Right Now

Peanut butter & honey, with a digger shirt.  So much goodness.

Right now:

- The coffee and the Advil are kicking in, and I might just make it through the day with my little three-nager (*might*).  I asked Linden where he would like to go on this rainy day (IKEA?  The gym?), and he resolutely told me we were going to stay home and eat.  So there you have it.

- Everyone here is mostly back to normal health-wise.  

- We have a house that is about 85% set up.  Not bad! This has been a massive team effort between the visionary/aquirerer of goods (me) and the visionary/super-amazing fix-it man (Clark).  It is a whole lot of time and money setting up a new place to live, I will tell you that much.  And now that everyone is not sick, we all mostly sleep right through the night.  It is therefore once again awesome having a grown-up bedroom.  You know what I can do now?  Read a little in bed before I go to sleep. A-Mazing.

- There is a family of birds (with brand new hatchlings)  living in the vent in the house next door, directly outside my office window.  This is both adorable, and constantly noisy.  I can currently see the babies poking their little beaks out, chirping for food.

- I am slowly starting to realize the awesomeness of living in the same city as old friends.  We've been so busy/sick that up until very recently, we've mostly been living in a bubble.  But we just had a very social weekend (invited out to brunch; visiting/procuring a couch; having people over for dinner), and it is very good for the soul.

And with that, I will leave you with some pictures of the past week in review.  There is, after all, a whole lot of sitting at home and eating that needs to be done.

My parents and Faye, the night before the long drive back to Fredericton

Crafts on the deck with Judith

Juniper shows off yet another vintage dress 

Making dried grapefruit sun catchers

I love getting notes like these.  Though I'm not sure Juniper took an official poll.

Punctuation?  Punctuation!

I will leave you with this demonstration of Linden's deplorable lack of core strength (you'll notice that he only succeeds in the end by surreptitiously pushing himself up with this arm).  He is one surprisingly strong little dude in most respects, but clearly we need to do some core training.  See you next week!

The Good and the Bad; (the Sleep and the Sickness)

The "dessert potluck", after Juniper's spring concert.  Rile them up, then send them home sugared

Happy Victoria Day to all my fellow Canadians! I am sad to report, however, that from my particular window on the world, the day is not super celebratory.This has been what you might call a difficult past week. The kind of week that holds a whole lot of expectations and potential, and then gets completely bowled over sideways by sickness.  I am currently sitting here, exhausted, having dealt with a little boy who was beside himself all morning long with pain and exhaustion. The problem is I know EXACTLY how he feels, but can do almost nothing about it.  But I won't spend a whole post complaining - nothing is ever all bad.  There is a lot of good amongst the yuck, as well.  So this post will be devoted to both sides of the coin - the good and the bad.

Finding small items for her new exploring magnifier

Posing with the results

The GOOD:  As you might remember from last week, Juniper was sick.  She was complaining of a sore throat, a headache, and an earache for what seemed like an exceptionally long time (like, 5 or 6 days).  This, coupled with only a low-grade fever, made me speculate that when she kept wanting to stay home from school, there were larger issues at hand (revolving around a new school, trying to muddle through French Immersion etc).  I am now pleased to announce that my concerns were unfounded.  Not only is she now super duper happy to be back at school, I can say with a large amount of confidence that she was really and truly sick.  Much sicker than she seemed. And not only that, she was an amazing trooper about the whole thing.

The BAD:  My confidence on that particular issue comes from first hand experience.  Just as Juniper was starting to come around, the rest of us started to succumb.  The symptoms were just as Juniper had described.  And though they may sound relatively innocuous, let me assure you this thing is fierce.  My sore throat started on Wednesday, and it is now Monday, and has yet to disappear.  During the worst day (Thursday), I couldn't even function.  I was either tossing and turning with chills and sweats and fever dreams in bed, or popping pain medication.  I couldn't talk without crying.  Some combo of the super severe sore throat coupled with the head and the ears made the pain almost unmanageable - I, (who rarely take an Advil for even a headache), was popping at least three on a 4-hour schedule, and it still seemed to do very little to help.  And then there is the sleep issue - what your body needs most in such a state is sleep.  But it is next to impossible to do so. Not during the day or at night.

Me and Linden, both miserable on the couch

 The GOOD:  We had visitors the week!  There was a wedding going on this past weekend, and both my sister Andrea (the maid of honour), and my parents were invited.  So Andrea and Dinesh (both of whom we never get to see), flew from the west coast for the event, my parents drove down from Fredericton, and even my sister Faye showed up yesterday afternoon - not for the wedding, but to drive back to Fredericton for awhile with my parents.  Juniper, as you can imagine, has been over the moon about the whole thing. And, an unexpected bonus - when I was at my sickest, I had back-up.  Hurrah!

The BAD:  Ummmm - except for Juniper , the rest of of us have been almost too sick to enjoy the visit.  We've all rallied at various points, however, so it has not been a complete loss.  We did all manage to make it out for a big delicious group dinner last night (which was not looking promising for awhile), so that's a bonus.

Eating strawberries and enjoying the deck and the new ball

Juniper shows off her fancy dinner dress (a hand-me-down from Yvon's daughter, straight from the '80s!)

Posing with Andrea and Dinesh at dinner, before they hopped on a plane.  Linden doesn't look sick, does he?  He mostly rallied for the dinner, but you should see him this morning.

The GOOD:  With respect to sleeping, this house is one giant mountain better than our last one. There are three whole bedrooms upstairs, meaning that the kids each get their own, and (gasp), Clark and I get to share one again.  Amazing!  Also, when visitors come, we can put them up in the nicely finished basement (where my parents are right now), and even in my little office if they are willing to squeeze in (as Faye is currently doing).  

The BAD:  So far the arrangement hasn't been completely satisfactory.  Neither kid is used to sleeping on their own, which means we often get visitors at night.  More than once.  From each kid.  Therefore, no one is actually sleeping all that well.  Which goes a long way toward explaining this awful, prolonged illness.  In fact, for the last three nights, Clark has been camping out on Linden's floor to try and minimize sleep disturbance/maximize sleep potential. Not that it's actually working, as this particular illness does not let you sleep.  It is a reminder of why we had our particular Wood's Hole sleeping arrangements in the first place.  I think this is one of those situations that just needs a bit of time to sort itself out, but holy crap it is a difficult thing to weather in the meantime.

The restaurant from last night was right beside the airport.  We therefore spent a lot of time post-dinner watching planes land and take off.

Riveted

Pretending to be planes

And with that, I will leave you, with hopefully better tidings next week.  If Linden can kick this things in the next couple of days, he's going to try out a home daycare this week! That holds much promise.  See you then!

Happy Mother's Day!

Hello from Canada!

This will be a short little update.  As I type, Clark is taking Linden to check out a home daycare close to Juniper's school that was highly recommended to us.  If it works out, we'll hopefully be able to send him a few days a week, and I can make use of that lovely little office space that I have almost gotten ready for action.  I was supposed to be going with them, but Juniper is home again from school.  This is now day three in a row.  Thursday and Friday she was complaining about a sore throat and a headache, and today it is an earache.  She is clearly not quite herself, but also not completely sick, either.  We actually had a pretty action-packed weekend, which Juniper was able to participate in. I don't doubt that her ear hurts (I think she's got quite a bit of sinus congestion), but for the first time, I am unsure how much of her insisting on staying home is related to truly feeling crappy, and how much is not wanting to go to school.  It breaks my heat a little.  

Some water got added to Linden's digging hole.  This was clearly an excellent development. 

 In any event, I have included some pictures from the weekend.  The highlights involved a gorgeous bike ride through some trails by Clark's work, a visit from Jane and little Ruth, and a Mother's Day trip to the Nature Museum.

1. Bike Ride:
Clark has been biking to and from work this past week, and discovered early on that there are a whole series of beautiful woods paths all along and through the area.  Clearly, then, this was top priority for a family adventure as soon as the weekend hit.  It truly is gorgeous, and very age/difficulty-level-appropriate for the kids.  The trilliums were out in droves (more in one place than I've every encountered), the trees are all in bloom, and there were incredibly picturesque streams to pause and explore along the way.  The one mishap that occurred was mine - in an attempt to get a nice picture, I slipped on a rock in the river, and went down.  My pride was definitely hurt (I got completely soaked), but as it turns out, so was my body.  I still have a huge welt on my leg, and my right arm is bruised, cut, and functioning only sub-optimally.  That will teach me, I suppose.

All ready to go!

Juniper coming through the blossoms

The highlight for Linden:  crossing a train track

Look at all those trilliums!

Close-up

The stream that did me in.  I would have gotten a nicer shot if I hadn't taken a spill!

2. Ruth stopped by!
Though we are not super close to Ottawa proper, we are starting to figure out the logistics of getting to see all the wonderful friends we have who live in this city.  One of which is our dear friend Jane, and her adorable little daughter Ruth.  They were away when we moved here, but were back this past week, and made it over for a visit on the weekend.  Though we were all pumped for the visit, Juniper might have been the most excited.  She dressed "like a princess" for Ruth's benefit, and spent as much time as she could holding her.  Ruth didn't seem to mind one little bit!

Look at that gorgeous girl!

3. Nature Museum!
Finally, as a mother's day treat, we finally made a family trip to the Nature Museum!  In an incredible act of thoughtfulness  and generosity, our Woods Hole friends gave us a year's family pass to this museum, and Sunday was the first day we were able to take advantage.  It was amazing!! Even though we were there for a solid couple of ours, we only got to see maybe half of the exhibits.  I feel like this will become a weekly (or at least bi-weekly) adventure for me and Linden on the days that he doesn't go to preschool.  I didn't actually get all that many photos - we chose what must be one of the busiest days of the year to go, and therefore there were people everywhere. But as you can see, one of the highlights was the dinosaur exhibit.  We could have basically spent all of our time there, and both kids would have been pleased as punch.  We also paid extra to see a 3-D movie about wooly mammoths, but Linden felt the whole experience was a little scary and overwhelming, and screamed every time something seemed to get a little too "close"for comfort.

Linden trepidatiously checks out the T-Rex

 See you next week!

Life, partially settled

Sharing popcorn on our one deck chair

We made it to Monday!  It is a strange Monday, though... in some respects, it is the beginning of a new life, and a new routine, but in others, everything still feels very liminal and unsettled.  Clark has left for his first full day at his new job, Juniper got hustled onto the school bus for week two of EFISK (early french immersion senior kindergarten), and Linden and I have yet to figure out how best to hold down the fort on our end of things.  In the interest of a shower and a quick blog update, he is currently upstairs watching the Gruffalo, but soon we will be choosing our adventure.  My guess is that it will involve at least a quick bike ride (Linden has been wanting to go biking all day everyday), and then maybe I'll take him with me for a a bit of play room time while I hit the gym.   At some point soon, we will need to find at least some part-time care for Linden - for both our sakes.  I need to get rolling on the last stage of thesis writing, and Linden clearly needs some social interaction (many of his bike rides are in search of his "new school" - I think he figures that if he looks hard enough, he'll stumble across a brand new child centre).

A fun climbing tree on a beautiful woods trail hike

So far, life in the 'burbs is turning out better than I expected.  Being so very close to all of our neighbours is a bit of a challenge (especially considering we have a next door neighbour who is an avid astral photographer, and therefore often stays up very late, and considers 9 am an "early" time to be hearing the kids in the morning), but there are so many trails and little playgrounds around here that it is extremely easy to explore and head out on little adventures.  This weekend, in particular, was gorgeous and sunny, and perfect for some biking and hiking and hanging out int he back yard.  We could get used to that!

The woods around here even have fairy apartment complexes!

Exploring the marshy board walk

 As for the new house - the main floor is quite usable now, as are the kids' rooms.  Our room, and the basement, however, are a different story.  Once we truly get everything in its place, I think we will be quite happy and comfortable here.  My office is VERY close to being functional as well, and I think it will be an excellent spot to get some work done (at least that is what I keep telling myself).

Juniper had a bit of a rocky first day at school (I think, in large part, because she felt like she couldn't understand much of what was going on), but by day two, things looked much brighter.  She has made some friends, is settling into the routine, and is just generally starting to feel a bit more comfortable, I think.  Linden has, as you can see in the picture below,  co-opted the strip of garden by the side of the deck for his digging needs.  This means that Juniper and I might need to alter our gardening plans, but a "big hole" was, after all, Linden's one request, so I cannot, in good faith, deny him this space.

Construction zone

And with that, Linden and I are off to start our day.  See you next week!