Watch what you say.

Four year olds do not have a lot of patience… (shocking discovery, I know… ) especially when waiting in line for a turn on the mini bumper boats.

Almost 4 year old: I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I just CAN’T wait!

Daddy: Why? What’s going to happen to you if you wait?

I was just about to enter into their conversation with the words, ‘are you going to explode if you wait’? And then quickly stopped myself… no, not because they are perhaps not the best words to say to a 4 year old and may one day cause him to require therapy, but because as a headscarf-wearing woman, accompanied by a bearded husband… trust me on this… ‘explode’ is not a word that you would want to be saying in public!

You wish to have talking kids, because…

1. They can tell you when their ‘milk bottle’ is leaking.

   Me: What’s wrong with your bottle?
   While milk is leaking onto 2 year old’s chin
   2 year old: It ruined, it ruined, ohhh noooo, it ruined!

   Oh, he’s not overly dramatic or anything.

2. So that they can talk some sense into their toys.

   Almost 4 year old: Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
   Daddy: Who are you talking to?
   Almost 4 year old: My car! Stop it!
   Daddy: What is wrong with you car?
   Almost 4 year old: It keeps moving! Arrrrr! STOP IT!

   Where does that anger come from??

3. And so that they can let you know when they have too much energy. Because apparently they remember from this article, and they are running around shouting “energy, energy, energy”!

Horayyyy for teaching kids to talk!

Love Thursday, and not-so-much love Thursday.

This is my entry for ‘love Thursday’ over at Chookooloonks. It is a picture of me with my first son, we went out to the beach right after sunrise. Taken last Fall, at Sauble Beach, Ontario. I love this picture.

Meanwhile, today after thinking that my kids were peacefully sleeping, I went into their room only to find the toddler, aka middle child, fell asleep in front of the room door (which he cannot open without the help of his brother), using his BLOCKS as a pillow, and smelling of poop! There are no words for how I felt… poor kid… if only I could kiss him enough to make up for my guilt! So now I am wondering, could a stay at home mom be fired for poor performance??

A new way of life in our 'Global Village'.

Last night there was a documentary on CBC about cricket , and a large part of it focused on Trinidad, the country where I was born and raised, the funny thing is that I hardly recognized the country. The doc explored how playing cricket transform the lives of these young men, but as the narrator was originally from India, he discussed a lot of the similarities between the 2 countries, making it look almost exactly like India so that someone like me had some difficulty believing that this was Trinidad. However, I did appreciate the fact that the stereotyped view of Trinidad was avoided, as it is not always about Carnival.

It has been my experience living in Canada (at least the greater Toronto area) that most people have heard about Trinidad, but it is a little known fact that the country is populated by East Indians as well as Africans. (plus Chinese, Caucasian… etc, but that’s not the point) Most times I tell someone that I am originally from Trinidad (after the get over the initial shock) the response is “What? I never knew that there were Indian people in Trinidad!” Yes… hard to believe that we live in a ‘global village’, yet our knowledge about other cultures appears to be quite limited.

When I was in my last year of high school we had some well defined cliques, it seemed like the Africans all ended up together; it was a gradual occurrence… girls who had been in inter-racial friendships at the start of high school, were now hanging out with their ‘own kind’. As I reflect upon it, even now I wonder what happened in those 5 years that separated us like apartheid hitting a nation…

Now that my son is getting ready to meet new people and form his own friendships for the first time, I am wondering how his peers would interact with him in our Canadian home… Not wondering so much because we are Indian, but because we are Muslim, and the often erroneous views that are allowed to grow in society today prevents people from looking at us as the individuals that we are, but to look at us as the mass media has stereotyped us as being.

Now, I hope that my son can overlook race, religion, and cultural differences in this multi-cultural land, and form friendships with individuals based on their personalities, and I hope he tries to find similarities instead of differences, and I hope that he and his new classmates can succeed where we failed, bringing us closer to ending all forms of racism.

When I grow up.

Parents are all alike when it comes to the future of their kids, we all have big dreams and aspirations for them, and I often talk to my kids about what they would like to be when they grow up.

My thoughts however, are not so much in terms of doctor, lawyer, engineer, that our parents must have imagined for us, but more like defining a plan for peace in the Middle East, or being able to eliminate poverty and world hunger. You know… just small things…

The eldest one often tells me that he wants to be a doctor; I think the reason (like many kids) is because he wants to help people, but then again he also wants to be the bad guy from The Incredibles because he wants to wear a cape! The eldest one also declared that his brother (the 2 year old) will be an Animal Rescuer, and that the baby would be a fireman!

My 4 year old loves to talk, loves to have discussions, loves to make plans and deals, he is very creative, and being the eldest, he is quite a good bully leader, so my husband and I are thinking that he would make a good community leader, or leader of a grassroots group that succeeds in ending world hunger… or something like that…

My 2 year old is quite curious about everything, he will take everything apart, and then put it back together, he loves his blocks, he loves his books, so my husband (being an engineer) thinks that he has the mind of an engineer, but I think that he can be a scholar, discovering something about the world that we didn’t figure out yet!

Of course no matter how smart you think your kids are, sometimes you just have to wonder… My almost 4 year old said to me “When I grow up, I would like to be a truck!” Yes, not a truck-driver, but an actual truck! And the toddler informed me that he is thinking of being Hi-5 (yes, the TV show)…

At least I still have hope with the baby…