finding cohen

i'm stuck with them, and they're stuck on you

2010-03-01T22:46:00.000-08:00

when i was a kid we lived in the suburbs of victoria in a place called colwood. it was pretty average, as far as these things go. like many kids back then i was often left unsupervised for afternoons at a time, building forts and attempting to catch cray fish in the stream. there are two places that contain most of my memories from back then, well outside of school, a cemetery and a golf course, both only a stones throw away from my house. the golf course was the more dangerous choice, oddly enough, with the occasional FORE shouted our way. we loved to look for lost balls, under bushes, or in the bottom of creeks. we would collect them, line them up and study their names, titleist and top lite, their colours mostly white, but every now and again there would be a fluorescent one (bright orange and it still got lost, my kind of ball). we loved the element of danger about the golf course, the electric feeling of doing something you aren't supposed to. there was a mystery about it that we couldn't resist.

my friends and i had a route we always took when we were on the course. first you needed to sneak through the hole in the chain link fence, make sure to look both ways so as to not get caught, and then run as fast as you could to the trees and hide. mostly we walked out in the open without a care, but there were a few spots where you needed to tread carefully, more windows in sight, or the clubhouse looming. where we entered was like that, but once out of the clear we were fine. singing tiffany songs or laughing at some dumb joke. being 10.

it was a hot day near the end of august when i first saw the building. we hadn't found any balls that day and started to wander off our usual path out of boredom. it was on the far side of the course, an area i had never been to before. it was so huge and regal looking, something out of a book. i wondered why a building like that would be here, in the middle of what had to be the dullest town in the world. all one side was windows, so many panes with stained glass. my friends didn't have any interest, they hardly even noticed, but i couldn't stop looking. i had to look inside, i needed to know what i'd find. i couldn't reach flat footed, so i pulled myself up with the sill to get a view. what i saw was an enormous ballroom, with wood floors and fantastic natural lighting. it was vacant. well not just vacant but in decay, the wallpaper peeling, dust inches thick on everything. in the corner there was a wheelchair turned on it's side, cobwebs filling it's wheels. i was terrified and captivated all at the same time. i still remember the way it felt to look up at the chandelier imagining one thing, and then to look down at something altogether different. i never forgot that, the enormity of it, to me.

then last week i decided to go into a house that is slated for demolition. the doors had been removed, so my access was relatively painless. i was curious what it looked like inside. i wondered if there would be anything worth photographing. what i found was a house that had been pulled apart from the inside out, pipes and sinks, tiles and windows, all removed for sale or scrap. the power was off leaving only natural light filtering through the space. it had that same magic to it, the beauty and the destruction all mixed together. i came back the next day to photograph it.

i later told a friend about the house, and the photos, and he told me that it is a thing, a movement of sorts. urban explorers. i guess it makes sense that it would be a thing, i mean, i didn't think i was the first to think of it, but it was neat, to discover something new. to find inspiration in a place you weren't expecting it. now i find myself reading about hdr and exploring wide angle lenses, scouring flickr groups, and finding photos like this. there is a beauty in that which has come and then gone, a reminder of our mortality framed in the perfect afternoon light. i would like more of that. preferably without needing a crow bar.

some of my photos (the whole set is here)

it was a short story to tell, over and over to myself

2010-02-17T21:51:00.000-08:00

i think it worth nothing that i found that graphic here, it's a site in which you pay either a "southern tech type" or a "sassy redhead" $5 a question to get the answers that will help you get your chick. this reminds me that i need to come up with an idea on how to take vulnerable people's money. the stamp itself though is more a testament to my inability to write everyday. i haven't given up yet though!

so should i give you the play by play of my drive in this morning, or perhaps a quick recap of the 100 calls i answered today? both incredibly riveting. yesterday, on the drive home, there was a car load of frat boys behind me for three blocks, they were singing and head bobbing to what i can only guess was some rap song about gettin' chicks. it may have been the highlight of my day. no wait, it wasn't. i remember now. i went down to the beach for my lunch, something i often do, and as i sat eating my leftovers and rocking out to my old lady music i watched a bald eagle hunting for it's lunch. diving in, back up, and then soaring in circles. the rhythm of the bird's movements almost seemed to be in time to the tunes. that was pretty good. the frat boys were a close second though. i think that is saying something.

whenever i call my mom she says, "so how are the kids?", and it just occurred to me that maybe you are wondering the same thing. the kids are good (which is better than ok, but less than great!). ada has a bit of a wet nose, and cohen is transitioning out of the nap, so it isn't all fun and games, but as far as these things go it is pretty good. tonight they ate hotdogs cut up in macaroni and cheese and it reminded me of being a kid. i like when that happens, this alignment of things that have been. it seems to happen more and more these days. maybe i am just looking for it.

my room is currently overwhelmed by the scent of hyacinth. it is my favourite flower, another kick back to childhood, and every year around this time i buy one of those bulbs in the little green pot for $2.99 from the IGA. i come home and place the green pot in a terra cotta pot and admire it. it makes me feel organized and more domestic that i have this little piece of spring a month early. i wait for it to bloom, and then once it does, i complain to myself about how strong the smell is. then it dies, and i feel the disappointed reserved for those things which we anticipate the most. it's my thing. the transition from winter to spring. this year's hyacinth is white, a deviation from the usual blue. 2010 is going to be my year of living dangerously.

hmmm is that really it? it looks like it might be, and it is only 10:30! i guess that means it is time to crawl into bed with my book. g'nite.

day eight (it was day seven in which i was supposed to rest, right?)

2010-02-14T20:21:00.000-08:00

as i mentioned, i spent friday night hanging around a couple of used bookstores, one of which had this gem of a book. i bought it for the inscription, because i have a soft spot for used books with inscriptions, but i also loved that below the pencil written price on the first page the witty bookstore nerd had written "watch out, everything you say is being blogged". i hope that isn't true. the book itself made me laugh though, in the good way. the grainy photos in the background were what really did it for me i think. i know it isn't entirely ethical to put these here, but it is just a taste of the book, and i thought you fellow bibliophiles would get a kick. it is out of print now, but if you are intrigued the whole thing can be found here used.

day six

2010-02-12T23:30:00.000-08:00

i live in vancouver, so i guess this post isn't going to come as a surprise. it seems to be the thing on everyone's mind. the olympics.

i swear it was only a few months ago that the city voted (or were asked to vote, i guess) and agreed that we wanted the games . in truth it was years ago now. the signs of their impending arrival were subtle at first, a new building being built, or a billboard, but then it became hard to miss. these days there isn't one bus stop poster or roadside ad that isn't olympic related. most of the buildings downtown are dressed up and ready to sell. they are here, there is no doubt.

i haven't really been affected personally. i live on the east side of town away from the action and although there is a venue at the university that has caused some rerouting for me, by and large i haven't been negatively affected, or positively either. which has been a bit disappointing. i think i thought that the energy would be so infection that you wouldn't be able to miss it, and although i understand that it may have proved true for some people, i have definitely had to go looking for it.

it was because of this that i was delighted to learn that the torch would be travelling down broadway last night at the exact hour which i had to kill before meeting friends for dinner. i browsed the used bookstore and watched as the crowds gathered by the dozens, and then hundreds. everyone was wearing red and white, people had their dogs wrapped in flags, or maple leaves painted on their cheeks. there was an energy, it was hard to deny. i started to wonder if i had tissue in my bag, it was looking like i was going to need it ( i cry when the national anthem is sung at hockey games). and then the start of the torch parade arrived and everything changed.

if you live in canada and went to see it, then this isn't a new story. i was taken aback anyway. there was a hippie on the patio sipping a beer behind me, he told his friend that it felt wrong to be watching this but he felt compelled anyway. it only took a moment before he picked up his beer and went back inside without saying another word. somethings can't be apologized away. you see, the actual torch is proceded by a commerce parade. first comes two rather large heavily branded coca cola trucks that are belting out some base heavy music with young people yip and yapping off the side, the announcer yelling into the air something about the history of the torch and then ending with a reminder that coke is a proud sponsor of the olmpic games. it was so overt and deliberate, it felt dirty. i started to look around at everyone wearing canadian colours and all i could see were coke bottles. it was depressing.

i realize that this complaint isn't a revelation. the olympics have long been more about selling something than celebrating any true human experience, but to witness all these people filled with a genuine sense of community, something i almost never see anymore, and then to have it infected with reality. it was no good.

not to lessen the experience, as to be fair, after the rbc dance party truck passed out all their plastic branded paraphernalia and drove on, and we came to the actual torch that was passed from one unbranded human hand to to another it had a certain magic to it, a connection with something larger. and it was worth it. i wish it didn't have to have everything else though.

tomorrow night i am going downtown to try and catch an outdoor concert. i am looking forward to immersing myself in it all. the crowds, the excitement, the happiness, it is going to be there, right? i have always been in the anti camp, like so many vancouverites i don't think it was the right thing for us in this economy and with our social problems. this isn't a unique opinion, it seems more people feel this way than the other. i have decided though, since it is here and done, that i should allow myself to be open for something great.

wish me luck!

day five

2010-02-11T23:44:00.001-08:00

as i look out my window i see the lights from english bay off in the distance. the way it shines through the clouds, a path through the sky. i went down there a few nights ago and i don't know what to say. for me it was one of those things for which there are no words. if you can, you should go. but then i guess telling people what to do has never been a good idea.

i am sorry i don't have more tonight, it is 11:45 and i only got in half an hour ago. i was out for sushi and bookstore browsing. now i mostly just feel like tucking in and tuning out. i did take some photos off my phone from today though. this is what february 11th looked like to me (i am sorry that i didn't get a photo of nick eating his banana cinnamon vanilla sundae, happy 29th!)

day four

2010-02-10T21:19:00.000-08:00

22 months. i won't say that it seems just like yesterday because everyone says that, and besides, we all know it is true. she isn't a baby anymore. she is a full fledged strongly opinionated, walking, talking, little girl machine. if cohen has a special place because he is the one that came after, the one that brought me back my joy, then she has one for reflecting myself back at me. i see so much of myself in her, some of it in looks, but mostly in her ways. she isn't easy with her smiles and if you walk in to a room she will probably run behind my leg, but she will peek out and she will consider it. there won't be tears of fear, but quiet contemplation of her next move. after ten minutes she will probably be asking if you want to see her dollys. she doesn't jump head first into anything and my heart is calmer for it.

she is a clever one. she likes to take off her clothes and change into something else when you aren't watching. it is not uncommon to find her room strewn with clothes that she has put on and decided against. it is always interesting to sit and watch her bring out new outfits, size them up for colour and texture, and then throw the unsatisfactory ones over her shoulder while muttering a "not that one". when it comes to which shoes, or jacket, or pj's you put on her she ALWAYS has an opinion. you are best to listen to it.

i fear that i am painting a portrait of a princess. i don't think she has verged onto that yet, and rest assured, if she does, her tiara will be taken away. mostly i just think she is a girl in ways i don't think i ever was. it is amazing how much of it is built in. the trains/cars/planes and clothes/dolls/kitchens. it is a constant struggle to allow them to be the thing they are meant to be and to encourage them to consider the other all the same.

her latest interests take her into the kitchen. she will spend hours at the kitchen sink washing the plastic dishes from ikea, putting them in the drying rack, and then promptly washing them again. she also pretends to make soup on the stove with a variety of items from around the kitchen, including grinding the salt, and breaking the carrots. then when she is done playing she gets down on her knees with the rag and washes the floor where she has been. with an "all done" and a toss of the cloth into the sink she is back into the bedroom to change again.

she loves books, but isn't so great at sitting through them yet. she usually wants to go get another before the first is done. and so far she seems to show a much stronger inclination towards art and playdough then cohen ever did. this pleases me. i need to have a fridge full of hastily drawn crayon self portraits, it was part of the contract i signed before becoming a parent if i remember correctly. but then i always have been a sucker for art.

it makes me sad to not be here with her all the time to watch her grow into the person she is becoming, but everyday when i get home she is there at the back door waiting, her arms outstretched, her face in a grin, "how are you mommy?" she yells and everyday i say the same, "i am great now that i am here with you my little bobada" (bo-bay-da). now come on, let's play!

day three

2010-02-09T20:45:00.000-08:00

when was the last time you sat down and wrote something with a pen and paper? was it a list, or a short note to let someone know to feed the cat? i wrote my brother a letter last week and just writing the 4 pages made my hand hurt. i hadn't written a letter for more than a year i'm sure. it made me feel sad to realize it.

i was walking on campus the other day and i took a peak in a chemistry class. every student, and there were a hundred or more in the lecture hall, was on a laptop typing. what does that feel like? all that clicking and the sea of facebook pages open while someone talks in vein at the front. you have the whole world right in front of you with the click of a mouse, there is no need to even look at the guy beside you.

it isn't that i have a problem with technology, well not entirely anyway, but more about how it has changed the way we communicate. now a days you write, revise, and revise some more. you can craft the character you want to be. it used to be that if you liked a boy you would debate calling him for several nights in a row, and then when you finally got up the courage, your hand would be shaking, your words coming out would be awkward and forced. you would be embarrassed. you would know by the inflection of their voice whether they liked you (although you would talk yourself into believing they did anyway). you grew a little every time you did it, by finding the courage and living with the consequences. if you like someone now you send them a text message or an email, it is delightful and witty. it is the perfect you. if you are lucky they write back and pretend to be their perfect them, but you get no tone or context, you are left to interpret the story yourself. if they don't write you back then you pretend it never happened and put it out of your mind. the experience was empty and soon forgotten. there is no tangible moment to hang on to for later, it is just a few words on a screen. it seems like it would be disappointing, but then what do i know?

i found one of my notepads the other day. there are dozens of them in boxes and drawers. mostly stuff i wrote a long time ago, back when i did it all the time. this particular one had a letter that i wrote years ago. i guess it never got sent. it was so great to read it, to remember having feelings like that. it's a record, just as all the angsty monologues i spewed out in the other pages are. it's the time machine i pull out on rainy night to take me back, to realize that this feeling is in me and always has been. so what will come of that? it seems like something we would want to save. i need to write more letters.

the one i found the other night opened with:

"I am stalling already. I am becoming lost in the words. I have never felt this way, thousands of things in my head and nothing coming out of the pen. The reasons are obvious. I am scared. I don't want to say the wrong thing or to say the right thing wrong. These are the things that we do to each other. A modern form of torture that manifests itself in beauty. Longing for the light of a new beginning under this cloud of a feeling that's never ending."

as you can imagine, it didn't end well. but how great would it be to get a letter like that now, written in green with a sketch of a tree in the margin. back in my day...

day two

2010-02-08T22:38:00.001-08:00

i've started listening to music again. well, i guess what i mean is that i have started to care about music again. there was a time not that long ago when i was keen on the scene. i wouldn't say i was very good at being a music nerd, but i tried, in the way that 25 year olds do. i went to shows and bought discs, back when people relished the liner notes, the layout and wording. somewhere along the way though i lost the ability to keep up, i started skipping music websites and before you knew it i had no idea what shows were happening. it has always been there though, waiting.

my friend nicole is my chief advisor when it comes to music. she hands me silver discs periodically and says "listen to this", and i do, and i dig it, and for a moment i am back in it. this is how it has been for a few years now, but then a couple of months ago i became friends with a guy at work who is really into music, he is younger and single, so it makes sense that he has the time and inclination to do it. he started making suggestions and i liked them, and seeing his enthusiasm for it made me remember the feeling of discovery, when you find that band that is great and hardly anyone has heard of them. it made me start reading pitchfork and the other day i even borrowed under the radar. every night i have been coming home to listen to a new album. so much new in a life that for awhile now has been a whole lot of the same. it is great.

the seed has been planted.

but the thing is, through all of this i can't help but feel as though i am an impostor. i feel too old to play the part. i know that sounds a little self deprecating, and i don't mean it to be, i am actually being serious. i mean you are either the record shop guy who grows old scraggily, he is always going to be the record shop guy no matter how old, or you are the kids that are just figuring themselves out and use music to do it. everything outside of that feels a little square, a little i get my music suggestions from the oprah show. maybe i have just been watching too many john hughes movies. i saw an advertisement for, actually i don't remember what it was for, but it said that 30 was the new 20, so maybe this is the decade when i get good at being the music nerd? or maybe it is just some slogan a marketing man came up with to make me feel better about myself. it doesn't matter much either way. i will keep making the perfect soundtrack all the same.

i think these might make the cut this week.

day one

2010-02-07T22:47:00.000-08:00

10:49 on a sunday night, i should probably be sleeping. at the very least i should probably go put the clean sheets on the bed instead of writing here. there is always something else that i should be doing. that i should have done. i slept in this morning until after 10, i can live on the edge and stay up a little tonight. now if only i had something interesting to say*. i take that back, i think i have a lot of interesting things to say, i am just not certain how one goes about saying them. practice and perfect they say.

i got ambitious tonight. it happens every now and again. usually it involves me coming up with some kind of creative project, completing a quarter of it before opting for a long hot bath and wine instead. sometimes i go back to the project, usually i don't though, which is why i recently purchased a bookshelf that houses, almost exclusively, my unfinished projects. i guess you could say that the shelf itself is a finished project though, i mean it got put up and has stuff on it, can't ask for more from a shelf. my ambition tonight though was of a culinary nature.

i periodically get together with a couple of friends and have a cook off. we drink booze, chop vegetables, and eat chocolate covered bon bons. in the end we have 12 meals to take home for our freezer. we each bring the ingredients for six of each of two meals. we wear aprons and talk about mad men. i think it is just as much about connecting with a past that doesn't exist anymore as it is about the food. it has been awhile since we got together though, and my freezer was empty, so i decided to have a party of one, well one and a lot of food. i didn't talk about mad men (although i might have had a moment where i thought about don draper) and there were no bon bons, but i had the booze and there was plenty of chopping.

when i first started working at ubc i was a clerk b in the admissions office. there was no clerk a, so b was as low as it got. my tasks were primarily made up of opening mail and filing dockets. it took zero skill and almost no mental effort on my part. i think it might still be the best job i have ever had. the filing was my favourite. hundreds of envelopes coloured coded and numerical waiting to find their home, the perfect spot just for them. there is a rhythm to filing that i never appreciated before, a meditation to it. my thoughts seemed to flow easily through the act. i am sure that if i had to do it for the rest of my life the story would read different, but i knew it wasn't forever, just a term position of 5 months, and i loved it.

chopping is not unlike filing. when chopping is combined with watching jon hughes' movies, it can be downright spiritual. so i chopped my way through some kind of wonderful, and sauteed for most of pretty in pink, and now my freezer is full and my contemplation cup brimming. time to oneself to simply get lost in thought is a rare thing when you are in possession of two toddlers, but then maybe i don't have to tell you that? it is why i love my commute everyday, and also why i love cooking.

the end result was (and i include this list here as i have tried all of these recipes and they are great, so maybe you would like them too):

3 chicken enchiladas**
3 spinach cannelloni
4 jars of chorizo spaghetti sauce
2 chicken pot pies
4 mexican lasagna***

now take a moment to imagine what my kitchen looked like after this. the stovetop alone was enough to make me want to run for the hills. so tell me, do you have any good recipes for the freezer? (and if this seemed to end abruptly it is because i am feeling guilty about the sheets!)

*although incredibly riveting, this post is not the most interesting thing i have to say (i swear)
**this is all cream and no veg so i add corn, red pepper and peas
***if you make this please note that her recipe makes enough to serve and entire congregation at her church, i am not kidding, well ok, i am kidding a little, but it is a LOT

everything that happens is from now on

2010-01-23T16:19:00.000-08:00

i am home alone on a saturday afternoon. being alone at the house is probably the rarest of time, a mystery almost, something never seen, and yet, here i am. my computer is in a little sunroom that was added on after this house was built, the floor is tile and the walls are yellow (or buttercup if you prefer). through the windows i can see north to the mountains and west to the ocean (i only know it's there in memory though, i can't actually see it). this means the sunset is my entire view at the end of the day, the birds migrating by the dozens to their overnight perch, silhouetted by the brilliant hues. i only get to see this two days a week, most days it is dark already before i get here. i love to just sit and watch the birds, i think this is partly why i am so fond of this. sometimes the birds do this in the bowl of houses i live in, circle around and around. i think one day i will have to make my own video.

the other day someone said that they were going to have a look at my blog to get to know me better. it made sense in context, i mean it was someone who i first got to know through their's, so it only seemed fair, but i couldn't help wonder, what exactly does this place tell someone about me? i don't ever read the archives around here, sometimes i will remember a specific entry and search it out, but mostly history is history, which is probably how it should be. never the less i was inspired to go in and search around the other night. i was amazed to see the things i wrote before i was married and had kids, it was a completely different place. no one read it, or those that did were either strangers or friends who love me anyway, so i didn't worry too much about how it was perceived. i remember feeling different about it later though, after the kids were born. as some regular readers know, i have often struggled with this space. i was tired of writing about my stay at home mom life, not because that life isn't worthy, but because my heart wasn't in it and really, i had nothing new to say. i tried just photos for awhile, but this isn't the best venue for that either, so then i just stopped (with the occasional putter along the way), which brings us to last wednesday night and me reading my archives. it was such a great exercise, to put it all out there and see the line from there to here, it made me feel like i had accomplished something, not word counts or stories, but emotionally and mentally, also, i took some pretty cool photos along the way that i didn't remember.

the earlier entries made me want to do it again, to make the quiet time to write fiction, or semi-fiction anyway. to be creative with words (and photos) again. i know that many of you didn't read this place back when it was called the way people run, which is probably what it should still be called, so i thought i would do a retrospective of the 10 posts i think represented each person i have been along the way and how i have run. the title of the links here were inspired by the 6 word memoir movement.

4.25.2005: i'm the best part of lonely
5.11.2005: tomorrow i'll be something altogether different
8.15.2005: what do you see in me?
9.01.2005: forever looking back i ignore tomorrow
9.12.2005: a minute's enough to change everything
9.22.2005: i came from there, here's better
2.09.2006: into the light we start again
6.23.2006: it wasn't the same before you
11.22.2006: the trees loss was my gain
6.22.2007: that first year changed everything after

i just realized that there wasn't anything about ada in those ten. mostly it is because after she came my life was a blur, a whirling cloud of chaos for so long. she holds this special place inside me, the way she reflects back on myself in so many ways. the post about that is yet to come though, so to be true to the story i should include this one.

so that's where i have been. i still don't know what it says about me though: that i have an unusually strong affection for the past? that as a person i could work harder at being less sad? that i am hopeful about what's ahead? all of them true and of course just part of the story.

i look forward to spending more time here in the near future, in whatever way i feel moved to do it. it feels like something i need right now. with a little luck there might actually be someone out there reading still.

a stitch in time

2009-10-18T22:47:00.001-07:00

i started a new project last night. i decided more than a year ago that i would like to make ada a quilt out of marko's old shirts. i put word out and slowly those shirts that were torn or stained fell into my fabric pile. i procrastinated on the actual making using the perennial "tomorrow" as my excuse, but then the other night ada woke up 3 times in the night from what i suspected might be the cold, and i decided that i needed to get on it, the great shirt quilt wasn't going to make itself. as for where i got the idea, i am not sure if i am reading too many blogs where women seem to miraculously turn something old and worn out into something new and wonderful, but i am aspiring to something, letting the warmth of delusion soothe me. so last night i was here watching the 30 rock premiere and cutting up the first of what has now become several shirts, and i got thinking about sewing and i, our rocky journey together.

i remember the first time i ever saw a quilt. wait, what i mean to say is that i remember the first time i ever SAW a quilt. i was with my brother, aaron, and we were at his friend's apartment. i was still in high school, he had just escaped. it wasn't an apartment that his friend lived in with her parents, it was an apartment of her own (well, with roommates) and it seemed so exotic and wonderful. i remember parts of it now and in truth it was mostly poorly lit and thrift store-ish, but back then it was something. truly, it was. i wasn't there long before i noticed the quilt sitting all alone in the corner. it wasn't even a real one, at least not what you are thinking. it was scrappy and smelled a little musty, mostly it was a mess, but i loved it. the creator had just taken old clothes, and sheets and cut uneven strips, some oddly elongated triangles, or rectangles that narrowed sharply at the ends, and had sewn them together with seemingly zero regard for colour, or texture, or flow. it was a fury of velvet and denim. so uninviting, and yet there was an energy to it that drew me in. i remember sitting a good part of the night staring at the sunken chair it called home. i thought about it later too, weeks and months after i saw it, long past the point in which i forgot the face of the friend who owned the home. it was the quilt that stayed. i was never quite sure why.

when i graduated from university my mom asked me what i would like as a gift. i got thinking about the quilt again, about how it must feel to make something with your hands, to place together all those colours and textures, to lay it all out and seal it with a stitch. i knew nothing about sewing, not one thing, i was a band student, we didn't have to take home ec, but i asked for a machine anyway. i would learn.

i had my machine for more than a year before i even took it out of the box. i was a bit nervous, so much expectation. thinking about a painting, or photograph, or quilt, is quite different than making one. i wasn't a fool, i understood this. as luck would have it though one day i happened upon a small out of the way sewing machine store and decided to go in. there was a lovely old lady in there (she looked just the way you are imagining complete with kittens on her apron) and she told me to come back with my machine and she would show me the basics. i was so excited i think i skipped the whole way home. and so it was in this way that i first learned how to fill my bobbin, and thread my machine, what a foot is and how to alter the tension. i was already making quilts in my head and they were wonderful.

what i didn't count on was all the stitch ripping and uneven rows, the unpredictable shrinkage, broken needles, and jammed machines. sewing is mostly about swearing and rage in the beginning, or at least it was for me. it was hard to see the colours and textures from the tears. i persevered though, through one, two, three full size quilts that were mediocre at best. i am sure none of them exist today, they didn't have what it takes to last. they were given to my boyfriend, my brother and my other brother respectfully. i was glad that each of them liked their quilts but i still felt defeated, they weren't what i intended, not entirely, i wished they had been something more. i wonder if the person who made that first quilt felt the same? i wish i knew where she was so i could tell her that to me it was perfect. to me it was the thing that made me make quilts in my head, even if it wasn't going to last and didn't have a colour scheme. i think she probably would have liked to know that.

i have since gone on to make a dozen or so quilt, but i have yet to make the one that i think is worthy of my dreams. part of it is knowledge, there is so much i don't know and i have never really had anyone to ask*, and part of it is patience and precision, two concepts that are key in sewing, neither of which i have ever been very good at. i don't know what will happen with the shirt quilt, maybe one day i will write about it and then you will think of me as one of those eco-bloggers that are able to reuse everything in their house, right down to their underwear (not really), or maybe i will end up with hundreds of perfect little squares that sit in a box, reminding me of who i long to be, always waiting for the next try.

* i now know kim over at milky beer who is a fantastic quilter, and will hopefully come and show me how to properly bind the shirt quilt, if i ever finish it!

i come from a land of plenty

2009-10-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here in my cubicle, the sound of fingers clicking on keyboards tapping me through the morning. The hum of the fluorescent lights a fitting backdrop to the upholstered walls and utility carpet. It isn’t bad though, I mean no one here calls me mom and if they want juice they get their own, or at the very least aren’t expecting me to do it, which is a refreshing change. I have been back here, at work, for three weeks now. If I said the weeks have been long I would be lying, they have flown by. The days seem to end before they begin, it must be the newness, the novelty. I don’t expect that to last.

Being back at work means being back to sitting all day though. Sitting, sitting, sitting and then, once the mood strikes, getting up and fetching a tiny chocolate bar (or three) from the snack bowl, or how about one of those girl guide cookies, it is for a good cause after all! And then I go back to sitting. And so it goes.
It only took about a week before I started to realize that the sitting could be a problem (I bought all those new clothes, in a size 8, I can’t bust out of them yet!), and so last night I hauled myself to the community centre (which is half a block from our new house) for the 8:15-9pm aquafit class. It might have been the best thing I did all week.

I managed to make it through the maze of hallways that led into the change room, wading through dozens of exuberant children fresh from their lesson, past overflowing showers and curtained stalls, finally making it out to the pool. It wasn’t much bigger than a hotel pool, and the lights were all out but for one which shone down right in the middle, like an aqua disco. As my feet made their entrance I was delighted to feel warmth between my toes, it wasn’t hot tub warm mind you, but enough that one wasn’t jarred awake. It was right about then that I realized that the 20 or so people in the water were all over 65, every one of them, and they were all staring at me with looks that seemed to suggest I was maybe in over my head, or at least in a place where I maybe didn’t belong. I hesitated, but only for a moment, I wanted to see this through. What’s the worst that could happen?

As we sat waiting for the class to start I surveyed the crowd. It amazed me how much the dynamic mimicked what you would see in a high school class. There was the old Italian guy that the ladies seemed to take a liking to, he was standing directly under the light, three women laughing loudly at his side. Attentive to his witty words, their body gestures lively. Then off in the corner was an Eastern European man staring him down, jealous that even now after all this time he still didn’t have what it took to make the ladies laugh, or maybe he was sad that he lost it? The asian ladies were off in their own corner warming up with enthusiastic over the head hand claps and loud chatter, happy to be out with girlfriends, so much to say. The asian men seemed more content to tread water while holding onto the side of the pool, large kicks and water splashing everywhere. Then there was me, alone, watching it all take place. At the very least it became clear that any shortfall in co-ordination on my part was likely to go unnoticed.

The instructor showed up and she too gave me a glance, maybe it was a double take, I couldn’t read what it meant. I buckled up and found a spot where I could see her. As she went for the stereo I was imagining traditional Chinese music (a staple of this particular community centre, and rightfully so) or maybe something adult contemporary but upbeat, perhaps a remix? It turns out it was full on techno and right from the get go it was all hands on deck. The moves were complicated and challenging and at one point I think I had to catch my breath. As you might expect the rest of the crowd was mostly just doing their own thing, following along when it seemed possible, walking in place when it didn’t. This wasn’t really about exercise for them, well not in the same way it was for me, it was about getting out and being social. Being able to say you left the house. There were moments when we had to move ourselves from one side of the pool to the other with sweeping side steps and complicated arm moves, the result was mostly people crashing into each other and then everyone staying in one spot out of fear. I moved up, closer to the instructor and wildly side stepped away.

It should be mentioned that the cardio room looks onto the pool. The demographic in there seemed much the same. There was an older man wearing not only a thick fleece hoody, but also a winter parka with the hood up while he pedaled away on a stationary bike. He seemed to be with a companion who rode the bike to his right, he was reading the sing tao out loud as he leaned heavily on his handle bars. I watched them intently as I lunged and arm flexed, a remix of land down under blaring over the system now (ah ha!). It was a scene almost too perfect, too comical to believe. There was even a lady who I suspect to be in her 70’s trying to work the rowing machine. After 40 minutes the wind down started and half the pool emptied, not much interest in strength training I guess. I was glad to be rid of the loud beat of the booming music (although I do like to sing “vegemite sandwich…”) and happy to welcome a little death cab for cutie and radiohead. It would have been relaxing if those ladies hadn’t started chatting again, oh well it’s their class, no need to rock the boat on my first day.

When it was over and the arm floats had been put back in the bin, I decided to try my luck at the sauna. It was a mostly male crowd, younger. I entered midway through a discussion about the Chinese calendar. Apparently, if you are born in the year of the pig it is better to be born between 6-9pm, then you will have a good life, anything in the morning and you are in trouble. I laughed when I heard it, and just like that I was part of the discussion. After admitting that I had no idea what year I was born in I was promptly told I was a rabbit. Very smart and wise is the rabbit, your face is a good face, a nice chin; you will live a good life! I guess good is pretty subjective really, and who am I to say he is wrong, I am not even halfway yet (I hope). Eventually the soothsayer left the wooded room and everyone laughed at his expense. The message was clear, he was a nut. It might be true, but I couldn’t help but say: “I don’t know, isn’t it better to believe in something rather than nothing?” It stopped the crowd in their tracks, and after a pause everyone agreed with nods and mumbles. Of course that opened myself up for a discussion about Christianity, which I should have seen coming considering the crowd, but I didn’t mind. It felt like community, and I liked that.

So what was the point? Maybe that you shouldn’t dismiss a party based on the crowd. Or maybe it's about opening oneself up to new experiences, how pleasant surprises are waiting for us all over the place if we choose to look. I need to do it more often. One thing’s for sure, I know where I will be next Thursday.

light of the...

2009-05-09T00:48:00.000-07:00

i love a rainy night

2009-05-07T21:46:00.000-07:00

duct tape

2009-05-02T23:31:00.000-07:00

never leave home without it.

wits end

2009-04-27T19:57:00.000-07:00

i bought a bottle of this and really liked it. i thought you might like to know.

i didn't take the photo, knightbefore-99 did, and saved me the trouble.

party of one

2009-04-27T19:21:00.000-07:00

2009-04-26T21:31:00.000-07:00

2009-04-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

maia's day

2009-04-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

at first i put five candles, but then marko said it didn't seem right, sadder somehow, a reminder of all the time that has passed without her. so one, a yellow one, the colour of stars in children's books, the sun, and the centre of daisy's. just one sitting there right in the middle, just as she does within me.

happy birthday to you, my little maia.

visit from old friends

2009-04-15T22:04:00.001-07:00

there is nothing quite like it.

apparently ada is one of those people that have to be in every photo, who knew?

easter weekend

2009-04-13T23:42:00.000-07:00

full moon

2009-04-11T22:52:00.001-07:00

you only turn one once

2009-04-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

i know that it would have been better to get a photo of her smiling, or looking at the camera, heck, even one without fingers in her mouth would have been ok, but alas she is not an easy one to photograph, so for now this will have to do. i am pretty sure it is more true to who she really is anyway. we are having some family over tomorrow, and we will eat cake, hopefully there will be plenty of smiles then!

i will also round up her monthly pictures before the weekend is up, so we can all take a walk down memory lane.

but since today is the day, happy birthday to you my sweet little ada!

bumping up and down in my...

2009-04-09T23:48:00.000-07:00

seawall saturday

2009-04-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

shadows and tall trees

2009-04-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

first haircut

2009-04-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

row on row

2009-04-02T23:03:00.001-07:00

season opener

2009-03-31T14:47:00.000-07:00

jumping over fences

2009-03-30T21:59:00.000-07:00

i recently acquired some pretty cool photo manipulating software called photo tools. it works as a plug in within photoshop and looks like it is going to be a lot of fun to play around with. i had intended to spend part of the evening tonight testing it out, but then i went for a run, and had an hour long bath while listening to the rain out the window, and now i am much too tired for computer things.

we'll see what tomorrow brings.

today special!

2009-03-27T00:11:00.001-07:00

trim & a shave

2009-03-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

bringing the court to order

2009-03-26T19:43:00.000-07:00

cohen's room is often neglected. i have never had adequate storage for it, and having to keep both kids clothes in there has proven messy. kids clothes in general are a huge pain, i mean they are constantly growing into and out of them, i feel like i need an inventory specialist just to keep track of it all. then we acquired all these little people toys which begged for shelf space, only i didn't have any, and so they would sit lined up against the wall (on a good day) looking haphazard and cluttered. the walls had leftover mounting tape from an art project that had long since been torn down. not to mention the left over christmas decorations and faded and limp artwork scattered around. the place was chaos and i felt like it was bringing the chaos out in the kids, so something had to be done. it took a couple of days but i think i have finally finished, i wonder how many more before it is back to a mess?

before

after

singing the tune without the words

2009-03-24T22:31:00.000-07:00

i know, i know, i said every day. old habits are hard to break. truth be told i have fallen under the spell of spring cleaning and have been spending most of my time scrubbing floorboards and rearranging furniture. i may have a cool before and after tomorrow to show you some of my handy work.

tonight i did make it out for my walk though and i had camera in hand. i got a strap for my tripod this week, so i thought i would test it out. i had some specific shots in mind and was excited to get out and shoot them, but after i set up the first one i realized that i had the 50mm lens on the camera instead of the 24mm, and that just won't do. it wasn't the first time i left the house wearing the wrong lens, i'm sure it won't be the last either. i decided to make the most of being out and continued walking anyway. i stopped into my local shoppers drug mart where i was greeted by this little fellow

i stared at it for nearly a minute, certain it was staring back. i was so captivated that i felt compelled to buy it, going so far as to scoop it up and carry it with me around the store, but then i changed my mind, turns out that he may just be too much bunny for me i'm afraid.

a few minutes later, after i was back on the street, i came across these

there were close to a dozen of them lined up, their cheeks illuminated by the street light. my first instinct was that they were offensive, imagining that they sing "pow wow wow wow, pow wow wow wow" when you press their buttons (?!), but then i wasn't so sure. they seemed sort of proud to be there, i am not sure they want me feeling bad for them.

i did end up setting up the tripod in the end to take one shot of the traffic. it wasn't what i wanted, but i will try and go out again tomorrow, this time with the proper gear.

oh, and because it was too cute to pass up, here is one of my little lady singing her song slightly off key

sharing

2009-03-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

it's been going really well over here, the sharing that is, i should probably go knock on wood now.

the road less travelled

2009-03-17T20:27:00.001-07:00

i have become somewhat obsessed with photographing alleys at night. i will spare you the dozens of shots i have already, saving them for a day when together they make something interesting. but i wanted to share this one. it's rather ordinary and not a great photo at all, and yet, there is something about it that compels me.

to do lists

2009-03-16T15:10:00.000-07:00

indoor days

2009-03-15T13:55:00.001-07:00

sways for you

2009-03-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

over the moon

2009-03-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

it's like one of those puzzles in the back of a children's magazine, can you find the mistake?

like a drop of water

2009-03-12T23:25:00.000-07:00

and now for something completely different

2009-03-11T15:45:00.000-07:00

i think i am going to shake things up over here, try something new. when i think of coming here and writing something, i sigh internally, and put it off. i don't have the words in me these days. so, for awhile anyway, i think this is going to become a photo blog, with the odd caption thrown in. i am going to try and post everyday with a photo, or few, that represent the day to me (not unlike klay's brilliant idea over at 100 days, thanks for that).

day one is easy, it was her eleven month day yesterday, and today she walked barefoot outside for the first time, so much to celebrate.

squish it

2009-02-23T21:50:00.000-08:00

cohen and i sat down for a little snack this afternoon. i didn't realize at first, but it was all orange, and i had put cohen's on a blue plate. blue and orange, a winning combination. looking at the plate i felt compelled to photograph it. it's one of those things that happens to me from time to time.

this is the photo

seems serene, doesn't it? everything was going alright, until we bit into our oranges and realized that they were pulpy and dry and everything an orange shouldn't be. i threw mine away, cohen had other plans. turns out he thought he should make orange juice.

also, because the last two have been about cohen, i will include a photo of the little lady, if for no other reason then i liked this one. she's a feisty one that ada.

yes, please

2009-02-19T14:03:00.000-08:00

cohen's language is starting to pick up. so much so, that if you were to meet him today for the first time you probably wouldn't say, "don't you talk? come on, say something!" (yes people really did). i am liking the talking. i am finally starting to get what all the fuss was about kids and the darnedest things they say. i have also come to the conclusion that the two year old needs the cute saying repertoire to balance out the unruly tantrums, without the cute quip it is just a tantrum, and no one wants that, especially me (enough with the tantrums, please?).

don't get me wrong, he isn't precocious or anything. i am still waiting for the uncensored truth spoken in line at the grocery store or the unending questions about the state of the world. these days the thing that makes me laugh the most is his use of "no, thank you".

a few weeks ago we were in fort langley with baka, and as we always do when there, we were checking out the old timey locomotive they have on display. it was freezing cold that day and once i could no longer feel my pinkey finger i announced that it was time to move on. of course he wasn't super impressed with that and threw himself onto the grass and started wailing like a tortured cat. thankfully this type of display is becoming less and less frequent, but it is nothing new, what was new was that in between wails he was yelling "no, thank you!, no, thank you!". polite in his fury, i taught him well.

the other day i was tickling him, he was in stitches on the bed, rolling and trying to push my hand away he managed to gasp out "no, thank you!" between giggles. don't worry, i stopped right away. after i endured several ticklings as a child i swore i would never do it to anyone myself, but that laugh is too cute, and let's admit it, it's fun. the problem was never in the tickling, it was in not knowing when to stop. i know when.

the best though was when my somewhat judgmental christian neighbour came over to ask me a question. cohen came running over as i opened the door, he was only wearing a diaper below the belt (not all that uncommon around here after nap time...or anytime really), and as a result she felt compelled to ask "where are your pants cohen?" while looking me dead in the eye letting me know that she was on to me. cohen didn't even skip a beat and answered with "no, thank you" and skipped off down the hall. it's good to know he has my back.

in other news i am going through that change of season i'm so depressed i only feel like eating and watching tv all day thing. it seems to happen to me no matter the season. motivation. so. hard. i have made it out of the house every day this week, but i can't do it today, i just can't. i know that the temperature is very likely in the double digits out there and that there is not a cloud in the sky, but it will have to wait for me. today i am sipping tea and letting the kids play amongst themselves. some days are just like that.

this is a list

2009-02-12T20:26:00.001-08:00

i saw a post over at lucky fish with a list of 15, perhaps a truncated take on the dreaded list of 25 that is all over facebook. i realize that it is kind of cheating, writing without writing, but that will have to do as i don't feel compelled to be here anymore, not since my camera up and left me, and yet at the same time i feel it is important. pushing and pulling, the essence of life.

15 things about cohen

1. he is obsessed with trains, i mean it, obsessed. when he is sleeping he sometimes mumbles and often, when i hear it, he is saying "tracks, trains, tracks, trains". i am not certain this is at all healthy.
2. he loves to help around the house, forever asking for "his turn" with the broom, and pulling his chair up to the counter to help cook (cracking eggs by squeezing his fist really hard while the egg is in it is his specialty!) or clean dishes.
3. he has a thing about open gates and insists on closing them when we are out walking. if the gate won't close properly due to improper installment or age, he appears to get agitated but he usually lets it go.
4. he loves tunnels, this mostly relates to number 1, but the interesting thing is what he calls a tunnel. first it was when we went under overpasses and now, when we are out walking, he insists that any sidewalk that has trees overhanging it is a tunnel, AND THAT IS THE WAY WE MUST WALK (preferably while singing "tunnel, tunnel, TUNNEL, tunnel").
5. he can pedal his tricycle quite well. for the longest time he couldn't do it, no matter how much we practiced, then one day he was on it and bamn, he was off. i am beginning to realize that much of raising a child is like this, wait and it will come.
6. he is having trouble learning his colours (what did i just say, something about waiting...). we are still not entirely certain if he is colour blind or just being a little stubborn. i thought he didn't know the alphabet, or his numbers, until i walked in on him singing the alphabet or counting to ten. i think colours might be the same. he knows it, he just doesn't want me to know he knows it. a man of mystery, that's cohen.
7. he has taken to climbing into our bed every night. at first he was discovered creeping in and promptly hugged and placed back into his own bed, but through practice it would seem he has perfected the skill of stealth. he somehow sneaks his way in to our room, lifts the covers, and then snuggles in beside me. that is where i find him every morning, his breath hot on my cheek. this sneaking and sleeping coincided almost exactly with ada starting to sleep in her crib. i am beginning to think it is territorial.
8. he loves the word and the practice of snacks. no, SNACKS! 4-5 times a day he gleefully announces that it is snack time and then proceeds to rifle through cupboards or the fridge (new fridge, tough seal, thought we could keep him out but he figured it out within two weeks. now he pulls so hard the door swings open and he flies into the stove). luckily he is happy to accept healthy snacks, no question though, he is going to be one of those teenagers that eats you out of home.
9. he hasn't shown any interest at all in making decisions when it comes to what he is wearing. i ask him if he wants to wear the red shirt or the blue shirt and he shrugs and says "yes?".
10. he has a sweet tooth and acts irrationally when cake, ice cream, gelato or cookies are involved. it is like a little monster awakens within him and demands "more!" he gets this from his father.
11. today we got a free bag of play kitchen stuff off craigslist and one of the first things cohen did was grab himself a mug and sit down by us, we asked him what he was drinking to which he happily responded "beer!" and then he reached out his mug and tapped it on mine with a boisterous "cheers!" i guess our home brewing is starting to wear off on him.
12. he most often uses his left hand for colouring and eating. marko is left handed, but i think it is too soon to tell if he is going to be in the end.
13. he calls my dad papa. nothing interesting there except that no one told him to call him that, in fact we always called him grandpa, but then one day out of nowhere he decided he was papa and now that is all he will call him. i still haven't figured out where he even heard the word?
14. he calls me grandma. seriously. he also calls my mom grandma. it has been going on for nearly 2 months. every day, 20 times i say, "i am not grandma, i am mommy", to which he responds with a "hurry grandma, come quick, trains off the track". i am trying to not make a big deal out of it and hope that it passes. i mean i know i have some grey, but really?
15. he is incredibly affectionate, insisting on hugs and kisses. he gives the best hugs of anyone i know. tight arms around the neck and a squeeze with a little nuzzle into my neck. hands down this is the thing i will miss the most when he grows up and doesn't feel like hugging anymore, because of that i take as many a day as i can.

15 things about ada

1. today she took her first unassisted steps. it was only two in a row but she kept getting up to try again and again. any day now she will be off and running.
2. she loves to eat. the only thing she doesn't like so far is green beans. her preference is little pieces on her tray which she can grab by the handful and stuff down her gullet. when she really likes something she claps.
3. speaking of clapping, she starts clapping whenever you play music (well that and bopping up and down) or if you sing paddy cake (she is even working on her "roooooollll it"). she loves music.
4. she waves goodbye only it is this more like a wiggle goodbye, she takes her fingers and crunches them into her palm and jiggles them, not moving her actual hand at all. it is significantly less weird looking then how i just described it.
5. she is in love with her brother. he climbs in the playpen and puts her in a headlock to smush her against the side mesh and she bursts into the loudest laugh, sometimes verging on squealing. she admires him in a way i wasn't sure was possible. they are going to be good friends.
6. she loves the bath, but insists on standing up, so they are usually much shorter than she would like.
7. she can let out a seriously loud fart for such a small thing. cracks me up every time.
8. she says mama and dada and tonight it sounded like she said ba ba (bye bye) on her way to bed. fingers crossed she ends up being a early talker, i think it would be much less frustrating for everyone.
9. she is wearing size 12-18 months clothing now. based on the way clothes fit her, i think she has really long legs for her age.
10. she is a pincher. i am pretty sure that she shows her affection by hurting the people she loves. my tummy and chest are covered with little cuts from her nails, kneading away as she drinks milk. grandma and baka have also been covered in cuts, necks, faces, arms. her love knows no bounds.
11. she loves to hang out with the shoes by the front door. she will pick up hers or cohen's shoes and try and put them on her feet. when she is not there doing that, she is often found dragging someone's shoe along behind her as she travels around the house.
12. she is shy and will play strange with new people. this took me by surprise as cohen wasn't shy at all, he has always been pretty outgoing, ada is more of a thinker. she needs to assess you before committing to anything like a touch. her affections are all the more sweeter though for having to be earned.
13. she sleeps on her tummy with her bum in the air and snores a tiny delicate snore. galena,who sleeps every night under her crib, also snores. it is the sounds of these two that lulls me to sleep.
14. she is fairly even mannered, not overly happy, but not miserable either, kind of like a pessimist with hope. her smiles don't come easy. she gets that from her mother.
15. she is coddled far less than cohen was and is permitted to do so much more, because of this she is growing up so much faster than he did. that makes me sad and yet also excited for the future.

list of good things

2009-01-28T20:54:00.000-08:00

watching dexter late at night with marko. we used to love to watch tv on dvd's, constantly searching for new shows to devour. it has been a long time since we have made the time for it. i am not sure what i think about dexter, but i think that is it's appeal, the uncertainty. i do know that i think about it during the day when i am not watching it, and that i can't wait for the kids to go bed so that i can watch another. i guess that means i like it, and yet at the same time i am pretty sure that i don't. we have only watched six episodes, maybe it is too soon to tell.

cbc radio 2 drive. i know, i know, it wasn't too long ago that i said i didn't like the cbc. turns out i just wasn't listening to it at the right time. i fell in love with the drive and rich terfry's voice a few weeks ago now, and then a few days ago i saw an ad for it on tv, you can imagine my delight when i realized that he looks like this. i also didn't realize that he was buck 65, which goes to show you how out of touch i am with canadian music these days.

marko's home made porter, which i have been drinking at least a bottle a day of for the last two weeks. it is easily as good as store bought. soon it will be gone and that will be sad. i hope the next batch, this time a traditional ale, is just as good. it should be ready any day.

the return of sunny, albeit still chilly, days. this morning i asked cohen if he wanted to go for a walk, he promptly replied "yes!", a revelation within itself as lately he wants nothing to do with leaving the house, and then he said "beach!", despite the distance i promptly took him up on his suggestion. it was great to be out in the salty air.

ada falling into slumber with ease and grace every night the last couple of weeks. this is in sharp contrast with her napping which has been grueling at best. some days she won't nap at all, not 5 minutes, a protest for being left out of something fun i am sure. we have resorted to much crying as it was starting to seem inhumane to keep her awake all day. i am hoping she tires of the fight and lays her head easier in the coming weeks, but at night she couldn't be different. i lay her in the crib at the designated time and she rolls onto her tummy, closes her eyes, and sleeps. it's that easy. sometimes she even sleeps all night, something i really didn't think was possible. i always assumed those people who claimed it to be true were just liars trying to show off. if she does wake up it is just once and then right back after some milk. it's important to acknowledge the good with the bad, so ada's sleeping at night, it's good.

our new fridge. the old one was from the early 80's i'm sure. it was rusted and leaked, not to mention the fact that it froze almost all of the food within it. it needed to go. after much bartering back and forth with the owner of the house it was settled and i went to home depot to pick a new one out. i have had it three weeks now and it is still as exciting as the day i got it. i threw out all the old bottles and jars that had been opened 5 years ago. it was time to make a fresh start. we'll see how long that lasts.

this vintage coat i bought at an antique market with silvija for $10. it is made in england and is 100% wool. it might be the cutest girls jacket i have ever seen. i can't believe it was so inexpensive.

the song kids by mgmt. i heard it on the drive and i couldn't get it out of my head. i downloaded it when i got home and i now listen to it 3 times a day. cohen likes to shake his bum bum (his words, not mine) to it and ada bops up and down. sometimes we watch the video on youtube as well. cohen tries to imitate the dancing. good times.

the tenth and final good thing is that it only took me 5 minutes to think of 10 good things in my life. i think i should do this more often.

watch your back, it's wet out there

2009-01-26T20:44:00.000-08:00

ok, after this i swear i will cool it with the poladroid, for at least a week anyway. i have to ask though, why is nostalgia so damn appealing?

i took this one tonight. the kids often have baths together now. more nostalgia i suppose. there were many reasons why i knew i wanted more than one child. i think the biggest one was cohen's social tendencies, his need for companionship. there is no question that ada's arrival was one of the greatest things in his life so far. quick to hug and kiss and slow to scorn, they have become fast friends. i laugh at how grown up she seems at this age compared to him. constantly mimicking her older brothers actions, she eats more food from the table and seems to understand so much more around her then i thought was possible.

in the afternoons when we get up from naps we have a cuddle puddle, an awful term to be sure, but i said it once and it has stuck. we all lie in one big pile and cuddle, our eyes half open, still mostly asleep. cohen often lets out big sighs of contentment while ada squeals with delight. it truly is something to behold, and makes up ten fold for the four o'clock crying festival which often proceeds the dinner time all hell breaking loose. the money is in the cuddle puddle, that and the night time bath.

i remember having baths with my brother. it isn't just from photos i remember either, i remember from actual recollection. i loved having a brother, no, i love having a brother. i love everything about it, even the really awful stuff. i love knowing that there is someone else out there who understands, who was there. family vacations, tree fort expeditions, lemonade stands and road trips to relatives for christmas. they were there. my brothers. that is the other reason i had more than one. i just couldn't imagine it any other way.

i hope that ada and cohen grow up close, that i am able to nurture that and see it grow. i know it will have it's challenges as they get older, more stubborn in their ways, but if i do it right it will work and then they will have what i have, the warm blanket of always knowing that no matter they will always have a best friend.

in case the photo wasn't enough, here is some video.

like looking through a fogged mirror

2009-01-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

in years gone by baka has indulged me and spent most of her evenings knitting various things for the kids. the first year, when cohen was but a babe, it was fairly ridiculous. last year it was more reasonable, but still, i took full advantage of her incredible talent. lately though her hands have been having trouble and knitting isn't as fun as it used to be, so this year she made me the cowl and a sweater/hat for ada, and then she asked if i would like her to sew something instead. it didn't surprise me to learn that she could sew as well as she knit, old world ways i guess. when she was a young women she went to special classes to learn these things, darning socks, hemming skirts, mending towels with blanket stitches, all things she has done here at my house for us, things that make me shake my head and ask, why not just buy new socks? lazy in my new world ways i guess. i have come to appreciate it all the same though, especially when i find an old sweater, the one i loved but had long since relegated to the top of the closet because of the unsightly hole in the sleeve, as good as new and neatly folded on the bed. i wish i had more "everything old is new again" and less "out with the old and in with the new". i suspect there is some philosophy in there somewhere.

so she asked and i happily accepted the offer of some sewing for ada. we bought tracing paper and i pulled out and washed up fabric, we talked pleats, debated over button vs zipper, and then baka fell ill. the last week she was here she was quite sick, lying in bed moaning sick. everyone but me got it, but baka got it worst. so it didn't look like it was going to happen, the sewing, but in true form she pulled out the machine on her last full day here and set to work (don't worry, she was finally on the mend). the idea was that i would watch closely, learn. i have been talking about making ada clothes since the day she was born. a girl! alright, i can make a dress! it has never happened though and to be honest i am pretty sure my sewing isn't up to speed for it, i probably could have used some of those eastern european home maker classes.

the problem was that trying to watch your mother in law design/cut/pin/baste, and sew a dress while watching out for two small children, one of whom is snotty and grouchy and insists on being carried and talked to, is akin to swimming with cement shoes, it is possible but only with the most determined perseverance and even then it is only for a short while. i did manage to pop in and see the things i was the most troubled about, the hem around the neck and arms, the pleat and the general assembly prior to basting. i think i learned enough to at least attempt a go on my own, and i got a pretty cute dress out of it in the end as well. i could tell that silvija was pleased with the result, she couldn't stop smiling, and immediately asked me to take a picture of ada in it so that she could remember. i wish i had a perfect shot of ada standing up straight in it so that you could get the whole picture, but i don't. it is grey wool, a fabric that i bought two years ago now because i fell in love with it and i knew that some day i would find something to make with it. i am so glad i did. when she was finished and saw ada in it she laughed and said that next year she will do much sewing. i can't wait.

with my own two hands

2009-01-22T22:13:00.000-08:00

baka went home this afternoon. every year when she goes i feel this strange mix of emotions, sad at the emptiness she leaves behind and relieved to have the space back, the routine. i have more to say about her visit, about the wonderful things she made, adventures we had, but i am thinking i should go to bed early tonight as i am back to 6 am starts (if i'm lucky) tomorrow and it is already past 10.

the photo up above features the toque my friend nicole made and a cowl made by silvija. nicole had made herself a toque i fell in love with, so with some cajoling she agreed to make me one (i really have to learn to knit). not knowing how much wool to buy i overdid it, and found myself with an extra ball in the end. when i showed baka some photos of cowls i was coveting on etsy she insisted on making me one to match the toque, complete with the enormous wooden buttons i had lying around waiting for a use. i think that silvija and i make a great team when it comes to hand made treasures, me full of ideas, her great at the execution. there is nothing like hand made things for kids (or me for that matter!).

i also thought it was about time for some new video, this one is of ada engaging in her favourite past time right now. she went on for another five minutes after the tape stopped rolling, i think she may turn out to be a bit of a talker.

hitting the snooze button and making it stick

2009-01-07T20:19:00.000-08:00

i only have a handful of blogs that i follow on a consistent basis. they are mainly comprised of people i know outside of the computer, and people who found me here and commented at one time or another. it would seem that i am a rather poor citizen of the blogging community. i don't really have a good excuse for it either, other than the fact that i spend most of my aimless internet surfing time gawking at random photos of complete strangers on facebook. don't lie, you totally do it to. so why do i mention it now?

well i mention it because it seems that everywhere i look this week the blogs are talking about sleep. needing it, missing it, loving it, overdoing it, and all this sleep talk has me feeling a little sheepish. a little too happy at my good fortune. i hesitate to put it out there for fear of retribution, but what the hell, nothing wrong with a little gratitude, right?

you see, marko's mom is here again this month. she makes the pilgrimage from croatia once a year and stays for an extended visit. one year it was for one month, and then last year for two. two years ago i was on maternity with cohen and it was nice to have the company, we took turns cooking and together we went for many walks and drank many cappuccinos (well, actually, make mine a latte). a month was too short. then last year i was back at work and we didn't have that time. she was generous and would always cook dinner before we returned from work, helpful to be sure, but i missed cooking. i also missed having that one on one time with cohen at night, i was at work all day, i needed him as much as she did. two months was too much. this year we have found the balance again.

silvija, or baka as she is known around here, is an early riser, usually sometime between 6:30 and 7. she just can't sleep past that time, it isn't part of her wiring. as it turns out ada also has this wiring, wiring that would have me pulling out my hair were it not for baka. our routine, the one i am so grateful for these days, has me waking for the day with ada sometime around 6, feeding her and then letting her poke my eyes or pull my hair until baka wakes up and comes to get her. then i tuck myself in and go back to sleep. i know, i am a bastard. to be fair though, things have been rough with the toddler the last couple of weeks. the last 3 nights he has woken up 3 times during the night. last night we even caved in and squeezed all four of us into our queen size bed, our necks and legs cramped by morning. so it hasn't been a total picnic, but close.

she takes ada and feeds her breakfast, and when cohen wakes up around 8, she feeds him too. i usually sleep soundly until 9, a couple of times even 10. i don't wake to anyone needing me, or screaming, just a couple of kids playing and a pot of coffee. who needs mexico when you have a baka around?

her and ada have become fast friends, and so she puts ada down for all her naps and at night too. she feeds her and changes her, and kisses her little cheeks plenty as well. i am already scheming on how i can make her stay longer, and dreading the 22nd when she goes home. it hasn't been long enough. not by a long shot. i don't know how i am going to cope when it goes back to just being me. i am trying not to think about it and instead just enjoying these last two weeks of sleep, and calm (sort of).

so there, that's my post about sleep. come back in a month, i am sure i will be singing a different tune.

problems with easy solutions

2009-01-03T22:56:00.000-08:00

i am trying to write this and watch northern exposure in a minimized window at the same time. it is proving to be a little like doing your taxes while riding a bike. i love that show, always have, and it is hard to not focus on the tv screen. i have paused it for now, we'll see who wins this battle.

so, it's the start of another new year. how about that. i managed to stay up until midnight for the big night this year. we had people over which i think was the main contributing factor to that, although who am i kidding, i stay up until midnight almost every night, it is 11:30 right now. still, a new year. with a little luck it won't end up being the year vancouver lay dormant under snow drifts larger than houses for the first six months. not that i am complaining, oh no, not me. we did borrow a sled from a neighbour for some alley walking, that was fun, and there was a snowman, but still, really? is all this necessary? i am starting to feel like i haven't left the house in weeks, and the garbage/recycling that is piling up under the deck and now, due to a serious lack of space, on top of the deck, is a little much. we did barbeque tonight though, snow be damned, and we all have the proper gear should the next ice age hit, so a little good, a little bad. nothing new there.

cohen seems to have found his voice in the last month or so and more and more he is not afraid to use it. "come on, quick, hurray, trains!" as he motions for you (or anyone else in ear shot) to follow him down the hall to his room. if you don't come right away he will return minutes later with, "uh, oh, i bumped the track, help?". the first 70 times i went and fixed the track, then i learned my lesson and since then he has been on his own, "oh wow, that's too bad, maybe next time you will think twice before you tear the track apart, huh?". this of course spawned the newest conversation which has him explaining to me that it wasn't him that "bumped the track" it was bob the builder and much to the contradiction of his reputation he can't in fact "fix it", as both him and bob seemed to need me on the job. he has also decided that he no longer wishes to use the word eight, so he says nine twice to fill the gap and keep accurate count. i wonder what it was that got between him and eight anyway?

we have forged into the world of playdough. so far so good. this morning it kept him occupied for nearly 40 minutes, which meant 40 precious minutes of not being asked to follow him to his tracks. phew. i also had him help me bake the other day. by bake i of course mean lick the beaters on the mixer (which i call a mix master, but apparently no one else does?). he almost fell off his chair with glee when he realized that those things came out and looked like a lollipop. i can lick one? really?

ada has been taking advantage of the home time to work on her walking. i have a walker for her but it is at a friend's right now and the snow has prevented me from getting it (well that and the fact that she was in ontario over christmas). never one to be deterred though she has been pushing an empty diaper box up and down the hall, stopping to bang her palm on the top and rock her knees to the beat. the girl has rhythm, no question about it. a couple of weeks ago when asked when i thought she might walk i said a couple more months, her knees still shakey, her stance much too vulnerable to actually step alone. this morning she was looking like it might be any day. that would be crazy though, right?

my camera died on new years eve. there was a brief period of gasping for air, teasing us with power and a will to survive, but then nothing. just a cold hard shell sitting on the table. now i am left with the crappy point and shoot i bought as a lark so that i would have a small camera in my bag, should i go out for drinks with friends and want to take arty shots of dumpsters on my way home. we'll buy a new one soon, i promise, but in the meantime things are going to be a little less sharp around here, although you never know, there might be some cool dumpster shots to look forward to.

in a nutshell

2008-12-25T22:46:00.000-08:00

snow, snow and then a little more snow. winter boots and long armed mitts adorning little hands as snowballs were thrown and snowbanks toppled.

spinach and ricotta cannelloni with garlicky caesar salad and red wine eaten in quiet without interruption as the children slept soundly in their beds, awaiting santa on christmas eve. butter tart squares and mom's shortbread with milky sweet cups of coffee for dessert.

grandma reading cohen's new christmas eve book, alphabeasts, by the light of the tree.

late night bailey's on ice and reading in bed

grandma and baka pulling still sleepy children into their bed as i slept just one half hour more

eggs benedict with perfectly runny yolks and crispy fried potatoes, glasses of orange juice filled to the brim.

cohen opening his gifts one by one as ada napped, his excitement brimming off of him and spilling on everyone around him. each toy was given plenty of playing time before another package was opened, the process taking all morning and part of the early afternoon despite there only being 9 gifts.

ada unsure about paper ripping and box opening, her brow furled as she watched on from a distance. stuffed cow we named jersey (despite the fact that it is a holstein) = ok, stuffed doll with hightop boots and curly hair = no thank you, take that thing away please.

a visit from my brother and his kids, the sounds of laughter and joy echoeing down the hall from cohen's bedroom

juicy roasted ham, scalloped potato's and baconed sprouts with a glass of pinot grigio and the good candle sticks lit in the middle.

tipsy after dinner walk in the snow with both mothers to buy coffee cream at the all night corner store, a stillness in the air

head hitting the pillow hard after a day spent with the love of family.

it was good year, i hope yours was too.

as is the custom around here, the slideshow is up. if you are new to this game then there are two warnings: 1. it is 200 mb and may take up to 10 minutes to upload 2. it is just pictures of my family and it will last almost 14 minutes and be set to cheesy music (although this year i didn't give the music a lot of thought and just put the songs that other family suggested, so it isn't as cheesy as years gone by). having said that though, if you have nothing better to do, or happen to be family (or are friends that are like family) then it just might be your thing!

it wouldn't be a highlights reel without some photos, and of course by now you know where you can find the rest.

first night of winter

2008-12-21T21:59:00.000-08:00

there is no end in sight

2008-12-21T19:24:00.000-08:00

i first met her a couple of days after i moved into this house. her name is irene and she lives in the little grey house across the street. she is elderly, into her eighty ninth year now, and rather grey looking, much the same grey as her house in fact. she has this warm voice that immediately makes you think of wisdom and experience. i was drawn into her the moment i met her. it only took a minute though to realize that she wasn't completely there mentally, her stories repeating like a broken record, her stare unwavering. marko and i entertained her cyclical conversation for five, maybe even ten minutes, and then we made up a reason why we had to leave. she was enamored with ada, touching her toes and smiling off into the distance.

i just realized that i am talking like she is dead, but she isn't. this isn't about death at all, in fact it is almost about the opposite.

mostly the relationship that i have shared with irene has been from afar. i later learned that she lives alone in that house, except for the home care workers that come to see her for an hour here and an hour there, making sure all her ducks are in a row, pills taken, stoves turned off. she has lived there, in that very house, everyday of her 89 years. in fact, i am told, she was born there, in the grey little house. she lived with her parents and then when they died she stayed on and kept living. she has a sister who wants to put her in a home, but irene knew what was coming for her and she made it clear before it was too late that she didn't want that, she wanted to die in the home too, it only seemed right. so she is over there, across the street, doing whatever it is she does all day, and waiting.

a kilt maker by trade, she worked for a fancy boutique on granville street, but one day, when she couldn't take her boss anymore, she decided to try it out on her own. legend says that she was even commissioned to make a custom kilt for the queen. "it isn't easy getting it just right you know, not just anyone can do it". so she lived with her parents and made kilts for the queen and never left.

all through the summer i would watch her as she sat on her front steps. it is a steep set of stairs that leads to her house and she would often sit, in the early evening, right in the middle, and she would look around carefully like a cat. her face was always set the same, serious with deep lines carved into the skin. sometimes the soft last light of day would hit her just right and i would grab my camera, but i couldn't take the shot from my house, it wouldn't work through the trees, and i was much too afraid to ask her. i dreamed of that photo though, every time i saw her out there, it must have been two or three dozen times. often as people walked past she would say hello and they would say hello back, a familiarity seemed present. if a block has a matriarch i guess she is ours.

i have come to accept that i have a bit of a fascination with irene. i think it is because i don't understand what it feels like to stick something out so fully. sometimes i wonder if it was giving up more than staying put though. i have often thought that irene's story is a sad one, tragic even. no children or grandchildren to fill her quiet life with joy, hardly any visitors and then alzheimer's to leave you confused and frustrated. she has people who come and take her out, and others that bring baking and groceries by, but by and large she is in the house, alone.

i was brought back to thinking about irene this afternoon as the snow fell. you see, living in a house there is a certain amount of work that needs to get done, garbage taken out, leaves raked, lawns mowed, that kind of thing. periodically throughout the summer i would see someone over there mowing, or raking, but i never gave it much thought, i guess i thought she had a gardener, but then today something unexpected happened. after more than 8 inches of snow fell, leaving everything white and new, six of my neighbours showed up in front of irene's house with shovels in hand and they cleared her walk, her stairs and iced, and then they each went back to their own home. a few hours later they came back out and did it again. there seemed to be a silent understanding. it wasn't just adults either, a couple were teenagers, no doubt sent out by their parents, but there they were out none the less. for me it seemed like a scene from a christmas movie, the cheesy moment where everyone comes together and spreads love, or something, only in real life it didn't seem cheesy, it seemed kind of incredible.

when i saw another neighbour hours later and i asked about it she said that they all pitch in to help, that it was each of my neighbours in turn that i had seen mowing the lawn or raking the leaves last summer. "some who can't help physically bring by baking and dinner already cooked", she said. even the wreath hanging from her grey door was brought over by someone who thought she could use it.

i have never known this vancouver. i have never even heard about it through legend. it seemed like a scene from the seventies, when no one locked their doors and everyone had neighbourhood barbecues. too good to be true, and yet it is. everyone doing something that gets them nothing in return, other than the right to say they are a community, that they are neighbours in the true meaning of the word.

i am not sure why i wanted to write about her tonight, so many times i have thought of it and turned it down. maybe it is because i am a pessimist, the one in the room who can be heard whispering, "i hate people", but then there is this, the opposite of what i have known, and it filled me with optimism and hope. maybe it is because i think her story needs to be shared because maybe that is what she is to bring to the world, a reminder of the way things used to be, could be, everywhere again. if the worth of a life is the mark it leaves on the world, then from over here it seems like she is doing alright.

sometimes once is enough

2008-12-08T20:34:00.001-08:00

my kids don't like to shop. it's ok, they are in good company, their parents could usually do without it as well. i rarely take them to the grocery store, opting instead for late night superstore runs alone, and although we do take them to costco on the weekend, it usually involves snacks and a lot of looking at toys. my mom says i am not doing them any favours by avoiding it and she is probably right, but i am doing myself one, and sometimes that has to be enough. i know one day they will grow out of it so until then i just don't do it.

of course every now and again an exception needs to be made, usually out of necessity, or on days like today, out of sheer unbridled optimism and a need to torture myself. i am a sucker for tradition and am more than a little sentimental, so i wanted a photo with santa. i thought of going back to kingsgate mall and having it done with possibly the worst (and most drunk) santa in town, but then i thought maybe i should branch out, you know, now that i have a car. so we went there, the most dreaded place of all. i had read about the train over at the cheeseblog and thought cohen would be interested, a little tit for tat. i buy three items from three different stores, make him take a photo with santa, and he gets to go on the train. i probably don't have to tell you what happened.

we went into old navy and he started moaning, then there was a little arm flailing, and verbal protesting, but i persevered. i wanted to see if they had a cute christmas dress for ada because it occured to me last week that i have a little girl and she can actually wear things like a christmas dress, and it sounded kinda fun. even i lost patience in old navy. the music, the bright colours. nothing immediately caught my eye so we left.

next was winners. we only made it past the front door and ada started crying. i decided that i didn't need it that bad.

so we found santa's castle and much to my delight there was not one person in line. i am led to believe this is a christmas miracle unto itself. ada started crying before i even attempted to hand her over. i have learned in recent weeks, through various christmas soirees, that she is not super keen on strangers. cohen was fairly outgoing at her age and rarely played shy, but she panics whenever she smells unfamiliar. it usually isn't just a whimper either, more of a wail, some might even say a blood curdling scream. santa was obviously not on her list of laps she wanted to sit on today. the nice photo lady told me that i would have to be in the photo if this was going to happen. great! good thing i had a shower and brushed my hair before leaving the house today instead of just putting on a hat and then taking it off before the camera clicked, trying desperately to part my hair with my fingers. cohen wouldn't sit on his lap either. he just stood in front of him eyeing him up, cocking one eye in confusion. finally st. nick asked if he wanted to sit on the seat beside him. cohen thought about it and then obliged. as she focused the lens santa laughed and said, "i guess my job is easy, no one is even sitting on me!" it seemed like a strange thing to say, but he does sit in there all day, it must make you a little weak in the head after awhile.

we don't get the photo for a couple of days but i am sure cohen will be grimacing and leaning away from santa in a grotesque manner, i will have my hair sticking straight up with a look that says "this probably isn't worth it", and ada will look like a deer caught in the headlights, only with huge wet crocodile tears pouring off her cheeks. so in other words, it should be pretty good.

the train was a success, but then we had to leave because i can't just ride a train all day, well i could i guess but i didn't want to. when good things end two year olds generally don't nod and say "thanks mom, that was fun! i guess we have to go now". i pretended that was what he was saying though as he demanded "no! train! go!" and then cried and cried and cried.

it was an adventure, no doubt about it, but it's true, sometimes once really is enough.

evening out the sides for balance

2008-12-04T14:04:00.000-08:00

the house is quiet right now. mostly anyway, i can hear cohen snoring down the hall, yet another thing he picked up from his dad. i am alone in the silence and it is beautiful. i haven't had much of this all week. it has been a tough one.

when cohen was ada's age it was common practice to lie down next to him in our bed for nap time. when he fell asleep i would wedge pillows on either side of him and then get up and attempt to be productive (except for days when i gave up on productivity and voted for napping instead). i would keep the house quiet and listen to hear him babbling upon waking. it was a system that worked. some people rock, or cradle, or stroke soft little foreheads, we always laid next to him. we still do most nights, so it wasn't a surprise that this is the same approach we would take with ada. this method became null and void near the end of last week though when she fell out of bed for the sixth time (five here, once at grandma's). i know, i know, six?!? there should have only been one i suppose but i kept tempting fate, believing i would get there fast enough when she woke, and probably a little of being lazy as well. it would work if she wasn't so quiet when she wakes up. silent. there is no other time in the day when she is quiet. she makes parrots and monkeys seem sedate, always singing and shouting, or crying. all the time, except when i want her to. she is that kind of a kid.

so last week when she fell again without warning i decided that enough was enough, never again. sleeping has been a disaster ever since. she doesn't want to be rocked and will pinch your cheeks hard and then harder until you stop with the rocking. cradling is a no go as well, fidgeting and rolling over in my arms is her solution for that one. i tried lying down with her on the living room floor on a blanket but she wasn't going to be fooled, the moment i thought she was asleep and attempted to get up she started to crawl away, smiling. so then what?

crying. that is the cold hard fact here. it is either crying, letting her stay awake all the time, or going for trips in the car every time i want her to sleep. the last one does seem tempting and might even be the solution if cohen wasn't so uppity about leaving the house. so we have been letting her cry to get to sleep. this has worked out ok so far at night, as she goes to bed before cohen, but for naps it just isn't working. she has stamina and conviction, she is, as they say, a tough cookie to crack. so i let her cry and then i go lie with cohen, but then her cries step up a notch and i feel i should go see her and cohen gets up to follow me. this goes on for half an hour or more some days. he can't relax if she is crying and i can't go in and calm her (somehow?) if he is awake and stepping on my coat tales. it is an impossible predicament. napping with two takes impeccable timing, rock solid instincts and significantly more patience than i currently possess. today the process took 2 hours. 2 hours! just when i threw my hands in the air and thought "to hell with both of you, if you don't want to sleep then fine don't sleep, see if i care!" i look in and he is fast asleep, exhausted from his attempts to foil me. today it was 1:45, a decent time. yesterday it wasn't until 3. i guess i should just be glad he naps at all. i know.

right now i am glad to have this moment of silence. i think i will go make myself a cup of tea. of course as soon as the water is boiled one of them will wake up, that is just how it works. until then i will let the fantasy be real.

this is the latest in an installation i like to call "cohen's head wounds". this one was achieved last night when he ran into the car door. ouch.

turning our blue day red

2008-11-25T19:28:00.000-08:00

i am certain that the above scene would have made marko more than a little nervous. him and i don't see eye to eye on the use of paints in the house. i see where he is coming from, why risk such an enormous and unnecessary mess? he says i grab too tightly to hippy ideals. i am not sure i would use the word hippy, but i have been known to utter something about allowing the freedom to express ones self in an artistic way, even if it means splatters on the wall. i should back up and say that i am all about expressing oneself in all kinds of ways, not just artistic, although i won't lie, i get a certain type of joy from seeing my kids express themselves with colour. it wasn't that crazy anyway, there was newspaper covering the floors and the paint was as washable as they as come.

besides, i seriously contemplated, albeit only for a moment, having them both get down on the floor and finger paint together. i would have done it, but the logistics of the after huge mess bath got in the way. that good time may have to wait until spring.

29 months

2008-11-18T21:05:00.000-08:00

** if sentimentally saccharine blogs make you queasy then you are going to want to sit this one out, consider yourself warned **

i meant to write this post on monday, but then like most things, i completely forgot. i had to use the fingers on both hands to add up the number of months. i get asked often for the number and every time i have to do the same. no space left in the brain for that tidbit of information i guess, or my brain is easily fooled by how it keeps changing.

as most of you know i don't do these updates on cohen anymore as the blog has become mostly anecdotal. this month seemed like a good time to shake it up though. you see, for the first time in a very long time things have been going well, better than well, i might even use the word perfect (albeit very quietly). for a few months the tv was on around here almost non-stop, i couldn't figure out sanity any other way. these days it is hardly ever on, opting for playing at home or embarking on adventures instead. often the two of them play together in the afternoons while i make dinner, a time that was previously far too difficult to manage without the tv. i didn't think they would entertain each other until she was at least one, but it just isn't the case. they have become fast friends and can't seem to get enough of each other. seeing them laughing at a game of peek a boo, or chasing each other on hands and knees around the kitchen table makes it easy to remember why i entered into this arrangement of insanity. it brings back those feelings from when cohen was brand new, the overwhelming joy that seems to fill you to the edges.

this wasn't supposed to be about me though, it was about cohen.

when i was a child i was shy, painfully so. i would well up with tears at the very suggestion of an uncomfortable situation. i lived more within myself then out wild in the world. reading was my passion. i didn't make friends easy because i didn't have the courage. i always held back. there is still some of that here with me, i'm sure, but i'm not the same anymore. life trains you to change, to adapt. still, i always envisioned my child being quiet, reserved and shy, someone who curls up in bed and reads pictures books all afternoon. it's crazy i know, but there it is. of course cohen isn't this at all. he is more like marko as a child, exuberant, full of life. he lives close to the edge and puts himself out there any chance he gets. every park visit is an opportunity to meet someone new. he sizes everyone up as we approach the playground, and decides who he will engage in a chase or a slide. if his target rebuffs his attempts he just shrugs and moves on to the next. he thrives on making friends. he is brave, perhaps too much so. he always gets back up and tries again, even when he shouldn't. he doesn't like being told what to do, or having his clothes changed. he is fiercely independent and yet he continues to want to cuddle. each morning he drowsily stumbles from his room to ours and climbs into bed next to me, puts his warm little head in my armpit and doses off to sleep for another few minutes. he is easy with his kisses, if you don't ask too much, and when he is in the mood will give a hearty pat with his hugs. he is always challenging me, but he also makes me laugh more than anyone else i know, so i forgive him his stubbornness.

since my last post he has become somewhat obsessed with the fridge, spending a good part of the day opening it and bringing me various items from within it. a plate from the cupboard and a container of yogurt delivered with a grin. when he is not opening the fridge he can be found perched on any of a number of surfaces turning on and then off the light switches in each of the rooms. "on!", "off!", stir and repeat. his other big thing is cleaning and organizing around the house. i know, you are all saying, really? i didn't see it coming from him either. he loves to line all his cars up in one long row with the fronts facing one way, "one car, two car, three car...". he won't sit in his booster chair if there is even a scrap of food from the meal before, and him and the dustpan have become close friends. at the end of the day when it is time to clean up the toys in his room all i have to say is "clean up" and he is taking apart lego and throwing books into the basket. this is such an enormous departure from where we have been that it leaves me a little dizzy. in fact, in general he is becoming so much better at listening and reacting in a timely manner. it is almost as if by learning to switch the light on and off in the house, he was able to do the same within himself.

language is still a work in progress, these things take time. he isn't one to say the alphabet when asked, but the other day while i was doing the dishes he sat at the kitchen table with his cars and sang the alphabet song (it doesn't help that his dad, raised in yugoslavia, doesn't even know the alphabet song). he also counts to thirteen when he is by himself (why thirteen i don't know). in general he won't answer a question or recite anything if he perceives the listener to be too eager. this stands to reason with him though. he is starting to say thank you, well "tank choo" on a fairly consistent basis and "dove choo" which seems to mean love you. so i am pretty sure he will be telling me some crazy toddler stories soon. i can't wait.

this afternoon while ada napped, i thought cohen and i could have our lunch in bed. we were at the library this morning and got a tape on visiting a farm. i made grilled sandwiches, washed some grapes, and brought lunch in on a bed tray. his eyes lit up when he realized that he was going to get to eat lunch in bed. i tucked myself in beside him as he pointed at the tv, and exclaimed "cow! mooooo", his excitement at the world bubbling over. pulling the covers up over my legs, i couldn't help feeling overcome with the enormity of it all. i know it is ridiculous to say, but after dredging through the trenches for so long, the sun seems sweeter somehow, warmer on my face. the best 29 months of my life, no question about it.

did you see what just happened?

2008-11-15T11:00:00.000-08:00

last night cohen woke up around 11pm. this isn't so unusual. normally he would start to cry or moan, or he would run out into the living room with an exuberant "hi!". it is the latter that you need to worry about. nothing makes him get back to sleep when he's ready to party. last night was different though. we might not have even realized he had woken up had we not heard the faint pitter patter on the wood floor. he went straight into the kitchen, opened the tupperware cupboard and pulled out one of his cups, then with his eyes still half shut he opened the fridge, pulled out the juice container, and walked over to my desk. he stretched both arms out to me and muttered "joosh". i poured an inch or two in the cup and handed it to him. he tilted it back draining the glass, then handed it back with a "tank you". what came next is the crazy part though, he turned around and walked back to his room, climbed into bed and went back to sleep. on his own. without a fight. seriously?

marko didn't see it all happen but knew he was awake, so he said "you want me to go put him back?". when i told him what happened he said, "what?". what indeed. i like to think it was his penitence for the sleeping week from hell, but i can't help but wonder, do you think there will be a day when that happens all the time? it gives me hope.

**i know this photo has nothing to do with the post, but i like it, so i put it anyway. it is the view from our living room window. the tree is almost naked, which means raking is almost done. phew.

a liquid cure

2008-11-14T20:48:00.000-08:00

after a couple of weeks of holding, twisting, licking, shaking and tipping, today she finally figured it out. oh how her eyes lit up as cohen's watered down juice hit her tongue. she's got perseverance, i'll give her that.

out for a walk

2008-11-14T16:14:00.000-08:00

a new take on an old idea

if you could only take one

2008-11-11T20:57:00.000-08:00

the rain was coming down hard today as i waited in the parking lot outside marko's work. i have only listened to the radio a handful of times in the last five years, having gone full speed ahead with modern technology. it is shameful, i know. the closest i have gotten is subscribing to several cbc playlists. i almost never remember to actually listen to them though, they sit in my itunes for months and months before i get around to deleting them. having a car has changed all that. we do have a six cd changer and a tape adapter for the ipod, but i usually just put on the radio. maybe it is my attempt to stay current with the times, or simply an act of laziness, either way it didn't take long to realize that the radio is fairly awful (exception being the cbc, but often it doesn't do it for me while driving). so today i am sitting there listening to some song i have heard fifteen times in the last week, feeling slightly agitated, and i finally decide "enough!" and put on a disc. it was james taylor.

i don't know what it is about this guy, but he has it in spades. somehow just the sound of his voice takes me to a happier, peaceful place where livin' is easy.i imagine this is what it is like for a baby to put a pacifier in it's mouth. listening to carolina in my mind today i thought of this post over at the cheeseblog. it would seem that in these troubling times as a parent that perhaps music is the thing that takes us back from the edge. i am not going to say he is my favourite, i am not sure anyone is, favourite being the jargon of the young, but i am fond of him, and were i told that i could only have one disc with me on the stranded island, his might be it. i don't even have any particularly pleasant memory that involves him, i suspect it wasn't, and still isn't, cool to admit to liking him. i'd bring him anyway, cause i know that after a few weeks the desertedness of the deserted island would start to wear out it's welcome, the stress would kick in, and i would need sweet baby james to wash over me like a blanket of calm. too much? probably.

so tell me who you would bring if you could only bring one. or tell me why i am wrong and i would ultimately wish i had acdc's back in black with me.

seven months

2008-11-10T22:28:00.000-08:00

if i was going to sum ada up in one word, i suppose it would be strong. since she was just a few days old it has been the one trait that everyone makes mention of, that and her big eyes. she wasn't even two weeks old when she started rolling from her back to her tummy (& immediately refused to sleep on her back), and tummy to back followed shortly after. by the time she was 4 months old she could sit on her own, although there was a bit of a lean, and by 5 months she could get herself from lying down to sitting up with ease. these days she is a master of crawling, so fast that sometimes i lose track of where she is in the chaos of our house and will find her down the hall in the bedroom. always looking for new adventures, she has now branched out to standing, and spends almost all day standing at various perches around the house, cohen's train table, the ottoman, our shoe bench. she loves being at cohen's level, able to get at all of his things. which is ok with him, since they are quickly becoming best friends.

she is strong in other ways as well. at the halloween party a child who looked to be a 18 months grabbed the toy she was playing with, but instead of crying she lunged herself onto the child, tugging on his rhinoceros horn. he cried, then dropped the toy so that he could run to his mom. ada smiled and picked the toy back up. having an older brother makes you more prepared for this kind of thing i think.

she is also strong willed. so far she is the most interested in galena's cat dish, the cord maze under my desk, and galena's tail. no matter where we put her down in the house she will immediately take off to one of these three things. she is determined, and much like her brother, becomes frustrated when her plans are thwarted. lucky for me her scheming is fairly predictable so far, i know it won't always be the case.

this was taken last week. you'll never guess where she learned how to do it...

well on our way to hillbilly village

2008-11-09T20:55:00.000-08:00

today we went to trains 2008! it is the third such show we have been to this year, what with a husband who aspires to be one of those "train people" and a boy who runs around all day yelling "choo choo, all aboard!", it was little wonder that we found ourselves deep in the heart of burnaby, basking in the glow of the gymnasium lights. this show was supposed to be better than the others, it was "the" show of the year. i was underwhelmed, if that's a word.

still, there were trains! and they "choo chooed!" so for the boy it was a pretty good time, and really who are we kidding, it was because of him that we went anyway.

one thing that always strikes me as odd at these things though is how abrasive the train men are. sure they are old, having taken up trains as a way to pass the time in their retirement, and so they are more prone to grouchiness, but still, it is a train show with a kidz zone (as a society we really have to stop doing that), there are going to be kids. there were sideways glares and downward smiles at every corner. turns out they weren't super cool with the whole stroller thing. i guess i don't blame them, they are done with kids, they have moved on to trains, and this isn't a game, it is serious business. they don't need little people running around making things fun, someone might have a heart attack.

as you can imagine there was a lot of shop talk, and if you think computer people are the ultimate geeks, you have obviously never been to a train show. however, for all their grouchiness (and i should be fair here and say that not everyone was crotchety, in fact some people were over the top friendly and interactive with cohen), i have to hand it to them, they put a lot of work into these layouts and have found something to keep them smiling (when there is no stroller around, presumably), so good for them. still, i secretly hope that marko doesn't become one of them, although i think he is already well on his way.

in like a lion and out like an elephant?

2008-11-03T22:34:00.001-08:00

we have had the car about a month and a half now, not very long in the grand scheme, and yet sometimes i forget what it was even like before we had it. i can't believe how quickly the progression from refusal to drive, to terrified but out there, to excited at the prospect, to resentful at the chore was. most days it seems like work now, not that i am complaining, i am not, the car has hands down made my life more enjoyable. our mornings are often filled with drop-in gym time at one of four community centres in our area, or science world, and tomorrow morning i think i am even going to go over to the west side family place (as recommended to me by a play gym mom). i have met quite a cross section of women at these places, and have even been accepted into a few groups of regulars. it makes me laugh, seeing myself this way. coffee in hand, kids in tow and a cheery "hello! how was the weekend?" or "how is he making out with the potty training?" so many tips and pieces of advice and knowledge, not just of parenting techniques, but preschools and gymnastics, breakfasts with santas and babysitters. they know the best ones and aren't afraid to share it. my life has opened up to this enormous world of motherhood just by having a car.

i should say that i am not totally open to seeing myself that way yet. you would think that having two kids, and being a stay at home mom would make me firmly grounded in mommy-ness, and yet there is this part of me that resists the identification. i suspect it is more to do with the denial of the other parts, the movie watching, book reading, live music going woman, who has an opinion about lots of things that have nothing to do with children, things that just never seem to come up at play group. still, it is nice to have others around that are going through the same thing. it is also nice to have somewhere to go where i can set the toddler loose and tire him out so that he passes out upon our return home.

one of our favourite community centres has become sunset. it is a beautiful new building with tons of natural light in the gymnasium and unlike some centres, their drop in equipment is always very clean and my kids never get sick. it is here that i think we might sign cohen up for preschool, and it was here that we spent the morning on halloween.

i think it might be the best community centre function we have been to. it was $3 for cohen to get in, and it included a ton of fun things. there was a pirate bouncy castle, and since the party was for preschoolers there was little worry of cohen being pummeled (and only a small worry about him pummeling someone). it had a hug slide you needed to climb bouncy steps up to. it was a dream come true. he would go in the little door and bounce bounce bounce and then up to the slide and weeeeeee. over and over and over. then there was face painting (which we skipped) and a bunch of play equipment (which ada loves), an area where you could decorate a sugar cookie with 5 different coloured icings and a plethora of sprinkles, they even supplied juice boxes to wash the cookie down. there was a crafts table with sparkles and cut outs and markers galore. they even had a table for the adults with free coffee, fruit plates and baked goods, all from desirable bakeries in town. then, to top it off, on our way out they gave cohen a goody bag with some candy, a sticker, and a child's toothbrush.

it was funny to see all the bouncy castle kids in their plush outfits, sweat dripping down their foreheads as they frantically scratched their hot arms and legs. by the end most people had taken the costumes off and there were kids running around in pajamas, or tights, or whatever they had on under there. it was easily the best two hours october had to offer.

i considered staying in at night, having been to the other community centre party last friday as well, but in the end i thought it might be a good opportunity to meet some neighbours and see how they celebrate it here on the south east side. we only went down one block but it was enough for cohen to master the "trick or treat" as well as the "thank you!" which really was music to my ears (thanks for encouraging him grandma). i was worried that he would realize it was candy in his bucket and would pitch a huge fit for it, but he seemed oblivious to what was actually in the bucket, he was far too focused on the other kids costumes and remembering his lines.

the night ended with us eating some pumpkin pie i made from a few sugar pumpkins i roasted, drinking beer and eating candy with a couple of our friends and my mom, while giving out candy and wearing masks for cohen. if you like pie, i highly recommend that recipe, it was the best pumpkin pie i have ever had. honest.

so our first halloween in the house was a success and the masks have finally been put away for another year. now we move on to the raking of the leaves. gulp.

breaking him in one boo at a time

2008-10-25T14:47:00.001-07:00

last night we went to a halloween carnival at the community centre. it was your standard fair of games and face painting, crafts and running around. there was even a haunted house. cohen's eyes lit up as soon as we got there, all of a sudden it made sense why we dressed him up in that ridiculous elephant costume. he ran over to the bowling game and waited his turn, he rolled the ball, laughed and then fell quiet. he didn't want to run anymore, he mostly wanted to hang out behind my legs peeking out every now and again. when i tried to coax him out he went for desperate measures and climbed into the back seat of the phil and ted's. i knew something was up, he hates the stroller, he would never go of his own free will, so i watched his eyes. turns out that he spotted a volunteer dressed as a ghost manning a game in the corner. he couldn't take his wide terror filled eyes off of him.

i thought i would be the good parent and take him over to show him that it is just pretend. i only made it five feet from the ghost and cohen broke out in screaming, clinging, shrieking, freaking. hmmmmm. really? my scared of nothing, dare-devil of a son is scared of a man in a sheet? how does he know this is scary? he didn't have fake blood on the sheet or a noose around his neck, nothing, just a sheet.

then he noticed the kid in a spiderman costume, the adorned nylon over his face. oh dear. then there was another spiderman with the same thing (there were four spidermen there, the most popular outfit i think). by this time he had resorted to total silence and standing by the wall. we thought it was time to go, but as soon as we got out of the gymnasium he grabbed marko's hand and pulled him back in. this was a mystery he wanted to figure out. so he sat there and stared. eventually another volunteer in a scream mask was wandering around. i was worried that it would be the straw that broke the camel's back, but it wasn't, again he just sat trying to understand it all. marko thought we should take him into the haunted house, a throw him into the deep end to teach him to swim kind of strategy i suppose, but if anybody was going to be ok, it was going to be cohen. i said, ok, but only if he promised to get him out of there if the terror became vocal. turns out he was starting to dig this being scared stuff. there were apparently several people in masks in the room, many of whom popped out at you. sure he was startled, but he also laughed and when they exited, he insisted on going back in. now that's the cohen i know.

we have a couple of masks here at home, and this morning marko thought it would be fun to put one on. cohen started walking backwards slowly until he was practically clinging to the wall when he first saw him wearing it, but when he realized it was just daddy and that he too could wear the mask (and look at his strange self in the mirror), well it became pretty cool. so all morning he has been wandering around alternating between masks. he has also tried putting one on galena and ada, and gets pretty insistent that marko or are should be wearing one with him and growling. i think there just may be an actor in him yet.

first we pick 'em

2008-10-21T21:34:00.001-07:00

not to be confused with the carving, and the lighting, those will both come later.

here is a comparison with cohen at this age, in the same pumpkin patch. i don't know why i keep comparing them, i guess i am just trying to figure out if they really do look alike or not. everyone says something different.

i know that there are way more of ada than of cohen, but he wouldn't sit still, there are kids playing mom! let me go! turns out toddlers aren't really into photos, so i thought i might as well abuse the somewhat docile infant. the photo i took right after this last one shows cohen as a blur across the screen, he had had enough, it was time to run.

not one to break things

2008-10-21T21:29:00.000-07:00

here i am, making good on promises made. the video is really quick so don't blink, you might miss it. it goes out with a bang! though, which is why i am so fond of it. aren't siblings the best?

6 months

2008-10-10T21:29:00.000-07:00

the fact that it is now 9:30 makes me feel pretty cheated. i mean what the hell? i swear five minutes ago i was eating dinner, but it was more like three hours, two baths, one incredibly long hissy fit, teeth brushing, story reading, kisses and then more kisses, some feet stomping, and then laying beside the smaller one until she fell asleep, and then the back and forth with the other until finally, dear god finally, we are done. i shouldn't have said that, i know, and if you are a parent then you know it too. it will come back to get me every time, but for right now, in this minute, i am free.

today was ada's half birthday. i guess that is another way of saying six months, but the whole half thing makes an excellent excuse for cake, not that i need an excuse, i mean i am an adult which means i can have cake whenever i like. this one fact is sometimes the only thing that keeps me going, well that and knowing that there is a cold beer in the fridge. so happy half birthday to ada, yeah! i have this great video of her crawling, and i had every intention of getting it off the camera, uploading it and putting it here for you, so many lists. i'm with klay, let's just get rid of those damn things. the video will be here before you know it and just think now you get to have suspense as well, and it isn't even your half birthday! this means she beat cohen by almost three weeks in the crawling department. lucky me. it does make for some good times now though, i will put her down in cohen's room and then him and i will be down the hall eating lunch and we wait to see how long it takes her to get there. it really isn't as mean as it sounds.

six months of course means eating solid food. i started a few weeks ago, but have been fairly haphazard about the whole thing until this week. even now it is just once a day at dinner. all that spooning and shoving and shoving and wiping and airplane noises and googly faces. it seemed so exciting the first time. all the wondering, will he like this? will he like that? now it is, oh yeah i have to steam some veggie or cut up fruit on top of cooking, i wonder when i can just feed her what we are eating? i can tell you that it will be a lot sooner than it was with cohen. i am all about the easy in this world of difficult in which i live. so far she loves the food, not just the spurting of it everywhere, but sometimes actually eating it as well.

blogging has been on my mind, with lots of things worthy of writing bout crossing my path, but lately sewing has taken over my free time (hopefully i will be able to share some of that with you soon), as well as staring blankly at the wall in the evenings in the hopes of recharging my brain. speaking of which, i taped about 13 hours of television from last night, and today at the superstore (ahh there it is again) i bought general tao chicken flavoured ripple chips to go with my dark ale, because really how could i not? seriously, it is going to be, like, the best friday night ever. righteous.

swing low sweet ada

2008-10-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

ada's blog video debut, i think she has star potential, what about you? oh and i guess i should warn you, this may cause sea sickness.

hasselhoff? really?

2008-10-01T21:25:00.001-07:00

today wasn't such a great day. the sun was shining, and the suggestion was that it may be the last time such a thing happens until spring, so we went to the farm and to the park. it should have been a good day, but it wasn't. something isn't aligning in our house these days. something is just slightly off. cohen is having more and more bad days. i had no idea it was so difficult to parent a two year old. maybe i shouldn't lump him generically into a clump, since so many people before this have said "i don't know why they call two terrible?" screw them. i spend literally hours of everyday battling with the small human. it is has gotten ridiculous, and the rainy season isn't even here yet. at this rate if i make it through to april it will be a miracle.

still, he is doing all kinds of cute things, like singing to songs on itunes, breakdancing at the hip noodle restaurant, and saying "i love you galena, nice kitty" as he gently strokes her head. there is definitely a love hate thing going on over here. the bottom line is that as long as he can do whatever, wherever he wants then he is mr smiley go lucky, but the minute i put the breaks on running recklessly around the vats of apples at the farmers market while dozens of people attempt to buy produce, and he becomes mr hitty grouchy pants. my mom has always said that the cornerstone of good parenting is always being the boss, children don't really want to be the boss, they want someone else to be in control so that they feel secure. i need to work on that. i try, but i almost always buckle under strong resistance. i am thickening my skin as we speak.

the sleep thing with ada came to a head tonight as well. we co-sleep and i think it works great for us, but as we did with cohen, the idea was to transition her to the crib around 6 months, give or take. i would have been happy to keep the co-sleeping up a little longer, but in the last 10 days ada has been waking ten or more times during the night. sometimes just to kick a little, pinch my face and then teeter back to sleep, but every time i wake up and have to lull myself back. the result has been a very impatient and sleep deprived mommy. i have felt half dead most days and quite ill prepared to deal with mr hitty grouchy pants, so tonight i took a stand. i tried to rock her for a bit, but she is quite possibly the fidgetiest baby in the entire universe. i guarantee that she is going to be one of those kids that can't sit still. so then i laid her down in the crib and gently stroked her hair for five minutes, but still no sleepy sleep. it was past her bedtime, she was ready, her eyes were drooping off the edge of the crib, she needed sleep. that sounded like i was justifying, didn't it? i guess i am a little. of course you know what comes next. i let her cry. it took her all of 3 minutes to put herself to sleep and now that is where she is. i know when she wakes at midnight i will probably bring her into bed with me, but until then i can't wait to crawl in to bed and have more than 4 inches at the edge in which to sprawl out. i hope one day soon we all have our own place to sleep that works, and that bedtime isn't a two hour affair.

and yes, i know, i should totally change the name of this blog to "miserable and whiney".

on the road again

2008-09-23T22:20:00.000-07:00

i went 33 years without a car, hard to believe i know, but it's true. i never wanted one either. i never said "if only", or "i wish" with it in mind. it just wasn't part of my consciousness. it doesn't help that i am afraid of them, or i thought i was, or that i didn't even learn how to use one until i was well into my twenties, and even then it was only because everyone told me that the longer i wait, the harder it will be.

all that ended a couple of weeks ago though when marko and i finally bought one. it wasn't something we had been thinking of really, or even something we thought we needed, although we will concede that it occurred to us that at some point in the not too distant future it might be handy, what with our imagined hockey and soccer practices, art classes and music lessons. mostly it just came about through circumstances, a conversation about cars with a co-worker that led to some investigating followed by driving many cars and then finally settling on the one, my first car, a 1995 volvo 850 turbo. i know, i know, how very family of me, but come on, aren't volvos the new macs?

things that my two weeks of driving have taught me so far:

1. life outside of my neighbourhood, although it is great, is better
2. we can be deep in the forest running down trails, or standing skipping rocks on the ocean in less than thirty minutes
3. no matter how loud i play the music it will never drown out the cries of a disgruntled baby that has had enough of the car seat
4. dance music sounds better when in motion (and preferably without anyone crying)
5. the superstore is like a drug, highly addictive and euphoria inducing. i hate shopping, but i love to just wander the aisles and bask in the sheer volume of it all, especially late at night when the kids are sleeping and no one is around. i have been going a couple of nights a week.
6. gas is expensive, no make that really REALLY expensive
7. anything you want is available to you 24 hours a day if you are willing to drive far enough to get it. this is bad, especially when it involves donuts.
8. having a car somehow makes one feel more free, more capable or something bigger, although i have no idea what that is
9. there was nothing to be afraid of after all
10. i shouldn't have waited so long

for those of you that are sheepishly wondering if i am now going to take back my recycling to the depot, the jury is still out, although i did hear a rumour that they were going to judge in favour of lazy. we'll see.

deelish

2008-09-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

that last post was a bit angry and complainy, so i thought i would offer up a ying to it's yang. this video clocks in at almost 2 minutes, the longest i have ever put here i think, so please feel free to skim it to get the jist. it is cohen eating an ice cream cone for the first time, not to be confused with eating ice cream for the first time. i'm just sayin'.

i'm mad as hell and i'm not going to take it anymore

2008-09-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

i read an article recently in the new york times about children and tantrums, i would link you to it, but for me recently usually means sometime in the last 2 months, and i don't much feel like sifting through archives, so you'll have to take my word for it. it was pretty standard fare, as far as articles go, but like most times articles the comments got fairly interesting. there were several high on their horse parents who came right out and said it, my children never have tantrums. some even went so far as to give advice, don't leave the house when it may be close to nap time, or eating time, or i just feel like being a pint size jerk time, because if you don't leave the house then no one will see the tantrum, and if no one sees it, IT DIDN"T HAPPEN. they didn't say that last part, but i am saying it for them, because i don't believe them. there, i said it. i don't. better put is i can't, to believe that it is possible to have a two year old who never, not ever, has a tantrum is to understand that another way is possible and that, well that just seems incredibly depressing.

we were at the park today, the sun was shining, and there were lots of other kids. it was perfect for mingling, cohen's favourite thing to do. he was laughing and running and cheerful. after an hour i asked him if he wanted to go to the thrift store and look for a new toy, to which he promptly replied "new toy!" and started running towards the store. every couple of weeks we go into the mennonite thrift store to have a look, buy a truck or a boat or some other thing that we don't need, and then he holds it contently in the stroller as he hums the whole way home. it makes me happy, it makes him happy, it makes the mennonites happy, and on a good day it doesn't make ada unhappy, so it is a win all around. it wasn't to be today though, oh no, it was not. i could tell shortly after we got in there that it was going to turn south. first it was climbing on riding toys to reach the higher shelf, and then pulling out all those little plastic bags filled with plastic crap and scattering them on the floor. i was right behind him picking then up and putting them away, asking him calmly if he saw something he would like, one thing that we could take home. i don't even think he was aware i was there, every now and again batting towards his ear as though i was a fly that kept landing there, making him itch. go away mom, i am making a ruckus over here and i need space. i would give him the freedom to explore, but those mennonite ladies aren't fond of that, and one of them had already come over and given me a talking to about the mess, she wanted to ensure i was on it and that nothing would be left out where others could hurt themselves. i guess she didn't see me picking things up at the speed of light, nor my negotiation tactics with the small human. so finally i picked him up and tried to talk rationally with him. that bit right there is often where it goes wrong, the rational part. it isn't that he can't understand rational thinking, because thank goodness, he finally can, but i usually attempt to deliver it about 30 seconds after he is capable of it.

so he starts thrashing in my arms, kicking, screaming. it was a doozer, a full out no holds barred spectacle. given the best stunt man and special effects unit i doubt he could have done better. ada, in the stroller, starts screaming too, it is a full man attack, and so i admit defeat and begin the march of shame out of there. the old ladies are scowling, the young punks are teetering and whispering that they are glad they don't have kids, the middle age indian man is shaking his head, it is awful. cohen hasn't stopped for one second, he is actually kicking my leg as hard as he can while i try and hold him, negotiate the stroller with one hand and open the stupid front door that pushes in instead of out. no one came to help, no one felt any sympathy for me, or it didn't feel like it. apparently, like manhattan mother, their kids don't have tantrums.

to be fair to cohen and to myself, he doesn't have tantrums like this very often, but when he does it tests me like nothing else in parenthood has. it is so easy to yell and get angry, it even feels good to do it, but the true test is to be able to take a deep breath, and show understanding in the face of all the commotion, to see that being two is a pretty tough job, and it is. today i did ok. today i was calm. it isn't always the case.

so this is the part where you tell me i am not alone, have any good tantrum stories?

puddles and rocks, a winning combination

2008-08-28T23:29:00.001-07:00

freedom and fortune, together at last

2008-08-22T21:38:00.001-07:00

cohen has gone to hang out with his grandma until monday morning, and now, sitting here in my perfectly quiet house, i am filled with the sort of euphoria that one experiences in their younger years as they are getting ready to go to a party. a party that their parents don't know about. the night filled with possibility. it is crazy really. only one child! for the whole weekend! i have already started making lists of all the things i can do now that i only have one small and relatively docile human in my charge. crafts! baking! sleeping! photography! sleeping! reading! sleeping! of that list i suspect i will dive headfirst into all three sleeping, and likely get absolutely nothing else done, because that is how it works, you wait forever to have time to yourself and then when it comes you feel so happy to have it that you decide to absolutely nothing, because really, when else can you do that? then on monday when he comes back and the house is filled with chaos again i will wish i had squandered my time differently. maybe writing this out here and now will make me reconsider the doing nothing. maybe i am completely underestimating the smaller humans insatiable need for attention and love, oh, and her complete disregard for naps. any way we slice it though i will have less noise around here for a couple of days and for three mornings in a row i won't have to get up early and concoct some sort of nutritious breakfast. victory!

it goes without saying though that by tomorrow afternoon i will be desperately missing him and by monday morning i will be so excited to see him again that my joy might actually freak him out, but that is parenting for you.

in other news, marko and i have decided that the chinese are going to take over the world. i could site several examples of why this is so, none of which have anything to do with the olympics, but i have one specific one in mind. friday is our recycling day, well this week anyway, i can't be sure about next as it seems to fluctuate often, making it impossible to keep up unless one looks at the online schedule daily to figure it all out. we don't have a car and we drink our fair share of bottled and canned beverages, so we have a lot of returnables each week. the thought of saving them all up in the basement and then dragging them all on foot to the return it place makes my head spin, so we take them to the alley and allow whoever wants them to help themselves. we are in the minority by far for our neighbourhood. most of the people around here are new immigrants from china, the philippines, and india, with the former making up the bulk of my particular corner of the hood. most of the shops around here cater to these cultures and as such it is quite a rich tapestry of commerce, significantly different from the neighbourhood we came from. back there, at the corner of drunk and homeless, it would be a junkie that would be taking the bottles from the bin, dreaming of his next fix and smelling like a years worth of sweat. around here it is something all together different. it is the lady across the alley, who by all accounts owns that house, and the seemingly poor couple with their baby that live at the end of the block. there is also the man on the bike who roams around looking for bottles and cans, he isn't homeless or drunk, just willing and industrious. in every instance these people are chinese, and i am certain they think i am crazy for putting out my bottles for anyone to take. last night when i put mine out they were all there anxiously waiting to take them away. i was surprised at first to see them. i had seen each of them help themselves on other occasions, but to all be there at once, it was shocking, like a neighbourhood event, "oh it is seven o'clock the night before the recycling gets picked up, i bet that wasteful couple with the noisy child are putting their cans out any minute now, i better get over there". they each nodded at me and smiled and then, seconds after i put the bin down, proceeded to divvy up the bottles amongst themselves. the lady from across the alley had a plastic bag with her, the man a bin on his bike, and the couple put them in the bottom of their stroller. each of them had a huge grin. i don't blame them. last week i forgot to take the recycling out and so i had twice the amount this week, a large haul to be sure. for a moment i felt glad, glad to be rid of the bottles and glad to have helped them somehow, but only for a moment, and then i just felt mournful of my lazy and wasteful western ways, the truth of which is hard to hide.

i told marko about it and he said "see, this is what i mean, the chinese are going to take over the world, they just get it in a way that we in the western world don't". i am not sure, i suspect that the chinese can be just as wasteful as the rest of us everywhere else on earth. maybe it is the immigrant experience that makes them more aware. whatever it is, there is something to be learned from them, the ones who wait in the shadows for me to bring out my bucket full of nickels. i'm still pretty sure i won't be taking back my own bottles anytime soon though.

similarly different

2008-08-20T22:16:00.001-07:00

when i was pregnant with ada i naturally wondered who was in there and what would they be like. would they be like cohen, or something completely different, not just in looks, but in there makeup, who they were. of course we are all our own individuals, but it seems that children fall into a few different categories when it comes to temperament and personality. i think i expected that this new baby would be something altogether different than cohen. looking at other families i knew and those that i read about online, it seemed as though most second children were different than the first. i was wrong. i know that it is too soon to tell, but the similarity between ada and cohen at this age is uncanny. minor things, like a preference for sleeping in the big bed with me, (both will/would wake over and over until you brought them into bed and then they will/would sleep all night), or how they both sleep with their legs and arms spread out as far as possible and take up the entire centre of the bed, with mom and dad perching on the edge (thank goodness cohen doesn't insist on sleeping with us anymore or i would be camped out on the floor). ada hates being covered by a blanket and if she isn't in a deep sleep she will wake to kick off any covering that is on her, it is only later, when she has been asleep awhile that you can cover her, no matter how cold it is, cohen was exactly the same. ada, just like cohen as a baby, is an efficient nurser that never takes more than 5 minutes in any one feed and is always quick to smile, her laugh is easy and gregarious, and her feet are ticklish.

even the bigger things seem to be close. she is tough. cohen likes to play with her and he isn't always gentle, choosing instead to try and ride her like a horse or "help" her play his piano. he doesn't hurt her, but he isn't using kid gloves either. she hasn't minded one bit. in fact, it seems that the more in her face he is, the bigger her grin. not to say she doesn't cry, because she does, when she wants to be held or is way overtired, but whenever cohen is there she doesn't bother. she is the perfect sister for him. i was a little worried that if the new baby was over sensitive or less physical that things could be sticky for awhile, but it just isn't so. she is strong, so very strong. she is already bringing herself up onto all four and sometimes just her front arms and the tips of her toes, she is itching for mobility and will for sure be an early crawler. i can see it in her eyes, the admiration for cohen, and i know that one day she is going to mimic his active and tumble ways. i wonder where they got this? marko i guess. by all accounts he was an active and mischievous toddler. maybe they didn't "get it" from anyone, maybe it doesn't work that way. all i know is that i am going to be operating from the edge of my seat with these two for a few years to come. or maybe i will be wrong in the end, maybe she will surprise me and be bookish and introverted, but i wouldn't bet on it.

cohen's big thing in the last couple of days is saying "cheese". last weekend when i was taking a picture of him i told him he should say it when he smiled, and i guess it made an impression. check out his "look take the picture already!" expression on the last cheese.

oh and my computer was fixed that same night so i am back to being cool again...phew.

one for the money, two for the show..

2008-08-18T22:07:00.001-07:00

it may be too early to know for sure, but it looks like as though my shiny macintosh has given up the ghost. i bought it just over a year ago and i am now thanking my common sense husband for suggesting the extended care plan. it would have been a bitch to have the thing kick it less than a month out of warranty. other than the minor inconvenience of not getting to use something shiny, it isn't much of a big deal. i still have my old laptop, and we backup our computers daily to an external hard drive. having a computer geek for a husband has it's benefits, heck he is out there trying to fix it right now, you never know, maybe it is time for another christmas miracle?

what i really wanted to talk about though was potty training. i know that there are a few moms that read the blog with kids around the same age as cohen, so tell me...are you thinking about? finished? working on it? thinking about thinking about it?

back in january when silvija was here we were working on it. i knew it was too soon for him to really understand the concept, and he was nowhere near communicative enough to tell us he had to go, but we thought we would just get him used to the idea of a potty. he started sitting on it everyday, often with fantastic results (if you call that kind of thing fantastic), but then silvija went home, and ada was born, and slowly potty training fell by the wayside. i did buy this book, and i even started reading it (although i forget what i read now), but instinctually i felt that he wasn't ready to actually make a go of it.

i never did write about it here, but in april, shortly after ada was born, cohen came down with a strange illness, so strange that my doctor couldn't diagnose him and sent us to a pediatrician. he didn't know what it was either and sent us to the hospital for a bunch of tests. i mention it now because one of the tests was a urine sample. the lab technician handed me a cup in a very nonchalant manor and pointed to the bathroom, i paused before asking her what it was for? she then told me that she needed the urine, from cohen, in a cup, on command?? when i explained that such a thing was not possible she looked at me with scorn and judgement. i was dumbfounded, so much so that i felt i needed to explain that he was not even two yet. she didn't seem to see that as a barrier. finally she sighed and handed me a urine bag to take home in hopes of getting a collection. i couldn't help but think, seriously? less than two? i understand that some kids are trained by then (although i highly doubt they are trained to go on command in a strange bathroom at the hospital right after having a bunch of blood drawn), but surely it is more the exception than the norm?

it was about a month ago that i finally revisited the idea. he says potty, pee, and poo now, and i know he understands when he is going, plus, his diaper is usually dry when he wakes up, all good signs right? what i didn't take into account is the mentality of a two year old.

i met a woman at the park one day whose 18 month old was almost trained. i asked her what her secret was and she said that since the weather had gotten nice,she simply allowed her daughter to be naked all the time and she just figured it out. sounds easy, i thought, let's get on that. yeah right. thank goodness i bought the giant package of paper towels on our last visit to costco. i can see now that i should have asked more questions. questions like, did you make her sit on a potty a bunch of times as well? how many? were there rewards? cause the thing is, cohen thinks it's great to be naked, and he knows when he is going to go because he hides or goes into another room, he'll even come out after and say "uh oh!" and take me to show me where he went, but transferring this information to a vessel is tricky. initially we had a stand alone potty that we were using, but i started to sense his interest in the big potty, so we got him his own seat. he sits on it now and i sit with him. mostly he reads marko's train magazine and shouts "all aboard, choo choo!", or "engine!", or "caboose", and then tries to unravel the entire roll of toilet paper and shove it in the toilet. he very rarely actually goes to the bathroom, and even when he does i swear he is disappointed that he couldn't hold it longer. what he does do is flush the toilet shoved full of paper, wave at the bowl while shouting "bye bye!" and then proceed to another room where he immediately pees on the floor. this is how it happens everytime. i am pretty sure it isn't a coincidence.

laisa told me about the m&m's (or was it smarties) as a treat, and so i tried that. the method was one for sitting, two for a pee, and three for a poo. apparently it works like a charm for others. cohen figured it out right away though, sit for a bit and get an m&m, get up and then come sit back down and expect another m&m, no m&m? throw hissy fit. hissy fit means no relaxing, which means no actual productive potty usage, and no belief that when he sits he gets an m&m. plus i am not really sure about the whole chocolate as bribery thing, i mean i have to save something for when he gets older and i really need it, no?

so we will continue sitting, and i will continue to buy gigantic bags of paper towel and toilet paper, and one day it will hopefully all come together. the one thing i know for sure is that i don't want to push it, if he isn't ready, he isn't ready. still, if you have any advice, or have been given advice you plan to use, i am all ears.

looking for that sweet spot

2008-08-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

it came! my birthday present arrived today, and i am very excited. it almost makes up for the fact that cohen woke up at 5:30 (and seriously, what is up with that?) and we have to go to an audiologist appointment this afternoon. now to take some photos...

the making of...

2008-08-10T22:12:00.000-07:00

33 & 4 day

2008-08-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

it takes a village

2008-08-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

ada in her natural habitat

one thing i never took into consideration when i moved from a third floor apartment to a house! with a yard! was all the wildlife. just this property alone seems to be home for a cornucopia of life, not all of it fun.

let's start with the mammals. we all know about the "not strong enough to carry my cat coyotes", but what about the playful fun loving family of raccoons? it is a mom and two babies, and were they not disease carrying, garbage eating vermin, you might think them the cutest things ever. the other night i actually saw one of the cubs roll onto it's back and play with cohen's small red ball in it's claws, much like a sea otter would, tossing it from claw to claw. of course the mother was busy digging up our lawn looking for grub and the other cub was digging in the vegetable garden, but that ball! so cute! to their benefit they have made themselves useful. it turns out that raccoons eat wasps nest, and since we ended up with one of those as well, they are taking care of the problem. i say taking instead of taken, as it seems to be an ongoing process, a quarter of the nest here, a quarter of the nest there. that nest is their big bag of doritos, they don't want to eat them all on one night for fear that the following night they will have a craving. i keep yelling out the front door "eat the whole bag!", i don't think they speak english though. i wonder if they speak cohen's language?

next up is our friendly neighbourhood skunk. he has a cold right now, or a scratchy throat at the very least, as i hear him under my window coughing and sneezing, but hopefully he will be back to his fun loving, hiding under the bush waiting to surprise me self soon. sometimes when i am sitting on the fronch porch reading he will walk right up the walkway and then stop and look me dead in the eye. i like to think he is being friendly, offering me a little company, but i suspect his motives are much more sinister, i mean he is a skunk after all.

then there is the rat. i only saw him once, but now i know he is out there and it worries me. it wasn't a mouse, it was like 7 or possibly 8 mice all crammed together into one large mouse with an exceptionally long and scaly tale. it was running along my back fence, a dash and a hop and it was gone. something tells me this won't be the end of it though.and finally, rounding out the list would be the ever present squirrels that live in the trees out front. cohen and i sit at the kitchen table and watch them in the mornings as we eat, "hello squirrel, nice day huh?" i say, cohen usually just waves. every once in awhile in the afternoons a neighbourhood cat comes around and sits at the bottom of the tree looking up at them, they twitch their tails and make strange squeaky noises, presumably their version of "@#!$ off!". the cats patience astounds me, this can sometimes go on for an hour or more. it must be really hungry. maybe next time i will throw him some treats while he waits.

other than the humans, the other big occupants of the place are the bugs and the spiders, since spiders aren't bugs after all. the list here could be quite extensive, so perhaps we should just keep it to the highlight reel, a best of if you will. first up would be the ants. after we had signed the lease, exchanged keys and envisioned ourselves living here, the owner casually mentioned that he gets ants in the summer, "it is only for a few months, they don't bite or anything". we both nodded and said it was no problem! we were drunk on new house possibility, we could see no bad. the thing is that i don't even mind ants really, i just didn't expect to see so many of them, crawling up the walls, walking away with my bread crumbs, and squished between cohen's finger. they have started to peter off now, and hopefully soon they will be gone, but wow, for awhile there it was much too much. i think if they come back around next year i may have to resort to more preventative measures, like a magnifying glass and the right ray of sun.

after we moved in and started to unpack i noticed some moth balls in the closet. i didn't know what they were at first, having never used them, and paid no attention. it was only after i noticed a hole in ada's shirt, and one rather large moth flew out of the drawer right into my face, that i was able to place the wooden balls. while i don't think we have an epidemic, i do think there is some cause for concern. when i grab the broom one flies out at me, at night they gather around the glow of the light. so many different kinds, fat ones, small ones, ones so big they force you to duck as they swoop by. galena has taken much pleasure in capturing and eating them though, the dust from their wings left on desks and tables, a reminder that she is good for something after all. even though they may make it possible to never buy cat food again, i think i would rather do without. those beady eyes and twitchy movements stress me out, a butterfly they are not.

last on the list would be the spiders, oh so many spiders. so far they are just the small ones, the ones you can squish with the tip of one finger, mostly without the need of a paper towel to wipe up the mess. i say mostly because there are a few rather large and meaty ones in certain parts of the basement, they stare at me as i do the laundry or grab something from the freezer. did i mention i don't like spiders? still, if they were to continue at this pace, i think i would be ok. i can look past the one that was sucking the blood out of the moth in it's web, or the small ones that live in the corner of the bedroom. what i can not look past are these, and i am afraid we are going to get them. i once lived in a basement suite not far from here, and we got them all the time. i would always be on watch, nervous as i moved from room to room, always checking the bed before getting in and the towel before drying (after finding one there as i was drying one morning). they sit in the corners of rooms and skutter across floors, too big to squish without mustering up the bravery of a thousand knights, but much too present to let go. this fall, if things get out of hand, i just might have to put an ad on craigslist, "wanted, one brave soul to be on call for my spider killing/relocating needs. experience not necessary. compensation is $5-$10 a spider, depending on size and location. arachnid sympathizers need not apply". do you think i would have any takers?

2008-08-08T10:52:00.001-07:00

what happens when you leave your 2 year old with his markers, and the baby, for only a minute to go grab your coffee because you only got three hours sleep again.

tooth!

2008-08-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

my kids are good sleepers, surprisingly so most of the time. this is not to say that they always go to sleep easy, although with ada this would be accurate (if falling asleep and staying that way were an olympic sport, she would likely win gold), with cohen it would not. since he graduated from the cage to freedom the going to sleep has been a crapshoot. still, it usually doesn't take forever (ie no more than 30 minutes) of up and down before he is fast asleep until morning.

then there was last night.

i put him down for the first time at 7:45, he was up again every 2 minutes for an hour and a half. seriously. i wish i could say that those 45 times up and down wore him out enough that he fell asleep at 9:15, but alas i can not. at this point i buckled and crawled into bed with him where he continued to fidget/poke me in the eye/pull my hair and laugh for another 45 minutes. 10 o'clock and i am now mad. the unhappy voice comes out and the finger starts wagging. he breaks out in hysterical laughter. i feel defeated. marko shouts from the living room "if you don't want him to laugh, you need to say it like you mean it". what is this improv class? i do mean it! i had a list as long as my arm of things i wanted to get done and slowly it was becoming clear that none of it was happening. i tried again and it turned out that this time i could find my inner "mean it" voice. quickly his laughter became tears, became my enormous guilt, became a huge hug and a kiss, became the return of his laughter. damn it.

10:30 and the game is still on. this time we are sitting on the couch, him in my lap drinking warm milk with a grin on his face, me on the verge of tears, 7 loads of laundry piled at our feet. back into his room i open the patio door a crack and sit on the end of his bed. the breeze is nice, but it brings with it the sound of voices off in the distance, voices that are enjoying the company of friends, maybe even drinking a beer, laughing. as i sit there all i could think about doing was yelling out into the night sky "whatever you do, don't have kids!"

the next half hour was a blur, i think i cried on the front porch and threw my hands in the sky and whispered "why?" and then marko went in and yelled and then hugged and then there was silence and we thought we were good. we weren't. 11:08 marko hugs him one more time, places him in bed and says "no more!", and that was it, he finally fell asleep 3 hours and 23 minutes after it all began.

he woke up again at 4am.

i got to sleep through that portion of the program, but as it was explained to me it involved a great deal of crying and cajoling and very little sleep until sometime around 5. he woke for the day at 7:30

which brings us to this morning. i tried to get him to nap at 11. i thought it was going to be easy, i mean he only had a handful of hours sleep, but he wasn't having it. for an hour we struggled back and forth, me in the bed and then out, him calm and him crying. there was yelling and hugging. it was essentially a condensed version of last night, until just after noon when he came back into the living room, pulled out his soother and said "tooth!" while pointing into his mouth.

this is an enormous revelation because:

a. it has been determined that cohen likely has a speech delay. we have been waiting to get in for an assessment and have an appointment for the end of the month. he will repeat words back at us but he never uses them to express himself, there have been no shouts of "more" or "down" or "now". mostly he babbles in some african language and points. so "tooth!", although he has said the word many times before, in this context is worthy of celebration.

b. it's his tooth! it had never occurred to me that there might be a logical reason for all the ridiculous fussipotness, i just assumed he was being difficult, testing boundaries, reveling in making my life hell. who knew? sure enough when i looked inside i could see that two of his back molars are on their way out, the gums swollen and bloody. poor guy.

so i dug into the cupboard and found some motrin. he gulped it down like the candy it is and then sulked in my arms for the 25 minutes it took to kick in, and then he fell fast asleep. she is sleeping too, which is a bit of a miracle really, 2 hours to myself in the middle of the afternoon! the question is, do i tackle the list or take a nap...

2008-07-26T23:18:00.001-07:00

contagious

2008-07-24T22:56:00.000-07:00

the day before yesterday marko came home with this. turns out that the printer he went to buy had a $50 rebate towards the camera, and since the camera was only a little more than $100, it seemed like an offer too good to pass up. i am so glad he didn't. i used to have a handheld canon, before i got my slr, and i loved being able to take videos on a whim, i also loved that it fit in my pocket (sort of) and so i could have it with me all the time. eventually it gave up the ghost though and then my slr was purchased. my rebel might take great pictures, but it is a pain in the neck to drag around. i can't believe how small this one is, less than a deck of cards. i guess what i am saying is that you can expect more of this in the future.

aren't you excited?

oh, and galena is still doing great, still no swelling, and she continues to eat and act normal. today she even went and sat on the front step. it may be too soon to say for sure, but i think we just might be in the clear.

i think we're down to three

2008-07-22T12:34:00.001-07:00

if you had asked me four hours ago if i would be coming and writing this post, i would have said "no way". in my head the words were necessarily going to have to come out different. i am glad i was wrong.

it all started around 3:30 am when marko came in to wake me up (he is a night owl and is often still awake at this time), he wanted to know where galena was. this is a very strange thing for him to ask, the whereabouts of our cat being a neither here nor there issue for him, and so i sat up to listen. i wasn't sure where she was, and this is the part where i admit that i leave the cat door unlocked all the time giving her complete freedom to come and go as she pleases. last night, it turns out, she had made the decision to go, and was outside at large. normally i wouldn't think much of this, she has been known to go out in the evening and sit on the deck or under the front hedge and then she comes back in and nestles herself in some corner. the look on marko's face told me i should maybe be worried though.

only moments before he had heard some ominous snarly and gnashing of teeth out the front of the house, "i think it was in the yard, just in front of that hedge", he said. the it, i soon found out, was two coyotes, possibly three. he saw something run out of the front yard but he couldn't be sure if it was a third coyote, a cat, or a coyote with a cat in it's mouth, as he was too stunned by the fact that there were coyotes in our yard to compute. he did see two linger in the street though, and then they were gone. after relaying the story to me he went into the street with a flashlight to see if he could see anything, clues as to what might have happened, but there was nothing there.

i was worried, but still optimistic, and after shaking the box of treats and calling her name to no avail i decided to go back to bed and assess things in the morning. when i awoke i went out to look and there they were, right in front of the hedge where marko heard the gnarling, three large chunks of white and black hair. my heart sank. i decided to put on a sweater and make the trek around the neighbourhood. i went to the end of the block to scour the park, up the alleys, and through people's yards, but there was nothing to be found. i tried to listen to my instinct and all it was saying was that she was gone, that they got her. she isn't exactly skinny, there is no way she could outrun a coyote. i was resolved, and so i came home, plopped myself down on the couch, and cried. i wasn't certain what was making me more sad, the fact that she had died or that she had died in what i imagined to be a horrific way. marko eventually conceded that i was probably right (until this point he felt certain that she would show up since there was no blood in the yard) and we continued about our early morning in relative silence.

it was almost two hours later when i heard the scratch. i thought it was in my head at first, but then it was clear. i rushed to the door, and there she was looking up at me with the widest eyes i have ever seen, fur was missing on her side, but there was no blood, no liimping, and as i gently massaged her all over i encountered no protests. she seems fine, but how? i still don't understand it all, surely she didn't out smart the coyotes? she is a domesticated, somewhat fat and lazy (but loveable) cat after all, but it appears that maybe she did. i hope she continues to seem fine as the day rolls on. so the lock is going on the cat door tonight, and i am here wondering, maybe cats really do have nine lives?

***update***
i went and had another look at her and unfortunately i did find two puncture marks on her back that were obviously made by teeth. it looks like she was picked up and carried, but perhaps because of her weight she was dropped or managed to escape. the wounds look fairly superficial at this point, but of course it is hard to tell and truthfully seems unlikely. i cut some of the hair around the area and rinsed it with warm soapy water and then applied some alcohol to the wounds. i will wait and see for now. our old place was beside the vet, it wasn't such a concern, but now it is a 25 minute bus ride, a bus ride i just can't do with two kids and a cat in a cage. if she worsens i am going to have to find someone to come be with the kids tomorrow. for now though she seems in good spirits and is still eating and grooming. keep your fingers crossed for us.

if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?

2008-07-17T22:11:00.000-07:00

thanks to those of you who reached out with words of kindness on that last post, it means a lot to me. i don't know if it was because i put the words out into the universe or simply the fact that we are all growing into each other, but this week has been so much better than the ones that came before it. provided i make it through tomorrow it will be the first week i have been through where i didn't have one unbearable, sweat rolling down back, tears rolling down cheek, moment. thank goodness!

for those of you that haven't seen the above picture yet, it is a vinyl tree that i recently purchased and had a chance to apply today. it is a bit of a newish fad, this vinyl wall art business, one which i had been quite curious about for some time. i purchased mine from etsy, well from here to be exact. there are hundreds of different styles available on there though, and that seller took more than a month to get mine to me (and it looks like he isn't doing vinyl signs anymore anyway), so i am not sure i would promote their stuff too loudly. have a look around, there is some really neat ones out there.

as for the difficulty of applying it, it wasn't too bad. as a first time user i will say that it was slightly more challenging than some others might have been due to the fine tips of the branches. you see, the vinyl is applied by flattening the surface with a sharp edge to loosen the applique from the sticky back. the tips in some cases didn't want to leave the paper and it took some serious coaxing and pressing on my part to get it off, but worth it. i did picture it as larger in my head, and i am still not certain it is what i want to have on the wall long term, but that is the beauty of vinyl wall art, it comes off as easy as it goes on (although it is a one time usage thing as it won't stick a second time). so tell me, what do you think?

some of you may remember this photo of the living room before we moved in, well here it is now.

i am still not completely happy with it, but it is a work in progress, so we'll see.

the hardest part

2008-07-14T23:22:00.001-07:00

i am having such a hard time with this tonight. i have been sitting at this desk for an hour and half, eating trail mix, and wishing i had just started the new david sedaris book instead of attempting to write this, the post which seems impossible to write.

i am feeling so inadequate these days and if i am to share that then i need to make sure that the words i tell it with are anything but, as though the words will make up for all the shortcomings. they won't, and i suppose i would argue that my shortcomings aren't really that at all, but simply misplaced expectations and a penchants for being the underdog anyway. i know this, just as i know that i shouldn't bite my nails and i should drink more water, yet still it is there. i can half joke about it tonight because today was a good day. more and more my days are falling into this category, which is maybe why i can come here and write about it at all, or try anyway. i have learned that for me there are some things that just can't be put into words, or at least not my own, opting instead to listen to others and nod with understanding.

life with two kids has been tough for me. i thought i would be better at it, the juggling, and reassuring, and nurturing. i don't have enough time for ada, and every time i blink she is bigger and stronger and one step closer to growing up. most day i feel like i am missing it. cohen, who is fiercely independent in his personality, is also a highly social being, and doesn't thrive on independent play, at least not for any length of time. it is hard to find enough undivided time for him during the day, he is alway needing more. i feel anxiety if the house is too messy, i make lists in my head of the things that need doing. the lists are quiet at first, but soon they are shouting at me. i have tried to keep the lists to the bare minimum, to not expect too much, but even just food on the table, clean clothes in the drawers and a watered garden can keep me busy until well past dark. i feel like i am losing a part of myself in this process, becoming someone new, unfamiliar.

this is the surface of the truth, the real truth is of course somewhere deeper. i think about maia, about how in the months after she died all i could think about was how much i needed something to hold. i would wrap galena up in a towel and rock her in my arms while i sang. i knew i was crazy, but it was too much, the yearning, i couldn't bear to face it. i think about all those other mothers out there who are mourning the loss of their babies, or the dreams of someday having one. i have no business being sad, or frustrated or overwhelmed. i owe it to those mothers, to my former self, to be something stronger. i am trying, everyday i am trying. i am not sure it is enough.

when maia died i read the words of others who were walking in my same shoes, they felt alone, as though no one understood. i never felt that way. somehow i managed to find a community of people who shared that grief, i felt surrounded. in this though, the weight of motherhood, i feel alone, as though it is not ok to say it is not ok. i have the photos with smiling faces, and charming summer anecdotes, all of the things that would make it seem like everything is fine, but they don't feel honest, not until i come right out and say that as a mother i am a work in progress, years from perfection, but miles away from giving up. if there are other mothers out there reading, especially those of two (or more), i would love to know how the transition from one to two went? did it get easier over time?

three months

2008-07-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

three pictures for three months

for fun, just add water

2008-07-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

that title could sum up so much of our life right now. cohen these days is all about the water, swimming or jumping in it, splashing it all over, or shooting it at others.

the thing that has been standing out for me the most the last couple of months though is my memory, the way it has been flooding back daily. cohen is at the age where things are happening, he is getting it. playing at the playground is all about imitating a monkey, and adventures in the backyard are about worms and beetles and dirt between toes. it reminds me so much of when i was a child. the splashes of paint on paper and flushed cheeks from a full day spent outside. i can't help but feel excitement at being able to relive all of those memories through the new lens of my family. words just aren't enough.

we embarked on a road trip a couple of weeks ago to clearwater. it was a gathering of my brothers, their families, and my mom. we swam in the campground pool everyday, splashed in the lake, sat around the campfire and hiked in the woods. it was wonderful to get away, and for cohen to be with all his cousins. it is always a bittersweet time for me though, as i can't help but mourn the fact that my brother aaron and i don't live closer to each other. growing up aaron and i were very close, we shared a room as kids and were roommates for a few years in our twenties. i think we both thought that one day we would raise our families together, close, like we were, but sometimes life has different plans. work took him north, and i have to admit he is happier there then he was in the city, and so our time together it sporadic, his son jonah, someone i have seen only a handful of times. we talk about it still happening one day, it may or it may not, but i like to think about it, jonah and cohen playing hockey in the lane. only time will tell, for now though i cherish the little time that we do have.

i won't bore you more with talk of the trip, instead here are some pictures. for the rest of them go here

cohen and jonah practicing for that game they will one day play in the lane

everyone but ada and i

some other random favourites

happy canada day!

2008-07-01T15:47:00.001-07:00

where we have been

2008-06-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

the other day when i was trying to decide what to write for cohen's birthday i felt compelled to go back and look at what i wrote last year. it was then that i came upon this. i didn't remember writing it, but i suppose i did, and i liked what it said. i decided then that i would do the same post this year, the pictures that is, only when i had a minute to go through them all. the next day laisha posted jonah's birthday pictures, and referenced the same blog post of mine from last year, and i had to laugh. i guess it is true about great minds and thinking. it seems like a good tradition though, to lay it all out and have a look at where we've been and maybe to think about where we are headed.

there weren't as many photos to choose from this year, in fact some months were pretty slim pickins, so it won't be all toothy grins and clean faces, but then i guess that is closer to life anyway. here it is, cohen's year in review.

june

july

august

september

october

november

december

january

february

march

april

may

today, my two year old boy!

we came, we saw, we ate chocolate cake

2008-06-16T22:55:00.001-07:00

i wanted to start this entry by telling you about the birthday parties my mom used to throw for me outside on our sun deck every year. i knew that words probably wouldn't be able to do it justice, and so i was going to start with a picture of me somewhere around ten with sun drenched skin and a pale blue halter dress sitting on rattan furniture, surrounded by friends and beautiful pots of flowers, eating hot dogs and drinking chocolate milk, but i couldn't find the picture, and so it turns out my words will have to be enough. what i wanted was for the photo to show you just how wonderful it was, how large a part of my childhood those parties played. my birthday is in august and i don't remember a year that it wasn't sunny for the party, maybe my mom remembers it different, but as a child my memories are nothing but fond. it was almost always the same group of friends that would come, as the years carried on our interests would change from my little pony to lego and then to music or boys, but one thing always stayed the same, us sitting outside eating hot dogs and laughing. this is what i always imagined it would be like when i had kids one day, sundecks filled with flowers and sun drenched skin, hotdogs and laughing. i was lucky enough to have a baby in the summer, my baby who isn't much of a baby anymore, but would i ever have the sun deck, the flowers? you may be tired of me talking about how much this place means to me by now, but it does. it is everything i wanted for us, kids playing hockey in the alley and neighbours that say hi every time they pass. i didn't know life could be like this in the city, we should have done this so much longer ago.

so this year we had a party, and it was outside and it was filled with sun drenched skin, potted flowers (although mine will never be as nice as my moms were, how could they be?) family, and friends that feel like family. we ate cake and splashed in a little pool made out in the shape of a dragon, and we laughed. it was perfect. i wished we owned this house, i wish that i knew that this was the first of many birthdays that will happen right here on this deck, but no matter where we go i hope we always have this, a plot of grass to call our own.

so happy birthday to the pooper! he is sleeping now, all partied out, no doubt dreaming of chocolate cake and water tables. i will leave you with some pictures and of course you know where you can see the rest.

in one word

2008-06-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

i know i haven't been here in more than a month, i will come back one day, just wait. for now though enjoy this, which was inspired by marita's post of the same.

1. Where is your cell phone? somewhere?
2. Your significant other? computer (obviously)
3. Your hair? brown
4. Your skin? freckly
5. Your mother? fantastic
6. Your favorite thing? life
7. Your dream last night? forgotten
8. Your favorite drink? gin
9. Your dream/goal? contentment
10. The room you're in? front
11. Your ex? history
12. Your fear? flying
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? fulfilled
14. Where were you last night? home
15. What you're not? wealthy
16. Muffins? please!
17. One of your wish list items? housekeeper
18. Where you grew up? victoria
19. The last thing you did? sigh
20. What are you wearing? sundress
21. Your TV? non-existent
22. Your pets? many
23. Your computer? shiny
24. Your life? enormous
25. Your mood? neutral
26. Missing someone? always
27. Your car? rental
28. Something you are not wearing? tutu
29. Favorite store? TheRegionalAssemblyofText (and i still think marita needs to copy this idea in edmonton!)
30. Summer? beer
31. Where? anywhere
32. Like someone? sometimes
33. Your favorite color? orangebrowngreen (that is a colour isn't it?)
34. When is the last time you laughed? today
35. Last time you cried? today
36. Who will/would re-post this? friends
37. Whose answers are you anxious to see? anyones (let me know if you do it!)

oh and since i am here, ada was two months the other day and this is what she looks like now, people are saying she is beautiful, i guess that means she looks like me, right?

cohen is having his second birthday party tomorrow, look for photos and more coming soon!

the beginning of a great idea

2008-05-04T19:26:00.001-07:00

the good, the bad, the ugly

2008-05-03T22:59:00.001-07:00

or in this case, the ugly, the bad, and the good.

the ugly (the story, not ada!)

have you ever had one of those moments where you didn't do what your instincts told you to do, even though you knew better, and then had the result come to no good? of course you have, it is a required part of being human. i have had many, too many to claim i didn't know better. it is the rule that should govern over all others, listen to your inner voice, it ain't a fool. as you have likely guessed, i had another one of these moments just the other day. i was coming home from the park with the stroller, and as i approached the front door to our building, i noticed a man i had never seen before lingering out front. he looked like trouble, but not in an obvious way. it was my instinct telling me he was trouble, my brain decided not to listen. the truth is that i didn't want a conflict. the truth is that i was being lazy and taking the easy way out. the truth is that i let him in, and rode the elevator with him (even engaging him in idle chit chat). the truth is that he kicked in a door on the fourth floor only moments later and stole two guitars from it's occupant, and it was completely my fault (i found out after the fact from the building manager and gave a statement to the police). i should have known better. i feel pretty shitty about the whole thing. i think there is a lesson in here somewhere.

the bad

well, i am not sure it is bad really, how about fortunate lined with unfortunate feelings? the last couple of days i have finally been exposed to what life is going to be like with two. picture me early in the morning with squinty eyes wearing a sour milk stained pajama top, holding ada and bouncing around the kitchen trying to sooth her cries as i attempt to slice open an english muffin, and cut up a banana for cohen's breakfast. all the while he is clinging to my leg and whining (or opening the spice cupboard and taking out all the spices and stacking the jars on the floor), desperately trying to get my attention. this scene gets played over and over throughout the day. i don't think i have enough hands for this job. what i am quickly learning is that i need to restructure my thinking, at least for now. it is impossible to think that i can do dishes/take a shower/do a load of laundry/nap, when i have two who are in almost constant need of me. i need to learn to breath and get used to living in a messy house. normally i would be better at letting it go, but with the move looming over my head and the nagging voice telling me that i need to be packing at least a few boxes a day, it is proving difficult. today marko took cohen out of the house for a few hours to allow me the space to get some things done, but ada had other plans for me and refused to be put down. i didn't get anything done (other than lots of cuddling), and felt defeated when the boys came back home, but tomorrow is a new day, and we still have two weeks before we move. perspective. i am trying.

the good

marko got the job! he starts back to work on the 12th. it would be nice if it was the 19th as we would be moved in by then and things would be settled, but the 12th is ok too. gulp, that means i only have him home with me for one more week and then i have to do it alone for real. i can do this....right?

they say bad things happen in threes

2008-04-28T23:02:00.000-07:00

today wasn't such a great day. i am not sure how many of you remember this, but it happened again. when galena got sick last time we knew it was possible that it would come back, despite modifying her diet and giving her metamucil everyday. for more than a year we were doing great, but then this week things turned again. she didn't throw up constantly this time, but she did stop eating and using the litter box. she just wasn't herself. so today we were off to the vet to find out that she was heavily constipated again which meant general anesthetic and a colon irrigation to the tune of $800. i know that sounds crazy (probably because it is) and there was much debate about whether or not we would do it this time. the thing is, i think she is going to start doing a lot better at our new house. being free to frolic outside and having more space of her own away from a tantrum throwing toddler (even though she is great with cohen) is just what she needs. so we chose to do it. i am not sure we will make the same choice if it happens again, hopefully i won't have to make that decision.

despite the stress of that, there was a bright side to the day, we went and signed the lease on our new place and got to see it again. it felt even better to me this time. i think it is going to be great for us. as promised there are pictures here. so, what do you think?

letting the pieces fit

2008-04-27T18:11:00.000-07:00

one down, one to go. we found a new home. it feels weird to think that soon we will be living in a new neighbourhood, a neighbourhood that neither of us really know at all, in a new house. it is a cute little house where we will live on the main floor, a student lives in a suite downstairs. there is a backyard and sun deck and it is all ours. cohen is going to have his own room where i can put his art on the walls, and at last i can go back to reading in bed at night without having to worry about waking him up. there will be many summer bbq's, complete with sprinkler jumping and wading pool sitting. the suite itself is about 1000 sqft with a fairly large living room, separate dining room and two bedrooms, with plenty of storage in the basement (which is perfect for the 9 rubbermaids of kids clothes i have).

cohen is at grandma's this weekend, so i really should be packing like crazy, but motivation has been a bit of an issue. still, i have managed to get the bedroom 3/4 done and the night is still young, so with a little perseverance i should be able to get it finished. i know that we still have two weeks before we move, but thinking about trying to pack everything while watching cohen gives me a headache, it would be nice to have it mostly done ahead of time so that i don't have to think about it.

we are going to sign a lease tomorrow, i will bring my camera and maybe come back with some pictures to share, till then enjoy another one of ada, cause one just isn't enough.