Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

i will always remember details about the session where carys' physical therapist told me her suspicions about my littlest.

the light overhead was flickering in an annoying manner. the PT, annie, was wearing a navy blue cardigan (i would like to think it was part of her uniform and that she never would have chose this for herself) and it had white furzies on it from being washed too often. she had a pink barrette in her hair.

she stretched little carys in quite a few directions, and focused on her legs and neck. she moved next to me and pointed out how carys' face was flat on one side and more rounded on the other: caused by poor muscle development.

then she moved away from me, and carys, who was lying on the table, not playing with her hands or kicking her legs. just lying there still sobbing from the painful stretches. it was if she didn't want to be part of my pain, and that we needed to make eye contact for her to determine how to introduce the conversation.

"what did (queen mary head pediatrician) dr lam tell you about marie?"

(they call her marie because the chinese have trouble pronouncing carys, those letters together are not a word for them. sela is also pronounced sella. fair enough. i like marie.)

"what do you mean?"

"what did she tell you you could expect?" and she gestured, she had nice nails, with her hand to carys lying there, still and red eyed. even then carys could produce tears.

and suddenly, i knew. what she didn't want to say but wanted me to realise.

"you think she has cerebral palsy."

"yes. we won't be able to know for sure for at least one year, but it seems so. the hips are so tight, the neck is so stiff and unyielding."

cerebral palsy.

in a minute of clarity, i decided that i would not overreact. crying didn't occur to me. trauma and bad news were nothing new to me, and i had three babies home from hospital to show for it. i would sift the information with other facts. how often she wanted to see carys, and when she next wanted to see her.

when should i make the next appointment for?

tomorrow. the sooner we can start improving her, the better chance she has.

tomorrow. this probed my internal alarm a little higher.

how often will you want to see her?

three times a week.

okay, this was serious. poor little carys.

do you understand what i mean about cerebral palsy?

yes i do.

you seem very calm.

i'm just grateful she's alive.

and i was. i am.

i went home and didn't do a lot of internet research. at one time i might have done, but this was not the time. they weren't going to know for at least one year, why put myself through the worry until i needed to.

but i did call my mum, which in itself is not unusual. we talk often. makes me smile, remembering the months of poverty level existence in hong kong when i called my mother maybe once a month and talked for ten minutes.

i told her about carys. i don't think i was overly hysterical, i tend to go flat and factual in these cases.

"well, tessie, if anyone can handle this, its you."

"oh, i know i can handle it, mum, its just, i don't want to."

that's what it came down to. i just wanted to lay my head down and rest easy for a while.

didn't happen. i don't know if i really expected it would, but i sure hoped for some relative calm. soon after sebastian's ears were tested and it was discovered his right ear had middle and inner hearing troubles. then it was really busy.

and now we are moving into 2005, and the triplets will be one year old for most of it. and we are going to learn more about how their extreme prematurity has affected their brains.

i know i can handle it. i know i will love them regardless of what they achieve or what doctors discover. i just am weary. and love doesn't rejuvenate, it actually tires me more. because if i didn't love them all so much, it wouldn't matter as much.

but i couldn't love them more, and so i am trapped and tired by the best thing in the world. love.

i have circles around my eyes while i am encircled in love.

lucky, weary, me. 

if you will?

now is the time to amend my will and choose godparents for my children. to be responsible about death. i am not planning on dying, but either were the tsunami disaster victims. you just never know.

pre sebastian our wills consisted pretty much of whoever looked after our cats got $10,000 a year for the cat's life and as much of our furniture as they (and the cats) wanted. our siblings got our money/jewellery, our parents got our photos and personal effects. we threw in cash bonuses for people who would care for favorite books, etc.

but add children into the world and the ability to write a cavalier eccentric will is no longer part of the equation. the desire to have them looked after is so strong.

who can i ask to raise my children? what are the criteria when choosing guardians? i can't guarantee a huge financial windfall upon our deaths. my parents currently are sebastian's guardians. but is it fair to ask them to take on three more children? would they want to take on the possibility of three more children? and we wouldn't split the family apart: in the case of our deaths i would want the kiddies to stay together.

i don't like this part of the will. the other stuff, the division of property is much easier. i think my parents have got it figured out when it comes to division of property. i'm not saying they are old, but they have seen enough families unravel when a relative dies and the will is read.

in order to prevent our their children from unnecessary fighting after their deaths, my dad took us aside a few summers ago and basically told us what the wills contained, so that there be no surprises and hurt. and no surprise: the will was being divided four ways. there are four children.

when it came to art, assets, etc, i think each of us gets a different coloured stickie pad, and then we roll dice to see who goes first, second, etc. and then the games begin. basically everything will be laid out, and the person who goes first gets first choice on what they want. if graeme wants some of mum's jewellery, then he has just as much right to it as pam, mandy or myself. that's very good.

(i am not going to say what i am going to choose because i know at least one of my siblings reads this blog and even in my grief, i know i will be acquisitive.)

i think what my parents have done is tres cool. after a person dies, you can't ask them questions about why they left the boy the tiffany lamp when he never admired it. my parents are giving us free reign, and not assuming we have attachments to items we may not. any questions we have, we can ask now.

sort of a message from the grave, in reverse.

so, time to get off procrastinating about writing about wills and actually doing it.

money for nothing and your trips aint free

today i found a new way to spend money efficiently. magnificent charles and i decided we had way too much money kicking around and needed to get rid of some of it. pronto.

in less than 20 minutes i spent $12,000 canadian. all i did was book flights for us from hong kong to vancouver.

understatement: flying with children is expensive.

right now it looks like magnificent charles will have to fly over to vancouver, maybe spend a few days with us there, and then leave again. why the short stay? because for safety reasons we need one adult per child under two. so, three adults. lita will also come with us. please remind me i need to take care of her visa soon as well.

money aside, here are a few aspects of holidays i don't like:

1) did i mention that i don't have a driver's license? i don't. two years seizure free and all that business. so when we travel anywhere we are completely dependent on other people to chauffeur us around. to collect car seats in advance, and be willing to drive us around in a big van. I HATE THAT. i wish i had independence.

2) we're travelling with a lot of baggage this year. getting through customs will be a nightmare. forget medicating the kiddies, tess will be needing frequent top-ups.

3) getting from location to location is going to be a second nightmare. how to get from vancouver to kelowna? how to get around vancouver? to get all kids to see my grandad in his nursing home? to get the four generation picture of women of my gran, my mum, myself, carys and sela. i can hardly wait for that photo.

4) getting babies switched around to new time zones.

5) being without magnificent charles. magnificent doesn't get a lot of holidays, and when he does get holidays he wants to just stare at a lake, create a tiny boat with macgyver like materials (pop rocks, four postage stamps, one kentucky fried chicken napkin, leg wax and mascara) laugh and talk. he deserves that downtime, his health needs it as well. i don't like being away from him for that long, but if i am going to do #4, then i need to be gone for a substantial amount of time.

but the positive aspects are so positive. being with family outweighs all the evil and, the cost. our families are doing everything they can to make our journey a little easier, more on that later.

money for nothing and your trips aint free

money for nothing

i want my, i want my, i want my chu-u-ckie

i want my, i want my, i want my chu-u-ckie!

laws of relativity

last night magnificent charles and i realised something relatively parent shattering:

we have different rules for our different children.

we did not intend this. but somehow, it has happened.

sela and to a lesser extent jasper, if they commence screaming during quiet hours, are largely left to their own devices to soothe themselves back to sleep. a few nights ago, sela was awoken by carys' sobbing and upon witnessing daddy airlifting sister carys to the safety of his hairy protective embrace, sela started crying.

leave her alone, instructed charles. she'll find her thumb and stop soon enough.

it took 14 minutes for sela to cease. during that time, we had put carys back down again, and she had continued her wailing. so she was scooped back up again. sela witnessed the second lifting and was cool with it.

but what struck me as odd was, we jump for carys. and not so high or fast for the other two. we are so accustomed to sela sleeping first and longest, that you would think we would jump on the rare occasion when our little lusty lass awakens. but no. however, a prolonged carys wail gets us a hopping.

jasper rests somewhere between the two. he sleeps least of the babies and cries probably the most. but he does tend to soothe himself back to sleep. sebastian, if he cries, gets a "run to" because it means he has fallen out of bed. thankfully those occasions are few and far between.

are sebastian, sela and jasper going to grow up figuring carys is spoiled?

is she?

i really don't think so. maybe we baby her a leetle. but, not nearly as much as everyone else does. which makes our babying okay, in case you are keeping track. carys goes to bed the same time as her siblings do, if she takes too long to eat we simply remove the bottle or bowl as we would with the others. we are not wrapped around her finger, but we are more aware of the tenuous health. it's a fact: the chances of carys getting sicker, faster are higher. she could be the preemie olympic motto: aegrum, citius, in mauis.

so if we hear her cough, we're interested. especially during RVS season. its not like we give her a handful of sugar and soothe her by letting her watch television with us.

by the teen years, i am sure each child will be accused of being treated with favoured eyes. sebastian because he was an only child, jasper because he was the only triplet boy, sela because she attracted attention, and carys because she was so sick and tiny.

but tonight, those teen years and accusations are a decade plus away. i am sure there is something else i can fret about with a slightly closer timeline.

we went for a walk today. all of us.

and none of us went to church.

i had a really tough time justifying this behaviour. if we were sick enough not to be at church then we should be home, right?

well, according to the best pediatrician in hong kong and possibly the world, dr thondup, when the babies are sporting snotty snuffly noses as they are now, their immune systems are compromised and they are vulnerable to all sorts of other germs. so keep them away from people. so no church.

but the fresh air, excellent. approved. applauded. best thing for them.

so into the fresh air we ventured.

we went to bowen road, a 20 minute drive from our flat. the crew were pretty listless.

jasper and sela had only had half-hearted naps, and had spent the remainder of their designated naptime rolling and laughing on our bed with sebastian, magnificent charles and myself. i had broken my iron rule of insisting they stay in their room and hopefully fall back to sleep by rationalising that carys, who is the sickest of the three and is off her food, really needed to sleep and not to be woken up by dolby sound crying. (i try to stay away from NEVER/ALWAYS and leave room for provisios/addendums/PMS dictated judgements. saving face is very big in asia. and in this household.)

sebastian had his bike. one thing about kids bikes today, they don't have the erstwhile "wheelbrakes" located when you pedal backwards. ohhh no, today, brakes are located on the handlebar, and more often than not, too far away from the handlebar to be conveniently accessed. sebastian uses his feet as brakes. i seem to remember that i used to do that as well, even though i was wearing sandals at the time. can you say scabby toes?

hong kong unfortunately has yet to decide what side of the sidewalk to walk on. in most parts of the world, you walk on the right, despite what side the cars drive on. but in hong kong, there seems to be the same number of people that walk on the right hand side of the road as the left. it was a navigational nightmare for poor sebastian. he actually had a head on collusion that was entirely his fault.

i carried sela in the baby bjorn (much to her delight). why did sela get the special position? jasper is too heavy to carry for 45 minutes, and i was hoping that carys would sleep on the road a little (she did). the other two were in the maclaren.

the babies did not attract as much attention as they usually do. this was deliberately planned. we brought lita with us, so while charles and sebastian cycled and walked ahead, lita and i brought up the rear with the babies. two women and three babies made the majority of passersby assume we were carting "just" twins and a singleton. so there were a few "God bless you's", a few "oh look" and a few age, weight and gender comments, but none of the massive congestion, touching, and questions "do triplets run in your family?" that we usually get. we just kept walking and smiling. the less interest in the babies, the fewer germs transferred to them. and that's what we were hoping for: no close encounters of the third kind.

sebastian, i love you so much

but i love daddy.

the relationship between sebastian and his (magnificent) dad is beautiful. mutual adoration in action. and respect. sebastian believes he has the best father in the world. it is a lovely relationship to observe, and even though i am an observer, rather than a participant, it is a gratifying relationship to observe because i fostered it.

because in the early days, it wasn't always that way. the first few times magnificent charles went on business trips and sebastian was old enough to realise his father had been gone for a long time, he ignored his father. cold shoulder, bald head, fleshy thigh and cheek. maybe he took lessons from the cat, because he was very good at ignoring.

i didn't like that. magnificent charles did and does work really hard and doesn't travel by choice. being punished by the boy he rushed home to cuddle and being rejected was hurtful for him. i took matters into my own hands.

i started talking up magnificent charles and my willing little pupil listened. and heard how his father loved him so much, loved the way sebastian was so brave, the way he tried new foods, the way he slept so well. we tended to only do the fun things if sebastian's magnificent daddy was going to be there too. if there was anything positive to endorse, magnificent did it through wifely proxy. we always prayed for daddy when he was gone, and a couple of times i brought out special daddy treats to sebastian while his father was gone.

those factors plus their similarity in body type, personality, athletic prowess, etc equalled for one eventual love fest. sebastian began crawling after daddy, pulling at daddy's pantlegs, and one day, walking towards daddy. i fed the seeds of his love by unwisely getting sebastian into a frenzy of excitement right around the time his dad was meant to walk in the door. if magnificent's ETA was 7pm, at 6.40 i would tell sebastian "SOON!" and every five minutes after that i would repeat the promise. and when magnificent did enter, sebastian would charge happily for his dad's arms.

i did my job thoroughly and well. maybe too well? sometimes as i sit there holding my passport as i try to get into their private country, i think so. but i look at them when they are together and the sheer joy, respect and love on sebastian's father-cloned face and realise no, i didn't. i did a good thing.

all because, sebastian, i love you so much. and your magnificent father, too.

circles in my mind and in the exersaucer

WHY?

this commonly asked question comes up when you choose a university simply because it was the one place your boyfriend got accepted, when you decide to hold your wedding in your parent's hometown, and a host of other situations.

so i shouldn't be surprised when i ask myself and others pipe in:

WHY DO YOU BLOG?

1) i need to write. writing events down helps me see the bigger picture. writing things down also helps me see what counts and if i have been, heaven help us, overreacting. i have always written. why stop now.

2) i don't have much of a short term memory. apparently i can blame part of that on my head injury, and probably the other half on genetics. this is an incredible time in my life, and sometimes while you are in the middle of living it, you don't commit it to memory. it's gone, like kaiser sauze blowing out a match. i want to remember this. i want to remember the magnifecence of charles, the joy and challenges of tiny children, some of their sweetest habits and activities. words they mispronounced and how i reacted to them. so i write.

3) and i share it because people have asked me to. so many people have supported me in prayer for so many years, and especially our family this past year. they want to hear about our family. i could just put the bare bones: babies awoke 6.45, 6.45, 6.55, 7am. ate (seb) toast and cheerios with partly skimmed milk, babies+ 130ml, 150ml, 140ml. seb wore long sleeve uniform and long pants caught bus at 8.02am.

i mean, how boring are the facts? but when you get our reactions, that's when you get our family.

4) it's good practice for the book i want to write. you're never going to be a better writer if you don't practise your writing.

SOOOOO, if you write it for you, and not for other people, do you tone down articles that might offend?

not so much. while i am pretty open with my feelings and reactions, i won't share my thoughts on someone else's activities/husband/choices. (unless they are a celebrity.) they can do that on their blog.  if i have an event that i would have to tone down for my blog, then it belongs in my diary.

you can't please everyone all the time. friend paul could have done without the article i did on CD1. another friend of a relative was "disconcerted" by the blog. this isn't a popularity contest, it is my life.

moving on....

when sebastian was four months old we put him in our newly acquired exersaucer. immediately, sebastian began bouncing and circling around, arms akimbo, legs pushing off the plastic to allow for a greater vertical jump. if he had had hair, it would have blown in the wind. he could stay in there for hours, playing with the toys, and if he wasn't IN the exersaucer, he was standing against it, his drool etching his initials and a heart into the plastic exersaucer bark. on sebastian's first overseas flight i was tempted to call and ask if we could bring that predecessor of the exersaucer, the jolly jumper, and hang it in the doorway between business and economy class. sebastian would have been THRILLED. and quiet. in hindsight, i am sure they wish we had taken the jolly jumper on with us.

jasper most resembles sebastian in the jolly jumper. he bounces up and down happily, and if i make a statement

"jasper are you a hungry boy?"

he lowers his head, opens his eyes and mouth really wide and bounces up and down loudly, as if to say

I-CON-CUR! I-CON-CUR!!

jasper can be distracted by the blue plastic (butterfly?) figure that extends out of the exersaucer. jasper will grab the butterfly with both hands, lower his head, open his mouth, and push the butterfly in and commence chewing. sometimes, he will push the butterfly to the side of his mouth and it looks like a huge exclamation point of blue crawling its way up his chin, culminating in a big side pocket of blue chewing tobacco.

sela loves being in the exersaucer when the room is full of people. what better way to see (and be seen by) everyone? she whirrs around, eyebrows dancing, her mouth curved upwards. unless of course, she wanted to be picked up and thought that she was going to be held instead of being plonked into the exersaucer. if that is the scenario, be afraid, be very afraid.

carys doesn't get the joy out of the exersaucer that her siblings have.  she doesn't bounce in the exersaucer, she stands in it, because she likes standing. her hands will play with the toys, but she doesn't move around too much. she occasionally chews on the butterfly, but mainly she stands looking drooly and serious, dreaming of the day she can stand unassisted. for carys, the exersaucer is inspirational, soul food. for jasper, replacement food. for sela, ego feeding.

the sweetest love

parents don't set out to be competitive. but when you are having a coffee morning with women you have no history with and your group commonality is recent childbirth, what your children have done in their short weeks of existence do tend to be the topic of discussion.

how long did you try to get pregnant, morning sickness, weight gain, labour: pain relief, stitches, and how many hours, baby weight and apgars, and breastfeeding: are you and how is it?

as the weeks pass and the stitches are removed, sleeping and eating patterns, resumption of sex life, and milestones are discussed. you don't mean it to be a competition, but it can feel like it.

with the triplets, there is no competition. while sebastian's birth story makes me cry big tears of joy still, the triplet's birth story is graded INCOMPLETE. i can remember being separated from magnificent charles after they promised he could stay by my side until i was put under. i can remember being asked to count down from 10 and making it to eight. that's it.

there is no competition. my babies are lowest on the percentiles (although we're doing okay in weight gain, aren't we, jasper?) and the last to achieve milestones. carys has conditions, and as much as i can, i am preparing and learning about them.

i get a lot of my information from one of my strongest support groups, an excellent board for mothers of preemies. these women juggle appointments, other children, have also battled the guilt and sorrow that comes with the NICU experience and premature children. many are mothers to "surviving" twins or triplets. i remember cycling with some of these women, rejoicing in our hard fought for, often expensive pregnancies, never dreaming we would belong to the preemie board. and some were strangers to me. but our stories are so familiar. babies born too soon.

while the mothers carry emotional baggage, these babies carry trach's, nebulisers, medicines, shunts, gromits and medical conditions with them. like a "regular" board, we are different women from different backgrounds, with premature babies and children we love no matter what their condition. unconditional love. of the highest sort. read on and see what i mean.

today, one mother posted us from the out of state hospital where her toddler aged child is getting treatment for her severe brain damage, the result of premature birth. this child cannot walk or breathe independently. she writes:

We are in ****** and things are good. We saw Dr. **** today and he is great. He read "jane's" CT and EEG results and was amazed that she is such an alert bright child. He expected a child in a vegetative state. Not my "jane"! He actually told me that my daughter was amazing.....

She has lost so much brain tissue because she wasn't getting any blood and oxygen....I think the only reason he agreed to treat "jane" was because she has a centimeter of mantle around the outer part of her head that is connected with vessels and she has a bit of tissue around her temporal lobes. Therefore, she has potential to improve. Other than this tiny bit of tissue, her head is only full of fluid. That is what shocks Dr **** so much. A child with this little brain should not have the ability to do anything, especially eat by mouth, smile, laugh, move around without restriction, see, hear, interact, etc. She should be in a completely vegetative state. I'm telling you guys, God worked such a miracle to give "jane" the ability to do the things that she should not be able to.

If the dr doesnt have any good results except for the ability to come off of the seizure meds, thats enough for me!!! So tomorrow is the big day....we are feeling very blessed just because we are here and we are able to provide this kind of care for "jane". It would not be possible without the donations, ebay purchases, yard sales, prayers and care that we get from you guys......

I can't believe I said this today but I was holding "jane" on my lap and we were playing. She has been so happy today and I actually said even if I could, I dont know that I would change her. The only thing I really want is her to be able to breathe.

and that my friends, is unconditional love.

if anyone wants further information on this family's ebay items, let me know.

tuesdays with bianca

sebastian's speech therapist moved back to kiwi-land two weeks ago. her name is bianca vowell. with a name like that, what else could she have been? she was predestined to be a speech therapist. and a great one.

the cute but terrorising-on-the-rugby-pitch bianca has enriched sebastian's life so much. she gave him the tools to speak and express himself.

when bianca came into our lives, sebastian's vocabulary was under 30 words. apple juice, mummy, daddy, car, cat, dog, baby. nouns.

for months i had been saying to friends and family,

"i wonder if i should get sebastian to a speech therapist."

for the most part, they all demurred, saying that boys were notoriously slower than girls to speak. charles remembered his mother telling him that he was very slow to talk, and then wouldn't keep quiet once he got started.

but at two and one half, sebastian was getting frustrated with his friends not waiting for his answers, the inability to express what he wanted. definitely time for intervention. i called a few of the audiology clinics, wanting to get his hearing checked, but was told they would not check hearing until the child was three, or in school.

finally, my girlfriend paula, mother to the ringleted annie, one of sebbie's best friends, suggested i call bianca. the next tuesday, bianca came to our flat with a bag full of toys.

that first day, she went into sebastian's room and after half an hour came out with the good news that sebastian had no problems with taking information in (comprehension), but he could not express himself.

"i don't want to seem like an overbearing parent, do you think he needs help?"

bianca smiled, scooped up the barbie, ball, bicycle, and book and said, "he needs help, you definitely did the right thing."

that sentence was a defining moment for me. i had gone against everyone's opinion, and sought help because i felt he wanted and needed it. and the expert agreed with me. i had done the right thing.

over the next months bianca got sebastian talking. she explained to charles and i ways that we could assist sebastian's talking. how to re-shape our conversations and questions.

within four weeks of her visits, sebastian was saying bianca's name.

and then he started tagging verbs to the nouns, and speaking in very basic subject verb object sentences. just a few, but it was music to my ear.

the hearing test revealed nothing that surprised me, sebastian had partial deafness in his right ear. we haven't been able to explore that issue much further, but we will this year.

we would plan surprises for bianca. for five days sebastian and i practised saying the word "crocodile" just to impress her. sebastian knew the purpose was to please bianca, and was so proud when after blurting out "cwocodi-al" she smiled and gave her typical encouraging words, "good talking, sebastian!"

and one day, a few days after a bianca session, for the first time, sebastian asked his teacher, michelle (sebastian's beloved She-shew) a question. a question!

and then, bianca told me in early october she was moving back to new zealand, but her interest in sebastian never flagged. and he continued making strides in school. his words are still very difficult to distinguish, but he is not as afraid to speak. oh sebastian, i am so proud of you!

and then it was her last tuesday with us. sebastian hadn't taken in that she was leaving for good, but i sure had. i was scared. there was talk of her replacement, but bianca had done so much for sebastian. there was no way (without crying) that i could tell her how grateful we were to her, the difference she had made in our precious little boy's life. she was leaving just as sebastian was really taking off.

i tried, but got a bit teary. i could only whisper, thank you for everything and wish her well. wrote her a letter of reference. and of course i forgot to take a picture of her with sebastian. that upsets me a lot.

i think of bianca often, but particularly last week. lita wanted to put on sebastian's jacket, but sebastian strangled out the sentence, 

"no, my daddy put it on"

"your daddy is changing his clothes,"

"no he's not, he's doing a big poo!"

embarrassing, sure. but still, thank you for everything, bianca.

pavlov's son

back in those tender, formative teenager years, we had a menagerie of animals. the first dog we added to our collection was bib. yellow fangs, crumbly teeth, matted hair, confused sexuality, putrid breath and impressive selective hearing.

despite the firm warnings and rolled up newspapers being smacked against the wall, bib often broke animal law 101 and crept up on to the sofa sometime after the lights went off.

only my parents really cared, so the rest of us wouldn't say anything when we passed by the family room and saw bibbers resting away on the sofa. but we would all hang around when mum saw the misdemeanor, because the show was so good.

bib! she would say, in a low firm voice. off the sofa.

bib! she would say, in james earl jones tones announcing that this....is cnn. off the sofa.

at this point, bib might raise an eyebrow. her face was black but she had these cute expressive caramel coloured eyebrows.

my mother might take a step forward and possibly point a finger to the carpet.

bib! now!

and bib would lift her head from the pillow.

and then she would move.

not off the sofa, you understand. but she would move her head around, trying to see behind her, as if she, too, was interested as to whether that rascal bib was getting off the sofa. or not.

her head would stay turned, and then my mother would have to walk around the sofa, where bib was watching so intently she refused to make eye contact or acknowledge my mother.

bib!

at this point my mother would grab bib's collar and assist her to get to the ground. bib would look up and her eyes would say

oh, you meant me? not the other bib. dreadfully sorry, my error. pip pip! i didn't hear you.

that deaf card might have worked if in the next room, someone reaching for their jacket hasn't brushed against the dog chains.

the minute bib heard a mouse's fart* whisper against the dog chain, she would go beserk. ar-ROO roo, roo roo roo and then run crazily to the front door, only to be told to lie down (and not on the sofa).

nothing wrong with her hearing.

i know a lot of women would say their husband is bib, but in my world, sebastian is my bib.

i can ask him a question about school, whether he is finished his lunch, a request to start cleaning up, a query as to whether he washed his hands after doing his stand up wee wee, you name it, and he keeps pottering about, running around, singing along or looking at his beloved daddy. (pronounced daddeh).

however, if i were to escape into the pantry for a moment's solitude with a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, seb whisks into the kitchen, all perky. eyes darting to the areas he thinks might hold the booty.

whassadoing, mummy?

having a mummy treat. you had your dessert, mummy is having hers.

wassin want mummy treat too. share.

i am torn. i can plead my rights to have my treats, or i can share, save a couple of grams of fat, and give a lesson. my righteous zinging blood overrides my greed.

well, i haven't heard you ask nicely.

peas mummy, share cwisps.

well, i will share, because sharing is a nice thing to do with friends or family. Jesus shared with all his friends.

yes. thanttoo.

you're welcome.

at the smallest indicator of cellophane being crinkled between the hours of 11.45am-7pm (mondays to fridays) and 7am-7pm (weekends) you are virtually guaranteed that sebastian will barrel his way into the kitchen. salivating already his beady little eyes examining your hands as she screetches to a halt infront of you.

whassadoing, mummy?

who does he think he is kidding?

he knows what i am doing. he wouldn't race if he didn't.

but, he doesn't eat on the sofa, so i guess he is ahead of bib.

* just in case i ever want to go home again, i should emphasise that there were NEVER mice in my parent's home. and that is not just because my mother is a fastidious housekeeper. i mean, she is, BUT, the main reason there were no mice is because IT WAS TOO DARN COLD FOR MICE TO EXIST WAY UP THERE IN YELLOWKNIFE. PULL OUT YOUR ATLAS AND CHECK! YELLOWKNIFE, NWT=VERY COLD!