Long, long rambling about Noah, followed by sister update.
Four year old boys are, to read certain message boards, pretty well just hell on earth: Defiant, rough, loud. We have a bit of that going on, but oh my. We’re only a little ways into four, so probably I will be eating my words shortly but… I love this stage.
Maybe it’s the little Oedipal comments here and there (“When I was a tiny baby I lived under your skin. Do you think I could go back in there sometime?”) or maybe it’s the 40 hrs of Montessori every week, who knows?
And maybe it’s just the chance to “play swords” every… day. *cough*
Today I took Noah down to Word on the Street which is an annual book fair where writers come out and do readings and signings and any group that can muster some kind of literary leaning hawks its wares. (For me it’s also an annual shame-fest: She Who Has Not Submitted Anything Lately, Nor Written Overmuch Outside Her Job. A little shame is a good thing here and there, despite therapists trying to get you to ditch it.)
The subway ride was intriguing. Noah looked out the window most of the time, and he killed a little spider that was crawling on it. It occurred to me that it’s new that he does things, like bug-slaying, without running a commentary about them. He’s constructing a whole inner self; little dark ovens into which parents cannot peer. And then sometimes he presents you with whatever he’s been baking in there. A couple of nights ago he told me the reason that “bad people” (villains) are bad is because they don’t have any hearts to make them feel sorry, but that makes it okay when you shoot them dead as long as it is in the chest, because it won’t hurt [due to lack of heart].
I’m not sure even 3 years of philosophy is going to get me through detangling that one.
Anyways at the event he displayed wildly crazy taste: he followed Stuart Maclean’s voice across the entire park due to way too much CBC radio on at our house, ignored TVO’s EnviroGirl as a poor imitation of a real superhero, and eventually plopped down in the “baby tent” for a long singing/nursery rhyme/etc. session. He also managed to charm a funnel cake out of me, and was at first stunningly disappointed in the lack of ‘cake’ and then ate half the thing. I’d promised him two books but we only bought one; he figured out pretty quickly that it’s nicer to pick books at the library where no one is jostling you.
The best thing there as far he was concerned though, son of a reader and writer? The red oak trees, so large and gnarly you can climb up the knobby bases of the trunks. So we hugged quite a few trees downtown.
It was a wonderful day. It was the kind of day you think you are going to have when you have kids: out Loving Books! In a park! With a happy child who comes when you call! Except for that funnel cake, which was probably ALL transfat.
Speaking of charming, we shopped for skates yesterday after gymnastics. Yes, this being Canada he needs to hit the ice this winter so he won’t suffer my fate which was, child of ignorant Americans, to spend most skating parties of my life falling on my ass. So one of the big-box sport centres had cheap kiddie skates (by this I mean single-blade) on sale, the sort of nondescript ones that don’t have toe picks so aren’t really figure skates but aren’t hockey skates either, and have plastic boots and are generally kind of crappy.
Well, we got there and for $10 more they had kiddy hockey skates that seemed much better, so I was game to try them on. But they didn’t have his size, so after a whole lot of discussion, trying on of kiddy actual figure skates with picks, I said we’d have to buy the original crappy set, or think about it and come back later.
Noah got a very sad look on his face, one which (I suspect) the manager had seen before perhaps when being handed down white figure skates as a boy. In any case, we ended up with a “let me see what I have in the back” pair of Nike premium youth hockey skates with a 45% markdown in price…. making them, yes, $10 more than the crappy skates. Hmmm. Well the guy was smart because now that Noah will be hooked on the good ones and I know he was kind to my son, he’ll probably be getting a lot of long-term business.
Incidently the reason Carl does not figure in any of this is because he was working all weekend; I haven’t left him out of the narrative or anything.
And for the final leap here – speaking of money! We’ve recently borrowed Ballet Shoes, the DVD, from the library — hey Hermione Granger Emma Watson as Pauline!) and renewed it twice before its tearful return; I kind of consider even a cinema-based love of Noel Streatfeild to be one of my literary duties herewith discharged and besides – a non-animated, non-scary DVD that doesn’t involve cheap-ass footage of construction trucks! That I can stomach! Woo hoo! But anyway, I digress. The movie gave Noah quite a bit to mull over, and now he wants to know more about being poor.
I told him we have ENOUGH money but we don’t have LOTS of money and strangely enough, this has made pretty much every shopping trip both wildly amusing and easier. Amusing because he tries to define value based on desire (“mummy! these fancy cookies are good for poor people because they are free” (err no)) and because he’s taking me at my word when I make statements like “you can have this, but not that.” Thank god for Brit Kid Lit.
(If I were a braver soul, I’d consider trying A Little Princess at this point but I am too scared to take on colonization as a theme. Maybe I need to re-read the Prince and the Pauper?)
All in all Noah is just delightful. I wish I could bottle these days.
Now for the update about my sister: everyone is doing really well. My sister is recovering although it hasn’t been easy either physically or emotionally. Because of the cruel, cruel American policies, she had to go back to work last week, and I think this makes it a little bit more wobbly for everyone. But overall it’s a total win. Total. Win. This is extremely happy-making. And I get to see her in a couple of weeks which will be really nice.
