Aurora Wells

Yesterday morning I left the house before Aurora woke up so that I could go to the dentist and be home in time for Brian to go to work at a reasonable hour. The last thing I expected when I got home was to walk into a forest of Truffula Trees. (If you haven’t read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss yet, you really, really must.)

Almost every day with Aurora is like an amateur improvisational theatre production of whatever books or videos we’ve been exploring lately. If you use your imagination, in the above photo you can see four lovely Truffula trees (brooms & jammies), the Lorax (Monkey), and the Once-ler (Aurora) with an axe (comb). Off-camera: a Brown Bar-ba-loot (Daddy), a Humming Fish (Nemo) and a Swomee-Swan (Mommy). She and Daddy had a Truffula fruit (mango) for breakfast, but while the Bar-ba-loot liked it, the Once-ler wasn’t keen on it. Daddy told me that when he built the trees, she demanded, “I need an axe! I need an axe!” so she could chop one down to make a Thneed. It’s a bit alarming that Aurora relates to the Once-ler, the “bad guy” of the tale. I guess she’s not quite old enough to grasp the environmental message of the book, but Daddy thinks that’s a good place to start. She says that now that she’s the Once-ler, he’s not a bad guy anymore (see below, comforting the poor Lorax with a hug):

So, today we’re back to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, with a bit of Cars thrown in for good measure. I thought that Aurora was Goofy today, but I just heard her commanding in a deep(ish) voice from her crib, “Mater! Don’t mock the ghost light.”

Also, for good measure, a photo of how I spent the US/Canada Olympic gold medal hockey match:

Making a multiethnic cheering stadium, of course!

For the past 30 years or so, I’ve felt that Olympics mascots were just short-lived cartoon characters without any good shows or movies to call their own. Then the five-ring circus descended upon my town, and those bloody mascots started showing up everywhere you look, on buses and bus shelter ads, in drugstores and department stores, bookstores and supermarkets, friends’ blogs and relatives’ living rooms. They are completely inescapable, and, like the Borg, totally irresistible. On the first day of the Olympics I was feeling rather “in the spirit”, so I let myself be swayed by the nagging child and broke down partway. I refused to buy an obscenely overpriced stuffie, but I bought Aurora a small pin and a little book about the mascots, because it had really cute illustrations, which was most of the appeal for me.

By reading the book, we got to know the mascots’ back stories (you can skip this paragraph if you have zero interest). Miga is a sea bear who got stuck halfway while transforming between her orca whale and spirit bear incarnations. She loves to surf in the summer and snowboard in the winter. Quatchi is a young sasquatch who, besides wanting to be a great hockey goalie, is really into travel photography. Sumi is a part whale, part bear, and part Thunderbird guardian spirit who is really inspired by the Paralympic athletes. And Mukmuk, the rare Vancouver Island Marmot, is not an “official” mascot, but merely a sidekick.

So then I was hooked. But still, the scope and magnitude of the Olympics merchandising freaked me out. I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world, but here in Vancouver it’s totally overwhelming. Brian and I long ago published a moratorium on bringing any more stuffed animals or dolls into the house, and I was determined to stay strong, despite my daughter’s impassioned pleas to let her “just hug” one of those darned “Olympics Guys” each time we entered a store selling them.

Enter: The Potty Chart. Our previously potty-trained toddler was firm in her opposition to using the potty, even though we tried giving her a few months of no-pressure diaper time. A friend suggested bribery, in the form of a sticker-reward chart, which seemed to work with her kid. After five months of a potty boycott, we were game to try it. Aurora was pretty excited about earning the first ten stickers, which would lead to a prize. But the prize ended up being a book, and she gets those all the time, thanks to our multiple library trips per week. She showed no interest in earning an eleventh sticker until I hinted that an Olympics Guy might be the reward. She was super-excited about that possibility. Little did she know that I planned to make a set of papercraft mascots with card stock, scissors and glue.

I worked hard for about an hour and a half the night before she was due to earn her second potty prize, and finished the Quatchi guy, on the left. She did her 20th potty pee right before quiet time, so I gave her Quatchi and put her in the crib. She was over the moon, and I could hear her playing happily with him for about half an hour. Then the happy play noises turned into screams of agony, and I rushed into her room. “CHACHI! CHACHI! I HURT CHACHI, MOMMY!” She had been holding Quatchi by the arms and making him jump when the paper gave way to the stress of a gentle two-year-old’s play. The diagonal bisection of Quatchi’s head, along with the dismemberment of both his arms, reminded me of the scene in Rob Roy when Liam Neeson cleaves his enemy Tim Roth in two with his broadsword, but unlike those foes, Aurora loved Quatchi. She had just killed her best friend, and she felt horrible about it. For the rest of the day she was inconsolable, clinging to me for hugs and reassurance, and throwing temper tantrums when I abandoned her to make dinner or use the bathroom. I quickly made another paper Quatchi, but I felt bad about giving her a prize that couldn’t really be played with.

So, here’s the conundrum: We’re trying not to spoil our child with too much stuff. We’re trying not to over-consume in our materialistic culture. We’re trying not to fill our small house with more crap than we can manage. We have a lot of reasons NOT to buy these stuffed toys. The only reason to buy them is because Aurora really, really wants them. So here’s what the compromising of one’s ideals looks like:

Last night, acting on the news that the mascots had gone on sale, Daddy came home with a set of all four Olympics Guys, and became a little girl’s hero. Bedtime was delayed by an hour because she was too keyed up to sleep, and all five of them ended up sharing the same pillow. Nighty-night, sweetie. We love you.

Now that Aurora is talking, really talking, some of those gosh-darned, cutest-thing-you-ever-heard things keep popping out of her mouth. Here are a few recent ones:

I have a Seuss character t-shirt, and Aurora now recognizes almost every guy on the shirt, but she didn’t know Horton the elephant. I went to some trouble to get a copy from the library, and when we picked it up I immediately read it to her. She loved it, but for about 24 hours she insisted that the title was “Tim Horton Hears a Who.”

When we walked into a store the other day, Aurora saw the ubiquitous stuffed Olympics mascots (which she calls “Lympics Guys”), ran over to them, picked up one and proclaimed, “He is my BEST FRIEND!” as if that would convince me to let her take him home.

I love that Aurora squeals “MacDonald!” with glee when the automated bus-voice chimes, “MacDonald Street”. She has no idea what MacDonalds restaurant is. She thinks the street is named after Donald Duck.

Today I read the modern classic The Paper Bag Princess to Aurora at lunchtime. Afterwards she decided that for the rest of the day she would be not Elizabeth, the brave and clever princess who managed to save her fiancé from the hungry dragon while wearing nothing but a brown paper bag, but Ronald, the spoiled prince who didn’t thank her but chose to criticize her mode of dress. Aurora said that as Ronald, she/he would not be mean to Elizabeth, but rather would try to be a better boy from now on.

Because it’s not enough to title a kid’s gymnastics class, “2-3 year olds” they give them cutesy names like the one above. However, I like this particular name for two reasons; one, Aurora really thinks jellybeans are, like, totally, the best dessert; and two, gymnastics is almost completely about jumping on the trampoline for her. The climbing and the hanging from the bars and the rolling and stuff are all the crap she has to get through to get to the trampoline part of the circuit, which she never wants to leave.

We had some difficulty at the start of our session, because we arrived late, and hungry, and I really tried to push her to participate. I was ready to quit until I realized that this was a great opportunity for me to learn how to “handle” Aurora, just as much as an opportunity for her to get some exercise & learn some new skills. I still have trouble remembering not to grab her and make her do the things she’s “supposed to” do, but now we always come early and eat lunch in the lobby before our class arrives. If she’s the first one there (and well fed), she’s much more comfortable, and a tiny bit more bold about trying new things.

I didn’t want to take too many pictures in class, mostly because I need to spot her when she’s hanging on monkey bars & such, but I took a couple in the lobby beforehand.

Perhaps the oddest look of concentration I’ve ever seen (she’s playing with a bead-and-wire toy on a table).

We also got a chance to visit the Chilliwack Wellses last Saturday, and drop off all the baby essentials that we could cram into our little car. Brian has the crazy idea that if there was an emergency in the middle of the night, that you should be able to make it to the front door of your house without falling over anything. Now that Jim & Lori have a cradle, glider-rocker, and boxes of toys and bedding, we can make it through the house without quite so much trouble. I now understand the pleasure Jenn and Vanessa took in unloading truckloads of baby stuff for us before Aurora was born!

I can’t believe I haven’t already done this, but Grandma Gail pointed out that I never posted pictures of the sea life mural that Daddy and I painted on Aurora’s walls. These pictures were mostly taken before she was born, but there’s one with furniture at the end, featuring the cradle that until recently graced the East wall.

Thank you to Grandma Gail for helping us paint the fishies! We’re hoping that Aurora will like the mural until she’s ten or older, but recently she told me that she just wanted plain white walls in her bedroom. Hopefully it’s just one of those two-year-old contrariness things!

Not as catchy as “Fox in Socks on Knox in Box”, but you write what you know, eh? The winter blahs are upon us in the form of colds that Aurora gets for a week and then passes on to Mommy and Daddy. The good news is that the weather has been mild, and at times, delightful. We had the loveliest weather in months this past week, and the garden and the park beckoned. I took a few pictures, so you can see what Aurora looks like at 28 months. I know it’s been a while since I got my camera out much. I’ll try to do better.

We’re reading a book called “Dinosaurs Galore!” right now, which inspired Aurora to armor-plate herself with grape halves at dinner one night. I don’t know if Stegosaurus would have had as much luck against Tyrannosaurus Rex if grapes were his defense. Perhaps if Rex had Gummy Bear teeth?

Then there’s the good old standby for entertainment; hair clips. Still fun.

Although we’re avoiding the play gyms and such, trying not to contaminate the rest of society, we do get to the park when it’s warm and dry enough, like it was last Wednesday. Love soaking up that sun – mmmmm.