local tourist::morning star farms

Without a doubt, Morning Star Farms and Qualicum Cheeseworks is one of my favorite little spots here.  I love this place.  First of all it’s simply adorable.   They have these ridiculously cute signs everywhere with lame-ass puns and I eat that stuff up.  It’s cute!  And always makes me chuckle even though I’m at this farm a lot in the summer.  Secondly, it’s free.  Do you know how few things like this are free these days?  Very, very few.  In fact, most farms I know of where you can frolick with the animals aren’t free at all but rather charge a crazy entrance fee to hang out with your future meal.

There is also a picnic area beside the goats, and this not-at-all-suitable-for-toddlers-or-woman-wearing-unappropriate-footwear trail with gorgeous views of the mountains, and then there is a gift store that sells made-on-the-premises cheese, local bread and preserves, locally made wine (I LOVE THIS PLACE) , ice cream and an assortment of gifts that are farm related in a way (like John Deere tractor toys, cheese plates and other accessories and the like).

Basically if you come and visit me out here, we’ll go there.  Everyone who visits me is forced to go to the farm eventually.

Farmall

baby cow

petting the rabbits

tractor

walking the trail

froliking

We decided to walk the trail around the farm this trip right at the time Claire would typically be napping beacuse WE ARE STUPID.  The trail is the tractor road between the fields and the fields are fenced with an electric fence.  Did I mention taking three children around a road with electric fences on both sides is stupid?  Because it is. 

At one point Claire starts to turtle.  She’ll no longer walk, she wants to be carried but my Mom refuses to carry her because Claire’s a big girl, was wet and muddy from some sections of the trail and walking through a field, and you know, she’s HEAVY.  I’m nursing Anna so I couldn’t carry her on my back, and honestly, the kid can walk.  She’s holding her ground doing her two-year old dramatic gig and we walk away because in theory the child should start to follow us? Yes?

She doesn’t because she’s two, and instead just stands in the middle of the trail carrying on.  We get a fair distance away and are trying to encourage her to come along with us when she gives us this evil look, walks straight for the fence and hovers her hand above it.  Through this whole scene she is looking at us dead-on.  Daring us not to come back for her.  We understandably flip out and scream.  She touches the fence.  We lose our  minds.  She cries.

Of course we go running, the kid just clasped her hand on an electric fence.  She’s crying!  She could be really hurt!  My Mom gets to her first (me with the baby attached to my boob being not very swift on my feet), picks up Claire and touches the fence herself to gauge the shock. 

THE DAMN FENCE WAS OFF.

Claire 1 : Adults 0

There might be something to this family bed thing

We spent our Father’s Day weekend camping about 5 minutes from our house.  In a tent.  With a group of preschoolers and their families.  You want to be me right now, don’t you?

But you know what? It wasn’t that bad.

It was our preschool’s weekend camp-out and it was nice to get to know some of the families a bit better, get to know some people in our little community better, and get to sit beside a little pond and splash around with our kids.  Steve and I are terrible about getting out and about in this little place of ours, so being a part of the preschool has been good for us.  Maybe we’ll even venture out to our local farmer’s market this coming weekend and be able to say hi to people.  Maybe we’ll even talk to them.   Whoa.  Wild.

Actually hanging out with the preschooler’s families isn’t what was scaring me as I prepared for the weekend.  It was all 5 of us sleeping in a tent that had me petrified. 

I have a confession to make: Steve hasn’t slept in our bed since Anna was born.

I bought two twin sized beds just before Anna was born for The Toddlers but my real intent was that Steve wouldn’t sleep in our bed for a little while.  Steve is not a nice person when he is tired.  One might say he’s a bit of a jerk.  That one being me.  The man is a jerk when he’s tired so I much prefer him well rested.  Babies don’t typically allow for well restedness (I don’t care if that isn’t a word, it makes my point well so I’m using it).   I can’t make Steve suddenly be all rainbows and lollipops on 5 hours of sleep so I decided that he would sleep elsewhere.  He very happily agreed to this arrangement and has been bunking in Callum’s room on the spare twin bed and relishing the fact that Callum doesn’t snore so he doesn’t have to wear earplugs.  Callum LOVES that Papa is there first thing in the morning and he can start talking right away! (Callum doesn’t yet care that Steve is Mr. Grumpy first thing in the morning, he just starts talking.  I find this hilarious.).

Since this new sleeping arrangement has been so well received the thought of getting into a tent with Steve, The Toddlers and Anna was daunting.  That’s a lot of sharing after two solid months of sleeping in a queen sized bed with a baby that just hit 9 lbs.  I wasn’t convinced it was something that would end well.

But it did end well.  The Toddlers sleep like champs anyway and once asleep stay asleep.  Anna got to cuddle in my sleeping bad so she was problem free, and Steve just pulled out the old earplugs and all was well.

The only drawback to this experiment is that he’s decided that we should once again start living life as a married couple and moved himself back into my bed. 

Or rather, our bed.

local tourist::cathedral grove and cameron lake

I thought I’d start a little project.  I can’t travel anywhere right now what with the 3 kids who are 3 years and younger gig, plus the whole being stupid broke thing but I really, really, really miss going places.  Instead of feeling ridiculously sorry for myself and dying inside of jealousy of all those people going off to interesting and fabulous places or who are doing intersting and fabulous things, I thought I’d be a tourist in my own backyard. Being a tourist in your own town also happens to be considerably more environmentally friendly too.  So as an added bonus I get to be all high and mighty and I like that.  I like that a lot.

And I get to tell you all about it.  I’m lazy and this makes for damn easy blog posts.

Last week we were excellent travellers and ventured out to Cathedral Grove and Cameron Lake.  Cathedral Grove is an old growth forest of Douglas Fir trees that is accessible because, you know, the highway was built right through it.  It also has convenient walking trails because that is just what we do to a stand of crazy old, beautiful trees.  We hack through it and provide some lovely trails. It is also being logged to it’s bitter edges but that’s an entirely different post.  Seriously, why don’t people respect nature?  Why?

It really is an amazing place to be, there is just something calming about an old tree.

pretty leaves

treehuggers!

seriously big trees

After we checked out the big trees, we went just up the road to Cameron Lake and had lunch, napped, nursed (of course!) and built fairy houses.  We were basically the only people there so it was rather lovely.

fishing, I think

I'm almost positive he's fishing

If I wasn't nursing while walking around Cathedral Grove, I would have put her in a stump there. It's my maternal right, people.

Now start showing me your local, favorite places!!

recrafted::crayons

Like every other family out there with toddlers, we have a bucket of crayons.  I have to be truthful here, I love crayons.  I was really looking forward to those lazy afternoons where we would all sit down at the kitchen table and color with our box of Crayola.  You know, like a Norman Rockwell picture.

And like oh-so-much about parenting let me give all you non-parents a little insight into the crayon.  Crayons break very easily and leave little crayon lint everywhere.  Crayons get their wrappers torn off bit-by-painfully-little-bit and all those damn bits of crayon wrapper end up in every corner of your house.  Crayons are very easy to bite into and then spit out.  Not that I have a child that does that (I’m looking at you, CLAIRE).  Crayons get dumped onto the floor in a giant heap so the bucket can be used as a helmet.   And also, Laura informs me that some crayons DON’T WASH OFF.  What the hell?!

The one thing kids don’t do with crayons?  Draw a picture.

Anyway one day I had a fit.  A huge, giant, child-like fit because once again an enormous pile of crayons was in the middle of my living room getting kicked around.  Crayons were flying under the couch.  Crayons were being thrown about.  Crayons were leaving their nasty little crayon lint everywhere.  I got mad and I picked up all those damn crayons, chopped them to bits in my mini chopper (oh, that was a bad, bad, bad idea) and then melted the shit out them.

choppy, choppy.

melty, melty

oopsy, oopsy.

pretty, pretty.

So now I have a small basket of pretty little crayon shapes!  The kids love them.  They feed them to their dolls, they line them up, they pretend they are little people, they trace them, they put them in their car/train/tractor and drive them around. 

The one thing they don’t do with the pretty, little crayon shapes? Draw a picture.

looks like he's going to draw, but he doesn't draw...

At least they aren’t leaving crayon lint behind anymore.

SAVE YOURSELVES!!

On Wednesday Callum had a bad day at school.  Not that you’d know it when you talked to him, but when I went to our monthly co-op meeting that evening the story was considerably different.  Or, more appropriately, there was a story since in truth Callum had no story.

From what I can gather, the teacher had set up a little volcano.  Now, the volcano has been in the classroom for several days and the kids have been playing with it.  The volcano itself wasn’t surprising, but yesterday was Eruption Day! so that meant the teacher got out the baking soda and vinegar.  You know the drill.

Except, well, Callum didn’t know the drill.  And with a build up of “explode” and “burning” and “hot lava” the kid was concerned.  Then something snapped and he realized that the adults in the room weren’t going to clear out like you should when a volcano was going erupt.  No.  Instead the were going to BLOW THE THING UP.

So, you know, he did what anyone would do when a volcano was about to blow. He started to scream and headed for the door.   I mean, I’d be all “SAVE YOURSELVES” if a volcano was about to erupt too. 

Now, Callum freaks out.  Not often.  Ok, that’s not true, it is kinda often.  He can only watch certain TV shows while other shows will send him screaming from the room as I’ve alreday blogged about.  This still goes on.  I don’t tend to think much of this, we just don’t watch much TV.  I just assumed that the noise of the TV eventually got overwhelming and he wanted it off since that is true for myself.  I can’t take the TV for more than about two hours and I have to turn it off or leave the room.  Anyway,  like I was saying, I’ve seen the kid freak out enough to not be freaked out myself.  The Moms on duty day at preschool on Wednesday though?  It broke their hearts.

This is why I love my preschool, the Moms are incredible woman and that makes a world of difference.  Their instinct was to go to Callum and give him the love, except that the teacher put a stop to the love.  That upset the Moms even further because to them it looked like Callum was having an anxiety attack.

And he was, I suppose, in a preschooler way.  Except that he does need to learn to deal, too, and that needs to be taught.  The teacher toned the presentation down considerably to accomodate Callum’s fears and the more she talked and explained, the more he calmed down and sorted it all out in his head.  Callum basically attached himself to one of the Moms which the teacher didn’t agree with, although I don’t really mind.  Eventually he calmed down and got close-up and personal with the fake volcano.

After talking with the teacher she explained to me that this is what is affectionately known as Magical Thinking.  In other words, the line between real and imaginary in preschoolers is pretty blurry.  Blurrier for some than others.  The volcano, she figured, was something that hadn’t been worked through from some point in his past*, and that confusion erupted (ha!) during the presentation.  The problem with Callum is that you can’t see the fear/confusion building until he snaps.  And when he snaps?  Whoa.

We talked about some ways for me to deal with it that are both effective in helping Callum see the difference and that won’t make me lose my mind considering I have a lot on my plate as it is.  And she suggested that since I’ve always limited TV, its probably best that he just not watch it until he’s developmentally more ready to see the difference between real and imaginary.  Maybe if the TV was on more frequently it wouldn’t be an issue?!  Never thought being strict about the damn TV was going to bite me in the ass!

At least I feel secure knowing that when danger approaches, my kid is going to be the one at the front of pack screaming.  There’s comfort in that.

My little dude.

*the incident is easy to place, too.  We rented a couple of Land Before Time videos, one where the dinosaurs are threatened by, you guessed it, a volcano that was about to erupt.  Callum freaked out and we turned the movie off, so he never did get to see that the dinosaurs did, indeed, save themselves.