We are now 9 days post surgery and Ilan is doing well. His back has healed wonderfully. I really believe the arnica he took helped a lot in that regard. I’m a firm believer. The week was pretty rough. Having had a few surgeries myself I should have remembered the experience. Aside from the terrible pain it is an emotional roller coaster. Anyway I think his feelings of fragility are less and he is feeling more optimistic about outcome. Onward and upward.

Dustin came in from university and because Ilan and his wife, Carrie are staying with us for a bit, we had a full house for the first time in a long time. In this honour, my husband and I decided to make a scrumptious dinner last night. We don’t have a barbecue yet so had to pan-fry the chicken, which had been marinaded in, amongst other things, brown sugar. In no time at all, the smoke set off the smoke alarm and then it was simply a comedy of errors. We forgot  that the smoke alarm was connected to the alarm company and unbeknown to anyone, the phone had been left off the hook. (Ok, fine, I did it!) By the time the alarm company contacted my husband on his cell, they had already notified the fire department. Despite attempts to halt the dispatch, lo and behold, 2 fire trucks with many firemen duly came. They were jovial and understanding and all ended well.

After the week we’ve had, the experience felt like light relief!

Tomorrow my son gets his leg pain fixed! He never thought he’d feel excited for surgery but he is! A little scared too, of course. We are all looking forward to his pain free future. It has been a long five months for all of us. I don’t even attempt to put myself in his shoes, literally and figuratively. Lan, I am rooting for you with every cell in my body – with much love.

Here is the surgery that he is having done (for those medical junkies like myself). Click here.

Check out Karen Nemeth’s guest blog on mychildfeels.com. Karen is the author of “Many Languages, One Classroom: Teaching Dual and English Language Learners: (2009). With the multicultural issues that our classrooms face today, Karen’s perspective is heartfelt and thoughtful.

I think the definition of a move completion is when you can use your computer! So while we still live amongst boxes and dust, I can check email and facebook and have access to the internet and that’s what counts. Haha.

First night in our new home was interesting and not quite what I had anticipated. I knew Gabi would be unsettled but I wasn’t prepared for her extreme distress. If she could have walked to our old house, I think she would have. I kept on reminding myself about something that I have learned about parenting and life – nothing stays the same. I’m happy to report that we are now 5 days later and things are much better. As I write this I hear my daughter happily playing with her friend and excitedly showing her around her new home. I felt strange and unsettled myself the first night, as did my husband and my 24 year-old son, so I can only imagine how much more frightening it must have felt for Gabi.

Must go, another box is calling my name!

Only 2 more sleeps! We move homes in 3 days and it is hectic! We’ve lived in the same home for 15 years and I had forgotten how much work a move is. I did not anticipate having to go through the overwhelming accumulation of years of unnecessary stuff! As exhausting as it has been, there is something very cleansing about a “spring clean,” albeit in winter! Thank you Mr. Garbage person for schlepping extra weight these past weeks.

My poor son (the one who just got married) has been nursing leg pain for many weeks now. He oscillates between determination to recover and frustration. Can’t say I blame him. Physical pain can feel physically and emotionally draining. After weeks of physio, massage, acupuncture and bed rest he is now trying, with a large degree of optimism, a back decompression clinic. He is booked to go on honeymoon to Mexico on the 19th so the clock is ticking!

Gabi wrote a book report on “Boom… Boom… Boom…” and I was invited in for “show and tell.” I always love speaking to kids and this was no exception. I had now read to grade 5’s before and was surprised how attentive they were. Their understanding of the book was at a higher level and most interesting. My baby is growing up!

Must go. Another box is calling my name.

Check out a new post on mychildfeels.com by Jennifer Kolari entitled “Ask Jennifer Kolari: Childhood Anxiety.” This touches many of us and well worth reading.

My daughter Gabi was home sick from school and we decided to climb into bed and watch a movie. With a little prodding from me (shameless, I know) she decided that she wanted to see Julie and Julia, directed by Nora Ephron. I loved it! Oops, sorry, “we loved it!”

I won’t spoil the movie for anyone but let me say that if you love food (which I do) and a good story, you will love this movie. For me, there’s something about being invited into someone’s kitchen that feels more intimate than being invited into their bedroom. I’ve always had the belief that people who really enjoy food feel more passionate about life in general. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Also, for a writer who dreams about being whisked away by a great publisher, the film was a fantasy. Sigh…

Gabi is in Grade 5 in an Arts Program and is loving it! There are 4 general categories: Visual Arts, Drama, Music and Dance. She is comfortable in the last three but has mixed feelings about the first. Here’s some background.

Her 3 brothers, her father and I believe we can’t draw. This is emphasized by the fact that my sister, her husband and their two girls are amazing visual artists. Their oldest daughter and our youngest son went to preschool together and the difference even then was astounding. So much so that she became extremely upset one day because she believed that her cousin was going to “fail” preschool because he couldn’t draw. My 3 sons took their lead from my husband and I and good-naturedly accepted that we had other strengths. In fact, they liked having their cousins to lean on when they need help with projects!

Gabi, on the other hand, hard on herself at the best of times, does not enjoy that her strength doesn’t lie in her “drawing” skills. It has caused her much distress and heartache. It took us a while to realize that the problem was, that, unlike our other children, she loves to draw. So we bought her instruction books, encouraged her and praised her and stood helplessly by for the most part while she continued to berate herself.

This past week changed our perspective. We had conformed to the “normal” expectation of art and felt that a true artist could replicate objects, in particular the human form. I’ve lost count of the times that I have said, “I can’t draw a stick figure.” Anyway, Gabi and I paid our local arts store a visit and she chose a pack of two canvases and some acrylic paints. Feeling like a real artist she sat down to paint and I left her to it.

“I’ve finished it, Mom,” she said. I was truly surprised at what I saw. It was absolutely beautiful and made me understand that art is not only about form but about colour, feeling and passion.

Everyone who wants to be can be an artist. It took my ten year old daughter to show me that.

I  babysat my nephew Aden of two and a half, for four days. He is an absolute joy! It is refreshing being around a child this age because they are completely honest. They haven’t learnt not to be! He also helped me put a new perspective on something that I spend a lot of time considering.

Imagination. My observations of people have shown me that generally speaking, those with greater imaginations are able to achieve greater things in their lives. Unfortunately, there are few of us who are able to fully engage our imaginations in our daily lives. I think it’s because we see imagination as an innocence that can only exist in childhood. It occurs because children really believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy or Mickey Mouse. My nephew showed me that this isn’t entirely true. We took him to Reptilia, a zoo for reptiles and left with a happy little boy and a newly purchased green snake. When we returned home, my son Dustin named the snake “Harry” and it stuck. Harry went everywhere with Aden and he spoke to the snake constantly.

At some point I was on the floor with him and getting into the spirit of his imaginative play. “Oh no Harry!” I said “Don’t bite me!”

Aden promptly replied.”Don’t worry Marshie. He can’t bite. He’s just pretend.” And then almost condescendingly he added, “he’s just plastic.”

Wow! Children know it’s pretend and yet they can still become immersed. Which means we can too. I began thinking and remembered years ago an incident with Gabi when she was about seven. She had just begun losing teeth and was very excited each time with the tooth fairy’s arrival and deposit. One day, she came home from school and announced, “my friend told me that the tooth fairy is not real – that it’s really my parents!” I felt sad that this bubble was about to burst and spent some time trying to convince her that the tooth fairy did indeed exist. Eventually she wore me down and I told her the truth. With that, she ran to her room and cried for ages. I was puzzled. She had really wanted to know. She had even said things like, “I’m not a baby any more. You can tell me.”

Reflecting now, I think that Gabi knew all along that the tooth fairy wasn’t real but she really wanted to believe that she was. Believing was adding joy in her life and we took that away by removing the myth. I’m not suggesting that we lie to our kids but I do think that we should spend more time teaching them the importance of holding onto their imaginations. It is the super power of children and if we foster it correctly it can become the super power of adults too.

Our very cute and mischievous Havanese puppy, Oreo, ate Gabi’s homework. It was a project that she had worked on for a week and she was completely devastated. My husband and I rallied and helped her recreate it and fortunately we were successful!

I learned a few things that day. I learned that the cliche “the dog ate my homework” actually exists. I learned that it is possible for a ten-year old girl to cry for a solid 30 minutes and gush enough tears to fill a stock pot. I learned that love overcomes all. Gabi forgave Oreo when all was said and done. And finally, I learned that often, out of the worst situations arises the best and most memorable ones. We ended the evening in giggles and Gabi had great fun taking in her chewed up project to show her class the following day!