What's with this? I am apparently half Asian, half B-list/never heard of "celebrity" .



I don't know if there just aren't as many celebrity male faces to choose from, but it looks like Eric was facially predestined to be an athlete. Maybe we can come up with some "long lost brother" scam to extort money from Nowitzki...

E-Happy Mother's Day

It's Mother's day and I am neglectful on two accounts. Firstly as a son. Secondly, as the father of 3 toddlers who are fairly helpless at organizing anything on their own, I will be noticeably absent from the day's activities. It's a beautiful (sunny and low 20's) late Spring weekend in Vancouver and I am sitting in a classroom doing a first aid course for 18 hours. And I have 2 more weekends coming up! So apologies to the Mothers in my life who will just have to know I'd rather be waking up early to serve breakfast in bed than learning how to put in nasal airways. Instead the girls are in charge of breakfast in bed. They have been instructed to come down stairs when they get up and make sure they don't wake Les or Lucas. I will leave out cereal, milk and some donuts for them to take up when the time comes. There's even a little gift for them to give their mom. They are pretty excited about the plan and in theory it sounds alright. Not exactly gourmet, but alright given the circumstances. However, the executioners of the plan are 4 and 2 years old. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they run into our bedroom at 6 am and spill milk and cereal all over the bed. Oh well, they'll probably enjoy it either way.

Late nights

Finny has an incredible power. In much the same way that a camel is able to retain water against a not-rainy day, Finny is capable of turning a thirty second nap in the middle of the day into a long, drawn out night time of bedtime negotiation and stalling.

Ordinarily, she is a terrific nighttime sleeper. Her head hits the pillow; she's out. But let that little kid snooze for a fraction of a minute in the car...game over. Instead of instant sleep...oh, the delays, the questions, the tactics and ploys. I feel sorry for her because obviously she can't help it. You don't go from that good to that bad just for kicks. She has some funky sleep-o-meter that replaces the first three hours of night with a snore and a half in her carseat. I don't get it, but it happens every single time.

The result of this bizarre hardwire glitch is our absolute terror of mid-day sleeps. If Finny's eyes start to go half-mast during the day, Eric and I turn into freakish clowns. We will make the biggest fools of ourselves in an effort to keep the Fin alert.

Today, we lost that battle.

Sleep was achieved briefly while we were enroute today. It was a long evening getting that tiny girl to sleep tonight.

At one point, I asked a tearful Finny what she thought would make me happy (strongly hinting that her going to sleep would be high on the list). She thought about her answer for a long time. Then, this: "Flowers, Mummy? Me make you flowers?" I told her that was a nice thought (and one that her father might want to arrive at once in a while).

A Sea of Tears...

There are innumerable ways in which parenting supplies joy of an unrivaled quality.

Then there are the ways in which parenting can make you feel like the best possible option for your pulsing head is for it to shoot off of your shoulders into a million pieces, because then maybe you won't be able to hear the skull shattering wails that follow you around your home.

There are currently four people in this small space. Three of them are crying. One is crying on the inside (speaking crossly on the outside...). Here is a small indication of the issues of the day:

1. Molly.
Molly is upset because one week ago I brought home some foamy stuff you can mold like playdough. In a 23 second burst of creativity last Wednesday, I formed a tiny bird's nest and a wee baby bird. It has sat on our table for seven days. Today, Finny mashed it up a bit.
Type of crying: Whiny, with a tinge of anger.

2. Finny.
You may remember from an earlier post that our recent trip to the dentist resulted in a considerable amount of vomit. The puke was on everything, including her new raincoat that had a sticker from the dentist on it. When we got home, I threw the coat in the washing machine. Obviously, the sticker was removed with the puke. Finny just remembered the sticker.
Type of crying: Broken hearted big, fat tears. We are now trying to tape the sticker remains together...

3. Lucas.
Sheer neglect has caused him to collapse into a puddle. All he needs is a cuddle.
Type of crying: Red-faced wail...with a back note of "It doesn't matter how I cry, you won't pick me up anyway..."

And how am I dealing with this saltwater onslaught? By blogging...hahaha!

And since I sat down to type (with Lukey in my lap, so don't call Children's Services or anything), they have sorted themselves out. Victory!

Clean house and clean teeth

We went to our very good pediatric dentist today: Dr. Millenaar. The girls got a clean bill of dental health. And they did a great job of being cooperative and helpful, which apparently is not always the case with kids at the dentist. Molly, who because of past experience has some trepidation, was immediately put at ease by the dentist who employed her as his assistant in counting Finny's teeth. He would point at a tooth and then pretend he was unable to remember how to count. Moll was all over it. She was very proud to be able to inform her dentist that four did in fact come after three. Less impressive to me, she didn't question that her dental health professional was that dumb...I think a good patient would inquire at that point how he possibly managed to graduate from dental school without knowing his numbers. If I were her, I would have been suspicious.

Finny was a great patient. The hygienist commented that she was the best under three year old she'd ever dealt with. Which was possibly true until about five minutes later when Finny puked all over both of us. She was a trooper about it, especially considering I don't think she's ever vomited before. Still, a messy situation. Might have knocked her a couple of notches down the under three list.

We came home and as I was in the kitchen, I heard Molly reading Finny a story. I came in to see this:


Oh, and Lukey says "Go Canucks Go" for this evening.