Category Archives: Words Words Words

Owlet: Twenty-Eight Months Old!

(Yay, finally! I’ll backdate this in a day or two.)

Owlet is two, and we’re seeing that in her behaviour. There are sudden leaps in vocabulary and creative thinking, and wonderful personality quirks emerging, and there are sudden stormy breakdowns over what we think are minor things.

One of her current quirks that I just love is her interest in writing down words. Sometimes she just dictates letters to me and I write them down for her, but other times she will bring a pencil and paper over, hoist herself up on the chesterfield next to me, and say, “Gandma and Papa,” and point to the paper. So I write down Grandma and Papa. Then she says, “Mirva.” And I write down Minerva. “Giffindar,” she says next. I write Gryffindor. “Daddy!” she says, pleased. “Mummy! Nana! Gandad! Eeeyam! Blue! Geen! Pupple!” Then she takes the paper and slides off the chesterfield and carries it around with her for a while. It’s her way of taking the things she loves with her.

Potty training has really taken off, so well that we can pretty much say that she’s done. We keep finding the little potty full of stuff, which means she’s trotting off and taking care of things on her own without telling us. One of her newest phrases is “Clean all day!” And in fact, we have had a couple of dry nights as well, which is pretty awesome.

Also in the line of common two-year-old behaviour, we get lots of “SELF!” She insists on getting dressed on her own (even her socks, which amazes me, because Sparky could not get the hang of putting socks on until he was almost four). She does her own shoes and boots, and her Robeez slippers, and when we have come home from school and she has put her own slippers on she enthusiastically puts mine on for me, too. Of course, I have to raise my foot to her eye level, which is kind of hard on my lower back, but it’s worth it to see how proud she is of getting them on my feet.

Bedtime this past month has been a challenge. There has been some raging crying some nights at bedtime, and I’ve had to sit next to her bed and hold her hand until she’s asleep. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde; you don’t know which Owlet you’ll get when you start the bedtime routine. We recently caught on to part of it; she thinks she’s missing something when we put her to bed. So we showed her Sparky in his pyjamas in bed, we got into our jammies early to say goodnight to her, and we turned off all the lights so when she peeks out of her room she sees that the house has gone to bed. It has mostly worked, so I think we finally figured it out. In the weeks leading up to the switch to the big bed we’ve been having a lot of “Sit Mummy, sit” when I put her to bed; she wanted company while she fell asleep. That would have been fine, except when she has company she thinks it’s playtime. It’s one of the reasons we figured it was time for the switch to the bed from the crib. It was kind of a reset of the bedtime routine. Now we curl up in her bed to read together, and snuggle and sing, and she knows she has a defined cuddle time after that.

The biggest news, and the reason this post was delayed a few days, was the introduction of the big girl bed. Owlet is in complete and utter head-over-heels love with it.

The first nap was a bit rough, but after that everything has gone swimmingly. Once we’ve finished stories, songs, and cuddle and we leave, we can hear her patter across the floor and crack open the door to peek out, but then she closes the door and races back and goes to sleep. In fact, we have to wake her up most mornings. She’s sleeping so hard that not even opening her blind and letting in the cat wakes her up…

We are seeing more sudden toddler breakdowns resulting from things like telling her she has to sit at the table to eat peanut butter and crackers, like we always have. No, she wants to eat them on the chesterfield, right here, right now, and the world will end if she does not. Do you want the world to end, Mummy? Of course you don’t. So bring the crackers HERE. Except we keep calmly telling her that if she wants PB crackers she has to come to the table for them, and it’s like we’re telling her that we have to cut off one of her arms before she gets that snack.

Since we’re talking about food, I’ll mention that like Sparky did at her age, she loves gravy on everything. “Dips? Dips?” she’ll ask when she gets served food. Grandma and Papa served applesauce with the ribs the last time we were over for dinner and she was all for it. Maybe we can get away with warming up some applesauce and putting it on her plate to dip everything into, because making quick pan gravy at just about every meal is getting old fast. (I remember making a large batch of gravy and freezing it in an ice cube tray when Sparky was at this stage; maybe Ill have to do that again.) I introduced her to mayonnaise the other day when she demanded dips for her carrot sticks, and I had to give her more three times during that meal alone.

At the end of November my rehearsal with my accompanist was cancelled on a Saturday morning, so I bundled all my equipment back inside, and Owlet decided she needed to come upstairs and that I should play my cello for her. She’s never asked this before. So up we went. I played my recital piece for her, and she was so good! She sat on the chaise longue exactly where I told her she’d have to sit, and I let her hold my Hermione doll while she did. When I was done she slipped down and came over and said, “Help?” So I let her put her hand on my bow hand and push the bow back and forth on the strings, which got her very excited. Then she wanted to do it alone, but I said no. So she grabbed Sparky’s bow and crouched over his cello, trying to play it. I managed to stop her in time there, too. Then I thought… why not?

I asked if she wanted to play her own cello. Yes, yes, Mummy, Owlet cello! So I got her installed in the living room again and went down into the storage room to get the old clunker viola Sparky used to use as his cello. We sat her in one of her tiny chairs, put a box in front of her to rest the viola on, and now we apparently have another cellist in the family.

It’s okay, I don’t think we have to look for a teacher just yet. Besides, we’re still hoping she chooses violin or piano or flute when she’s five and it’s time for music lessons.

As she gains more autonomy, life gets easier. Even with the slowdowns when SELF has to do it, it’s wonderful to be able to give her a direction and let her handle something. And the older she gets, the more easily she plays with Sparky, to both their enjoyment. They love one another very much, and even when they get frustrated with one another, it blows past quickly.

Fall Concert Announcement!

It’s late November! Before we know it, it will be December. Have you been wondering when the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra’s fall concert announcement would appear? Did you worry that you’d missed it?

Well, wonder no more! We’re presenting it a couple of weeks later than usual this year. In fact, it’s happening as late in November as it possibly can be.

Airs de jeunesse will be presented this Saturday, 30 November 2013, at 19h30. As the concert’s title suggests, the theme is early works from some well-known composers, but early doesn’t mean weaker than their more mature works; in fact, they’re anything but! They’re bursting with energy and vitality. Here’s the programme:

    Overture for A Midsummer Night’s Dream — Mendelssohn
    A Simple Symphony — Britten
    Violin Concerto (first movement), with soloist Ember Reed — Kabalevsky
    Symphony no. 1– Beethoven

The concert is taking place at Valois United, our orchestra’s home, which is at 70 Belmont Ave (corner King) in Pointe-Claire. Admission is $10, free for children 18 and under. The concerts usually last just about two hours, including the refreshment break. The address and map are on the church website. Children of all ages are very welcome.

I hope we’ll see you there!

More Sparky, With Cello

I haven’t even mentioned here that Sparky got a new cello.

It was about a month ago. When school began this year and lessons started up again, Sparky’s teacher mentioned that he’d grown over the summer. (This was not news to us; all the pants he’d had to roll up at the beginning of the calendar year were now just barely long enough for his legs.) Come the new year, she said, we’d have to look for a new cello, the next size up.

Let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane.

This was Sparky with the 1/4 size rental cello:

This was Sparky with a 1/8 size rental cello, the proper proportion for his size at the time (he was 5 1/2):

This was Sparky with his very own brand-new-to-him 1/8 size cello, the purchase of which was documented here). (It looks bigger than the other 1/8, but that’s just the angle of the photograph.):

Well, this was Sparky this past September, with that same 1/8 cello:

Yeah, we knew he was growing. We’d have been blind not to notice.

Because it’s not every day the right size cello pops up in the classifieds, I started watching local ads for a used one at an affordable price. There were 1/4 cellos out there for more than I could afford, of course. I needed to keep an eye on things and jump on the right one as soon as it was listed.

As fortune would have it, that cello showed up the second day I checked, priced at five hundred dollars. And it was five minutes away, to boot. So we made an appointment and went to check it out. It was perfect — nice sound, no cracks or open seams, a well-repaired neck — so I made another appointment to go back with the payment and to pick it up. The sound is quite nice; the simple fact that the body of the instrument is bigger means there’s more room for the sound to resonate and for the vibrations to amplify, so that’s a big help.

Sparky now had a new cello! Which meant we needed to sell his old one to recoup the money. I listed it at the same price, taking into account the three hundred dollars of work we’d had done to it to bring it up to playable state, the new bow we’d bought, and the new case. Two weeks ago I had a query on it, from a couple in Quebec City, who were looking for an instrument for their four-year-old son to start lessons with. (Aww!) It’s rare to find a 1/8 cello listed for resale, so I understand why they queried me; heck, we bought this one in Ottawa, remember? They obviously couldn’t come see it, but we had long chats on the phone and via e-mail about it, I answered a lot of questions for them, and we made a date for their son’s teacher to come see it the next time he visited Montreal. (He travels here to visit the same luthier we use! That was a good omen.) He came by this morning and gave it a good workout, then asked me if I was really asking only five hundred for it, because it was a really good little cello, and outfits usually go for much more. Yes, I explained, I only listed it at that price because we got a really good deal on it and I only added the amounts we’d paid for the bow and the case and the upgrades; I wanted it to go to another child who would love it and enable a family who might not otherwise be able to afford it to buy it. He said that he’d recommend it at that price without hesitation; heck, he’d recommend it at a higher price. So he called the couple who were interested, and they agreed, and we compromised on $475. Sparky’s first cello has gone to a very good home. And the teacher voluntarily promised to make sure it went to another good home when the current wee cellist outgrew it. And he took the wee cello away with him.

So, as HRH pointed out on the phone, through the magic of creative financing, we kind only paid $25 for Sparky’s new cello, which tickles me. I didn’t haggle with the woman selling the 1/4 because, as she said, it’s kind of a complicit thing: it’s like a closed community and we’re all supporting one another. It’s like passing good karma along, and encouraging our kids.

The only drawback is that the buyers wanted the small 1/10 bow we bought for Sparky when the 1/8 bow proved just a bit too long for him to balance properly. That’s understandable; the new wee cellist is four and a half, and he’s going to need a smaller bow, too. That means Sparky just started using the 1/4 bow we got with the newer cello, and you can tell he’s not quite comfortable with it yet. Although, our teacher told him he was doing all the right things to get used to it and that his hold was still pretty good for working with a new bow. And the case for the new cello doesn’t have backpack straps, which we miss a lot, but we’ll manage.

I don’t yet have a photo of him with it; he has refused each time I’ve asked. But we have a recital coming up in two weeks, so I’ll try to get one then. Or rather, I’ll have to ask someone else, because I’m accompanying him again!

I am a wee bit nostalgic, because Sparky got that 1/8 cello not long before Owlet was born, so we’ve had it as long as she’s been around.

A Night Out With Sparky

Last night Sparky and I did something special together, just we two cellists. We went to a concert held by the West Island Youth Symphony Orchestra, in the church where I usually do my Canada Day concerts.

It would have been little more special if half an hour before we got there, Sparky hadn’t done a 180 degree shift from his excitement prior to the actual concert and decided he didn’t want to be there, because we’d get home much too late to read a chapter before bedtime. He was cranky and a bit whiny through the first half. He sat there with a Lego book open on his lap, poking me and whispering stuff now and again. It was chilly in the church and he was wearing only a cotton button-down shirt, so that didn’t help; he burrowed into his down-filled jacket and pulled his scarf and hat on. But as every new piece began he asked for the programme and looked up its name. I like to talk to him about music, and sometimes give him snippets of trivia about the piece and the composer. He’s often receptive, but he wasn’t in the mood this time, so I let him be.

They opened with a Shostakovich overture that was nice and crashy with lots of brass, moved to Respighi’s Fountains of Rome (I need to break out my double disc set of Respighi music, because I do not listen to it enough), did a pleasant arrangement of Williams’ theme for Schindler’s List, and finished the first half with a soloist performing Chaminade’s Concertino for Flute and Orchestra. I was especially interested in this one, because our orchestra played it with a phenomenal young flutist a couple of years ago, but I’d never heard it live.

The orchestra was incredible. They were smooth, tight, confident, and leapt from pianissimo to fortissimo without dragging along the way. (My orchestra must make our conductor despair sometimes, because dynamics are one of our issues; he likes a lot of contrast, and we are usually very slow to get there.) We sat in the perfect place to see the celli work, and I was kind of excited about that. I think the last time I saw an orchestra play was about three years ago, and it was the WIYSO again, in their free concert for the Beaconsfield centennial year. (Again with Sparky! That’s one of the reasons I thought this would be a nice treat; we’d very much enjoyed that one.) It’s quite a treat to be able to sit and enjoy another orchestra.

The second half was what it’d really be looking forward to. They played Dvorak’s eighth symphony, and while the ninth is yes, very good, I prefer the eighth, hands down. The last time I saw the eighth done in concert, it was in the second half of an all-Dvorak programme presented by the TSO fifteen years ago; the first half was the Dvorak cello concerto with Yo-Yo Ma as the soloist, and Ma crept out in the second half to sit with the cellist at the last desk and play through the eighth symphony with them in the cello section for fun. The WIYSO did a brilliant job. The symphony is very cello-heavy; they have a lot of the themes and carry a lot of the textural richness along with the brass section, and they did a terrific job. It turned out that a lot of his grousing during the break was because he was tired, because Sparky slept through the second half, his head pillowed on my lap. I marvel at how he manages to sleep through the loudest, crashiest pieces of music. He’d whined through the break, wanting to go home, but I told him pleasantly yet firmly that we weren’t leaving because I wanted it hear the symphony, and so he could be miserable or try it make the best of it. I opened a tiny packet of Smarties during the second movement for him, and he went back to sleep for the rest of the symphony.

He said the next day at our group lesson that he’d really liked it, even though he slept through most of the second half. I know that even though there are hiccoughs along the way, he’ll remember these special nights. And yes, I read half a chapter to him after we got home, as I’d promised.

Lest We Forget

I remember, today and always.

War’s not the answer most of the time; it’s often an excuse that veils another agenda. But that’s not going to stop me from honouring the men and women whose job it was/is, or who volunteer(ed), to go out and risk their lives in confrontations beyond what most of us can envision. It’s their commitment and courage I honour on Remembrance Day. I honour our peacekeepers, too, the people who go to other countries to help rebuild after times of turmoil. And support staff — doctors, drivers, cooks, all those people who are necessary and who rarely get recognition for being in danger as well. And those left at home, who carry the double burden of hope and dread for their loved ones.

There has to be a better way. But even when someone figures it out, I’ll keep on saying thank you to all those individuals who gave lives, limbs, time, and innocence to the wars. I honour and respect their personal decisions, even if I disagree with the governmental decisions that created the need for them.

November

I am just back from DavidsTea, where I bought three teas I did not expect to buy, and none of the ones that were actually on my list to pick up. Shiny things! Let me smell them! Ooh, I’ll take 25 g of that, and 25 g of that… shopping list? What is a shopping list? You mean, this thing in my hand that’s in my way of picking things up and looking at them? This thing that reminds me of the favourite teas that I am out of or running low on?

Yeah. But I got some of the new White Chocolate Frost, so that makes up for a lot.

I am late on Owlet’s 26-month post, I am late on any kind of an October roundup, and I am sadly delinquent in any kind of note-taking here. I blame a lot of it on October, actually, which was full of deadline kitting, travel, sunshine, and back-to-back work projects. I am also delinquent on a fibro post, but here’s the essence of it: Going back on my medication seemed to be a good idea, except it didn’t do much for the first couple of months, and I began to wonder if something had changed and I needed a different kind, when suddenly everything settled and I felt better than I’d felt in a couple of years. My doctor was very pleased, told me again that she didn’t know how I’d managed everything while not taking medication, and happily extended my prescription for a year. And then November hit.

Ah yes, November. October is all sunshine and coloured leaves, and even the rainy parts are okay. It’s Thanksgiving, and it’s the smell of dusty, smoky, early decay, and it’s really nice. And then you flip the calendar page, and it’s like a huge dark wall slams down, imprisoning you in a horrid grey cell that is damp and cold, and you can never get warm, your tea goes stone-cold in half an hour, and you burst into tears because you can’t fold a bloody bed sheet properly, for goodness’ sake.

Yeah. So that’s where I am right now. I am the ‘nothing going right no matter how hard I try’ stage of things. Cello? Pointless. Reading? I can’t get into very much. Knitting? I’ve frogged the same blanket square five times this week. I’m between work projects, which is good in one way because I am pretty fried, but worrisome in another because in a month my last freelance cheque will arrive in my mailbox, and then there will only be the echoey sound of crickets in my bank account unless I land more work.

So I’m going to go make more tea, because this cup is stone-cold, and do some deadline spinning, and try to get half a blanket square knitted, because someone is having twins they only discovered were twins at 29 weeks (!), so suddenly a second blanket has to be made. It’s very nice to have hobbies when they are a rest from work, but when they become the thing you’re working on, they’re not as much fun.

Owlet: Twenty-Seven Months Old!

This is about two weeks late; I’ll backdate in in a day or so. Lots of pictures, fewer words.

We spent Thanksgiving with my parents in southern Ontario. While we were there, there was much leaf-jumping:

And we managed to get to the warplane heritage museum where my dad works before it closed for the day, despite the rain and the accident that closed both sides of the highway:


And we went to a real fall fair on a thoroughly gorgeous fall day, complete with a midway, food trucks, and livestock competitions. The kids liked the 4H rabbit jumping competitions best. (Yes, this is a real thing. Bunnies doing obstacle courses with jumps and faults, just like horse show jumping. It was marvellous, actually.) The kids got to pet all kinds of livestock, like the rabbits, and sheep, goats, ducks, cows, and horses:


Owlet’s stubbornness is starting to make things like meals and potty training a bit more of a challenge. While she is essentially pee trained (huzzah! and I only say ‘essentially’ because if stated outright that she is pee trained she will have a massive accident) pooping is another matter. She has decided to refuse to poop on the weekends, which has made things kind of crazy. (It’s not even a daycare/home thing. She’ll poop at home on weekday evenings if she has to… just not weekends. It’s driving us batty.) We can put a plate of all her favourite things in front of her and despite loving every thing on it she will push it away sharply and call for yogurt or “peanut butter toast” (which is her term for peanut butter anything, really — sandwich, crackers, actual toast). She loves yogurt, clementine oranges, raspberries, hot chocolate, and anything she can dip into milk or the aforementioned hot chocolate. She can pack away three freshly-baked scones, and would try for a fourth if we let her.

She is quirky and bursting at the seams with character. She picks up inanimate objects and uses a funny deep voice to make them say, “Heywo, Mummy; how are ooo?” She insists on smelling tins of coffee and tea when we open them, big deep inhalations with closed eyes and a sighed “ooh, mmm” afterwards. She insists on eating a pot of yogurt on her own. “My self,” she informs us importantly. And she does indeed do it herself, very tidily, and only needs parental help to scrape the very last half spoonful off the sides. If she does something, she exclaims delightedly, “I did it!” Sometimes after she has successfully used the potty, she says, “I did it!” then throws her arms around my neck and says, “Me happy, Mummy.”

She has discovered how much fun it is to chase other people. She loved pretending to be a monster at Halloween and shrieked with laughter when Sparky would pretend to run from her in horror. “I going get you! I going get you,” she would say, chugging after him on her chunky little legs.

Her favourite shows are Peppa Pig, Sesame Street extracts, and the Angry Birds Toons that Sparky watches. She loves to sing, and brought home a somewhat garbled version of Frere Jacques from preschool that I nonetheless figured out one day (hurrah for motherly intuition). She sings the same circle time song that Sparky used to sing when he attended the other preschool that the director runs, and was delighted when I started singing it with her one day. Her current favourite books are King Pig and she keeps going back to the Little Pookie books and If You Take a Mouse to School. Her new favourite movie is Finding Nemo.

The big girl bed plans continue. Our daycare director passed along an antique wooden bed that has pinecone/acorn finals on the headboard and footboard and is finished in a lovely warm chestnut brown colour. Owlet’s not in danger of climbing out of her crib (the way Sparky was, yikes), but with potty training being close to done, she needs to be able to get out of bed at night. And she so loved reading and snuggling in bed with us at Nana and Grandad’s house, and cried when we had to transfer her into the playpen she sleeps in there: “No, Mummy, no Daddy, sleep big bed!” So the plan is to put up the big bed the first weekend of December, after classes are over at the school HRH works at, so if he gets up a couple of times a night to return a wandering toddler to her bed it won’t impact him as badly the next day. I found her a lovely vintage-looking floral quilted patchwork coverlet mainly in shades of pale green and blue, which looks lovely with the yellow walls. We’re looking forward to snuggling in bed with her to read and cuddle instead of doing it in the rocker (which will have to be moved out of the room, alas, as the twin bed takes up so much more room than the crib does). Moving to a big girl bed is such a sign of growing up!