Oh, man.
I'm appalled by my lack of writing. When I realized I only had three posts here for May I felt disappointed in myself as a writer, director and producer of chaos. For shame, Maven. For shame.
In my defense, large chunks of our long weekend (which is a week earlier than that of our American counterparts. Neener neener) was taken up by hospital visits. My Good Grandma, who is losing a battle with pancreatic cancer, took a fall in her apartment and wasn't found for - hold on to your stomachs, kids - two days.
Two.
Days.
I was obviously heartbroken to find this out, but she's resting comfortably in the hospital now and is awaiting a bed in a palliative care facility. My strong and stubborn granny knows that it's time to be waited on hand and foot by nurses and doctors instead of doing everything by herself. It took her much longer than most people to figure this out. She's nobody bitch, that lady. And I love her for it.
Gutsy is sick this morning and I'm dragging him to Spawnling's chiropractic appointment. I did what every good mother does: doped him up on acetaminophen to bring his fever down.
I live by the code of over-scheduled families: Illness Shall Not Mess Up Thine Timetable.
In actuality we don't. In fact, being a bon-bon eating, soap-watching mom allows me the flexibility to just say no to not only drugs (except those that bring down fever, apparently) but also to appointments, activities, and other things that get in the way of my family's slacking ways. They just wrote an article about people like us, and I'm damn proud.
The free range parent is most definitely a label I can live with. I'm already an attachment parent, so why not add something else? Although to make it easily printable onto a business card I might have to call myself "Freetachment Parent." It has a special ring to it. It almost sounds like frittata, which is both delicious and satisfying.
I am also delicious and satisfying. Sort of.
In a show of parental excellence, I bought Spawnling a pink stroller on Thursday. Why stroller? Because his friend had one and he was practically beating her off of it with a stick before we left (by that I mean he was yelling 'nono!' and ok! ok!' over and over. No actual sticks were harmed in the lack of sharing). In order to pry his little hands away from her stroller and into the van, I had to reward his bad behaviour by offering to get him one of his own. So, before he had a chance to forget that not sharing = getting a new toy, we went to the toy store.
Why a pink stroller? Why not pink? They had a blue one and a pink one, but his friend has the pink one and that's the one he wanted. He now walks the stroller around the house, the yard or down the road, with an assortment of passengers: sometimes it's Curious George, sometimes it's a stack of DVDs and once it was a bowl of chips. But he loves that stroller dearly and nobody dare touch it lest they are met with 'NONO!' and 'Ok! Ok!' which actually means 'nono' but Spawnling likes to diversify.
That's ok though, because apparently my boy is a genius. The doctor said it, so it must be legit. Why would she say such a thing? Because while the Spawn doesn't have an enormous vocabulary, he does know and say his colours.
He gets it from me. It's all me. Geekster? Not so smart. He married me for my gigantic brain and extraordinary baby-making abilities. I married him because he's cute and looks nice on my arm.
The Spawn will now tell you if something is blue, green, red, yellow, pink or purple. We're not into brown, white or black yet. He's a genius, but not gifted. Definitely not gifted. He wouldn't dare be because he knows how much I dislike that label.
I honestly had no idea that identifying colours at18 months was advanced. That's because, as a Freetachment Parent, I'm too busy co-sleeping and letting my children play outside to be aware of these things.
It's a difficult life, but they're worth it, pink strollers and all.