby was smaller we had a hard time with my dad even walking through a room without Toby attaching himself to his leg or something and screaming blue murder when he was just passing through. I felt bad that my dad couldn't get anything done and felt bad that Toby didn't understand why the world didn't revolve around him.

I had to limit their time together because certain disciplinary things or behavioral things I was trying to do didn't always get upheld. And yes, there's the cheeky shirts you can get that state "What happens at Grampa's stays at Grampa's" but when this is our home too and it's daily, not just once on a weekend visit, I try to keep things as consistent as possible. 

Toby is better now with the separation and so they play together more.

But now Toby has decided that Grampa is hero, and mom sucks.

When I'm in the middle of explaining why we cant watch anymore TV and Grampa walks through the room, Toby runs to him and Grampa picks him up and they have happy talk.

When I'm trying to convince Toby to go to bed and he's in tears in protest, clearly indicating he's overtired, Grampa walks in and Toby runs to him and they happily go brush teeth.
I have become Mom. I have become the bringer of bedtime and the washer of hair.
I'm not the cool rescuer.

And all of this has made me realize...

...how glad I am to be doing this single.

I can avoid my dad if I wanted to... I wouldn't be able to avoid a partner.

The only thing keeping me from opening my mouth sometimes is that ultimately I have the control and the last word on things.

And maybe in a relationship things would have been fine and blah blah blah, but now I don't HAVE to share Toby. I'm not sitting in a corner being jealous that Toby is better behaved for my partner, because it's excusable to be angelic for a grandparent.

I'm allowed to be mildly annoyed at my dad, but I wouldnt want to feel that way towards someone I was with.

...I'm searching for a 'poetic' way to end this but it's late and my bran is mush... so here is how I spent my Valentines day:

Made chocolates

 Hung out with a turtle and some horses

 Built a snow castle 

 With the love of my life

February Blahs

First of all, I want to say thank for all the feedback I've been getting about the book chapter I posted.
It was kind of a 'forgotten' project and I had written it off as a therapy project, but now I want to finish it. Writer's block sucks lol. I also know it's insanely hard to get anything published if you are a 'nobody', so I've been getting discouraged by that too..

So yeah... It's February... and I feel blah.

I try to like winter, I do. I try to not imprint on Toby that winter is the time of year that we stay inside and be miserable. But lately he keeps asking to do things that we can't do in the winter. He wants to hoe in the garden, he wants to ride on his truck outside, he wants me to throw the ball up in the roof so he can catch it when it comes off, he wants to stop at every playground we see...
All those things we COULD do in the winter, but he barely likes walking in his snowsuit, let alone climbing around in it. He won't even climb our front step when he has his snow gear on.
So to avoid tantrums and i-told-you-sos, i just say no before we're all miserable.
Yesterday there were 6 instances where my answer was "Well... that may be a better thing to do when the snow melts"
I feel like i'm turning winter into a non-fun time of year for him.
I"m hoping when he's older and he can move around better it will be easier.

I like a white Christmas but once this time of year comes I'm just done.

And then comes Valentine's Day.

I've never expressed much like for the holiday.
Even in relationships I complain that one shouldn't need a holiday to tell someone they love them.
And so I've never really had any big epic Valentine's story.
And now that I'm older I'm starting to wish I did.

I've become a hopeless hopeless romantic. I don't know if it was always there and I just suppressed it, or if me 'growing up' while I was at college turned me into a girly girl.
When I say 'No, don't bother, it's  just a stupid holiday", I really mean "I hope like heck that when I get home there are rose petals strewn everywhere with an outfit laid on my bed with a note reading 'Get dressed and meet me at 'such-and-such-a-place'' and then a big romantic dinner and a big romantic movie night filled with chocolate and ice cream"

And so now I find myself looking at my son and thinking that I can't wait for him to be school age so he can draw me surprise Valentine's at school and bring them home to me.

Doesn't mean I like the holiday... just I'm more a sucker for it now.

More blahs: February is one of the coldest months of the year because the sun has been off this hemisphere for so long that even though the days are getting longer, the surface temperature is still freezing. So it snows, and freezes, and we get ice storms, and I"m just sick of being cold.
Seriously this is what we look like in winter from space

Our entire country is white.
I need to take up snowboarding or something.

I feel like I need to have a positive party for winter....We'll see if i can think up enough things to make a decent list lol.

I also feel like I have no real news or stories to share at the moment.
Another 'blah'.

That's all for now!