Alright. It’s settled. I have decided not to sell my toddler on Craigslist.

First report card: Evan is a sweet, gentle boy. He is so inquisitive, loves anything with wheels, and loves to sing.

<What?> Loves to sing.

What do you mean, he ‘loves to sing’? He doesn’t sing. I’m his mother. I should know. He’s not even talking yet, aside from NO! and WOW! and the requisite mama/dada.

Good god. Does he sing?

The other day we walked hand-in-hand to the wharf in search of dried-up mussel beds to crunch underfoot and to scramble in dinghys beached for winter. As we strolled I tried them all: row row row your boat, twinkle twinkle little star, itsy bitsy spider. All the standards, to no avail. He listened politely, gripping my fingers through his mittens, staring at his boots.

Then, I struck gold: Old MacDonald. His head snapped to attention, and he hummed along until the chorus, when he.. well, see for yourself.

Knocked off my feet that he has talents unbeknownst to me. He soaks up the world under the stewardship of other people, and brings it back to show me with his own twist. Magic.

They’re staring at me, judging, disapproving, clucking. He’s flailing in the middle of the road, gone limp in a pile of toddler rage. It was funny at first, how it always is: he stops drops and rolls, and it’s my own laughing that makes me unable to wrestle his squirming, indignant noodliness.

But today, waiting a g-d fricking hour for the Chester Basin Annual Santa Claus Parade (and then leaving, with not a single g-d fricking elf in sight), laughing turned to frustration which turned to dismay which turned to forcible confinement which turned to near-child-abuse which turned to an all-out ban on Christmas for the next ten years.

I’m a wreck. I’m still shaking. I need two padded rooms: one for me, and one for him. I’m not taking him anywhere by car ever again. I lack the brute strength required to buckle an enraged rhinoceros into a carseat.

You’re supposed to stay calm, be button-free. Instead: squealing out of the bloody legion parking lot, both of us bawling, one of us covered in vomit, the other behind the wheel screaming the world’s most heartfelt F********************CK!!!!

“Oh, my little junior is so active too,” you say, chortling. I smile, faking affinity, thinking Bullshit. Take my kid and call me in a week. You’re standing on the side of the road and he holds your hand, twiddling the ribbon on his balloon. I see you forty-five minutes and forty-five tantrums later – yours is in his stroller, watching the road, nibbling a cracker.

When does it get better? Does the advent of talking help? How does anyone have more than one child? The thought of it makes me break out in nervous hives. Maybe we're feeding him too well. Maybe a little nutritional lethargy would be just the thing.

Why does everyone else seem to have it together? Why don't people realize that it only makes me feel worse to gawk at us like the spectacle I already know we are? Why doesn’t bribery work? Why do everyone else’s kids seem so complacent?

<Complacent: is that the right word? Thesaurus says: satisfied self-satisfied smug unworried content contented self-righteous. No word has ever been more right.>

He scissors his legs in fury, dislocates both shoulders for easier transmission to the ground. Then the gun goes off and he lunges directly for a) speeding traffic; c) the edge, any edge; c) imminent danger. I make a feeble effort at restraint, shrinking with embarrassment, shame, ineptitude. See paragraph one. Repeat.

+++++++

Upon re-reading: am tempted to delete. I know what you're thinking: You're supposed to stay calm, be button-free. You let him get so upset that he threw up! And you're not helping matters by being upset yourself. You shouldn't be driving when you're feeling out of control like that. You shouldn't curse like that in front of him, let alone be screaming it when he's already freaking out.

Yes: it gives me as much indigestion to live it as it gives you to read it. But quiet meltdowns, private ones, are more toxic than public ones. If you don't acknowledge the stuff you're ashamed of, it eats you, makes you loathe yourself. So here you have it.

In the last post, M commented with a lovely compliment and question about photography, which is how this all began. Truth is, I take pictures through sheer effort rather than with great depths of expertise. Risking presumption, I started a comment-reply that quickly became post-length, and then figured why not share a few indispensables? Reads, inspiration, creative ideas, diversions that someone, at some time, shared with me. I’m just passing them on.

My camera is a Kodak DX7590, a practically obsolete 2-year-old point-and-shoot but a versatile workhorse. Picture and video quality are great, and it’s fully manual with room to play. It’s obliging enough, but limited. I’m starting to itch for something more advanced, a proper camera system that I can invest in with a more diverse selection of lenses.

I use Photoshop to do a quick freshening of all my pictures, to make them pop. I layer a soft light on top of the original, then play with the curves until it looks right, then flatten, resize and save. If you have the software, it's very quick and easy. Interesting tutorials are here and here, from impossibly famous bloggers Dooce and Dooce’s Husband respectively. That said, I never want pictures to look obviously tweaked. Too much can turn photo-taking into photo-wanking, but it all just depends on what you like.

When it comes to Photoshop, I’m self-taught and not remotely a power-user. All of the above is a fancy way of adjusting the contrast and vibrancy of light. I also cheat through cropping: I try to be as neat as possible through the camera, but with kids you sometimes have to seize the moment without obsessing over a clean frame, and fix it later.

Here’s a before and after, with cropping and contrast adjustments available with any standard photo editing software.

 

See? It's like washing an ordinary picture with soap until it squeaks. Photographic palmolive.

Confession: I take a LOT of frames, especially when shooting kids. Don't get dejected when ten pictures don't capture the right face or the right moment. Take a hundred instead. Why not, with digital? You'll get it. Just make sure you ruthlessly delete the stuff that doesn’t work, to avoid clogging your computer unnecessarily.

Basic principles that are always top-of-mind for me:

1) Keep the background/setting free of clutter. If you can’t, change your position or stance to minimize it. There’s almost always a way to overcome a messy background, like shooting from a lower perspective to include more sky and less passing traffic.

2) Shoot from your subject’s point-of-view, especially with children. In this one of my sweet niece, the camera was about four inches from her face as she dug in the sand at the beach. I held the button down halfway to focus, with the camera set to 'backlit' so that it would overexpose her face (to compensate for the bright background). I shot without looking through the viewfinder, with the camera almost to the ground. A gamble, but I love the result.

 

Try lying or crouching down on the ground. That's where I am for the vast majority of my pictures, the camera at Evan’s eye-level or lower. Without doing that, I never would have caught this profile of him yelling at seagulls, that same day at the beach. Again, I was on my side, elbow propping up the camera, waiting for him to run past.

 

3) When in doubt, do two things: get closer, and get closer. Fill the frame. Watch for wasted space.

4) Wait for good light, if you’re aiming for a portrait. On a sunny day, get out of direct light. Place your subject(s) under the shade of a tree. Don't shoot at noon if you can avoid it, when the sun is directly overhead (nature's equivalent of a fluorescent big-box store). When the sun is low in the sky, early or late, conditions are much more favourable for that lovely glow.

5) Try something that seems counter-intuitive to get a picture that’s more interesting. I originally had both my friend Kelly and her spunky son in the centre of the frame, but moved the camera at the last minute to make his kiss the focal point. This isn't the most graceful of pictures, but it's one of my favourites of the two of them. It captures their spirits.

 

6) Be a pest. I’m all for candid, non-invasive shots, but kids often need to be prompted, surprised, ushered into a better spot, cajoled into giving me something a little extra. Ask them to be silly, or hug, or kiss, or jump up and down. Even a shy little guy will show me all his teeth if I ask him to growl like a bear.

If you’re really keen, invest in some courses or a workshop. I took photography in my spare time at Langara College in Vancouver, got about three-quarters through a continuing education diploma program with a 20-year-old pentax. It's absolutely fantastic to improve your eye and skills. Start with an introductory course, or take darkroom, or photojournalism, or anything else that strikes your fancy. I loved it, and unfortunately moved before I could finish.

Now for a few choice haunts.

Tracey, an online acquaintance and professional photographer, has a great mama-photography site where she shares plenty of tips and inspiration, much better than I ever could.

Flickr offers endless inspiration, such as this unbelievable set (if you can take gorgeous photographs of a baby in a supermarket, you’re officially my hero).

Mama Says Om is another wonderful site and companion Flickr group with creative themes every week. Anyone can submit, making for a mash-up of poetry, writing, illustration and photography. It's a very cool community of creative moms and dads, and a great way to uncover reserves of inspiration.

This will be old news to many of you, creative folk that you are. Many of you shame me with your fabulous writing and photos. What are your failsafe tricks or inspirations? Dish!

Live tarantulas. Shiny, crunchy, palm-sized (unconfirmed) madagascar hissing cockroaches. Rock-jumping bullfrogs. A see-through beehive. Foot-long jungle-dwelling millipedes. Indonesian beetles so huge they had horns, not feelers.

Evan’s screams of delight rang through the halls of the natural history museum, peppered with the If-Only-My-Legs-Moved-As-Fast-As-My-Eyes patta-patta-pat of his sneakers. He ran circles, pointing and squealing at each diorama like a kid on a spinning fairground ride waving to buddies on each pass. He played with seal bones, measured a whale and almost turned himself inside out at the sight of the horses at the paddock next door.

Seeing him thrilled is crack. I want more. I’ll take him anywhere to reproduce it.

After that we roamed the hallowed stacks at the famed Woozles, where two enormous, kid-height railway scenes left Evan wanting another set of godzilla hands.

Then we left. And he freaked.

After that we walked to Cora’s for lunch, for its yummy food (hollandaise sauce, sausage and brie on the same plate) and its people who, when you sheepishly apologize for the state of the floor upon departure, say Don’t Worry! like they really mean it.

Then he freaked. And we left.

After that we walked to the playground at the Halifax Common, one of the best in the city. Slides and swings and wonky bridges and whoop-dee-doos: and repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Then we left. And he freaked.

After that we drove home. He slept. And we pulled into the driveway. And he slept. Carrying him into the house, he koala-wrapped his legs around me, nuzzled his face in my neck. I thought is there a chance? and sat down in the la-z-boy for glory: he slept on me, while we rocked. Not since he was a wee baby has he done that. It was hot and neck-crampy and deliciously wonderful, a rare gift of stillness and intimacy during this high-motion era.

Then he woke, and we talked about the day, all the things we’d done and seen. He dressed in his Finnish coveralls and his rainboots, and we went outside in the pre-dinner dark to poke around in the backyard mud. Here he is, filled to the brim with input. And me? Filled to the brim with toddler, heart and soul.

 

 

It’s uncanny. As soon as the war’s last generation begins to fade, the world rumbles again. Loss, brutality and senselessness don’t mean as much to us — at least not enough to make us demand it to stop.

My Grampa fought overseas with the British Air Force, calling his beloved plane a ‘salt shaker’ for how much it was hit. Almost all his friends were killed. He missed the same fate by unbelievable luck — twice — and struggled with the injustice of it for the rest of his life.

Here’s to you, Grampa, and to all your chums.

It’s an idyllic scene: after supper, the whole family cuddles in front of the fire to play a game of scrabble, go fish, monopoly. We jog, knit, canoe at sunset, go on wildlife jaunts and canvass the neighbourhood for the local animal shelter. The Family Unit prospers, without a stitch of ADD in sight.

But here’s what I’d rather not fess up: I am addicted to America’s Next Top Model. So is Justin (shhh: don't tell anyone). There. It’s done. Our illicit love affair with trash teevee is officially de-closeted. And yes, we do feel dirty afterwards.

I don’t need seventy channels. I just need TLC for What Not to Wear, Showcase for cursing and naughtiness, Spike TV for surprise reruns of The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller on those dreary nights when you need to decompress and expect there to be Nothing On.

We don’t buy ice cream. If we did, we’d eat it. Same as cable—once you get used to it not being there, you accept its absence and dive into a good book instead.

Or so I’m told.

Calling Eastlink to order our phone-net-cable bundle for the new house, Justin and I were both struck (as happens every two years or so) with a righteous optimism: a desire to cancel it, cold turkey. We can depend on the fabulousness of Rogers Video Direct for entertainment, and own a few choice DVDs for our tank engine-entranced boy. We’ll own the television—it won’t own us.

I was bolstered by this article, the testament of a man who unplugged his family from the mechanical boob. Best thing we ever did, he says. It’s worth a read. You can’t help but be inspired.

After all, a cable hookup provides 10% quality and 90% surfing and complaining. TV Sucks. <two hours later> TV Still Sucks. Sucks sucks sucks.

And another evening of our lives is vapourized by the big black box. Spent willing it to give us something to chew on when we could have been poring over the Giller Prize nominees or mastering the art of french cooking or doing yoga and feeling at one with the universe.

Or maybe not.

I hesitate for all kinds of habitual reasons. Have you ever cancelled cable? Love it? Failed at it? Wouldn’t dare? Tell me about it. I really want to know: is it worth it?

Our new neighbours think us not far from child abusers, politely declining candy for Evan. But the door-knocking and doggy-answering and twinkling orange lights and jack 'o lanterns and spooky noises - not to mention the being out after dark - were more than enough thrills for this cowpoke.