Category Archives: The Girl

Owlet: Fifteen Months Old!

I am astonished at how quickly Owlet is changing. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be, seeing how she’s practically a different baby every day, and we’ve gone through this with Sparky… but wow. Suddenly we have a little girl.

We have an accident-prone little girl, to be honest. Owlet tripped over a mote of dust and drove the corner of a baseboard into the centre of her forehead last Friday night. Blood literally pouring down a child’s face onto a white shirt does interesting things to one’s focus. She’s mostly fine now. It’s her second head trauma this week. (The first one wasn’t this bad; she whacked the edge of her eye socket on the edge of the coffee table, bending down to pick up a cup. It split and bled, but wasn’t half as bad as this one.) HRH said she’s not allowed to walk ever again. If she’d been a bit worse we’d have taken her to emergency, but she seems fine apart from the gash. It possibly could have used 1-2 stitches, but waiting forever at the hospital and putting her through that would have been much more stressful for everyone. Owlet was her usual perky self half an hour after it happened, so things seem okay. I had forgotten how badly head wounds bleed. And Owlet hates cold things put against her face; she gets very angry. At least the cold washcloths and frozen packs distract her from the actual trauma. And we discovered that she has a latex sensitivity, so now she has the slightly curved gash in the middle of her forehead plus a raised red irritated circle around it from the band-aid we covered it with. HRH says it looks like a Do Not Enter sign. Let’s hope the baseboards pay attention next time.

In the less-than-dramatic column of achievements, Owlet adores brushing her teeth, climbing stars (and can do it very well now, so well that Sparky will let her climb them alone with him, much to our heart attack-inducing surprise when we discovered that), and helping unload the laundry basket and put her clean diapers away. She can throw together her stacking rings like a pro. While crayons are still too tempting to chew, she has discovered plain pencils, and loves to draw with one on the promotional pads of paper we get every couple of months in the mailbox from our local real estate office. Watching me draw cats and fish and houses fascinates her.

We tried a series of new sippy cups, because she was hauling away on the valve ones we’d been using since she was about eight months old and working so hard that I was envisioning disaster when we started giving her open cups. Three different kinds later, it turns out the cheap take n’ toss style are the winners. Although the straw cups aren’t a total loss; she just needs to remember not to tip them up like the other cups. They’re good for the car.

I am very impressed at how well she follows direction. “Switch the toy to your other hand and put this hand through your coat sleeve” was followed without hesitation the first time I said it. “Time to get your boots and coat on so we can go get Sparky” is followed by her bringing her boots to the door and plunking herself down in my lap, pointing up at her coat, and saying “Go, go, go” while trying to turn the doorknob afterward. It’s fascinating to watch her figure things out, too. She can drag things around and climb on them to reach higher. (This one is somewhat disconcerting.) She tried to squeeze through the cat door in the gate that blocks off the stairs to the attic office the other week, too, but got stuck with one arm, her head, and part of her torso through it.

She has started waving hello to people. She wanders around the schoolyard under the trees where we wait to meet Sparky, and waves cheerily at the other parents. She ran right up to a pair of twins around three years old yesterday and gave them each a handful of dead leaves. Slowly she’s starting to understand that it makes more sense if you wave goodbye before or while someone leaves so they can hear you. She loved Halloween; you could practically see her thinking, “Wait — we walk up to someone’s door, ring their bell, smile at them, they give us colourful things and then talk to us? Bring it on!” We don’t have photos of her because we were rushing from one thing to another, but we intend to dress her up again this coming weekend and take pictures of her then.

Her lower molars are coming in, and are currently huge swollen bumps in her lower jaw. She’s quick to grizzle these days, and has been erupting into small but fierce tantrums when something is taken away from her or she is told she cannot have something that she wants. She’s wearing size 24 months or 2T clothes in general, though we like her in 3T jumpers and dresses and her pants need to be at least 2-3T to accommodate the diapers, and size 5 shoes.

New words are showing up. She loves to eat “chzz” and drink “jsss”, and tell us to “go go go!” A “fsssh” is the first animal she says the name of instead of saying the sound it makes. (Possibly because “bubble bubble bubble” is hard for a fifteen-month-old to say?) Food is “nyum nyum nyum,” and after lunch she goes to the gate at the basement stairs and asks to watch “ss ss sse” (or Sesame Street, for those of you unacquainted with our daily routine). And “No,” is a big new one, usually said while shaking her head. Unfortunately it isn’t always accurate, because she sometimes says “no” and shakes her head when she actually means “yes,” which isn’t part of her vocabulary yet.

She points to steer us when we carry her, and brings books to us excitedly and jabs her finger at the text to make us read it. Her current favourite book is The Pigeon Has Feelings Too by Mo Willems. I read the bus driver’s request for the pigeon to show his happy face, then I look at her, and she draws herself up importantly and says, “Nnno!”, proud that she’s “reading” the next page where the pigeon says, “Never!” And she loves to “ticka ticka ticka” people and cats, which makes all of us laugh. She has developed a somewhat menacing toddler chuckle, which we call her evil chipmunk laugh, low and completely at odds with her cheerful, innocent persona. We all laugh whenever we hear it, which makes her laugh more, which… you get the idea.

(For comparison, here’s Sparky’s fifteen-month post.)

LATER: We went to her 15-month checkup. The good news is that her weight is beginning to level off, and she’s only at the 95th percentile instead of the 97th. (Are you laughing? I did.) She weighs just over 27 pounds. No wonder my lower back hurts! She’s now 32.5 inches tall, too. That’s still 97th percentile. Yikes. Well, this all explains the 2T clothes she needs to be wearing…

Trudge Trudge

I am struggling with a bout of being non-social. I’ve drastically reduced my use of social media, and as you can see I haven’t been blogging much. Part of that comes from not having the time–I’m doing the mum thing all day, and when the kids have been put to bed I sit down at my computer to work–but part of it also comes from fatigue. I don’t have the brainpower to write anything. And if I did, a lot of it would sound the same: Owlet is bouncing off walls and chattering and being cute. Sparky’s current obsession is Angry Birds. HRH and I are tired. I’m the one who’s losing out, of course, since I journal for my own reference. So here’s a scattershot of what’s been going on.

Work-wise, it was independently confirmed by my copy chief that editors are so happy with the work I’m doing on the novels that they’re starting to ask for me by name, which thrills me. I’m pretty much doing a two-week assignment, then I get a week off, and then I do another two weeks of work. So it’s steady.

We had lunch over at the Preston-LeBlanc household on Sunday, and it was so nice. Owlet wandered around completely overcome by all the things to look at and touch, and enjoyed Pasley’s potato-apple-carrot soup immensely, as well as an apple she plucked from a fruit bowl, the first she managed to bite into with the peel still on. Tamu and Pat and Flora stopped by the previous weekend and we delighted in watching BebeFlo and Owlet play together (especially the peekaboo game with a blanket at the end, where they both ducked under it and stood there giggling at one another). We got out to MLG’s fortieth birthday evening at Hurley’s before that, which was also fun, because I hadn’t seen everyone in ages.

HRH installed the new range hood this past weekend, and it’s a definite improvement over the last one. It no longer sounds like an aircraft taking off, as my father-in-law put it when he gave it to us. The only thing left to do is cut a hole in the kitchen wall for the new exhaust pipe. We’ve been without a fan since the attic was converted into the office, as the old exhaust pipe went up there and lay along the ceiling crossbeams on its way to the exterior exhaust vent. Once a floor was laid, there was nowhere for the duct to go (cutting holes through the ceiling crossbeams isn’t such a good idea, you know?), so a new vent needs to be made. That will happen this weekend.

I dyed fibre and spun it for a fellow Raveller, who won it in a draw for prizes in our Ravellenic Games team that she captained, and I’m quite pleased with it. I hope she is, too. It was my first time dyeing more than a bit of fibre to mess about with. I used Ziplock microwave steaming bags (which was an interesting experience in itself), and did the four ounces of fibre in four one-ounce batches. She requested raspberry and tangerine, and I blended a very nice colour for both from my Jacquard acid dyes, which of course blended and subtly altered when I spun it up. I did a DK/light worsted two-ply yarn, and I gt at least 300 yards out of it. It plumped up beautifully after a wash. Canada Post tells me that it’s out for delivery in her area right now, so she may have it today!

I am currently sewing the Halloween costumes for both kids, and mostly enjoying myself, although doing it in fifteen minutes here and fifteen minutes there is a bit frazzling. I lose my train of thought and a sense of what I’d planned to do next, or how to do it. (I am working without patterns for both of them, because I don’t have enough stress in my life.) I made a lovely pair of polar fleece pantaloons for Owlet, complete with two deep lace ruffles on the legs, and they’re possibly the most adorable things ever. I used polar fleece for warmth, because nights at the end of October around here are usually quite chilly. I made her a mob cap as well with polar fleece on the inside, but it’s smaller than I thought, so I need more deep lace to sew around the edge so it looks less ridiculous.

The last bit of current news is the worst. Today Nixie goes to the vet, and I suspect that she is not coming home. I am spending as much time as possible with her today. At the very least, the large, weeping, overgroomed area on her chest has become infected; at the worst, the overgrooming is directly related to a possible recurrence of the mass that was removed as part of her surgery this past spring, which makes the third appearance of it, and as something like 80% of feline tumours are malignant, even if we get it removed it will just happen again. We don’t have the money for tests and biopsies in the first place, nor treatment if the worst is confirmed. Sparky and I had a hard cry this morning when I reminded him that she was going to the vet today and she might not come home, and he railed against the injustice of it all: “I don’t want Nixie to die! I want her to come home! She is the best cat!” Of course you do, sweetheart; we all do. No one wants her to die. But things die, and we can’t stop it. It doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, and our hearts hurt so much, but it is a truth, and something we have to face, either now or in a few months, or a few years. When I dropped him off at school he met his friends at the schoolyard gate and stopped there, and I wondered why he didn’t go all the way in. And then I saw one of the girls put a comforting hand on his shoulder, and I understood what was happening: as soon as he’d arrived told them that Nix was sick, possibly too sick to come home, sharing his grief and his hurt, and they were sympathizing with him.

At best, I am hoping that they will be able to prescribe antibiotics and come up with a solution to cover the wound so it can heal properly, because everything I’ve tried has failed. At worst, I have to make the decision that every pet owner hates to make. Somewhere in the middle lies the “we can’t do anything but make her comfortable” diagnosis, and if that is what happens I will probably bring her home again until her quality of life deteriorates to unacceptable levels. Because right now her quality of life seems good: she is still eating well, moving in her usual fashion, using the litter box, purring and enjoying the occasional cuddle, and I am weak, and it feels wrong to say goodbye when she seems so normal other than the infected wound. Her energy hasn’t changed at all, and with every other cat we have known when they were tired, ill, and suffering, even though all of them were stoic they way cats are, because we are attentive and sensitive to that sort of thing. Nix doesn’t project any of that. Knowing when to make that decision is the hardest part of this whole process.

I’m so tired. I think the fibro is starting to creep back, as I’m having trouble focusing on things, lacking the energy to be happy and enjoy my hobbies, the body aches and weak hands are here again, sleep is not restful, and my appetite has vanished. Part of this could be attributable to the time of year, but I suspect that the fibro-quashing pregnancy and year of postnatal adrenaline and hormones are finally done with, and my body is slowly creeping back to normal operative levels. It is not fun. I am trying to find joy in small things, and it is very difficult. I don’t have much time to read, or spin. I can sometimes knit for a row or two. But most of my baby-nap time is taken up by cooking or baking or tidying or work or errands. And it’s all very well to think that this time next year she’ll be in daycare, which is exciting because we know she will love it, but that does not help me now.

Thanksgiving

We are thankful for making ends meet (it’s happening, and it’s only going to get better as we catch up), our lovely little house, our children, our family, our friends (near and far, in person and those we know and love thanks to the wonder of the Internet), our health, and the beautiful world around us.

And for leaf piles!

Sparky picked Owlet up and dumped her right into the middle of the pile of leaves that he’d raked up with his Nana, then rolled around with her. She loved it. Initiation into a Canadian fall tradition: complete.

Owlet: Fourteen Months Old!

All hail development! Someone has finally figured out the putting-things-inside-other-things game! It’s a nice change from the dumping-things-out game. I gave her an empty Kleenex box this morning, and she put her Fisher Price Little People inside it, one by one. Every time she dropped one in, she’d stand up and clap, looking at us so we’d clap too.

We have words, too! Some of them were one-shots, but in her regular rotation are up, down, meow, woof, moo, neigh, owl, whoo, bye-bye, hi, all done (“ah dahn,” said with a hand motion), peekaboo I see you (adorably rendered as “peeabooh, seeyoo”), banana (“‘nana”). Sometimes we get a very clear “thanks” or “taa ewe,” but it isn’t consistent yet. She said “kitty” very clearly when talking with her Nana, which was a surprise because we don’t use it (we say “cat” instead). And the other day, the surprise was “rass berr ees.” I’d asked her to come to her chair so she could eat her toast and raspberries, and she started walking toward me, her head down looking at whatever she was playing with in her hands, and she said it so casually and clearly. It’s so odd, hearing perfect words come out of tiny mouths you’re more accustomed to uttering babble and jargon and weird twisted pronunciations. My other favorite is “’gin,” her way of saying “noggin,” which is what we say when we gently bump foreheads (it’s from the Crush and Squirt scene in Finding Nemo).

She adores Gryffindor, who is so good with her. She can lie right on top of him and he just stretches out and purrs. She often gets too excited and starts bonking him with her fist or whatever she’s holding, but when we say, “No, no, gentle, softly,” she says, “Soh, soh” very seriously and pets him very carefully. Gryff gets lots of Owlet-cuddles, which she does by laying her cheek on him. That’s a very common way she shows love: she lays her cheek tenderly on a cat, a parent’s knee, a favourite book. She kisses things a lot, too.

She has a word or sound she says over and over: Bao, bao, bao. She lengthens it a bit, so it’s kind of like ba-aho. It sounds a bit like her “meow” word, but it’s a very different sound at the beginning. We’ve been trying to figure it out for ages. She doesn’t seem to be aiming it at anything in particular, and sometimes just wanders around saying it, so we thought that it was just a sound she liked. The other day HRH suggested that she was saying “book.” We’re still not entirely sure, but it’s very possible, seeing as how there are bookcases everywhere, so no matter where she is she can see books. It may also be bird. Who knows?

One of the awesome developmental things is how she can now follow directions. And not just one-step directions; directions that have several steps implicit in them. For example: “Where’s your spoon? Can you get your spoon?” She looks down into the pocket of her bib, sees the spoon, looks up at me to confirm that she has found it, then reaches into the pocket and pulls it out. And, “That’s Sparky’s toy. Can you find Sparky and give him his toy?” Watching her look down at the toy in her hands, turn it over and over, then look up and locate her brother, walk over to him, and push the toy at him is just incredible. (Then I have to gently remind Sparky that in order to reinforce what we’re teaching her, he needs to take it even if he doesn’t want it, and say thank you to her, too.)

We’ve been trying to get her to use utensils at supper, and while she’s very happy to hold a spoon, she’ll eat with the fingers of her free hand. The other day I bought a set of metal cutlery for her and showed her how to spear things with the fork. Suddenly it was so much easier! She very proudly ate a piece of penne she’d speared by herself that first night. We applauded her. She’s been so frustrated with the clumsy, thick, plastic spoons, because they just don’t pick up anything other than yogurt very effectively. Meals are generally a fun time, because she loves to eat. It’s fun to watch her attack a grilled cheese sandwich, which she usually peels apart first. She motions for a napkin or her damp washcloth when she’s done eating, and wipes her mouth and tries to wipe her hands.

Let’s see, what else does she do? She loves to drink cool tea from my mug, and alternates between sticking her fingers in then licking her hand like a cat, and tilting the whole mug up to slurp it. She has become much better at handling paper books, paging through them relatively handily. The pages do get creased or crumpled when she gets excited, but at least she doesn’t tear them out. She is mimicking how we touch pictures of things when we count, and counts on her own by striking her finger against the pages of her Pride & Prejudice board book. (Enough people have cooed over this idea that I am sharing the link with you. The whole series is fun.) All brushes are for hair, including clothes brushes and toothbrushes (even when they have toothpaste on them, ahem). She likes to push chairs around the kitchen.

The evil upper molars have finally appeared! They were huge, swollen lumps up top, no wonder she got cranky last month. The right came through first, followed by the left about a week later. She had a dreadful cold last month, too, her nose streaming thickly for about two weeks straight, all snorty and snuffly, waking up at night unable to breathe. The double whammy of teething and the cold dampened her usually sunny disposition.

We dress her in tights or leggings and jumpers over t-shirts, and she’s just the most adorable thing ever. Her soft curls around her ears and the base of her neck are killing. Her lovely blue eyes have greys and greens to them, like her dad’s. Her face has changed in the past month, slimming down and becoming even more like a little girl’s. She can just barely see above the top of the kitchen table now (uh-oh). She’s fearless; I am having to fend her fingers off while I cook, and that makes me nervous. She loves to duck between people’s legs, and the taller she gets the more awkward and hilarious this becomes. The other morning she opened the pantry on three separate occasions and helped herself to crackers, organic corn puffs, and fruit puff stars. Coincidentally, cupboard locks and other safety stuff was 25% off at Toys R Us. So off we went after lunch, and there was a minor meltdown. Apparently we have reached the age where we now understand that a toy store is full of toys, and we want all of them. (Yes, the pantry is now locked.)

She has taken to spinning slowly in place on locked legs, giggling as she makes herself dizzy. To dance, she shuffles in place, occasionally throwing in knee bends and bobs, or one of those stiff spins, sometimes holding her hands up by her shoulders with palms cupped toward the ceiling. The easiest way to get her to dance is to put on the Tangled soundtrack. As soon as she hears the opening guitar of “When Will My Life Begin?” she starts bobbing up and down and shuffling her feet with great concentration

The secondhand fitted diapers that we’ve been using for the past year are finally biting the dust, the cotton just wearing out and falling to pieces after being washed every two days. (And to be fair, Owlet is the third child they’ve been used for, so they have had very good return indeed.) So I scraped the money together and ordered fourteen pocket diapers. They’re cheap pockets, but we really needed them. I’ve never used pockets before—I’d discounted them from my options because they seemed so much less adaptable than prefolds or fitted and separate covers, since you have to wash the whole thing plus the insert every time—but by day two I was a total convert. They come out of the washing machine after a second spin practically dry, and only need an hour or so on the rack, which cuts down the amount of actual doublers/liners/stuffing things that go in the dryer by over half. I’m thrilled. I may order another set of fourteen, since I only paid just under $3 per diaper (yay, direct from manufacturer on eBay!). And as the pocket diapers are so much trimmer than the cotton fitteds or all-in-ones that are part of our rotation, she can go back to wearing size 2T pants (although the 4T jeans we picked up at the thrift store last week are handy when she does wear the AIOs.) I’ve had to sort through all her clothes again, and bring up the 2T fall clothes.

She is such a happy child. Along with this developmental leap her sunny, laughing nature returned. The teething and nasty cold are past; this level-up has been accomplished.

Owlet: Thirteen Months Old!

Okay, where are we at? Dear gods, she’s thirteen months old.

Owlet has, in the past month, totally gotten into:

  • feeding others (crackers I can stomach, especially is they’re not soggy, but she feeds me raisins and I have to pretend I like them because she won’t take no for an answer)
  • blowing kisses
  • saying and waving bye-bye
  • lying down on blankets, taking about seven point two seconds of rest before she’s up and running again
  • pushing things along the floor or through the air, going “vrrrrr, vrrrr” (like blocks, the laundry basket, and books. And a Little People black sheep, as well. That cracked me up. I decided it was a steampunk cyborg sheep.)
  • taking people’s hands and cupping them to her cheek, then cradling her head in them (so, so sweet)
  • finally, cuddles! She climbs up and puts her arms around your neck, then leans her head against your shoulder, and it’s just so wonderful. Sometimes she even pats our shoulder or arm while she does it.

    • New skills include:

  • Opening our lever door handles (Jana, [from my online mums group, see below] whose son demonstrated this new skill just about the same time, said that it feels like that moment when the velociraptors in Jurassic Park figure it out)
  • Swinging open the gate barricade we prop across the hall with ease (it’s not like it’s hinged and latched like our other ones, but it is wedged pretty firmly)
  • Climbing stairs like whoa, if we let her
  • Practicing the sliding-off-beds-and-chesterfields move

    • Big events this past month:

  • We met Jana, an online friend from BC, when she came to visit family in Montreal with her husband and son, who was born a couple of weeks before Owlet (we met via that online mums group, were everyone’s babies were due in July 2011). I packed the kids up and bought picnic lunch stuff, and we met at Lafontaine Park where we picnicked and played and talked. It was awesome. There was swinging (complete with chortles from them both), playing in the sand, dropping sticks and leaves down sewers, and eating of leaves. I am eternally grateful for this group; I have met so many wonderful women.
  • Owlet had her first experiment with crayons. She likes to see the lines she makes, but she isn’t entirely clear on which end or side to use. Lesson learned: Hand her one crayon at a time, and hide the others behind your back so she can’t see the box. And be ready to grab them if she starts lifting them toward her mouth.

    • New foods… I can’t remember any more. She eats everything. She’s had tastes of peanut butter and we haven’t seen any problems, so I assume she’s okay with it. Daily schedule-wise, she’s up around 6:30, naps from 9:30-11:00ish, naps from 2:00-3:30ish, and sleeps from about 7:30 to 6:30 the next morning.

    She has two huge swollen lumps where her one-year-old molars are coming in her upper jaw. No wonder she gets grouchy.

    Her twelve-month doctor appointment was terrific. She weighed 11.92 kg (26 lbs), and measured 78 cm. She’s still around the 97th percentile. The doctor is delighted with her and told me to keep on doing whatever I’m doing. She’s doing very well mobility-wise (she told me she expects one-year-olds to be cruising along furniture) and language-wise (again, she expects about three words at this age, so while I feel that Owlet is behind where she should be because Sparky set a crazy standard, she’s actually ahead of the average). She and Sparky walked in holding hands and slowly strolled down the row of clinic receptionists while smiling, as if they were showing off how adorable they were. The coos from the receptionists and nurses were hilarious.

    A couple of weeks ago she was standing in front of me eating a cracker. She looked at me and made her grabby-hand “I want food/more/milk please” sign. But she already had a cracker, so I was curious as to what she wanted. When I didn’t clue in, she made a little frustrated huff sound, reached the cracker out and banged my chest, then made her little grabby-hand sign again. “Oh, you want some milk with your cracker?” I said. “Mah, mah,” she said, all excited. So I picked her up and put her on my lap, and she sat there and nursed for a minute, then popped off, had a bite of cracker, then had some more milk, and so forth. I was very amused.

    We can’t leave anything on a placemat within her reach, because she pulls the placemat over and helps herself to what’s on the plate or in the glass. A couple of weeks ago I turned around to find her holding HRH’s coffee cup nonchalantly, with a huge coffee stain down her chest and across her lap. (The coffee was cool, fortunately.) She is fascinated by cups of tea and coffee. This morning she was talking to my Davids Tea mug with the silhouettes of birds on it, and kept peeking inside. It was cool enough that I told her she could sip it if she liked. She dipped a finger in to touch the surface instead, and sucked the tea off.

    She loves telephones, but she doesn’t quite get the idea. She knows she can hear the person talking so she reaches for it when I use it. She gets a huge grin when I put the receiver to her ear, but then she puts it in front of her to look at the receiver, kisses it with her big open-mouthed “mwah!”, and then presses as many buttons as possible with her thumbs before someone rescues it.

    She tried to grab the broom repeatedly from HRH when he swept up after dinner, so I found Sparky’s tiny broom for her to use. She loves it. Although after she swept a couple of times that night, she turned it around and started using it like a lightsaber against a chair. Perhaps we shouldn’t have taught her to play Jedi with Sparky in the backyard with the extra lightsaber toy…

    I love watching Owlet and Sparky play together. The older she gets, the more he seems to love her and actively want to play with her, which is delightful. Their favourite games seem to be “hide under the blanket and try to find me,” “pile on top of Sparky,” and “push Owlet around in a laundry basket while she chortles.” She loves coming with me to drop him and collect him at school; there are dogs to look at, and cats that sit on the street corners, and all! those! people! to wave at and say “Bye-bye” to. There are problems, of course, namely that with her newfound ability to unwedge the hall barrier and open doors, she wants to be in Sparky’s room with him when he’s playing on his own with non Owlet-friendly toys like Lego. But in general, they genuinely like one another, and I am so grateful for that.

    (For comparison purposes: Here is Sparky’s thirteen-month post.)

    In Which She Is Thankful For Friends And Opportunities

    We spent a day and a half with t! and Jan this weekend. We did a six-hour visit with them at Upper Canada Village and then stayed overnight with them at their homestead, and we had a wonderful time. Owlet didn’t have a morning nap in the car on the way down, despite scheduling things so she would, but I nursed her to sleep mid-afternoon after a picnic, and she slept for forty-five minutes while everyone else went off and did different things. I just zoned out next to her in the shade of some trees and enjoyed the sounds of the wind, water, and horses (partly because it was nice to do, especially because I was fried and crashing, and partly because I’d forgotten both my spindle and my knitting at home). Sparky learned how to milk a cow there (and did well enough that he was using both hands, not just one like the farmer started him off with), how to pump water and slop pigs, and he helped feed the chickens and gather the eggs before supper back at Rowan Tree Farm. He has decided that he is going to be a farmer when he grows up, which I think is a very noble calling in this day and age, considering all the other cool stuff a seven-year-old thinks is awesome and shiny.

    Owlet was entranced by all the horses (it was a horse weekend, with various exhibitions and competitions and so forth), and she got to see her first real live baas. I don’t think it really sank in until one came right up to the fence that Sparky was standing on and gave one of those loud, directed BAAAAAAs that sheep can give. She said “Baaaaa! Baaaaaa!” all the way back along the road. She climbed all over Carter, t! and Jan’s husky-collie mix dog, too, who was beautifully patient with her, and kept trying to give him her open-mouthed kisses on his very wet nose. And as a delightful bonus, she slept the whole night through there (yippee! she was certainly tired enough after a long day outside with so many things to see).

    I am so thankful that my children have these opportunities, and that we have friends who enable them to experience things like this.

    Also, they were selling dyed roving at $10 a pound in the store, wool from the Village sheep carded on site in the woollen mill (the first place we visited, much to Sparky’s excitement — I love this child — and wow, the size of the water-powered carding machines!). So I got to buy myself a treat at a crazy low price! I got some navy and some deep chocolate brown. They were also selling yarn they’d dyed with natural dyes, and I wish they’d been selling some of the lovely soft olivey green or pale purple as roving. Or even some undyed roving, so I could experiment with some food-based dyeing myself.

    It was a wonderful way to spend the last weekend of summer. School starts tomorrow for Sparky, his first day of grade two in an 80% French classroom at a brand new school. I’ve been trying for a week to make a ten-minute appointment with his new teacher so he can see that s/he is nice, not intent on making him miserable, and seeing a bit of the school to give him a bit of familiarity, but every time I call the receptionist tells me to call back a day later and they may have the class lists by then. As of today, it turns out that the school board isn’t releasing them until tomorrow, which means I’ve been made a liar to my son for promising him that meeting. Well, we’ll go over after lunch and walk around the outside, anyway, so he has at least that. I’ve left a voicemail with the school principal, whom we know, as she was the principal at Sparky’s school when he was in kindergarten, and if she has a moment maybe we can meet with her, but I know she must be insanely busy today so I’m not holding my breath.

    In work news, I am partway through a copy edit for my publisher (an adult novel, very fun, and it’s about an ornithologist so my knowledge of birds is coming in quite useful!), and was asked yesterday to take on another book to edit concurrently because they’re in a bind, on a shorter deadline than usual for the second project, with a higher fee for both projects as a thank you. With Labour Day weekend coming up, plus both Sparky’s and HRH’s schools closed on the 4th for the provincial election, I have more time to work, and so work I will. It’s either feast or famine for a freelancer, and after such a long famine I need all the work I can get. My mother-in-law has also been booked for a Grandma Day here with Owlet that week, too, so I have another day there to finish up the second project. I’ve already been working for two to three hours a night after the kids are in bed, but now I shall edit like a mad editing thing.

    Playing Catch-Up, Part One: An Owlety Update

    I’ve had a growing list of notes to blog, so I’m going to separate them into two or three shorter posts. (I know you’re glad about that. My posts tend to be novellas. Well, maybe novelettes.)

    About a week ago I found Owlet standing a couple of steps up the stairs. I whisked her down. Half an hour later I found her four or five steps up, trying to hoist herself up to the landing. So the next day HRH built another gate and hinged it to the bottom of the stairs. Walking at eleven months, climbing stairs at twelve. I am so not ready for this.

    Having learned how to wave goodbye, Owlet is now applying it to everything that moves. She can point to the door and wave, saying “bye-bye” when we talk about someone leaving, too. The other day her local grandparents came to pick Sparky up for a day out, and when she was told that Grandma had to leave she made a very, very sad face, waved, and said “bye-bye” in a heartbroken tone.

    She had a little celebration on her actual birthday with godfamilies and honorary uncles in attendance, and then another a week later for all her grandparents. Both were lovely. She got books and clothes and a couple of toys, some of which we had to put away for when she’s a bit older. Our gift to her at the first one was a stuffed lamb, because she loves baas, and for the second (although I didn’t bother to wrap it, they went right into the china cupboard) was a set of tiny teacups and saucers with a delicate rose pattern. They’re the perfect size for a child’s tea party — an actual tea party, not a dolly party. I found them at a thrift store while seeking a used canning rack. I shall keep my eyes open for little plates to match/complement them. These were the cupcakes at the first party:

    Here she is opening some presents at her family birthday dinner:

    And this was Her Owletship nomming on ribs at that second party:

    I took her for her 12 month vaccinations last Tuesday. It’s three shots here, two in one arm and the last in the other. She didn’t bat an eye at the first two, and just made an “oi, what are you doing?” squawk at the third. Brave girl! Or maybe she just has my crazy high pain tolerance. The nurse was a bit taken aback at how calm she was. She had a reaction to it five days later, spots on her legs that migrated to her torso and arms, but they began fading four days after that. I was warned the spots might happen; they’re less common than the fever and irritability, but they’re also not uncommon. Parents are always warned, but I’ve never actually seen it.

    Her molars. Oh good gods, her molars. Earlier this week, there were two nights in a row that were awful. She woke up every hour or two, crying. She’s been whingey and clingy in general, warmish to touch although the thermometer swears she’s normal, her appetite is a wee bit off, and she’s just generally miserable, not wanting to play or read or anything. You can’t put her down to get things done, because she just stands there and wails to be picked up again. Everything’s just wrong, all the time. It’s got to be the molars.

    Also, she randomly caught a 12″ diameter ball that Sparky tossed to her in the backyard yesterday. Everyone was surprised. It hasn’t happened again. What has happened again in that Owlet has been bonked with the ball repeatedly as Sparky tries to replicate the experience.