The Little Ninja who couldn't...

...walk. The Little Ninja, who was, admittedly, late to sit, late to crawl and late to stand, is, unsurprisingly perhaps, late to walk. (Aside: Just trying to squeeze as many commas as I could into that sentence.) While most kids walk at around 12 months, and approximately ALL of the particular kids around us are starting even earlier, The Little Ninja is still only crawling at 18 months. I am going crazy.

While it is technically still (barely) within the range of normal development, and I don't in my heart of hearts actually believe there is anything wrong with him, I am stressed out about this. I feel pressure to do something. This pressure might be entirely imagined, but it affects me nonetheless. The worst part of this, however, is that I can't do anything about it. I can reason with myself till my face turns blue that "he'll walk when he wants to," as people keep saying to try to reassure me when I mention it, but the fact is, I don't know if I believe it. I am extremely annoyed that he can't walk yet. And I can't do anything about the walking either. Because, apparently, he WILL walk when he's good and damned well ready. And nothing I do will speed that up. Believe me. I encourage him. I walk him around while he holds on to my fingers. I reach out, hoping he'll walk to me a few steps across the room this time, instead of sitting down and crawling over, like all past experience has taught me to expect. I try not to show my disappointment and I try to stifle my jealousy when the next much younger kid is already walking. I try to stay positive, even defensively spouting the positive "I guess he's just not ready yet" nonsense in response to other people's commentary, but it's all a lie. In my head I'm screaming: Walk, Child! Just stand up and walk!

Subconsciously, I probably pass on some of this pressure and frustration, though I try not to say or do anything too negative or direct. And there will be those of you reading this (haha) that no doubt believe I should just relax because everything happens in its own time. I wish I could. Really, I do. And I try. For The Little Ninja's sake. He should be allowed to develop on his own timetable. And the sweet mother in me agrees with this wholeheartedly.

The selfish adult in me, however (who may well be more forceful than that sweet mother), is sick and tired of it:

• carrying the damned heavy kid, because this is Holland, where they don't pave everything and it rains all the time so I can never set him down without him immediately getting filthy and/or soaked
• buying new pants because he's worn the knees out (while I would like to repair them, there's just no time, frankly)
• buying new shoes because he's still supposed to wear soft shoes until he's been walking well for three months and soft shoes just cannot withstand the force of his crawling (neither can the tops of his feet, which is why we put shoes on him in the first place. That and it's cold and wet)
• grimacing and washing because his hands are constantly disgusting, because he constantly has them on the ground. I firmly believe that this would be improved by walking. Perhaps not by much right away, but eventually.
• delaying. There are so many great things to do once you can walk (or at least stand up without holding on to anything). And I want to do them with The Little Ninja. And none of them will happen this summer. Even though I wanted and expected them to. And maybe I secretly fear that they won't happen next summer, either.

Walk, Ninja! For yourself, because walking is wonderful. But also for Mama, to ease her back muscles, stress, frustration and (secret) fears.

Noodle Ninja

To our great relief, The Little Ninja is a noodle fiend too. He seems to have inherited both my own love of pasta and his father's love of Asian-style noodles. (Really, though, how could he have survived otherwise?)

Despite refusing most of the things we (adults) eat, last week he polished off a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs with me, this week he's been gobbling down fried noodles with satay sauce with Papa and today he stole the noodles from my instant pho. Seriously. I wasn't finished, he had already eaten, and he stole all of the remaining noodles from my soup. I was left with a bit of broth.

He even wanted in on my Kraft Dinner and weiners last month. My husband won't go near KD, not having grown up with it, I guess, and when I consider that it's really just pasta, butter and cheese powder, I don't really blame him. And yet, I did grow up with it and while no longer addicted as I was in high school and university, I still find myself mildly anxious when I can't get it for a while. It's comfort food. And now The Little Ninja's hooked, too. I guess we don't need to worry about what to feed him in Canada. :)

So, to our Noodle family a true son of our blood, hearts, minds and stomachs was born. And The Little Ninja became a Noodle Ninja. :)

Positive

In an effort not to hate Holland quite so much, I've decided to make a list of the things I like about it.

What's great about Holland (IMO):

• Incredible cloudscapes
• Bike lanes, bike paths, bike routes, bike traffic signals and signs, and the bike culture in general.
• Public transport
• Vacation (all 5 mandatory weeks of it)
• Part-time employment
• Maternity care
• Government-subsidised childcare
• Kruidnoten, especially the chocolate-covered variety
• Very, very long days in the summer

 Anything else?

Helmet chronicles conclusion and follow-up

Right, so during my extended hiatus from blogging, The Little Ninja completed his helmet therapy. That was in January. We are VERY PLEASED with the result. The Little Ninja's head is no longer triangular/noticeably asymmetrical. Also, he can wear normal hats. And that's the real win, isn't it?

Back in black

Well, back, anyway. I'm always in black. Seriously. I'm one of those.

Anyway... Seeing that my last post was about the disappointment of my last trip to Canada, I figured that now would be a good time to start writing again, as our next trip is just a week away.

You will all (ha ha) undoubtedly be proud to note that I have, as resolved, implemented a few changes. We are indeed going for three weeks, but starting with a two-day stopover in Iceland to enjoy Reykjavik and relax in the Blue Lagoon before continuing on to Toronto.

We have also rented a cottage in Cottage Country (up north, in the lakey, woodsy tamed wilderness that is Haliburton) for a week in the middle. This might give us some time alone, or just merely move the frustration up north. (I still invited my family up to the cottage with us.)

We'll see. I'm hoping for the best. At the very worst, we'll still have a nice lake nearby to drown my parents swim in and all my favourite Canadian junk food on hand to eat away our frustrations enjoy.

Worst Vacation Ever

Seriously.

The almost two weeks that we went to Canada to visit my family amount overwhelmingly to the worst vacation ever.

We saw my folks. We saw family and friends. Everyone got to meet The Little Ninja. We even had nice weather and went to nice places. We survived the tiptoe dance on eggshells around my parents and the inevitable guilt trips for living so far away, not visiting often enough, not sending enough photos and any other perceived slights. I suppose it was a successful family visit.

But it was a horrible vacation.

Vacations are supposed to be relaxing. Isn't that the whole point? Living at my parents' houses for 12 days, while possibly enjoyable for them, was a nightmare for me. It was far more work than just being at home, as their houses are just not equipped and arranged as efficiently as ours. It was far more stressful because it's not home and there are unwritten, unspoken expectations and judgments about everything and whereas at home I can do what I want when not looking after The Little Ninja, that is just SO not the case there. There is NO REST. The Recyclist doesn't seem to conform to the whole 'make-yourself-at-home' policy, so he's hanging on my heels and nagging me to get up before I'm ready because he doesn't feel comfortable going and getting his own breakfast without me there. So I have to get up even earlier than normal. I have to look after The Little Ninja constantly and immediately. The grandparents don't OFFER to do anything and asking them to even feed The Little Ninja a bottle feels like an imposition. While I was hoping they would offer to babysit one evening so The Recyclist and I could go out for our first date since The Little Ninja was born, obviously nothing came of that. I don't know why I thought otherwise; they didn't offer to help with anything when they came to visit us here, either.

As any family visit is, the trip was packed with obligatory visits. Many of these meetings were arranged without our knowledge or input; we were only informed of them offhand. Like we should have known the extended family would be at my Dad's on Sunday and booked the time accordingly.

We somehow never got a chance to go to the mall alone - so my intended shopping trip was somewhat impeded. (The Little Ninja got wicked stuff but I seem to have mostly missed out. I'll be pushing the London trip in January with the Kiwi now in order to make up for lost shopping time. The poor Recyclist missed out completely.)

And I always find it stressful to spend an extended length of time with other people (more than 1 day with people other than my husband and son) because I just hold in all the frustration to keep the peace. I am just not a social type. I enjoy and require time alone. At home I get that. With my family? NEVER.

So it's probably no surprise that when the time comes to go home, I can't wait. I can't wait to get away from my family! Isn't that awful? I feel like an awful daughter even writing it. But seriously, by the time I leave I don't even ever want to go back. In time, that feeling changes and, of course, we do go back. But damn, I wish it could be more enjoyable.

We need more time alone.
We need days with NOTHING planned.
We need time by ourselves to go do stuff like shop.
I think we need to go for longer, much as I dread the idea.

Thus, a new resolution. Hold me to this! Next time we go to Canada (probably next summer), we will break up the trip to have some time alone on at least one mini-vacation away from my family. A good possibility would be 3-3-3-3-3-3-3. That's three weeks, with 2 three-day sessions with each parent and 3 three-day periods of vacation in between. I doubt it'll actually work out that way, but it looks like a good ideal to strive towards. 12 days of obligation separated by 9 days of freedom. Because I want to like going to Canada. I want to enjoy spending time with my family. and hopefully this is the answer. Because I don't ever want a 'vacation' like that again.

Disappointment at the Zoo

I love the Toronto Zoo. I always have. It is - bar none - my favourite attraction in the GTA. Yet I hadn't managed to get there for several years. Before today. Now, with The Little Ninja in tow, it was clear that we would have to go this time, much to my own delight.

Perhaps my expectations were too high. I had, after all, been idealising the place in my head for a good 10 years. I had been looking forward to the zoo since I planned the trip to Canada in the first place. I had even checked out the website to see what special animals would be on display. I guess I had set myself up for disappointment.

My Dad might possibly have mentioned at some point that the zoo wasn't doing all that well and the city was considering privatising it (in my opinion a good idea, especially after my experiences) and that there was some protest about the elephants in the Canadian climate, but I had waved away these minor points as they obviously could not possibly affect my wondrous zoo experience.

Well. What a frickin disappointment. Maybe the zoo isn't doing that well, but I paid $23/person PLUS $10 parking and I damn well expected to see lots of animals. We didn't see any cheetahs, though I am willing to believe there is one somewhere in the massive enclosure, though before today I would have bet on more. But there was only one lonely giraffe, one rhino, one lion, one tiger, one antelope - it was like the zoo in Madagascar - one sad example of each of those fantastic animals. And the pride of the zoo, the polar bears, were in the far enclosure where you could barely see them off on the grass, rather than in the viewing enclosure.

I understand that it's no longer high season. That was clear in the many empty kiosks we passed, the closed restaurants and the shortened opening hours. But I paid full admission and I expect to see animals! The pavilions closed at 3:30 and the whole zoo closed at 4:30. We didn't even get to see the special sting ray exhibit. Or a bunch of other things, but the zoo is really, really big and I didn't really expect to see the other things. The polar bears were not really on display. But my biggest disappointment was the lack of some animals. Those mainstays of zoo visits, lions and tigers and bears; oh my, what a disgrace. Come on, Toronto; it is not fair to the animals or the visitors to have just one of these animals. Either find some more or send them off to another zoo to at least have some company. I don't need to walk for an hour to get around the Africa area of the zoo just to see one lion, one giraffe, one antelope and not find any cheetahs at all. (The cheetahs are my favourite...)

That said, the elephants were still there (at least two) and the hippos (also two) were fun to watch. If, however, as my Dad reports, the elephants are to be sent to San Francisco or somewhere else warm, only the hippos will remain as a positive point. And that's not good enough. Toronto Zoo used to be one of the best in the world. And I don't think that's all in my head. I fervently hope that the city sells it to some zoo operator that knows its business because there is no reason (especially at those prices) for the zoo not to be a top-rate attraction!