one foot in the fire, one on the face of the sun

so it's been hot lately. really, really hot. the kind of hot that has you sitting around the house in canada's cheapest nightgown (not just for the maternity ward anymore!). we've had some record-breaking days here in vancouver this week and where have i been? oh, the okanagan. because when you live somewhere experiencing an unusually fierce and long-lasting heatwave it's of course logical to go someplace even hotter.

it just turned out that way, with the heat, but i was so glad that we could get away to penticton...

did the road trip up with just cole. i hadn't taken him on such a long drive solo since he was a baby, so i was a little hopeful and a little unsure if it'd be hellish or fine. it was fine. cole slept the way there until manning park, where we ate lunch and chased marmots. he helped me pick my car snacks at the lodge, we played in a few rivers along the way and then he slept from outside of princeton until penticton. such a relief.

i did pack an aresenal of crackers and small toys from my 'mystery drawer', so he was well entertained/distracted. the only hitch - i stopped to put a blanket in the window so he could sleep, just outside of princeton, and i "somehow" managed to roll the window up with my finger still inside. (somehow = i'm routinely clumsy and distractable). i've broken a finger once before and it was only very slightly less painful. i got myself free after a moment of sheer pain and wondering what would happen to cole if i passed out while stuck in the window on the side of the road... no harm done in the end, surprisingly!

we stayed in the beautiful home of our lovely auntie patti. you could not ask for a better place - wonderful company, the fenced yard is huge and grassy, there are raspberry bushes, hummingbirds, a friendly dog named abby, a hot tub and a basement full of different toys! stairs to climb, strange things to poke and a reflective table that he found most enjoyable... i think cole wondered what disneyland i'd suddenly transported him to! we shared ice cream sandwiches on the deck and listened to the crickets at night. cole didn't sleep well - teething and the heat combined to make his nights rocky, but we did thoroughly enjoy our days!

he was a little timid around abby at first, but every morning he would sit up and say "pup, pup" and point upstairs (we were staying in a wonderfully cool basement bedroom). we'd get up and he'd climb the stairs on all fours until he found her. he made the most out of access to a dog - even tasting her food and splashing around in her water. thankfully she is very patient and well used to babies and their ways.

and the lakes! oh the lakes!!

we got a floaty for cole and had no end of fun with it. we went to a beach everyday - often enough to decide that i like okanagan beach better than skaha - it's shallow for ages, has sandbars and shady poplar trees and is just perfect. i'm really getting my money's worth from that bathing suit i bought online! cole gathered rocks and tugged at tree branches and gave me the sweetest hugs while covered in sand. we traipsed to the giant peach concession stand in search of peach drink, but alas they don't sell any anymore. "back in my day..."

stopped at the red rooster winery one evening in the most beautiful golden light. cole fell asleep in the car on the way home from the beach, so i drove to naramata and ate tacos (why is there no taco bell in vancouver?!) and he woke up just as we were driving by. you really can't beat the prices of wine from the source, even if it means you have to endure the pointed looks of uptight folks who may have wondered if i was tasting while baby-wrangling. seriously folks - you have no idea how much that would help, but alas i was not... so far have tried their 2007 gerwertzaminer and it's so crisp and fruity.

and of course we stopped for fruit at bears fruit stand on the way home. again - you can't beat the prices or taste of farm-fresh. i got a trunk full - big box of apricots, small box of peaches, cherries, apples, zuchinni, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, honey and a loaf of bread for $32. cole loved their old tractor (rusty + danger = fun).

cole slept all the way to manning park, where we stopped to eat lunch (beware - i got more mosquito bites in the restaurant than i did rummaging around in raspberry bushes at twilight!) and chase marmots again...

and i realized that we did this same exact trip during this exact time last year, except we didn't go swimming. can't believe the difference a year makes:

a day to myself

a rare treat indeed today - a day completely to myself. well, to clarify for the non-mothers out there, that means about four hours of free time after cole has eaten breakfast, played and gone down for a nap. jamie had the day off today and he sent me away - apparently my lunatic ravings have earned me a day of fun. he insisted that i needed some time to myself and i thoroughly agreed. ;-)

so what did i do with my free time? well, before it even started it was stressing me out. free time - what should i do? or what would i like to do, which is different. oh, and i should add that this free time must of course be out of the house, otherwise i would have gotten creme brulee and watched all six hours of the bbc version of pride and prejudice while lying in the world's most comfortable fresh new pajamas. my daily routine with cole (eat, play, cole sleep, me work, make food, eat, go out, play, cole sleep, me work, make food, jamie home, eat, play, bath, sleep) has become so ingrained that it was like suddenly being told the laws of gravity don't exist. anything? really? places that are inaccessible by stroller? places that don't like cracker crumbs on the floor? things that involve many stops that would normally be too annoying because getting a baby in and out of a car seat, no matter how jovial he may be, is not exactly relaxing?

in the end i kind of mentally prepared a rough list of things i'd like to do, because otherwise i felt like i'd just drive around aimlessly and end up running errands. i am not a structure-loving person, and this is what baby-raising has done to me! i wanted to do a little non-downtown clothes shopping (since bemoaning my lack of clothing is a favourite pastime), get a tasty lunch, read, sit someplace quiet and then i had to go pickup some craft supplies that i'd ordered from a new supplier.

so i did. got a cute cardigan (yes, i know it's july. again) and a really cute pair of brown plaid peep-toed high-heeled shoes (on sale, impractical for my current role as mother/worker-from-home/hausfrau). tried on many impractical and mostly ill-fitting clothes without having anyone mooching crackers in exchange for patience. almost bought a pair of nearly great-fitting expensive jeans that were on sale. savoured the time to debate the decision. had lunch to-go from the secret garden and ate it on a blanket under the shade of a tree at van dusen gardens, way at the back in my secret spot beside a babbling brook. and then made a stop for my much sought-after organic cotton toy stuffing in a place without an elevator. oh, and i even stopped to buy lemonade and a rice krispie square from some adorable blonde children (cole would have liked that stop). they served the lemonade (fifty cents!) in a real cup so i had to stand there and guzzle it while making small talk (how's this corner workin' out for you?).

it was a really grand day. jamie's dubbed it "mother's day" and we've decided it must be a monthly occurence.

cole loves the biking

our days have been filled with (cole saying 'no', sweating, killing fruit flies, constant demands for crackers) bicycle trips. how fun! ;-) cole and i have been riding everywhere on my bike and loving it. it takes less time to get places by bike than it does by car, perhaps because many of the places we want to go are along the seawall route - beach, pool, park, grocery store. either that or i'm a really slow driver. no - can't be that.

i think that for cole part of the allure of biking is the head gear - he gets to wear his shiny helmet. seriously, he wakes up in the morning and when we bring him out of his room he says "helmet" right off the bat most days ("halm-maa", that is). and aside from riding shotgun on my bike, he loves riding his own.

we got him this convertible tricycle by weeride a little while back, during one of the many trips to various sporting goods stores in search of our co-biking solution. it was a great deal on sale and he sat on it in the store and smiled like a crazy person. we bought it and he rode it back to the car, gleefully squealing all the way. it's a little silly (seatbelt and sun canopy and all) and a bit of a pain to steer (think in straight lines!) but he really has a blast, dinging his bell and showing off for the folks.

raspberry season

i love raspberries. i love the raspberry for it's practicality and simplicity - just wash it and you're done. no messy hulling, they last longer in the fridge than my other favourite, strawberries, and there's no back-breaking labour required when picking. same goes for the blueberry.

we took cole out to krause berry farm again yesterday to pick some raspberries. the season is getting on and the picking was a little thin, but i managed to fill a few small buckets while jamie and cole enjoyed the sandbox and whatnot. cole was again no stranger to berry picking - he nabbed a few low-hanging ones before we moved along to gawk at the goats (they were sleepy), pick up some veggies and of course a stop at the snack shack for strawberry shakes.

ps - homemade "huck finn" pants from heather ross' weekend sewing. can't resist making more baby pants - they're so easy.

lately: ice cream

so it's summertime and cole is teething - hello ice cream! it might not look like he's really enjoying it, but try taking it away...

on and off, we've been having a less-than-ideal time with food lately. i don't know if it's just the teething or maybe a stage he's going through, but it's been a hard slog getting much into him... he is crazy for crackers and i have to laugh because every time we sit down to eat he hopefully asks "cack-or?". i'm trying very hard to make crackers a snack-time food only and not a replacement for actual food... we can't even eat salad with croutons in front of him because he will ignore everything on his plate and try to mooch our "cack-ors" with much pointing, groaning and melodrama. always with the crackers...

give the kid anything bready - toast, pancakes, cereal or porridge, rice cakes - and he'll go to town. sometimes homemade mac & cheese too, but it's confounding - one day he'll eat as much as you can give him, the next he just chucks it all... the other day when he was walking down the aisle in the grocery store he accosted a display of kraft dinner with excited exclamations of "noo noo". i guess he recognized the picture - or perhaps an ingrained canadian love of kd?

he loves fruit, which i'm thankful for, and he would gladly eat it until it gave him problems... blueberries and strawberries are favourites right now... watermelon, grapes and apricots too. at least he won't have scurvy! vegetables, not so much. oven-baked yam fries are usually a hit, and he'll sometimes put cucumbers into his mouth. he'll eat corncobs and many things will sometimes get a second glance or even a touch on the lips, but rarely get inside... i had better luck with things like squash before and may have to drum up some non-seasonal ones... he hasn't touched peas since we got back from the uk.

he will eat some meat, but he's very particular. he seems fond of meatloaf and bits of burger, loves salmon and will eat chicken occasionally if it's particularly spicy or curried. he's cool with eggs and i think he would eat more fish if i cooked more fish... he loves cheese and yogurt and milk too. and peanut butter - i got over my media-manufactured nerves about peanut butter a few weeks ago and all is well on that score. if i can get him to consistenly eat the mac & cheese and pb&j i should be set. ;-)

we're down to one, maybe two nursing sessions a day generally, except this last couple of weeks he's constantly been at it, always "mi-mi" and stretching the collars on my shirts... i'm glad that we can fill any gaps in his nutition with breast milk, but looking back over this rambling post about food i'm realizing that he eats quite a lot of stuff... i guess it doesn't feel like it some days when it's all about crackers and all the other food seems to end up on the floor, but overall it's pretty good...

we have a british baby-feeding book that has been a great reference - very factual and down-to-earth. it's funny because it's always making references to the 'tea time meal' and what kinds of puddings are healthy (apparently anything with flour, eggs, cocoa or fruit). it features such common-sense advice as "if he does not eat milk for one day his bones will not crack up". and from early days cole has loved the kid on the front of the book. we call him "messy baby" and chase cole around with the book while he laughs hysterically. as you can see, it might have been considered a source of food at one point:

captain crackers

yar! check out me new shorts, matey or i'll make ye walk the plank.

hooray for canada!

today cole rediscovered this paper canadian flag that had been out in the balcony garden for a couple of weeks now. we got it at the grocery store on canada day along with a great balloon-on-a-stick (stuff on sticks is a1 - corndogs, meat, popsicles) but the balloon didn't last long. it blew away four or five times before we'd made it a block and various folks kept bringing it back to us. this flag didn't last long either once cole realized it was made of paper. it's not illegal to rip up a paper flag, right?

pause

cole looking more boyish than babyish in a moment outside yesterday...

a new hat for cole

cole is a maniac for hats. we have a big basket in the living room that contains a number of novelty hats - two cowboy, one pirate, a green robin hood/yodellers cap (depending on your pov), a fireman's helmet, an archaeologists hat obtained at the natural history museum in oxford at great peril to my sanity (gift shop was full of children on a field trip), a knight's helmet from the monstrously cheesy warwick castle and a yellow construction hat that says, nonsensically, "tool boss". i think that's it. he likes to run over to the basket all day long, pulling out hats, putting on hats, putting hats on us and the dolls and lining them up on the table.

well just got a couple of new sewing books in the mail and had to make this hilarious and potentially functional winter hat, despite the fact that it's july:

for more info on the books, please skeedaddle over to my other blog, hudsonny. ;-)

eating in the park: perfect for the wee folk

we've been spending a lot of time outdoors lately, what with the lovely weather we've been having and all - except of course on the day that i'm typing this!

we met up with friends kim & sean on friday night for an impromptu picnic at new brighton park, halfway between both our places. i'd never been to this park or even really known of it's existence since it's kind of tucked out-of-the-way, but it's a terrific secret park. there are two playgrounds and an outdoor pool, and great views of the north shore mountains.

jamie and i had to laugh at this photo (one of many!) of him being ambushed by the babies:

cole and the lovely abby. two curious babies and one person is quickly overpowered. spooky. how do folks with twins do it? more photos of the kids:

kim & jamie have known each other since they were tiny little humans way back when, and i love this photo of them each holding the kids!

file this under...

1) how to waste money
2) you gotta be shittin' me

the why cry baby crying analyzer. apparently your mothering instincts are no match for a ridiculous device that can now "interpret" why your baby is less than peachy and fit him into one of five rather broad and limited categories...

i can't tell if they're serious about this thing or whether it's just for laughs - at $99 (american!) it's a touch pricey for a gag gift. what do you think?

and the baby + bike sagareaches an eventual conclusion

i love to bike. we live directly across the street from the seawall that encircles the city, which is paved and bike-friendly, traffic-free and a beautiful way to see vancouver. so it only makes sense that we'd find a way to combine biking and baby...

for about a year now i'd been thinking of getting a bike trailer. seeing them whiz past us and ogling the freedom of the parent biking while wishing to be the kid hanging out in the back, all comfortable and speedy. so about a month ago i went out and bought a bike trailer. i didn't get the one i had in mind, because seeing it whiz by on the street didn't clue me in to the fact that it was about $600, the one i was liking... cripes almighty - that is a wad of cash to drop on something that is basically a novelty act. i looked on craigslist first, with no luck and eventually went and got a more affordable version at crappy tire. that was a pain in itself, finding someone who was actually working at canadian tire, persuading that surly someone to help me carry it up to the front of the store, going up front a few minutes later to realize that it never made it to the cashier and having to do it over again, then trying to drag it to the car while carrying a baby in a sling...

i assembled it while jamie was out of town, labouring in 30 degree heat and our kitchen once the sun went down and after cole was asleep. i actually read instructions. i got out tools. i sweated. and when i got the thing assembled i realized it was for two babies, which had not been noted on the box. ahh - that's why it was so large, i thought... and i got the heebie-jeebies because although having something that carried two babies did not mean i had two babies to carry, it's kind of terrifying to think about, what with the sheer amount of work and all.

i took it apart because i hated the thing, packed it back into the box and took it down to the car. then i thought maybe i was being silly for hating it because it was huge and cumbersome and smelled like it was offgassing at a fantastic rate. so i brought it back up (again with the sweating) and put it back together again, which was easier the second time. and sheez, it was huge. monstrous even.

the next day i put on cole's helmet and we manoueuvered the thing down to the bike room in our parking garage. i got to our bikes only to discover that someone had decided they were apparently up for grabs and put their own kryptonite bike lock on them. um - i know the tires were flat and we hadn't moved them in the year and a half since we moved here because we were pregnant and then had a baby and all - but why would you, someone, think they were abandoned and have chosen to claim them for your own?

discouraged by fact that i couldn't get my bike out at all, and realizing that yes, i really, really hated the thing, we rolled back to the elevator, nearly taking out a couple on our way in. the guys we ran down were all "woah - that thing is huge!" and "you could use it as a tent!", confirming that i was not alone in thinking it was of monstrous dimesions... once upstairs we took it apart again and gladly dumped off at canadian tire for a refund. in hindsight i'm glad a trailer didn't work out, since it seemed too disconnected for cole, who likes to be in the thick of things and interacting, rather than chugging along behind in a bubble.

but now what? i kept looking at other folks bike trailers and noticed that even the crazy expensive model was enormous. so i checked out child seats and we found a front-mounted seat that looked like a blast. dutifully i traipsed over to more than one place (since the first place needed to work on keeping their online stock up-to-date) and picked it up. easy - and a third of the price of the crappy trailer!

before we could try it out, we had to figure out how to remove someone else's unremoveable bike lock from our bikes. thankfully, my father in law is a swell guy who happens to be very, very handy. he brought down his tools (the kind you have when you don't live in an apartment!) and was planning on cutting the lock off for us. well, why cut off a bike lock when you can just guess at the combination? yes, he guessed and guessed correctly... not 1-2-3-4 or anything either - apparently he has a little known skill of lock cracking!

now, the flat tires. i was planning to walk the bike the five blocks or so to the gas station to pump up the tires, but apparently i didn't know we own a pump. jamie pumped up our tires and got to the business of attaching the new bike seat. hooray! helmets taken downstairs again. excited baby attached to baby-toting apparatus. adorable! hooray! and then... i couldn't get on the bike. the front seat attaches itself with a bar between your handlebars and the seat and i have a ladies bike which means i get on over the low bar... i actually can't disengage my leg from my hip in a way that would allow me to throw a leg over my seat. and even with help i could get on but not touch the ground. oh, and hey - why not have an excited baby wearing a helmet keep headbutting you in the chest? off thing number 2 came. back into the box with all it's loose bolts and promises of biking freedom. back to the store with it.

and on to three more stores in search of a rear-mounted baby seat. did you ever realize how many bike stores there are on broadway? a lot. cole and i got in and out of a couple stores and he learned the word "helmet" all on his own along the way (he says "ham-maa"). at different bikes we finally found the type we were looking for - you know, one that seems of good quality since your precious baby will be strapped to the back of your bicycle. except that the bike dudes couldn't find the rack that comes with it and attaches the seat to the bike. much to my consternation (otherwise known as i must have seemed like a bedraggled, grouchy mess since i was all sweaty and we'd been to three stores and by now cole was leaning backwards and poking me in the eyes) i had to order one, which was supposed to come from toronto and take at least a week. fine. we left and took a trip to the beach which was fun and also sweaty but highly enjoyable.

the bike guy called back later that day and hooray - had found the rack. so in we went the next day and picked it up. are you thinking by now i'm done with this long tale? nearly, but not quite... i felt all industrious and went down to install thing number 3, armed with my minature tool set and good intentions and poorly written instructions. and was feeling good, grouping my screws in little piles and getting a handle on what was what, dropping nuts and thankfully finding them, making progress... except that my bike was the special circumstances type listed on the instructions that required you to remove the damn back wheel in order to attach the rack. f------- whooshing out of my mouth - picture it.

jamie saved the day. he brought the bike upstairs and did the rest. removed the wheel, attached the rack, reattached things that needed reattaching, secured things that needed securing. and at long, long, long last - we went for a bike ride last night.

marvelous. i love this bike seat - it's awesome and sturdy, simple and functional. cole loved it and he patted me on the butt and said "mama" as we rode. couldn't get much better than that. he does have to look at my derriere as we ride, but he seemed to enjoy himself a lot. and he got to wear his ham-maa.

make that messy baby a smock!

check it out - a baby smock! seriously one of the simplest things i've made (and that's saying a lot since i try to pick simple things). cole kept pulling this fabric out of my tub of many fabrics, so i figured i had to do something fun for him with it.

one piece of fabric, some bias tape and voila - mega adorable and theoretically handy for finger painting or playdoughing or whatnot. in reality it's probably tidier to just do those sorts of things sans clothes and head into the tub but the smock is too cute to pass up.

pattern from amy karol's terrifically easy-to-follow bend the rules sewing. she of the lovely crafty blog angry chicken. wicked japanese seersucker pirate/octopus/whale fabric found amidst a random destash pile at the buy the yard 2 event earlier this spring and bought for a song.

the hardest part was getting a photo of it, and none of them really turned out well. they were all blurry and overly light and cluttery but oh well... it was fun. cole found his favourite rubber boots, brought them over to me and proceeded to squeak all over the house in them once they were on, which drives him into fits of giggles. he walks oddly in them, kind of like they're filled with cement. and they make his feet reek like rubber and smelly foot smell. which adds to the smell of yogurt that he'd rubbed into his hair at breakfast. and as usual in the morning before naptime he has a blast going around pulling all his toys out and putting on a show with his hats. you can get a bit of a fix on the chaos:

and have you tried to get a baby to sit still when you really want a photo of something in particular:

cole and the babies

yes, another post involving the somewhat-creepy vintage doll dubbed the "new year's baby". actually, i'm not sure that we've had that many posts that reference this doll, but it comes up in conversation oddly often in our family.

for those who don't know: jamie and i liberated it four years ago now on christmas eve eve from a musty corner at the cloverdale "antique" mall - source of good finds and a lot of junk. it was one of our two contributions to the annual family post-christmas-dinner gag gift exchange. won by aunt christine, who was totally creeped out by it and vowed that it would not be allowed in the house. surprisingly, it showed up again the following christmas, only to end up with yours truly. i was very excited to see it back. turns out uncle ian had kept it hidden in a spider-infested shed and saved it for the exchange. i have been wanting to put it back in for the last few years, but it's proved too good a model for various things (stock photography, for one) and instead we've put in substitutes two years running - one year a framed photo of the baby, hilariously which ended up with uncle ian who, when unwrapping his gift, prematurely declared "at least it's not the creepy doll". and last christmas we had a deck of cards custom-printed with the baby photo on the back, encased in a box containing four pounds of peanuts in the shell, which made little sense but had us laughing until we cried while we wrapped it up. fifty-two new years baby photos - plus jokers! check out the baby's annual family christmas appearance in this flickr set...

anyway, the baby still lives here at our place. cole used to be alternately mildy curious, spooked by it and then intrigued. now he calls it 'baby' and laughs at it and likes to dress it up with various hats. and to possibly make it less creepy (but not really) we've dressed him in one of cole's old newborn t-shirt with monkeys on the front. a while ago i was getting rid of some things on craigslist and a woman came by to pick them up. she was browsing through our old baby clothes and found the pants that matched the shirt and asked where the top was. i think she was creeped out when i pointed to the doll... right now it's sitting on cole's radio flyer scooter over in the corner. yesterday it was lying, spread eagled with no pants on, in the hallway when jamie walked in and declared that it was too gross a sight to see on first getting home.

we added another doll baby to the house a little while ago, when i thought ny baby might be too creepy for cole. we got an inexpensive doll from toys 'r us that had a hard head and appendages but a soft, squishy body and a rather vacant expression, which we've dubbed 'scuttles' since that's kind of what he does when you make him pretend chase cole. cole calls scuttles 'baby' too and likes especially to drag him through the big blue tunnel that always seems to come out when it's time to fold laundry, for some reason.

anyway, that whole long, rambling story was just to justify the photos of cole being adorable with his dolls.