Emilio - 3 years

Emi, you are 3 years old! It sounds so much older when I say it, but you are still a little guy to me!!

It has been a huge year for us. I can officially say I nursed you for almost a full 3 years! It wasn't easy, and most especially at the end it was very challenging, but we made it through.

We also went though a very difficult month just before your birthday. You started having night terrors, and I am not sure who they terrorize more, you, or us! you were waking up every night without fail, sometimes even twice or 3 times in the night, screaming your lungs out, running around in the house, kicking and running into things... a pretty scary sight for a parent. Your Opa even flew here all the way from Mexico to give us a hand and effectively tried to distract you. And after that, and making sure you weren't over tired at night, watching your sleeping and peeing patterns, we finally went back to normal. But it was a tough month! complete with pediatricians and even psychologists!

So we had some bad stuff going on, but the rest of the year was so great with you. Things that you do now:

- You talk INCESSANTLY. You see your brother chatting away, so you will do the same thing on and on even if your conversation doesn't make any sense. Even if it is tiring sometimes to follow all you say, it is great to see how your language abilities have gone through the roof. People who haven't seen you in a month or 2 always comment on how well you can communicate now. 

- You still love your brother more than any of us and it is so sweet. I hope you two always love each other this much. You are always copying your brother, trying to do everything like he does, and give it your all to get his attention. If he laughs at you, you are on cloud 9. Very sweet!

- You are very good at sharing and listening. In general, you are very well behaved. You make a good side kick because you are generally good at staying close and being a happy guy.

- You are now sleeping very well. Sometimes you wake up early at around 5.30 a.m. and that is tough, but if I lay down on the couch with you downstairs and give you warm milk, you can sometimes fall back to sleep.

- You are very smart, independent, helpful, and tidy.

- You have a heart of gold. You are so so sweet, you like to look after your brother, you constantly give us hugs and kisses, and even love on your stuffies. Even strangers at parties always comment on how loving and friendly you are. You are such an extrovert!!! You love social situations, meeting new people and that just energizes you.

- You are also very sensitive. Sometimes it is hard because it is basically impossible to get mad at you. If we ever get mad at you about something you did, you immediately pout and cry and visibly get your feelings very hurt. So we can only stay mad at you for a couple of seconds until you break our hearts too :( .

- You are an amazing dance. You follow rhythm so well, and have some amazing moves. I love watching you dance and you just live for music. 

- Our biggest challenges right now I would say, are to teach you to use your words effectively, rather than hitting, pushing, yelling. And to encourage you to be yourself. You are so obsessed with your brother that sometimes you copy bad habits, or in the case of dancing, you don't realize how much better than your brother you are!! you don't realize that you should just keep your own style!

I could go on for pages about you. You are just a sweet sweet, friendly, and very considerate little guy. I hope your heart remains untouched as you grow older and that your love for your brother only grows.

We love you so much our little guy, we can't get enough from you!

Mom

Paulo - 5 Years

You are 5 years old Paulo!!

This year we had a birthday Party at home with some of your best friends from school - Harrison, Dexter, Luc, and Liam. We did tie dye shirts, you played hockey outside with daddy and we had cake, it was lots of fun!

Things you can do now at 5.... Pretty much anything. You are doing really well in school and you have only said you didn't want to go a handful of times in the 2 years since you started. You are doing really well in reading, writing, and you quite enjoy math.

Some of your favourite things to do are: riding your bike, playing soccer, Lego, Knex, Magna Tiles, and pretty much any building toy. 

One of my favourite thing about you is that you are very creative and resourceful. You may not paint the most "eye pleasing" picture in the traditional sense, but you are a very resourceful boy. You almost never get bored. As soon as you start feeling inactive you start looking for things to build, make, create. 

One of the great things I have discovered in you in these 5 years: you are a really "well behaved" boy (for lack of better terms). You are a good listener, aggreable, and self-controlled. We can usually give you our reasons for a certain decision and you will understand and follow our lead. You understand so much now that you are like a mini adult, and we realize now we really have to watch what we talk about (death, pain, illness, or anything bad) because you really understand it and take it at heart. 

You are so good, I feel like I can really trust you. Lately, I can trust you and your brother to go outside and play in the street and you know to stay where I can see you from the window, get on somebody's lawn if a car is coming, and to look after your brother. You often seem annoyed at his being all over your face, but you actually take good care of him. You comfort him, you help him catch up with us, and you even tell me to go tend to him if he is crying or upset. 

Most of all, you are a kind boy, you are intelligent, you are precocious, and loving.

I am so proud of you and who you have become. We love you immensely and feel a great responsibility to keep that precious heart and brilliant mind expanding.

What we have been up to.

This year has been a year full of reflection and introspection for me. Funny, because even though I didn't make any resolutions for this year, I have thought about many changes I would like to make in our lives, especially in terms of our health and the way we parent. Some of these thoughts I have actually put into action and have stuck for almost a year now. They have had real consequences for our health and I just want to write it all down to remember how this whole new lifestyle came about.

 

It is difficult to keep this short because I feel that I can have a whole conversation about each of these topics but I only have limited time to talk about this so I will have to be brief, hopefully describing all the essence of my thoughts:

 

• The first big change in our life since the start of this year has been dramatically reducing and almost eliminating sugar and refined carbohydrates from our diet. We have also greatly reduced other unhealthy foods (i.e. potato chips, which I'm addicted to), but the main focus has been on sugar. It all started when I read the book "Fat Chance: Beating the Odds against sugar, processed food, obesity and disease" by Robert Lustig. I always considered us to be a healthy family, always thought I chose healthy foods for our kids and believed I was moderating our consumption of sugar. Everything in moderation, right? Well, this book really opened my eyes and helped me realized the amount of sugar that is present in processed foods, even when you least expected. We are not big on processed foods, but I realized the amounts of sugar my kids were getting from things like flavoured yoghurt, juice, bread and the occasional canned vegetables for example was worrying and inacceptable. So I decided to try to eat as much "real food" as possible. No more quick, grab-and-go, so-called healthy snacks for my kids, no more "convenience' food, no more trusting the food industry with their "healthful", "natural" claims. We now have a diet based on whole foods, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lots of beans and legumes, dairy and meats, and I bake my own bread every week, we are not scared of fat anymore. Rob and I have done a few 30 day challenges where we go without sugar and honestly, the last time I didn't even miss it, so I tried to keep that diet. I wouldn't say it is perfect at all, and actually I find it really hard to protect the kids from the sugar-obsessed environment. But I try really hard, even if it means having mixed feeling about allowing kids to have a "normal" childhood vs. a "healthy" one (these many times are conflicted). Anyway, this year we got sick in September (1 month after the start of school) for the 1st time, and I am suspicious that our new diet had a lot to do with our staying healthy this long.

 

• Another thing I have consciously tried to do on purpose has been to spend more time outside with the kids. I was inspired by a few videos and articles I read about the Forest Kindergarten and other school that really promote building a connection with kids and their environment. Their values resonated with me and I also have experienced first hand the benefits of spending time outside with the kids. This is the thing: I know many parents who are afraid of taking their kids camping, or doing hiking trips or the like, because they are afraid their kids are going to act crazy and it is going to be too difficult to control them. But honestly? Every time we take our kids outside they have SO MUCH FUN, they don't even look at me. I don't know if my kids are the exception, but I doubt it. I think kids just thrive outdoors, and they learn so much from physical ability to mental focus, to strategy, to science, etc. it seems even cruel or negligent to deprive kids of outdoors and nature. I do recognize there are families that are waaay more outdoorsy than us, but I am really trying to make an effort to spend more hours outside every day, even if it is just playing soccer in our street.

 

 

 

• This one is closely related to the previous point and more about our parenting. I recently read Jessica Lahey's book The Gift of Failure. I didn't think this book was extraordinary like other books in the way it is written , but I think it's message is very valuable, very clearly stated and well document with research and not just anecdotal. The message really resonated with me: back off from your children, give them space, let them fail, make mistakes, and learn for themselves. This book presents the idea that even if our intentions are good, trying to save kids from our fears and trying to "help" them do things "better" or "easier" , when we intervene to save or help or children, we are doing more harm than good. We are undermining their ability to do things on their own, and depriving them of the sense of achievement. Depriving them of those incredible feeling of doing things all by yourself. And later in life, these feeling or not being able to do things on their own translate to the real world, resulting in kids, teenagers, young adults who are afraid to go out in the world and take risks, make friendships, find jobs, etc. This whole philosophy really resonates with me, because I think it described exactly what happened to me while growing up. I know my parents' intention were always the best, and I won't dare say I parent any better than them. But I suspect that it was their own fears sometimes, or their desire to make my life more comfortable than they had it, that motivated them to overprotect me to the point that many times I felt crippled, frustrated and incapable. I think on a subconscious level that might have been the reason why I was always looking for opportunities to travel and live in other countries. If you ask me one of the things I most enjoyed about traveling, was the feeling of "surviving" on my own. A feeling I didn't experience much at home. Another component of this philosophy is how modern society expects parents to be excessively monitoring their children. And when parents excessively intervene in their children's play or when they make themselves excessively visible, interactions between children change dramatically. I could not agree more with this. If I think about the times I have watched my kids show affection to each other and play peacefully while having contagious belly laughs, looking after each other, showing tolerance, patience and fraternal love, is when my presence hasn't been obvious. This happens when I am focused in cooking and they are left to play (and get bored) and their own, when I have left them outside playing while I go back inside to get or do something, when I am (or pretending to be) "busy" in the backyard while they are just there playing on their own. I know a lot of parents (including my very own) could interpret this as borderline neglect, or uninvolved or just plain wrong, but honestly, I have seen some of these very same parents literally ruin moments of play, or relationships between sibling, or even their own relationships with their kids by constantly intervening, unnecessarily mediating between children, nagging, correcting, criticizing, etc. And it is these same parents who always make remarks to say my kids are very independent and they wish their kids were able to play and have fun without constantly needing them to step in or play with them.

 

 

As I mentioned before, and as it has become clear, I can rant forever about all this and I have run out of time. But these 3 are things that I have dedicated a lot of thought and effort to, and just wanted to write it down.