5 times my kids have amazed me

(I'm going to be posting new lists soon - I promise! In the meantime, here's another oldie from Facebook...)

1. Max’s hair. Like all new moms, when I was pregnant for the first time I thought a lot about what my baby would look like. Would it be a boy or a girl? Would he have my husband’s nose? Would she have my eyes? All the regular things. One thing I never gave any consideration was hair colour. Since I’m half Japanese with dark hair and my husband is Caucasian with dark hair I never even wondered about our baby’s hair. So when, after over twelve hours of active labour, the midwife plopped our son onto my deflated belly I was …. well, I was surprised! Red. Not strawberry blonde. Not auburn. Definitely, unequivocally red. And I love it. Five years later I still field the “Where does he get his hair?” questions. I have yet to come up with a witty retort to the inevitable milkman jokes. But that hair. I look at him and it’s like a daily reminder, a little sign saying “Life is full of fun surprises and little miracles.” Don’t take anything for granted. You just never know.

2. Sarah walks. My son was fairly average when it came to hitting milestones. He could hold his head up off the floor at three months, rolled over at four months, sat up at six months, and walked at about one year. So when our daughter started striking a sort of “downward dog” yoga pose at four months, I was pretty intrigued. And then she walked. She walked when she was eight months old. I know people who didn’t see it don’t believe me when I tell them now. I’m glad I have the little videos we took, otherwise I’d start doubting my own memory. People used to stop me in the mall. I guess we were an interesting site: me and this little, teeny, tiny baby, who looked like she should still be in a stroller, walking around. Now that I think about it, it’s no wonder that, nearly two years later, she still won’t sit in her stroller. No one’s holding her back!

3. The lock. Last year we sold our house. I could rant … but I won’t. This isn’t about that. This is about the lock we had on our front door. You know the kind: it’s a combination lock real estate agents use that has your front door key inside. Well, one day I pulled into the garage with the kids and realized that the last agent who showed our house locked the door into the house from the garage and I didn’t have a key. No need to panic, though. I called our agent and asked him for the combination to the lock that held the extra key. I got the key out but couldn’t seem to figure out how to replace it and close the panel. It wouldn’t stay shut. So there I am on the front stoop of our house, Sarah trying to dig in my flower planters, Max yammering away in the background as usual, and me on my cell trying to hear the agent explain how to work the lock. “Shhhh, Max!” I snapped. “I’m on the phone and I can’t hear!” After a few more unsuccessful attempts I told the agent to wait a moment while I put the phone down so I would have two hands available to contend with the lock. That’s when I realized what my four-year-old had been trying to tell me. “Mom! You’ve got it upside down!” Oh. I turned it around. Click. It went right in.

4. The pantry. Experts say you can’t expect children under the age of three to really understand the concept of sharing because at that age they haven’t yet developed the key emotion: empathy. So at just two years old, Sarah surprised me a few months ago when I was digging in my pantry. The pantry is a bit of a sore issue. Last year when we were going over kitchen specs with the builder, I wanted pantry shelves that would pull out. My husband thought it was something he could do himself, much more economically, with supplies from Home Depot. I’m still waiting. And smashing. Smashing bottles, unintentionally, that get pushed off the edge of shelves as I manically sift through trying to find the illusive item I need at that moment which is inevitably at the very back of the pantry. So it was after one such episode, as I was crouched in front of those shelves, on the brink of tearing my hair out, muttering “Where is it? Where the hell is it?” that I felt a chubby little two-year old arm around my neck. A soft, little voice said: “It okay, Momma. Don’t worry.” Suddenly paprika was just paprika again as I regained my composure in my little girl’s hug.

5. Max wakes up. All the moms whose kids started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks raise your hands. Okay, I don’t want to hear from you. Sorry. Not to be grumpy. It’s nothing personal. It’s just neither of my children are “sleepers.” Try going three years without more than four consecutive hours of sleep and you’ll be grumpy too. It’s made me very, shall we say, protective of my sleep. That’s why one night last year when Max woke up at about 2 a.m. to use our ensuite bathroom – He always uses ours. The main one is about three steps from his room but that’d be too easy. He walks right by it to come into our room every time. – I pretended to be asleep. He went in, peed, flushed, came out and stood by the end of our bed. Oh no! Why was he stopping? Eyes closed, I willed as hard as I could. Just keep going, Max. Don’t talk. Don’t ask for a glass of water. Just keep going. I really didn’t want to spend the next hour convincing him to go back to bed. Then I heard a soft mmwah and a faint blowing sound. The sound of a four year old blowing a kiss. I surreptitiously opened one eye in time to see him wave at his “sleeping” parents as he walked out and quietly shut the door behind him.

All of my complaining aside, this is the real snapshot of my kids. Smart, funny, intuitive, full of surprises. Authentic. Beautiful.

The amazing red haired Japanese baby.


Downward dog at 4 1/2 months.