Sundays...

 

  

 

Just a regular, plain old Sunday morning on Granville Island... A wander through Emily Carr, a jaunt through the public market, a little bird feeding and macaron enjoying.

spring has sprung!

two weeks ago, we hoped in vain for a little sign of spring. the barest whiff of spring air one day got me thinking "garden shop" and, after daycare, cole and steve and i took a trip to the garden shop. 

from holdom skytrain station the garden shop on lougheed is a mere 5 minute walk, if you are without impediments - things like a drenching rain and wind storm, a stroller, a rain shield, a toddler, inescapable and constant snack demands, thrown soothers, a lone semi-functional umbrella for three people and a downtrodden attitude. if you are suffering it feels like a half hour slog through some kind of fortitude-measuring wasteland. a smarter person might have abandoned the plan at the first sign of rain and toddler grumping, but i held out hope that the fun parts would outweigh the challenges. not so! also i'd promised cole we would go and that kid has a memory like an elephant! suffice to say that day was not the most enjoyable. 

but lo and behold, on the most recent monday afternoon the sun was shining and we tried again. the heavens smiled upon us and we had a wonderful time. there was (inexplicably) an old VW beetle out front of the garden shop for cole to practice his driving (we went to science world and the trip involved a lot of parking and fiddling with dirty dashboard components). inside we found 'butternuts' the cat, the somewhat surly resident ginger stray. cole got two pats in before getting hissed at, at which point he discovered the mason bee houses to thrill his wee fingers. we selected herbs and seeds, coco spotted the rosemary for me (he's a natural gardener, i think!), he ran laps around the aisles and spied on tanks of baby koi. cole adopted a toy bird for one of the pots at home and i managed to select only one flat of plants to carry back on the train. it was a grand time indeed.

 

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paint + wood

i found the most adorable bird house kit at pedagogy toys at the new west quay on the weekend. we had a blast painting it (cole did all of the creative direction and most of the paint application too!) and we hung it out back in a tree in the yard. so far it's still available, if you know any birds in our neighbourhood who are in the need of housing.

 

alley oop

spring has arrived and with it come fresh starts. jamie and i decided to separate after the new year and the last few months have been a time of transition for us all. we're all adjusting to new roles and cole has been dividing his time equally between two parents who love him very much.

among the changes? as of last week, cole and i have moved into a new apartment! it's a garden suite in a cute mid-century house in north burnaby. it's taking a lot of work to get unpacked, but we're finally getting down to the fun stuff like hanging art, creating some new stuff, building a few billy bookshelves, and otherwise getting settled in. we have a covered patio out back and a yard to share with the nice granola folks who own the house. and behind? childhood dreams realized - an alley! we headed out back after naptime on sunday for a bit of fun, armed with some matchbox cars and sidewalk chalk, hot milk and tea and some animal crackers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

cole + cherry blossoms

could it get any cuter? cole, auntie jas and i were walking to get some gelato yesterday, and we came across this stairway covered in cherry blossoms, just one street over from our building. it was raining blossoms - the wind was fairly mighty - and it was so beautiful...

ahh, it feels like spring!

Now that I have my crafty blog started, I can get back to the business of posting the stuff that everyone (especially the Grandmas!) want to see. Photos of Cole!

Today we celebrated what felt like the first real day of spring. The sun was out and the weather was glorious. The birds were chirping, the skaters were skateboarding, the basketballers were basketballing. We took a short walk to Gastown to visit Button Button, a vintage button (shocking!) store that recently reopened in a new location but was unfortunately closed today. I only found this out after lugging the carriage up about 10 steep stairs, to be greeted by the owner of the store who told me they weren't open. Um, you're standing there and the door is open. I just lugged a baby carriage up the stairs and I'm definitely going to buy something (browsers wouldn't have bothered) so just let me in, ok? We'll try again sometime this week because I do need some more vintage buttons for my projects.

Anyway, on our way to the closed button shop we stopped in one of the various nondescript parks in our neck of the woods. There are lots of them and none have swings, unless you walk over to the parks along the seawall, which are plentiful and do and are great too. But of course the advantage of the parks without swings is that they usually have much better slides. Cole is a bit wee for slides, but I stand to the side, hold him halfway up and then slide him down (over and over!), which he loves. Sometimes when there are no judgey moms around to give me the side-eye we climb up and slide down together. Today we had the place to ourselves and did lots of both!

Cole had a blast trying to climb up the slide - there was no way to discourage him. He was getting all sorts of static zaps from the plastic slide but he just laughed and laughed.

And he had a great time meeting his first real-life ladybug! I had to really try to keep him from touching her - it looked like a disaster (for the ladybug) just waiting to happen. Or maybe protein for Cole, who of course does put mostly everything into his mouth...

We went on a strange ambling stroll through Gastown after the button semi-fiasco, stopping to try on clothes and shoes, for an iced mocha (to celebrate spring, of course) and we stopped at our favourite place to pilfer daffodils on the way home.

And you must check out his walking! I haven't ever been able to get a video or photo even of his walking until now - he has prefered to hold a finger and run around the room or go between the two of us, but all of a sudden today he can really walk on his own! I don't know what changed, but he can just walk across the whole kitchen, or across his room or clear through the middle of the living room. He still reaches for a hand if there's one nearby or the edges of things when he gets wobbly, but it was so strange and amazing.