Okay, well, about that passing on of the award, it’s like this – what I wanted to do was go beyond the usual suspects who I always say are mavelous. I need to branch out my blogging a bit. This seemed like a good excuse to do so. But, shockingly, I actually got work – writing and editing people want to pay me to do. So it’s suddenly a bad time to go wandering through the blogverse. Especially as this is the only week for the rest of the summer that I actually have all three children amused elsewhere.

Boo is loving her swim camp. That kid is a marvel to me. She happily went off to a camp when she knew no one else and then just made a friend. She just picked one girl and asked if they could be friends. My older two could never manage such a thing when they were little and, in truth, neither could I.

The older two appear to be having fun at camp. J phoned the camp after two days to see how Asher was doing, which was something I’d have never done. I am happier figuring that if I don’t hear anything, all is well. And mine is the wiser way, because the head of camp said he was doing pretty well during the day but was very weepy in the evenings and hadn’t seemed to have quite found his way yet. But he phoned back Sunday to say that Asher had definitely made some friends and is now doing great. I could have definitely done without those couple of days imagining that he’d be miserable for 12 days and never again voluntarily leave home.

Maya is doing great, but then I knew that.

And now, it is back to work!

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A terrifying glimpse into the future

Isn’t he just dreamy?

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I’m brillante

I was just surfing around to my favourite sites and I see that knitnut just game me a nice, shiny award. And I’m betting she didn’t even know it was my birthday yesterday.

Okay, according to what she said, it is now my job to pass it on to 7 more people. And I swear I am going to do that. Really. Just as soon as I get back. We are on our way up to the cottage (again) for the weekend and I haven’t the time and capacity to do a proper job of it beforehand. But I will. Really. No, really. Stop looking at me like that!

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Adventures in sending the kids to camp

When J was a kid, he attended a camp near here that he just loved. It was the seminal experience of his childhood. His kids, he was determined, would go to the same place. At first, I was completely against this, mostly because of the stories he told me of his camp adventures. One of my favourites was of how, every year, he’d help a good friend pass his swimming test by letting that friend hold onto his shoulder, unseen in the murky lake water, while they treaded water for the requisite time. So? you figure. Big deal – he helped a friend get a swimming badge. But no. The test was to be able to go water skiing.

I happy to report that the friend is still alive today.

As the kids got a bit older, he started telling me about how the camp had changed over the years and is now much safer. When my eldest nephew started attending and not only survived the experience, but loved it, I softened my stance.

So that is where Maya went to camp last year, and she too loved it. The stories she came home with demonstrated that it is safe, but in many ways is still the camp of J’s youth. It isn’t the sort of place where the kids are structured 16 hours a day and have archery and horseback riding, etc. There’s a fair amount of hanging about and goofing off. I actually consider this a good thing.

Not many kids from our city attend this camp. Last year, we showed up in the school parking lot looking for the bus and were surprised to see the place filled with parents and campers. Thankfully, we quickly determined that they were all going to a different camp. We finally found one other family. Their two and Maya made 3 kids in total. The ‘bus’ was half an hour late and turned out to be a minivan with a trailer for all their crap. The driver was an Israeli who worked at the camp and drove like an Israeli, so our kids were relieved to make it to camp alive.

This year, we arrived in the parking lot in time and quickly found the other family again. We settled in for a chat as the scheduled 10 am pick-up time arrived and the bus from the other camp roared in to disgorge and reload campers. No minivan, but we weren’t surprised.

The parking lot cleared and we continued to wait. To our surprise, another bus drove up. The driver wore a cap with our camp’s name on it. A whole bus for four children. As the other parents and I told our kids to hop on and chose which 6 seats they’d like to claim as theirs, J briefly got all adult-like and responsible and phoned the camp to see how many kids they expected. They couldn’t have sent a bus for four kids, could they? The person who answered the phone told him that they expected “eight to twelve” children at the pick-up. “Don’t you have a list of who is coming?” he asked. They said they’d get back to him on that.

So while he waited for the return call, he headed over to the other parking lot to look for the missing 4-8 kids. There were no more kids. The camp guy called back to say he could not access their database and had no more information, so we waved off our children, amid jokes about their large personalities, or perhaps split personalities, turning them into 8-12 children.

From now on, J says when people ask him how many kids we have, he plans to answer, “Two to four.”

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The One-Child Family

What did we do with all our time, back when we only had one child?

Oh yes, now I remember. She was extraordinarily demanding.

Maya and Asher are off to sleep-over camp for 12 days and 3 weeks respectively. I’m a little worried about Asher, who sometimes perceives the world differently than his peers. I really, really, really hope he has a good time, because if he doesn’t, I’ll probably never get him to leave home ever again. This is his first year at camp. Can you tell?

So Boo is having a brief stint as an only child and she’s actually being pretty darn demanding herself. Mostly, she just talks incessantly, which is really nothing new for her. The new thing is that I actually have to do stuff for her, like feed her or help her reach something or play Old Maid. We are both used to having her siblings do all that. When I offered to play a game with her today, she said, “But it’s boooorrring playing with you!” That’s the difference between first and third child. I’m convinced that Boo and Maya are exactly the same child, the only difference being that they were born into different family positions. For Maya, there is nothing better than doing whatever she wants to do with me. Her siblings are a distant, distant second.

So, I figure that in theory I should spend next week engaging in some serious mother/daughter bonding time, since Boo rarely gets that, but instead, I signed her up for day camp. I listened to her alternatively yammer on at me and complain about how bored she was, coming up with names of playmates that stretched back two years that she begged me to call for her to play with (and, it appears, ever damn one of them is on vacation or in camp themselves) and decided that it would be best for our relationship if she had what one friend of mine kindly called ‘structured playtime.’ (She told me she signed her twins up for camp because she believed they needed some structured playtime, rather than just saying that they were driving her nuts and she needed them gone for a while.)

So I signed her up for a swim camp and told her, prepared to have to sell it to her a bit, but there was no need. She is delighted. Thrilled. Happy, happy, happy. Can’t week for this week to be over already. That certainly takes some of the mother guilt out of it. Actually, there was only a smidgen of guilt there anyway, so now it is gone. And everyone gets to be happy, happy, happy. Including, pleasepleaseplease, Asher.

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Card Sharks

By the way, those poker chips are casino weight – a gift for J’s birthday a couple years ago and not cheap, but playing poker is much better with those chips.

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Out of the mouths of babes

J just came from putting Boo to bed and told me that as he was reading bedtime stories to her, she reached over to his naked chest and slapped him solidly. “This,” she told him, “is a great example of man-boobs.”

For the record, he actually has a very weak example of man-boobs, but it is damn funny anyway. We had no idea where she got the concept of man-boobs. The thing about having a kid who is the youngest of 6 cousins by over 3 years means we have gotten used to hearing many strange things coming out of her mouth. Before this, there was, “Let’s get naked and smoke.”

She’s getting pretty good at Texas hold ’em too.

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I’m back again!

Well, I’m sure there’s nothing like a 3-week break to chase away all my readers, but I really didn’t have much of an option. The cottage had the slowest dial-up in the history of the internet. Generally speaking, this is probably a good thing. I had a technology vacation.

We went up to the cottage with our kids and two of my nephews, who are 10 and 12-years-old. This meant everything we did, we did with five kids instead of three and I have to say, I didn’t really notice a huge difference, except for the food thing. Man, can those kids eat.

For the last week, J’s cousins moved in next door, turning our 5-child posse into an 8-child posse. Meals were epic. Oh, and I can’t forget the friends across the road, whose 9-year-old spent most of her time at our house. That was okay. They also have 6-year-old twin boys who followed Boo around like puppies, but she spent most of her time at their cottage, evening things out.

During nice weather, all of use could be found at the beach, and since we have a much broader definition of nice weather than normal we frequently had the beach to ourselves. Basically, it had to be not raining. Although truthfully, we often stayed when it rained too, as long as it wasn’t heavy, simply denying that rain was coming down.

We did do other things. One day, everyone went on this cool obstacle course that snakes down the mountain. It takes several hours. I do not do this. I did take Boo and her boyfriends (she hates when we refer to them as that) to the littler kid version.

I brought my soapstone paraphernalia and had all the kids working on small soapstone pieces on the beach. It is soft stone and can be worked with files, so kids can do it with a minimum of injuries. Only my older nephew, A, showed any real affinity for it. The rest behaved as though I was the ultimate judge and would return frequently to me to ask, “Did I file this enough already?” I’d point out that while the piece was looking more whale-like, or bunny-like, they still had to file this part and that if they really wanted it to look as they said they did. Once cousin pestered me so much that once A, who was happily doing his own thing, snapped, “It is filed enough when you think it is filed enough! Why do you keep bugging her?”

So the truth was, except for A, I pretty much shaped every piece, but they did most of the sanding to make their carvings smooth and were very happy with the results.

Here are Asher and Maya, working hard at theirs:

Another day, someone brought water colour paints down to the beach and we all had a lovely time painting each other.

I also created an enormous scavenger hunt that amused the kids for hours before they discovered the treasure – a pile of golden chocolate coins.

In the evenings, we frequently played huge games of Texas hold ‘em poker. The kids are starting to become good players. My FIL was appalled that we were teaching them all how to gamble, but I’m hoping they’ll become sharks and put themselves through university.

Now I have 2 days to get Asher and Maya ready for sleep-over camp. They leave Wednesday morning, my birthday.

Here are some bonus pictures. This is what I found when I came in to go to bed one evening:

The diving board broke on the raft that is normally swimming distance from the beach, so J towed it in and a couple of the manly men fixed it. Then the kids had fun pushing it back out again.

The necessary Jasper shot:

And finally, a shot of the nape of my boy’s neck. I sat and took about 20 of these one afternoon because I think he has the most adorable, delectable nape ever. I thought this was my particular mother quirk until one of J’s cousins commented on it too, unsolicited. So now I’m sharing it with everyone.

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