Why we like our stuff old and crappy....

Recently they built a new library by our house.  I took Max for a visit and we chose some BRAND NEW board books to take home for the week.  Among these borrowed books was a much beloved book with flaps.  Max especially liked the flap that revealed a kitty underneath.  The problem with flap books is that, although they love them, small children tend to rip off the flaps in their enthusiasm.  Usually this is not a problem with library books as they have already been so loved by all the other children that no one will notice your child's contribution.  Not so with BRAND NEW library books.  And so Gus and I were attempting to be very militant about making sure that Max did not rip the flaps. 

One of the many parenting lessons I've learned is that attempting to be militant at protecting stuff from children never works.  Eventually you will get distracted, and toddlers are very adept at picking those moments to attack whatever precious thing you have been desperately trying to protect.  The board book proved no exception. 

While in the middle of a distracting task, Gus hears Max's monologue from the adjacent room:

"Kitty!  Flap no rip....no rip flap...no...no... RIP IT!"

While our vigilance skills are definitely lacking, we are getting pretty good with the tape. Somebodies kid had to be the first to love the library book, right?

"Kiss it?"

Like most parents, Greta and I have taken to kissing whichever part of Max's body has been hurt in a tumble.  Like most kids, these kisses ease Max's pain like a tonic.  (Besides which, it's adorable and it's a great excuse to give him kisses.)  Nowadays, whenever Max hurts himself he runs crying to the nearest parent asking, "Kiss it?  Kiss it?"

Today he tripped over the vacuum cleaner and hurt his bum.  (Can you see where this is going?)  I picked up our crying child and said, "Aw.  Did you hurt your bum?"  Max looked up wearily at me with those big blue eyes full of big crocodile tears, barely containing his sobs, and asked if I would "kiss it?"

Rocking horses a come-from-behind hit

Last xmas Max received two rocking horses -- one from gramma and grampa and one from Don and Mel.  (Imagine that.  It was like that stereotypical conundrum wherein two women show up at a party inadvertently wearing the exact same lavish dress.)  Both horses collected dust for a while and we feared that they'd be duds.  It turns out, however, that Max was just too young for the rocking horses at that time.  Now he loves them.  We keep one at gramma and grampas and the other at our house.  Here are some terrible pictures of Max on his horse this morning.

"Thanks, Don and Mel!"  This would have been a good picture if I'd been closer to Max, if I'd managed not to catch the flash reflecting in the window, and if the rack full of drying diapers were not so close to Max's head.  Other than that, I think it's an award-winner.

Max decided to dismount during my attempt to correct two of the aforementioned photographic blunders. 

Sorry no pictures on this post....please come back and look again.

So I came up stairs the other evening to my husband glaring at me over top of the telephone.  "The phone is off the hook!" he declared.  Gus is extremely power conscious and even goes to the effort of turning all power to the phone off when we are not using it (such as overnight), so this was a really serious offense.  To be honest, I'm not really sure it uses more power when it is off the hook...but I digress. 

At any rate, Gus was not impressed.  "How long has the phone been off the hook?" he inquired.

I was puzzled...usually these things are my fault, but I couldn't remember even using the phone.  "I don't know, I don't think it was me...."

"Well it wasn't me!"

The conversation continued down a similar accusatory vein until our son walked into the room.  He passed casually by our argument, quietly chanting to himself  "please hang up and call again.... please hang up and call again".

Max Reorganizes

So yesterday evening I wandered into the bathroom after we had finally put Max to sleep to discover this:

With my fatigue encumbered mind, all I could think was 'why would Gus put all of Max's bath toys in his dump truck?'  Sometimes I really wish I could get a translation of what is going on in Max's head.....

The new sleep solution

Disclaimer:  This is actually quite an old post.  I wrote it more than a month ago, but I wanted to add a picture, so I didn't post it.  I'm finally posting it with one mediocre picture.  Enjoy!  Good news...I added a second sleeping picture.

As an update on Gus's earlier post, we have now resolved the death trap that was Max's bed.  Our first attempt involved simply placing the mattress from his play pen on the floor.  Although quick and easy, this had a few downsides.  For one thing, I felt like I was sleeping my kid on the floor in the corner.  The play pen mattress is not really thick and doesn't provide the feeling of a bed.  Max also seemed to be missing having a closed in space to sleep in.  He would wake up fussing regularly in the night and need Gus and I to help him back to sleep.  

Lying awake after just such an occasion, I recalled that my sister once mentioned the benefits of sleeping children in tents.  Conveniently, this same sister had recently purchased Max a series of kid tents.  Max had played in them a few times, but got easily bored with them, so we hadn't used them much.  This tent, I decided at 3:00am, was the perfect solution to our problem.

So the next morning I set up the tent in Max's room and put his wimpy play pen mattress inside it, with all his stuffed toys and blankets.  What a transformation!  First, I felt like a better parent now that my child had more of a "bed like" structure.  Second, Max absolutely LOVED it.  His past apathy towards the tent was completely transformed.  Somehow tent + bed is MUCH cooler than tent plus other random toys.  It has been three days since we put his bed in the tent and he still can't get enough of it.  He practically lives in that thing.  He rearranges all his stuffed animals, hides under his blankets and just stares lovingly at the tent walls.  Best of all, he sleeps well in it and doesn't really try to get out of bed.  Thanks Wen!

Grandma Gutoski has a night light that plays music and displays a light show on the ceiling.  Normally it doesn't work very well (you can barely see the lights on the ceiling), but in the tent it is quite a spectacular show.  Max was so impressed that he sat in there just staring at the lights and laughing for a full half hour.  Unfortunately, our digital camera has had some recent issues, so we didn't get any good videos.

Horsey for Halloween

Initially, we had no intention of taking Max out for Halloween -- too much work, and he won't know what's going on anyway.  We changed our minds under mild pressure from family, and I'm glad we did.

Greta picked up an adorable little horsey costume from Value Village.  They gave it to her for only $4 -- a deal due in no small part to the big doe eyes and smiley face looking up at the store manager when Greta inquired about the costume's unmarked price.  Max was disgustingly adorable in his horsey costume.  (See photos below.)

He was a star.  One lady answered her door, took one look at Max and immediately said, "Oh my god.  Robert, you need to come see this!"  Another, elderly lady insisted that Max come in her house and sit on her lap.  She showered him with kisses.  (And yes, we caught it on camera.  See below.)

We taught him to say "trick or treat", though he could never summon the courage to say it to a real live neighbour on his or her doorstep.  He did, however, bust out a couple enthusiastic thank-yous when given candy.  This gratitude was very well received.

That's all I can think of for now.  I'll update this post if I recall any more interesting details.  Unfortunately, all of our photos are terrible.  Enjoy them anyway.

Max brushed his teeth before trick-or-treating.  Pretty cute.

"Light!"

Our elderly neighbour forcibly pinned Max on her lap and showered him with kisses.  She gave him enough candy to feed a whole village for a month.

Breaking News - It's probably a girl

My 20 week ultrasound for baby number 2 was today and it looks like we are having a little girl.  Our new baby was not particularly accommodating so the technician told us she was relatively sure that we were having a girl, but due to a less than optimal view, she was uncertain.   She told us to keep our receipts.... I think we had better choose a boy name too, just in case.

Max falls out of his playpen for the first time

We need a new place for Max to sleep.  Fast.

Max was unusually fussy last night.  He awoke several times for extended periods.  We gave him acetaminophen (tylenol) but it didn't seem to help.  Greta and I lay awake in our bed listening to him cry over the intercom.  Finally, at about 4am, the crying was punctuated by a loud thump, followed by more ferocious crying.

Half asleep, I assumed that he was just banging his playpen against the wall again.  Half asleep, Greta did a standard vault-out-of-the-bed-in-a-mad-panic.  Turns out her panic was justified.  She found Max screaming on the floor in his room, outside his playpen.  Fortunately he was uninjured.

He wasn't injured, but he was wide awake.  We were in a bind.  We needed to put him back to bed so we could get some sleep for ourselves.  But with him so wide awake and with his new found propensity to do swan dives out of his playpen, we were out of options.

So we took him into bed with us for the rest of the night, paranoid that we'd screw up his excellent track record for sleeping through the night alone in his room.  Naturally, he passed out immediately and slept soundly until 8am, making up for lost sleep during the night and throwing off his whole schedule. (And ours.)

He successfully napped in his playpen today without diving out of it.  We'll try him in the playpen tonight, mostly because we haven't yet found the time to set up a new bed.

In other news:

• I finally got a new chain for our bike today.  I also fixed up another one of our bikes.  We're finally back up to a full compliment of bikes.
• The renovations in Heather's bedroom are now complete.  Heather's pretty busy with school and won't have the time to move back in for a while yet.
• Our renovations are mostly complete.  It remains to finish drywalling our new railing-wall and to fancy-up our stairs.  Rob will be back to help us again.
• After an exhausting battle, the fleas in our house are finally on the defensive.  Every once in a while we'll find one at a random location in the house and I can often find one on the dogs after a few minutes of careful searching.  I'm hoping that our newly reduced carpet area will allow us to eradicate them entirely with another blitz of carpet spray, flea shampoo, and internal flea treatment for the dogs.
• Sorry mother, but I still haven't gotten around to replacing the windshield wipers on the van.

That donkey behind me is crazy!

We spent last weekend up at the river for some much needed outdoor relaxation.  On Saturday morning before gramma and grampa arrived, Greta and I decided to take Max and the dogs to visit our neighbours Chris and Lisa.  These friendly neighbours have a baby of their own (six months old now?) and a hobby farm with chickens, goats, and sheep.

The visit was short lived.  Chris was busy at work in the barn and Lisa was on the phone.  We said our farewells and made our way back through their property towards our own.  Along the way we noticed that the sheep were out in the field we were crossing.  The dogs noticed them, too.

At first there was no problem, the dogs would simply pause, look, sniff, and then continue on our way home.  Perhaps they hadn't yet realized what had tickled their spidey senses.  Eventually though, they discovered that there was a whole flock of live sheep right there in the field.  The yelping and jumping turned on like a light switch.  The dogs behaved admirably, listening to our urgent commands to heel and continue on our way off our neighbour's property.

Shaky finally cracked under the temptation.  He took off toward the flock, ignoring our shouts for obedience. The sheep soon noticed that there was a carnivore barreling at them and panicked.  It was quite a sight: sixty sheep ran in unison at a speed I never thought sheep could achieve.  Shaky had absolutely no plan for the sheep, he just chased them.  It was all herding instinct.

Before long, the resident donkeys -- a pair of farm animals whose job it is to guard the sheep against wild predators -- sprung to the defense of the sheep.  The donkeys chased after Shakey, who chased after the sheep.  Donkeys are fast.  And big.  Shaky noticed the donkeys once they began to close the gap between him and the sheep.  After a moment of careful consideration, Shaky decided that he did not wish to be trampled to death by a charging donkey.  His interest in the sheep quickly waned.

I had left Greta and Max at the edge of the pasture in a pathetic attempt to fetch Shaky. (Hailey remained with Greta and Max -- a stellar display of obedience for a two-year-old border collie mutt, given that not even Shaky could resist the call of the sheep.)  It was while I was vainly trying to catch my dog that he abandoned the sheep and began heading back up the path toward me.  We headed toward each other -- Shaky, in a bit of a rush to save his hide from the donkeys; me, in a bit of a rush to grab his collar and secure him.

The donkeys, however, were not yet satisfied.  They wanted justice.  They left the sheep (who were now safe) and continued their pursuit of the interloper.

I stopped running and stood there.  Shaky casually glanced over his shoulder to see two angry donkeys charging behind him at maximum warp.  The whites of Shaky's eyes became clearly visible at that moment.  He picked up a considerable amount of speed and continued on his course down the path... directly at me.  As he neared, the expression on his face was clear as day:  "Dude," it said to me, "I don't know what's going on, but that donkey behind me is crazy!"

It dawned on me at that time that I was in the line of fire.  I took a step or two off the walking trail, hoping to stand innocently in the bushes as the chase roared past.  Shaky, however, slowed to a walk, trotted right up to me, then stood obediently at my side.  This with donkeys in pursuit.  I was in trouble.

Thankfully, the donkeys began to slow as they approached us.  They stopped altogether not ten feet from where I stood, still as a statue, with Shaky panting madly beside me.  The donkeys began to mill around in the grass, grazing, as if they weren't involved in a high-speed chase not five seconds past.

Not one to look a gift donkey in the mouth, I grabbed Shaky's collar and began a calm, measured walk back to Greta, Max, and Hailey.  The donkeys left us alone at that point, apparently satisfied that their job was done.  Shaky and I rejoined the rest of our family and continued on our merry way.

Next time we visit our neighbours, we'll bring leashes.

New laminate floor already delivers on its promise

We haven't even finished the renovation yet, but our new floor has already proven its worth.  This morning Max peed on our shiny new living room floor.  If we'd still had carpet then we'd have to painstakingly soak up as much pee as possible with rags, dig out the carpet cleaner, spray, scrub, and dry.  Instead, today we simply wiped it up with a rag.  Done!

As an added bonus, I was able to fix our crooked, rickety table.  Turns out all it needed was a new set of washers ($1.50) and a re-levelling of the feet.

Not to be outdone, the world continues to conspire against us.  Yesterday Heather set out to Waterloo Park with Max on the bike trailer.  She didn't get off our street before her bike chain snapped!  How can a bike chain snap?!  Anyway, we now need to fix a bike chain and/or move our trailer attachment to another bike.  One step forward, two steps back.  We're not out of the woods yet, but I think I can see daylight...

Photos of living room renovation

I managed to snap a handful of photos of our ongoing living room renovation mentioned in a previous post.  Before I get to the photos, some highlights:

• The painting and floor is now done.  It looks very hip.  We should hurry up and sell our house now before it goes out of style.
• There's still lots to do.  Next up: baseboard, handrail, stairs.  We also need to move all the furniture back into the living room.
• Our friend Rob has kindly agreed to design and construct our new handrail.  He's an architect and he's using our house as a chance to flex his artistic muscles.  I hope he comes back because it's not finished yet and only he knows the what it's supposed to look like.
• Rob also has plans for our staircase.  This guy is crazy.

Just to give you an idea how nice Rob is, he commuted here from his home in Guelph on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  He spent at least eight hours here per day on the weekend.  On Monday he drove in after a day at the office.  Without him, Greta and I would still be arguing about how to lay the first piece of laminate.  We are very thankful for his help in moving this project along.

Now, on to the photos:

Mommy and Max enjoying breakfast before a hard day's work.  The carpet is gone.  The couch is the only piece of furniture remaining in the room.  It's too big to move it elsewhere.  We just work around it.

Nowhere for the fleas to hide.  Also, Max was mowing the lawn in our living room.

Painting is finished.  We'd just started the floor.  It looks very stylish.

Our indispensable friend Rob busily constructing our new hand rail.  He has a vision of how it will look.  We feed him and stay out of his way.

Daddy's shoe

Max has been toying with multi-word sentences for months now.  But until now they haven't been true multi-word sentences, only parroting.  (e.g. "ready to go", "vacuum cleaner", etc.)

Today Max busted out a suspiciously original two-word sentence.  He was toying with my red crocs.  Greta told him, "those are red shoes," to which Max replied, "daddy's shoe!"  Is it original?  Or did he just mishear mommy and repeat what he thought he heard?

Something else interesting happened today with Max, but I can't remember what it was.

Update 28-Sep-2011: Greta remembered:  Max held Hailey's leash on our walk.  Hailey didn't pull.  She heeled nicely at Max's slow pace the whole while.  This is news because until now Hailey has always pulled on the leash as though she's willing choke to death if it will get here where we're going a half second sooner.

One way to get rid of fleas

We've been treading water for the past three weeks.  Our new au pair arrived on September 6.  Her name is Heather and she's working out fantastically for us.  We're batting a thousand so far with au pairs.

Our retaining wall is finally complete.  Just today I put the finishing touches on the staircase leading up the wall to the side of our house.  There was a tense few moments a few days ago when our neighbours appeared with a list of last-minute demands as to how we should finish the wall.  I mouthed off to them as much as I dared (which isn't very much) then I did what they told me.

Suffice it to say that our neighbours are very relieved and happy that those lazy losers next door finally got around to finishing the retaining wall after a whole summer of dithering.  The potting soil and grass seed lining the top of our wall was helpfully laid down by my neighbour the day we finished.

As I mentioned in a previous post, our dogs have fleas.  Unfortunately, the fleas had a chance to get good and comfortable in our home while we were in Saskatoon.  The dogs have been treated; theoretically, any flea that bites them will die.  Even so, we have been unable to get the fleas out of our house.  Indeed, we can often pick fleas of the carpet with our fingers and everyone's ankles are covered in itchy scabs.  Thankfully, Heather has been a really good sport about it.

Aside from constant vacuuming, thus far we have treated our carpet with Borax and diatomaceous earth. For health reasons we are reluctant to use toxic insecticides, though I broke down and bought a spray bottle of the nasty stuff.  It's currently sitting on our counter, daring us to risk cancer and early childhood developmental problems.

Most of you know that the vast majority of floor space in our house is covered in carpet, and carpet is the perfect hiding place and breeding grounds for fleas.  Yesterday we came up with a brilliant idea to halve the amount of flea-inhabitable carpet in our house: renovation.

Some members of my family who shall remain nameless have gently suggested that we splurge to replace the ugly, stained, out-dated carpet in our living/dining area with a nice non-carpet flooring.  Greta and I are above such superficial concerns; we were content to keep our ugly carpet if it saves us a thousand dollars and some hard labour.  We are well aware that such a renovation would add to the value of our house.  Our tentative plan was to wait until it's time to sell before renovating, that way the new floor and paint will be fresh and shiny for the gullible real estate market.

The fleas changed our minds.  Greta and I used a precious Heather-day to tear apart our living and dining area.  Today alone we moved out all the furniture, tore up the baseboards and carpet, cut and rolled the carpet for curbside disposal, hauled it into the garage, and painstakingly pulled out most of the millions of little staples, nails, and thin strips of spikey wood lining the walls of the room.  Yesterday and today we bought some nice laminate flooring (fake hard wood) and other supplies.  I confess that, despite my lofty ideals, I will appreciate the renovation.  I'm only human.

Today one of us made the brilliant observation that it would be much easier to paint the living/dining area now that all the furniture has been removed, there's no fear of spilling paint on the floor, and there are no baseboards to paint around.  We went to the store and bought over $200 worth of paint.  In addition to all the work I mentioned above, we also primered the walls.

We also walked the dogs twice.  Greta made meals.  Max just woke up screaming, most likely due to teething.  It's been a long day.

Sorry, no pictures.  I'd love to have taken some pictures of the demolition and retaining wall, but it's too much trouble.

Leavetakings

There was a teary goodbye on Wednesday evening before I drove Radka to the airport.  These past six weeks have flown past.  Radka has been a tremendous help to us and we feel lucky to have had her in our home.  Good luck on your exam, Radka.  I hope you find your lost luggage safe and sound.  Our new au pair, Heather, will arrive tomorrow.  Radka has set a very high bar for all future au pairs.  Yet we are very excited to have Heather here for the next eight months.

Gus' sister Laura was visiting from Alberta for the past week.  Her visit is now over and she's on her way back home.  Sue and Jeff also left for Ottawa today after a week-long stay of their own while Laura was in town.  It was good to have all three Gutoski "children" under the same roof again.

Tom and Jean also completed a grueling week at work.  But everyone's back in his or her own home now.  Everyone except Greta and I can relax and resume a normal life.  (Greta and I will resume our normal life once Heather arrives.)

Crab apple sauce with Max

The University of Waterloo has a few stellar crab apple trees on its property.  Today we augmented our routine dog walk with a bike trailer full of empty baskets.  We stopped at one of the bountiful trees and picked to our heart's content.  It took us 15 minutes to pick enough apples to fill an entire cooking cauldron.  Max helped us rinse the apples.

"It's Shake 'n Bake, and I helped!"

A rare shot of Max doing something productive.  He spent most of the time throwing the apples onto the ground.

This is our entire haul.  Not too terribly much.  But not bad for a few minutes of leisurely picking.

You rinse the apples, dad.  I'll pull the rain hose out of its socket.

The hard work was processing the apples.  Last year we painstakingly peeled and cored hundreds (maybe thousands) of tiny crab apples.  We also burnt the sauce last year.  Imagine our dismay at having burned days worth of work.

This year we tried a lazier approach suggested to us by both Mike and Heidi.  We simply dumped the untreated apples into a cauldron with a bit of water, boiled it until it was mush, and then forced it through a sieve with a stirring spoon.  It was a lot less work than peeling, though Mike seems to think we could cut out even more of the work if we bought ourselves a food mill -- perhaps in the future.  We ended up with four-and-a-half containers.  The containers are old feta cheese containers from the grocery store.  They hold a kilo of feta each.  That's no small amount of crab apple sauce!

The sauce was initially runny.  Rather than try to boil off the excess water, thereby wasting energy (not to mention possibly burning our sauce again!), Greta had the brilliant idea of re-straining out the water, which was then canned as crab apple "syrup" -- a tasty sauce for ice cream, drinks, pancakes, etc.  It worked beautifully.

Binge visiting

As Greta already mentioned, the Gutoski-James trio recently returned from a twelve-day visit to Saskatoon.  Greta's sisters Heidi and Wendy live there with their families.  Teela lives in Indiana, but she was also visiting Saskatoon at the time with her own family.  Moreover, grandpa Lee, the father of these four lovely James girls and resident of Ottawa, was also in town.  It was a big ole' James family reunion.

We stayed at Wendy's house with her family.  They were extremely accommodating and the food was always top-notch.  For the first couple nights Max slept in his playpen in the hallway adjoining the guest room (our room) with Wendy and Mike's room.  For whatever reason Max did not take well to this arrangement, so Wendy and Mike were often awakened by Max's crying in the night.  They took it like champs.  Even so, we took pity on them and moved Max into the guest room with us.  Of course, they could still hear him cry.  But the frequency of such events decreased significantly.

We visited Heidi and her family almost every day.  Max quickly learned the names of his four Saskatoon cousins: "Lee-oh-ah!" (Leora), "Aeh-weh!" (Anwyn), "Eick!" (Eric), "...." (Anthony -- I can't remember how he says that one.)  There was no shortage of great food at Heidi's place either; Gary even stepped up with a couple of his world-famous, all-out dinner parties.

The days were packed.  The activity that sticks out most in my mind at the moment is our trip to the Saskatchewan River.  We canoed out to an isolated sandbar where the girls played with Max for hours.

See how the baby ape stays close to his mother.  This rare shot of the elusive hairless pink-skinned ape with her baby was obtained only after days of waiting in a blind.  More photos at uncle Mike's photo album.

After an exhausting flight into Hamilton we returned home to find that Radka had cleaned our house from top to bottom.  The entire place was vaccuumed.  She even went into our bedroom and cleared the dresser of junk so that she could dust it.  She cooked a couple of fantastic dessert pizzas and left them for us.

Despite Radka's thorough and much-appreciated cleaning, we came home to a tri-fold infestation: the ants had returned in our basement, the fruit flies had returned in our kitchen, and the dogs had fleas.  Fruit flies and ants are no big deal.  Fleas are a whole other ballgame.

Because of the fleas, we could not go visit Gus' sister Sue and Greta's parents in Ottawa this weekend.  (Neither family was keen on inviting flea-ridden dogs into their homes.)  Unfortunately, our Ottawa plans also included Radka -- she was to spend a couple days touristing about.  Moreover, Sue and Jeff needed a babysitter for Saturday night.

Our solution was to send Radka to Ottawa alone on a bus.  She is currently touring Ottawa.  (She even went to Montreal yesterday!).  She will babysit for Sue and Jeff in our absence tonight.  Then Sue and Jeff will take her back to Waterloo when they visit tomorrow.  Quite a whirlwind.  Mean time, Greta and I are secretly grateful for the excuse to sit at home and unwind after a hectic two weeks in Saskatoon.

While visiting family like this is always fun, it's also exhausting.  Everyone's life in Saskatoon was put into temporary chaos while the visits played out.  Routines were interrupted.  Max's potty training went into relapse.  The fact that people need to travel so far for visits like this one implores guests to spend as much time with their hosts as possible during the visit.  We love that time, but it's also an overload.  (For context, consider: we'd never shack up with gramma and grampa Gutoski for twelve straight days -- they're only a ten-minute drive away!)

I can't help but think how much more we could all benefit from our families if only we could structure our lives so that we all live in the same city (or even the same street).  Of course, modern life makes that impossible.  We follow the jobs, first and foremost.  Even if you do live in the same city as a relative, it's almost impossible to get desirable real estate within walking distance of a relative.  Indeed, thanks to the dangerous highway overpass connecting us with gramma and grampa Gutoski, it's virtually impossible for us to bike there with Max even though the trip is only 30 minutes.  I wonder if there would be any positive effect if some houses were sold in bundles of, say, five, instead of the one-family one-property model we have in most of the developed world.

Yeah, yeah, leave it to Gus to find doom and gloom in a super-fun family visit.  Of course I'd do our Saskatoon visit all over again.  It was undoubtedly a positive experience.  I just find it hard not to notice the problems and think about how to solve them when they're rubbed in my face.

Max flies to Saskatoon and back again - almost...

Gus, Max and I just finished a trip to Saskatoon to visit my family.  All and all the trip went very well and we had an enjoyable visit. (For some pictures check out uncle Mike's album.)

That would be the end of this post if Gus and I had not been foolish enough to book a connecting flight out of Hamilton to Saskatoon instead of our usual direct flight from Toronto.  Besides the frustrating experience of flying past Saskatoon to Calgary so that we could get on a new plane and fly back the way we came, the whole transfer wound up doubling our travel time.  Nevertheless, Max behaved like an angel on the plane and we managed to make it to Saskatoon with only one lost bag.  Out trip back was not so smooth.

Before we left Wendy cheerfully informed us that all of southern Ontario had severe weather warnings and some areas had tornado warnings as well.  Many flights were delayed.  Fortunately, our flight from Calgary departed on time and with only a few bumps we landed 3 hours later in Hamilton.  What a relief!  No delays!  Until the pilots informed us they weren't going to let anyone off the plane.  Apparently there is a rule that no one is allowed on the tarmac if lightening is within 5 miles of the airport.  The plane unloads directly to the tarmac, and besides, no airport staff were allowed on the tarmac either.  The airport was under 'red alert' and so we sat in the plane...for an hour.

The plane was packed and insufferably hot.  In spite of the fact that we were completely stationary, they wanted us to stay seated and wear our seat belts in case of a sudden turn or stop.  There was no where to move and we had already been on a long flight.  Max, at least, was asleep.

Finally, the pilot announced that they has some information about the storm.  We were in the middle of it and it had a 30 mile radius.  It was travelling at 30 miles an hour.  Silence on the plane.  Gus claimed to hear the collective psyche of the plane going 'ok...so that means at 30 miles an hour we will be on the plane....no wait....carry the 1....'  The captain announced, 'so we will be on the plane for another hour' - the entire plane erupted in groans and shouts.   Gus looked at me incredulously.  "They needed him to tell them it would be an hour?"

Half an hour later they declared that the red alert has been lifted.  The plane cheered.  That was faster than expected.  Normally, Gus and I would wait until it emptied to try to get Max off, but we were so anxious to leave that we pushed and shoved our way off with the rest.  I was half-way down the ramp to the tarmac when an airport personal came running towards us, yelling "red alert! red alert! Get them back on the plane!"  I quickened my pace, rushing to the end of the ramp.  "I'll take my chances with the lightening," I said to the woman as I pushed past.  They closed the plane doors behind us.

Being stuck in the airport was markedly better than being stuck on the plane.  We were happy to meet Grandma Gutoski inside the airport with food and childcare reinforcement.  We could move and stretch out.  Max was now awake and he could run around, but we still couldn't leave.  Half the passengers were still stuck on our plane, as was our luggage and Max's car seat.  Most passengers that had gotten off opted to leave and come back for their luggage in the morning.  We had no such option.  We lived an hour away and Max's car seat was still on the plane.  So we waited.  Almost home.

Another hour and a half passed with no word.  Finally, the red alert was lifted and the rest of the plane's passengers made it into the airport.  Another half hour later our luggage arrived.  Then a one hour drive back to Waterloo.  We pulled in at 5 in the morning, a whopping 5 hours late, but we were home.

Next time, we will take a direct flight from Toronto.

Max "masters" potty at a young age - PART 2

The potty saga continues.  The news cold (it has taken me two weeks to get around to writing this) off the press is that Max has finally started asking  to use the potty when he needs to go.  At first, he would only ask if he was not wearing a diaper (and even then, only half the time), but now he asks when fully diapered, even when we are out and about.  When he needs to go, he declares "Boo!" and sometimes even runs to the potty.  He still has many accidents, but we have already cut our diaper use down by more than half.  The past two days he wet only 1 diaper all day! We have decided that is grounds to declare that he is potty trained at 15 months - although most would consider that parental pride more than accuracy.

Max hasn't yet learned how to sit on the potty on his own, however.  He sometimes makes attempts, the most successful of which involve facing the potty and straddling it.  On the less successful attempts he just steps right in. Mother would say he is just like I was at that age....

Max wows Yale with Intellect

Our friends Christina and Rob visited us for dinner last night, which was a rare treat.  Christina is currently living in New Haven because she had to go take some stupid graduate program at Yale.  Anyway, she was back for her birthday, which gave Max the perfect opportunity to make his first move on his path to Yale.  He was a charmer all evening, flashing big smiles and displaying his impressive vocabulary ("light, light, light, fan, light, light").  But it was on our walk that he really blew Christina away with his brilliance.

Christina (to me): I'm convinced your child is a genius.

Greta: Yes I am too.  What convinced you?

Christina:  While he was just ramming the chariot into that construction fence over and over again and repeating "open"  which I thought was pretty stupid, but then I noticed there was actually a small hole in the fence...maybe 2 or 3 inches wide.  Isn't that smart?

Now, all in all, I would say I tend to cut Max a fair bit of slack when it comes to my judgements.  He is only one, after all, so  I overlooked it when the dogs learned sign language faster than he did (in spite of their lack of hands) and I don't judge him too harshly when he points to himself in the mirror and declares "Anne!"  But it is a stretch, even for me, to consider this most recent fence display as evidence of his genius.

Greta: Christina....he is trying to fit an object that is 3 feet wide into a 3 inch hole....  Which part did you think was smart exactly?

Gus (impersonating Max):  Now if I just line this up....there we go.  Hunh.... well maybe if I just... push... a... little harder.    I don't understand...it lines up perfectly on this side....

I'm not sure what they're teaching them these days at Yale, but if this fence episode reflects badly on Max's intellect, I'm really not sure what it does for Christina's!

This is what progress looks like

Today I laid some of the concrete blocks that will eventually compose our new retaining wall.  To understand how momentous an occasion this is, please indulge me while I list the tasks that had to be accomplished before the first brick could be laid:

• Painstakingly tear out the old rotted rail ties that composed the previous wall
• Dig and haul wheel-barrel after wheel-barrel full of dirt away from the site
• Acquire and install a trailer hitch for our vehicle
• Fixing up Grampa's trailer up at the river (with much help from Grampa)
• Use the trailer to acquire two types of gravel
• Shovel gravel into the trench and tamp it down
• Haul a wheel-barrel full of sand -- the very same sand that I earlier removed from the site -- back to the site, shovel it into the trench, tamp it, and painstakingly level it using a standard six-foot level and some scrap wood.

The result is what you see here:

The black tube is for drainage from our eaves trough.  In addition to laying the blocks, next on the agenda we have:

• Lay landscape fabric behind the completed wall.
• Backfill with gravel.
• Place some weeping tile and the rain drainage pipes behind the wall and embedded in the gravel
• Glue a finishing layer of bricks on the top of the wall.
• Construct a ramp so that we can get our bikes behind the house.

This retaining wall is a ridiculous amount of work.  Retaining walls are expensive.  Every retaining wall you see represents a flaw in design.

Radka cooks sauerkraut soup, helps us get our lives on track

Now that Radka's stay with us is almost half over, I thought it prudent to finally take her picture and post it for the world to see.

She has been a tremendous help to us.  She frequently rises well above the call of duty to put in extra time with Max and do our dishes for us.  Today she even vacuumed the house.

Today she also cooked us a traditional Slovakian Christmas dish: mashed potatoes with sauerkraut soup.  (How this dish came to be a Christmas tradition in Slovakia is beyond me.)  Greta enjoyed the meal.  But I'm not a huge fan of sauerkraut.  Of course, I ate the whole dish anyway, being a human garbage can and all.

Greta and I have been chipping away at the backlog of items on our respective to-do lists.  Thus, Radka's presence has not reduced our workload -- it's just that our workload has shifted from Max to more mundane things such as earning a living or maintaining the house.  I'm exhausted with all the work but happy that the immense weight of things I need to accomplish is lightening ever so slowly.

Just for Wendy, here's a list of some of the things I've accomplished:

• A few days ago I completed some minor renovations and cleaning in the laundry room.
• I spent much of today hauling wheel-barrels full of dirt away from our soon-to-be-built retaining wall and then filling the trench with gravel.  Leveling the tamped gravel is exceedingly difficult.  I'm not yet sure how I'll accomplish that.

As today is Saturday, Radka is nominally off-duty and so Greta and I made a token attempt to watch Max and do housework ourselves.  As I already mentioned, Radka vacuumed our house.  So much for being off-duty.

As part of this token child care I took Max in the bike trailer to Gramma and Grampa's to feed the cat. We then biked to the FreshCo where we purchased $67 worth of groceries, piled them into the chariot and saddle-bags, and biked all the way from Bridge & University to our house -- an 8km bike ride through busy suburban roads. The biking was especially tough due to our abnormally heavy groceries (Wendy-list):

• 8 litres of milk,
• 3 litres of olive oil,
• 4 litres of vinegar,
• many canned goods, and
• a 12kg child

Max got a little irritable by the end of all this, but he took it like a champ.  I'm tired.

Conversations you would rather not over hear

Gus:  Max....? What are you eating!?

(pause)

Gus: No Max!  That's dog food, we DO NOT eat dog food.

Max: Mmmmmmm!

... And I was worried about raw bread.....

Riding a bike before sixteen months

Teela gave us her old front-mount bike seat for babies.  We finally got around to attaching it to a bike a few weeks ago and Max has been in heaven ever since.  He rides right up front.  He likes to stare down at the ground as it zips by, ring the bell, and grab the handle bars to veer the bike into a ditch.

We've even taken to "walking" the dogs on our bikes with Max in the seat.  It's a great way to give the dogs some exercise when we're short on time and the experience is more enjoyable for Max (and hence for us) than if we walk with him in the chariot.  (He's developed a need for speed.  The chariot at walking pace no longer cuts mustard.)

A while back gramma and grampa got Max a bike helmet.  We've decided that the easiest way to get children accustomed to wearing a bike helmet is to raise them so that they never know any different.  Today I snapped some pictures of Max in his favourite bike chair wearing his helmet.

Mommy's sportin' a funky new sun-hat-plus-helmet look that's sure to be all the rage.

"I like sitting here so much I forget I'm wearing this helmet!"

I'll finish with a couple more unrelated pics taken on or before our dog walk this morning.

These mongrels are the whole reason we march in the baking sun day after day.

Our clothesline doing what it does best.  It's mounted on our deck at one end and 20 feet up a pine tree at the other.  Note the beans growing on a railing box in the foreground.  What a great yard.

More strawberries than you can shake a stick at

Last month (June 27, to be precise) the Gutoski-James clan drove out to Herle's farm for an afternoon of pick-your-own strawberries in the baking midday sun. The strawberries we picked cost $110. We probably would have payed at least $200 for the same amount of strawberries had we not picked them ourselves.

That's a lot of strawberries.

Greta made two strawberry pies and strawberry shortcake. We canned approximately 30 jars of strawberry jam and filled 5-10 freezer bags with strawberries.

Mom loves her strawberries.

We planned the trip so that Max would sleep through most of it in his chariot.  Unfortunately, he slept for only 20 minutes, so we had to tag-team juggle him for the remaining hours.  It slowed down our picking considerably, but we still got all we wanted.

Our Slovakian-French-Spanish nanny has arrived

On Saturday Greta and I picked up our new summer au pair (nanny) from the airport.  Her name is Radka.  She's originally from Slovakia (complete with living memory of Russian occupancy!) and has spent several years in each of France and Spain.  She speaks more languages than I have fingers.

For those who don't already know, Greta and I have been searching for a while now for an au pair (similar to a nanny, but often with less responsibility).  The offer is that we will provide room and board in exchange for 24 hours per week of child care for Max.  I like the idea because it relieves some of the pressure of constant child-care while simultaneously extracting some value from the half of our house that has gone unused since our tenants left.

First, we found an au pair who has agreed to live with us for the eight-month stretch from September to May.  (I'll write more about her when the time comes.)  Then we found Radka to pick up the slack from now until September.

It's only been four days but thus far I'm quite happy with Radka and with our arrangement.  It was a little overwhelming at first because a lot of time went into preparing for her arrival and helping her get oriented.  Today was officially her third day on the job.  She's taken care of Max for us for 4-6-hour stretches every day this week.  She even does dishes.

Now that she's had a chance to settle into our home she's been a godsend.  Already I feel like I'm slowly getting my life back under control.  So far, I've spent my new-found Max-free time on two very important tasks:

• research (yes, I'm foolish enough to work while on parental leave)
• destuffifying, sorting, and cleaning the house

Other than destuffifying I have several house projects that I plan to accomplish during future Radka-Max times, most notably the retaining wall in our front yard, which is currently nothing but two piles of gravel and an ugly wall of dirt on top of which stands my neighbour tapping his foot and waiting impatiently for me to resume construction.

Unfortunately, Greta has not yet benefited from Radka as much as I.  Greta's day is still filled with the usual tasks of occupying Max in the morning, working hard during the day, and cooking us food in the evening.  Today I cooked dinner to help relieve some of the pressure.  Tomorrow I'll go shop for food at the market instead of Greta.  Hopefully with enough ad hoc measures such as these we can make it so that the benefits of Radka are more equally distributed between us.

Alas, our digital camera is MIA so I cannot post a picture of Radka today.  Rest assured, we'll catch her on camera sooner or later.

Local weather conditions conspire to deprive us of diapers

We use cloth diapers.  Dirty diapers are washed in our washing machine and then hung out to air-dry.  Diapers are typically dry within 24 hours of hanging and thus we are rarely caught without any clean dry diapers.

We've been low on clean cloth diapers for a few days now.  For normal people this is not a problem; you just wash your diapers and then shove them in the drier.  But Greta and I are freaks, you see. We use our drier only under extreme duress.

At the beginning, we had some breathing room.  The weather forecast was not favourable.  (See graphic below.)  Given our tendency to procrastinate and our desire not to have Max-reachable racks full of damp diapers decorating our living room for days on end we chose to put off diaper laundry and wait for a sunnier, drier day to dry our diapers.

This picture has dominated frequent weather forecasts.
Source: Environment Canada

Boy, were we had.  The sun came out during those first days despite the forecast for constant rain.  Alas, we were unprepared and could not exploit the sunshine to dry diapers.

Now, we're desperate.  We washed the diapers a couple days ago.  But the forecasters' predictions were actually correct for those days and we've had nothing but rain.  The drying diapers are still damp.

In our desperation we've found several diapers we never knew we had.  We've managed to survive by combining these emergency reserve diapers with liberal (and risky) use of children's underwear.  Next I plan to use teatowels with safety pins.  Then perhaps paper towels and scotch tape.  Once those things run out.... (sigh) I guess we'll use the bloody drier.

bummee, bunn, up-pee, and bike

Max is picking up new words at an incredible rate.  Some examples:

• up-pee.  Means, "up, please."  Said while grappling an adult's calf with head bent way back to look up at his audience, sometimes in a whiny tone.  It took us a while to get him to say "up" when he wants to be picked up.  But the "please" part came out of nowhere -- a pleasant surprise.
• bike.  Means, "bike."  Max loves to play with bikes.  If someone's riding, he pushes along.  If the bike's lying on its side, he'll spin the wheels.  In all cases he repeats "bike" with great enthusiasm.
• bummee.  Means, "bummer!"  He learned this one today after just one repetition.  He overheard me say, "bummer" to myself and thought it was hilarious.  He laughs out loud and repeats several times whenever I say it.
• bunn.  Means, "button."  Max does not distinguish between buttons sewed onto clothing and belly buttons.  He loves belly buttons, though.  He likes to lift up people's shirts and jam his finger into their belly buttons.

Max is now at that stage of development that drives neuroscientists crazy.  How do kids this age pick up language so quickly?  Why can't adults do it that quickly?  For that matter, how do our brains allow us to learn any language at all?

Max makes bread - sort of

Max and I had an exciting afternoon cooking bread together.  Cooking with Max is one of those adventures that seems like a great idea until you actually attempt it.  He loves the whole process, but seems to feel his role is to grab everything he can get his hands on and throw it on the floor.  That said, he often makes a good helper (by which I mean he doesn't hinder the process too much) if his job is to put the lid on and off a pot repeatedly.  He also really loves to stir things in bowls, which works really well when making bread.  Usually letting him stir things is a little dangerous because he tends to pick up some batter on his wooden spoon and, you guessed it, throw it on the floor, but bread dough is so thick that it tends to stay in the bowl even when you sick Max on it.  Since the bread dough was so stubborn, Max took up his third role whilst helping cook: eating.  He usually tries to grab whatever ingredient you are currently working with (butter, eggs, sugar exc.) and put it in his mouth.  Raw bread dough was no exception.

Max, unable to throw bread dough on the floor.
Notice he looks depressed.

As I watched Max bring the dough to his mouth I was reminded of the time my sister's son asked to drink some beer.  He was perhaps 2 and a half and was begging for some "pop".

Son: My want pop!

Sister:  That's not pop.  Its beer.  It makes you woozy in the head.

I think he might have been laughing at me
in this picture....

Son: My want woozy in the head!

Greta:  Let him drink it.  It will taste terrible and he will never want it again.

Sister (to son):  OK, you can have some beer, but it doesn't taste good.

My sisters son eagerly grabbed the beer, took a big gulp and then spit it out all over the table.  "My NO LIKE that pop!"  he declared.

And so, I figured, let Max eat the raw bread dough.  It will taste terrible and he will learn not to eat raw baking.  I bet you can guess how this ends.  Max LOVES raw bread dough.  He ate the whole fist full declaring "mmmmmm" the whole time.  The lesson in this experience is that I will not be letting him try beer

Max can barely contain all the bread dough
in his mouth.  Despite appearances he
is not about to hurl.
.

Another late night with Max

It's 3:51am right now.  Max has had a really rough go of it tonight.  Greta and I are being especially diligent in our attempts to keep Max trained to sleep by himself in his own bedroom.  But it does raise a tough dilemma every now and then.

For instance, tonight he woke up screaming.  Bad dream?  Teething?  Let him cry a bit more and see if he goes back to sleep.  Still crying.  Hmm.  Okay, I'll drag my tired old butt out of bed, pop his soother back into his mouth, and shush him back to sleep.  Done.  Now I can go back to sleep.  Ten minutes later: more screaming.  Bad dream?  Teething?  Or just trying to get us to pick him up?  Let him cry a little more and see if he goes back to sleep.  Still crying.  Hmm.  Okay, I'll drag my tired old butt out of bed again, pop his soother back into his mouth, and shush him back to sleep.  Done.

Well, now I'm wide awake.  There's a good chance he'll wake up crying again, so I sit upstairs reading a work-related paper waiting for him to scream.  There it is, right on cue.  This is pretty abnormal -- he must be teething again.  I need to give him acetaminophen for the pain.  That's a delicate operation that cannot be done without picking him up.  (Believe me, we've tried.)

Woe is me.  Despite our tough stance against picking up crying babies in the dead of night, I am now forced against my will to undertake the onerous task of picking up my crying baby in the dead of night and snuggling up with him in the glider chair for some quiet time while we wait for the painkillers kick in.  I may stroke his hair while he falls back asleep in my arms.  But that doesn't mean I'm enjoying it.

Thankfully, Max sleeps through the night more often than not these days.  But every so often we get a night like this and it reminds us of what life was like when Max was younger.  (4am -- the water softener just kicked in.)  Sue and Jeff undoubtedly get "nights like this" almost every night with baby Anne.  Hang in there, guys.  It gets much better.

These late-night forced cuddle-fests often lead me to reflect upon how busy our life has become and how often we think of everything we do -- taking care of Max, walking the dogs, maintaining the house, earning a living -- as just a torrent of fires that need putting out.  It's easy to forget that most of these tasks are quite enjoyable.  Indeed, most of these tasks are what makes life worth living.  If only we could turn down the volume a bit.  Perhaps then we'd take the time to enjoy putting out these fires and maybe write more blog entries.

In order to adhere to the no-pictureless-posts policy of this blog, I've included below a new picture of Max, Viola, and Merlin all crammed into the ding, taken on Teela's second stop at our house, this time on her way back home to Bloomington.

Yep, three's definitely a crowd.

It's now 4:18.  Max just started crying again.  Maybe I'll let him cry a bit more and see if he goes back to sleep.

Two babies in a ding

Teela, Merlin, and Viola stopped by our house for a couple nights -- a rest stop on the way to Ottawa to visit Gramma and Grampa James.

Max kept calling Viola by the name "Anne" and we kept correcting him.  He eventually called her "Vai" a couple times.  Perhaps he now understands that Anne is not another word for "baby".

As usual, we barely got our act together to take only a handful of pictures.  Max introduced Viola to his rope swing, which he calls "ding".  Pretty cute.

"This is my ding.  It's MY ding, but you can use it with me for a bit."

Blackflies and bruises at The River, May long weekend

It was a big May long weekend up at The River.  We got some great photos (see below).

Greta, Max, and I were arrived Friday morning, a full day before everyone else.  We spent the morning at a mom & tot event at nearby Edge Hill, a small, private Waldorf school just a few kilometers from The River.  It was a nice opportunity to learn about the school (if ever we intend to send our children there) and to meet people.

Shortly thereafter, Hailey got into a porcupine.  We tried pulling out the quills ourselves, but she was having none of it.  We tried alcohol and acetaminophen to no avail.  Out of options, we bit the bullet and took her to a vet.  $250 later we had a very groggy dog with no more quills in her mouth.  Not the best way to spend a Friday up at the River, but all's well that ends well.  Sorry, no pictures of the porcupine, quills, or sedated dog.

Tom and Jean arrived on Saturday, with Sue, Jeff, and Anne hot on their heels.  Everyone stayed until Monday -- a nice long stay up at The River.  Highlights include:

• Gus was the only person to do any significant swimming in the chilly May river water, though Greta and Max joined for a brief spell.
• The blackflies were out in force, as evidenced by the photos of Max below.  By day he gave no outward sign that the bugbites bothered him.  But by night he would grind his face into the mattress or bang his face into the wall to scratch the itch -- all while sleeping!
• Max took a couple nasty spills, as evidenced by the lumps and black-eye in the photos below.
• Max drove the tractor with grampa.  Max loves the tractor.
• Gus and Greta used their new trailer hitch for the first time to bring home the trailer.

But enough of my yakin'.  Enjoy the photos, courtesy of Jean and Sue!  More can be found here.

He's a natural.

How could anyone fall asleep while riding a tractor?! 

Blackfly bites, black eye.  All in a day's work.

This shot is great.

Gramma with baby Anne.

Max investigates his cousin.

Uncle Jeff rarely makes it into this blog.  But this shot was to good to leave out.