June 16, 2007 by Barbara.

At home, sitting on the floor of our bedroom because that’s where I had set the books last night after I recorded them and also where Reid sat and asked for them to be read to her:

• Duck by David Lloyd, I’m thinking that this book will join The Big Honey Hunt in the give-away box since I have such negative feelings toward it. Reid has many other books to choose from; and
• Chitter Chatter! (no author), the story of a bunch of animals who really need to listen carefully to details.

On the train we read:

• Mortimer by Robert Munsch, with Reid supplying Mortimer’s “song”;
• Henry and the Cow Problem by Iona Whishaw, I do love the imagined ingenuity of the cows;
• Dinosaur Dreams by Kerry Westell, from which we learned that dinosaurs are very much like kids, dreaming about fingerpainting and kicking ice pieces and things of that sort rather than about eating the smaller dinosaurs;
• And You Can be the Cat by Hazel Hutchins, with Norman who builds “a parapet (though he had no idea what a parapet was)”;
• The Fire Station by Robert Munsch, the miniature version of which is very different and not as enjoyable as the full size one. Sheila is not the brave, devil-may-care ring leader encouraging Michael to be brave. Instead they are much more equal;
• A Friend Like You by Roger Pare, any book starring cats is already a long way to being popular with our family; and
• Then, no books at the zoo, supper and Reid fell asleep on the way to the hotel (mind you, it was 9 o’clock).

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June 16, 2007 by Barbara.

I wrote this while we were travelling - my version of live blogging, I guess. 

We’re maybe 20 minutes into our trip, at the Fallowfield Station in the west end of Ottawa, and I’m thinking that I’d forgotten how civilized it is to travel by train. (I don’t know how our city rates two stations but it has them.) Okay, the train station part would have been improved by having two clerks at the ticket desk but since we arrived only 30 minutes early and still boarded the train, it worked out in the end. Reid and I have a four-seat area to ourselves and we could adapt to two more people if we needed to. Reid has been playing with our tickets for at least five minutes. I’m not going to rush her into an activity while she is amusing herself - I’m tempted but I’m working on that “okay, okay, move along, what’s next” impulse. ;+) 

90 minutes in - I just checked my watch for the first time. I stuck my hand into my pocket, noticed the watch there and went to put it on, looked at it and realized we still had three hours of travelling. I decided it would be better to stay in the moment and stuck my watch back into my pocket.

When the snack cart lady came by we bought cookies, a muffin and a bottle of water. The water was just what I hoped for. Reid was not so impressed with the cookies or muffin. I thought the cookies were okay, if cold, but I think the muffin was chocolate chip and bran - yuck! It’s a betrayal of chocolate chips to put them in a bran muffin. At nearly three hours into the trip, I offered Reid a Care Bear movie that lasted about 6 minutes before we switched to Franklin Takes a Trip, which lasted only 4 or 5 minutes, before we switched to Toopy and Binoo videos through iTunes.

It’s official, we’re now late. By two minutes as I write this. The man with the really bad French has said we’ll be 25 minutes late. Given that we’re not cramped in an airplane, it’s really not a problem and I’m not complaining. Besides, Aunt Karin might need time to find a parking spot.

Okay, one hiccup. We got off of the train and were told that the elevators wasn’t working. They tried to tell me to take the escalator with Reid in her big stroller and me with a heavy backpack and a duffle bag. Never mind the signs on the escalator saying that you weren’t allowed to take strollers on them. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably 10-15 minutes and two phone calls with Aunt Karin, a red cap appeared to help. I let him take the stroller down the escalator while I carried Reid. To do it on my own would have been like those brain teasers where you have to get a goat, a sack of grain, a chicken and some cabbages across a river in a row boat that can’t hold everything. Goodness knows what they do with people in wheelchairs. At the bottom of the escalator, Aunt Karin was waiting. Yes, she’d tried to come up but was told we’d have to get a red cap instead. Cha-ching! ;+) It was better than our return flight from San Diego when that guy from the plane and I had to carry Reid and her stroller up the steps, though.

Overall, I stand by the train as a good way to travel. We’ll see what I think after our return trip on Wednesday night.

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June 16, 2007 by Barbara.

At some point over the last week or two, Reid decided to stop eating cereal for breakfast at home. She’s had many bowls of fruit, a few days of banana bread, the occasional slice of bread with margarine on it and one day ate a left over hamburger on a bun. At daycare, she continues to eat what they give her. It goes to show, again, that rules of life are different at daycare. I agree with what Grandma Joyce says about preferring that kids behave best in public, though.

Wish me luck that Reid puts on her best public behaviour while we’re out and about in Toronto until Wednesday.

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June 16, 2007 by Barbara.

We had a bit of a rough evening Thursday. It started out well enough, I remembered to tell one of the daycare teachers that Reid will be absent Monday through Wednesday next week as I have that conference in Toronto to attend. When Reid came over, Archana asked her where she was going and Reid replied “Missle’s” and I had laughed and told Archana we were going out for supper. By the time Reid had identified Melissa as my friend and Stephen, Sarah and Benjamin as her friends, the time for talking up Toronto had passed. Another teacher came up and explained that she’d been playing with Reid, chasing her, and Reid fell down and scraped her knee. Reid always has one scrape or another and so I wasn’t overly worried and just asked if the new scrape qualified for a band-aid becaue Reid would think it was worth the pain. Reid happily showed off her bandaged knee to me and then Melissa’s kids when she had the chance. She never mentioned the accident or any pain.

Reid and I went to Melissa’s for supper as always. In our summer tradition, we managed a swim before supper. Reid played at the edge a bit, swam a bit and sat on the rocking bench for a while watching. All three activities pleased her. At supper, though, I restricted Reid’s parmesan cheese to one heaping teaspoonful on a very small serving of spagetti. Great amounts of woe and anguish followed. Tears were spilled. Sarah tries to help with reassurances and distractions. She will be a good babysitter and mama one day. Reid ended up crying on the couch for a while and finally, she came back to the table. She ate and then there was a bit of a crisis when she received only a half of a cupcake rather than the unbroken one she wanted. Last week, she was given a full cupcake and ate only four bites of it. More unhappiness and an offer from her mama, who was getting to the end of her own rope, to go home since Reid was so tired. The wails changed to “I not tired!” Wailing is usually proof that Reid is indeed tired, but I didn’t argue the point. We soon packed up and left, with Reid fussing in the back seat and me telling her how much better she would feel if she “had a rest” while we drove. She didn’t believe me. She did, however, go to sleep pretty much as soon as we got into the rocking chair at home. Poor tired girl.

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