His older brother always makes news because he’s outside the norm, so I feel bad for “typical” Brayden. Every time I ask his preschool teacher how he’s doing, I get the standard “good”, so he seems to be on track — which means we don’t really make much effort to teach him new skills. I just sort of assume that he’s learning everything he’s supposed to be learning, and then I go back to figuring out Justin’s therapy schedule. Poor Brayden gets a double dose of second child syndrome — he automatically gets less focus cause he wasn’t first, plus he doesn’t really stand out as needing special help. I know he could benefit from more attention, but I get so tired from dealing with Justin that I just don’t want to have to come up with more teachable moments. There’s definitely a New Year’s resolution to be made here.

The good news is that he’s doing great despite his parents’ neglect. His passion these days is Lego, and it’s so cute to see him being creative (right now his cave men are roasting a steak on the second floor of the fire station while their escape airplane waits nearby). He loves to help me cook dinner — yesterday I asked him to pour the milk, so he did, and the next thing I knew he was washing out the empty jug and putting it in the recycling bin (a feat his father has never accomplished). He can tell me what letter a word starts with by sounding it out, and he “reads” common signs and logos, so he’s getting there. All in all, he’s a bright little monkey and we’re so very proud of him.

We’re all a little weary today after Brayden had another scary case of croup last night. He was having trouble breathing around 2 a.m., so we rushed him outside to the cold air — that helped a little, but he was still wheezing and he still had that awful barking cough, so Chris took him down to the hospital. They gave him an oral steroid and he’s been just fine ever since (he got home at 4:30 a.m. and was so excited to show me his hospital wristband — apparently he thought it was a pretty cool adventure). He slept in our bed for the rest of the night so we could keep an eye on him. Whew.

We’ve had snow for three days and I’m already sick of it, which is probably a bad sign considering we’re off to Saskatoon in just a few weeks. My Christmas shopping is done — yay me! (It helps when you don’t buy for many people — the whole family has agreed to just focus on the kids this year.) We don’t actually have to change planes on the way there, so it’ll be nice not to have to worry about missed connections for once. We’ll see how things go.

It’s like an annoying skin infection — just when you think you’ve got it beat, it comes back even worse. As more people I know give in and buy iPads, I find myself wondering if I’m missing out on something. And now there are so many options for tablets, some of which are actually affordable (think Kobo Vox and Kindle Fire, although the latter isn’t actually available in Canada yet). Should I do it? Would a tablet be the perfect all-in-one mobile device? Can you believe I’m even having these thoughts after going through this same debate with myself months ago and buying a netbook?

But here’s the thing: there is no perfect all-in-one mobile device. I’m seriously tempted by the Kindle Fire, if only because I love my current Kindle and getting one with color and web browsing capability sounds pretty cool. But there’s always a trade-off. The Fire doesn’t use the e-ink screen I’ve come to love, and its battery is advertised as lasting for about eight hours of continuous reading — my current Kindle can go an entire month on a single charge. (I’ve heard from a few iPhone 4 users who complain that they have to charge the thing every day and a half — how handy is that?)

I’m almost equally tempted by the iPad (damn that itch!) but in my saner moments I know it’s not for me. I already have an iPod Touch, which does almost everything the iPad can do, with the added benefit of fitting in my pocket. I can listen to music, watch movies, play games, even check email and surf the web if I wanted to (although I generally don’t — that screen is pretty small). The iPad won’t even fit in my purse, much less my pocket, and its price tag is insane.

So the iPod is my portable entertainment device. And my Kindle is my e-book reader. And my netbook is my portable blogging machine (it has a real keyboard and an easy way to upload photos — take that, tablets!) And even though it means carrying around three different devices and three different charging cords, they each serve their own purposes. So I guess I need to be content with that.

I really miss having a behavior consultant. Justin’s in a bad phase of melting down whenever it’s time to give up the iPod or computer, plus he’s having potty accidents because he doesn’t want to leave whatever he’s doing. (It got so bad that I actually took him to the doctor to see if there was something physically wrong — but no, the problem is all in his head. Great.) The behavior consultant we used to have is too busy to work with him these days, so we’re pretty much on our own. He has always responded well to a token system, so today we introduced a new system of rewards for good behavior — he seems motivated, so I guess that’s a start. The school is aware of his issues and has their own plan of attack, so we’ll see how things go. Argh.

Justin’s current obsessions are numbers, dates and addresses. To illustrate this, I just have to share a conversation we had the other day:
JUSTIN: So then Ben said something funny.
ME: Who’s Ben?
JUSTIN: He’s a boy.
ME: How do you know him?
JUSTIN: From 473 Yates Road.
ME: (pause) You mean from school.
JUSTIN: Yeah.

The boys are both excited about Halloween tomorrow. Without any prompting from me, they decided on complementary costumes this year: Brayden will be Mario and Justin’s going as Luigi (the Nintendo characters, for those of you who live under a rock). They each get to wear their costumes to school, so I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. All the grade ones are actually going trick or treating at a retirement home near the school — that should be interesting.

Happy Halloween everybody!

Sometimes I dazzle myself with my efficiency. I’ve already figured out the kids’ Christmas presents, I nagged Chris enough that he got the winter tires put on the vehicles and I finished the next assignment for my tech writing course a week ahead of the due date. God, I’m good.

Speaking of my course…I’m flying a little high right now because my work group rocked on the last assignment that’s worth a quarter of our grade — yay! I can’t really take the credit, as one of the girls in my group did most of the work, but I share the grade and I even learned a little something, so hey.

Justin is doing great at school and seems to have no social issues there, but he does need to work on the etiquette of play dates. One of his buddies came over this afternoon and Justin kept wanting to do things like play on the computer or write in his room, and all my explanations for why he couldn’t do those things and why he needed to be a good host seemed to fall on deaf ears. This was a spur-of-the-moment play date, so maybe he would’ve been better if he had more prep time. I dunno. I’m volunteering in his class on Monday so I guess I’ll get a chance to see how things work there. Huh.

I’ve been feeling kind of disconnected lately — I haven’t blogged for a while, none of my friends seem to do anything interesting on Facebook anymore and I’m way behind on newsy emails to faraway friends. I’d like to think that I’ve been too busy living my life to write about it, but if that were the case you’d think I’d have more inspiring things to say. Argh.

Things have certainly been busy: between my course, the kids’ school schedules and the usual round of extracurricular activities, the calendar seems to be full. Throw in a round of stomach flu (Justin had a touch of it over Thanksgiving and today it was Brayden’s turn) and things really get interesting. I just don’t get how working moms do it. I can barely remember when they have field trips or library days or gym class, I find it tough to find the time to sit with Justin to do his homework, and it’s always a challenge making sure everybody has lunches and snacks — and I’m a stay-at-home mom. There’s just no room for anything else in my head. How do other moms do all this and fit a career in too? Wow.

In a classic case of poor planning, the kids have no summer camp on the one week when their grandparents are also out of town, so we’re overdosing on togetherness right now. Actually, I can’t really complain. My parents showed up unexpectedly Thursday night and stayed until Sunday, so there were extra people around to entertain the kids. I even got out golfing Saturday morning, so that was cool, plus we had a play date with some friends on Sunday. So today is really the first day that it’s been just me and the monkeys, but it seemed like a long day. (It didn’t help that Justin’s behavior consultant was supposed to do a session with him and Brayden but had to cancel…so far Justin’s social skills group has met exactly three times this whole summer. Argh.)

The light at the end of the tunnel is a trip to Vancouver on Saturday. Chris and I have tickets to the Mamma Mia stage show, but we didn’t feel we could leave the kids overnight (long story), so we’re driving down Saturday morning, watching the show at 2:00, and driving back home right after. That will probably work out to be about 10 hours on the road that day, but oh, well. I’m super excited about the show cause I loved the movie and the music, so I hope all the driving will be worth it. Wait and see, I guess…

It’s all in the timing. I’ve been trying to convince Chris that I need a netbook, a mini laptop that would give me a portable way to blog. He was more for an iPad cause it’s cool new technology. I needed his agreement on this because he had a Costco gift card (a bonus from work) that had enough on it for me to get a netbook basically for free, but of course he had to be willing to donate it to me. By pure coincidence, he discovered a new game on his iPod a few days ago that had him totally hooked — I think he spent three straight hours sitting there, and he only gave it up cause he got hand cramps. So while he was there in his happy place, I pointed out that the iPad is really just an overgrown iPod, only heavier and less convenient to hold. The next thing I knew, he was handing over the gift card. So now I have my netbook, and I can blog, check email, surf the Net, download and upload photos, make video calls, etc., from anywhere that has wi-fi. AWESOME.

I’ve been thinking about how great it was to be able to blog each day on our last cruise using the ship’s computers, and how I would really like to take it to the next level and add photos on the go as well. Given how much the kids missed me when I was in Vancouver for two days, I think I’d also like to be able to chat with them via Skype when Chris and I go off on our cruise next year (we’ll be gone 18 days — yikes!) So I started looking into netbooks, which are designed for exactly that purpose — they’re mini laptops that let you type, surf the Net, make video calls, etc. They’re cheap, too, so I thought I’d found a great solution.

But when I mentioned this to my techie husband, he insisted that netbooks are on the way out and what we really need is an iPad. Huh. The iPad is very cool, but it and all the accessories (a separate camera connector to download photos, and a separate keyboard cause the on-screen one would drive me nuts for long blog entries, and some kind of holder to make the thing stand up while I type instead of lying flat) would cost at least twice as much as a netbook. Plus we already have an iPod Touch that has much, though not all, of the same functionality as the iPad. I dunno.

All of this is sort of moot right now anyway, since I just found out I need thousands of dollars worth of dental surgery (ugh). We’ll see how things work out.

After our road trip to Prince George, I have a whole new appreciation for two things: 1) how big this province actually is (it took us 10 hours to get home yesterday) and 2) how great an Okanagan summer really is. It was only about 18 degrees up north the whole time we were there, and we almost never saw the sun. Blech.

But we obviously weren’t there for the weather. We were there for Dave and Tanya’s wedding, and that went great. A few gems from the weekend:

– While they were getting ready to leave for the ceremony, Tanya looked at her dad and noticed something was weird about his tie: it was on backwards. Someone yelled, “Get the man a clip-on!” But it was a clip-on.

– Brayden, usually such a bulldozer, took it upon himself to take care of his one-year-old cousin Serenity while we waited for the bride to arrive. Serenity would toddle a few steps away, and Brayden would go over, take her hand and gently lead her back to her mother. It was sooo cute.

– Justin did so great walking down the aisle that I gave him a thumbs up when he took his place. He then proceeded to give thumbs up to everyone in the audience — repeatedly.

– Brayden was mighty miffed that he wasn’t actually part of the wedding party, and when the photographer made a big deal about Justin being a ringbearer, Brayden just about threw another fit. The photographer quickly defused things by offering to take some truly adorable pictures of Justin and Brayden together. Crisis averted.

– I knew Dave had to be deeply in love when he and the rest of the wedding party danced into the reception. Dave normally only dances when he’s drunk. (Come to think of it, there was champagne at the photo session…)

– We left before this, but apparently Rob started a conga line, moved his hips in unnatural ways and somehow hit our 92-year-old grandmother in the back of the head with a package of baby wipes. Classic Rob.

– At the end of the night, while waiting for the shuttle bus, a rousing game of bum darts got underway in the parking lot. This is a popular sport among the bride’s family, one that even has some strictly enforced rules (such as “no preparation H”). Don’t ask.

The rest of the weekend was filled with visiting all sorts of family. The boys loved seeing their Uncle Greg, of course — he and Chris took the boys to a science museum a couple times. (Justin was using a space shuttle simulator and managed to crash the shuttle into the space station…he then read what was on the screen and bemoaned, “Oh, I caused billions of dollars worth of damage.”) We also had the kids at the rehearsal dinner, at the actual wedding (Greg was kind enough to pick them up just after the supper so we could relax and party a bit), at a post-wedding open house, at various people’s houses…and they handled it all like pros. After several nights of staying up way too late and getting up way too early, I was relieved that both kids crashed hard at 7 p.m. the last night we were there. Whew.