Gone Fishin'

We live in a city, only 10 minutes from the downtown core, and yet two blocks from our house is a huge park that runs along the river. This is one of the many things I love about Ottawa.

Last night, we piled into the car in search of a bait shop as learning how to fish was one of the top three things our kids wrote on their "I have to do this summer or I will die" lists. We got to the bait shop fifteen minutes after it closed.

I turned the car around and headed to Loblaws. Armed with two fishing rods, some hooks and a package of hot dogs, we went to the park where we ate our picnic dinner and Wifey gave her first fishing lesson.

The munchkins had only been fishing once before in their lifetime and that was with their foster family. On this trip, they caught Bubay (their toddler foster brother) twice which quickly ended the adventure before a hook even had grazed the water.

The kids stood out in the river for about an hour learning to cast and while I watched bits of pseudo fish bait, the hot dogs, fly everywhere. Hot dog, it turns out, is quite tricky to hook for adults and kids alike.

Once the dog figured out that the bait was hot dog, he was the only animal in the whole entire river interested in what was on the end of the fishing rod. A few times, he almost forgot his manners, and tried to bite the hot dog right off of the fish hook.

The sun was starting to set. Bella had long ago tangled her line beyond repair and was catching minnows in the shallow weeds, and Bubaloo was hooking his final piece of hot dog. Wifey and I were taking self portraits on the shore and had given the munchkins their five minute pre-departure warning.

Bubaloo threw out his last cast, and moments later yelled to us, "I got a fish."

Thinking he'd caught another bunch of weeds, Wifey and I were slow to react. I then looked at the line and saw it moving in the water. Wifey dashed into the river, Bubaloo reeled the fish in, and they placed it in the net.

There stood my beaming son with his rod in one hand looking into the net at the first fish he'd ever caught. And, are you ready for this? He somehow had managed to catch a foot-long bass.

The whole way home he kept on telling me how proud he was of himself.

The whole way home I thought my heart was going to burst with happiness and joy for him. I was so proud. And, so fiercely protectively proud of him and his fish. This was the first moment of parenting like this for me. The "ah ha" of watching your kids succeed and grow by leaps and bounds in a single moment.

Ode to Compost

A picture is worth a thousand words and can extol the greatness of compost.

This plant, a sweetie cherry tomato, was started from seed in late-March and was planted outside on the May long weekend - about one month ago. While it wasn't planted in soil amended with compost per say, it was planted where the old compost bin used to rest. We had to get rid of the bin this spring because it was cracked, split open and no longer composting well.

The tomato plant sits there and soaks up the compost goodness day after day. It has outgrown all the other tomato plants in my garden.

See the brandywine tomato in the background that looks paltry in comparison? It's not that small. Nor, is it not a sight to see. But, whoa. Look at that tomato plant.

Why My Kids Crack Me Up, or, Money in My Pocket

Over the past few weeks, we've been giving our kids more money management tools and lessons on consumerism.

Since they moved in, they have received $10.00 in allowance each Friday. The first $5.00 must be split up however they like between a jar for their bank accounts and a jar for charity. The second $5.00 is for them to spend however they would like.

Letting two children with a deficit in impulse control have $5.00 a week to do with whatever they would please has been a lesson in letting go for us as parents. Sometimes we're better at it than others. We've ended up with lots of non-working dollar store purchases, hideous accessories and other miscellaneous crap like gum, chips and an untold number of items from .25$ machines.

Our families have both asked what our kids have to do to earn money. Nothing is our reply.

Our kids get an allowance to learn how to manage their money. Their allowance is to be used to buy things they want that we're not willing to buy for them. They're learning to save and learning about giving back to the community through charitable donations. Many times they have had to go without something they really wanted because they had already spent all their money.

The kids, however, do have weekly chores that they're expected to do because we're a family and it takes all of us to run a household. They clean their rooms, set the table, clear the table and empty the dishwasher. Over the summer, they'll be picking up a few more family chores. And, when they want to earn more money, they will ask if we need help with something around the house that they can be paid for.

All in all, the system works quite well.

The tool I've been specifically working with them on is delay in gratification. I'd like to teach them to delay instant gratification. I'd like to see them buy something they really want or need, opposed to buying the first thing they see that they have enough money to buy.

I've put some limits around their spending now. Last night, for example, I ran out of sour cream while making potato salad and had to run to the grocery store.

Before the kids piled into the car, they scrambled for their wallets and started to have a discussion on the things they could buy at the grocery store. They were talking about spending their money like they'd never been to a store before.

I then let them know that they were free to spend their money at the store, but they couldn't buy food. I was then reminded of the toy section at said grocery store. This is the scene that unravelled.

Me: Okay kids, it's time to go. If you've got something you're going to buy, come to the check out now.

Bubaloo: I've got these hot wheel helicopters. I want them real bad. I've had my eye on them for weeks.

Me: Do you have enough money for those?

Bubaloo: I DO! (He scans item at self-check out and a price tag of $7.28 flashes on the screen). Mom, it's $7.28.

Me: How much money do you have?

Bubaloo: I have $5.00.

Me: Is that enough to buy the hot wheels?

Bubaloo: No. (Shakes his head in great disappointment).

Me: Well you need to go tell the cashier that you don't have enough money to buy those so that she can clear the scanner.

Bubaloo: (Walks over to the cashier, alone. He mumbles). I don't have enough money to buy this.

Cashier: Oh. (Looks up, and around, and doesn't see the parent. The look crosses her face as to why is this kid telling her this. Is it because he wants her to buy it for him? Is it because he's just sharing the news with her? It's a very clear WTF look.)

Me: (Trying not to laugh.) He's letting you know that he doesn't have enough allowance money to buy it today and would like you to clear the scanner over there.

As we leave the store Bubaloo starts in on a monologue about how he will have enough money at the end of the week to buy the hot wheels, or for that matter, perhaps he'd even have enough money to buy a water gun....or this Nintendo game he wanted...or something from the dollar store....

My learning opportunities are perhaps not going quite the way I had planned.

Medicating Children

When you look through the profiles of children waiting for adoption, almost all make a reference to the child needing a parent who is able to advocate for their needs. The more "challenging" the child, or as the number of disabilities or behavioural issues increase, the emphasis on being a parent turned advocate increases, too.

By being a parent, I've become an advocate by default and have to negotiate systems and institutions with which I have zero familiarity. We're still working with Bella's school to resolve the bullying she faces. And, Wifey and I have had an ongoing struggle with Bubaloo's medical needs.

I'm a born activist. I like to think I'm pretty good at it. As an advocate for my children, I barely think I'm getting a passing grade. Mostly, I'm too overwhelmed and paralysed to the point of inaction by the sheer number of issues our kids face.

This article from Saturday's Globe and Mail on the disproportionate number of crown wards that are medicated reminded me of an outstanding issue we have yet to deal with regarding Bubaloo.

One month before we officially met Bella and Bubaloo as their adoptive parents, his foster parents placed him on an antipsychotic drug called risperidone. This is a drug that is prescribed to people living with schizophrenia, people trying to cope with the manic states of bipolar disorder, children and adolescents with autism and a variety of other anxiety disorders such as OCD, depression and Tourette's.

My son has been diagnosed with none of the above, nor are any of the above conditions being explored as possibilities for him.

Bubaloo is an angry child with poor impulse control. He often cannot articulate what he is feeling, so he shows it. He uses his body to get emotions out and often does so in highly inappropriate ways. He often is anxious and stressed when his basic emotional needs aren't being met.

In that month before we met Bella and Bubaloo as their adoptive parents, we had a conversation with our social workers and their foster parents and shared our opinion on medicating children. We don't agree that medication should be used to suppress behaviour that is emotionally driven.

Kids need to work their stuff out. And, medicating Bubaloo wouldn't give him that opportunity. As his new parents, we'd only ever know the child on medication and how were we to establish a baseline for who his is and what his normal behaviours are? We were clear that we didn't want Bubaloo to be put on any new medications prior to our adoption.

Two weeks later, the foster parents let us know that Bubaloo was on a new medication and it was working wonders for him. At his most recent pediatrician visit, Bubaloo actually articulated that he was anxious a lot and felt so angry at times that he couldn't control his rage. With both the foster parents and pediatrician delighted with this emotional sharing, a prescription was written for risperidone.

Practically overnight, Bubaloo's behaviour changed according to his foster parents. He wasn't hitting, kicking or lashing out at other kids at school when he got frustrated. He wasn't angry as much. He was a more tame and more manageable kid.

This rapid transformation brought into question whether or not it was actually the meds or the thought of the meds that was causing the behavioural transformation. Perhaps for Bubaloo, it was the idea that a little pill would fix everything and make it better that gave him the power of control over himself.

A little bit of research on this drug, thanks to my mother-in-law who is a nurse and has access to medical journals, revealed a body of literature that this drug is overprescribed to kids in foster care. There's no time and a lack of support in foster care to help the kids work through their experiences that lead to behavioural issues, so this drug is often prescribed to tame the behaviour and make kids manageable. It's an ingrained philosophy of "let's deal with the immediate behavioural issue instead of dealing with the root of the behaviour, or rather, lets deal with the effect and hope that the cause with work itself out."

Today, Bubaloo is still taking the risperidone and we haven't taken him off of it yet. There were so many battles for us to fight on his behalf when he moved in with us, so much change going on in his life, that we were advised not to wean him off of it just yet. It's an issue I've broached at the last two pediatrician appointments, but we often run out of time to discuss and plot a course of action because I walk into the doctor's office with a laundry list of issues.

Bubaloo's anxiety ebbs and flows. The past two weeks have been anxiety riddled. But, the 1-2 months before that were relatively anxiety free.

At one pediatrician appointment during a high anxiety time, the doctor suggested upping his dosage to two pills a day. We put our feet down and refused to medicate his issues away.

Bubaloo takes his little yellow pill each night before bed. By doing so, we've become complicit in what we would call an unnecessary, systemic medicating of our child.

Weeding Weeds from Weeds

I'm wondering if anyone thinks it is as comical as I do that I have to devote a significant chunk of my gardening time this week to pulling weeds from our new grass patch. Perhaps it's even funnier that I'm writing about weeding grass.

We started out at the beginning of April by freecycling the stones from this patio and deciding to grow grass.

I've never really been a fan of grass, never have devoted any of my time to caring for or maintaining a lawn. My philosophy has been one of it's grass, it's a weed, so who cares? Mind you, I've never lived in a place where we've experienced "grass issues."

Prior to this experiment, the only experience I've had with growing grass was at my parents' home. And, I was purely a bystander and not a participant.

I was still in the early years of grade school and I cannot remember exactly why, but my mother wanted to build up a berm around the perimeter of our lawn. I think she might have gotten fed up with all of the neighbourhood dogs using our lawn as a bathroom. She had my step-father truck in a load of dirt and build a mini-mountain barrier to separate our lawn from the street.

It was then seeded. Only, my parents opted to use fast growing grass so that we wouldn't have to look at the pile of dirt on our lawn for a long period of time. I believe the new dirt seeded easily and we had a thick carpet of grass relatively soon.

But we had one problem. And, a pretty big one at that.

The new grass grew twice as fast as the other grass on the lawn. By midweek, the mini-mountain of grass would need to be cut. By the weekend, it would be 2-3 inches tall and look wild, uncared for and offensive to the suburban landscape.

As much as my mother tried to not be those people, in that house, with that lawn, I don't think she ever did with much success.

When it came to growing our own patch of grass, we opted to start it from seed and knew not to buy fast growing grass. I didn't do any research. I didn't ask any questions. I just purchased some seed and tossed it out there.

A little over a month later, and with a second seeding, this is what we now have growing in our backyard. What I never thought to calculate in my plans was the presence weeds. A whole, big whack of them squarely planted in my patch of grass.

Now I have patches of grass, patches of weeds, and patches of dirt. I'm spending more time trying to get the grass to grow and weeding it than I am on growing my veggies and fixing up the other gardens. It's because as I pull out the weeds, I have to be careful not to pull up a handful of the weed I'm actually trying to grow.

This is what a 1 foot x 10 foot pass of weeding looks like. Sigh. Thank goodness I find weeding relaxing.

But in more exciting news, the munchkins spotted the first tomato blossom of the season. It's on one of my non-heirloom plants, a Christmas grape. With a frost watch earlier this week, and the plants entering their third week in the ground, I'm wondering if it's too early.

Home Alone

This weekend we left Bella and Bubaloo at home and took a weekend away. We left them with their Grandma, a woman they had only previously met for a total of no more than four hours, who we flew into Ottawa from Toronto for the occasion.

I'd like to say that Wifey and I went for a romantic and much needed/desired solo getaway. But I cannot. We went up to camp to meet our new and returning camp staff to lead them through an orientation weekend.

Grandma was thrilled to have this time with the kids and created a weekend crammed full of activities. There was monopoly before breakfast, skateboarding lessons, swimming at the public pool, a movie, walking the dog at the park, and lots and lots and lots of junk food.

I came home to bags of cookies in my cupboard. Chocolate bars. A half-eaten lemon meringue pie and pineapple upsidedown cake. I even came home to a confession from my mother that she'd had a solo chocolate eating mission and had raided our cupboard to eat a bunny or two, or possibly three, left over from Easter. The kids ate more junk food with Grandma than they'd normally eat in a weekend of meals and snacks. Only they ate all of the junk food and meals loaded with veggies, too.

Grandma also got the kids to drink water. And lots of it. But the water they drunk and now are in love with is that flavoured bottled water. I detest bottled water for a number of reasons, and I don't want to hear from the munchkins one more time about how the water is "naturally flavoured." Since when is splenda a natural sugar?

All of this to say, is that I fell even more in love with my mother this weekend. The kindness and generosity she shared with our kids. The bond she built with them. Her intense focus on fun that wore the kids out. She's more laid back as a grandmother and has a better perspective on the world. It was great to sit back and admire her parenting around the dinner table after coming home from camp.

Kids of Lesbian Parents Go To School Too

On Bella’s first day in her new school, she came out. She came out as a foster kid. She came out as an adoptee. And, she came out as a kid with two lesbian moms.

While her history with the care system seems to be long forgotten by her peers, she has been permanently labeled as child of queer parents. With this singular tidbit of information subject to 10-year-old imagination and logic, Bella is now the grade 5 “lez.” This is because we all know that gay parents breed gay children or turn the children gay that we care for even if we don’t breed them. Right.

Everyday Bella comes home from school with a new story of homophobic bullying and harassment. Within the first week of being at her new school, the school’s administration was made aware of the homo-taunts and sent a letter home with nearly half of the sixth grade class. At first, she didn’t even understand the words her peers were using against her.

Bella gets stopped in the hallways and questioned about her family. She’s told that she’s weird and is a “lez.” She gets vilified and alienated.

We tell Bella that words can only have the power over you that you give them. We explain how bullying works, we explain how to deflect it, and we give her tips and tools to survive her school days.

Her teacher tells her that sometimes a little information is too much and can be a dangerous thing. The result of this is that Bella is shamed for having the family that she does and is told that she disclosed too much to her peers.

For the first three months of school we knew nothing of this. We had our suspicions, but Bella denied it. Finally, two weeks ago, all of this came to a head and Bella asked if we’d be willing to come to her class to speak about families and our family in particular.

We set up an appointment with her teacher and principal to address the bullying and to implement concrete steps to get this to stop. While giving lip service to the values of diversity, equality and religious freedom, it seems the school has forgot their commitment to creating a safe school with an inclusive learning environment for all children. Diversity does include sexual orientation and gender identity.

After all of discussion on various approaches, and feeling that we as parents were on the same page as the school, we were just informed by the teacher that when a lesson on puberty is delivered in the next week or so that they will plant a question of LGBTTQ issues. This is the same teacher who was clear in our preliminary discussions that she didn’t have the expertise to speak on LGBTTQ issues, even had to ask us what LGBTTQ meant, and was relying on us as both parents and community activists to be of assistance.

To help the school get it, I wrote an email that contained the following analogy. “If one of your Muslim students was being teased for fasting during Ramadan, you wouldn't deliver a lesson on world religions, ask one question about Ramadan in a sea of questions about other religious faiths and expect that your students would be equipped with enough information to have curiosity alleviated and stop the harassment.”

I haven't received a response....yet.

I live in Canada. We have benefits and law that recognizes both us and our family. I’m married to my Wife.

While I never doubt that we are so much further along with human rights than the majority of people in the world, it is situations like this that we and other LGBTQ and/or non-traditional families face daily that remind me of how far we still have to go.

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This post has been written in honour of Blogging for LGBT Families Day. You can find out more here.

The Poppies Have Popped

The first poppy has peeked its head and has popped for the 2007 season. I was so excited that it chose to make its appearance this morning that I called the kids and Wifey to abandon their breakfasts and come to the window to admire it.

Sigh. I love poppies.

None of the poppies I winter sowed survived. Not because they didn't germinate, but um, because I failed to take off the top of the container when it got unusually hot one day early in the spring and I cooked 'em good. Real good. Totally to a burnt crisp.

In other garden news, my tomatoes are thriving. They survived the frost and are loving their digs in my new lasagna garden. I can almost taste the warm tomato sandwiches and pots of tomato sauce.

I also tried my hand yesterday at an annual flower arrangement. It actually took me nearly an hour to put this arrangement together. Once I saw the ornamental kale which I've always wanted to work with but never had, the rest of the arrangement was put together to compliment it. I like it. And, that's what matters.

Finding Bella and Bubaloo - Prelude

It was around this time last year that we found Bella and Bubaloo. I knew the moment that I saw their photos that these were our kids. Call it gut instinct, mother's intuition, a feeling or whatever you like, but I knew that these kids would be our kids.

What I wasn't prepared for was the journey to become the adoptive parent of these two children. From the time we first found out about them, to the time we first met them, it took nine months. The same amount of time that it takes to carry a baby to term was the same amount of time it took to make us moms to these two children.

I started this blog a year ago and didn't make a post until this winter. The purpose of this blog was to originally chronicle our adoption process. It never served that purpose and has now morphed into something entirely different. Instead of chronicling this adventure in real-time, I'm going to write a handful of posts to recap it.

Splish Splash Gardening

After months of hemming and hawing - reality check, it was at most two months - plants for the front garden have been selected, placed and planted. It was a cloudy, raining morning which was perfect for transplanting.

After facilitating the munchkins cooking the entire family a breakfast of champions, which was pancakes of course, Wifey and I headed out to the garden. This is where what we started with at 9am.

And here, just behind the iris and day lillies you can spy upon the mock orange that was planted earlier this month.

We placed out the plants and got to work. We had five shrubs to plant - 3 emerald gaiety euonymus, 1 blue danube juniper and 1 royal purple smokebush.

Wifey took the lead on digging the holes, while I took the lead on transplanting the shrubs and weeding elsewhere in the garden. It was running quickly and efficiently, until we hit hole number three. This hole has been termed the hole from hell. We've got rocky, clay soil, and the compaction near the foundation from the fall waterproofing isn't joyous to work in.

I think it took Wifey about 10-15 minutes to dig this much out. Note how she's standing with her full weight on the shovel and nothing is moving.

When we got to the fifth, and final hole, Wifey smelled gas. Well, in actuality, we'd been smelling gas upon occasion at the side of the house since last November. That's when the yahoos who were waterproofing the foundation broke the gas line (and they'd even had a locate done) and we came home to a house with no heat since no one bothered to call us to let us know about the snafu. Because of the rain, we were able to see the air bubbles escaping from the tiny gas leak at the connection joint.

I'm thankful that no one was ever hurt. I'm also thankful that the leak was before the meter and we haven't been paying for all that wasted gas!

The lady with the gas company was quite comical. She asked Wifey how long she'd been smelling gas for. When Wifey told her since last fall, the customer service representative responded, "Um, Ma'am, next time you smell gas you should call us RIGHT AWAY."

So we kept on planting until the gas company showed up.

Here I am measuring up the purple smokebush. I also noticed that you can see my underwear in this photo. I've always been a bit disdainful of people who bend over and reveal their underwear. Who knew that all of this time, I had been one of those people.

Relationships are about compromise, and apparently, gardens are too. Wifey had really wanted a juniper, and so I worked a blue danube juniper into the mix. I had really wanted a smokebush, and Wifey wanted to get rid of a tree that had been knocked by the bobcat during fall construction.

You can see it was a win-win situation.

And finally, the planting was done.

I really enjoy the pairing of the blues and burgundy colours. During the plant selection process, the golden barberry lost out to the euonymus. There's still a touch of the golden yellow tones through the mock orange. I cannot wait to see what it looks like next year when it fills out and I can place some more plantings in front.

Next, we laid down some newspaper and a couple inches of mulch. This should hopefully keep some of the weeds down and assist in our wild violet eradication project.

Coffee Grinds in the Raised Bed

Last weekend, I started putting some compostables in the second raised bed. After spending part of my morning driving around collecting coffee grinds from two local establishments, this is what found its way into the first layer.

For a little close up.

Sample #1.

Sample #2

I'm not going to provide commentary, as the photos provide food for your own narrative imagination.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Coolest Dude of All?

Hair makes a man. Or rather, it's just been discovered that a mod hawk can turn a 9-year-old into the coolest dude on the playground.

It was time for a haircut this past weekend, and Wifey and I convinced Bubaloo that a little something more, something a little spikey in the middle that would deviate from the regular sheep-shearing of his head would be a little bit better. And, cooler. He agreed to let us try out a tiny faux hawk.

While I recognize that the mod hawk is a little dated, and that I pined after a girl with a mod hawk during grad school which was over 3 years ago now, this is a fun and manageable haircut for a kid.

In Bubaloo's own words, his hair has transformed his life. This kid, Landon, who is apparently awesome cause he knows how to do a back flip, played with Bubaloo at school and actually thinks he's cool (and now, not just cause of the hair). The hair was an 'in' to building a friendship that he had started in the winter.

When he was playing by himself earlier this week at the play structure, I caught him entertaining himself in the mirror. He was moving and grooving while checking out his do. He was making googly eyes like a love bird to himself.

Hair, whether it's for girls or boys, plays a big role in self-esteem and concept. Hair is social capital.

Bubaloo has been walking with his head higher, his shoulders straighter and has been strutting around more comfortable in his own skin since his haircut. He hasn't got in a single fight, has been controlling his temper, working better with his peers and actually is looking forward to school. He's not being teased.

I don't know how long the mod hawk infused confidence will last. My only complaint is that ever since the hair transformation, Bubaloo has ceased to blow me kisses from the school bus in the morning.

Brothers & Sisters

It was noted by social workers when Bella and Bubaloo went into care that they had an unusual sibling relationship. What they noted was unusual was that there didn't appear to be a relationship. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Other than acknowledging in a matter of fact way that they were indeed related, there didn't seem to be any other strong bond or connection to one another.

Literature on adoption and sibling groups, notes that siblings who have been raised together in circumstances that would cause them to come into care typically have tight bonds and closeness. The eldest child often becomes parentified as the caregiver for the younger siblings. The children learn to rely on each other, have an acute understanding of the other that comes from shared experiences. They are each other's family. And most often, the one thing siblings request when they come into care is that they be placed together.

Since Bella and Bubaloo have become our children, we've watched this sibling relationship develop and grow. We saw snips of sister and brother interaction from the beginning, at least in terms of knowing the other, triggers to set the other one off, being wary of the other's behaviour which would have got them in trouble in the past.

In part, we think that this sibling relationship has had time to grow because for the first time in their lives they are the only two kids in the house. With their foster parents, they were two of five children living in the house in addition to daycare kids. When they were shuffled from relative to relative, there were always cousins and other family members to contend with.

Instead of playing by themselves, or asking us to entertain them individually, Bella and Bubaloo now spend much of their free time playing fantastical, imaginary games together. Or, they ride bikes, go exploring, play nintendo or webkins. They've become playmates and friends. And, even when other friends are over, they tend to all play together.

As part of this blossoming sibling relationship, Bella and Bubaloo decided to have a "camp out" this weekend. This "camp out" took place in Bella's room. She refused to share her double bed with her brother, and instead opted to have him create a sleeping area on the floor beside her.

Bubaloo, wanting so badly to not sleep alone, was delighted with this option and bounced up and down with excitement.

Finally after the chatter died away, they both fell asleep.

As Wifey and I retired for the night, we peeked in on the sibling duo. Somehow Bubaloo had managed to work his way off the floor and into his sister's bed. He must have batted his eyelashes and played a sympathy card.

But, Bella still managed to retain the upper hand. Sleeping perpendicular to her, and about halfway down the bed, Bubaloo was dead asleep and Bella's leg was firmly planted across his face.

This Year Meets Last Year

While I've been spending a lot of time working on the side garden/veggie garden project, I haven't much discussed the reclaiming of the front garden.

Past - May 2006

Present - May 2007

This one-year-later photo is taken about two weeks earlier in the gardening season and the front lawn hasn't filled out quite as much.

We've gotten rid of the pine tree through an "accident" with a bobcat. The foundation planting of evergreens and an unknown shrub was also a casualty of the foundation waterproofing, as were many of the plants in the mid-section of the garden. Slowly, but surely, we're going to be filling this garden back in and coming up with some sort of plan.

I've planted a mock orange to the left of the front stairway and a lilac to the left near the fence. It's going to take several years for them to grow and fill out.

I'm contemplating a dwarf burning bush for the left front of the house, and some other small shrubbery or large perennials for the centre underneath the window.

Rain Reprieve

The rain rolled in on Tuesday and I've been able to temporarily turn my attention from outdoor to indoor projects - primarily cleaning a house that hasn't properly been cleaned in a few weeks.

The garden project is looking to be in pretty good shape and we've made lots of progress.

First off, I purchased 1x8 western red cedar from Home Depot, where they also kindly cut the pieces to length. I had tried to find a local lumber yard in search of a lower price, but where I stumbled was in actually locating a lumber yard. Home Depot sold the wood at $10 a board and when I found out that Rona was selling the same wood at $15 a board, I thought I had a deal.

Using these brackets from Lee Valley, I built the first level of each of the three raised beds. Frankly, this was the easiest wood construction project I've ever completed. Simply pre-drill your holes and screw in the brackets.

Our initial plan had been to build 3 beds, with three levels each. Once we had the second level stacked on, it gave us a raised bed depth of 16 inches, over top of another 4-5 inches of topsoil , which is covers the old gravel driveway. We tested what a two level high would look like versus the three level, and were sold with the two level.

The two level bed should give our veggies sufficient root depth. And, we always have the option in the future to add the third level.

This turned out to be an excellent decision as I decided to fill the first bed full of lasagna garden goodness, to give it 2-3 weeks to cook, and managed to deplete all of my organic materials reserve. What we have in this bed is a layer of newspaper, covered with alternating layers of leaves, composted manure, coffee grounds, sphagnum moss, half finished compost, some grass clippings and topsoil.

The other two beds were built up to a second level, and this weekend, I will be working on digging them in, leveling them off, and scraping up some more organic materials. I had hoped to have the second bed filled by now as I've got a bunch of veggies to start from seed.

We also purchased this fabulous rain barrel and have it installed, albeit incorrectly. I wanted to get in in before the week of rain so it could fill up. There's about 1/2 a barrel full now and the water is dirty, dirty, dirty. I think it's time we clean out our gutters. This weekend will also be a great time to fix the downspout and have the barrel installed properly.

This is what the side yard looks like right now. I've contacted two contractors so far about building the new step for the house and a fence and neither have bothered to show up at our arranged meeting times.

I've been itching to plant my tomatoes out for the past week and have held off. I also made a tentative mental plan to get them into their bed this weekend. But my gut tells me not to. It tells me I should wait even longer. And, this week Weather Canada has, too.

It's been very, very chilly here, near the freezing mark, and tonight we have a definite frost warning in effect. May 6 is the supposed "frost free" mark for our fair city. The gardeners' rule of thumb in our zone, or so I'm told, is the Victoria Day weekend. I think I'm not going to risk my two month growing from seed project and give it one more weekend.

Parented Out

The last week has been the most challenging, trying, exhausting and difficult week in parenting Bella and Bubaloo thus far. We're tired. We're frustrated. We're losing our wits. And, we're on the verge of feeling defeated.

In the last 24 hours, we've become caught in a tunnel of endless consequences. There doesn't seem to be an end and it seems that more bad behaviour and poor choices only net the same bad behaviour and poor choices.

Bubaloo was caught stealing snacks from his classmates lunches last week at school. His teacher indicated that she though it had been going on for about a week. As we began to untangle the web of stories with him, it turns out he had been stealing for much, much longer. About a month and a half.

It all started when he lost his full lunch and lunch bag at school. Instead of telling a teacher, or asking to call home to get a new lunch, he decided to steal to feed himself. This started him on a bandwagon of thievery that only escalated with time. By the time he was caught, he had found a partner in crime and was up to two snacks a day.

The consequence we handed out was that he needed to use his allowance to replace all of the snacks he had stolen from his classmates and apologize to his class for stealing from them. He said to Wifey at the grocery store when purchasing the snacks, "Boy, do I look foolish."

Bella verbally threatened a classmate last week as well by telling him that she would "cut his body up into a whole bunch of pieces and squish them like ladybugs." When called upon by a teacher for this behaviour, she red-faced denied that she ever said that. By the time she got home, her memory had returned, and she admitted the threat.

We discussed how words of anger can be threatening because people are fearful of the action. We talked about better ways to deal with anger and frustration. And, Bella felt that an appropriate consequence would be to write an apology letter.

The apology letter was written and delivered on Monday. Only, she didn't really apologize for what she said. And, that got the other kid more upset and the teacher was called in to mediate the conflict.

This was the tip of the iceberg that began last week. Since then, the pile of offenses has been racking up at an exponential rate.

Bubaloo was sent home from school yesterday for swearing in the classroom - and don't get us started on this for sending a kid home for uttering motherfucker while playing an army game with a friend during indoor recess in the classroom.

Bella missed gymnastics last night because she got distracted by a comic while getting ready to leave for the activity.

Bubaloo ran through the house with muddy shoes after I had spent the whole day cleaning the house and had asked them to take them off.

Bella wasn't ready to go to school this morning because again she was reading a comic.

Ugh, I can't even remember what else has been testing my patience and anger threshold.

Schools are hypervigilant today. Kids' programs are hypervigilant. In turn, I feel like I'm becoming this hypervigilant parent.

Generally, we don't have major behavioural issues with our kids at home. They listen, they're respectful for the most part, and they don't act out in the home the way they do at school.

Writing all this down is cathartic. This looks ridiculous on paper. It's the small, silly, minutiae that's gotten me so riled.

Quashing Santa

Yesterday in the car, Bella asked me if Santa was real.

It’s May. She truly believes that dragons, faeries and witches are real. Who would have thought that the existence of our mythological holiday friends would questioned in the off season?

She’s also 11. Which is a little old to still unquestioningly believe in the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and the like. But fantasy has always been her escape, a place she inhabits because the world hasn’t been good to her, and I didn’t want to be the one to have to crush that alternate plane of mental imagining.

Her 9 year-old brother doesn’t really believe in Santa. But what he does believe in is the relationship between Santa and presents. He knows about the causal relationship that if he outwardly shows or says he believes in Santa, there will still be presents for him under the tree on Christmas morning. He’s too afraid to say it’s not real, which might make it cease to exist. It’s a big gamble he’s not quite yet willing to take.

Bella asked me if Santa was real. I asked her what she thought (aka, brilliant parental strategy of deflection). She again asked if Santa were real and told me I had to tell her the truth. So I did.

She got really mad it me. Like it was all my fault. Like I had somehow been keeping this big, dark secret that every other kid in her class knew for an eternity. Like the first thing I should have told her when we adopted her three months ago was that Santa wasn’t real.

Apparently, she wants me to start a mental notebook of all the things adults should tell kids between the ages of 0-11 and lay it on her all at once. I'm sure that will go smashingly well.

(Addendum: On Sunday night we got to the second last chapter of Superfudge by Judy Blume. This chapter is all about how Peter pretends to write letters to Santa because his younger brother still believes in Santa. And by the end, it turns out that neither Peter nor Fudge believe in Santa and the parents also verify that Santa isn't real. Why isn't there any warning labels on the book!!! Funny thing was that Bella sat with her fingers plugging her ears repeating I'm not listening cause Santa's real.)

R.I.P Black Prince

Thanks to my stupidity, and a little help from the poochie, this summer's crop of Black Prince tomatoes have been rendered nearly extinct.

Left on the lower landing for some sun and wind to start the hardening off process, the dog saw us outside through the window, wanted to play and proceeded to dance on top of the tomatoes in excitement.

I knew that was not a good place to leave the tomatoes. But it was the easiest, and in the moment, easy prevailed.

Now nearly two months of work has gone down the tubes. I think only one of the four plants is salvageable.

Oh me, oh my. This sucks. Big time.

Operation Move Dirt Continues

Operation "move dirt" continued this weekend and into the week. Eleven cubic yards of dirt and two cubic yards of pine mulch later, the new garden space is primed.

Today was supposed to be my day of rest as the forecast called for rain. It was only supposed to be a day of rest from outdoor projects, as the fridge is looking bare and heaps of shedded dog fur are threatening to over take the furniture. My upper body is begging for rest. It's sunny outside, however, and I'm torn.

This picture was taken on Sunday when operation "move dirt" was 3/4 of the way complete.

The dirt pile also was transformed into an army base by Bubaloo, complete with lots of tunnels and little army people. We've never actually encourged him to play army or any other sort of war game. He's just got this inclination for it and has constructed a whole elaborate fantasy world around it.

Each weekend he dons his skateboarding helmet, Wifey's rubber boots, and keeps his PJs on to run around and play. We just clued in that the reason he loves his skateboarding helmet so much is because he pretends it's an army helmet. He's an army man on his bike; he's an army man while playing basketball.

For a kid who isn't even allowed to have a play gun, a water gun or toys with guns, we find it a bit bizarre how every inanimate object gets transformed into a gun - anything from a stick, pole or branch to the leg of a barbie doll. The hose becomes a flame thrower. A big ball of dirt becomes a bomb.

We've given up trying to make army "bad," outlawing and re-directing him to other activities. In part, I think the fascination with army play comes from the fact that the last school he attended while living with his foster parents was located on an army base, where the majority of kids had army parents, and army play was part of daily school yard behaviour.

Instead, we set parameters of safety and separating how we play army in pretend-land from how we act in real life.

To break up army play, Wifey wheeled Bubaloo around in the wheelbarrow as she moved dirt.

(Note: I put that wheelbarrow together all by myself on Friday).

He'd climb in, get covered with dirt, get dumped out and covered with dirt, and spent the whole time doubled over in giggles and begging for more...and to go faster...and to be buried under more dirt.

Wifey was happy to comply. I was the killjoy who had to keep asking them both to stop jumping and compressing the dirt. All day long.

And, yesterday marked the day of finishing touches. I hauled out more of the compacted dirt, did some more grading and then heaped mulch on top of it all.

All that's left to do now is to mulch the front garden and back bed, purchase and install the rain barrel, hire a contractor to build the fence and new steps, purchase wood and build new veggie beds....

Dirt!

The marathon gardening project of 2007 has begun with the arrival of dirt.

Here's where we last saw the old driveway. One final photo before the arrival of dirt.

Bella and Bubaloo were at school when the dump truck of dirt arrived. Being that I was pretty amazed by the process of dumping 12 cubic yards of dirt, I really do wish the kids could have been home to see it.

This is what 12 cubic yards of dirt looks like. I measured and calculated. The person at the dirt place calculated with my measurements, but I'm not quite sure that we have enough dirt to achieve a 5 inch depth.

Then, it was time to get the much. I opted for shredded pine mulch and now our driveway smells like a christmas tree forest.

I rented a truck and unloaded not one, but two loads of mulch all by myself! This is what a truck full of mulch looks like.

I'm pretty proud of that. Although, my body doth protest this morning. And it protests even more when I tell it we have to go purchase a wheel barrow to start moving the dirt and mulch.