Paper Identification

Last night I went to the post office to pick up the munchkin’s passports. After months of struggling with various government offices to get the adoption paperwork and birth certificates in order, and then gathering all the items and signatures for the passports, we finally submitted the applications earlier this month.

Timing is of the essence here as we’re now booked on an out of country vacation this Christmas…only the kids are not yet aware of the impending adventure. So last night when I returned from the post office I was very excited to show the kids their very official travel documents.

I handed Bubaloo his, and he got all excited about the pages and the possibilities of collecting stamps one day. I handed Bella hers. She opened it up to see the face of a young boy sporting a mod-hawk by the name of Samuel.

We’re now in the possession of a very official travel document that doesn’t belong to us. Passport Canada sent us the wrong passport and somewhere in the world a stranger is holding our daughter’s passport.

Now getting this sorted out doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a walk in the park. Calling Passport Canada only has resulted in us getting re-directed to having to show up at the office. The only result of this is more paperwork.

Like in high school, where I didn’t like science labs because lab = lab report, I’m beginning to develop this equation: children = horrid amounts of paperwork + bureaucratic headache inducing snafus. To date, we have yet to have a single piece of official documentation be issued successfully.

Not 'Yer Grandfather's Stew

Since she first moved in with us, Bella has always talked about her favourite meal. Stew. Not just any stew, but the stew her Grandfather used to make her. This is the kind of food that foodies love best because it's a meal tied to memories.

The thing is I hate stew. For the same associative memories that make Bella love it, I cannot stand it. The smell, the taste and most of all the texture. It's just not a meal that I've brought myself to make for her in the past year and a half.

But on Saturday morning as I meandered over to Loblaws, there, in the meat cooler was a package of stewing beef with a bright pink label marking it 50% off. While I love the Saturday morning meat sale - there's nothing like getting more meat for your family and making that dollar spread further - this stewing beef called to me. I could take advantage of the great price and do something nice for my daughter at the same time. The generosity of a cheapskate!

I talked proudly about the stew I was going to make just for her. I searched the internet for a great recipe. I even came in early from planting bulbs so I could brown the beef for the stew. When I realized we were out of bread I even adorned the best puppy dog eyes so that Wifey would quickly run to the store to grab some.

I made the stew with love and three hours later dished it out for the dinner table.

The look on her face said it all. She wasn't impressed with my efforts. Not one bit. We probed about what the problem was couched only in the guilt of "look at all the effort I went to for you" that a parent could muster.

She then spilled all her disappointment. "The stew my Grandfather used to make was white," she said. The bowl that we'd assembled for her contained a brown stew. As she ate it, it also turned out that she didn't like the potatoes. Or the stew sauce. Or the beef.

In the end I'd venture to guess that what her Grandfather used to make her wasn't stew at all. The lesson I get from this is that frugally motivated kindness will give you a karmic kick in the ass every time.

The Edu-muh-cation of RKW

Last night around the kitchen table, Wifey was telling her favourite joke. "Pass the honey...honey. Pass the sugar...sugar. Pass the tea...bag." I groan. This kids think it's hilarious. Wifey thinks she's a comedian.

After pleading courses of "tell it again, Mommy!" Wifey acquiesced and told it with a newfie twist.

At the end of the joke, Bella asked what a newfie was, and we responded that it was someone from Newfoundland.

To keep her on the toes of her geography skills, we asked her to tell us where Newfoundland is.

Bella: It's east, east of here. I'm sure.

Mommies: Good job sweetie!

Bella: I read in a book once that it's close to Australia.

Mommies: Um, no. I think you might be confusing Newfoundland with New Zealand.

And then, she tried to argue with us about the location of this Canadian province. Unless there's be some sudden tectonic plate shifts we don't know about, I'm pretty sure that when I woke up this morning Newfoundland was a couple of thousand kilometers to the east, not tens of thousands of kilometers.

Mental Health Days

When I was younger, I was good at taking a day for myself when I needed it. I can recall in high school, at least once a semester, I'd tell my Mom that I just wasn't going to go to school cause I needed just one day to do nothing before I'd jump back into the swing of things.

This is one of the things my Mom has always admired about me, according to her. I never really got that - why people have such a hard time saying time out for 24 hours.

Ten years later, I get it. Because I secretly was planning my "sick day" since the beginning of week.

So I did it. I called in sick. And, I'm not even sick. But, the guilt. Oh, the crushing guilt.

Despite the fact that I'm "sick" to my colleagues and staff, I'm still working. I've taken a couple of phone calls. I took a meeting. I talked with a client. I mean really people, I'm "sick." What if I really were sick? This really isn't helping me trying to convince myself that the world-won't-stop-without-me and dispelling the being-out-of-the-office-for-one-day-will-cause-irreparable-harm complex.

What this does for me, however, is create a nice illustrative commentary on the state of the organizational culture at my office. There really is no such thing as a holiday. We've actually all started to differentiate between a "I'm not in the office holiday, but I'll still do whatever you need me to do" and "I'm really off and you can't reach me no matter what" types of vacations.

So, I'm going to enjoy the rest of my personal mental health day. I'm going to catch up on TV I missed this week. I'm going to enjoy my new blog layout. And, I'm not going to answer the phone again.

Queer Parenting is Radical

One of the things we told our adoption worker early in our process is that the kids we adopted would have to be more than okay with us being queer. They'd have to have enough comfort to be part of the queer community because we're "out-out." We're active, involved and engaged, and our kids would become part of that world.

Parenting hasn't lessened our activism, but it has been thought provoking and challenged assumptions within both the LGBTQ and straight communities.

Back in February I did an interview about the new statutory holiday - Family Day - and how the LGBTQ community should/should not embrace it for a local queer publication. When the reporter kept on pushing on the angle around how my family differed and didn't emulate heterosexual models of families, I stated, "Being a queer parent in still a radical notion - for both the queer and mainstream communities." He nearly dropped the phone.

We live in the nation's capital and this is a notoriously conservative community. It's a city dominated by public servants. It's quiet, sleepy, and still has a small town feel to it.

The LGBTQ community here is also unique. It's not a very out and visible community. We have a quasi gay village. Our queer organizations struggle, flounder, and often fail. The LGBTQ community is dominated by gay men - from bars to services. There's limited space for women and trans folk. The space for families, up until the last few years, has been even more limited.

When we became parents of two children, we knew handfuls of other families in the LGBTQ community. Most queer parents are focused on being parents. That means taking our kids to school, swim lessons or gymnastics, and coordinating family vacations. It's dealing with tempertantrums and helping our kids become responsible adults. As parents, what we do is more around what our kids need than our identities. And, more often than not, being queer becomes secondary to our identities as "mom" or "dad."

When we became parents of our two children, very few of our queer friends could understand why we wanted children. For some of them, it was because we were young. For some of them, they were concerned about how we'd change as people with kids. But for many of our friends, they just didn't get why when everything in our lives was so anti-mainstream by virtue of our identities, that by choice we emulated and embraced the values of the heterosexual world. We got married, bought a house, and had kids. Exactly in that order. Essentially, we were accused of being sell-outs. We were accused of trying to embrace this otherness, that we were attempting to 'straighten out' who we were by becoming mommies.

So when you ask me why I think queer parenting is 'radical' this is why. As a lesbian, I've stood on the outside of the straight world, and now as a lesbian parent, I'm being forced to stand on the outside of the queer community. We challenge the conventions of communities we have a stake in when we choose to have kids. By being queer, and being parents, we've challenged institutional heterosexism. By being queer, and being parents, we've challenged notions of what it means to be queer.

The thing is, as a queer parent, I'm more out than I've ever been. I'm outed daily by my kids in every single thing that I do. I'm outed by virtue of having kids.

When I have to fill out a school registration form or enroll the kids in an activity, we write both of our names as the parents. When we're at a restaurant and the server asks how we'd like the bill split, we get a confused look when we say its all together and the kids are calling each of us Mom. When a co-worker asks what the my kids' father's name is or when a coach tells my kid to practice soccer at home with his dad to only get a funny look - I'm suddenly outed. From grocery shopping to clothes shopping, you're always out when you're a queer parent. You're always visible. And, you're always visibly queer.

Being queer and being a parent is what it is. Kids don't make you less gay. If anything you're gayer because you're conscious of that gayness every single day. You're conscious of suddenly not really fitting in to any community - except for the one of other queer parents.

Counter Surfing

Our dog Gus has an issue. Well, to be honest, he has multiple issues. Notably, these involve barking, jumping on people and counter surfing. The first two behaviours are a little scary for people who aren't familiar with Gus. He's a 70lb dog with made up of black lab, german shepherd and border collie. Getting greeted at the door by a dog who simulaneously barks at you like he wants to tear you apart and kiss you silly is quite an odd experience.

But, most of all, he's become more than the occasional counter surfer of late. It started off with an item here and an item there every few months. Sausages that had just been drained sitting in the collanadar in the sink. The toppings off half a pizza mysteriously disappear by the time you walk back from the dining room to set the table. A sandwich from the table is no longer there. The motto in our house is that if you leave it unattended it's your loss. (Note: I'm too busy trying to deal with my kids behaviours and be a parent to even begin to attend to the dog!)

Only now, Gus has found a new source of human food. Leftovers from Bubaloo's back pack.

See, we ask our kids to pack their own lunches for school each day. Then we do a lunch check to ensure it meets our expectations. Sometimes they just tell us that they've got a main lunch item, like a sandwich or dinner leftovers, one fruit, one veggie and something else. Sometimes they make a song about what's in their lunch, or do a little dance. We try to make it fun. Some days it's more of a struggle than others, especially with Bubaloo around the need to have some sort of veggie in his lunch.

By packing his own lunch, he gets to eat the veggie of his choosing. We've tried taking him to the grocery store and letting him pick out items of his choice so there's lots of options to pack. When we discovered he liked V8 we stocked up on that (he liked it until he realized that we also liked him to drink it). Basically, he likes baby carrots, baby carrots or more baby carrots. And, that is the veggie he chooses to pack every day.

Only, he doesn't like the baby carrots anymore. He hasn't quite outright said it as he continues to pack them all the time. But, we find with increasing frequency that they come home in his lunch box each day. Or they fall to the bottom of his backpack to be discovered weeks later. He's also put them in the drawer beside his bed and other interesting places in his room. I'd like to think that with some of his food issues that he's hording carrots, but I know that's not the case. He's hiding them because he doesn't want us to know he's not eating them. Why he just doesn't bury them in the garbage can underneath things is beyond me.

The dog increasingly is fascinated by the contents of Bubaloo's backpack. I'm getting a little bit more frightened. Gus barks at it, noses it, knocks it off its perch in the hallway all in attempt to get at its contents.

Yesterday, the dog got his victory. And yet I'm not so sure it was his first. I came home to find the dog with a saran wrap package of very dry, old baby carrots in his mouth. It was the size of a softball - a week worth of carrots I'm sure.

The dog had hit the jackpot and there was no way he was giving up his bounty. I tried to be the owner and command the dog to give them to me. Then I tried to take it out of his mouth. He growled. He then tried to run away. Finally, I just had to wrestle them away from him and ran to the garbage can keeping my gag reflex under control.

This morning when I saw the dog lying in the hallway stalking Bubaloo's sealed lunch bag, I knew better than to find out what was so tempting. I called Bubaloo to deal with it and deal with he did. Goodbye yucky stinky sandwich from Monday's lunch.

Gus 0. Mommy 1.

Green Thumb Sunday - Garden of Scent

One of the things that struck me about many Green Thumb Sunday posts is that people tend to show off each of their wonderful plants, but shy away from showing off how all of the plantings work together. Our front garden is a disastrous work in progress. And, here it is.

Many of its faults are hidden from this angle. What I do enjoy is that the purple leaf sandcherry (top left) starts to bloom as the flowers fall off the forsythia (mostly cropped out of the right). I spent part of the day yesterday pruning the forsythia back. I went a little harder on one side than I had originally intended and I hope it comes back.

These green and white tulips appeared this past week. We can't remember whether they came with the house or if we planted them last year. We definitely need to plant some tulips in the back and some pink and purple ones in the front.

Wifey Wifey loves lilies and she came home with these a few weeks ago. They're fire red and light up the garden. They also have a light, lovely fragrance.

Our house was without a lilac bush and the lilac evokes spring as a child for me. This was added to the garden last spring. I brought home a Charles Joly lilac, instead of the dwarf Korean as intended. On the label, I was attracted to the deep-wine burgundy blooms. Two years in a row, I've gotten a light purple. The smell is wonderful, and I do enjoy it, but I do wonder what it is.

These are the lovely fragrant jonquil daffodils.

I read somewhere that inter-planting daffodils and blue grape hyacinths was a complimentary colour pairing. So I tried it. It does photograph well, I just don't like it all that much in the garden. Perhaps it will need to be moved to a new home.

Last, but not least, these marmalade coral bells are a thing of wonder. I love the way they catch the light and change in the light. They seem to dance.

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Green Thumb Sunday - For Mothers

It turns out one of the reasons Wifey was inclined to agree to the purchase of our sinking-money-pit house with too much garden for non-gardeners was the bird bath on the front lawn. Only when we took possession of the house and moved in, the previous owners had taken the bird bath with them.

We've now become gardeners over the past two years and Wifey has talked a lot about the missing bird bath. The stone where it sat surrounded by sedum has remained firmly planted, yet empty, in the front garden. This Mother's Day we treated ourselves to a short road trip to K & B Concrete Lawn Ornaments and came home with this.

Not much to report on the new blooming front. There's lots preparing to bloom, but not quite there yet. New this week, is the bleeding heart.

And, the trilliums. Only one of three has yet to appear in this part of the garden. Five more on the other side have just broken through the hard crust of the soil. This one has been putting on a solid show for about two weeks. I'm also happy that we inherited these trilliums with the house as the $9.99/root cost a the garden centre for this native plant gave me temporary sticker shock.

Over in the veggie garden, the peas have started to sprout.

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Notes on Parenting

Tonight, my friend called and asked how things were going with the kids. While this was one of the first undisturbed phone conversations I've ever had with anyone (you know this all too well - your family ignores you for hours on end and as soon as the phone rings and you're conversing with someone everyone suddenly desperately needs to talk to you or you become more popular than ever imagined), it wasn't quite private and I couldn't get into all of the trials and tribulations of being a Mom to Bella and Bubaloo.

Wifey is away on business. That means I'm solo parenting. She's been travelling a lot in the past few months and now I'm beginning to dread her departures because all of the intense emotions come out to play when she leaves town. It's like how the wheels on your shopping cart freeze and you get thrown backward with quite some force just as you're trying to push the cart ahead. Totally unexpected. Throws you off. And, it takes a bit of time to figure out what is wrong.

Bubaloo's has some significant meltdowns which after hours of negotiation and talking can be boiled down to one single, heart-wrenching question - "Why couldn't my birth mom get the money to keep me?"

He knows that Wifey and I both have jobs, and it seems quite easy, he just doesn't understand why if a person we claims loves him so much wasn't able to do such a simple thing as getting a job that paid enough money so he could have a warm place to sleep at night and food other than cereal and peanut butter sandwiches. Actually, given that he doesn't quite grasp accountability and responsibility, he doesn't really get why there wasn't a job that paid enough ready and waiting for his birth mom to fill, but that's a whole different issue.

Poverty and addiction are complex issues. Putting them into 10-year-old speak, what to say and not to say, isn't really the part of parenting I enjoy.

Bella's spending a lot of time not acknowledging how she really feels that her classmates don't like her. Given some of her well developed control issues, a penchant for being bossy and a love of tattle telling, it's not surprising that peer relationships aren't quite her forte.

While her brother was in meltdown mode in his bedroom, she sat at the dinner table and denied that it had any impact on her. When we finally got to the point where she could admit that it hurt, why she liked to be overly bossy and tattle tell, and perhaps other ways that could make her a better friend, we got somewhere. She spent some tearful time on my lap.

I'd been home from work for less than an hour, had somehow managed to get a meal on the table, and had yet to recover from my day at work before I have to be a full on solo parent.

These were the things I didn't get to tell my friend today.

Instead, what I got to tell her about was the 'why questions' I used to ask my children to understand, and why I've given up on asking why. I no longer ask why because I never get an answer that makes any rational sense.

The responses I get to 'why questions' don't make sense to me. It surely doesn't make sense to me as it's getting explained in the present moment. I'm not even sure it made sense at the time. But someone, at some time, must of thought it made sense because they chose to do it anyway.

I'd like to ask why, but I know better not to, how the new coffee table that's part of the backyard furniture set got caked with mud and dirt. All of the furniture is under a covered patio, so I know it didn't fall from the sky. The coffee table itself is a good 5-7 feet from the garden, and it's behind a low rock wall, so I know the wind didn't pick up some loose dirt and drop it on the table. I don't really know what kind of art one would do with mud that would involve it being caked and pressed into the wicker. I'm not sure what kind of experiment could be conducted with mud that would explode and cover a table with mud.

I'd like to ask why. But I know better not to.

I'd also like to ask why if one were to do something that would so obviously not be okay, why one wouldn't be industrious enough to try to cover their tracks - at least a little bit - in the first place. Does anyone really think I'm going to question the WHO in this situation?

I'd like to ask why, but I know better not to, what one thought would happen when slime thrown 10ft into the air hit the ceiling? What about experimenting with something easy to reach like the floor or the walls, or better yet, what about OUTSIDE on the driveway (wait, I know why outside wouldn't be good - the slime would get dirty). I'd like to know who thought mass producing slime in a can to market to children was a good idea in the first place. I'd like to know which parent (ahem, it wasn't me) bought the slime into the house to begin with. And, I'd like to know how the slime got out of the garbage can when the parent who neither brought it into the house nor wanted it in the house disposed of the toxic green goo.

I'd like to ask why. And, I'd like a better answer than, "I wanted to see what would happen." I'd also like someone to haul the ladder out of the garage, climb up it, wipe the slime off of the ceiling and then repaint it when it stains like I'm sure it has.

I was really getting into all of the wonders of the kid-brain when I was forced to end my phone conversation prematurely. I couldn't hear her over the barking dog who was sitting at the side door whining to go out. He was letting the whole house know that he had to pee.

Which led to my newest discovery that I'm the only person in my family who knows how to open a door.

Green Thumb Sunday - Spring is Possibly Here

My body knows it's spring when I turn down the street heading towards home and I can see the yellow of the forsythia blooms. The forsythia, and this particular one, is perhaps my favourite spring shrub. Maybe because it's usually the only thing in bloom in my garden at this time. I love the way it seems to glow at night under street light. I love the way it looks at dusk after it rains.

Soon after the forsythia bloomed this week, the first batch of daffodils bloomed. These are my first daffodils ever. I can't even remember what kind they are, but I purchased a bunch in the fall. I'm enjoying them so much that I've made a mental note to ensure that more daffodils are on my fall purchase list.

And this is what the daffodils look like up close. Flecked with dirt.

The first tulip of the year to bloom were these lovely red ones with great foliage. I have no idea what these are as we inherited them with the house.

The biggest disappointment of the year goes to the rock garden tulip - Tulipa violacea 'Pallida' - which was supposed to look like this. I splurged on three bulbs in the fall because these were supposed to be white tulips with blue centres. Only one has come up thus far and imagine my surprise/horror when the leaves unfurled this afternoon to reveal a yellow centre. I don't imagine the yellow will turn to blue. Right now, I just feel ripped off.

In the veggie garden, I have my very first shoot. Only peas and spinach are planted outside in the side garden right now. And, here is the spinach.

You have to love that tax refund season coincides with the start of gardening season.

We were at Home Depot last weekend to purchase the hedge pruners and a new composter. On a whim, we took a rest in a outdoor furniture set. Wifey was smitten.

To make sure she was truly in love, I made the whole family drive from store to store to try out and assess the style and comfort of various patio furniture. The winner was the first set we sat in and we welcomed it home this weekend. The only draw back was my naivety that this wouldn't have to be assembled with an allen key. But, it's together now and with all the crap hanging out back there it looks as if it has been ours for many a summer.

That funny paper lantern like thing to the upper left of the photo is a faux wasp nest. We've had really bad issues the past two summers, and in Wifey's course of research, this is supposed to fool the wasps into thinking other wasps have already built a nest in that particular place. I suppose it's better then Wifey running around the yard armed with the can of raid as she chases wasps around.

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Green Thumb Sunday

I finally decided to do it. I've joined Green Thumb Sunday as my obsession with working the soil is at an all time high this year.

As the sun kicked into high gear, the snow rapidly melted. The first bloom of the year goes to a little white crocus. It appeared this past Thursday.



As a joint Christmas gift, Wifey and I had Santa Claus (who we actually call Mommy Claus in our house) put a Nikon D40 under our tree. We purchased the lens the white crocus photo from a friend - I believe it's a macro lens. It takes pictures really close. The only problem is around the fact that you have to manually focus. You actually can only use manual focus. And, I've never been able to focus a camera.

Although, I have to say when I was with a photographer on a shoot for work a month ago and I was talking her through my issue she noted that it's nearly impossible to manually focus with a digital SLR. Thank made me feel a little bit better.

On to the only other thing blooming in our garden. More crocuses. Only these ones are purple.



The unseasonably warm weather has given us a huge start on garden clean up. The front garden is raked and cut back. I purchased a hedge trimmer on Friday and cut the cedar hedges - when I wasn't looking, Wifey went and cut them again to "fix" my attempt.

We cleared out more junk left by the previous home owners.

And, my little man helped me dig in some organics to one of the raised beds and helped to install a trellis in preparation for the forthcoming sowing of peas.



You can see the butchered hedges in the background.

Today, it's off to fix the composting situation, perhaps purchase some comfy patio furniture and bikes for the kids.

Career Change #1

I read somewhere, some time ago, that one can now expect to experience 7 or 8 different careers in a single lifetime.

I've been in marketing and communications for nearly 8 years. For most of those years, I've somehow managed to work at the manager/director level.

I suppose that happens when you work in small-ish non-profits where you can easily expect to post the director title on your nameplate or email signature because you're the expert in the organization. Mostly you become the expert not because of this experience you've managed to amass over a number of years in your profession, but because you are the only person with any iota of knowledge on staff. You often work on a team of one, this one does include yourself, and there's no one to challenge your self-proclaimed expertness.

All of this to say, is that I'm thinking I might be due for a career shift.

One of my longtime dreams has been to work as an executive director of a small, non-profit organization. My organization of choice would be this one or this one. I'd even consider working for this one (which just posted for an ED but with the current family situation I felt I couldn't give it what it would need, so I opted not to apply), this one or this one (but who knows what I could ever do here).

I've been thinking that I'd like to work in camping. I could work here or here, but neither of these are based in Ottawa. I don't really think I'd like to work at the direct service delivery level. But I enjoy supervising staff and ensuring that the resources and systems to run and support the organization are in place.

Given my new interest in gardening, I'd love to work somewhere where I could acquire new knowledge like a sponge. I was thinking something like a gig at a garden centre or landscape company. Only, I don't think I'd be so good at the manual labour side of things. I'm good at coordinating and planning. I'd be good at cultivating customer relationships. And, I'm good at project management.

There's just so much that I'd like to do, I just don't know what it is that I want to do. All of these decisions need to keep in mind that I can't earn less than I earn right now - and now, I'm more underpaid than I've ever been.

I'm just tired of facing the same battles wherever I go.

It's exhausting having to create an argument and buy-in about why branding is important. I work in organizations with cultures that revolve around leaving everything till the last possible minute to get done. I hate that everyone thinks that the marketing cure-all is to simply create poster or that marketing begins one week before you launch a new program. I hate that no one realizes the amount of time it takes to craft text or design a project. The amount of review and revision that has to take place for 1 page to 20 page documents. I hate that I have to write/re-write everything produced. I hate that we never get past the we-have-to-market-right-now-or-it-will-all-be-over mentality that we never get to planning, strategic initiatives or simple communications with our members or staff. I hate that if no one can figure out where responsibility should go in the organization than it must be a marketing issue - from uniforms and signage to office supplies and mail.

Work makes me grumpy.

But most of all, I don't love it anymore. And that is a sign that I should start thinking about career #2. Suggestions? What would you do if you got to choose another career?

Throwing Resolutions Out the Window

Nearly three and a half months ago I made a resolution. This is a resolution I made around the same time that the majority of humankind, or at least cultural artifacts like blogs and newspapers would have you believe that this is so, make personal pledges for the forthcoming year.

The year started off promising on certain fronts. One of those fronts where I didn’t quite achieve success was on the blog resolution. I had whole-heartedly resolved to blog at least once a week. Every Sunday night. I idealized the thought of curling up in our bed with a cup of tea, the laptop and just making some mundane event of my week amusing through words.

Well, the first week passed and I missed my Sunday writing window. I probably had a good reason that I could rationalize back then. Something like the first Sunday of the first complete week of the New Year would be when this commitment would begin. Then the second Sunday went by and I still hadn’t written anything. I probably came up with a pretty good reason as to why I couldn’t keep my resolution that week either. Then the third, fourth, fifth and so on Sundays went by.

A whole lot of Sundays, with no action, just left me feeling a little disenfranchised. And guilty. I like goals, because I like to achieve them. I don’t take them lightly. And, I’ve really not done so well on this one.

But, who cares? This is a blog after all. It’s not supposed to be a chore. It’s supposed to bring pleasure. I’ve forgiven myself and will be back to writing in keeping to whatever irregular schedule I should choose not to schedule. Things are much simpler that way. Write on impulse.

Life has been a little bit overwhelming. From Bubaloo painting the principal’s office with Elmer’s glue, to having Wifey need to put on my pants because I threw my back out, to the school suspensions, the over-the-top acting out, the loss of after school care, a car accident, the adoption finalization, discovering you don’t really like your children, to the mess of work, social workers judging your parenting skills, to it all. Life hasn’t been easy. It’s been a struggle. And, I’ve spent much of the last two months wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into by becoming the adoptive mother of two children.

I felt trapped in the obligations of being a parent. Trapped in the obligation of having to pay a mortgage. Trapped in the need to have a job to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. Trapped in a job that’s not the job I initially signed up for. Trapped in the trappings of adulthood. Trapped in the life I created for myself. Trapped in the life I created with Wifey for the two of us.

Now, in this moment, I don’t feel so trapped. A little perspective shift reveals that these aren’t my burdens. They’re my gifts. I choose not to spend my time dwelling in the “what if” hypotheticals of different choices, as these are the choices I made, and will make peace with that.

How to Make Friends

Our kids have really poor social skills. Like really bad. Their skills are so bad I'm no longer surprised by the immense difficulties they experience at school and in other social settings.

Bella is a bossy, know-it-all, control freak. Bubaloo is a belligerent, belittling and downright mean dude. While we, as their parents, know where these issues come from, other children do not and do not have the patience to stick it out.

We had an inkling about what they were experiencing at school and having seen them play with the neighbours over the past few days, I'm horrified at how bad they are. I'm not even sure after yesterday if the new neighbours will even play with them again. They are no longer friends with the handful of other kids who live on our street.

Our kids just can't seem to make friends or acquaintances, and without the ability to befriend other kids, how will they ever learn how to build a friendship?

We've put them in extracurricular activities. No click. We sent them to summer camp. No click. We've arranged play dates with other kids from LGBTQ families. No click. They go to school everyday. And still, no click. How do we help these munchkins?

We repeatedly re-visit what makes a good friend. Because often the kids they choose to hang around with don't inspire the best behaviours in our children. We see our kids being used for some troublesome purpose (like stealing chocolate bars out of a cupboard at school) or engage them in unbalanced friendships (like only being a friend when everyone else is mad at you) which negatively impact our kids.

Yeah, kids can be pretty cruel. But in turn, we know our kids dish it out back. Or, dish it out first.

Neither child has ever had a single good chum. And, we're at wits end to help them develop the skills they need to help them out. How do you help your kids negotiate the intricacies of friendship?

Predicting the Future

Three nights ago a friend came for a visit. As we sat around the dining room table, Bella took an interest in her necklace. After commenting that it was pretty, I encouraged Bella to ask more questions about it.

Our friend revealed that the symbol on the necklace was a pentacle - a pagan symbol.

Bella's eyes lit up and she was so excited that she momentarily lost her words. When she found them again she blurted out, "But I'm a pagan, too!" And, um, part Moron to make that an interesting combination.

Bella's birth mom was a pagan; her grandparents Mormon. Which in her mind makes her religion 50/50, despite the inherent contradiction of the two belief systems and the fact that she's never practiced either.

Sharing a little bit of her pagan roots with our friend, Bella somehow got onto the topic of Tarot cards. Our friend let us know that she used to read them for money on the streets of Toronto. Eventually, the skill was laid to rest because it was tedious to constant predict one's career path or if one's true love was to be the person met casually the night before while downing drinks at a bar.

Bella raced up to her room and grabbed her deck of cards. These were cards that Wifey had given to her for her 12th birthday. Since the cards were gifted, they had been shuffled and gazed at, but never read. Bella didn't really take to reading the book that came with the deck to explain what the cards meant.

The Tarot cards came out and were divided into major and minor arcana. Bella was given instructions to pick up the major arcana pile, shuffle them and to ask a question. Bella asked her question in her head.

As three cards were flipped over to tell Bella her past, present and future in the context of her question, her eyes became increasingly wide. An abbreviated version of the dialogue would simply state that in the past it wasn't an option, in the present it was not so likely to happen and the future was open to possibility. The reading was punctuated with a detailed questioning of the symbols on each card.

Bella was thrilled at her reading. Bursting with excitement. She then offered to share her question with us.

I was sure her question was going to relate to adoption or to our future as a family.

Bella spoke. And, this is what she said. It was spoken in earnest seriousness. "I asked if I would ever have wings."

I looked at Bella and then looked at my friend. I was speechless and was momentarily incapacitated to deal with this unexpected curve ball. My friend, however, was not speechless and thank goodness thought on her feet.

After explaining that Tarot wasn't necessarily a literal interpretation or response to a question and that getting wings could mean one day she would be a pilot or find herself on a plane or perhaps be a genetic scientist who would engineer wings, Bella looked at us both as if we were stupid.

"I didn't mean wings as in a pilot. I meant wings, right here, on my back," as she pointed to the spot where the cards had predicted wings would grow.

She said it in a tone as if we didn't know what on earth we were talking about. She said it in that voice used by incredulous teenagers. And not willing to listen to anything further about the matter, she left the table with the whole air of how us adults know nothing and she'd show us the day she'd fly by our window with wings on her back.

Knight in Shining Armour

The Swish in His Hips

Our little one is a wee bit swishy. In the best possible way.

It comes out when he dances or plays imaginary games with his sister. When we engaged all of the kids at a family wedding earlier this fall in a game of charades, he was the best supermodel of the bunch. He could work a runway better than a top ranked model, but less model and more queen.

At dinner parties, we like to speculate on the outcome of his sexual orientation. He has this dash of gay, but is oh-so-not-so-gay at the same time. We can't make him. And, so we wait and watch for him to make himself.

Keeping with the ambigousness of children's sexual orientations, we talk about all relationships in hypotheticals with him - "When you bring home a girlfriend or boyfriend..." or "What kind of things do you think makes a good girlfriend or boyfriend..." He sometimes talks about cute girls at school and other times he talks about his future with a girlfriend or boyfriend.

We've tried to make it clear for both kids that it doesn't matter to us whether or not they end up gay or straight. For a while there, Bella was feeling a tortured by the fact that she likes boys.

All of this came forth in a very interesting conversation on the drive home from a marathon candy shopping trip in preparation to the holiday building of a gingerbread village.

Piping up from the backseat in a most conflicted and endearing voice, Bubaloo asked me if I would promise not to ever embarrass him in front of a girlfriend. After clarifying whether he meant "intentionally embarrass" or "embarrass him by my mere existence and breathing in the same room," I discovered that he doesn't yet have a girlfriend but lots of prospects as there are a plethora of cute girls at his school.

As with all relationship conversations, we encourage our kids to explore what would make a good partner.

After reiterating his top priority, the cuteness of the girl in question of course, he shared his second need. He wants a girlfriend who won't make fun of him because he has two moms.

I nearly slammed on the brakes to turn around and face him to gauge the seriousness of the comment. Instead, I just looked in the rear view mirror and saw that he was dead serious.

Bubaloo has been experiencing some teasing in the past few weeks and is feeling incredibly self-conscious about his family. He loves his family in the comfort of his home, and shifts uncomfortably in the playground with his peers.

After affirming that respect is an important part of any relationship, I asked him what else would make a good girlfriend.

The next important value came someone who is nice, followed by someone who would do his homework. He was pulling my leg with this last one. I then asked him to think about how it might be important to have a girlfriend who would like similar things or like things that they could do together. In the end, he decided that this wasn't too important to him.

In recapping the list of the four important attributes of a girlfriend or boyfriend, Bubaloo stopped on number two again.

"I could have a girlfriend or boyfriend," he said deep in thought. "The good thing about a boyfriend is that he wouldn't care if I have two moms."

"Um, yes, that's right Sweetie," I said. "I don't think your boyfriend would be too concerned about you having two moms. But, it's also important that any girlfriend you have not care about you having two moms, either."

Remembering Our Family

A year ago today, we met our children for the first time. Only at that time, they were only our possibly-maybe-future-children.

We received a phone call late in the evening of November 10 from the foster parents. They had been given a green light from their social worker to set up a rendez-vous with us.

See, as par for the adoption course, and especially with older children, the first meeting is set up to look like a chance meeting. You may go to a park, sit on a bench, and watch the child play. This is an observation meeting. The child is never to know you're there and never know who you could possibly be to them. From this, you're supposed to get a better feel if there's going to be a fit.

Since Wifey knew the Foster Mother, we were given the option to "run into" the family and have a little interaction with the kids.

I planned and plotted on the phone with the Foster Father. We decided that since they were planning on going to Home Depot the next day to take the kids to one of the store classes, and that Wifey and I were in the middle of a kitchen renovation, that we could have a chance encounter in the hardware section. Then, we'd be invited to join in and help the family out at the kids' workshop.

The only thing we didn't account for is that the next day was Remembrance Day.

The next morning, Wifey and I showed up early for our meeting. I remember feeling nervous, my stomach dancing, simultaneously excited and terrified. What if we didn't like them? What if they didn't like us? What if they were weird about us being gay?

When we pulled into the parking lot of Home Depot, we thought it looked empty. We parked the car and then dashed through the rain to the front doors. Only, the front doors didn't open. We looked for a sign, but we didn't find one. Then we went back to the car and waited.

We didn't have the foster parent's cell phone number. We had no way to contact them. We didn't know what kind of vehicle they drove. We had no way to approach them without giving ourselves away. So we sat in the car and waited. We thought about driving away. We were both on the verge of tears with the anticipation of about to being disappointed. And, upset that we were about to have to re-schedule a meeting that we'd been waiting to have for over 4 1/2 months.

Finally the foster parents drove up. The foster dad got out and went to the front of the store to go in. The doors didn't open for him either. He looked around and went back to their van. They pulled into a spot and waited.

We waited in our car across the parking lot mentally trying to get their attention.

Nothing happened. No one moved. We sat in our respective vehicles, each unaware that the other was there, trying to figure out what to do next.

I turned on the car, pulled out of our spot, drove around the parking lot to pull up at the front door. Wifey got out and went to the entrance again. The doors still didn't open. She waited and waited. Trying to look obvious. Hoping that the Foster Mom would see her and make something happen. Wifey then returned to the car. Just as Foster Dad left his car and went to the entrance, again.

Pretending not to recognize the other, Foster Dad and Wifey conversed. Foster Dad talked while looking at the front entrance with his back turned to the parking lot and Wifey talked while looking at me in the driver's seat. Once we discussed that Home Depot wasn't open, we didn't know why, and had no idea when it would be open again, we hatched another plan.

We could go to Chapters because that was a place they took the family to read in the children's section.

Twenty minutes later, and across town, we pulled into the Chapters parking lot and went to the front doors. The doors wouldn't open.

We couldn't believe it. I almost broke down in tears of frustration. Chapters wasn't open either and it looked like we would have to re-schedule. We walked back to the car.

Sitting there, dejected, Foster Dad tapped on the window. McDonald's would have to be open, he surmised. Let's have a really early lunch.

We came up with another story to tell the kids. This time, we were meeting them at McDonald's to give some renovation advice.

The foster family pulled up to McDonalds and went in. We pulled up to McDonalds and went it. And it was there, for the first time, that we met Bella and Bubaloo. Our 30 minute chance encounter turned into a 4 hour long pit stop.

We spent some time eating all together and interacting with the kids. The kids spent time playing in the play place. We spent some time to getting to know more about the kids through the foster parents. It was such an incredible afternoon.

It was during that time that is was confirmed for us - these were to be our kids. Even though they had no clue who we were. We were just some friends of the foster parents.

Today, in celebration, we went to McDonald's and relived our first meeting.

As a family, we always go back to the final minutes of that first meeting together. When saying goodbye and walking to our respective cars, Bubaloo donned his sneaky face. Waving goodbye as he walked towards our car, he proclaimed to the foster family, "See you later. I'm going home with them!"

All the adults laughed at his joke.

Bubaloo thought he got a laugh because he made a funny. We all laughed because little did he know how true his words were. In a few months time, he would be coming home with us as his forever family.

The Dickie Bird Comes Home

My gran is in her mid-eighties. She still has her licence. How, we're not quite sure.

She stopped driving on the highway in her early-seventies, at night in her late-seventies, long distances in her early-eighties and now she rarely drives anywhere at all. The car is parked in her driveway for emergency use only.

From spring to fall, all of her extracurricular activities are based out of a local seniors centre. The art classes and tai chi she takes there is a 10 minute walk from her house. For groceries or medical appointments, she calls upon her children or neighbours to take her.

My gran has only lost her independence in the last few years. Her physical health, quickly and unexpectedly, has deteriorated rapidly.

It's hard on us and harder on her. This is a woman who worked full-time until her mid-seventies.

When she got the flu last winter, my mother found her passed out on the kitchen floor. No one knew how long she had been there. A few hours, possibly. More likely overnight. See, she's a diabetic. Type 2. She needs food to regulate her blood sugar.

Last winter, she also acquired several successive viral infections in her ear. It made her dizzy. She was unable to walk up or down the stairs in her home. She couldn't stand up for long periods of time or even tolerate car trips across town. She was confined to her house.

And, with the long Canadian winters, my gran is also subject to the fear of practically every senior residing in a northern geographic region which keeps them housebound or southbound for a better part of the snowy season: falling down on a patch of ice.

She lives alone and gets lonely. As her ability to interact with the outside world decreases, her loneliness increases. She wants a companion, but would never get one for herself.

While she spends heaps of money on her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she'd never for a moment even consider spending a dime of her money on something frivolous for herself. This is a woman who grew up in the depression.

To put it in perspective, she never calls long distance or will end a conversation with you prematurely because she thinks it's costing you too much no matter how many times you tell her you have an unlimited call package that is quite reasonably priced.

Enter the German roller canary.

My grandmother once had a singing canary that rested in the pass-through between the kitchen and living room. It would sing its sweet bird song to her all day long. It was a German roller canary that had been gifted to her by a local breeder that couldn't be sold because it had a club foot.

She loved that bird and doted on it. It was her friend. I like to think that she would spend her days puttering around the house while talking to the bird and whispering her secrets.

The details on how that bird became not to be aren't quite clear. I know it wasn't her choice or doing. I know it had something to do with my grandfather and his irritation with the bird. Whether his irritation stemmed from the noise of its song, or her re-directed adoration, is unbeknownst to me. What I do know is that one day the dickie bird was no more.

My gran speaks of that bird fondly. She could tell you stories for an entire afternoon on its song alone. It wasn't any old canary. It was a German roller canary. She's very, very, very specific.

After months of research, connecting with breeders and anticipation, we brought a dickie bird home for her. We'll give her the gift she won't give herself.

He will be her companion till she needs a companion no more.

Trick or Treat

A conversation heard this evening while securing free candy.

Man at door: What are you?

Bella: A zombie pioneer!

Man at door: Well, you're the first one of those at my door tonight.

Bella: Actually, I'm the first one in Canada.

Bubaloo: No! The first was an Indian zombie.

What impact the dinner conversations on colonization and celebrating our son's aboriginal history have had.