The last full month

Sitting on top of the couch (not allowed); Juniper reading Magic Puppy to Linden (too cute to shut down)

 A full week of March has now passed us by, which is relatively unbelievable.  This is, you see, the last full month that we will be living in this beautiful little corner of the world we've called home for the last two and a half years. Everything is moving forward, and it seems to be happening incredibly fast.  With that in mind, I'll pause here and paint a little picture of life as it is right at this very moment.

Linden is much more serious than you'd think when it comes to trying Juniper's violin

Linden:

Linden has been coming up with some hilarious expressions and words, as you might expect a feisty 3-year old to do.  Some of them, however, have such a nice ring to them that we have stopped trying to correct him, and sometimes find ourselves using them.  In particular, he has found an excellent way to mark time.  It used to be that everything that happened in the past was "yesterday", and anything in the future was "tomorrow".  He has swapped these terms with the highly adaptable phrase "a few whiles".  For instance:

"Linden - where did you get this bruise?"
"I fell".
"When did that happen?"
"Oh, a few whiles ago".

or:

"I'm going on the train to Boston"
"No - we're going to the grocery store"
"I know.  I'm going to go on the train in a few whiles".

Another turn of phrase that has persisted for many, many months now is Linden's habit of  replacing to "laugh" with with "to be funny".  This is often said indignantly: "stop being funny at me!", or "Juniper was being funny at me, and it made me sad!", but can also be used as a request: "I'm going to tell a joke, and then you need to be funny at me, OK?"

Bright yellow lemons in a hand-made wave bowl

As anyone who interacts with Linden can attest, he is a real charmer.  This is, I have come to realise, a particularly important personality trait for a child who also has an unparalleled knack for inciting frustration.  Sometimes, he'll come up to me, touch my face, and say "I like you, mama".
"I LOVE you", I'll respond, and Linden will reply, "I love you too, but I also really like you. You're my special mama, and you make me happy".  Who can resist that without your heart melting?

He is also unusually generous with compliments, often letting you know that he is fond of your outfit.  "I like your dress - you look very fancy", he'll proclaim.  Or "those are great shoes.  They are a very nice colour brown".   Last night, he looked up at me at the table, and said "thank you for making dinner, mama.  The basagna is delicious".  This morning, he climbed into bed for a snuggle, and remarked, "I like your nose.  It is a beautiful nose".

So very devilish, and yet so very charming.  And ridiculously cute. This will undoubtedly spell disaster in about 10 years time.

Kea and Juniper skip through the group at folk dancing

Juniper:

Juniper has been singularly obsessed with her upcoming 6th birthday.  And by "upcoming" I mean a good half a year away.  She has big plans.  HUGE plans.  She talks about them daily, and they change at an alarmingly fast rate.  She has been through any number of themes, including ones you might expect (a princess party; a costume party), and others that clearly came from some deeper, more creative space (a "rainbow" party, where everyone comes dressed as a colour of the rainbow; or a "bug" party - I'm fuzzy on the details of this one).

Currently, she has decided on a "shop" party.  The idea came from the shop party that WHOI throws every year, so called because it is held in a gigantic machine shop (I blogged about it last December).  Juniper first wanted to find such a machine shop in Ottawa, and hold her birthday there.  She quickly amended these plans, however, when she realized that her new friend Ruth (who she has, incidentally, not yet met), would only be about 9 months old at that point, and that it might not be safe for her. So now, "shop party" has morphed into an event to be held at our (as yet theoretical) new house.  It will involve Clark building a play house in the back yard, and Juniper setting up a store, with food and other items for sale.  Guests at the party will be invited to buy items from this shop, each of which will range in price from 0.01$ to 0.09$ (Canadian). If Linden plays his cards right, it looks like he might be invited to work the cash register with Juniper.  I'll be very interested to see how this epic shindig actually shapes up in the end!

And with that, I will sign off for now.  There is one video to check out on this week's Juniper and Linden newscast - you can find it here.