dido

I quickly perused my blog posts and I don’t think that I’ve ever done a post on DIDO. Shocking.

We recently talked about this and we think DIDO started in 2005. At that time, the lives of our group of friends were shifting from our close-knit, Vancouver-centric lives to marriage and buying houses that forced us out of our centralized city locales. The bottom line was: we seemed to be seeing less of each other. One of my girlfriends came up with the idea of DIDO from one of her girlfriends, who was doing the same thing with a group of friends. The concept is simple: once every other month, we would take turns organizing a get together. We could either go to one of our houses and order in food or go out to eat - Dine In or Dine Out.

“We” is our group of 8 friends - 4 couples. When we started this, we mostly dined out. It was a great way to go to different restaurants and catch up with old friends at the same time. Bri and I introduced the first newcomer to DIDO probably at the beginning of 2007 - Josh. This added a new dimension to DIDO. We didn’t want things to change “too” much for just this one baby, so we tried to continue going out to restaurants. But, of course, the focus was much different for Bri and I. Also, everyone was keenly aware that mealtimes are much more…distracted with babies so we tried to go to more family friendly places. Even though we didn’t mean to, we slowly started to change the tone of DIDO.

Towards the end of 2007, M and J introduced their first newcomer to DIDO. Our group of 8 was now a group of 10 and growing!

Today, 7 years after starting DIDO, when we are lucky enough to get all 4 families out, we have to reserve a table for 14 - 8 adults and 6 kids. And we rarely get together JUST to go to a restaurant. These days, it’s all about the kids. We’ve done Canada Day celebrations, picnics at the beach or water park, Kris Kringle’s and countless dine in’s, because they are SO much easier than dining out!

MJME organized our October DIDO and managed to get 3 our of our 4 families out to the pumpkin patch last Sunday morning (LPD, we missed you guys!). It was pouring rain on the drive out to Langley and we almost turned around and headed for dim sum. But dumb luck (and lack of being able to get in touch with everyone to change plans!) brought us out to Aldor Acres. We thought it might be a short, wet experience, but then, part way through the morning, the clouds parted and we saw sun and blue skies. It turned out to be a perfect morning for the pumpkin patch (with some great photos below)!

The kids had a blast (mostly) and by the time we left Aldor Acres just after lunch, we were happy and thoroughly chilled. We decided to drop into Tim Horton’s for hot chocolate before the drive home, but we ended up in McDonald’s. It only took 7 years for us to end up doing DIDO at McDonald’s! Ha. The best part was that we actually managed to have an adult table and kids table for probably a good 20 minutes (possibly the beginning of a new DIDO tradition?!). It may not seem long, but with kids, that’s just enough time for us to have some good conversation and finish our hot drinks. Perfect.

It will be interesting to see how our DIDO’s evolve as the kids get older. I’m so happy that we’ve managed to continue our DIDO tradition for 7 years. To LES, MJME and LPD: we are so lucky to have friends like you! Thanks and PS: I think it’s our turn to organize for December DIDO!

M, Bri, S and Josh welcome you to Aldor Acres!

“Look! It’s drooling!”

Soft, white bunny!

Bri's face has "I didn't mean REALLY kiss it!" written all over it!

Josh and S with a kitten

Hay ride out to the pumpkin patch

Searching out just the right pumpkin

Aves is clearly distraught by the hay ride and pumpkin patch

Hmm...I think this is it!

Pumpkin success!

DIDO, the next generation (sans Aves and D)

Cutie pies

Just so you don't think it was all tears for Aves!

aves vs. monchichi

Lately, Aves has had alot of practice mastering the art of the tantrum.  OK, who's kidding who?  There is no art to tantrumming.  It's a primal display of emotions and very, very irritating.

This is how the tantrum usually goes with me and Aves:

1. Aves is happily doing something.
2. Mom expresses discontent with the "something" Aves is doing.
3. Aves feels indignant and expresses discontent at Mom's discontent.
4. Mom emphasizes her discontent and indicates what she prefers Aves to be doing.
5. Aves starts crying.
6. Mom tries to calm Aves down at the same time maintaining her stance on the matter.
7. Aves crying continues to escalate (because she's not getting her way) until she has reached tantrum status.
8. Mom (surprisingly still calm in the face of a tantrum) calms Aves down.
9. Aves calms down a bit but remains indignant, muttering things along the lines of "hating" this and "no like" that.
10. Mom maintains her stance and tries to "reason" with Aves.
11. Aves crying re-escalates to a tantrum.
12. Go back to step 8 and repeat.

The last time this happened (on Tuesday), it took close to an hour to get Aves to calm down and not re-escalate.  This has been going on for awhile now and it seemed like we needed to try something new.  So the next time I saw Aves going down the tantrum path (on Wednesday!), I tried a different approach:

It was after dinner and Aves wanted an ice cream cone for dessert.  To be fair to Aves, I understood that she wanted the ice cream cone because the previous night, she had a tantrum instead of getting an ice cream cone like Josh.  She likely felt that this night, it was her turn to have ice cream.

But Bri's mom had bought us a box of chocolates to celebrate our anniversary and we had already decided to share the box of chocolates for dessert (which is what prompted Aves to say that she wanted ice cream instead).

I wasn't about to cave in to her whims, especially in light of the fact that we don't do make-ups for bad behaviour the previous night!  I told her that we were having chocolate, not ice cream, tonight and she would have the ice cream another night.

Uh-oh.  Aves was ramping up (can you believe the child was having a tantrum because we were going to have chocolate instead of ice cream?!).

So, I ran into the living room and grabbed her girl and boy monchichis.  I went back to the kitchen and showed Aves that monchichi was talking into my ear.  I said, "Look, Aves!  Monchichi said he wants chocolate and not ice cream."  Aves stopped mid-whine, with wet eyes, and started laughing.  So I continued, "Are you sure you want chocolate, monchichi?" (I help monchichi give a nod).

Aves continued to laugh thinking this was hilarious!  I pretended to make monchichi eat the chocolate, "Om nom nom nom.".  Aves laughed and laughed and laughed.  Oh my gosh.  It worked!

Finally, I nonchalantly asked Aves, "See, Aves?  Do you want chocolate like monchichi?".

The smile abruptly disappeared from Aves' face and she said, "No.  I want ice cream."

Damn.

bringing a gun to a rock fight

The kids are loving playing rock, paper, scissors these days.  Josh is pretty good at it.  There is seemingly no strategy to it, but Josh can beat me consistently.  We've even tried incorporating lizard and Spock.

Aves can't quite get the timing of saying her outcome with what her hands are doing.  It's pretty cute and we all get a kick out of it (including Aves).

This morning, we were out for brekkie and towards the end, the kids decided they wanted to play rps.  Aves was playing with Bri and I guess she got tired of losing/getting the timing wrong, because she decided to play the hand that trumped us all...

the road to vegetarian...

...is paved with turkeys and chickens.

Now that Josh is in Kindergarten and making sense of the world, he had all sorts of questions surrounding the Thanksgiving tradition of turkey on this past long weekend:

J: Mommy, are we having turkey for Thanksgiving?

Y: No, we’re having chicken.

J: Why aren’t we haven’t turkey?

Y: Because there are only 4 of us eating it.  Turkey’s are just big chickens.  Since we don’t have many people eating, we don’t need a turkey.

J: Do you think the turkey wants to be killed?

Y: (Ugh.  Seriously?!)  Uhhh…what do you think, Josh?

J: I don’t think the turkey wants to be killed.

I think at that point, I changed the subject because he caught me off guard and I didn’t know what to say!  But later on at dinner, the conversation came up again as we were eating our Thanksgiving chicken:

J: Mommy, do you think this chicken wanted to be eaten?

Y: Well, I don’t think the chicken was thinking about being eaten when it was alive.  Chickens have really small brains (good one, Mom!) so I don’t think that they think of much.  They are just happy to be running around (I’m considering my chicken was free range, of course!) and getting fed.

J: I don't think that chickens what to be eaten.
Y: (In my best trying to be empathetic voice) Well, Josh, if you don't want to eat chickens or turkeys, then you don't have to.  Just tell me and I won't give you any.

What else am I suppose to say when the kid is questioning the ethics behind eating fowl?!

fiery girl

Today, Aves and I were driving home from the park. We were listening to music and singing along. Then, Aves says this to me:

“Mommy, when I grow up I want to be a singer…and set the world on fire.”

Wow. Why do I get the feeling that we’ve got our hands full with our little girl?!

almost 6 years

It is almost 6 years to the day that diapers made their first appearance in our house and I think we are finally seeing the light at the end of the diaper tunnel!

Today was Aves’ first completely dry butt day! Yay for Aves! She has resisted potty training since we started trying when she turned 3. We didn’t push the issue because, honestly, it wasn’t that big a deal to me. But Aves will be 3 1/2 in October and the idea that she had no desire to rid herself of wet or poopie diapers boggles my mind! So, when school (and pre-school) started, we finally decided that it was time to REALLY work on it.

Even though the potty chart didn’t work for Josh, I figured we would try it on Aves. Wow. Talk about results! It’s taken a couple of weeks, but today Aves rocked the toilet.

It started great with her waking up with a dry diaper. When I finally got up, I asked her to sit on the toilet and she peed. Woo! Hoo! I knew it was as good a time as any to try underwear all day (even though we planned to be out most of the day). At one point, while we were out, I panicked because Aves hadn’t pooed all day, so it had to be coming soon, and we were going to hop in the car for a bit of a car ride home. She wore a pull-up, but never did anything in it. Right up until bedtime, Aves did all her stuff on the toilet or potty and kept her butt completely dry all day.

Now, I know at 3 1/2, she is by no stretch of the imagination breaking any potty training records. I’m posting more because I can’t believe that the day is fast approaching when we will be diaper free! Can it really be?! One thing is for sure: when we finally reach that milestone of being diaper-free, I will not look back at those diapering days and ever claim that I miss changing diapers! Ha!

loss (aka loose, the sequel)

On Thursday, Josh lost his first tooth. Someone said (or I read somewhere?) that it can take a couple of weeks for a tooth to fall out after it starts wiggling. Well, just so you don’t have to do the math, it was 15 days from the time that Josh’s tooth started wiggling that it fell out. Unfortunately, Josh asked me this question because, I’m guessing, he wanted to know how long it will be for next time. Sigh.

I found out about the tooth when I was at work and when I got home, Josh was full of smiles and pride about the lost tooth. He was so excited and had so many questions about why his tooth fell out and when the “adult” tooth was going to come in and whether it was going to hurt. Little did I know that Josh was not all smiles and pride when his tooth fell out while he was in the morning line-up right before walking into his classroom. (I learned this the next day from the moms when I dropped Josh off at school.) Apparently, he was playing with the tooth while he was in line and his tongue pushed it out. He was upset and crying (possibly about the blood?) and when one of the mom’s reassured him that it was all ok that his tooth was suppose to fall out, he sobbed, “No it wasn’t! I pushed it out with my tongue!”. I guess at some point during the day, he managed to convince himself that it was all meant to be, because by the time I got home, there was no evidence of tooth loss trauma.

Instead, we started our discussion about the tooth fairy. We didn’t make a big deal about it, just explained that the tooth fairy takes the tooth and leaves something behind. Josh seemed to take this all in stride and didn’t ask too many questions. At bedtime, I put the tooth in a box (for ease of locating) and under his pillow. The next morning, Josh made no mention of the tooth! Ha. Clearly, surprises from the mythical tooth fairy are not high on Josh’s list of morning priorities. I asked him about the tooth and he said that he was waiting for me before he checked to see what the tooth fairy left for him. Hmmm…fear, perhaps?

We went upstairs and Josh pulled the box out from under his pillow. He started to get excited now that he had the box in his hands. He opened it and declared, “I GOT A GOLD COIN!”. I clarified that it was a loonie, but a big deal nonetheless. We started to talk about options for his “gold” coin. I told him he could put it in his piggy bank or, when we went to my work the following day, he could use to buy a treat from our vending machine. He thought about this for a bit and then he said, “Mommy, if I put my coin in my piggy bank, do I still get a treat from the vending machine?”. Damn kid. I gave a vague answer and he said he wanted just to keep the coin in the box (I guess he WAS pretty excited about it!). I said that was fine too, but when his next tooth fell out we would need the box for that tooth. Josh finally decided he wanted to put the coin in his piggy bank. Yay for saving!

Soon after this, Josh said, “Mommy, one of my friends gets more than one coin for his tooth.”. Dammit! Don’t kids know that they’re not suppose to disclose this information to each other?! (A friend likened it to grown-ups talking about salaries. Ha.) I can’t remember what I said, but I managed to skirt around the issue. There was NO way I was caving into tooth fairy peer pressure. When I went to drop off Josh at school that morning, I got clarity on this issue. Josh was still very proud of his absence of a tooth and went on to show his friends. One of the boys came up to me and said that when he lost his tooth, he got 2 coins because he lost his first tooth when he was a baby and the tooth fairy never came back then because he was too young. Aha! His mom confirmed that when his first tooth actually fell out, he was also given money for a tooth that got knocked out when he was a baby. Apparently, Josh seems to have selective hearing when it comes to coins from the tooth fairy!

And I’m still not sure how Josh is taking the whole loss of tooth experience. He keeps asking when the next took is coming in and that he can’t feel it. Today, he asked me if his back teeth will fall out too. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens when the next tooth starts wiggling...