Mommy needs a break. I’m not your mommy so don’t stress about it. I will still be posting here, just not in such long form and not so obsessively. For the summer, I’m going to focus on finishing my book and writing other writing. And feeling feelings. And also doing absolutely nothing. And thinking about the Real Housewives of Vancouver. And getting to know different ice cream flavours. And running a marathon. Kidding about the marathon. See you soon.

Jowita

Anyway. My favourite book that they’ve been reading lately is Big Bear Hug by Nicholas Oldland.

I love everything about this book: the drawings, the humour in it, the simple, light story. The toddler’s a bit too young to get the humour yet (in the drawings) because he didn’t laugh as hard as I did when we read this book. Buy it. It’s awesome.

Recently, I ordered one of my favourite childhood books. It’s The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren who to American children is mostly known as the lady who wrote Pippi Longstocking. In Poland where I grew up, she’s like the goddess of children’s books and because Polish children are naturally melancholic, The Brothers Lionheart was read eagerly and widely – it’s a book about death and afterlife and evil dragons and war and honour. Polish children were all over that shit. It’s a beautiful, beautiful book and if you ever find yourself confused about what to say to a kid being terrified of death and dying this is a good book to read. When I got it, I read some of it out loud to my toddler because he won’t understand a thing but the reading voice calms him down… Anyway, I will put it away for now and let him read it when he’s eight or nine.

Other books that I absolutely loved as a child and read from the time I was six are the Le Petit Nicolas series René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé . I had every single volume (still do, though it’s in Polish) and this is the kind of a book that will make both children and parents laugh equally hard. Here’s why, from Wikipedia because I’m lazy and Wikipedia’s much smarter than me anyway, “The humour of the books derives from their unique story-telling style: the adventures of Little Nicolas are told in the first person by Nicolas himself. On the one hand, the books are a parody of the story-telling habits of little children; for example, the author makes frequent use of stylistic features such as run-on sentences and employs an egocentric, naive point of view. On the other hand, adults are the targets of the books’ humour when the straightforward and uncomplicated worldview of the child narrator exposes the flaws of adult perception. The subversive element in the Petit Nicolas thus made it an early example of modern children’s literature that is centred around the experience of the child, rather than an adult interpretation of the world.”

One day, when our son was about 14 months old we realized a terrible thing. He wasn’t talking much. Not that he was completely mute but he had a limited vocabulary that was simply embarrassing especially if we were somewhere in public and ran into people. We would watch them struggle as they tried to politely decipher what “madawadabaapple!” meant and after a while we would resignedly translate: he enjoys his apple.

We pretended that the looks of pity and concern didn’t make our feelings hurt but they did. Nobody ever said anything and they would even try to humour us by telling us about their own children’s delays – no teeth till the kid was 9 months old, kid still stuck on trying out different genders at 3, terrifying memory lapses when recalling nursery rhymes at 2, etc. It was nice that our friends tried to reassure us this way but the horror prevailed, especially when we’d look down and there he would be — our ignorantly happy son babbling to himself like a drunk monkey.  And even without the outside world judging harshly, we were worried privately about our son’s ability to communicate. How was he ever going to get a job? Ask for directions? Ask somebody out on a date?

Listen, it’s not that he was a bad child about it – he was as determined as we were, we could almost tell (almost – we could never actually tell without him unable to articulately state his desires). He pointed to things. He made up words for things he couldn’t pronounce. We speculated that he wanted to talk, that he was trying. But sometimes trying is not enough. And we couldn’t ignore the simple truth. Like the truth that was staring us in the ears. in the face in staring us in the ears: our son couldn’t even say his own name!

So we did what every loving parent would do. We took him to a specialist. The specialist was a young man at a child centre who listened to our concerns.  We hoped that he wasn’t just some random guy, like maybe the janitor who just happened to lean against the front desk when we approached with our concern. But no, we were pretty sure he was the real deal:  He nodded so well. This specialist had a monopoly on nodding his head. And he said he had encountered children like our son before and that there was a place to get help. Speech-therapy classes, he said the magic three words.

By the time we finally got a referral, our son was 16 months old and he tried to trick us from going to the place by finally learning to say his own name. But we knew better than to let this fool us – after all, he hasn’t exactly told us in a complete sentence that he didn’t want to go, had he?

My son attended the Speech Therapy classes three times. Out of all of the children there he made the most impressive progress. Not only that – he was the youngest in class and we could tell how surprised the workers with his ability to repeat words and listen to instructions. We could tell that at first they were stunned by his progress because – how ironic! – they were speechless when we talked about our troubles with our son’s speaking abilities. But eventually I saw them getting used to it. I saw them drawing on their clipboards – highly arched curves of progress on our son’s chart. A lot of them were students and they even fought a little bit over the one-on-ones with our son – I even wondered, somewhat cynically, if being able to show how well and steadily our son progressed insured higher marks, if it inflated the average somehow.  No matter. One thing was sure: the Speech Therapy classes were helping immensely.

We withdrew our son from the Speech Therapy after only three sessions. The student therapists eagerly suggested coming back to check in, but at that point we had a much more serious issue to deal with. You see, when running our son’s feet didn’t quite leave the ground for an instant in each step – in other words he wasn’t technically running, just walking really fast. We made an appointment with our family doctor to see if we could get a referral to a specialist – and after we did that, we held each other closely, unable to cry, frozen with terror, as our son played happily on the floor.

J.

P.S. By the way, there’s a really interesting book called Drop the Worry Ball (by Alex Russell and co-authored by Tim Falconer) that I’m currently reading. It’s mostly targeted to parents of older children but it’s a good read for any parents as it talks about raising happy, self-reliant kids in the age of helicopter-parenting. I recommend it for all of us who find they could probably submit a story to the Fretful Mother magazine.

Okay, I’ll shut it with the lame intros now. I just want to tell you that yesterday, I spontaneously walked into a downtown fire station and asked the nice firefighter if he would give me and my toddler a tour of the place. And he did. He said that you need to call ahead to organize bigger tours but he was totally cool with showing us the station right then and there.

We got to sit in the fire truck cab, we got to check out the uniforms (we learned about colours of helmets corresponding to different ranks), we saw a short demonstration on using the main, back hoses and the toddler even got to unlatch a special front compartment where there was another hose. Then the nice fireman ran upstairs to show us how he gets to slide down the pole. The toddler shouted like a maniac, “AGAIN” as soon as the poor man’s feet would touch the ground and this went on for a few awkward minutes too many. I told the fireman to ignore the kid, that it was okay to stop. I think he was relieved. Then we thanked him and left.  Here’s some numbers for the Toronto fire Services.

Okay, the point is that there are lots of places in the city you might be able to visit if you ask nicely enough or call ahead. Or sometimes you can just spontaneously walk in somewhere and ask for the tour – a small kid in tow is almost as good as a unicorn and people are often happy to bend a few rules when presented with one (kid or a unicorn).

Two more places that have been tested in Toronto, are the Model Railroad Club, (you have to call ahead to book birthday parties for kids and the kids have to be a bit older, I think, like five and up) and the National ballet school ( open doors event is this Saturday).  I heard rumours about chocolate factory tours and special ins to the Canadian Opera Company and many other places that can be kid- and unicorn-friendly.

J.

It definitely wasn’t 1998 either because we came with a real kid instead of a cute doll pack.

The tunes were good. Stuff  like this. Not too aggressive but nicely savage, perfect for the beach to stimulate all the postmo-hippies jumping around in the dirt.

Because that was the thing that hasn’t changed at all since 1998 – same postmo-hips jumping around in the dirt. Kind of a Tank-Girl-Janis-Joplin-dirty-coyote mix, complete with hula-hoops and those sticks that I’m way too lazy to look up the name of, that every hippie knows how to twirl and twist around while looking very serious and magical because in their head, at that moment, they’re the Master of Dragons or some other Wizard.

Another thing that hasn’t changed were the 24-hour party people, the club-o-mators – men with shaved chests and slicked hair and women with balloons in bikini tops. Well, the silicone — that I guess is a bit different than it used to be – much more plastic surgery around and it’s hard to tell girls’ ages.  Lots of belly button piercings, sparkling in the sun. Shiny hair and shiny lips.

Shiny stripper girls with stripper shoes, slung over their shoulders.

And the beautiful gay guys. Always beautiful gay guys who make girls like me wish I was a beautiful gay guy too.

And then us. The older people. Not necessarily by age (because no one is ever older than the Permanent Clubkid senior in un-ironic PVC pants and fluorescent tie. No one.) but by stage. The parent stage. The stage where the only person that’s going to get naked won’t be the drunken chick (formerly, me) but the toddler. And it won’t be the chick that will spontaneously run into the lake and dance in the water to the beats of Murder was the Bass ( a nice song I consider the anthem of my sickest youth) – it will be the toddler running into the water to fish out larger pieces of rock to throw it back while screaming in joy.

The toddler grew up with this sort of umcee-umcee-plinky-blink-blinky music so he was happy to bounce around and we were thankful for getting him used to it – though I know we’re ruining it for him too (because he’ll have to rebel against it, no? When he’s 15 and full of rage-y hormones?). We were happy to be at this event with him.  And it was fun to look at all those people who were exactly the same people they were 14 years ago or so. Just more silicone and better drugs, perhaps.

But here’s a funny thing about being a mom. I got hung up on a very skinny stripper girl (complete with Lucite heels that she stuffed into her plastic bag as soon as she sat-fell down on the ground). She was terribly drunk and swaying, talking to herself and breaking cigarettes before even managing to light them. She showed up with a guy who ignored her as she walked around drunkenly. Occasionally, she’d go up to him and kick him lightly in the kidneys but he wouldn’t react except for one time when he got up and shouted at her to fuck off. So she got pissed off and walked away from him. And danced in front of the speakers. At first it was just her and another drunk wonder, a strung-out bodybuilder girl with panties that said “You Wish.” The bodybuilder girl was at least my age. At that age you should probably know better. Besides, she looked like she could slug most of the testosterone bulls that she kept rubbing against, in case they got too randy. Anyway. The stripper girl was really young. Like almost kid young.

I kept trying to look for her in the crowd because I was worried about her and the fact that I was worried about her made me worried – I was definitely old. I worried about other bitches getting too drunk and too stupid. My worry, the evidence that I am no longer a young, stupid drunk bitch myself.

We had to leave eventually because the toddler threw himself in the lake in two different outfits and it was getting super pot-smoky for my taste (another sure sign of ageing). I was relieved to see the young stripper girl dancing with a bunch of (actual) kids. I thought how those kids’ moms and dads will maybe watch out for her but if not, I guess she’ll just have to live through whatever experience she’ll have to live through. Hopefully all it’ll be will be just a really terrible hangover and a spontaneous tat of  Tweety bird.

J.

Two wack-wacky-wacky we go in the water!

Wow. Wow.

I can eat my watermelon, actually

Yummy yummy watermelon

Oh, look my castle, woo.

One, two, three follow in the car. Follow.

Do you know any cops?

Yeah.

More and more.

Giraffe!

What the hot dog hot dog!

Don’t do that. Don’t do that.

The cars are sleeping. Shh, don’t wake them up.

Uno, due, ciao!

Ay caramba!

Maybe it’s the actual word I hate.

“BLOG.”

Doesn’t the word “blog” sound like some kind of a growth? Like a form of a benign cyst?

I saw my GP the other day and she said the tests show I’ve a few dormant blogs and two very active ones.  

I just had a blog removed so I may need to rest for a while, read a book or something to recover.

I think I dislike all kinds of new words that came with the Internet.

For example, “Twitter.” I’m not big on Twitter. I’m not big on it as in I’m not a fan of it, and I don’t have a lot of followers follow me on Twitter follow me follow me so perhaps my animosity comes from that. But then the word itself, the word “Twitter” – that to me sounds like an even worse medical condition than a blog. A Twitter is Sexually Transmitted Infection, clearly.

I only slept with him once but he gave me the twitter!

Oh my god, is that a twitter on your penis?

Here are few other ones that make me weak with nausea:

Feed – Don’t ask why but I immediately see a feedbag. A bag you attach to your face while you sit at your computer because you have a terrible Internet addiction and can’t be bothered to eat your dinner.

Flickr – This is what you do when you dig some dirt from underneath your nail. You flickr it.

Wiki – Another medical condition similar to hives.

Quora – This is a character from The Game of Thrones, an old witchy woman who lives on a tiny tip of a very high mountain, on a throne surrounded by a cloud.

And finally (at least for today):

Klout, which is an intestinal blockage.

J.

I Image-Googled. This is apparently a “block station.”

“Mommy tell me the story about Hugo and Daddy going to the Block Station.”

“The what?”

“The Block Station.”

“The Block Station.”

“Mommy tell it!”

“Once upon a time, Hugo and Daddy were going to the Block Station—“

“The End! Tell me another story!”

J.

Hugo’s father on the same topic but with many, many more words and also with a paycheque to show for it.

And if you don’t know who Jenny Mollen is, I feel bad for you, son.

On the other hand, I’ve raised $800 for the SickKids Foundation to sponsor my creative project –  a kids’ book that I wrote and illustrated for my son after our visits to Sick Kids hospital. (I wanted to help him deal and understand his congenital disorder called Syndactyly and show him that he was just like every other kid ever he’s got this condition.) Can you have a look at the page and send it around to your friends? I would so appreciate it. Sebastian Seahorse and the Other Fish

Also, last week it was raining really hard one day when I was walking home from daycare with my kid in the stroller. The rain was unexpected, serious, very wet. We didn’t have far to go but we were getting totally soaked. A very well-dressed woman stopped us and insisted I take her umbrella. It was a lovely umbrella with a woden handle and sleek metal detailing. I declined because we did have only a few more blocks to go, but it totally warmed my heart. Thank you, lady.

J.