Shucks

This is what my 4 year old boy was doing this afternoon.

Shucking and sucking raw oysters right off the shell:-)

 

Meanwhile, this is what my daughter was doing.

Can anybody say gender roles stereotype?

Space

After a full night of laughs, wine, a little bit of rum and regrettably my once every 10 years Burger King double cheese-burger, I really really needed to get my toxic body into a yoga class followed by a steam room.

So I did.

When I got to the Yoga class, it was packed. The teacher was moving around mats to make sure everyone had room.

When she sat down to begin the class, she started by saying that sometimes it's a good thing to realize how we don't really need all the space we think we need. That sometimes, space is overrated.

I guess she could sense the fear most of us had in our eyes...like, “Oh my God what if I touch the person next to me's gross feet....or what if the person next to me can smell MY gross feet or worse...the dreaded fart!”

Anyhow, the class was great. I was still not able to NOT think about all the laundry I had to do during savasana, but at least I tried!

This whole personal space concept got me thinking.

I remember when I first moved here to Louisiana, one of the first things that I noticed was that people would hug and kiss each other whenever they saw each other. It was their way of saying hello.

It was very awkward for me at first.

Back home in Canada, this greeting does not happen. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think, in general the French Acadians are very reserved, private people who would rather you not invade their personal space.

Hugs
Mise en ligne par j/k_lolz

So when I first moved here to Louisiana, when I would see someone that I kind of sort of knew, I would think to myself, “Do I go in for the hug? Do I kiss? Once? On both cheeks?”

It made for very uncomfortable moments:-)

Luckily, I eventually got used to it and it soon became second nature to me.

But what I find really interesting, is that now, when I visit home, in Nova-Scotia, it's awkward when I DON'T give a hug and a kiss to someone I know. We’re just standing there, looking at each other like a couple of awkward weirdos.

So anyway, it was fascinating for me to think that the Cajuns, who I think are very physically welcoming, come from a culture, the Acadians, that tend to be more reserved and not so much touchy-feely.

Either way, both Cajuns and Acadians share one same thing.....they will always invite you to the party, hugs or not!

Flamenco Date Night

 For this week's Wednesday night date night, my husband and I had the chance to go to the Heymann Performance Arts Center for one of the Performance Arts Society of Acadiana's (PASA) 2010-2011 shows. The show was Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca, a flamenco ensemble from Madrid. It took my breath away. If someone had asked me to write a critic about this performance, this is what I would have written.

Four chairs. Four bodies. Two guitars. A red dress.

Gut-wrenching native chants that command every space that surrounds them.

Soul, passion and seduction through the twist of a wrist and the soles of the feet.

Percussion.

Percussion beyond rhythms and beats. Percussion that cannot be taught or learned. Percussion that you are born with, to the marrow of your bones.

Strings being plucked with such intent and dedication that they resonate through the bodies with coinciding peaks and valleys.

Beauty, elegance and womanly grace flows like syrup through the tip of the fingers down through the core of the arch of the back, but with bestial ferociousness that can not be contained.

Power.

The essence of pure manliness, put with the finesse and poise of a matador's feet.

Compete control, yet total reckless abandonment.

Fire. Love. Poetry. Bliss.

This show was, by far, one of the best shows I've witnessed in a long time. Thank you PASA for giving us the chance to experience such raw talent.

For PASA show listings and tickets go to http://www.pasa-online.org/.

Oh, and to all you moms and dads out there, the next show (Feb 4th) is Louisiana's own Imagination Movers...they're gonna move you! A show that does NOT require sitting still....how often does that happen?:-)

Forgive And Forget

In this world, I think we tend to instantly forgive two kinds of people: celebrities and children.

Whether it is writing with a sharpie on my red leather lazy boy recliner (children) or sleeping around with any tattooed, lip pierced show girl (celebrity), we forgive.....and fast.

(..with one exception to the rule: my husband does not forgive Julia Roberts for what she did to Lyle Lovett...whatever that was!)

A sweet smile (child) or an Oscar worthy performance (celebrity) and all is forgotten.

Photo by Gwen Aucoin http://www.gwenaucoin.com/

If only I could forgive my husband for leaving his socks on the floor as easily as I forgive my 2 year old for “cleaning” my brand new iPhone in our dog's water bowl, I think my life would be a lot simpler and easier.

I understand why we forgive children. They don't know better...well, in reality, most do, but their lack of life experience trumps their disregard for basic human decency.

The thing I understand less is the celebrity part. Is it because we regard them as “God like” creatures who need not adhere to the basic life rules that we common folk follow? Or is it because the more times we forgive, the more we are able to watch them self-destruct over and over again, the more we can feel better about ourselves?

Anyway, thanks to the fantastic, impartial journalism over at E!News, we will forever be able to keep track of those shady, racist, home-wrecking celebrities, forgiving and forgetting over and over again.

And as for children, what are we to do? Hold a grudge? I doubt that would work. Children are so oblivious to anything unless it's filthy, shiny or candy. (OK people I know that's not true...but it's funny).

Maybe we should all try to forgive and forget like we do kids and celebrities.

Or not.

Either way, the socks will still be on the floor and the sharpie ain't coming out!

Oh and if you like what you read (or you just feel like being nice) don't forget to click on the "like" button below:-)

Speed Read

I swear I can do this:  http://comedy.video.yahoo.com/?l=3774749&v=8711175 !

Speed reading is one of my specialties!

I confess, when my kids were younger I would ever so discreetly skip pages while reading the bed time story.

But, come on, have y'all read a Dr. Seuss book lately? They're like 60 pages long of words that do not exist in the English vocabulary.

Now however, there is no way I'm skipping those pages.

Nope, my kids have all...and I mean ALL, of their books memorized and they're is no way to pull a fast one on them.

Now, every time I try to shorten the book, I hear "MOM! You skipped a page!" and then I pretend it was an accident.

So instead, I have mastered the art of reading an entire book without even realizing that I'm doing so (like when you're driving your car and 10 minutes pass and you wonder how the hell you got where you are??).

I also manage (in my head) to make my to do list for the next day, plan the weekly meals and ponder if it's time to send my 4 year old son to preschool! 

All that in 61 pages of Cat In The Hat.

However, I do sometimes take my time and really pay attention to Thing One and Thing Two, but after a long day of picking up poop off the floor and mediating brawls, I think I deserve to slip into my head once in a while when bedtime story time finally rolls around:-)

P.S Yes, the colors of this page have changed...I'm playing:-)

Oh and if you like what you read don't forget to click on the "like" button below:-)

Terrible Twos

So, lately my two year old boy is the most “interesting” person in our house.

Not that that everyone else is boring, it's just that he is really starting to make a name for himself.

In my opinion, it's at two years old that kids really start to get a sense of what's going on around them.

They finally start do realize that there is more to life then nipples and cheerios.

Gone are the days when I could hide his pacifier and he wouldn't even try looking for it since he thought it had magically disappeared (now he would scale mountains and fight dragons to get to that damn pacifier) or sneak out of the house without him noticing (like I was foolishly trying to do when I took the picture below).

They call it the terrible twos, but it's sure as hell not terrible for them!

Uh, not without me you're not!

They get to slowly, non-methodically and eventually unsuccessfully try to put on their socks (by themselves of course) while you watch impatiently, trying so hard to restrain your own hands so you don't just grab those little fat feet and put those damn socks on yourself so the kids waiting in the van won't attempt to drive themselves to the dentist appointment (for which you're already 15 minutes late).

“NO! I DO IT!”

However, when year number two rolls around there are SOME good things that start happening.

My two year old now realizes that the toilet bowl isn't just for bathing his little dinosaurs.

Also, when he wakes me up in the middle of the night he is able to tell me, with words, what he wants.....mostly he just wants to watch movies on my I phone...at 3:00 am!

Well, I guess however bad or “interesting” my two year old is, he makes for good pictures!

Bed

Somebody get this child a bed!

(And, for the record, he fabricated this bed all by his very self!)

Seam Ripper

My husband to his friend, “Yeah, my wife Nicole, she calls herself a feminist, yet she spends her days at home sewing and baking”.

Before I go any further I want to clarify that my husband does indeed understand the true meaning of the word feminist (...well, at least I'm going to make sure he does after I'm done writing this post!).

It was a joke....which I thought was actually funny.

I guess I consider myself a convenient feminist.

I'm all for woman in the work place and birth-control, but I still want doors opened for me and I like the dinner check to be taken care of.

Anyway, that's not the point.

The point is, I like to bake and sew!

I suppose for me it's a way to instant gratification, unlike most other things in my life.

There is nothing “instant” about parenthood except maybe projectile vomiting and odd unexplainable rashes.

My sewing room.

A place where there is no food or alcohol, yet I am happy and at peace.

Some meditate, some drink, I sew! …(Well, I drink too, but that's beside the point.:-))

And the best part of sewing is the seam ripper. No matter how much you mess up, all you need to do is grab this magical tool and all is forgotten. You get a second chance to make it work.

Sometimes I wish there was a seam ripper for life!

Ok. So I thought I'd share my latest project with you folks.

In this photo : Anna Laura Edminston and yours truly  (photo taken by Gwen Aucoin)

 I call it classic elegance.

A friend of mine is nominated for a Grammy this year (very deserving I might add) and I offered to make her dress for the event. So, I'm showing y'all a picture of a fitting. The dress's very beginning. This is actually the unfinished dress made in muslin (cheap fabric) just to get a good fit before cutting the more expensive, velvet fabric.

So there you go. Hopefully you'll be able to see the finished garment sooner than later and hopefully there will be many more of these to come.

Cheers!

Lawn Mower

My lint remover....full of grass

 Who would have thought a lint remover could be used to mow the lawn.

My husband found mine outside, wet in the yard. 

Apparently my son, who was home "sick" today, decided to do a little yard work:-)

I guess it's a more ''fuel efficient" way of going about it.

And So It Begins

6^th place in the pole bending competition at the Harper Stick Horse Rodeo.

That is the award my 4 year old boy is proudly holding in the photo below.

His very own trophy.

I never thought that a child of mine would be participating in anything like a rodeo. Not because it's something bad, just because it's not exactly the reality I grew up in.

The only thing remotely close to a rodeo was when a buddy of mine (who shall remain unnamed) would dangerously yet uninhibitedly do donuts in his jeep in the gravel pit in Saulnierville.

Bronc riding, goat tail pull, barrel racing,bull riding and of course pole bending.

Those are the six events that has catapulted my son into the rodeo scene.

I think the only people prouder then he was of himself, was his father and grand-father.

Stick horse rodeos and bucking chutes are definitely part of THEIR boyhood realities!

So I have a feeling that I will be hearing the words bull riding and stick horse a whole lot in the next few days.

And that makes me smile:-)

Nobody puts baby in the corner!

Translation Please

''Look mama, flit!''

Had I not known what my 2 year old was saying, I would not have been able to attempt to stop him from catapulting himself forward off our lazy boy chair.

What he was in fact trying to say was, “Look mama, flip!”

And I am saying “attempt” because I never quite made it in time to stop the tiny circus act.

I guess that's what I get for putting his older brother in gymnastics:-)

Anyway, the point is, being a parent often means being able to crack codes.

Examples:

• As you've already read, my two year old now puts t’s at the end of each word. So, “encore” is “encote” and       “ouvrir” has become “ouvrite” (sorry for all you non-French speaking folk...I'll try to have better examples next   time:-))

•  For the longest time, my son would say no when he meant yes and yes when he meant no...and we still somehow managed to keep him alive.

• I was sitting with my 4 year old the other day watching the Auburn vs Oregon game and he asked me, “Is it the papas who are playing or the kid big people?”

Did anyone get that????.......he meant, is it the NFL or college football...clever right?

I instantly knew what he was talking about...maybe I should be a spy:-)

But on the flip side of things, kids can be very articulate.

For example, my 5 year old daughter just asked me, “Is it going to be like this all day....you on the computer?”

Maybe too articulate.

Anyway.

I guess language barriers can manifest themselves in different ways.

For instance, when I first moved here to Lafayette, Louisiana from Canada, I asked my husband, then my boyfriend, (who, by the way, was not the ice cream connoisseur I am) to get me a “heavenly hash ice cream in a sugar cone” at our local ice cream parlor. He came back, empty handed, with this baffled, confused look on his face....a look you don't have coming out of an ice cream parlor!

It turns out what I really wanted was “rocky road ice cream in a waffle cone”. Who knew! Apparently heavenly hash ice cream and sugar cones don't exist here.

My husband lets me order my own ice cream now:-)

So I guess whether it's small children or two people from different cultures trying to communicate, they will not always be understood completely. The important thing is that they are communicating:-)

…...Oh and remember all you Canadians! In Lafayette, Louisiana there is no “pop”....there is only “soda”!

Little White Lies

''Oh the holidays were great. The kids had such a great time. It was really fun having them around all the time.”

Lie.

But that is my politically correct, right wing answer when people ask me how the holidays were.

I mean really, who wants to hear, “Well, the holidays were like Chinese torture, my children managed to think of new ways to make me contemplate downing that bottle of wine on the counter and truthfully I don't care if they stay at my life saver of a babysitter for the next 30 consecutive days”.

These are the little white lies we say to make ourselves feel better about our situation and to make others think that we feel good about ourselves.

Or to make sure nobody calls social services on us!

I admit, I sometimes do or say things to make myself seem like a “better” parent.

I often let my 4 year old pee in the yard so I don't have to wipe down every single object in the bathroom 20 times a day, but when he pees in the yard at my in-law's house, I fuss at him a little and act like it's the first time he's done it (I guess the cat's out of the bag now...sorry Gran:-)).

I also have two time-out chairs in my dining room that I never use. I just leave them there to make it look like I'm following all the Supernanny rules and that my kids actually sit quietly in time-out in those damn chairs for the amount of minutes of their age.

Yeah right! Mainly they just use them to stand on and draw on the custom made (expensive) painting I have behind them. Maybe I should move that painting...or the chairs.

I think however, the problem with those little lies is that in reality, if amongst us moms, we would tell each other the truth, we'd probably all feel way better about ourselves.

Because I know you did not LOVE to spend 3 whole weeks with that brat of a child of yours and I know your 1 ½ year old did not miraculously potty train himself in a week.

Maybe a little more honesty wouldn't be so bad. :-)

Potty Time or Party Time

What it is with the darn bathroom!

I swear to God, my kids have a spidy sense that goes off in their head the minute my foot crosses the bathroom threshold.

I don't know what they think goes on in there, but you'd swear it's some sort of mystical fairyland where they're giving away balloons and pony rides.

The minute the tinkle of water falls in my tub, here comes 3 frantic kids ripping off their clothes as if they were on fire.

On the rare occasion that I get to lock the handle, screams and frantic banging on the door serenade me until my dear husband is able to finally, somehow distract them.

Still to this day I don't know why I spent such time and effort creating the inviting, peaceful, oasis of a bathroom upstairs (their very own bathroom)...walls adorned with pretty colorful fish...bright, educational shower curtain (...it's an actual world map)...buckets full of water guns and bubble bath...a mecca for bath time.

But, no. They insist in bathing in our windowless, dark box of a bathroom..playing with the half broken plastic cup that holds the soap.

I just don't get it.

How many times have I been in the bathroom (using the commode...sorry had to say it) and one (or two) of my kids come bursting in asking me to come restart the “Passe-Partout” (70's french Canadian kid's program....not the morning show) or the “Caillou” DVD.

I swear I'm in there tops two minutes!

I guess it's kind of like a “forbidden” land. And we all know the sure way to get kids to do something is to tell them they're not allowed!

Maybe I'll start telling them their NOT allowed to use THEIR bathroom:-)

My Kids Can't Skate!

It's a quiet Sunday afternoon and my daughter and I are looking at Christmas photos of my family in Canada. My 5 year old niece is happily holding up her Christmas gift, proud as a peacock. My daughter turns to me and asks, “What are those?”.

I shoot her a look. The kind of look your mom gives you when you've said something so disgusting, so embarrassing, that you walk yourself up to your room without even being sentenced.

I answer, “Those are skates!”.

Blasphemy......MY child doesn't know what skates are!

Ice skates to be more specific.

If I was in Point-de-l'Eglise, Nova-Scotia, Canada, I would not have to specify, but since I'm here in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the deep south, where ice is as rare as an acadian holiday without a potato, then yes, it's safer to specify.

I come from a place where kids skate before they even learn how to walk.......so to speak.

In her defense I'm pretty sure she know what ice skates are...at least I hope.....it's just seeing them out of context threw her for a loop.

 There is in fact an ice rink about 5 miles from here and I am told that there is some sort of minor hockey league and figure skating in town. However, I'm pretty sure that there are way more cleats and footballs hanging around and utility rooms then there are skates and hockey sticks.

One of my fondest memories growing up is watching all the boys from our neighborhood (neighborhood meaning a 30 mile radius with houses being ½ mile apart) playing hockey on the little pond behind my parents house. Or, going skating with my cousins at our local arena on cold Sunday afternoons.

So naturally, it makes me a little sad to think that my children can't skate.

Granted I could make the drive and teach them, but between gymnastics lessons, dances lessons, dirty diapers and birthday parties, it's hard to find the time...or the envie. (I guess it's not that important to me after all:-))

So I don't see them learning to skate anytime soon, but this I know for sure.....

They do know what a first down is , they could all pronounce the word Atchafalaya before the age of 3 and they can cast their fishing line out 20 feet to that hole where the red fish are hanging out.

It's not skating, but I guess it'll do:-):-) (wink wink)!