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Category: Family Life
30 degrés à l’ombre
Par une bien chaude journée, mon bonhomme a du rester à la maison à cause d’une conjonctivite. Quelle meilleure occasion pour aller au parc de jeux d’eaux par une chaude journée précédant l’orage?
Random Bullets
- My apologies for the light blogging. A perfect storm of moving, listing our house, moving, medical appointments, moving, sick baby, sick baby, moving, sleepless nights, napless days and more moving has severely curtailed my ability to do anything but moving and holding babies.
- In the last couple of weeks, the twins turned 8 months, got sick and then better. One twin is on a cocktail of 4 different drugs and things — fingers crossed — seem to be settling. And by “settling” I mean that this baby is no longer crying for 2 to 4 hours for no apparent reason in the middle of the night, twice a night, night after night. Dealing with a child with a chronic condition, albeit mild and probably recoverable, has given me a new bone-deep appreciation for parents of severely ill children. It is relentless.
- Many friends and members of my family have ganged-up to give me a hand moving and looking after the children. This in turn has given me a new, bone-deep appreciation for the value of community. Some have helped me pack boxes, others have helped me prep our house for showings, others — with a medical degree — have decided that enough was enough and we shall get to the bottom of this with the babies. Some people wonder how I do it with a large family. This is how. I don’t do it, we do it. There is nothing miraculous about having a large family when you have as much support as I do. To my most awesome family and friends Cheers! (and a heartfelt thank you.) You can see how well the house shows in the gallery below. I hope to have good selling news soon!
- When we listed our house, our agent asked that we leave our kitchen table in the kitchen to make it look more kitchen-y. As a result we are eating off these two very ugly 6-ft tables. You’d think I would be looking forward to selling our house so we can get on with the business of paying off our debts, living cash-flow positive and start looking for land on which to build our forever home. But really, I just want to sell so I can get my kitchen table back.
- Did you know that you can “Like” this blog on Facebook? That’s where I started posting little twiddly things that are not worth the aggravation of using the blogging interface. You can find it here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vie-de-cirque-Le-Blog/202177269850964
Faits divers du vendredi – Édition déménagement
Friday’s Mixed Nuts – Moving Edition (on Tuesday because I didn’t have Internet last Friday and the WordPress iPhone app ate my post. Grrrrr.)
1 Une bien belle vue de ma nouvelle chambre:
Notre nouvelle maison n’a pas de voisins à l’arrière mais un petit étang. Creusé afin de récolter les eaux pluviales et empêcher les inondations, les berges en ont été aménagées afin de favoriser le développement d’un petit écosystème marécageux. L’étang est habité par quelques familles de canards, des outardes de passage, des mouettes qui pêchent pour vrai, quelques hirondelles, des carouges à épaulette et un grand héron majestueux. J’ai même vu un faucon qui chassait dans le champ qui borde le marécage. Moi qui avait peur de ne plus entendre les oiseaux (le quartier est nouveau et les arbres plutôt chétifs), je passe de la faune de forêt à la faune de marécage.
2 Deux fenêtres qui manquent de vision.
Le beige c’est la maison du voisin. Combien pour les fenêtres pleine-hauteur lors de la construction? Et personne pour vous faire remarquer que les fenêtres seraient mieux placées du côté de la maison sans voisins? Du même côté que les fenêtres pleine hauteur se trouve une belle fenêtre de coin au-dessus de l’évier de la cuisine. Pour regarder… le set de patio du voisin plutôt que la nature en faisant la vaisselle.
3 Trois voisins qui vivent en couple dans leur maison de plus de 3 000 pi. ca. Soit jeunes et affluents ou à la retraite. Moi, si j’étais seule avec un peu d’argent à dépenser, j’irais m’acheter la plus petite maison la plus chère sur le bord du canal Rideau. Je marcherais partout et je ne mangerais que rarement à la maison, préférant découvrir les restaurants qui font d’Ottawa une ville à découvrir. Mais aller me faire construire une McMansion aux confins de la banlieue, pas assez loin pour avoir les bénéfices de la campagne mais pas assez proche pour avoir les bénéfices de la ville? Très peu pour moi. Outre les différences de goûts architecturaux, nos voisins sont très sympathiques et nos plus jeunes se sont déjà fait des copains.
4 Quatre pattes moins une. Notre petite chatte grise a disparu au cours du déménagement et nous pensions qu’elle était allée se réfugier chez les voisins qui avaient offert de la garder. Les voisins se sont beaucoup attachés à notre petite chatte grise et aimeraient bien la garder avec eux. Elle est revenue 3 jours plus tard, affamée, déshydratée et avec une blessure sévère à une patte. Moi qui aurait bien aimé laisser mon chat de campagne à la campagne ais du la faire venir en ville pour la soigner. Je crois qu’elle va devoir rester avec nous.
Et parlant de quatre pattes, tapis blanc + escalier en bois franc teint noir + chien = pantoufles! Ce sont les Meshies de Barko Booties à http://www.alldogboots.com. Recommandées.
5 Cinq … C’est un secret. Je vous promets de vous écrire cinq aussitôt que c’est officiel. Pour l’instant, c’est motus et bouche cousue.
Road trip!!!
Whoa! I haven’t posted since April 28th? I may have had excuses… Like a sick toddler, followed by a sick baby, extreme sleep deprivation and preparing for a short-fused move. Yes, we are moving. Packing-up. Vacating.
We are listing our house. Preparing to put it on the market. It’s a long story and I am thinking of starting another blog to chronicle this new turn in our family’s life. But in a nutshell this is a positive change in our life. We love our current house and especially our large-family-sized kitchen and backyard but life is about more than kitchens and backyards, isn’t it?
On the bright side, we are moving into a rental property which means that we have the luxury to move out before listing our house. If you know anything about real estate, you are probably attacking your keyboard to tell me that empty houses are harder to sell than full ones, to which I reply “Don’t forget how many children I have”.
Trying to pack a house with three very young children underfoot has been an exercise in frustration. I get a box started. Assuming I find the tape-gun, I start filling it up. Then the babies wake-up. 2 hours later, it’s time to pick-up the kids from school. When I return to my box, the children have found their most favorite (book, shoes, top, toy) EVER and the content of the box are strewn across Hell’s half-acre.
When my husband and I started to talk about listing our house I said: “You realize that you will move us essentially on your own.” He said yes. I meant it.
Needing a break from doing something slightly nutty (moving a family of 10 with infant twins), I decided to do something quintessentially normal: take my two daughters to a sports competition 700 km away. I couldn’t leave my husband alone with the twins and the toddler to pack-up the house, so I brought everybody, along with my mother for supplemental handy-womanry. For a woman like me, even “quintessentially normal” ends-up slightly nutty.
It’s when I do “normal” that I realize how abnormal I am. I go to the hotel pool and I’m the only parent in the water. I look at the other parents sitting together poolside and I can see those I know telling those I don’t know that I have 8 children and the youngest are twins. I can see it by the look on people’s face, a mix of disbelief and contempt. As we return to our room to dry-up and change, I notice several families leaving together for supper or meeting to order pizza. Back to my room, I told my mother:
I don’t think people even realize that I would like to be included. I think that although I see myself as a normal person with more children than most, people see me as abnormal, different, and are either intimidated or not interested.
To which my ever-wise mother replied: “Véronique, you are not normal.” Here I was, at a sports competition 6 hours away from home, with “only” 5 children, two of them babies, one of them running a fever, when most people can’t even imagine themselves with 3. Back home, my husband “only” had 3 children and was having a blast packing-up the house. If moving is ranked as one of life’s top 5 stressful experiences, someone should talk to my husband: without the three youngest, moving was positively restful! (Worry not I have since returned with my sick infant, my restless toddler and the other, quieter, baby and any rest that may have been felt has now been annihilated).
I’m glad we went. I may have mixed feelings about the wisdom of trying to pull “normal” stunts with my abnormal gang but it all went over my athletes’ heads: they were thrilled to be there with their coach and their teammates. They were even spared the pediatric car ride, being given the opportunity to drive up and back with a friend.
Des nouvelles des jumeaux! 7 mois
This is a 7-month-update on the twins with pictures at the end!
Ève et Lucas ont maintenant 7 mois! Quand les jumeaux avaient à peu près 6 semaines j’ai rencontré une maman de jumeaux qui m’a dit que les choses deviendraient plus faciles vers 6 mois. Je suis aujourd’hui arrivée de l’autre côté de la montagne et je peux confirmer que le rythme de vie devient plus prévisible et plus facile à gérer.
Maintenant que les journées sont moins strictement orientées vers le boire et la sieste je voudrais pouvoir vous écrire un beau post sur la beauté et la grande joie d’être parent de jumeaux. Au cour du dernier mois, j’ai capturé en mémoire — mais rarement sur film — des tonnes de petits clin d’oeuil et de moments partagés entre les jumeaux et leurs frères et soeurs. J’aimerais avoir assez de talent littéraire pour vous décrire ces petits moments mais je manque de subtilité. Car la beauté d’accueillir deux bébés dans une famille déjà nombreuse se trouve dans les détails comme Lucas qui partage un gros rire gras avec sa grande soeur ou Marie qui me dit, en attendant l’autobus un matin: “Quand je serai grande j’aurais un garçon comme Lucas qui s’appellera Lucas!” Ou encore dans le regard d’un bébé qui vient de découvrir ses doigts et qui les approche et les éloigne de son visage émerveillé en se demandant par quel miracle ce nouveau joujou se déplace devant ses yeux. Ou encore dans les yeux rieurs de Ève qui préfère tout découvrir avec ses pieds, que ce soit un nouveau hochet ou une nouvelle surface. Il n’y a rien de plus beau que d’être accueillie tous les matins par deux sourires, quatre yeux qui pétillent, quatre mains qui s’agitent et quatre pieds qui gigotent.
Lorsque Lucas et Ève sont nés, une de mes amies m’a dit: “Tu vas voir, Ève va être la coquine que personne ne soupçonne et va faire passer tout le blâme de ses mauvais coups sur son frère. Mais c’est elle la chef.” J’avais trouvé ça comique puisque Ève était la plus petite, la plus tranquille, la deuxième à être née. Mais au cours des mois, j’ai bien vu qu’elle avait raison. Lucas s’endort en regardant Ève. Lorsque je les nourri dans la chaise-haute, je dois donner la première bouchée à Ève sinon Ève crie et Lucas refuse de manger avant d’avoir vu sa soeur le faire. C’est elle l’alpha jumelle: les apparences peuvent être trompeuses!
Au niveau de l’allaitement, je pourrais écrire un post complet… peut-être même un livre! Les 6 premiers mois d’allaitement ont été un gros défi. J’ai du supplémenter les bébés avec de la formule pour compenser pour un sein qui ne produit rien. J’ai du allaiter en tandem afin de stimuler ma production avant d’offrir le biberon. La routine de boire pouvait me prendre 90 minutes et recommençait 1 heure plus tard. Je devais toujours garder un calcul mental du nombre de bouteilles, du nombre de millilitres, à qui c’était le tour, jour et nuit, jour après jour, nuit après nuit. À 7 mois, lorsque nous avons commencé la nourriture solide, les bébés ont graduellement diminué leur consommation de lait au point où ils peuvent se passer de biberons. J’ai arrêté de les allaiter en tandem et ils prennent leurs tours au sein qui produit. Je suis tellement heureuse d’avoir attendu 6 mois! Si j’avais arrêté d’allaiter à 5 mois, alors que j’arrivais au bout de ma corde, j’aurais vécu les défis sans recevoir ma récompense. Nous sommes maintenant arrivés à la récompense et quel bonheur!
Une image valant mille mots, voici une petite récapitulation du mois d’avril dans ma vie de cirque:
Let him cry it out
Lucas is not the best sleeper baby. He is a fun and engaging little dude who likes to party.
He also likes his mom. A lot. Almost from birth he would look around for mom whenever someone else was holding him and react to the sound of her voice. At night, he likes to know his mom is nearby.
Parenting experts say that babies wake-up at night because they lack the skill to fall asleep on their own. But Lucas says it’s all nonsense. He can fall asleep on his own just fine. In fact, his mommy always put him down in bed wide awake. He and Ève will chat a while then Ève will fall asleep and Lucas will keep chatting her up a bit longer until it gets boring. Then he falls asleep looking at Ève.
Lucas wakes-up several times a night to check on mom. Mom finds it a bit tiresome: if you include the last 6 weeks of the twin pregnancy, the longest stretch of sleep mommy’s had in the last 9 months was, oh, about 2 hours. And most nights, between Lucas, Ève and Sarah, mommy can be up as often as every 45 minutes between midnight an 4:00 am. Some nights mommy wonders why she bothers going to bed at all: talk about setting yourself up for failure!
So about once a month since Lucas turned 3 months, mommy decides that she will listen to the experts and let Lucas “learn” to fall asleep on his own. The experts say that after crying for a while, Lucas will learn to “self-soothe” by using his fingers. But Lucas says this is all nonsense : he knows perfectly well where his fingers are and how to put them in his mouth. But that’s of little use to him since they are not attached to mommy.
Other experts say that mommy should give Lucas some water at night so that Lucas will learn not to be hungry. But Lucas says this is all nonsense: when Daddy gives him water or a pacifier, he still needs to know that mommy is near.
So mommy decides once a month that Lucas should cry it out. And it lasts, oh, about 5 minutes. Because nature did a good job and when Lucas cries, this is what mommy is up against:
Allocation
This post is about pocket money and allowances. Yes, our children get an allowance. No, it’s not linked to their chores. Chores happen because we are part of a family. Nobody has the option of not participating. Allowances serve the purpose of teaching saving and management, exposing our children’s financial temperaments and flaws, and teaching the difference between a want and a need.
Cette semaine, en panne d’inspiration, je me suis tournée vers Facebook et Facebook a répondu. Mon amie Luce a proposé une publication sur l’argent de poche et les allocations. Ça tombe bien, j’ai toujours eu l’intention de le faire.
La réponse courte: Oui. Les 4 plus vieux reçoivent $20 par mois. Si vous voulez lire plus sur notre approche face à l’argent de poche, continuez à lire ci-dessous.
I haven’t worked a day in my life
Yesterday I received a call from someone at Sun News Network asking if I would give a short interview on why being a stay-at-home mom is hard work. It was to be in response to some comment made by someone about Ann Romney, the wife of Republican leadership hopeful Mitt Romney. Ann Romney stayed home to raise her five sons and all she got was this lousy t-shirt saying “I haven’t worked a day in my life”… or at least, that’s what the Democrat woman who should not be thought, perceived or otherwise considered to be tied to Barack Obama’s reelection campaign said.
In the end, the interview did not happen. The producer decided to go with the “opposite point” which I think means a stay-at-home mom who will give an interview about how she hasn’t worked a day in her life. Or maybe a working mom who thinks she has it harder than Ann Romney. Fair enough.
I found that quite funny because I am, to most people, “the opposite point.” I am on maternity leave which makes me both a working mom and a stay-at-home mom. But even on a more stricter understanding, I have seen both sides of the work-home balance. To most, I am an odd animal. Too stay-at-home for the working crowd, too working mom for the stay-at-home crowd. In the Mommy Wars, I am foe to all (although I prefer to think of myself as friend to everyone).
That whole episode about whether stay-at-home moms do real work made me laugh because when you talk to women who prefer to work outside the home, they will usually say that they need to remain engaged, stimulated, they need the challenge of work to avoid turning to mush. I stayed at home for 10 years while having my first four children. Then I went back to law school to get a Master’s degree and went to work after graduating. Now I am on maternity leave with three little ones under 3. I’m not convinced that work is a challenge compared to raising children at home. As I wrote to a Facebook friend who commented on the issue:
I used to look forward to the end of my mat leave* so I could get (a) more money, and (b) a lunch break. I guess I must have missed something.
(* I’m not looking forward to the end of my mat leave, it was just for effect.)
All mothers work hard, whether they work at home with their little ones or outside the home. What is often missed by the critics of the working mom (aren’t we all?) is that the quantity of housework doesn’t decrease because mom works outside the home. The working mom, while she doesn’t suffer the minute-by-minute aggravation of dealing with young children, has the same mothering/homemaking requirements as the stay-at-home mom. She just has a lot less time to accomplish them. This is a hard-learned lesson from being a working mom and one I will gladly share with you.
When I decided to return to school, I did so because I wanted to hit the workplace. My law degree was dated and I was coming out of a pretty rough time personally. After 10 years at home with my children, a combination of factors and people in my life — most well-meaning, others not so — had led me to believe that I was a rather lousy mother. Not cut out for this. I went back to law school and I excelled. My husband stayed home for the first year of my studies and we found an amazing caregiver for the second year and onward. Including my graduate studies, I have been working outside the home for 6 years.
What I realized was that even with an amazing husband who pulls well above his weight around the house, the job of a mother changes very little despite the time spent out of the house. I still had to cook, and clean and make sure that homework was done and that laundry was cycled. And while my children were mostly fed, clothed and up-to-date in their schoolwork (minus a few close calls), once all the basic stuff was done I had very little energy left to be a good mom. A patient mom. An upbeat mom. A listening mom. An understanding mom.
Who has it worst? Being a good mom is hard work, period. Working mom or stay-at-home mom, we all have 24h in our days. Now that I am home full-time, I can do housework, cooking and cleaning while the children are at school, between the demands of my three little ones. Now that I am no longer trying to clean-up our act during the weekends when the children are coming and going, I have more flexibility to do unimaginable things with my kids, like taking nature walks or just chatting. Moreover, I’m not nearly as grouchy when they drag dirt in. So who has it harder? It depends how you fill your 24h. Being a good mom takes time, but I know people who can do in a day what I can hardly do in a week. Work obligations compresses the time available to raise raise children and generally running the home show. In that sense, working moms have a greater challenge than stay-at-home moms. On the other hand, if it wasn’t for stay-at-home moms, how many school activities would never happen? Working moms owe a debt of gratitude to their stay-at-home colleagues who make the school/neighborhood/community world go round.
It’s not how many hours we have, it’s how we fill them.
Walking in Peter’s footsteps: My long Lenten journey
I don’t often write about my faith… I don’t think I ever have. But there is something about a supernatural outlook that makes it easier to take the craziness of a large family. I am neither formed enough or literate enough in faith matters to publish about it and I leave the inspirational material to skilled professionals (like Leila at Little Catholic Bubble). But this is the Easter season and the high point of the Christian liturgical year. It would feel wrong to let it pass on my blog unmentioned.
Continue reading “Walking in Peter’s footsteps: My long Lenten journey”
Hey Vero 