Contrasts

Today was fairly nuts - not scary or health-threatending or anything truly nuts like that - but it rendered me mostly exhausted and bewildered and out of any “parenting - yay!” juice I might otherwise have.

The morning brought a grocery trip for a week for a bunch of people with three kids in tow. Usually I have the luxury of only taking one kid (the eager one) on my weekly grocery trip. Today I had the “luxury” of making it more of a family affair. So much so that a man, who had been eyeing up our cacophonous procession from the other end of the aisle as we approached each other, uttered mostly under his breath as we finally passed: “Oh…you’ve got your hands full. Jeezus.”

Then later that day, vaccinations for Anna. She has decided she does not like needles since the last nurse who gave her a needle told her to hold very still because we didn’t want the needle breaking off in her arm because of any squirming.

Evidence of this dislike: near wall-shaking howling and screaming for a full five minutes prior to a needle being brought even close to her arm. Finally our usual, more experienced nurse came in to inquire whether everything was okay. My firm head shake and perhaps glint of a losing-my-shit tear (while Lily and Graeme embraced, heads down, and faced the wall) prompted her to sit down beside me and help me hold Anna’s arms down while the other nurse got the job done. Thankfully Anna managed to bring it down a notch after the first needle because, evidently, she realized she had survived. Onward.

Not even the hair was spared trauma

Side note: Something that did not necessarily help how well the doctor’s office escapade went: Graeme deciding to have his first kind-of runny poop in months in the waiting room and my deciding to try to ride it out until they called us in except they really weren’t calling us in for a while and we may have destroyed the man sitting behind us’s olfactory system during the wait so I decided to ask to breach the Pentagon-level guarded door to the doctor’s area to deal with the poop situation. Turns out that I waited too long and there was significant leakage and the shorts were no longer wearable. So we emerged as the people that decided the youngest kid just doesn’t need pants.

Note the lack of shorts/pants. In a public place.

Parenting involves so many of these kinds of days. I’ve been through a pile of them and expect, of course, to plough through loads more of the same and worse.

But, then there are the moments, sentences, looks and notions that spur me on. They soften the edges of the harried days. They bring me to pause. To smile. And be grateful.

The other day I was picking the girls up from a birthday party at the home of a former classmate who had recently moved across the city. I told the party girl’s mom that I liked their house and neighbourhood - all older houses, friendly aged trees and meandering streets. In this statement I included the fact that I had never been in that area of the city before. Lily then threw in a contribution to the conversation I just don’t want to forget:

“I’ve been here before. When we went on our class trip to Bulldog Fitness, we took this street. I know because I recognize that patch of shade over there.”

Harboring a remarkable memory for shady spots

Lily has an incredible memory, but I’m not sure I believe that they took such a residential street that day when they could have easily taken major thoroughfares. But I love the idea that Lily remembers a particular patch of shade - that she even pointed it out to me. I want that notion continually rolling around in my head so that I can savour it over and over - forever.

Especially on the nuts days.