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A Canadian expatriate living and exploring first France now Germany, then BACK to FRANCE (!!!) with her family; former fashion designer, turned unexpected UNLIKELY NOMAD, raising two children, writing, photographing, painting, playing piano (who knew!!) and blogging - and now... full time student at ART SCHOOL!! (I MUST be crazy!!)

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Boxed In

The tedium…the humdrum…it is starting to get grey and chilly here (plus the chocolate is all gone) …*yawn* and it’s not even February yet…

My kids are at school all day today and so far I have had a German lesson, lunch and a nap. Not so good. Sort of gearing up for a crazy weekend as we have some of our friend’s children for two days and TBG comes home today (at least that’s my excuse). Somehow I always feel compunction to have the house compulsively tidy whenever he gets home…sort of like I feel we need to rack up against Sofitel…(*Chuh*)…like he has not seen our place a mess and like it is my job…*ughhh*

Gosh gotta get to the laundry, run some errands-sort out dinner yada-yada-yada…

Whatever

My kids more specifically. Riel is utterly, utterly absorbed right now with making houses out of cardboard boxes. On my last trip to Ikea I came home with a slick office chair which of course included a nifty kid sized carton and the lights I bought also included even niftier doll sized boxes. Quick as a blink Riel had fashioned himself a set of carving knives out of Lego, (really)…with such an imagination the child will never lack for anything that’s for sure, and he instantly set to work carving out openings and fitting little boxes into big ones and constructing all manner of magic access panels and such.

This cardboard box thing has reached epic proportions and has been going on endlessly for about two weeks now. Every time I go into the play room, nay even turn around, he and Lily have built an entire subdivision out of a combination of boxes, the play table, its chairs, a compilation of the dissected elements of both their beds including the foam mattresses and blankets. The room is FULL. He has his quiet time in there all fortressed up, roofed in under some sort of contrived combination of things, having dragged in his comforter and Cleo. One day I walked in to discover him on the floor lying IN the barely big enough box on its side head-first-with-just-his-bum-hanging-out happy as a clam. Very funny.

All well and good. But the mess and subsequent Mommy driven reconstruction bi-daily not too mention the constant distraction from the things-that-must-be-done is driving me INSANE. Every time I turn around it is like a Greenspan building site in there and the child cannot walk past any of it without completely losing his way. I have threatened to pitch the whole kit and caboodle, as it is driving me crazy, but can’t quite bring myself to do it as they are deriving such obvious pleasure from it all.

Yesterday I picked up something downtown that had been ordered and had arrived (god forbid) in a box. Riel was with me and his eyes instantly lit up. He timidly asked the sales clerk if he could have the box.

“Oh yes, yes” she breathed in her French-sales-clerky way…”Ve have many many boxes here, you can always come and pick up as many as you like…

3 comments:

oreneta said...

OK, just typed this out, and the stupid computer lost it and the kids are nagging me, so this is going to be pithier than last time.

I so relate,

With the kids room, I just shut the door, not worth the fight. As long as I can find them to kiss them goodnight, it'll do, and these are kids who can form an emotional attachment to ANYTHING in about 2 seconds flat.

The tiding up thing, gotta get over that, it is a hang-over from our culture's perception that earning is being. SCREW IT. You, or at least I before I beat the feeling down, feel you need to tidy to prove that you have been "doing" something while he has been out earning. It is perfectly acceptable for people to talk about "work" at a dinner party, but god forbid we bring up our kids..... You do 99.5% of the childcare, which is work. You do 99% of the cooking, which is work. You do 99.5% of the cleaning, which is work. If ANYONE had to pay you for the work you do, they could NEVER afford you, even at the slave wages people who do this for a living get, let alone what you deserve.

I'll get off my high horse now, obviously hit a nerve there.

Napping?!?.....One of the great things in life *sigh* I have resolved to try to nap every day. Probably good for my health too. When in Spain......
Even if they don't anymore.......

Unknown said...

You, Nomad, have been TAGGED. (See my blog for more details)

Angel said...

That is too cute! My daughter did the same thing and made Barbie houses out of boxes...I miss that....not the mess tho. Ugh!

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