Category Archives: Family

I just bought a Black Eyed Peas track off iTunes and now I feel slimy.

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So my kids forced me to do it. They wanted mp3 players for Christmas so I sprung for the smallest, cheapest iPod shuffles for Julia and Emma. I didn’t realize until they arrive just how insanely small they were and instantly said to lyn:

“They’ll loose these in days.”

Anyway.

So the next conundrum. I actually had to fill the thing with music. I conceded and with Lyn’s help loaded it with some of the stuff they listen to on the radio and have expressed interest in. I took my opportunity as parental role model though to pad it with some stuff I thought had more ‘substance’ – some of which they already like – in hopes that it would help keep them from straying too far over to the ‘lite pop’ side. I wanted to fill it with a bunch of other stuff, but Lyn smartly reminded me that they don’t have 8 hours at work to kill everyday to listen to music and their attention spans are 8-10 songs tops.

So. Submitted for your perusal, my intro playlist for the youngin’s.

Gee. Can you tell which ones were my picks?

Holiday Update.

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Every year (well mostly) I write some sort of brief update that we call the Christmas Letter and send out with our Christmas cards. I’ve been madly in the weeds over the holidays and when I have had free time I’ve decided to spend it doing pretty much nothing, since I’ve got to be off to work again in the new year and wanted to relish the remnants of my leave. I will say that I’ve had a lot of time for introspection and self-examination during my leave/the holidays and I’ve really discovered quite a bit about myself and the way I operate. I feel much better for it, and I’ve got some ideas for the new year. No time to delve right now though, so by way of a copout, here’s this years ‘Christmas Letter’ in it’s entirety. Apologies to those of you who received a hardcopy verison, you can go browse for after-Christmas internet deals now…

The Facks, 2008. Colin, Kent, Julia, Olivia, Lyn, Emma

Lyn’s been hassling me for 2 weeks to write the Christmas letter. I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with some sort of clever ‘theme’ or presentation and I’ve come up empty, I mean, it’s not like I’m a graphic designer or anything. I started on a few different tangents but wasn’t able to maintain the attention, time or patience (go figure) to see any of them to fruition, so in the end, looks like you’ll get the formulaic rundown of what everybody’s doing. As Lyn says to the kids, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” Onward.

We had a new addition to the roster this year. Olivia Lyne was born on September 12th and is doing well. Initially we had some real problems with colic, but we’ve played musical food sources and played with combinations of breast milk, regular and ‘sensitive’ formula, and – of course, scotch – and we’ve finally found the magic formula. She’s finally pretty much settled in and as a bonus, we now have a reason to keep lots of scotch on hand. On the downside, she’s turned out to be a bit of a scotch snob, preferring only older, really expensive double malts. Women. Go figure. She’s a big baby (was 9 pounds at birth) and is already pushing the limit wearing size 6 month clothes at 3 months. It’s probably a good thing, very Darwinian, as she’ll need the size to stand up to her older brother and make it out alive.

Colin is 18 months old now and dabbles with Darwinian theory every day by testing the premise that humans don’t abandon their offspring. He’s a big kid for his age too, and must be advanced, because even though he’s only a year and a half old, he’s already exhibiting ‘terrible two’ tendencies. His favourite pastimes include leaving toys all over the house, removing ALL the cushions from the couch, testing his cranium resiliency by hurling himself from various pieces of furniture and putting all manner of items into the kitchen trash – with the exception of actual trash. His vocabulary is still pretty limited; mama, dada, tantu (thank you), wassat (what’s that). In addition, if you show him a lion or tiger it will illicit a ‘rawwwrrrrrr!’ In keeping with the Darwin theme, Colin demonstrates his ties to his primate ancestors by refusing to wear socks, shoes or slippers of any kind for a period of more than 7 minutes. Anyone needing evidence of our emergence from apes need not look any further than my perpetually barefooted boy.

Emma started school this year (well, full-time school anyway) and is a full blown Kindergartner now. She enjoys being a ‘big sister’ now that Colin and Olivia are around and particularly likes to ‘read’ books and stories to Olivia. Emma digs horses and she attended a week long horse riding camp and is taking riding lessons once a week. The riding lessons will be ending in January, but then we’re looking to get her into some ice-skating lessons. Emma really enjoys drawing pictures and doing crafts.

Julia has entered the world of second grade and is completely into the horse thing as well – probably more so than Emma. She too attended summer riding camp and has been taking lessons once a week. Any and all toys, books, videos that she’s into either pertain to horses, are about horses or feature an image of a horse. She does some other stuff too. She’s in the chorus at school and recently sang the national anthem at a high school hockey game with them. She still loves to draw and do crafts and also has been getting a kick out of helping around the house more, including doing some cooking.

Lyn continues to ‘hang out at home and raise the kids’. When I meet people and they ask me “Does your wife work?” I always say, “She’s a stay at home mom.” They usually follow with “So she doesn’t work outside the home.” I counter with, “We’ve got four kids, there’s PLENTY of work to be done within the home – I don’t think she feels compelled to seek out MORE work elsewhere. I’m glad she’s there to do it. I got a day job so I could get out.” In spite of all the work that she does, Lyn still finds time once in awhile for her more recreational pursuits including knitting, tending to her African violets and working in the garden and around the yard. She’s recently considered picking up a weaving loom to continue weaving (she took a class when we lived in Virginia) and we still banter about the idea of her starting some kind of business of her own selling crafts. I keep telling her she should make hand-knitted sweaters with a pocket in which to grow an african violet or fresh vegetables and a woven, sewn-on napkin/bib for the dinner table. She doesn’t think they’ll catch on.

I’m still doing my breadwinning thang at Goose Lane Editions (a book publisher and graphic design firm) and I also am still turning out freelance work as well. Somewhere in the back of my head I harbour thoughts of opening my own business and saying ‘damn the man’. We’ll see. In the meantime I continue to find various ways to spend free time – when there is some – hockey, the bike (though I haven’t been on as much as I’d like). I’m trying to teach myself to play guitar – and I’m putting my would be beer money into a jar for a set of drums. It’s been at least 12 years since I owned a kit and having one again would be awesome – I just need to finish gutting and re-doing my entire basement to have room for ‘em. Oh well, I can’t complain I’ve got nothing to do.

Here’s hoping that this letter finds you and yours well this holiday season and best wishes in the New Year!

­­— Kent, Lyn, Julia, Emma, Colin & Olivia

Coffee. It’s not just for the day you make it anymore.

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Yesterday morning we got up to go to Julia and Emma’s school. They have a ‘walk’ every year where the whole school walks around the block. It’s to promote health and the school I think, but it’s always an added bonus to be able to disrupt traffic with a legitimate cause.

I made coffee to take with me before we went, then forgot to pour it, so it sat all day yesterday in the coffee maker and I’ve given it new life just now via the microwave. Day old, microwaved coffee. That’s worse than Sev coffee I think. No one can accuse me of being a coffee snob.

Life trundles on it would seem. The most important development would be the start of the hockey season. Always invigorating. Maybe the Habs can actually pull it off this year.

I’m beginning to feel a bit like one of those people on one of those home renovation shows – I’ve got many irons in the fire. I’ve got the ongoing basement renovation project, which technically isn’t behind schedule, because there was NO schedule to begin with, but I dare say not much progress is being made. I had the Permacrete guys here again yesterday to fix yet another crack in the foundation wall. (Insert cash register noise here). $525.

I had one of them who also does foundation work give me an estimate to have my foundation dug up, the drain tile replaced and the exterior waterproofed and insulated. Something I should really have done before I finish the interior. (Register noise.) Roughly $10 Grand. (Special note: to have this done would also mean I’d need to tear out my back decks and front porch and then replace them with something – I’ve no idea what yet, though I know it won’t be free.)

I’ve got to call today to get the insulation guys over to boost the insulation in my attic from R11 to R50 so all my heat doesn’t go outside. (…) $1500.

The other day Lyn and I realized that our pool that I’d covered and winterized only had about a foot of water left in it, hence, it’s been leaking and there’s a leak in the liner somewhere. I’ve spent chunks of time the past few days wading around in a foot of freezing cold water feeling along the liner for a leak with my hands. When I can’t feel my feet anymore or my hands start to hurt too bad, I get out for a few minutes and let the blood come back in, then go in again. We’ll probably need a new liner or at the very least I’ll have to patch this one if I can find the leak. The clock is ticking though as the pool’s integrity is shot without water in it and I need to have water in it over the winter or take it down completely. If I take it down, I’ll have to get a new liner next year, as this one won’t fit. Pretty soon, the water in it now will freeze and then I’ll be really screwed. (…@&%!…) $ Priceless.

I’ve still got to get my wood in under cover for the year, split a bunch of kindling and rake and mulch just under a quarter ton of leaves.

To top it all off, after the election, we’ve now got a Conservative minority government here again, and though it’s got nothing to do with my home woes, it means that – well – we’ve got a Conservative Prime Minister which in-and-of-itself is enough reason to put the plastic on the rotting, mouldy windows and stay inside and drink all winter.

Lyn was up all night with Olivia, so I’m out here with Colin the Destroyer who has run about the ridiculously cramped living room and emptied everything that contained anything onto the floor, with no intention of actually playing with any of it and is now sitting idle in a trance making phhbbbt noises with this fingers, drooling and watching Rollie Polie Olie. Make’s a man proud. Also on the list of things to do is complete the paperwork to get Colin and Olivia U.S. Passports, though, if they could see him right now, I doubt they’d want him. Well, actually, I take that back – they must have given one to Dubya, so…

Cheap shot, I guess, but it’s really easy to sit up here and poke fun, and when you’re trying to avoid the laundry list of things that need doing, you always take the shortest route to procrastination. I mean procrastinators are by nature, lazy, right?

Finally, I at least got my garbage man to start picking up my trash again. He had got into the habit of pulling up, looking at the bags, kicking one, then determining that it was too heavy and then he’d drive off. After confirming with the Solid Waste Authority that the limit is indeed 50 lbs and weighing all my bags (none more than 30), I had succinct conversation with the garbage company contracted to service our house and the lady asked that I ‘distribute the trash amongst more bags’ because the driver was having trouble with them. I mean, this guy showed up a few times on crutches. Maybe it’s time for a career change? I agreed to do so, but added that should any bags remain, ever again, I’d be calling the Solid Waste Authority, and not her (read: contract goes bye-bye). I issued a public works smackdown.

Then yesterday in the melee to get to the ‘walk’ I forgot to put the bags out at all and missed the pickup until next week. Grumble. Sigh.

So, what’s in your wallet?

Sneeze.

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Ugh. My allergies are kicking my ass. I don’t fully understand why. It’s fall, nothing is in bloom, but I get it every year. I finally went to an allergist a few months ago after battling allergies with OTC meds all my life and he gave me a new allergy test. Rather than take a lot of space and tell you what I’m allergic to, I’ll sum it up this way: trees; grass; oh and most trees and grasses.

So I’ve brought in the heavy artillery and am set to start with shots on Friday. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve basically been unable to breathe trough my nose from the age of 5 – or at least as long as I can remember. I’ve tried all the pills/nose sprays under the sun to various levels of success, but no magic bullet, so I’ve basically resigned myself to the snuffling, sneezing, watery eyes and such at various times of the year as the status quo. From what I hear the shots help people a lot and in some cases can even rid you of the allergy symptoms all together. I remain optimistically pessimistic.

My test also showed mild allergies to peanuts and mixed nuts, which seems odd as I think I ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day for my entire school career and young adult life with no ill effect. Maybe it’s just killed brain cells I don’t know about. That would actually explain a lot of things.

With the arrival of fall comes another of the regulars of the change of season – yeah, yeah, the leaves change colour and all that and are breathtaking blah blah blah – but it also is time for what I’ve dubbed the Big Atlantic Canadian Switcheroo. The is the time of year (or it will be soon) when the lawn furniture goes into hibernation, the summer toys are put to sleep, pools are covered, and the blueberries and rasberries are wrapped in burlap and stuffed with leaf mulch. The plastic sleds and snow shovels emerge from their summer dens to be at the ready and we see our first glimpses of snowblowerous combustionea as it prepares for the long winter’s work ahead.

While I’m on the subject of cooler weather, I take a moment to pose the question; what is with children and jackets? Rather, what is with children and their opposition to wearing said jackets? I don’t understand this. Julia gets all grumpy each morning when I tell her she needs to wear more than a sweatshirt – IT’S BELOW FREEZING OUTSIDE. We’ve explained the freezing process and the subsequent effects on humans – still each morning, the protest – “Do I HAVE to wear that big jacket? Great. SIGHHHH.”

It’s bad enough with them, but at least I can insist they wear stuff. What really throws me is when I drive by bus stops in the morning and see the teenagers in their wet hair, wearing only a long sleeve t-shirt and still sporting flip-flops. I know I sound like an old codger, but that’s just dumb. It’s one thing to want to “hold on to summer”, it’s another to blatantly flirt with pneumonia. I mean, pneumonia WILL win. It has for centuries, weren’t you paying attention in your history class? Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!

Magical sleep depriving powers.

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So it’s 7:30 am on Saturday morning and I’m up as usual. I’m always up. Colin woke up at 6:30 and I gave him a bottle and rocked him for an hour in a desperate effort to get him to go to back to bed so I could get even just one more hour of sleep. Sometimes this tactic works sometimes it doesn’t.

At 7:00, Julia was up of course, being conditioned to be up at 6:30 on weekdays for the bus, she automatically gets up on the weekends. I guess that 1/2 hour is her ‘sleeping’ in.

Emma is still asleep, and would easily sleep until 9 or 10 if not provoked. She’s slow to get up on school days too. She’s a hardcore sleeper. Of course the fact that she’s the last one to quit playing in her bed at night and making last minute bathroom and ‘drink of water’ runs I’m sure contributes to her lethargy in the morning.

I’m on kid duty this morning ’cause Lyn was up on-and-off all night with Olivia who – of course – is now finally sleeping.

So, the interesting conundrum is that I’m now in possession of a fully -rested, fully-fueled, fully-recharged 15 month old that I need to somehow keep quiet.

It’s strange how kids have no concept of sleeping in, or the tremendous commodity that sleep evolves into as adults. When they’re up, they’re up. Laying around in bed, snoozing simply isn’t ‘fun’ or entertaining. Personally, I the importance of sleeping in should be taught in schools. One day they’ll be complaining when they have to get up and I’ll just tell them that I tried to teach them early on the importance – the sheer joy of sleep, but would only intone “You’re weird, Dad.”

It would seem that some lessons are invariably never learned, both in children and adults. Even after 7 years and 4 children, I still go to bed on Friday night harbouring some fruitless belief that come Saturday morning the planets will align and I will sleep unmolested until the unheard of hour of 9am. Nevermind that in my days back at the Youth Hostel in a house of 5 guys, you’d have thought the house was vacant if you stopped by anytime before 11am on a Saturday. Furthermore, I’d say you might be lynched if you were to hazard a phone call or attempt conversation with an occupant.

Whether I go to bed Friday night at a decent hour or stay out late with friends, I’m still doomed to be awakened at some ungodly hour the next day by my bright-eyed offspring looking for something fun to do or something to eat. Some might perhaps suggest this is in fact, karmic retribution for the “old days”.

It is to suggest, then, that children do indeed possess some magical powers, event though at times their actions would suggest far less. For instance, since I’ve sit down to write this, Colin has proceeded to get into every single thing he’s not supposed to – things he would leave alone 99% of the time, has attacked his sisters on several occasions – one can only assume to cause bodily harm, and run screaming through the halls for no apparent reason. One can only assume he’s using his ‘psychic mind link’ to pay me back for my years of dabauchery preceding his presence on the planet. Buddha has taught him this.

Emma (yeah, she’s up now, you can blame Colin for that) has interrupted me to present a discourse on how cool mechanical pencils are (You don’t have to sharpen them!) and Julia is hungry- I know this as she’s asked about breakfast 5 times in the span of 1/2 hour – she thinks she’s being subtle.

Magic powers indeed. Most impressive is the ‘power of sonic force’ they all possess, whereby the Gods use them to punish you for late nights of drunken revelry by facilitating them in the morning with metal toy xylophones, large dumptrucks to race about the hardwood floors, and massive buckets full of toys and blocks to spill about.

Children: Tools for Good or Evil? I say it’s a toss-up.

My to-do list is consuming my soul.

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The sun was streaming in the window this morning warming the room and physically warming the surface of the desk as I sat down to check some emails and type a bit. The glow of this space belies the frost on the grass outside and the -2 C temperature. With a warm cup of coffee scenting the room as Colin quietly cooed, chewed a breakfast cookie and played blocks, I drifted off to a fuzzy place when my internal monologue picked up a megaphone and shattered the stillness, nearly spilling my coffee in the present world:

CRIPES SAKES MAN! GET TO IT! YOU’VE GOT 2,347 THINGS TO DO ON THE LIST! GO! GO! GOOOOOOOO! WINTER IS COMING AND IF YOU DON’T GET EVERYTHING DONE, SURELY WE’LL ALL DIE!

Well, we wouldn’t all die, but we might be a bit cold to say the least.

Sometime, a few months ago, when I decided to take leave, I thought for some reason, God knows why, that while I was off, I’d have time to get a bunch of stuff done that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. In truth, I think I’m actually getting LESS done than when I was working. I haven’t quite figured out the mechanics of WHY this is true, but it seems to be the case none-the-less.

The irony is that I’ve now penned two blog entries in two days time – something I haven’t done in months or years I think, and I’m dangerously close to setting some sort of precedent. I think it must be due in some part to my reconnection with Coffee (yes, CAPITAL ‘C’, oh, the master deserves his respect) something I had put aside since Olivia’s birth, but rediscovered yesterday.

So the to-do list looms. There’s all the seasonal stuff that must be done. Winterize the pool and put the summer toys and lawn furniture away. Store 4 cords of wood and make sure the snow blower is tuned up (did I just say that?). Clean and seal the windows and clean out the baseboard heaters – that’s #1 on the list today as they kicked in last night and the whole house now smells like burnt dog hair.

There’s the everyday, the housecleaning, laundry, kid feeding-cuddling-playing-extrication from hazardous situations. The paperwork and bills (I have to sort out immigration papers for me and two of the little ones). The explanation of scientific phenomena like ‘why won’t water go uphill’, ‘why do we need a bathroom fan’ and ‘what’s pork?’.

Somewhere in there as well, I’ve got to refinish a basement including insulation, drywall, suspended ceiling and electrical revamp. I’ve got a bunch of house stuff to do – the little stuff – like fix the jiggly doorknob, the slow draining bathroom sink, and refinish a dresser for the kids room so we can actually keep all their clothes somewhere other than stacked in neat piles in the corner.

Personally, I told myself in the off time, I’d try and enrich myself as well – improve my French, bone up on my Dreamweaver and CSS skills to broaden my freelance appeal. Read a bunch of books. Practice the guitar.

The reality is that each weekday I’ve got about an hour and a half when Colin sleeps to do stuff I can’t do when he’s up (which is about 80% of the above). When his head hit the pillow, my first thought is:

JESUS HE’S OUT MAN! GET YOURSELF A NAP POST HASTE!

After that internal momentary struggle, 9 times out of 10, reason wins out and it becomes, ‘what can I do in this time that needs doing’. The depressing thing is the mental review of the ‘what needs doing list’ takes 15 minutes alone.

The weekends I have a bit more time, but there’s more kids around and more fires to put out. Plus the addition of several ‘assistant-though-questionably-skilled labourers’ on the job can either slow things down or speed things up, it’s always a crapshoot.

I guess all I’m really trying to say is I miss riding my bike. I realize it’s an entirely selfish pursuit, but in ways it helps one stay sane. I know that in the long run, when all the little minions are older and don’t even want to be seen in public with me, I’ll have all kinds of time to do such things – though Lyn will occupy a lot of that dragging me to knitting conventions and flower shows – as long as they’re situated in close proximity to some choice singletrack – I’m down.

I told myself above all on leave I’d ride the bike as much as possible, but I’m realizing that this is not an altogether realistic proposition. I’ll keep trying to fit in in here and there though – it is after all – a part of who I am, but I can understand that there’s not always time.

I mean think what I could have done in the time that I sat and wrote this? I could have painted the kids, given the dresser a bath, paid some dinner and swept and vaccumed the water heater. DAMN! Now I feel like a slacker!