capturing the moment

i met up recently with a friend and her two adorable wee folk at maplewood farm. it was a great sunny fall day, one that included much feeding of waterfowl and an alarming incident in the goat enclosure (seriously - they really do eat clothes and baby carriages and they escape given the chance and, well, you get the idea...).

but i forgot my camera! that never happens. lucky for me then that my playdate was the lovely kim of kim culbert photography. she took amazing photos of cole and was kind enough to share.

i absolutely love how she's captured him and the style of her shots. absolutely fantastic. and it was so nice to be camera-free, if only for a day. it's hard not to get preoccupied sometimes with capturing a moment instead of just enjoying it, and having someone else to take the photos was a lovely change! i like to fancy myself a photographer but i'm totally wowed on a regular basis by folks with a special talent that goes way beyond.

if you've been thinking of professional photos of your wee ones definitely check out her site for more info!

picking a pack of pumpkins

pumpkin-picking this past saturday at the westham island pumpkin patch. lots of fun had by all!

we walked in the mud (thank you self, for remembering to wear rubber boots this year), posed with the festive seasonal decorations, rode in the wheelbarrow and on the tractors, including a "real" one that i didn't realize was in-use and the farmer kind of gave me a side-eye when we were done playing on it... and we picked three stellar pumpkins of course, despite thinking one was enough initially. what can i say - we became caught up in the excitement of not-rotten pumpkin scavenging, because as you know, it's only acceptable to buy the stickered pumpkins under extreme circumstances. ;-)

now, back to debating what to dress cole as for halloween. he still fits his duck costume from last year (it was too big then and perfect now) and he seriously loves that costume. it's been in my craigslist/giveaway pile for a while, but he keeps hauling it out and asking me to help him put it on. seriously the cutest thing ever. and he's a good quacker. on the other hand, i was thinking cowboy - some homemade not-fancy getup. we'll see...

ontari-ari-ari-o

we just got back from a week visiting my family in ontario. the funny thing was that what i was nervous about - the flight - was a piece of cake, both ways, and what i didn't even give a thought to - the daily routine - was a total debacle!

cole was such a happy camper on the flights. i highly recommend gravol and then snacks, new toys and stickers for plane travel with a kidlet this age! he slept for a couple hours on the way there (and three on the way back - delightful!), and then happily munched snacks and stuffed sparkly dino stickers down the armrest of our seat for ages. we lucked out with a set of bulkhead seats to ourselves on the way there, which was a treat and a half... i got to watch 3/4 of a movie i'd never heard of, which sadly had gone off the rotation on the way home. anyone know how the brothers bloom turns out? (actually, don't tell me - i'll drum up a copy online and finish it off.)

it was fantastic to see all the family i hadn't seen in ages. my parents, brother and sister-in-law and neice, my grandmother, my aunts, uncles and cousins, heck - even neighbours... so fun to introduce cole to everyone too. he never got tired of saying everyone's name (bryyyy, shell, ga-gra) and he was delighted to find many staircases to climb and various new methods for thwarthing my desire for sleep. but good god - he was a hard to manage... the child would not eat! not even his beloved crackers!!! and this is a kid who normally would eat anything even resembling dried bread-like products! i don't know what it was, but he barely ate a speck (thankfully he also seemed to grow, according to jamie). and sleep? forget about it! he woke up all night long, only napped when i had him in the car (so we got to enjoy many long country drives and lovely fall foliage). and it took the whole week for him to let me out of his sight, and even then - constant calls for "mama" which were endearing and heartbreaking and utterly exhausting. and my poor grandma, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday - she kept thinking cole didn't like her because he wouldn't sit still on her lap for two seconds! and i'm going to have to work hard to part him from his reinforced bond to the pacifier (which he calls 'poppie')...

but... he got to meet everyone, smell that same fall smell that i love, eat apples at my favourite farm market, pick pumpkins and leaves and acorns, enjoy many treats and he's still talking about his favourite folks. i'm so glad we went.

many more photos to come but for now here's the first one on my camera, taken on our first morning there. it's just a silly one of cole lounging on the leopard-print futon in my brother's basement family room (where we slept so comfortably, if not soundly thank you cole) but it's seriously one of my favourites:

thank you to everyone for your hospitality, the wonderful meals, the activities, the conversation, the help and the good company.

ps, for you jamie - the stellar jay is not a real blue jay. no contest!

happy thanksgiving!

we went for a great walk today with friends out at deer lake park in burnaby. i had no idea how beautiful the lake is, or any clue about the woodsy lakeside trails wrapping around it! i used to work just a few minutes back down the road before cole was born and some days while pregnant, desperate for a noontime nap, i would drive over to the park in search of a secluded place in which to doze. turns out i would have been much better off walking around the lake!

cole and abby (who can say each other's names - true love for sure!) hung out, we all walked, chatted, they walked (more on the rules of walking with babies), they rode and ate crackers, they cried and smiled, hugged and fell, and we all tried to get a photo of them together looking at the camera.

later on, we went home and cole napped, woke early from his nap, convinced me to lie down and nap with him, and then went out with jamie to get some ice cream for our apple crisp thanksgiving dessert. they came home with a GALLON of ice cream from costco, so you know we won't be wasting away 'round here anytime soon.

and we had our own little small thanksgiving dinner, just the three of us. since it was just us i skipped the whole bird (too many leftovers: we're each off later this week to parts far and wide) and made a turkey breast roast. seriously - this is the answer! so easy!!! we had all the trimmings too, and cole was particularly fond of cranberry sauce. so fond that he ate it by the handful and then tossed in a few carrots, a little turkey (the boy ate meat - a thanksgiving miracle!) and his own apple crisp (apple sauce and a little ice cream) which he also ate with his hands.

making faces

cole gets a big, big kick out of squeezing things, real or imaginary. he makes this face and squeezes every muscle in his body and it's hysterical to watch.

in the bath he's all about the splashing and bubbles. mmm - tasty, tasty bubbles. and he drinks a lot of bathwater, which i hope is not that bad for him! he's started to pee in the potty before getting into the tub, so that probably helps some. ;-)

and he just generally has a grand time. see, you only need to toss him on the bed into a pile of pillows and it's the best fun ever. and by the way - check out those teeth! he has all his premolars now and all the canines have broken through to various degrees, so we're up to sixteen teeth! crazy...

like garden gnomes

i really do love to garden. right now we have only the patio garden, with a few big pots. i'm on the waiting list for a community garden space at many community gardens in our area, but for now it's just the patio. seeing as i love to garden, and have a deep yearning for trees and lushness, you'd think i might strive to keep our plants alive? we'll you'd be right about the striving part, but sadly mistaken about the living part! i have one green thumb (the planting one) and one wilty thumb... our tree and plants from earlier this spring didn't like the psycho hot weather any more than we did, and i think our watering chain of command broke down sometime in august... (that would be me asking jamie and cole to water the plants and lots of times not).

so, i bought some fresh greenery yesterday on a whim (i was alone and driving and hey, let's go to the garden shop, self!). cole helped me, which was a lot of fun, a lot of mess, and some help. ;-) but fun! he likes to sweep and dig and transfer soil from one pot to another - we just need to work on what is swept into whose shoe and which soil should be taken to where... seriously though, a great afternoon.

we even planted some crocus and mini daffodil bulbs so we have something to get excited about in the springtime! now all i have to do is take down the dead tree to the garbage room incognito (too bad i dumped our old gorilla masks in the goodwill bin yesterday) and then wait for rain so i can wash the balcony off discretely...

randomly, since they kind of go with the topic of mud and gardening - here are a few shots of cole from our trip on friday to queen elizabeth park and the bloedel conservatory (which i always garble and call the bird observatory).

we loved looking at the birds and fish inside, but i think cole was even more impressed with the loose soil outside. he dug and dug, brought me handfuls and got entirely grimey.

and i was going to crop the dude and stroller out of this photo, but it's too funny. his whole family was motioning wildly for him to get out of the way of the camera, which i had perched on the wall and on self timer mode, but he didn't even notice... and yet i'm still fake smiling and giving him the "get a f'in clue and out of my photo" look... cole is dropping a handful of dirt onto the ground and trying to escape. too perfect.

hey four eyes

i scored these swell old man/nerd toy glasses at granville island toys on main street yesterday, and they've been a real hit around here. cole loves them - particularly on me, because apparently he prefers to wear my actual glasses and laugh at me wearing these ones...

and of course we couldn't resist trying them on jamie when he got home. yep, equally flattering and massively hilarious on everyone!