Oh Christmas Tree

We had the most beautiful Christmas tree this year. It stood a towering half-metre tall and it came with the lights already on! All we had to do was plug it in. Dex was almost as tall as the tree which made it really easy for him to decorate it. Not that this effort took much; We only had one ornament to hang on it.

East Coast visit postponed

We were supposed to have a low key Christmas: a trip to rural Nova Scotia to visit Poppa and Nana, where there is not much to do except visit, relax, eat, and watch my son delight in the company of his grandparents.

But things started to derail two weekends ago. We took one of our cats, Cinnamon, to the vet because he started puking a lot and was refusing his food. I wasn't too concerned (he's gone through this spell before) usually from something he ate outside. He usually bounces right back after a couple of days. This time around, refusing the food lasted longer than two days so Jon rushed him to the vet on the Friday night. He arrived home later with no cat. Cinnie was quite dehydrated and needed an IV. They were also doing a bunch of blood work, x-rays and other stuff to find out what's wrong. By Saturday ($1,500 later, if I might add), we still did not know what was bothering Cinnamon but he was obviously benefiting from the drugs and the IV.

The next day, because our vet was going to be closed on the Sunday, we had to move Cinnie to the Emergency Cat Hospital in another part of town where he stayed another night. Luckily, his condition improved overnight and by Monday, we had Cinnie at home with a fistful of pills (antibiotic, antacid, anti-nausea), plus an IV that we can administer in case he goes through this again. The diagnosis: feline leukemia. This is not good news but at least now we know what we are dealing with. We thought about canceling our trip but within days, Cinnie improved (back to his normal self, really) and we felt better about leaving him in the care of a sitter for a week while we're away.

Dexter's turn

One day before our scheduled flight, I got a call from the daycare at 3 pm. Dexter has a bit of a temperature, was coughing all day, and in fact coughed so hard that he vomited. Off I went to the get him. Of course, this was the Friday Toronto got its worst snowstorm yet (25 cm in a day) with howling winds and whiteout driving conditions. The five-minute ride to the daycare took half an hour because I needed to shovel a path to and clear the car.

By the time I got to the daycare, Dexter was doing a little better. His temperature was under control, but he was still wheezing. I wanted to take him to the hospital but with the snowstorm, rush hour, and impossible driving conditions, we decided to go to a clinic that was a bit closer. The doctor confirmed what we dreaded: he had a touch of asthma brought on by the cold. And to top it off, surprise, surprise, another ear infection (his sixth this year). We went home with the antibiotic and the puffer, plus the doctor's advice NOT to travel with our sick baby.

Thank you nurses and doctors

Saturday. After half a day of using the puffer, Dex was not showing much improvement. He was still wheezing, not eating much, and when he did eat, he usually vomited. We decided to take him to the Toronto Sick Kids Hospital. Thanks to SARs, respiratory problems are treated as urgent so our wait at Emerg was short. After looking at Dexter's X-ray, the doctor recommended that we get admitted, but suggested we go to Toronto East General Hospital which is much closer to our house. We finally got to Toronto East by 2 am and I finally got Dex settled in for a sleep by 3. He has a respiratory virus that developed into bronchilitis and pneumonia. That's in addition to the asthma and the ear infection. Poor, poor boy.

It was Dexter's turn for an IV. We stayed at Toronto East for three nights. Thanks again to SARs, the respiratory infection meant that we were in "isolation," which basically meant being in a private room with lots of nursing attention. Dex got to watch a Thomas the Tank Engine video for the first time, and we did so over and over and over again. We couldn't do much about the virus, but Dex got some relief from the blockage in his bronchial tubes and the ear infection.

Home again

By the time we got home on the 23rd, we had a day and a bit to get ready for Christmas. We didn't really decorate our house since we were not going to be here so we had to make the house look festive and pronto. Jon, bless his heart, stopped by Canadian Tire for the $9.99 mini-tree special and got us some groceries (the fridge was completely bare because we were going away). He also put up the Christmas lights both indoors and outdoors to make the house look less Jewish.

On Christmas eve, Dex and I made paper chains to hang on our tree. We also cut out a carboard star and wrapped it in tin foil then pegged it to the tree with a chopstick. We also made garlands of cranberries and popcorn. With the Christmas music in the background, our house looked festive at last. Once Dex went to bed, Jon and I ran around the house looking for things to put in his stocking (we were going to buy most of the presents in Nova Scotia instead of carrying it with us on the flight). In the end, Dexter's stocking was full to the brim: books, raisins and oranges, and little toys Jon picked up at the last minute on the way to the grocery store.

Jon and I had very little in our own stockings, but the sight of our little boy excited on Christmas morning was enough to warm our hearts.

Merry Christmas

We are happy to be home for the holidays and we are grateful for the reminder to appreciate what we have.

It's not quite how we envisioned our son's second Christmas. Had we been at Poppa and Nana's, Dex would have seen the best tree ever that Poppa himself would have chopped down from his woodlot, shaped to perfection, then decorated by Nanna with antique ornaments. Had we planned to stay home for Christmas, we would have probably spent a small fortune on a perfect balsam, trimmed it with European-made, hand-blown glass ornaments with handpainted winter scenes and other expensive, precious things. We probably would have had more Christmas trinkets and decorations and certainly more presents under the tree. Quite the contrast to what I call our Depression-type decorating.

But you know, our son believed that Santa dropped by the house and left him with oranges and raisins and he's just fine with that. And in the end, after the harrowing two weeks, that's all that really mattered.

Every Christmas is special, but I think I am going to remember this one the most. It really brought back the true spirit of Christmas, as corny as that sounds.

One of the highlights of the holidays for me so far is watching my beautiful son, on the night before Christmas, standing side by side with his dad, looking at our humble tree with the most exquisite and magical look of innocent wonder.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our family to yours.

Elf wanted

On December 1, the first Monday of the month, I looked in my mailbox and found three Christmas cards! Three! That means those friends must have sent the cards in November! Then on subsequent days, more cards, some with newsletters (with the family photos they must have had taken months before), started arriving. How do you people do it? You know who you are! I bet your homes are also nicely decorated and presents neatly wrapped under the tree. I'm so jealous.

Need. To. Get. Organized.

Broccoli milkshake

I made my goodnight pasta special tonight. This time around, I made it with the small round pasta, broccoli and some cut up leftover sesame-orange chicken from last night. Also, instead of stirring in the egg at the end of the cooking time, I just cracked one in the soup and poached it. I served it with the grated parmesan and Dexter just devoured it. He inhaled the first bowlful, but then he got a little distracted and started playing a bit, as he sometimes does.

For some reason, he thought it was a good idea to stir his milk with his spoon. There's only one problem: his spoon had gobs of mushy broccoli and pasta clinging to it. By the time I realized what he was up to, he had all sorts of broccoli and pasta at the bottom of his glass of milk. Actually, the resulting concoction was kinda neat -- it looked like green-ish bubble tea. And you know what, despite the ewww factor, he still drank it.

I had lunch with a girlfriend today and she was telling me about her son who does not eat fruits or vegetables. Not even irresistible fare like pears, grapes, or yams. Nope. Nothing like that. And that was what I was thinking about while I was watching Dex play with his food. I figured, if my son preferred to drink his broccoli in milk rather than in the soup today, who cares? He was still ingesting it. Why let my sense of taste ruin his love for the food.

21 months

Our boy is sweet. He cuddles his stuffed animals, kisses them a lot, pretends to change their diapers, reads to them, and pats them to sleep. He is always trying to hug the cats.

On the emotional front, the new thing I noticed was the empathy. One day Cinnamon, one of the cats, was hacking away trying to pass a fur ball or something disgusting, and Dex just stared at him. Later, he would pretend to cough and say "Cinnamon fur ball" with a worried look on his face and I would have to spend some time reassuring him that Cinnie was okay.

And then there was that time at daycare. There was a bit of a scene down the hall because one of his friends was having a loud temper tantrum with the whole works (flailing, and squirming on the floor, etc.) while his mother spoke to him insisting he put on his coat. Dex was staring so I said by way of explanation that "Owen was having a bit of a meltdown because he was tired." Well, that must have struck a chord because he still says "Owen meltdown" quite often. When he does, we talk about how when we're very tired, sometimes, we have a bit of a meltdown. Of course, now that he knows the word, he tries to use it. One night he was in a bit of a bad mood and resisting something we asked him to do and he announced "meltdown meltdown." We had to explain to him that if he can say that he is having a meltdown, he is most likely not having one.

In general, emotional development seems to be a focus at this age. He uses words like "scared," (they were reading a lot of Halloween stories with that word), "excited," "happy" and "sad."

The only other significant change is on the language front. His vocabulary seems to expand at an exponential rate. His extensive grasp of construction vehicles and processes is astounding! He also seems to grasp grammar rules. We've heard him say sentences in the past tense and he certainly knows the singular and plural forms of words.

On the cognitive front, he continues to demonstrate that he understands concepts like "same" or "different." He likes matching things up. His memory also amazes me. I mean, I know that he memorizes his books, toys, and stories but I never thought he applied it to real life situations. One day, we were sitting on the front steps and a car pulled up to park at the end of the street. I said out loud, "I wonder who that is," more as a rhetorical question than anything and to my surprise he answered "Tony." Tony is a neighbour who lives down the street and the car parked almost right in front of his house so yes, that was a very good guess. I just did not realize that he knew which neighbour lived where. We've walked up and down our street lots of times and when the weather was nicer we often saw our neighbours sitting on their front porches so of course he must know who lives where.

He continues to be active. He loves kicking the ball, riding bikes, and playing in the sandbox. It is so cute watching him run around the playground wearing his too-big-for-him two-piece snowsuit with the sleeves and leg cuffs folded up. He now wears size seven shoes. He's been sleeping well at night, at least 10 hours, and drinking lots of milk. I think he's having a bit of a growth spurt.