From there to here, from here to there, Funny things are everywhere
Every now and then I feel the need to conform to the expectations of those who castigate mommy blogs as self-reverential shrines to minutiae. What could be more self-indulgent than four minutes of baby’s first cereal posted to YouTube?
But seriously, could he BE more adorable? If nothing else, watch for the infectious baby giggles in the second minute.
June 30, 2006: “Oh no, you’re all sold out of Canada Day temporary tattoos, too? But I’ve been to three stores, and everyone is sold out! I guess we’ll have to do without this year.
May 2007: “Aha! Look at this great selection of Canada Day temporary tattoos — and only one dollar for a sheet! I’ll buy some now and tuck them away for a month.”
Early June 2007: “I’m sick of having these tattoos sitting right here on the counter, but I know if I stash them away I’ll forget where they are. They’re just contributing to the clutter, but I’ll try to ignore them.”
June 27, 2007: “I wonder if it’s too early to put these Canada Day tattoos on the boys? Nah, I’d better wait, they might rub off.”
July 5, 2007: “Crap. Forgot the tattoos. Now where should I put them so I remember them for next year? Oh look, something shiny over there…” (drops tattoos on counter, walks away)
November 2007: “Okay, all the papers have been filed away or recycled — except this little sheet of tattoos that’s been floating around for six months. I can’t just throw them away, that would be wasteful. I’ll just put them here on the corner of the desk for now while I sneak onto the computer to play on the internet, then I’ll decide where to put them.”
February 2008: “These damn tattoos. I should just pitch them. Sigh, it’s only four months until Canada Day, I suppose I should keep them.”
Late June 2008: “Finally, it’s almost Canada Day and I can get rid of these things once and for all! I can’t believe I’ve kept them for an entire year, and I actually know where they are when I need them!”
July 10, 2008: “Crap. Forgot the tattoos…”
All that anxiety for just one dollar. You can’t beat the price.
We’re early risers around here. Most mornings I’m up somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30, and at least one of the boys is up around the same time. I can’t remember the last time all of us weren’t up by 7:15 with the exception of Beloved, who would sleep until tomorrow if we let him.
Even so, it takes us a while to get going in the mornings. I nurse Lucas when he wakes up, put on a pot of coffee, make a pre-breakfast snack for the big boys (this is a holdover from the old days when they were wee, and they probably don’t need it anymore but we are nothing if not creatures of habit around here) and read the paper for a bit before nursing Lucas again on the other side to take off the overnight milk pressure build-up. By then it’s time to shower and do my morning ablutions, get the boys dressed and breakfasted, and get Beloved up. Lucas likes a wee nap in the morning, and usually gets held by one of the grownups while he’s doing so. Yes, he’s spoiled rotten. I know. I’m okay with that. He’ll wake up for a bottle around 9:30 or so, which takes the best part of a half-hour to drink, and then get him dressed. Three mornings a week I sneak off to the gym and leave Beloved to tend to the boys, but nobody else gets dressed and goes anywhere without a major effort. We’re ready to face the day in public by 10:00, maybe 10:30.
We live close enough to the school that I can hear the schoolbell ringing. Each morning for the last month or so of school, I’d hear the bell ring for 9:00 and suppress a little shudder. Starting in September, we move from our leisurely both-boys-in-school-afternoons-only to both boys in school mornings and Tristan in school all (gasp!) day. How the hell we’ll get all of us out the door and across the street for 9:00 am has been a puzzle I’ve been worrying for a couple of months now.
I found out today just how ugly it will be. Without even realizing the foreshadowing, I’d enrolled Tristan in an all-day arts camp and Simon in a mornings-only camp at his former nursery school. The chaos of getting everybody out the door was nothing short of insanity, but it’s now not quite 10 in the morning, Lucas is sleeping in his car seat on the bathroom floor with the exhaust fan on (his second most common napping place, after our arms – don’t judge me, it works!!!) and I have both a hot Tim’s coffee and an entire blog post at my fingertips.
This might work out after all!
The question now is what on earth will I do with myself all day with only Lucas to take care of? For at least the mornings this week, with Beloved home the parents outnumber the kids!! How did we ever find just one child so difficult to manage? The silence (aside from the hum of the exhaust fan) is blissfully deafening.
Sometimes, even a douche doesn’t give you that fresh clean feeling.
Four-thousand and twenty-two. It’s Simon’s magic number, a quantity that delineates anything between a lot and infinity. As in, “Is my time out done yet? Because I’ve been here for 4022 minutes.” Or, “When I grow up, I’m going to have 4022 webkinz.” Or, “Do I have to eat another pea? I already ate 4022 of them.” I have no idea where this particular number got its significance, but it’s entirely of his own creation.
And, it just happens to be within a couple dozen of the number of unread posts in my bloglines account. Four thousand unread posts calling to me: “Read me! There are funny stories and anecdotes to be read, memes to be filched, wry observations to be appreciated, photos to be admired. Read me, read me, read me!” Sigh. I’ll never catch up. Sorry I haven’t been a good bloggy friend lately. Maybe next week when the boys are in day camp for the week, I’ll catch up. But, probably not. I got up at 5:30 this morning, thinking I’d catch up before everybody else woke up. I did spend more than an hour on the computer, after I savoured the newspaper and a hot coffee, but I still didn’t make it any deeper than the backlog on three or four of my very favourites.
It doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of you guys, though!
It was one of the hottest days I can remember, the steamy tropically oppressive kind of heat that reminds me of my childhood summers in Southern Ontario. The thermostat registered well over 30 degrees, and with the humidex it was at least 40C, maybe more.
As we dressed for the day, my mother and I kept stealing worried glances out the window at the stormy skies. As it turned out, no rain would fall that day, but the morning skies were grey and threatening.
When we arrived at Fanshawe Provincial Park around 11:30, the skies had begun to brighten, but the sun peeking through the clouds only escalated the humidity. The tiny white clapboard church, built in the 1800s and relocated to the Pioneer Village in the 1970s, had barely enough pews to hold our 50 or so guests. They had come from near and far – Toronto, Windsor, and a large convoy traveling with us from Ottawa.
My maid of honour was my brother Sean, and Beloved’s best man was his sister Belinda. We were married by an ancient Justice of the Peace whose name has since escaped me. She had no sense of humour whatsoever, but was accommodating enough to marry us in the little church in the pioneer village using a ceremony mostly of our own design.
My dad escorted me down the aisle to the sound of Stevie Wonder’s “You are the Sunshine of My Life.” Beloved and I wrote our own vows, and my friend Candice read a poem by e.e. cummings. The first stanza goes like this:
the great advantage of being alive
(instead of undying) is not so much
that mind no more can disprove than prove
what heart may feel and soul may touch
–the great(my darling)happens to be
that love are in we,that love are in we
It was a simple, short and lovely ceremony, full of love and laughter. That day in the pioneer village there was a strawberry social, and so while the guests treated themselves to strawberry shortcake after the ceremony, we posed for photos in the wildflower gardens and in the replica of the original Labatt’s brewery. We hired a friend of my brother’s as the photographer and instead of stilted portraits, we have a lovely set of bright candid photos that truly capture the fun of the day.
Our reception was in the provincial park next door. We had a catered barbecue picnic, with corn on the cob and peanut chicken skewers and the most wonderful salads. It was so unbelievably humid that the caterers had difficulty getting the charcoal lit and burned down enough to cook the chicken, and we ran out of bottled water and ice twice. We decorated the all-season gazebo, open on one side to overlook Fanshawe Lake (which is really just a wide spot on the Thames river), with sunflowers and white tulle ribbons, and little frog figurines danced around a mason jar filled with wildflowers on every table.
(We didn’t mean to start a frog theme when we fell in love with the sweet invitations that showed two frolicking frogs with the words “Join us in our leap of love” on the front, but that is exactly what we did. There were even frogs on the wedding cake my sister-in-law Belinda baked for us.)
There wasn’t much dancing – it was simply too hot – but there were waterfights. Beloved and I did manage a dance to “A Whole New World” from Disney’s Alladin as the afternoon drifted to a close. By six o’clock, the official wedding part of the day was done, but most of us reconvened later that night for an evening of camraderie, beer and souvlakis in several of Richmond Street’s finer establishments.
Nine years ago today, I pledged myself to Beloved with these vows:
I, Danielle, choose you, Mark, to be my love.
I pledge to you my life, my heart, my hope and my joy.
I promise to love you with my finest kindness and my deepest care.
You are my prince, my knight, my king;
My friend, my jester and my inspiration.
I promise that I will love you always, from this day forward,
Blissfully, joyfully, infinitely.
Nine years later, and my heart still sings when I think of the life we have built together.
Happy anniversary, my Beloved. You are the centre of my world, and I love you.