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February 24, 2004
How absolutely heartwarming it is to have a captivated audience again. To be able to complain and gloat and share and at the same time, the wonder of opening myself up to all those posts about how totally wonderful I am.
Wait a minute. You are captivated, aren't you?
It's been too long and for the first time in all that too long, I feel motivated to write, truly inspired by the Jeanette's and Russian Lisa's of the world. I've spent many of my compositions on the day to day antics and embarrassments I find myself enthralled in, or at least narrowly escaping, but do I write about us? About who we really are? Since the beginning, I've always maintained my goal here is to keep a diary my children will treasure one day - with stories of the escapades that made my heart explode with pride or left me sputtering exasperated. But let's say twenty years from now my children have my diaries before them, it's for THEN that I would like to paint an omnifarious picture of the things we cared about or not, of our preferences and quirks and passions.
So now that I've arrived at such a monumental decision, how shall I go about executing it?
With time, I suppose. I could bring you back to the very beginnings, when I was born breech, after three long labourious days, on a Saturday. Or just go at it as I am - all over the place. One entry at a time and right off the top of my head.
I think I'm a creature of contradiction. I'm scarily organized in some respect. I have presents bought and wrapped long before the special days. I notice and appreciate details, I like to use nice paper and bags and always, real ribbons. I have boxes, bins and baskets for nearly everything I own. I crave order. A glimpse into my closet would show our things hanging neatly and categorically on the same plastic hangers and shelves with everything neatly ironed and folded. My wallet is absolute chaos. Partly because I didn't choose it myself and mostly because I can't for the life of me use it properly. I have cards and money and receipts shoved in pockets all over the place. If only I would put things in their place immediately, I swear I would be in fantastic shape. It drives Remo CRAZY that I don't walk in, plug in my phone and put my keys and purse (which is also in a state) in the same place every single day. I'm very clean but awfully sloppy. My kitchen cupboards are nearly perfect inside. A place for everything and better yet, places that make sense and are easy to maintain. But when I'm baking or cooking up a storm, it's as if a cyclone rips through the place. I leave drawers and doors open and I only sometimes put things away as I go along. I believe very strongly in "a cluttered space makes for a cluttered mind", so over and over again I get myself all organized and over and over again, I get upside down again. Two of my best friends are perpetually organized and I wish to be "naturally" like them. When they say their houses are a mess, are they messy like mine or sparkly clean?
I change our sheets and mattress covers every week and have a shower and wash my hair every single night. I'm writing that because I have girlfriends who have their hair set and sometimes never wash it again for the rest of the week. First off, I'd look like a rat and secondly, I'd feel like one. But they always look glamourous. Speaking of hair, my favourite is when it's red and curly like Grace from Will and Grace. Did you know she's about to have a baby? I'm also impressed with tiny little noses and nice eyebrows. I wished for a child with curly hair, knowing it would be a shot in the dark and couldn't believe it when Kaillan got curly hair from out of nowhere. But it's not overtly thick and for every little curl on her head there's a matching cowlick. Honest to Gawd, I don't know what to do with her hair because she's losing most of those curls while cowlicks are cropping up all over the place.
I know if I had all the time in the world, I'd be a clean freak. Back when I had more time, I'd clean and clean and clean and never be satisfied. I would take a toothbrush to my mouldings even. One great bonus I've noticed with having Anne Marie do the final run, is the piece of mind it gives me. She makes the house feel "done". If she misses something, I don't notice or even care. So what. Once Anne Marie leaves, it takes us a day, who am I kidding, a meal, to pull the place apart again. We're trying really hard to work with that twenty minutes a day theory, if we just pick up for twenty minutes at the end of every day, we'd be done. I find a few cracks in the plan we lovingly refer to as Brandan, Kaillan and Emmie. But even we're working on them too. One toy at a time, Brandan's pretty good with that. Kaillan is the most destructive. If she's not constructively kept busy, she will destructively busy herself.
Remo is fantastic at clearing space but his plan is to get everything out of eye-shot in three seconds or less. Lets say I've just organized my clutter into piles; pile for upstairs and down, papers to be filed or bills to be paid, things I have to give to someone, whatever, he piles it all together and puts it in the cupboard or in an already organized basket. Then I have to find and dig and re-sort what I just sorted. Now his problem with me is that I start and don't finish. I'll sweep my kitchen floor five times a day but never actually scoop the stuff up and put it in the garbage. I do the grocery shopping but hate putting stuff away. We have two rooms downstairs, the cold room we call our depanneur (corner store) and Walmart. I should post pictures. Remo insists I could never hit a store again till Kaillan goes to kindergarten and we'd still have everybody's birthdays and meals covered. Everything in there is now deliciously organized (it's been six months), people would swear I was obsessive if they took a tour, BUT, if you saw the condition of our house when we're trying to get ready for something, you'd run. Fast. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not THAT bad, if maybe all the distractions (kids, phone, activities) deviate me. Or maybe I take on too much and that's why I get disorganized. I would never advocate throwing in the towel because I'd be a miserable mess, but there's something to be said for letting go. When I think about my most perfect friends, I'm fairly certain I don't want to go that route because the pressure they put on themselves is pretty powerful. I do know someone who is sloppy, gosh, I should really use more dramatic words, I can barely eat there. But it doesn't bother her at all. She could really give a crap what the place looks like, she'll invite anybody over anytime. Her priority is in having fun, forget the house. I scamper up the middle, aiming for perfection and forever cleaning up after myself. Man, but if only in this life all that work would get you ahead...
One thing I must say I find particularly motivating when I need to accomplish a lot of things is wearing a pair of Nike's. When I have running shoes on, I mean business. Does it make sense? I guess it's like getting dolled up in the morning even if you don't have a place to go. Now, if I listen to the Bee Gees or my Footloose CD, I'm really flying. When spring fever hits, I don't even make sense anymore.
I have to say I'm finding life back at work more of a juggle. Remo's taking some time off now to spend with the kids and help with the transition and I'm relying on him for so much. I have to accept I just can't do what I did before. I think staying home is extremely difficult, even with support. What I find hard about going to work is that I have to do much of what I did while I was home, but the bonus is having everybody out the door by seven o'clock in the morning. What I find most difficult, is that in my heart of hearts, I'd rather be home. In a line or less, let me say for now in our lives, we realized that is not an option. I'm grateful because I'm satisfied with my job. It's not the career I'd have chosen for myself. If I could go back and do it all over again, I think I'd have been a doctor. A pediatrician maybe? Sadly enough when I was in high school, I didn't think I could afford to do it and anyhoo, I had friends and a social life that were imperative. I find it amazing to think how different a turn my life could've taken. Who knows where I'd be living. No Remo or the kids? But they're a dream come true! What would you do? Could you go for it even now?
In writing this, I'm wondering what are my aspirations of today? Since the kids are little and demanding, I guess for right now I have to keep it simple. I seek calm, happy, balance. Ironic, actually, given the furious pace I often run at. For my Valentine's present, Remo had a laundry room built off the closet in our room, and while I was initially against changing status quo, a few days into it, I'm thinking he's onto something. It does make life easier. Remo's in a phase where if he can pay somebody to do something we don't really need to waste the kid's time with, he will. He owns a snow removal company and we pay someone to do our driveway even. I fought wasting money on things I can do myself, vehemently. Now sheepishly, somewhat reluctantly I have to agree that it does make life easier, and Remo works so hard he deserves it. That we eat well is a priority, though since Emmie, we've eaten more not-from-scratch than we used to. I realize now, I'm better served preparing what I know they'll eat as opposed to experimenting with something new. I love entertaining, but I've crossed that line now where I don't want crowds coming over all the time anymore. I'd prefer when we see our friends to go out without the kids. To catch up and laugh and probably spend the whole time talking about the kids. To make that time quality and the kid's time quality. Did I tell you I cancelled our New Year's party this year? The theme was tacky, in the invitations I had asked that everyone came in their flashiest, wackiest most outrageous paraphernalia. Then maybe half an hour after we had the gingerbread house building party for 23 children, who were hanging like monkeys from everywhere, I convinced Remo we HAD to cancel New Years. What could be tackier than that? I couldn't do it. Couldn't spend a week getting ready for the party and a week cleaning up after it. More important, didn't want to. Am I a getting hard?
This year? I want to try cross-country skiing and then start cycling in the summer. I want to speak French well. I still want to go see Oprah really bad. I want to master a tomato sauce that my kids will long for. I want to take Brandan and Kaillan horseback riding and I want to roast marshmallows in the fireplace and sleep in sleeping bags on the living room floor. One weekend I want to climb into bed every night with a good book and I want to finish and seal up the kid's time capsules. I've entered into a stage right now where I have an insatiable need to learn about different things. May I just find a little more time and brain space.
One thing that really filled me with regret when I read the entry of whoever it was again, was the stories they dream up for their children. Wait a minute, I think it was Jeanette. I read the kids stories, though never enough, and sure I have a wild, crazy imagination but I'm not sharing it enough with the kids. All the time I give them I'm trying to teach them something, it's not often enough that I'm silly. Remo's so much luckier for that. He's silly ALL the time. I'm tougher on them, pushier.
Ooops, a week went by.
Probably sort of convenient given that I was going off on so many tangents and sharing nothing of any particular interest. Like knowing I wash my hair every day is edge of your seat reading. You know something though? I write as I speak, off the top of my head. While I can be very outgoing, I have a streak of shyness. I talk, talk, talk, talk, talk and I think I do so because I'm shy AND outgoing. It's like I have a perpetual need to keep things flowing, to keep conversations animated. An idea stops by my thoughts even briefly and out it spews. Like how a cup of sweet potatoes has the same amount of beta-carotene as 24 cups of broccoli. Is it relevant to this conversation? Nope. Interesting? Maybe. While I do have discretion, I do catch myself carrying conversations with people whilst I'm thinking about something completely unrelated. I actually just discussed this with a friend. I was saying I'm probably missing out on a lot of bonding connections by being so jibber-jabby. She told me she'd hate if that part of me changed because that's what she loves best about me. Hmmm.
Way back in the beginning of November my Dad and step-mother came to see us. I'm mentioning it now because I didn't in an entry before. They read my diary and I wanted them to know how important it was to us that they came. It was a "there's a great seat-sale if we come right now" kind of visit, last minute and over too soon. There is heartbreak that comes with every visit and that's that horrible moment when I have to say goodbye. Anyway, they came round about the time that we had landed the satellite dish and most importantly, the food network, and that week I organized the fundraising cooking class and collected stacks of favourite recipes. My dad loves cooking and eating as much as I do, so I had a partner in crime. Armed with a few recipes and his ideas and mine, we started experimenting. Both of our knockout recipes, cranberry-balsamic pork tenderloin and butternut squash soup, worked out fantastic when we tried them, though we deviated quite a bit. When I went to make them all by myself the second time, and cockily winged it again, I blew them both. I posted a great coconut jam thumbprint cookie recipe by the Barefoot Contessa. She actually prepared the cookies for some of her girlfriends, packing them in cellophane bags and tying them with ribbons. I made them for the helpers at Brandan's school for Valentine's day and they all wanted recipes. My dad and I also took a chocolate class together so we could make chocolate mouse and truffles and chocolate dipped orange peels. One of my favorite dishes was actually orange slices we mixed with sugar and cinnamon, I can't for the life of me remember if we cooked them or not, but we poured them on vanilla ice cream. It was a really easy yet somewhat fancy looking dessert, especially if you put them in chocolate "cups".
Now what came next...Christmas. I know I mentioned up there about the kid's party but I don't know if I wrote about it in an entry. Every year I do a gingerbread house building party for the kids, this year Brandan wanted to invite every person he's ever met in his life. We chopped the list down to twenty-three children, boys, girls with their ages between two and seven. That was my first mistake. Rule #1 when having a kid's party, keep them the same sex and the same age. This year I bought some really cute (all-inclusive down to the sparkle gel) foam gingerbread house kits from Walmart. There was a girlie house and Santa's workshop and perhaps I should mention I had to travel to seven different Walmarts to ensure I had everybody covered. The kids were coming over for pizza at 5:30, then they would do their houses and make a couple ornaments, we'd pose them up for some great photos, at 7:00 I had Santa coming and by 8:30 they'd all be gone.
First off, they ate way too fast.
The craft scene was chaotic at best. The girls were all careful about their little packages of decorations, methodical in their art. The five year old boys mixed up all their pieces, would squeal "poo-poo"and then collapse off their chairs in laughter. Boys I'd deemed exceptionally polite, perfect role models for my son, were mauling each other. For some reason some of them didn't have shirts on anymore. Some were barefoot. They sang their newly acquired French songs as loud as their voices would take them. Half an hour into crafts and I thought surely to God, it must be time to go home by now. I still had two hours. Victoria found the whole scene overwhelming and fell apart. I had to call her Dad to come get her, I felt like a failure. Santa Clause (our friend Stephane) came and was fantastic. We bought a great suit, but my seven year old nephew said he was a fake because his boots were brand new. I hauled him out of the young, impressionable room. Each of the kids sat on Santa's knee, save for Kaillan, who sent Claudia over to get her chocolates. The first boy wanted a trumpet. The second asked for an X-box. Every boy after asked for a trumpet and an X-box and my bet is fifteen of them didn't know what an X-box is. The boys very quickly went from high energy to seriously wired. I drew a stern line with the ones beaming candy canes from upstairs. At one point I had to nurse the baby and I think that was the only moment Mitchell slowed down. The baby of three boys, he was very interested in whatever it was I was doing to that baby. One of the boys had a toy gun and I up and died when I found it in the hands of the one boy whose mother would FLIP if she knew he had a gun. I spent so much time pulling boys off each other, my only impression of the girls was they were so good. To Claudia, Theresa, and Karim, I owe you big time and may I take your never-again advice.
The holidays went very quickly. CBC was playing Christmas shows for the kids every night so we tried to plunk down with them. I had a LOT of commitments at the school, I volunteered for a lot of things while I was home, thinking it would be a good opportunity to see what I'll keep up when I'm at work. Ultimately, I had no one to blame but myself for a few overwhelming moments I brought on myself. Though I had been so sure my Christmas shopping was done, I was forever racing out to pick up things. I made cookies with Brandan's class and I swear I dislocated every disk in my back scooching down over that little table. The other two mother's tables were totally neat, mine was like a war zone with a puff of flour smoke on top of us. We wore our cookies proudly, my guess is Madame Poirier has my number now. Surprisingly, she actually invited me back a couple days later for the Christmas party. Oh, wait a minute. That was a riot.
Because we have the Santa suit, I volunteered Remo to go and hand out candy canes to the three kindergarten classes. I had nine boxes of candy canes, which was exactly the right amount since there were 18 kids in each class. Remo's a pretty big guy, with not a skinny bone on his body but in that suit he looked stringbean. He walked in with the wig on crooked and his hat, that was supposed to be flopped over, stood straight up like an antenna. His too-big glasses kept slipping down and fogging up from his beard, and speaking of the beard, he had tied it around his ears sideways. He was a horrible Santa and he knew it. Remo was so worried Brandan would figure him out, he was a nervous wreck. He walked into Brandan's class and it was all down hill. He mind-blocked "Ho Ho Ho"and kept shaking his bells and saying "hello there"over and over in a deep, phony voice. He didn't know what to say and wouldn't look at Brandan. Brandan knew it was him immediately. Remo gave them all their candy canes and gave Madame Poirier one to, oblivious to my eyes popping out of my head warning that we didn't have enough candy canes to give to teachers too. I tore out of the room and ran to the secretary in a panic. Did she have a candy cane? She looked in her hands and around her desk and was shrugging no, when I saw one over there, on the table, sticking out of a present all wrapped in cellophane. She didn't know what hit her and I didn't care about decorum. I cut the thing out with her scizzors and was out of there faster than you can spell Zoro. Sufficient to say, I do believe Remo will not be coming to a mall near you anytime soon.
On to Christmas. Tradition has it we go to Remo's parents Christmas Eve, his brother's for brunch Christmas morning and we do a turkey dinner for my family that afternoon. Italians don't do turkey. I was a little overwhelmed this year because we had something going every day and with the three kids, I knew I needed help. Way back when, my family had offered to give me a hand, but were now too busy, so I turned into one of those women who says in a moment of frustration: I'm not doing it. When on top of everything, one of them called to ask if she could bring one more person, a fifty year old man who was here from China to learn English and wanted to write a report about us, I said yes, but inside I was reluctant. Probably mostly because I had to single handedly do all the shopping, cleaning, preparing and cooking on top of wrapping presents and taking care of children and not being home. Christmas is such a personal holiday, what would we talk about with this stranger who couldn't understand us? A night went by and that I was annoyed, I'm not sure if that's the word even, saddened me. I had let myself be swallowed up by the crazy, mad rush of the holidays. Lost all spirit of warmth and sharing and togetherness. Bruce came and was probably, definitely SHOCKED by how Canadians celebrate Christmas. They all arrived fifteen minutes after we came home and the place was a nightmare. Messes piled high, wrapping paper everywhere, food all over the place. I offered drinks and hors d'oeuvres out of packages or made them serve themselves. Friends and family came one after another all day long, I swear every time the doorbell rang, my eyebrows hit my hair line and I'd run into the dining room to finish wrapping their gifts. Then the doorbell would ring again. Dinner was served by serving, not by course. You finished your turkey? Then you can have some mashed potatoes. Bruce was such a great sport. So he could bring back pictures of his wild adventure, we dressed him up and posed him. He was a fireman putting out a fire in the kid's playhouse. He was a cowboy riding a horse and a fairy princess holding his purses. We laughed so much I lost my voice. I made all kinds of vows for this next Christmas. One is to put a limit to what we spend on everybody, another is to absolutely have everything ready long before the hustle and bustle of the holidays, and most important, I vow to treasure the moments. You never know when you're making a memory.
Speaking of vows, it's pancake Tuesday today, we've shared it with our friends Gina and Peter and their girls every year for as long as I can remember and I have to scoot home to get things going. I've also been considering what to give up for lent. I'm not a good Catholic and please don't lecture me up and down about not having found myself, because I'm still discovering my beliefs. Since mostly everyone around me takes it much more seriously and are in the process of making sacrifices, I want to give up something as well. I'm want to give up saying not nice things about people. I'm really going to try not to criticize or gossip. Let the little frustrations go. I can't promise to think perfect mind you, my halo has always been a little tilted.
I mentioned already for Valentine's day this year, my ever romantic husband had a laundry room built off the closet in our room, hey? Remo felt it didn't make sense to haul all the laundry to the main floor to wash it and haul it all back upstairs again. There are advantages and disadvantages. I'm actually surprised by how much laundry we actually accumulate on the main floor, the kids are forever peeling clothes off in the family room. Actually doing the laundry was more convenient when it was near the kitchen because that's where I spend the majority of my time. Upstairs, I only really save time when it comes to delivering it all. Needless to say, when we had the work done, we also had Emmie's room finished and the only project left, the bathroom in the basement. We painted and put up the fixtures up even. On Saturday, two weeks after the jobs were done, I was downstairs trying to download pictures on my finally fixed computer when I heard it: drip-drip-drip. A lake of water on the floor and a sagging ceiling in the brand new bathroom. Remo tried to convince me it was the powder room toilet above us, or maybe he was actually trying to convince himself, while I feebly asked if it could be washing machine. He shook his head, no. Minutes later he came out of the old laundry room, where there hung another sagging ceiling and announced it was in fact the washing machine above. You had to see us doing laundry Sunday. Remo took the hose from the washing machine and tied it to a waist high garbage can so we could empty the water in that. How much water could a high efficiency machine use? It filled to the top with a hundred gallons of the heaviest water you ever heaved. Five times we had to carry that water to the bathtub, dragging it four steps at a time. On our last transfer, Remo said it was a good thing we bought such a fancy machine and lived in such a nice neighbourhood. Maybe you had to be there, but we laughed our guts out. I nearly fell in the bucket.
A quick update on the kids....
Brandan's doing awesome in school, showing up with TB's (tres bien) almost every day. We went for parent teacher interviews a couple weeks ago, expecting the worst because he'd been going through a streak of attitude at home, and were told Brandan had to stop helping everyone so he could concentrate more on his work. Apparently what's happening is he's got half his head on his work, while the rest of him keeps tabs on what's happening in the class room. If someone drops a paper four tables away he'll sprint over to pick it up. Emily drops her crayons on the other side of the room and he leaps over to get them. Mme Poirier said it's a difficult situation because he's not disruptive and he's not aggressive, in fact he's very popular with the kids, but it takes him longer to finish his tasks because he loses focus. Her concern is that grade one, when they're confined to a desk all day long, will be difficult for him. Brandan plays hockey three times a week (an hour and a half practice Saturday, an hour game Sunday and a hour long practice outdoors Wednesday nights) and loves it, maybe half as much as his hockey nut father. Remo says Brandan skates very well and his puck handling gets better every week, but he's just grasping the passing aspect of the game. In soccer he could score twelve goals a game single-handedly, here he has to work with the other players and not be a superstar.
One of the big projects I took on at school was lunch fundraising. Every two weeks, we do a pizza/spaghetti lunch with one of the restaurant chains or a subway lunch. I had no idea what I got myself into and used a lot of friggan-frak expletives that weekend I spend nearly thirty hours cutting little pieces of pink papers and sorting them by week and then classroom and then counting them over and over and over again. Imagine $5485.00 of $5 lunches that needed to be written down on upmteen lists. Claudia, my best friend who's daughter doesn't even go to my school, came to tick off lists. I couldn't begin to explain to you the craziness I encountered, I swear school administrators and teachers do not get paid enough. At two o'clock one morning while we were trying to match the circles of one student who didn't put his name on all forms, Remo asked if I had given any thought to why NO ONE else put up their hand for this. At the same time the next day, he said he'd gladly give five hundred dollars to the school to never do this again. Little did he know, his part in this little scheme would not end. Not only do we buy the drinks and desserts for the lunches, we're also placing orders and at the school on lunch days organizing the distribution of them. They love Remo over at the school. I made a decision to finish up this stint and then hand it off to the next mom - till Diane. The perfect mother of four little boys, she congratulated me on the project, saying that they had discussed at both the PPO meeting and governing board what a great job I had done with it. I blushed. Then I could feel myself caving. They promised me a committee so now I'm thinking it wasn't THAT bad, if I had help, I could maybe keep it going. First off, it helped me establish a great connection with the principal and the secretaries, and I think it can only benefit Brandan to sorta be on in the in with the cliques that happen in a school. Our school has more stay at home mom's than working ones. Tomorrow Remo's volunteering for a field trip up his alley, they're going to the planetarium and then skating downtown. I can only hope we can do this for the other two when it's their turns.
Kaillan is in the throws of terrible twos. Holy smokes, the temper on that one. Let's say we just put our foot down on an issue and insist that no, she cannot have whatever she needs at that very moment (and I daresay we're generally quite reasonable), she will stomp some part of her, fists clenched and staring at us with such intense indignation and then she'll SPIT on the floor. She's tattle-tailing a lot these days and completely obsessed with everything matching. I can't even give her a fork without explaining, see, it matches the fridge! I got home from work yesterday and took off my suit, leaving my turtleneck on and pulling on a pair of casual pants. You'd think I committed a brutal sin. That doesn't match, Mommy. Then she looked at my socks and I swear, rolled her eyes. Kaillan is very cuddly and sensitive. She also has her father's sweet tooth. Because she's very stubborn, it's probably the only real leverage I have over her these days. Meal times are probably my biggest weakness. Ensuring they eat enough, negotiating how much, convincing them it's not yucky and insisting they are not done yet, has to be the one
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