… and family!

Yesterday was one of those days.

It wasn’t a bad day per se, but it was extremely busy and I was trying to juggle a whole pile of things. I’ve taken on a lot this week between preparing for my cousin’s wedding and extra responsibilities in planning the new community garden, plus soccer season started this week.

At breakfast yesterday morning, I was planning out my day when I remembered that their music lesson that day was the last class of the year, and it was party day and they were supposed to come an hour early so they could party with the other class. I remember just in time to try to hurry the boys through the rest of their morning preparation and get out the door in time. Soren was NOT impressed and put up quite a fight, but I finally managed to get him excited about going to a party.  I had also just remembered that their first soccer game was that night, and Soren’s only running shoes had broken velcro that needed fixing so while the boys buckled themselves into the van, I grabbed some new velcro scraps and sewing tools and tossed them into my day bag which perpetually holds a spare change of clothes for Soren and my novel.  I figured I could fix them while the boys were partying.

I was just walking out the door when the phone rang, and the teacher’s assistant apologetically explained that class had to be cancelled because the teacher had a family emergency.  So I had two excited boys buckled up and no party to go to… so we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s instead and had a bit of fun over there.

Fast forward to soccer.  Since I didn’t get to fix the shoes during the party, I was scrambling to sew them while the boys finished their supper.  As we went to leave the house, I repacked my day bag with stuff we’d need for the game.  I took out the remaining sewing stuff and my book, and kept the extra clothes and added jackets and mittens just in case.  It seemed like there was a lot of sand in my bag, so I took it outside and shook it out and then repacked it.  Off we went.

Soccer was great – amazing actually – but that will be another tale.

Fast forward again to bedtime.  I stayed up pretty late trying to get a bunch of my work done.  Finally I couldn’t work anymore, so I dragged myself up to bed around midnight, and gratefully crawled under the covers and got comfy.  I opened my book for a few minutes of bedtime reading, and… I was TOTALLY SHOWERED IN SAND.

So at midnight, there I was vacuuming sand out of my bed.  I couldn’t help but laugh.

Replaying the day through my head, I realized that in the morning when I had packed for the party, I had dumped my book in my day bag, followed by Soren’s shoes for fixing.  And his shoes were full of sand.  The sand got everywhere, including inbetween every page of my book.  Ha!

I have been meaning to post this since Christmas, and now I’ll have forgotten half the stories.  But the gist of it is that Aidan has an incredible knack with numbers.  Soren is pretty good too, but Aidan just seems to understand how numbers and counting work in a very intuitive (and curious) way.  Here are some snippets of conversations or things he has said since Christmastime onwards:

“Five minus one is four.  Four minus one is three.  Three minus one is two.  Two minus one is one.  One minus one is zero!  Zero minus one is… Mommy, what is zero minus one?”

(laughing) “Well, technically you start counting backwards after zero, and we call those negative numbers. So zero minus one would be negative one. ”

“Oh, ok.” (thoughtful)

Then, a day or two later, he says “Mommy, do you know what three plus four is?  Just the regular four, not the other four.”  I think he was remembering the negative number lesson.  Then again that day, “Mommy, do you know what one hundred plus 2 is?  The normal 2, I mean.  It’s one hundred and two!”

***

“Mommy, did you know that two pluses fours is eight?”

“Well no.  Two plus four isn’t eight,” I corrected him.

“No, not two plus four.  Two pluses fours.  Look.”  Aidan held up his fingers, showing me four fingers on each hand. “Two pluses fours is eight.”

“OH!” I was astonished. “You mean two times four is eight!”

***

(Counting to himself)  ”Ten.  Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety. One hundred!”

***

(Sitting quietly at McDonalds for fifteen minutes, then speaks)

“Dad … four plus one plus three … is eight.”

Then shortly afterwards, “ten plus eleven…” (without looking at his hands) ” … is twenty-one. Right?”

***

“Mommy, three sixes is eighteen.”

***

Stuff like that last one he will do in his head.  He almost never uses his fingers to count anything anymore. He makes up number games and will sit and do addition or subtraction in his head (or even multiplication, evidently), mumbling as he goes.  And he’s always talking about finding number patterns in things (and patterns in general, actually).

On my “To Do” list this winter was the large task of organizing my craft stuff. It has grown considerably since the boys started enjoying crafts, and I’ve learned that since we do crafts at the kitchen table, the craft stuff has to live in the kitchen too. Until now, the craft stuff has been strewn all over the house in various nooks.

So after a lot of shopping, I determined that the only good solution was to make a custom unit. Dad offered to help, and I drew up the plans!

Aidan watched me work with a great deal of interest. In fact, every time I got out the tape measure and started making calculations, he wanted to help. And when I started sketching plans, he insisting on helping and sketching plans for shelves too.

I delivered the plans to Dad, and he built them in hardly any time at all! We went over to their house one day, and the boys helped to assemble one of the units, and they helped me make the fabric-covered boxes that function as drawers inside each cubby hole. Aidan in particular wanted to help with every step of drawer making.

Then Dad brought over the finished shelves and installed them. After he had left, Aidan looked at the shelves and said “Is Grandpa all done?”

“Yes,” I said, “He’s all done. The shelves are all finished! Hooray!”

“But,” said Aidan, “I helped draw the plans. Those are your plans. I drew really high shelves. Where are my shelves?”

I thought that was pretty cute, although a bit sad too! Poor kid.

But it gets worse. In order to make room for the new shelves, of course I had to move all the plastic storage drawer towers that had collected in that spot, holding some of our most popular craft stuff. Aidan pointed to the largest one. “Where are we going to put that, Mommy? You moved it. Where is it going to go now?”

“Oh, we don’t need it anymore, because we have new shelves and drawers! Now we don’t need this one. We’ll just get rid of it. Maybe we’ll give it to somebody else.”

His eyes opened wide in horror, and his lip quivered. In a matter of seconds he was bawling and completely undone.

“Oh sweetie!” I hugged him, realizing what I had said. “It’s ok, we’re going to keep all our craft stuff! We’re keeping everything inside the drawers. We’re just going to give away the empty drawers.” But it was too late – he was already broken down into sobbing and it took a good five minutes before he was calm enough to process what I was saying.

Since then, he has been absolutely obsessed with finishing the drawer-making project, and transferring the craft stuff into the new spot. The moment I had a few drawers ready to go, he grabbed them and moved all his crayons, glue, scissors, playdough, beads, pipecleaners, pompoms, and a few other things into the new drawers. But there aren’t enough finished drawers yet, and he’s clearly extremely anxious that if we don’t get the drawers done soon, the rest of the craft stuff might disappear with the old drawers.

“Mom, we need to make a new box now for the paint stuff,” he’ll announce periodically. “I think we should work on boxes today. Can we make boxes, so we can move the paint stuff?”

I feel bad. He’s just terrified of losing his craft stuff, and I don’t think he’ll be at ease until these boxes are all done!

Today I called the boys for lunch.  Aidan came running and sat down to eat with me.

About twenty minutes later, Soren appeared.

“Sorry I took so long Mom,” he said casually.  ”I was just playing my game, and I had stuff to do.  I had to finish my mission before I could come for lunch.”

He was playing “Tonka Town” – and I’m pretty sure they don’t call the activities “missions”, but I guess he was familiar enough with the concept of video games having missions!  Made me laugh.

I had a pretty funny conversation the other day with the boys.  We were driving to West Edmonton Mall for a quick stop before visiting their friends Lucas and Mya.  As we approached the mall, the conversation went something like this (I can’t remember who said what, but they were both chattering away):

Kid:  ”We’re going to West Edmonton Mall!  Hey, is West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton?”

Me:  ”Yes it is.”

Kid:  ”Yeah, that’s because it’s called West Edmonton.  And West is US!  We are West!”

Me, laughing:  ”Yes, our name is West.”

Kid:  ”And we live in Edmonton, right?”

Me:  ”Yes we do.”

Kid:  ”And our house is on Earth.  Earth is our planet, right?”

Me:  ”Yup, Earth is our planet.”

Kid:  (thoughtful)  ”What planet are Mya and Lucas from?”

Soren continues to have problems potty training.  I have been pulling my hair out getting so frustrated with him.  We have periods of success, immediately followed by periods of severe regression.  We have tried incentive rewards, praise, various forms of discipline and punishment, and even ignored the problem for a while.  Nothing is working.  The problem is with both #1 and #2, and Soren gets incredibly upset and anxious when you even mention the potty.  It’s becoming a real problem to go anywhere, especially visiting friends, knowing that this stinky, messy, accident could crop up anytime, anywhere, soiling… anything.  And with kindergarten on the horizon and no sign of improvement (the opposite, actually) I am getting pretty worried.

So anyway, we hit a new backwards step this week.  No matter what problems he has, he has always had successful days when he is at home naked from the waist down.  So this week after a bad string of accidents, I kept him naked.  He had accidents.  Several.  Of both kinds.

After the second #2 accident, that decided me.  I picked up the phone and called the pediatrician, and they were able to fit me in immediately, today!  So off we went.  I described the problem, and he asked questions about Soren’s comprehension (fine) and understanding of the purpose of the toilet (fine).  He gave him a pretty thorough exam, and then wrote up a prescription and described a treatment plan for the next month.

It’s pretty simple and no big deal – but it explains a whole lot.  He said that Soren is full to the brim with poop – so full, that his bladder doesn’t have enough room to expand properly, which means that it’s almost always full too.  So he’s been living – for quite a long time – in a state of constant full-ness, and hasn’t had the chance to even experience what it feels like to be totally empty and relieved, and therefore recognize the difference between needing to go to the bathroom, and not needing to.  He just always feels the same.  And since he’s always full almost to bursting, he’s constantly leaking bits out.

The treatment is a stool softener, and over the next month the doctor hopes we can clean him out completely and let him have some time to figure out the difference between when he needs to go and when he doesn’t.

It definitely explains SO much about his behavior and his bathroom problems.  I sure hope this works out.  :)  Of course, I’m feeling incredibly guilty for getting so mad at him all those other times…