On Saturday morning, we took our annual Easter weekend trip to the Agriculture Museum. It’s my favourite museum in town, especially at this time of year when there are new lambs and wee chicks and baby bunnies and newborn calves to see.

I’ve forced this tradition on my kids because I am absolutely determined to make them love the farm, too. But so far, I must say, they are doing a bang up job of resisting the love.

They actually really hate the farm.

So this year, as with all previous years, it was a festival of “I’m soooo tired, it’s soooo much walking, when are we going to sit down?” from the Captain, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” screamed over and over from the Gal, who is absolutely terrified of all animals, including chicks that are the size of her hand, and “I neeeeeed a snaaaaack, when are we going to eeeeeeat?” from both of them at periodic intervals. They whined all the way through the barns, weren’t interested in seeing or touching any animals, and only got excited when they saw the play structure, which is exactly the same as the one we have in our local park that they see almost EVERY DAY.

Sigh.

So since the kids hate the Agriculture Museum so much, I can only get away with convincing Sir Monkeypants to suffer though a visit once a year, but dammit, WE ARE GOING, because the kids will love it someday, SO HELP ME GOD.

At the very least, it will provide them with fodder for therapy someday. Or maybe just a funny mug on my 65th birthday.

Anyway, this year there was a small, happy ray of hope. As it turns out, Little Miss Sunshine loves the farm! She is completely unafraid of animals five times her size. She went right up to the cows to say, “Hi!” to each one in a most adorable way. She muscled right in there to pet the baby lambs. She picked up stray pieces of hay on the floor of the barn and offered them to the calves to eat. She petted the bunnies, made snorting noises at the horses, and adored the baby chicks.

One out of three ain’t bad!

I’m going to take the Little Miss back again in a week or so, when it’s hopefully a little warmer, and when the older two Scrooges are in school. I imagine we’ll have the fun farm visit I’ve always envisioned.

I knew having that third kid was a good idea!

The thing that really bugs me about this whole rain/snow/sun/hot/cold weather extravaganza we’re having is that we still have three car seats in our car.

That means three five-point harnesses to untangle, struggle to wrap around flailing kid limbs, snap together, and re-snap after complaining and crying. Every time we get in the car.

Add to that the seat belt adjustment step, to accomodate the day’s selection of coat and outdoor-pant combination, and it’s just too much. I know, it seems like one small extra step, but when you multiply it by three, and throw in belts that have been twisted beyond all movement over the winter months, and you have the strap that broke the Mommy’s back.

The law says we can’t move our kids into booster seats until they are 40 pounds, regardless of height or age. At this rate, we’ll still have three car seats when our kids are in their teens.

The Captain, at age 6, is still holding at 36 pounds, despite recent efforts to get him to eat french fries at every opportunity. He’s already too tall for a standard car seat, and now he’s pushing the height limit on the special extra-large-size five-point-harness seat we had to buy him last year (at a cost of approximately his entire university education). By next winter, there is no possible way we will be able to buckle him in with a coat and snowpants on, so it’s BOOSTER OR BUST for him come November.

The Gal, at age 4 1/2 — the age that the government suggests “most children” will have moved to a booster — is still the smallest in her class and only weighs 30 pounds. If she continues on her current growth curve, she might make 40 pounds just in time to hit the age 8 limit, when it’s no longer legally required to have your kid in a seat of any kind.

And Little Miss Sunshine, who we sometimes refer to our “bruiser” because she’s the biggest of our kids, weighs in at 22 pounds at age 21 months. If we were following the law to the letter (AND OF COURSE WE WERE, OFFICER), we’d only just now be turning her around to be forward facing. Which we totally just did YESTERDAY, OFFICER. We’re really hoping she’s into a booster by age 6 — fingers crossed!

Sigh. Yet another reason to hate the snow on the ground (grrrr) and the more snow we’ll be getting today and later this week (GRRRRR). What the hell happened to Spring?

When I was a kid, my grandmother gave my sisters and me a bunch of old 78 records that she wasn’t using anymore. Most of them were big band-type music, but there were three or four that had kids’ music on them. We loved these and listened to them over and over again, even though the music is crazy weird and full of odd messages.

My sister FameThrowa’s favourite tune from these records was “Don’t Put Things In Your Mouth.” Little Miss Sunshine is teething again (and so very, very cranky, I might add), and so she is sticking anything and everything in her mouth. Every time she does it I hum this tune. It’s a classic!

The other day Captain and Gal were playing Star Wars action figures. Gal likes to be Princess Leia, because she’s smaller than all the other figures and Gal thinks that means that she’s a little girl. Captain likes to be Luke because Luke is his favourite character (but don’t call either of them dreamy, or you will get a very stern look of disapproval).

Gal (talking as Leia): Hi! I’m just a little girl!

Captain: You should go get Han, because he and Leia are going to get married.

Gal (talking as Han): Hi! I just married this little girl!

Captain (talking as Luke): Dude! That’s MY SISTER.

Guess he has the protective sibling thing down. That guy kissing Gal Smiley on the bus better watch out!

Last night I attended a meeting for the heads of all the PTAs for all the schools in our district. Our School Board Rep has this meeting every couple of months so she can tell us what’s going on. The Chair of my PTA couldn’t make it, and asked if I would go instead (I am being GROOMED, people!).

I thought it would be very boring, but I was pleasantly surprised. There were squares! And cookies! And coffee!

That School Board really knows how to throw a meeting, I tell you.

Anyway, I learned all kinds of useful stuff and got all kinds of good PTA type ideas, and in general it was very interesting and useful.

The most interesting thing, for me, was a discussion of Early French Immersion, which is FI that starts in Senior Kindergarten. Apparently there is a 60% drop out rate for the program over its lifetime (i.e. between grades SK and 8, 60% of the original SK class will have dropped out of French Immersion). Scary!

The Board is trying to introduce new initiatives to keep kids who start FI in the FI program. Their biggest concern — as I’ve mentioned here before — is that as soon as a kid starts having trouble in school, the school recommends that they leave FI and move to the English stream. This is rarely a solution, as kids that leave FI in grades 2, 3, or 4 might be as much as two years behind their counterparts in English reading and math. So rather than improve their school performance, it might actually hinder it further.

The real problem is that there is no remedial help available in most schools for French students. So if a student is struggling, they have no resources and no tutors to help them out. They can only get this kind of help if they move to the English stream…or, if their parents are French speaking and can provide the help they need.

Eeep. Totally not what I needed to hear right now, when we are already feeling like our French skills will not be enough to see us all the way through to Grade 8. Chantal, I may be over at your house A LOT.

Anyway, it’s a very tough line for the schools to walk right now. The Board wants them to let parents know that when they choose FI, they will be STAYING in FI, no matter what. At the same time, they want to increase their FI numbers, so they want schools to assure parents that FI is suitable for any and all kids, no matter what their language background or current abilities. I think it’s really hard for a school to sell, sell, sell FI, and then tell any kids that chose FI who don’t like it that tough, they are stuck now.

My own school actually kind of tried to discourage parents from choosing FI. They did make it clear that switching streams later would be very hard and not good for your kid, so they wanted everyone who chose FI to be fully committed. They didn’t want any wafflers. I think that’s a good way to do it, but our Board rep would be quite unhappy if she heard that our school was warning parents away FI if they had any doubts at all. It doesn’t exactly fit with their “welcome all comers” policy.

Anyway, it was an interesting discussion, so thought I’d pass that info along.

Now, don’t get me started on all-day JK and SK in 2010…GACK.

One time I saw this movie called The Green Mile. In it, Michael Clarke Duncan plays a simple kind of guy called John Coffey.

When he introduces himself in the movie, he always says, “John Coffey, like the drink, only with a ‘y’.”

And the whole movie long I was like, “Cough-y? What the heck kind of drink is that? Something you take when you are sick? I don’t get it.”

By the third time he’d introduced himself this way, I was quite miffed, like, “I do not know this cough-y. Is this some sort of crazy down south thing? Why did they make this supposedly simple-minded character refer to some obscure drink that no one has heard of? THAT IS STUPID.”

By the fifth time he’d used the phrase, I was totally fed up, like, “WHY DOESN’T HE JUST SAY JOHN COUGHY LIKE WHEN YOU ARE SICK AND HAVE TO COUGH? THERE IS NO DRINK CALLED COUGHY!”

Then, like three years later, I was having a coffee one morning and suddenly I GOT IT.

Sometimes I can be very, very stupid.