Sursum Corda

Marli referenced a book she enjoyed as a child today, "Karen", by Marie Killilea.

She mentioned that the Killilea family named their house "Sursum Corda", which is Latin for "Lift up your hearts".

I think it a terrific and heartening coincidence that one of my favourite quotes from Prime Minister Winston Churchill (who was in turn paraphrasing the Bible) is an excerpt from his June, 1941 address to the Allied Delegates:

Lift up your hearts, all will come right. Out of depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind.

Winston Churchill

How's that for a propos?

Now, I'm not comparing being in the middle class with a decent income and two healthy boys (albeit one with autism) to facing the possibility of all free peoples being conquered by Fascism, but beautifully crafted words with an inspirational message sure can come in handy at times.

Here's a fun version of it set to a catchy beat:



Listen to the rhythm of his words. Amazing.

BAD: Potty Humour - GOOD: Writing Down What He Wants

BAD

Kenshin is appending "poop" or the adjective "poopy" to everything. He thinks this is hilarious.

We tell him that "potty words" are not acceptable and punish him (verbal chastisment, corner, room, in that order) but it only seems to encourage him.

I'm thinking it's some manner of attention-getting thing and it's annoying because he definitely knows better. I'm mostly embarrassed that he might be influencing other kids at school or in daycare.

GOOD

Marli was surprised by Kenshin walking up to her and giving her his light up sketch-pad, on which he had written:

Watch
Mom
I
want to
TV
please

The words were a little misshapen, but quite legible. Marli was so impressed that she went to get the camera to record the "sentence" but by the time she returned with the camera he had erased it.

This isn't a communications breakthrough - he can ask for things quite clearly (and does, frequently) already, but it's pretty amazing, all things considered. There was much hugging and positive reinforcement. At least until he abruptly erased the words.

Oh well, next time.

The Cheese of All Walking

I haven’t posted anything for a while because, to be honest, for a long time I’ve been depressed at the prospect of another glowing report about Daigoro’s progress and yet another month of little to no (perceivable to the casual observer) progress for Kenshin. That sounds overly harsh - I should clarify:

We started having serious concerns about Kenshin’s mental and social development in mid to late 2010. Marli had issues earlier far than that – but I had thought it was just a small delay, well within norms for children and not something we should be overly concerned about. We had suspected something since Spring 2009 or so, but we couldn’t put a finger on it.

Back in Spring of last year (March 2011, as documented), we took him to a paediatrician, who in turn recommended speech therapy and additional testing for autism. We were referred to another specialist in childhood development, who ran Kenshin through a series of tests through the Summer and into Fall and confirmed what Marli had suspected – Kenshin is autistic.

Not Asperger’s Sydrome (apparently now dropped from official medical usage), not “mild” Autism or having an Autism Spectrum Disorder – full, “moderate-level”, “mid-range” autism.

It was a lot to deal with. As I joked to my sister at the time, I had no idea where I was on the Kübler-Ross model of grief. It was (still is!) sort of a roller-coaster ride. Wheee... denial... whoa... acceptance? No.... bargaining! Ooooo... here we come... DEPRESSION!

I’m wondering if I’m thinking I’ve run through it quickly and am already at acceptance, or what I think is acceptance is just an elaborate form of denial.

I know the stages don’t have to be sequential, or indeed, the “Five Stages” may not even be the best conceptualization of the grieving process for everyone. I think right now I’m mostly angry, angry that this has to happen to me, and angry that I’m selfish to think mostly of the effects that it has on me, rather than Marli or the most important person being affected, Kenshin.

Marli and I had a very earnest discussion in September and I tried to be as honest as possible about how I felt, and I was surprised at how selfish I sounded, and said so at the time.

I guess one of my innermost personal failings is sometimes I have a overblown sense of what I think I deserve, and I keep thinking, “Why is this happening to me? I don’t deserve this - I deserve better!” Then I feel guilty about it. Ah, the existentialist post-modern conundrum.

So, internally, I’m mostly shouting “why me?” to myself, and then getting angry about not being concerned enough about the people around me. Then I realize there’s not much to be done about it except to just carry on carrying on and help out Kenshin as much as we can. My family was and is being being very supportive and it’s still early, of course.

Fortunately, we’d been suspecting this for well over a year now before we got the official diagnosis, and wasn’t not as much of a shock as if we had been told of something unexpected, but it’s still a punch in the gut, no matter how much you’re prepared for the blow.

Marli and I share a sort of gallows-humour about a lot of things, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I seem flippant at times. At times I’ve thought to myself, “well, at least it isn’t some terminal illness, like untreatable leukemia, or Tay-Sachs... but at the same time, you don’t have to live with and support a person with a terminal illness for 30, 40, 50 years.” Yes, Kenshin may turn out to be high-functioning enough to live on his own, but he may not, we don’t know.

Marli said at the time, “Well, it could be worse, he could have Tay-Sachs or he could be profoundly autistic. We should be thankful.”

I responded, “Yeah, but that’s like saying, ‘You’ve only gotten a $100 fine. It could have been $2000.’... That may be true, but it’s still a fine.”

I actually have a friend who has an autistic son who went from mid-spectrum in toddler years to high functioning in his pre-teens (he’s 10 now) and we got together to compare experiences and for me to take notes on his approach. He has the advantage of being quite well-off, financially, so it’s a little different for him (he had multi-hour private therapy lessons for his son five days a week, I believe), but I guess I can’t complain when Marli and my combined income is relatively high compared to the “average”.

During this time I couldn’t decide about what to document – this blog had begun as a tool to help me keep track of milestones and moments that otherwise might have passed, forgotten – but now it was becoming a painful reminder of how difficult progress was for Kenshin and how well Daigoro was doing as a normal (dare I say “gifted”?) child. This sounds horrible, but I felt terrible about the apparent favouritism a blog like this would seem to project, “Hey, Daigoro is drawing entire comic books! Oh, and Kenshin has mostly recovered from his relapse with potty training accidents.”

Does that make me a terrible human being? Do I lose my “parent of an autistic child” card now?

This, combined with the extra effort to help teach and entertain Kenshin, had put me into a pretty bad mental state for a long time - probably too long. I let things slide which shouldn’t have slid. I started feeling sorry for myself far too often, which I have done before from time to time, but it was seriously dragging me down. I tried to keep a stiff upper lip, but it was hard. Really hard. Marli suffered as well, perhaps more so, for a variety of reasons.

Anyhow, the long and short of it is sometimes I feel like I’m handling it well, and sometimes I think I’m just bottling it up and at some point the facade’s just going to come crashing down.

Things have slowly started to get better. We enrolled Kenshin in speech therapy shortly after the last blog entry. After six weeks he had made decent progress, learning more social cues and turn taking. More testing followed, at which time the confirmation of his autism was made. A flurry of paperwork and phone calls (mostly handled by Marli) later and Kenshin was on the waiting list for a number of programs, including the local respite services and Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) therapy sessions, and we also started to coordinate with his school for special programs available through the school. That’s still in progress.

He started a second round of speech therapy, once again concentrating more on the social/behavioural aspect of speech as opposed to the mechanics of it. His teacher, “S.D.”, was very pleased with his overall progress from the first session to the last, commenting on improved eye contact, initiating contact without prompting and generally understanding the order of events in a social gathering and turn taking.

He finished that last week.

His ABA therapy has been in progress for three weeks (he had to miss a session this past Saturday) and results aren’t yet readily apparent, but it’s good to see from his progress records what goals they are working to and what he’s able to do.

There’s a lot he can do, perhaps better than the “typical” autistic person his age (if such an thing exists), but also a lot he can’t. I’ll try to come up with a short list with Marli’s help.

He’s bright. He can puzzle his way through iPad games with frightening speed and seems to grasp some things quite intuitively, especially how to get at things he wants. You can see the cogs and wheels turning in there – he’s pondering something much of the time.

He’s funny. He laughs frequently (very much not typical for autistic kids) and he has a mischievous grin that is utterly disarming and cute. He says (seemingly) random things, like, when the family is cuddling in the queen bed, calling himself “the cheese of all walking”, Daigoro the “sausage of all skipping”, Marli the “noodle of all hugging” and me the “meat of all looking”.

Or, as we were on our way to Walmart, he said, spontaneously “Walmart and Grommit”!

This past Sunday I took both the boys to a park to go tobogganing. They laughed and ran and sledded and smashed into each other and behaved just like I’d expect a four and six year old to behave. They were having a grand old time. For a moment - just a moment - I forgot that Kenshin is autistic and I just revelled in their happiness and my own happiness about their happiness.

Wiser, more experienced parents of autistic kids would probably say, “That’s exactly the way it should be. Why would you think otherwise?” You should never think your son or daughter as “damaged” or any less worthy of your love because they have a disability; of course not. But is it not human to want to have a “normal” child? Yes, I know people with disabilities hate the “normal” word. I’m going to go ahead and be politically incorrect here. I didn’t want this, I didn’t ask for this. Kenshin, if you’re reading this at some later date, forgive me: I want you to be normal.

As I watched them, my smile faded, and I remembered that I would have to make sure Kenshin went to the bathroom before we left because he wouldn’t think to ask for himself... and that I was going to have to plan for some extra time at the coin-op car wash that I’d promised to take them to because he often doesn’t understand consequences so I’d have to be extra careful about letting him use the spray hose... and I couldn’t just hand him a juice box when we got back to the car because he might oversqueeze it and spray it all over his seat because he thought it was funny... and to make sure he didn’t chew the straw into a pancake of plastic because of his need for oral stimulation... and... and...

A dozen worrisome things popped into my head, swirled around and pushed that shining moment of bliss into the back of my mind. Clouded by shadows of doubt and worry, I lost it.

But I’ve grabbed it again and I’ve written it down here. It was joyous and momentary and all the things that are good and true in life, and it didn’t matter if Kenshin was autistic or not, because I love him so much. I will remember that hill and that moment in all the dark days yet to come.

I'm feeling better now - the therapy and group sessions are ongoing and seem to show promise. Kenshin continues to improve day by day, in tiny, almost imperceptible ways, but over time they add up to progress. I'll try to do my best to observe the little things which might be big steps for him.

I've gotten my head out of the bad space it was in and now I'm trying to push forward with a more optimistic view. He is the cheese of all walking, after all, and it takes a while for the cheese to pick up speed. In the meantime, I'm the meat of all looking.

Whatever that means.

Opening Moves

Daigoro, as is fitting for the son of a gamer, is very interested in the board games and video games that daddy plays. Recently, Marli took it upon herself to educate Daigoro in the finer art of Chess, at which she is consistently able to wipe the floor with me.

For the record, I am not a great strategic thinker. I do think that I am a very good tactical thinker. Tactical thinking, while not a obstacle in chess, will almost always lose to strategic thinking.

Daigoro at this point is about six years old. He is asking to play chess. We're happy to oblige, of course, but we have to walk the fine line of presenting a challenge and not putting him off games altogether. Marli has adopted her father's strategy of never playing sub-optimally for a child's benefit. Unfortunately, this has the effect of putting Daigoro on one heck of a losing streak.

I've made clear to Daigoro that I'm willing to play at a variety of difficulty levels, like the difficulty levels in video games. Marli takes a different tack. As long as Daigoro continues to enjoy chess, I'm happy with either approach.

Catching Up...

Well, it's been a while.

The usual excuse for bloggers is lack of time, but we all know it's just plain laziness.

A lot of things happened in a year. I'll highlight the big ones.

Daigoro left JK and entered SK. He's thriving there - I'm very proud of his progress and his report cards (they have report cards for kindergarten?!) seem to reflect that he's a good influence in the classroom and a quick learner. He still has problems with being impatient with other kids and becoming frustrated with tasks he doesn't master quickly, but generally he's doing well.

Kenshin has advanced in many ways. Since the last entry, he's become much more interactive and willing to eat new foods, but he's still behind in several key developmental milestones.

He hasn't mastered washroom training, and he generally is communicative only as much as is necessary, rarely "volunteering" information other than parroting or combining known phrases. Late last year we had him tested for hearing (fine, or actually better than average) and then a couple of months ago we took him to a pediatrician specialist in development at Sick Kids Hospital. The specialist did a number of tests, many of which he completed quite well, but he also gave us a questionnaire which is typically used for autism spectrum disorder / Asperger syndrome diagnosis. We have suspected/feared this outcome for some time, beginning shortly after his delayed beginning of speech, but we were encouraged by spurts of development that have occurred since.

Last week we took him to a child development centre for speech analysis. He scored lower than average on many tests, but the analyst was reluctant to put too much weight on the scores because it was evident that Kenshin was performing poorly on some tests not because he couldn't answer the questions, but because it seemed he didn't want to.

The analyst feels that we should enroll him in a six-week, hour-per-week social/peer speech group to encourage better interactive behaviour. We remain hopeful that as we continue to focus on encouraging to speak and interact with us that we will continue to see the slow and sporadic improvement that we've seen over the past two years.

This past weekend we went out to a Thai restaurant as a family and we actually had a very nice sit-down meal, with no squirming, running about or behaviour issues. This was a really nice milestone - one worth remarking on.

I'm still chuckling at one of Daigoro's comment's on the food, which he was thoroughly enjoying.

"This is like a Heaven breakfast!"

Both of them are growing like weeds and we're constantly amazed at how big they look in bed or when we're carrying them around.

Daigoro is reading above his level and is very pleased with himself. We're proud of him too.

Last year Marli won an iPad in a contest and we've discovered that Kenshin is drawn to handheld electronics like nobody's business. He loves iPads, iPhones, laptops, desktops - anything that has buttons and a screen... or just buttons. He loves to fiddle and change things. He's managed to delete all of the photo's off my parents' digital photo frame, create new user profiles on our PS3, dial the Philippines on a relative's phone, and install new applications on my father's smart phone.

Just this past weekend, he's figured out that he can climb on our entertainment console to get up to the small box (he calls it "a bag") in which we store our remotes and PS3 controllers. When confronted, he says "I was not climbing!"

Another favourite recently is "I'm just..." as an abbreviation for "I'm just doing this." as a way to put you off asking him to do something. Similarly, he likes to say "I'm working." to indicate he's busy and shouldn't be interfered with.

It was SOOooo funny...

Went skating with the kids this weekend for Family Day. Daigoro was frustrated at first and obstinately ignored instructions from his mother, auntie A., ba-chan and gi-chan, but was starting to get it by the end.

We visited the " 'Chans" this weekend. They have a large exercise ball, about 700mm in diameter. The kids love playing with it - bouncing on it, rolling it around, running at it and bouncing off... you get the drift. I've never been a skater, really. I can stand up and make decent speed (for a newbie) but I can't stop except by a very shaky snowplow or what I call the "rapid deceleration by collision" method.

Anyway, at one point I heard gales of laughter from the other room - Daigoro was having an absolute blast with Kenshin. Daigoro came in completely out of breath. When he had recovered somewhat, I asked him what was so funny.

He replied, "I was bouncing the ball and den [sic] I rolled the ball at Kenshin and he bounced off it and den he fell down and the ball rolled on him and den I was laughing so hard even my germs were laughing."

That's descriptive gold right there.

I love to hear children laugh. I've said it elsewhere in this blog and I'm sure I'll say it again. Innocent, unforced, devoid of pretence or malice - it is a balm for my heart in troubling times.

Milestones

Last week, Daigoro successfully read about fifteen different words independently of prompting after Marli wrote them down for him. We celebrated by taking him to the local library and getting him a library card.

This past weekend, Kenshin requested to sit on the toilet (seat) and peed on his own.

Daigoro has become very interested in Pokemon after I bought him a video game (Pokemon: Colosseum) which features them. I had tried to sell him on Animal Crossing or a few other less competitive games, but he was very interested and I figured that I couldn't just buy completely innocuous kids' games forever.

Daigoro is expanding his eating tolerances, but Kenshin remains firmly in the starch and meat category.

Kenshin and Daigoro have been invited to a few birthday parties at a local playground/party room location - it's a lot of fun seeing them rip around having a grand old time.

Not much snow so far this year -making it hard to make snowmen, snowballs or go for sled runs. We'll see how the rest of February pans out.

Brothers

Sometime in the past few days (I first heard it yesterday, Marli says she heard it a few days previous) Kenshin learned to call his brother by his name.

For quite some time now (a few months at least), Kenshin has been able to point at Daigoro when asked "Where's Daigoro", but he's never actually called him "Daigoro".

Yesterday and today he's been calling him Daigoro.

Also, another milestone for Kenshin - on Saturday we left the children with their ba-chan and gi-chan for the day. When we arrived at the door Saturday evening, he said quite clearly, looking from one to the other of us, "Hi Daddy, hi mummy."

Once again, pretty run-of-the-mill for most parents of two and a half-year-olds, fairly substantial progress for Kenshin.

Ts-icken Little

After months of glacial progress, Kenshin has suddenly started leaping forward in vocabulary.

Added recently:

"I would like..."

"...milk."

"...water."

"...noodles." (President's Choice White Cheddar Macaroni seems to be his favourite meal at the moment. That kid can pack the stuff away like there's no tomorrow.

"Don't want." (pretty much the answer to anything that isn't meat of some kind or PC white cheddar macaroni)

He's learned his colours and the first five numbers with a great deal of help from nightly sessions with Fisher-Price board books. His pronunciation of the word "pink" is darling.

He also likes to watch the small chickens in the child-friendly faming-based video game "Harvest Moon" and say "chicken in" or "chicken out" (of the henhouse). Only when he says it, it comes out "ts-icken in" "ts-icken owwt".

Daigoro began half-days of kindergarten, although as mentioned below, it wasn't really the same jarring transition it might have been, since he was already spending part of the day with the kindergarten class in his daycare class. He continues to be a gentle, loving and very considerate young boy, if a little spazzy at times. He surprised me the other day with a question about stars and falling stars, asking if the far away stars are suns, and if they are suns, how could you catch a falling star? I suppose he had heard or seen something which had involved catching a falling star.

Two weeks ago was my brother's wedding, which was an absolutely fabulous affair. Daigoro looked handsome beside his father the groomsman and his uncle the groom in the wedding party as the ring bearer. I'm not sure what is quite so adorable about children dressed up in formal wear or uniforms, but it sure is cute.

There's all sorts of other things about Kenshin's progress which I probably should document, but it's all happening so fast it's hard to keep track. I'll have to ask Marli for some input. More later.

Breakneck Acceleration into Speech Country

Yes, it's been a while. No, I have no good excuse, except that Kenshin hasn't been doing a lot of progressing. Until the last few weeks.

Somehow, for whatever reason, the spoken word switch seems to have suddenly flicked on for Kenshin. He's now actively asking use to "read book" (or even more impressively "read Sandra Boynton"), "I think I want to watch [Wall-E, Bolt, I Spy]" and dozens of other sentence fragments and individual words. He says "look, plane!" or "look, noodle!" appropriately when pointing at those respective objects.

This really must sound like "yeah, so what?" territory for many parents of 30 month old kids, but for Kenshin to be speaking at this level (~24 months) is a big leap forward in a very short amount of time. For the past six months previous to this latest development spurt, Kenshin had been speaking around a year-old level, well behind his age. Fortunately, as mentioned in previous posts, developmental assessment indicated that he wasn't too far behind in other aspects.

He's beginning to talk without prompting, excitedly describing things he wants or has seen. This, paired with his increasing comprehension of our commands to him ("come upstairs", "let's brush your teeth", "time to change diaper", etc.) has made it a little easier to deal with him.

Strangely, as I say this, he's actually not generally troublesome in the sense that he's actively causing mischief - it's just that due to his slow comprehension of verbal commands, he's generally indifferent or ignorant of what we want him to do, which makes him seem very uncontrollable except by pulling him about or physically sitting him where he needs to be (on the couch, in his chair, in bed, and so on). He's not drawing on walls because he wants attention - he just doesn't know any better.

Daigoro, by contrast, was speaking fairly clearly at this point in his development, albeit still in sentence fragments.

We took them to African Lion Safari this past Labour Day weekend. Surprisingly better than I was expecting, though I have to say I thought the kids would be more interested in animals roaming just outside the car windows than they ended up being. Kenshin in particular was more interested in his toys than the baby zebra frolicking about four feet away.

Daigoro and I had an interesting duel of wills a month or two back - I need to document that, but not tonight. Just wanted to get a record in while I had a spare moment.

[edit] OK, I have a spare moment.

I was instructing Daigoro to do something - what exactly I can't remember.

I was getting frustrated and I said, "Daigoro, it makes me very angry when you don't listen to me. Please do what I say."

To which Daigoro replied, "Why do I have to do what you want when you don't listen to what I want?"

I replied (in a somewhat taken aback manner), "Daigoro, children have to to what their parents want so that they stay safe and learn from what their parents know. Sometimes children don't know the right things to do yet."

That seemed to fly, but I have to say I wasn't expecting the teenage rebellion angle for at least another eight years.

Identity Crisis

The family managed a relatively peaceful road trip to Montréal over the Victoria Day weekend. We've gotten into the habit of structuring travel legs around the sleep patterns of the children - leaving early in the morning before they wake up, or taking the second leg while they sleep in the afternoon.

After visiting relatives in Montréal and Ottawa, I can say that we're definitely getting better at the packing and planning aspects of our trips, though maintaining car tidiness and packing cohesion over the weekend is not yet optimal.

Both of us are big believers in not resorting to DVD players and other digital distractions, preferring to try to interact with the children in song, conversation and sight-seeing. One such conversation had a particularly humourous twist.

Marli and I were discussing the family history of my Japanese-Canadian roots when Daigoro jumped in with his frequently-asked question, "Excuse me, what are you guys talking about?"

Marli patiently (and very concisely) explained the concept of identity. She talked about how people talk about appearance, culture and other aspects of one's background as making up one's identity. She finished by asking, "So, what things identify you and our family?"

Daigoro thought for a while, then answered, "Daigoro is fast. Daddy is strong. Mommy is safe. Kenshin is screamy."

Lasts

It's been a while since my last entry, principally because (as much as it pains me to admit it) Kenshin actually hasn't been developing much, speech-wise. It's actually a bit of a concern for us, so much so that we had him evaluated by a developmental specialist to ensure that his lack of development of language skills is the only factor.

Fortunately the specialist indicated he seems to be developing mentally, physically and socially the way that a two-year old should, just that his linguistic development is about a year behind.

On the happier side of things, he has developed a veritable obsession for having books read to him - he will press a book into our hands, listen beaming while we read it, then demand a second, third and fourth reading. It's quite endearing - he will smile and giggle at the book content and look positively radiant with joy.

He is progressing slowly. Besides his early words of "Mom", "Up", "Bye" and "No", he's added "outside" (ow-syyy), "ball" (baaah) "yay" and a few other words to his lexicon. You can see the wheels turning in there. He will spend literally an hour or more positioning and repositioning trains on his Brio-compatible tracks and toys, and laying out the track in various patterns. He's actually figured out polarity on the magnets on the trains, knowing to flip them around when they're repelling each other. He also engages with all manner of buttons and switches at every opportunity. At least once or twice he has managed to turn on, off or otherwise reconfigure equipment that I wouldn't have credited him with being able to figure out.

Daigoro continues to astound me with his ready grasp of difficult concepts and excellent recall of things I've often only spoken to him briefly about. He progresses very well in his drawing and writing skills as well as displaying a well-developed sense of empathy and care.

Marli has weaned Kenshin down to a single morning feeding per day, which brings me to the title of this entry - the idea of a last feeding. Often we note firsts - teeth, walking, word, etc. - but we seldom take note of a "last". Kenshin is very likely our last child and Marli will consequently likely never breast-feed again. At some point in the next three to six months will be the last time that Kenshin will have breast milk, Marli the opportunity to feed Kenshin breast milk, and I to see the two of them share such an intimate and serene moment. Similarly, once Kenshin starts to speak, it will be the last of baby-talk, and eventually the last of the loping, lop-sided toddler run, the utterly unfiltered laughter and soon enough, the last time I'll be able to bundle either of them up in my arms, cradled like an infant.

Last week I took the children to see cherry blossoms in High Park. It is a nation-wide phenomenon in Japan to go sakura hanami (cherry flower-viewing) - besides being an excellent excuse to get sozzled and write maudlin poetry, it has a much deeper sense of bittersweet awareness of the temporary nature of natural beauty. They even have words for it: mono no aware - the poignancy of things. As I watched my pre-schooler and toddler run beneath the gently falling cherry petals, I felt it deeply within my heart that these are moments which will never come again, and yet they are nonetheless happy and beautiful. This, I think, is the deepest wisdom that one can try to grasp - that even though all things will pass and come to dust, there is no need for despair and ennui in the world.

Gleaming petals fall
Dying light of a spring day
Children run, laughing.

Firsts - Writing His Own Name

Yesterday, February 8th, Daigoro wrote his own name in clear, legible letters, in the correct order. As far as Marli and I know, this is a first for him, so we celebrated the occasion with a reward of Kinder Surprise eggs.

Daigoro seemed to think this was a very equitable exchange.

We've also managed to arrange a few playdates with local children of Daigoro's age, which helps to quell some of my latent fears about him having trouble making friends and seeing them regularly. We haven't yet managed to find a female playmate for him - all of his contacts so far have been boys. I'm not going to worry so much about that yet - even at this early age, there are marked differences in how boys and girls play.

Interesting Quotations

When asked if he wanted water, Daigoro replied,

"No, I'm being problematic. I want pop."

Given bacon, Daigoro asked if Marli could remove the fat. He added,

"I'm a vegetarian for fat."

Treasured Moments

Kenshin walks and climbs quite nimbly now - running is still a little ungainly-looking (gallumphing might be a word for it). His speech hasn't really progressed much at all - somewhat unusual for a nineteen month-old - but not something we're worried about yet.

Daigoro still speaks quite well and continues to show remarkable powers of observation daily. He's going through some odd phases of on-and-off separation anxiety at pre-school - probably arising from the long Christmas break.

Last night, after we put the kids down, Kenshin was crying and not wanting to go to sleep. We decided to wait and see what happened for a few minutes before we intervened. Our bedroom shares a wall with the kids' room and we can often hear what's going on.

We were laying in our bed, when I heard Daigoro start to sing to Kenshin in a soft, gentle voice. I couldn't quite make out the words, and the tune was unfamiliar, but Daigoro was definitely trying to comfort Kenshin with song. It was very, very sweet. About two minutes later, Daigoro stopped singing and sweet, blissful silence fell upon the house.

On the other end of the sweetness spectrum (what I like to term the "razza-frazza kids" end), the children are generally safe enough to be left for a minute or two without someone watching them like a hawk (enough time for me to go to the washroom, or go downstairs for something, etc.), but this little vignette was an exception.

The weekend before last, I was looking after the kids. Marli was in the house but didn't have responsibility for them at that moment (we usually verbally "hand off" the kids to one another a la pilot-in-command transfers on aircraft - a habit which generally avoids the "I thought YOU were looking after them" arguments). I had to go upstairs for something. Marli was already upstairs - I think Daigoro was with her. I figured, "I'll be upstairs for a few moments," what kind of trouble can Kenshin get into?

Heh.

I run upstairs, get the thing that I need, am coming down the stairs and see Kenshin there at the bottom of the stairs with a jar of jam hoisted over his head and about to throw it on the hard ceramic tile floor of our front hall, looking for all the world like some sort of bizarre toddler variant of Charleton Heston playing Moses in the Ten Commandments about to dash the stone tablets down the side of Mount Sinai.

I vault down the last few steps and grab the jam jar out of his hands just as he's about to throw it.

Frickin' jam? Why does a kid want to throw a jam jar around!? JAM!

Razza-frazza kids.

Lawn Shovelling

Daigoro loves to shovel snow. He'll actually get upset when he sees that the plows have been really efficient at clearing the highways - he was on the brink of tears when he was describing to me in the car how "the trucks with the shovels were clearing all the roads."

So tonight he got to stay with his ba-chan and gi-chan and shovel snow to his heart's content. He shovelled the walkway, the driveway and, in a little bit of overzealousness, started to shovel my parents' lawn as well.

Kenshin is experiencing something which is disrupting his sleep and making him wake up in the night again. Judging by the redness in his cheeks and his running nose, we're thinking its something to do with his teeth again (apple-red cheeks and runny noses seem to herald teething quite clearly for Kenshin). He's also developed a scaly, reddish rash on his calves and thighs which appear to be eczema, though we're not entirely sure.

Yesterday Daigoro was thrown into fits of laughter when he started putting on my battered brown fedora and Marli and my mom would say, "hey, it's daddy," and then when he took it off again they'd say, "oh, it's Daigoro again." Later, he found my father's slippers and they'd say, "oh, now it's gi-chan!" He thought this was hilarious, but when he put on both the slippers and the fedora, the women would say, "oh no, now we don't know who it is - is it daddy or gi-chan?"

Daigoro thought this was the height of modern comedy and repeated it for about ten minutes.

Kenshin is learning certain verbal cues for things - "a doi doi doi doi" is "I want that."

"Amaaaa." is "here, take this thing which I am giving to you.

"Uh-huh, uh huh!" (accompanied by head-nodding) is "yes, I am doing what I want to be doing," or "yes, I like what I now have in my hands."

"Uh-ohhh," is "something has fallen/broken" or "I think I have done something wrong".

"Nah!" (accompanied by twisting his head and body violently away from a proferred food item) is, of course, "no, I don't want this; how can you possibly think to offer this to me?"

He also seems to be increasingly happy to interact with Daigoro - the two of them thumping around the house chasing each other while laughing delightedly is a great joy for me.

Daigoro has been a bit of trouble lately at suppertime. He's become more and more squirmy and fidgety at meals, which obviously reduces the amount of food we manage to get into him. Today we reached the limit of our tolerance and buckled him into his booster with the warning that we will now buckle him in every time he squirms and does not sit properly in his seat. We'll see how effectively this solves this problem, if at all.

Ghosts n' Gobbling

(no, not "goblin" - "gobbling")

Daigoro wanted to be a ghost this Hallowe'en. Since putting a sheet over your kid and cutting eyeholes is apparently a bad thing for safety/visibility reasons, I took a makeup kit in hand and painted my best scary skull face on him.

Apparently it was scary enough to prompt a lot of comments from adults. Daigoro loved it. Our Kenshin had to content himself with an explorer's helmet and some play binoculars.

We managed to get him to ration his Hallowe'en candy over the course of a month, which felt rewarding.

The usual start-of-winter cold viruses ran rampant through our family, making mid-November quite unpleasant. Fortunately, though all of us were sick concurrently, none of us were bed-ridden at the same time (though Ian and I both had days in bed on different days).

For whatever reason, Daigoro has been more and more difficult to feed at supper and occasionally lunchtime. Kenshin, though usually a bottomless pit of appetite, has suddenly developed a screaming-fit-throwing aversion to bibs, which makes clean up and dinner time somewhat trying.

We attended the Santa Claus parade in Markham this past weekend. A good time was had by Daigoro, who seemed most amused by Mr. Peanut, but Kenshin was pretty unimpressed by the whole affair and spent much of the parade being either wheeled or carried about by alternating father and grandfather comforters. He perked up and paid rapt attention at the passing of marching bands and other sources of music (carollers, speakers playing music, etc.). That boy loves music.

Speaking of which, Kenshin has developed the often amusing but sometimes pathetic habit of crying to himself to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or "Goodnight Ladies". I believe he finds it comforting when he's feeling upset. He's actually good at carrying a tune, which is harder than it probably sounds, I think.

Daigoro is excited about the Advent calendar given to him by his Mamie. The countdown to Christmas is at the forefront of his mind - this past Sunday after waking up, he blearily looked around and asked "Did I miss Christmas?"

Lesson Learned

No posts for a while. No excuse really, so I won't try to give one.

The kids have been growing steadily. Kenshin babbles away to himself quite happily, but still is not forming distinct words, except for "ma" for mom or dad and "ba" for ball. He also knows to say "uh-oh" when something seems wrong or is dropped and "wheeee" when he's having fun.

On (Canadian) Thanksgiving Monday, we took the kids to Orchalaw farms near Missisauga in a town called Norval. It was almost magical. I know that's a pretty corny thing to say, and I'm not generally the corny type, but it was really, really nice. Beautiful day, beautiful weather, lovely smells and sights - the wonderful bounty of nature and time with my young family.

I will carry the mental image of Kenshin sitting happily under an apple tree, munching on windfall apples, as one of the mental snapshots of happiest moments of my life.

If you have young children, take them apple picking. It is a lovely experience.

Today, Marli gave me a break from childcare while I played with my monthly wargaming group. She took them to the Ontario Science Centre. At one point, Daigoro wandered away from Marli, just for a moment, but long enough for him to become frightened. Today at supper, I asked him about what he learned at the Science Centre.

He said, "I learned not to run away from mummy."

Memento Mori

Last night Daigoro broke down in tears at the thought of his own death.

Marli was explaining how all things die - we're both big believers in showing our children that death is a part of life. Suddenly Daigoro started sobbing and announced,

"But I don't want to die. If I am dead I cannot play with my toys. I don't want to die."

Apparently this went on for several minutes, despite Marli's excellent and patient efforts to console him.

He seemed to be recovered by the time the three of them came back from the park.
I have to say that I was a bit taken aback by the daunting nature of explaining mortality on a personal level to a pre-schooler. I mean, it's all well and good when you're talking about ants and dead birds and squirrels, but when a three and a half-year-old is trying to face up to the core truth of humanity, it's a little different.

I often find myself considering the apparent finality of death, trying to reconcile it with my own religious beliefs. I try to tell myself I would face death with a brave heart and a peaceful soul. I think, now that I have children, the hardest thing for me to face would be the thought of them having to go on without me. Now, I also sometimes think of how I would deal with the death of one of my children.

Once, before Kenshin was born and Daigoro was younger I had a dream in which Daigoro somehow managed to open the door of an airliner we were flying in and fall out (realistically impossible, of course) and I was framed in the doorway, watching him fall away. I was so incredibly torn up emotionally by this feeling of helplessness and loss - when I woke it was all I could do to stop myself from weeping.

It's said that no parent should live to bury their children - yet it happens all the time. To be reminded of this by the fear of your own children was a new and sobering experience.

Room to Blog!

I have a home office space again! After weeks of renovations and some very frustrating delays, I have a space where I can set up my office and work in peace.

Maybe I'll be able to blog less intermittently. Maybe.

Lots of stuff to catch up on... Daigoro's time in preschool, his first movie theatre experience, Manitoulin Island fun, Canada Day fireworks - all sorts of stuff; but not at 12:15 AM on a weeknight.

Maybe tomorrow.