In the middle of a horrendously busy week for me, and one not without stress, was an event which I skipped blogging about. It is, however, an event of some historical significance, so here you are: 

On Wednesday The Wictor had his first day at Mothers Day Out, or as we like to call it, “school”. 

I may have been tempted to write about it right away, except that absolutely nothing happened. He was delighted to be counted among the big kids, and wheeled his little Cars suitcase into his sister’s preschool with such pride. He cried a little when I left, but had stopped before I was out of earshot. On Thursday, as his brother and sister prepared to leave, he ran everywhere looking for his school bag. I felt so sorry for him that I took him to the supermarket, even though I didn’t really need to go. In case you missed it, the supermarket is his absolute favorite place.

Actually, now it is his second favorite place, after school.  

Were you watching the Today show today? 

Were you watching with the subtitles on? 

I was, because I was in the waiting room at Kwik Kar with the Wictor, while they gave my SUV car a quickie oil change. This was shortly before the oil change turned into “Your brake pads are about to disintegrate, give us another $300″ and we were trapped there for an extra hour, but I digress. 

When The T-Bot was a tiny baby he would only nap on my lap. No kidding, he would fall asleep and if I tried to move him or put him down he would wake up again and then everybody was grumpy. So I spent hours and hours sitting on the couch watching the TV, with the subtitles on. Because, did I mention, noise would also wake him up? 

So I consider myself quite an expert on subtitlers (or Subtitle Executives, or whatever they call the people who sit there and type what people are saying). And as soon as I looked up at the Kwik Kar TV screen, I knew I had hit a bad one. The subtitles were either in a strange foreign language or had been typed on a German keyboard. Or both. Or maybe whoever was typing had been drinking. Heavily. A million scenarios spring to mind. 

Unfortunately I did not have pen and paper to hand, but this one I could not forget. Meet Carnal Electra: 

This morning as we were about to walk out of the door to the bus stop, I slipped on the wet tiles in the bathroom and hit my head on the handle of a cabinet. It hurt like a very hurty thing, but after about 20 seconds on my hands and knees to make sure that I was, actually, still alive, I pushed through the pain and went out to help the children get their shoes on. At one point I thought I would be sick, but with the rush to get out the door it wasn’t long before the accident  was (temporarily) forgotten. 

Before kids, I would have probably spent ten minutes lying on the couch with an ice pack and a splitting headache, nursing my booboo. It’s lucky I didn’t, because as we opened  the front door the bus passed us and we had to run! run! run! to get there in time. 

I have decided that is one of the main things which makes a person a parent - the ability to put your children first (even when you feel like you should have an enormous handle-shaped hole in your head and are possibly about to die. Or similar).

In my fragile state I would obviously absolutely love a bucket of comments and emails asking if I am OK. Of course, the fact that I am writing this at all is probably proof that I am, but don’t let that stop you ;-) 

PS While writing this, I went looking for a link to that research we moms always talk about, that empirical proof that women have a higher pain threshold than men. I couldn’t find it. Instead I found lots and lots of articles like this. Gulp. Well that sort of cut the legs out from under my original post. 

Today is the first day of school after the summer vacation and sometime during the night T-Bot’s fish Charlie died. This morning he was lying curled up on the floor of the tank, so I didn’t believe it at first because I thought dead fish were supposed to float. But, after an exploratory poke into the tank to check he wasn’t just asleep, I had to keep poking to make it look like he was moving. Because he wasn’t, and today as you know was the First Day of School. I didn’t want anything to ruin this.

Then Baby Sister wanted to feed him.

“That’s OK! (OMG OMG OMG OMG)” I said brightly, “I already fed him this morning. Anyway, he’s still asleep”.

Yes, I do lie to my kids, sometimes. Especially when it is for their own good. And sometimes even when it is for mine. (”Mommy and Daddy Chocolate”, for instance. Is deathly to children). 

This morning they were all cooperation and excitement, and I was a bunch of nerves, although I think I hid it very well. We were ten minutes early for the bus, because apparently the school bus is a magical thing. Not quite like the Magic School Bus but almost. The T-Bot has been begging to ride the yellow bus since he started kindergarten. Now he is going into 1st Grade I finally let him, despite the dire warnings from certain American friends about some sort of  Lord of the Flies type alternative reality which is supposed to exist behind those blacked-out windows.  I saw immediately what she meant when two smirking 2nd graders wandered up and proceeded to stare at my son as if he was something gross that had just fallen off the bottom of their shoe. But then, the other boy at the stop was a very very nice 5th grader, and the bus driver lady was lovely, like somebody’s Mom.  So I decided that the odds of surviving this bus trip were probably hugely in his favor. 

That, by the way, is my New School Year’s Resolution. To look on the bright side and not stress about anything until it happens. Last year I let the whole school thing drive me to distraction. And yet the T-Bot? Was eager to go to school this morning, so it can’t be all bad. 

Baby Sister went back to pre-school later, into the Pre-K class, and I had promised her that she would not be in with the Four-Year-Old going on Fourteen-Year-Old who terrorized her last year. Note to Self, stop being so trusting and quit making promises based on information gleaned from other people. Still, she seemed happy to be back, for now at least. 

So, children dispatched, I set off for my appointment with the new dermatologist. And I swear, as if touching a dead fish, sending my four year old into the devil’s lair, and putting my six year old on a school bus were not stresses enough for one day, the dermatologists clinic had vanished into thin air! 

Another Note to Self: Stop being so trusting and quit giving any credence to information doled out by Mr Google Maps.  I had even looked at the street view, and the fact that it showed a service station possibly should have been a clue, but I figured the clinic was somehow behind it.  It wasn’t. It was about 2 miles up the road but it took me a while to ascertain this, given that the telephone number I had written in my agenda was for a random lawyer’s office. 

But they were very understanding about me being so late, and let me in to see the dermatologist anyway. And he was very nice about me wasting his time, because the two moles which were bleeding when I made the appointment a month ago are not bleeding anymore. He declared me a very disappointing carrier of “common or garden moles” (His pun. Intentional? Who knows?) and sent me on my way.  

And now? I do sort of miss my children. It is almost school run time. And bus pickup time because (jumping in air pumping fist a la Tom Cruise, who by the way, looks very dorky doing it but I swear when I do it, it is graceful) someone else is going to bring my eldest home for me! I will not have to spend 30 minutes in the car line today! 

And that is reason enough to celebrate. 

Other Exciting Wii news! I finally found a Wii Fit! 

Target came through, once again. They actually had five but as expected would only sell me the one. It doesn’t matter, one is all I need, and my RL friends just had to get themselves down there pronto to nab the last ones. Lucky, because really, if you want a super family game which is always impossible to find except online at outrageously inflated prices, who thinks of looking at Target?? 

(I think I earned myself some Brownie points there). 

Now that I have the Fit, I am looking forward to the kids being back at school so that I can actually use it, because during vacation time my Wii time is being measured in mere minutes per week. I am talking about maybe 20 or 30 minutes. Because I can’t stand whining. And also I love my kids. 

In the meantime, The Daddy (that’s right, The same Daddy who has a gym at work) has been working out with the kids. In the space of days he has reduced his Wii Fit Age from 45 to 24. Although to be honest, the 45 was probably just the result of a few beers.

I get to watch sometimes, which has done nothing to reduce my Wii Fit age from the current 102. But I am biding my time… Soon the Wii will be mine! All mine! Bwaaaa haaa haaa haaaaaaa!

Shockingly, the boy who lost 8lb over summer - yes, that would be the T-Bot - has become the most addicted to Wii Fit. He easily spends 20 minutes on the Wii Fi jogging trail, scurrying along while his Mii struggles to keep up. And all the while the Wii admonishes him that “keeping up a steady pace will help you burn more calories”.  I am torn between congratulating him on all that healthy exercise, and banning him from the Wii forever because calories? We don’t want to be burning more of those, unless, of course, you are putting more into your body. 

I’ll tell you a secret. Yesterday I got a teeny bit freaked out and before I knew it, I was buying him Pop Tarts. 

Baby Sister doesn’t have a problem with calories. She likes to consume them. Expend them, not so much. Her fortes are the ski jump and the game where you adjust your balance to make balls fall through the holes. I would say that all those ballet lessons paid off if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s not true. I think over the summer (a summer devoid of any ballet lessons whatsoever) she sort of grew into her body. And now she doesn’t fall over anymore. In fact she has gone from being a little clown to a sort of one person balancing act.

Especially on the Wii. Those balance games can come in very useful if you don’t fancy burning any calories. 

The Wictor uses the Wii Fit too. Although it thinks he’s obese, because when he stood on the board to measure his weight, it didn’t register. And so The Daddy stood the T-Bot on there instead for the weighing part. (What do you want to bet, this is the first and the last time the T-Bot will ever be linked with the word obese?) And when it’s The Wictor’s turn (because we all get a turn, except for me), everybody lounges around bored and petulant while he stands there with the Wiimote repeatedly pressing “A”. That’s The Wictor’s Wii Fit Trick, the repeated pressing of “A”.  

I swear that yesterday I saw the Wii shrug, throw up its hands in horror and just give up. 

I am a little frustrated right now. This morning we went to Baby Sister’s appointment at a new pediatric dentist. I wanted to try a new one as an experiment.  I just wanted to see if a pediatric dentist even exists who doesn’t run a tight factory production line operation, with children lined up in chairs and the dentist uttering two words to each, poking around briefly in their mouth and then moving onto the next. Without even a goodbye. 

I wanted to see if this imaginary dentist would have a hygienist who didn’t sound like they were reading their lines from a script. Because my son is six years old and last time even he had enough of the faltering rendition of “This is Squirty Squirter he’s going to squirt water in your mouth see Squirty Squirter’s squirting, it’s just water see. Now let’s meet Bobby Brush he tastes good and he makes a whizzing sound listen to the whizzing sound… ” after the first three minutes and was looking at me like “What has this woman been smoking???” 

And I’m not even going to mention the dental assistant who handed the T-Bot his “sleepy juice” before dental work with the words “Ewww. It tastes yucky!”. 

Anyway. I just thought I would check all this stuff out. So I phoned and made an appointment with Our-New-Dentist and gave them my insurance details and wished I didn’t feel the need to try new medical professionals each time in search of the perfect one. Because what with all the phoning and exchange of details and form filling that goes on, I am losing hours of my life here. Hours which could be spent either productively or in watching Season 3 of Weeds. Take your pick, it’s all good.

But I made the effort and we arrived on time and Baby Sister was even excited about Her Turn at Our-New-Dentists! But we never got past the waiting room. Because when we arrived they informed me that they don’t accept our insurance after all. The lady was very nice about it and gave Baby Sister another free toothbrush to add to her free toothbrush collection, but still … she didn’t offer to pay my gas money or refund my time. Or put my children back in their PJs and arrange them in front of PBS Kids. And then I realised I had a bigger problem. 

The Not-Our-New-Dentist’s waiting room was amazing. It was enormous. It had trains of every description, and building blocks, and Finding Nemo running on the TV (like actually running, without us having to ask!). While I was discussing our ultimate rejection with the receptionist (who, by the way, was not sitting behind glass!), my three children had settled in and were playing contentedly. You could tell by their faces that I was the Best Mommy Ever for bringing them there. 

So I let them play for another few minutes but we were the only people waiting and I started to feel a little uncomfortable freeloading off Not-Our-New-Dentist, especially as we already had our free toothbrush… so we left. 

And as we left, the Wictor started wailing, “Noooooo! Nooooo! Wanna More Dennis! More Dennis!” 

My sentiments exactly. 

I have entered my own private hell.

The Wictor has learned to use the mouse. And now the kids’ computer, strategically placed in a common area so that older children with self-control may use it when they please, has been taken over by the Terrible Two. 

Actually, that’s not fair, The Wictor doesn’t seem to have entered the Terrible Twos yet. Except where the computer is concerned. The house now resonates with regular wails of “Ah Wan PBS Ki’ !!!!!!” And if another child should so much as glance towards the computer they will be literally bowled over by the screaming. “No! Mah Coh pooter!

This morning I walked upstairs to find him watching a video commercial for wrinkle cream on Yahoo! and quietly whimpering. 

If he is going to have a Metal Mommy I suppose the interaction provided by PBS Kids online is a step above the TV. And if those Dell commercials on the spanish channels are to be believed, he even needs this computer time so that he will not, later, fail horribly in school.

So really, I wouldn’t mind so much, if his new confidence with things digital didn’t extend to the Wii. 

Now, the Wii is my domain. It’s bad enough that I have to share it with the T-Bot and Baby Sister. And last night, when I was just points away from getting us to the next level of Elebits, The Wictor arrived and declared “Mah Tur’! Mah Tur’ !!!!!” 

“No,” I said firmly, “My turn. You go play PBS Kids on the computer” 

Unfortunately he is stronger than I am. Also I have delicate ears. 

As he noisily wrestled the controller out of my hands (and a million Elebits sauntered past, arrogant in the knowledge that they had just become untouchable) I asked helplessly,

“And what are you going to do with that controller anyway?” 

“Ah,” he declared proudly, “Ah gonna click o’  ”A”!” 

“Mommy, when you met Daddy you danced together.

And you wore a pretty lady dress.

And you kissed to be married. 

Then you told Daddy you had a baby inside your tummy and he was so excited! 

And you told him my baby name would be T-Bot. 

And he liked it! 

And he was very happy…. ”

(Ten years of my pre-baby life, as summarized by the T-Bot. That’s it, no more Disney Princess books for you, boy!)

Candy House by Baby Sister. 

(About 2 seconds later the roof collapsed under the weight of all that sweet goodness. And then we ate it.) 

I am not a food nazi or organic warrior, although with three small kids I probably should be. 

There is one thing I am firm on though. No food products from China.

A few years ago I watched a documentary on PBS about farming practices in China and the difficulties ensuring quality in their food production. Apparently many fruits and vegetables there come from small farmers who are trying to scratch a living out of infertile or over-farmed land. And many of them resort to banned pesticides and herbicides and other chemicals, and/or concentrations way over safe limits. 

I am too cynical to believe that none of this produce makes its way to the foreign market, especially in the light of the inability of large companies such as Mattel to keep lead paint out of their toy production lines in much the same circumstances (outsourcing to many smaller companies, making inspection of each step of the process very difficult). 

And so, I made the decision to limit food products from China. By limit I mean, we do not knowingly have them in the house. There are, of course, always exceptions - fast food apple juice boxes and Halloween candy for example, and we will never know the source of the ingredients in the little pre-prepared food we eat - but we do what we can. 

My kids drink a lot of apple juice. Mainly because they don’t like many vegetables and this is a good way of ensuring they at least get their full quota of fruit (an aside - did you know that the five servings can be fruit OR vegetables? Not necessarily a mixture of both, as long as they are eaten as part of an otherwise balanced diet. This information is pediatrician approved). 

It used to be fairly easy to eschew juice made with chinese concentrate. It was just a matter of studying the label or those little black words printed on the neck of the bottle. Some companies did. Some companies didn’t. No problem.

However, the grocery shrink ray apparently isn’t weapon enough against inflation. Lately more companies seem to be sourcing their apple concentrate from China. The rot set in slowly.  Not so long ago I was buying Tree Top. Then one day I noticed that ominous “Concentrate from China” mention appear on the bottle and switched to Old Orchard Organic. Not bad, I thought, only 20c more expensive and it’s organic. 

Old Orchard and I have had a good relationship for over a year now. Until yesterday, when I reached for the bottle, did my usual check, and instead of “Concentrate from Chile, Turkey, USA, New Zealand, Argentina” (all countries I sort of trust), the bottle was marked … you guessed it. 

(Yes, I know it’s marked organic, and by definition should be free of nasties. But Mattel has told us time and time again that their toys are free of lead.  Get my point?)

So. I have done extensive research in the Clear, Bottled, Pasteurized, Apple-Juice-From-Concentrate department and it appears that where I shop there is one hold-out. Hansens Organic Apple Juice at a whopping $4.56 a bottle (compare this with Old Orchard at $2.57) still sources its concentrate in Turkey. For now.

I am a big fan of Hansens, I am just not a big fan of their prices.

But in the end, it’s all good. Because, on his first reluctant sip of the new brew, the T-Bot declared “Wow, Mommy, this is really yummy!”. And Baby Sister and The Wictor gulped all theirs down too and asked for more. So I tried it and poured myself a big glass because this stuff is amazing! Light and crisp and just like biting into a fresh apple. Comparing the Hansens juice with Old Orchard is like comparing … I don’t know, Prada with H&M? Bentley with Hyundai? Italian coffee with that weak cup of instant your Grandma makes?

You know - they are sort of the same thing. But they’re not. 

Oh, did I say it’s all good? I’m taking it back. The Hansens juice is so delicious that The Daddy and I just can’t resist stealing glasses of the stuff ( I admonish The Daddy - “Hey, the apple juice is for the kids!” - while holding my glass behind my back). The price of our family consumption has not almost doubled, it has quadrupled. It is costing a fortune.

Somebody send me an press and a ton of first world apples.  Quick.