Month: February 2009

Deja vu at one

A couple of months back, when Marla was visiting with Josie, she made an observation that I’ve since quoted many times, usually to much laughter. She took one look at Lucas and exclaimed, “It’s like Tristan and Simon had a baby!”

It’s true, Lucas is a rather perfect blend of his two older brothers. Beloved has said that he should have been the middle child, so nicely does he bridge the gap between my tall, fair, freckled son with eyes the colour of a stormy ocean and my solid, cheeky, olive-complected son with eyes the colour of melted chocolate. He has Simon’s dark eyes (or should I credit Beloved with those?) and fleshy cheeks with Tristan’s fairness and lankiness. He is, of course, his own man.

I tried making a nice triptych of these in Photoshop, but quickly lost patience. (Why is it I can never get that program to do what I want it to do instead of what I tell it to do — it’s worse than the boys!) This way works well enough.

My babies, age one:
Tristan age 1Simon19:365 Happy Birthday, Lucas!

(We got a lot of mileage out of that high chair, that’s for sure!)

True to their personalities, Lucas and Tristan both look thoughtful, perhaps even pensive, and Simon is hamming it up for the camera.

How lucky am I?

A love letter to Lucas, Age 1

My darling baby Lucas,

Has it only been a year you have been in our lives? Has it already been a year? How can both of those things seem so surprising at the same time?

DSC_0557

You, my third son, my beautiful baby boy, are one year old today. I don’t have the words to tell you how much you are loved, and how much love you have given to us in just one short year.

I'm your big brother!

Lucas, you are a delightful baby. You find new ways to charm me, and new ways to vex me, every single day. You are not quite walking yet, although I’m sure you could if you just let yourself try. You crawl at the speed of light, though, and you cruise the furniture while making delighted little caws of accomplishment. “Look at me go!” your bright face and happy chirps are clearly saying.

And go you do. We call you a menace, several times a day, because you do not miss a single opportunity to find mischief. With a hundred toys to choose from, you’ll find the one with the not-baby-safe parts and then refuse to give it up without a fight. With an entire house to play in, you have an impeccable sense of when a door is left open, a baby gate ajar, a cup of coffee momentarily abandoned within your reach.

DSC_0457

Speaking of coffee, one of your cutest little “tricks” at this age has come very close to making me spew many mouthsful of coffee down my shirt, but I’ve finally come to anticipate it and not snort with laughter every time you do it. Some time in the last month, you took to letting out a satisfied, “Ahhhhh” every time you saw me take a deep drink from my cup of coffee. Given the amount of coffee I’ve drank lately, you’ve had plenty of time to hone this particular trick! Clever thing that you are, as soon as you realized it made us laugh, you took to smacking out the same satisfied “Ahhhh!” any time anybody takes a drink of anything in your presence. It’s such an odd little trick, but endlessly entertaining to your entire family!

You are an impressive mimic. For months now, you have delighted us with your babbling, which sound uncannily like real words. When we sing “your song”, which is a play on BNL’s “La la la Lemon” that goes “La la la Lukey-fish” you love to join in on the la-la-la chorus. You also happily sing along to your other song, Great Big Sea’s Lukey. We can often coerce you out of a foul mood with a few bellowed verses of either song, and when you sing along with us it simply melts my heart.

DSC_1468

You have an impressive set of lungs, too, and have learned that nothing will get you what you want quicker than an ear-splitting screech. Your favourite time to employ this tactic, aside from when we are sitting down to dinner and there is the possibility that you may soon not have an adequate supply of food in front of you, is when we are in a public place that calls for a certain amount of vocal restraint. Passers-by still seem to find you uncommonly adorable, though, and you’ve had more than your share of cooing strangers everywhere we go.

Once upon a time, you slept like a dream at night. We’ve dropped that particular thread in the past few months, but you seem to have traded excellent nighttime sleep for more reasonable daytime naps. I’m still not sure I’m happy with this trade! In the last month or so you so completely wore me down that I’ve now capitulated entirely to your will, and it’s a rare night that you don’t spend at least a couple of hours sleeping in my bed with me. With you, my third child, I’ve finally realized that it’s okay for principles to melt run like spring runoff in the face of sleep deprivation.

DSC_2248

At the age of one, you are easily delighted. Finding a brother taking a bath seems to be particularly delightful, based on your happy chirps. Having a brother pay any sort of playful attention to you at all is another daily delight, as is playing tickle and tumble with Daddy or me. You love the “One Baby” series of books, to make “vroom” noises while pushing toy trucks, and the mouse on the computer that you aren’t supposed to touch.

8:365 Lucas in the morning light

I could go on for hours, my sweet baby Lucas, listing the ways in which you bring love and laughter and joy into our lives. Not to mention a few more grey hairs and wrinkles than I had this time last year! But let me finish with this simple wish: may your whole life be filled with the same delightful charm and exhuberance that is you at the age of one. Happy Birthday, my love!

In which she counts her bloggy blessings

Hey! Did you know Mabel’s Labels is sponsoring a contest? One lucky blogger will win a trip to BlogHer ’09 and be the chief correspondant for the Mabel’s Labels blog — which, by the way, was voted the Best Family Blog in the 2008 Canadian Blog Awards. And all you have to do to enter is answer this question: What have been the rewards and benefits of participating in the blogging community?

Oy! You’d think that one would be an easy question. Heck, isn’t the whole blog a testament to my love of blogging and especially my love of you, my bloggy peeps? I think it’s safe to say, with no amount of hyperbole, that blogging has completely changed my life. But I have no idea where to start, or how to summarize in a few succinct words what it’s taken me four loquacious years of rambling to express!

Blogging has stroked my ego in more ways than I can count. I’ve won accolades from the Weblog Awards and the Canadian Blog Awards, and blog has been featured in publications from National Geographic Traveler’s online magazine to Chatelaine magazine to a couple of newspapers and our local TV news.

But that’s not the best thing blogging ever brought to me.

Blogging has brought me free stuff (and you know I loves me some free stuff) running the gamut from my first ever free book to the complimentary weekend in Smuggler’s Notch, all for the pleasure of expressing my opinion.

But that’s not the best thing blogging ever brought to me.

Blogging has opened up new professional opportunities for me. My boring day job in government communications turned into a dream job in social media, largely because I was blogging and active in the blog community long before most of my colleagues even knew what a blog was. And I was thrilled to finally accomplish a life-long goal last year when an article inspired by a blog post was officially published in a real magazine – my very first professional writing credit! (And the whole Smuggler’s Notch thing came about as a direct result of my post about stalking Stephen King. See, it *always* comes back to blogging!)

But that’s not the best thing blogging ever brought to me.

Blogging has changed how I think; it’s a lens and filter on how I see the world. In blogging, I’ve captured snapshots of my life and of the boys’ childhoods that might have otherwise been lost. It’s a lovely gift to myself to be perusing my own archives and stumble across vignettes of life that I’d captured and promptly forgotten – vignettes that would surely otherwise be lost.

But that’s not the best thing blogging ever brought to me.

Blogging has inspired me to push my own limitations, to be brave, to be creative, to have the courage to try new things. From joining the panel on blogging and motherhood at the Motherlode conference in 2006 (which was, by the way, an ode to mothering in the blogosphere) to my newly launched photo project, blogging has given me the opportunity to learn new skills, hone old ones, and take personal risks that I might never have otherwise imagined.

But that’s not the best thing blogging ever brought to me.

What, then, you must be asking by now. If none of those things are the best thing that blogging has brought to you (and, by the way, you are one spoiled girl, Miss DaniGirl, to have been so lucky in your blogging life) then what could possibly be the best thing that blogging has brought to you?

It’s all of you, of course. It’s the friendship, the camraderie, the commiseration. It’s the friends from the real world who came online to play, and the friends from the computer who manifested into real people. It’s the laughter we have shared, and the tears. It’s the chance to peer into the windows of your life, to sit down and chat over virtual coffee, and to share a part of your world. It’s the fact that any time anything happens in my life, from the most momentous to the most painful, from the most embarrassing to the most mundane, I’ve wanted to share it with you. I’ve been honoured to have been given the chance to share your lives through your own blogs and your comments, but I have been truly gifted with your presence here.

So there you have it. In my usual reticent, understated and taciturn way, I’ve run on just a bit. But you get the idea. As central as blogging is to my life (and I don’t blame you if you’re thinking perhaps I need to get a life at this point!) I’ve never in my wildest dreams imagined being able to go to BlogHer. And it’s just a week before my 40th birthday. Wouldn’t that be a gift? Pick me, Mabel’s Labels! Pick me!!!!!

Edited to add: Oh! My! Goodness!! They DID pick me!! Thank you so much, Mabel’s Labels! I’m so honoured! So what are you still doing here? Get over there and VOTE for me, already!!

Apostrophe catastrophe

We’ve defended the disappearing hyphen and debated the lowly comma, but it’s been a bloody good long time since we’ve had a dust-up as much fun as the one-space or two after a period debacle.

Thanks to Kerry, though, we can now turn our attentions to the latest incidence of grammar-phobes running amok. From the Globe and Mail :

The city council of Birmingham, England, has decided to eliminate apostrophes from its street signs. Apostrophes are of course normally quite common in British place names, in constructions such as St. Paul’s Square and Acock’s Green. Apparently Birmingham has been quietly removing them from official signs since 1950, and now it faces a non-standardized mishmash of usage across the city. Citizens have often protested against the changing of historical names. After a recent dispute about punctuation in the name of the suburb of King’s Heath – now Kings Heath – the council decided to put an end to the bickering forever, and introduce a simple rule: no apostrophes anywhere. Now, even the Birmingham Children’s Hospital is the Birmingham Childrens Hospital, dashing the ambitions of that city’s schoolteachers to ever hope to teach children how to write.

Further, “In the British press, the pro-apostrophists accuse Birmingham of Philistinism and degrading the English language, while the antis accuse the grammarians of pedantry and uptightness.”

Now, much as I like a good pedantry-versus-Philistinism cage match, I’ll admit that I’m not as frothed about this debate as I have been over some of our earlier language debates. The apostrophe vexes me at the best of times. Just here in the neighbourhood, for example, we have Smiths Falls and Bells Corners with nary an apostrophe to be found. I usually find myself siding with the traditionalists in any language debate, but I find this one particularly hard to defend.

What do you think? Shall we rally the troops to join the Apostrophe Protection Society, or is the simple existence of the Apostrophe Protection Society yet another sign of the pending apocalypse?

Mother and child reunion

I step quietly into the house, not consciously intending to spy on the boys or the new nanny, but knowing that they aren’t expecting me home quite so early. I hear laughter, and realize while expelling a sigh that I’ve been holding my breath with dread. It’s the end of my long first day back at work after my maternity leave, and I’m not sure what to expect.

I don’t want to make a big deal of rushing into the house and freaking Lucas out any more than I have to, so I slip off my coat and walk with affected nonchalance into the living room, tossing affectionate greetings to Tristan and Simon as I beeline toward the baby. He’s been playing happily on the floor with his toys, and my anxiety lessens considerably at seeing him so content.

I expect some form of reaction; I’ve never been apart from him for this many waking hours, and on the occasions when I have left him in the child-minding area at the gym, he has cried harder upon my return than he did in my absence. I brace myself and pause to let him absorb my presence before I sweep him into my arms. He beams in delight when he realizes I have returned, and when I pick him up he melds his body into mine. He engulfs me in his baby version of a bear hug, his arms and legs clinging so tightly that I’m sure if I let go he would hang suspended from my side like a baby chimpanzee clings to its mother as she swings from branch to branch. He lays his head on my shoulder, tucking it under my chin as if he’ll never move away again, and I can feel his relief at my return radiating from him. His perfect stillness as he wraps his body into mine takes my breath away, and I am surprised to feel the rush of tears welling in my throat.

He has never hugged me like this before, and I can do nothing but stand and sway with him in my arms, caught in this breathless moment of love and relief. He’s okay. I’m okay. We’ll all be fine.

An old blog, a new project

Sheesh, as if two birthdays in one week weren’t enough excitement, there’s more! First of all, today is my first day back at work after my year of maternity leave. More on that some other time, because there’s still more!

Can you believe that four years ago today, I wrote my very first blog post? Yowza! And here we are, more than 1,300 posts and 18,000 (!!!!) comments later, still going on about not much in particular and everything in general.

As if all that weren’t enough, I’m taking the occasion of my blogiversary to tell you about a secret project I’ve been working on for the last little while. Back in November, I was listening to archived podcasts of the CBC radio program Spark. In one particular podcast, they were talking about a guy who took a Polariod a day every day for years; from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997. Listening to it tweaked memories of having seen something similar on the web, and when I went looking I found a couple of sites talking about Project 365, the idea of taking one photo per day for an entire year and posting it to the web.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try it. I mean, you know, I don’t have anything else on my plate right now, right? *grin* And hey, I’ve made it all the way through 11 of 365 days already; how much harder could it get?

My own rules of the project are fairly simple. A photo must be taken every day, but I can slip a little bit on the posting of them. I really want to expand my subject repertoire beyond the boys, and to learn to look at things and ‘see’ them in a new way. And I want to include at least one self-portrait every month or so.

I’ve been toying with ways to show you my pictures. I was thinking of a separate gallery on the blog, or even a separate photo blog. Rather than make extra work for myself, though, I think I’ll just keep uploading them to Flickr. You can see the most recent pix under “Project 365” over there in the sidebar, and I’ll make a post of my favourites each week. And you can see the full set on Flickr, including the captions, explanations and other random thoughts that accompany each photo.

Here are my favourites so far:
2:365 Peek!4:365 Club soda8:365 Lucas in the morning light10:365 Sunlight, snow and shadow11:365 Coloured pencils

(Click on any of the thumbnails to see them full size on Flickr.)

And this is one of my new all-time fave photos. I love the reflection of both Lucas and I in the collander!

5:365 Lucas and me in the colander

Funny, but I am already seeing how this project is getting into my brain. Just like I used to often see the world around me in terms of blog fodder, now everywhere I look I feel like I’m looking through the lens and scanning for photo opportunities!