Post title a line I just heard from Caillou. A surprisingly wise toddler, Caillou. Last night I went grocery shopping and for a change, rather than orange juice, picked up Tropicana Tropics' Mango-Citrus blend. This morning I gave it to the kids and one of them is rejecting it. Won't even try it! Now I feel insulted. It's really good stuff! Just try it, damn it! What's it going to hurt? But no. Please? No.
Clearly I'm spending too much time around my kids. No end in sight, however, as Friday was their last day of Montessori and Natalie's summer break doesn't start until June 29. Yesterday they spent a lot of time at Julie's place. I took them swimming in the 11-1 window at Trinity Bellwoods and at first it was like parent-kid heaven in the toddler pool, with Penny on my back and Myron experimenting with underwater swimming, successfully, and I let them convince me to stay until 12:30 and then once I wrapped them up in their towels and got them standing on the changeroom stall bench in T-B it was rapid dissolution into tears until noise in the stall rivaled the volume of a couple of G20 sound cannons.
The family stalls at T-B are just off the pool. They are open at the top and bottom like in a normal public washroom and the entire pool area must have been able to hear every intonation in the warbles and wails. And lots of other parents were out there. Speed was the best tactic here, I figured, yeah, once I got them dressed I would sprint from the pool area with my eyes on the ground, the better to avoid other parents' glances. So I tried to speed-wrestle Penny into her tights but three minutes into that strategy only one leg was on her and both of them were generating heretofore unknown levels of audio energy. I tried pleading. Then I gave up. I looked at the floor. Yeah, with me already feeling like the world's worst human being, this was just awesome. Maybe I couldn't figure out what they needed, but I knew what I needed: I needed a hug. I gathered them both into my arms and hugged my sobbing children to my chest. We stood like that awhile. They were crying, but it seemed to be decreasing, if only a little bit. Myron managed two words: "I'm cold," he said. Then: "I'm too cold to put my clothes on." And then, finally: "I'm hungry."
OK. They weren't being demon children—I'd overextended them. Plus after an hour of pool time, they were exhausted. Sure. Of course. I rubbed Penny's back through her towel and huh, wait a second, straight from all-out tears: Was that... a giggle? Intense towel rubbing with Myron prompted more giggles, now from both of them. They were still crying, but now they also were laughing. Amid this mess I worked the other leg through Penner's tights. Summit talks between Myron and I convinced him to trade his wet bathing suit for his jeans. I changed from my suit to my jeans, gathered the rest of the stuff, the diaper bag, the towel bag, and a half-hour after we'd climbed from the pool I picked up shirtless Myron and half-dressed Penny and staggered out to the car. (The car, because we'd been doing errands pre-swim.) Penny fell asleep on the two-block drive home. Myron ate 1.5 grilled cheese sandwiches—for my non-eating boy, an amount like something out of a Roman feast.
So, resolved: Today, I will structure the day with a set schedule that ensures the kids are well-fed before what I'll limit to a max of 40 minutes swim time. We'll see how that goes.
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