Category Archives: The Boy

Catching Up

Let’s see, what of importance happened last week that I didn’t sit down and write about?

* A second job with my publisher in negotiation, this one for a single editing contract due in November. My editor is a networking goddess. Also, I hammered a lot of evaluation assignments home in the past two weeks and today I get to invoice for a very nice amount.

* The inevitable happened, and the boy lost Whitey-Blackie the bunny on a shopping trip Friday. Oh, the screams in the car after the first fruitless search when I explained that if he was lost and we couldn’t find him, then someone had found him and picked him up to give him a good home. “AAAAAAAAAH!” screamed the boy through his tears. “I DON’T WANT ANYONE ELSE TO HAVE HIM!” Cuddling him while he cried in the car was a sobering example of how sometimes all you can do is hold someone while they grieve or rage against the injustice of life, and that sometimes a mother’s kiss doesn’t make it all better. Retracing our steps the second time, we found the bunny stuffed under the bottom shelf in Zellers where we had been trying on new sandals that didn’t rub the boy’s feet to fresh blisters on top of the blisters of the day before.

* I had a lovely surprise Saturday morning. It was dull and gloomy, and I haven’t been sleeping well, so the boy was up playing and I was still lying abed with a book when the phone rang. “Who’s calling at this hour?” I said, leaping for the phone, but of course it wasn’t seven-thirty (which is what both the light and my inner clock were telling me), it was nine-thirty, and Bodhifox was on the line to wish me a belated birthday. I curled up in my office reading chair and had a very enjoyable chat with him. It set a lovely tone for the rest of the day.

* We had friends over on Saturday night and ordered in an incredibly large spread of General Tao, beef and black bean noodles, spicy peanut butter ravioli, and other things. This was a belated birthday thing, too, and was an inspired alternative to all of us going out. The food cooled a bit beyond what I’d have liked while I put the boy to bed, and I should have thought of putting everything in the barely warm oven to keep it hot. And Ceri made a peanut butter pie which was kind of like an ice cream pie with chocolate sauce that was light and delicious.

* I am so very tired of talking to people about the house. I was tired of it two days after we sealed the deal, and so many conversations still lead back to it. Yes, it’s a house, it’s lovely, we’re happy, but all I seem to do is repeat the same information over and over when people ask about it, which is boring to me and thus, I assume, boring to others. That said, it must be recorded here that after all is said and done, our combined monthly mortgage payment is going to be slightly less than our current rent. It’s only by about six dollars, but it’s the principle of the thing, and makes us very happy. Also, no one seems to make the kind of light wooden-leg loveseat I want for the new living room, and I am peeved. We have picked our paint colours, though. Earthy and creamy tones, as usual, because they work for us.

* I picked up the new Scott Pilgrim graphic novel on Friday, and finished it in about twenty minutes, handed it to HRH, and watched him finish it in about forty-five. (An excellent wrap-up of everything with some really good storytelling; I am pleased with it.) We then sent it home with Scott on Saturday, which was only right as he and Ceri had lent us the first five as they came out. Besides, he left me Tongue of Serpents, the new Temeraire novel, in return, so everyone is happy.

* I had literally just finished reading The Lost Years of Jane Austen, which posits that Jane travelled to New South Wales (AKA Australia) with her aunt and uncle Leigh Perrot, when Scott brought me the new Temeraire novel… which takes place in the same place at essentially the same time, so all the place names and locations and general conditions are familiar to me. Very synchronous and convenient for my mindset.

* The boy and I stopped by the library on Friday (post-Whitey-Blackie incident; the bunny stayed in the car, as all toys are doing from now on) and I discovered that they had the first two Moomintroll books on the new acquisitions shelf on the kids’ side. I jumped up and down and exclaimed and snatched the first one, and the boy totally brushed me and my excitement off, heading for Dewey numbers 625-629, which are his regular turf. That night I said we could read the first chapter at bedtime, but he said no; then he compromised, saying I could read him a picture book of his choice and then the first chapter of whatever this chapter book I was so excited about might be. And it turns out that when we got to the end of that chapter, he took my arm and said, “No, Mama, you should keep reading.” We read a chapter and a half the next afternoon while HRH vacuumed, and another chapter and a half that night, and a chapter last night, too. We’re going to have to go back for volume two sooner rather than later. Or perhaps we shall buy them, which would make me very happy indeed. I found my first Moomintroll book at a church sale when I was about ten, and loved the series so much.

* I spun 4 ounces of Corriedale into a single comparable to the single I spun last weekend of the HAY batts, and dyed it a deep sort of crimson rust colour yesterday. It’s drying now, and I’m hoping the colour complements the HAY single well enough to ply them together this week. I also experimented with dyeing 4 oz of the local wool/mohair roving I had, mixing up what I thought should be a celery green and looked it in the pot, but when the roving dried it was more of a cheerful lemon-lime colour. I tried blending some with a bit of white Tencel on my hackle comb, but while it breaks the solid green up a bit it doesn’t have the lighter sheen I wanted. I think I’ll spin the green roving as-is, then possibly overdye it with a bit of blue. My problem so far is I think I’m mixing up really weak dye solutions (a quarter-teaspoon of dye powder total to about eight cups of water) but they’re stronger than I expect. This green would have worked if it had been about a third of the concentration. From now on, I’ll mix the solution and then use maybe half of it; I can always do a second dye bath to deepen a colour, but you can’t take dye out.

* Working on some nudges and fixes of Emily’s cello book (second edition! if you own the first edition it is now a collector’s item!) made me want to play the cello, so I pulled it out and played for half an hour. I regretfully sent a note to my cello teacher saying that the plan had been to set up lessons again after everyone’s stuff in July was done, but now that we’re moving in three and a half weeks I just don’t have time, what with packing and work.

* Music-wise I have been thoroughly enjoying Zoe Keating’s new album Into the Trees, and Hans Zimmer’s score to last year’s Sherlock Holmes. I also recently picked up Danny Elfman’s score to The Wolfman, with lots and lots of lovely dark cello, but it has, alas, suffered in the aforementioned company, and so I have tucked it away for re-introduction later when my brain is not obsessed with other music.

Right, enough of that. This is what happens when I don’t blog for a week.

Weekend Roundup: Sheep to Shawl/Alexandria/Maxville Tour Edition

Giddy from the house news, we left Saturday morning at about ten to nine to drive to Alexandria ON for the Twistle Guild’s Sheep to Shawl event. Held at the Glengarry Pioneer Museum, this was an informal small gathering of fibre artists and vendors. It was a lovely day. We had three brief thunderstorms roll through, but we just hitched our wheels and chairs closer to the centre of the awning we were under and kept on going. The boy had an enjoyable day playing about and visiting the various buildings on site one by one, eating his picnic lunch (packed in his new Artoo lunch box, a birthday gift from Ceri and Scott!), and petting the local cat, who was very friendly indeed. He took me on little tours to the museum buildings after HRH has taken him to see each one, showing me the interesting things and explaining various items to me. There was a sheep shearing in the early afternoon, which was very interesting to watch and fascinated the boy:

The Twistle spinners are a great bunch and I was made very welcome. I spun up all 3.5 ounces of the HAY batts I’d won from Phat Fiber a couple of weeks ago. I got a lot of comments on it from both spinners and visitors; I suspect this is due to the fact that I was the only one spinning something brightly coloured (and possibly the only one using longdraw; I didn’t get a good look at what others were doing, but my impression was that their hands were all very close to their wheels). I was very good and didn’t buy anything, mainly because I had no money, but also because I am now aware that anything brought into the house needs to be moved in four weeks. If the rest of my summer wasn’t so wildly booked I might have planned to head up on a Friday to spin with them again.

Things started packing up around threeish, mainly because it looked like there was yet another thunderstorm rolling in, and I was the last spinner to leave. We headed over to Darroch and Carolyn’s, where we were soon joined by an ever-increasing crowd of assorted friends and relatives. At Darroch’s request I made what is known as Evil Chocolate torte, the flourless chocolate cake I’d made for a gathering there before, which went over very well with the crowd. The boy and I went to bed around eight, and the next morning we had coffee and tea with our hosts while the boy had two bowls of cereal. Just past nine AM we headed over to Rowan Tree Farm to visit with t! and Jan, who fed us brunch, too. The boy checked on the chickens and ran around madly with their dog Carter.

Time with friends is always much too brief. We left for home around midday, all thoroughly exhausted. The boy and I watched movies while HRH went and sanded plastered drywall, and we ended the day with homemade pizza. Everyone slept like logs.

Today has been handling the slew of congratulations and questions about the house, and negotiating another editing gig. My lovely editor put me in touch with yet another in-house project looking for someone, and I talked today with the project’s editor about reducing a manuscript for republication. My bid to raise the fee for the project gig was met with regretful refusal due to their budget constraints, so I’m working within their budget. I was psyching myself for a two-month turnaround, but it turns out the delivery date is in mid-November, so I’m slightly giddy and somewhat relived that I won’t be trying to cram it into my life along with the move. And Jeff and Paze stopped by to give me their birthday gift, a lovely selection of handmade chocolates (which are very, very good indeed).

And in final news, the boy has scraped more elbows and knees in the space of three days than ever before, and he also consumed a full litre of milk in about twelve hours. I think we’re seeing a growth spurt.

A Rather Important Announcement

We bought a house today.

It is small but sweet, in remarkable shape for its age, and very charming. It was built in 1947, and sold for the princely sum of $560 to the first owners. (We will be the fourth owners. We paid significantly more than that.)

Yes, househunting hell is OVER. Now, of course, we shift into packing hell, but as this has a concrete goal at the end of it and a structured timeline, it’s bearable. I’ve packed a home in two weeks before; a month will be fine.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who listened to us vent and offered moral support through this entire affair. The past six weeks haven’t been easy, but you have all made it less hellish by being positive and encouraging.

I must say, this has been a rather excellent birthday week, what with a house bought and a job offer received. Also, as a wonderful cap to the excellence, the boy paddled all over Ceri and Scott’s in-ground pool today with a floaty thing, and we were over the moon about his decision to leave anxiety about swimming behind. (When I say he was paddling all over the pool, I really mean all over, deep end and everything. For someone who wouldn’t leave the steps this is huge, and it seemed to happen within about ten minutes. There was even jumping in involved. And he paddled for ages, and then it was nigh-impossible to get him out; he kept wheedling to swim across the pool one more time.)

And in unrelated news, tomorrow we head out to the Glengarry Pioneer Museum for their Sheep to Shawl day-long celebration of fibre arts, where I will be spinning from ten till about four, unless I am slain by the heat first. It should be wonderful fun.

Photo Post

You haven’t had pictures in a while, have you. Poor things. And it’s not like I have the focus or attention to write a thought-provoking post about oh, anything these days. So!

The boy plays Rock Band (we have discovered that the original Rock Band on the Wii does not have a no-fail setting, alas, so there is lots of saving by whoever is playing with the boy):

SpinKnit&Life’s Baby Silks batts on the bobbin (just over halfway through spinning this up, and it’s just lovely to work with):


Yarn I spun for Jan! The multi-coloured skein in the middle was Icelandic fibre dyed by someone else, but the plum skeins are local mohair/wool fibre I spun then dyed myself in the slow cooker, and let me tell you, I’m so glad I scribbled the on-the-fly dye blend down for future use:

It took a while, but the boy finally managed to carefully balance his soot sprites on Gryffindor’s back:

After which Gryffindor lost patience, knocked them all down, and tried to eat them:

Catching Up: Concert Recap Plus Brief Weekend Roundup

There was a national holiday, and a concert, and house stuff, and a barbecue with good friends, and the boys on holiday from school and work, and it was hot.

Well, yes, there are details, but essentially that was it.

The Canada Day concert was good, I think. I am personally not happy with my performance, but neither am I upset. I’m just neutral, because I don’t have the energy to be happy or mad. (This is a theme that has carried through the last week or so, and if I had the energy I might be interested or concerned but, well, I don’t, so.) I am very aware that my not-as-good-as-it-could-have-been performance is directly related to the exhaustion and fibro, and I’m… well, not perfectly okay with that, but I accept it. My bowings were all over the place, which was disappointing because I am very proud of my bowing work and to have it all scuttled in performance is disheartening. Our conductor’s wife is a cellist and she spoke to us after the concert about how to improve our sound, which was both encouraging and tiring. I’ve done so much work already on my sound and bow arm in the past almost-two years. I had a scattering of friends attend the concert (thank you, MLG, Marc M, Lu, Phil, and Amanda!), which was lovely, although we were missing quite a few of our regulars. About half my teacher’s students came to see us, too, which was great, and a new friend or two as well.

The insane housing market led us to make an offer on July 1 with which we were ultimately uncomfortable, so we refused the counteroffer. Rumours that we bought a house are therefore unfounded. I am both okay and not okay with this. I am very, very awearied by this househunt, and of this crazy-stressful market that has houses selling three days after they go on sale. I am tired of feeling like we have to offer on a house while we are standing in it to ensure that we have a chance. And while I know we made the correct decision, I can’t help but feel that I turned down a perfectly serviceable house. (Despite the fact that it was missing a third bedroom and the boy’s bedroom would have held his bed and dresser and that’s about it. And the fact that it was further away than we wanted to be. The house wasn’t spectacular enough to balance the distance issue.) Our agent is fabulous and reassured us that if we felt at all iffy we were doing the right thing by continuing to look. But thirty houses and four offers in, I am pretty depressed.

I missed the chamber orchestra end-of-season party because we attended a lovely barbecue with Rob and Kristie and half their wedding party (the other half had attended an earlier barbecue). It was wonderful to have some of my questions and concerns addressed and put to rest, and I am really looking forward to performing this ceremony. It was fun to be with people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and others I don’t see often enough, and to see the number of kids running around with one another. That night the boy had a fever teetering on the edge of do-we-take-him-to-the-hospital-or-not, but I kept an eye on it, and he was pretty much back to normal the next morning, if a little clingy.

Saturday HRH went out to do some plastering, so the boy and I hung out together. He now has his first electric toothbrush, as he saw mine and for the first time coveted it instead of being nervous. There has been a lot of enthusiastic brushing of teeth since we brought it home. He also napped for two hours, so I suspect that his body was still fighting whatever triggered the fever. We picked up a few groceries, and for that night’s dessert I made peanut butter sauce for ice cream, and built most excellent sundaes with vanilla ice cream, dark chocolate and the peanut butter sauces, real whipped cream, and chocolate sprinkles. They were so good that I called the upstairs neighbours down to feed them some, too, while the boy had an evening splash in his tiny pool.

Sunday my in-laws had an early birthday dinner for me, at which I embarrassingly fell asleep before supper and couldn’t eat a piece of my own cake. I’m really, really tired, okay?

The freelance work I’m currently doing is labour-intensive and focus-intensive, both not ideal for my fibro-fogged state, and not overly fabulous pay, so I’ve been keeping my eyes open for something else. t! sent me a link to an online freelance thing, asking if I’d heard of them, and I saw that they hire copyeditors. Aha! thought I. I like to copyedit. Straight copyediting is faster and easier than reviewing a manuscript for flaws and weaknesses and telling someone else how to edit it. So I retooled a resume (which had to be done anyhow, as it’s three years out of date) and went through the whole online application process, only to have it tell me at the end that they were only looking for writers from my region, which made me quite cranky. Still, it led me to wonder why I’d never contacted my current freelance place to ask about a test for editing, so I did that. No answer yet, as I enquired on a holiday weekend.

And great; the doctor’s office just called to cancel the boy’s appointment, because the doctor has had a death in the family and has gone home for a week. So the boy is at home with me and we have the car for no reason, HRH having taken the bus to work. Although it means we missed the home-based daycare strike thing this morning. Our daycare isn’t striking, and they were anticipating physical harassment from union people who had called with thinly-veiled threats, and all the parents had been warned that they would encounter difficulty dropping their kids off as a result. The boy’s best friend there happens to be the daughter of a regional police supervisor, so HRH and I fervently hope that he showed up in his marked car and in full uniform to drop her off and casually hung around with a cup of coffee or something. Because physically preventing parents and kids from walking into their daycare? Not cool. Kids shouldn’t have to deal with stuff like that in association with a place they trust, and that’s why our daycare refused to join the strike action in the first place.

The boy has been pretty good so far this morning about leaving me to work in my office. There have been interruptions, but not as bad as usual. I think we managed to impress upon him the importance of me working. The cancellation had him thinking we were both free to play, but I think I’ve cleared that up now.

Back into the fray.

Weekend Roundup, Birthday and Recital Edition

What a wonderful weekend.

Friday I did over half of the freelance thing in four hours, had a catnap, wrote the boy’s five-year-old celebratory post, did more househunting research, and started the laundry. We let the boy stay up an hour past his usual bedtime to finish building his Lego Atlantis sub, and HRH went out to the party store just before it closed to get helium balloons with which to surprise him the next morning.

Saturday morning the boy woke us up at 5:15, and while HRH got back to sleep I did not, so I gave up around 6:00 and got up with the boy. He was not impressed that the World Cup coverage was on instead of his cartoons. The morning felt rushed for some reason, and I headed out for our recital dress rehearsal just before nine-thirty, which was fifteen minutes later than I wanted to be out the door; as a result, instead of taking the detour and time to treat myself to a breakfast sandwich as I’d originally planned, I hit the local depanneur to pick up an orange juice and a huge granola bar. I’d expected the rehearsal to be as stressful as home had been, but it wasn’t; it was relaxed and went very well, and was very enjoyable.

After lunch I made the boy’s birthday cake while HRH did the final tidying up (who knew the front window could be that clean?). My parents had arrived in town the night before, and they came over around one-thirty. The overcast skies and drizzle cleared up enough for us to sit outside, which was lovely. Mum brought fresh peas (both the kind to be shelled as well as sugar snaps) and Niagara cherries, both of which the boy was into as soon as he saw them (he won’t eat tomato sauce, but will eat sugar snap peas by the handful, and asks for them as a treat; go figure). And he got cherry juice on a brand new button-down shirt, of course, but at least the juice kind of matches the shirt’s colour scheme.

HRH’s parents joined us around three, and the boy asked when we would be able to open birthday presents, so when everyone had settled down with a drink we let him go to town. He was perfectly thrilled with all the Playmobil and Lego (“Oh, this is what I wanted! Thank you!”), and while he didn’t seem as enthusiastic about the clothes, he has chosen to wear three new shirts from the pile of birthday clothes already, so while they were not immediately gratifying they did make an impression. He finagled various adults into helping him build the new sets of things until dinner, and had HRH fill his pool so he could play in it and take the Playmobil seaplane in. He was in and out of that for the rest of the afternoon while the adults snacked on crackers alternately piled with Brie and my mother-in-law’s wonderful seafood dip.

We had flank steak and herbed sausages for supper, and while the sausages were dry (partially a result of their composition and partially to miscalculating the cooking time) the flank steak was really quite excellent. We put out a pile of fresh raw veggies and made dip to serve with it, and a potato salad. Dessert was the cake the boy had requested, vanilla with maple frosting. The recipe for the cake is a definite keeper, though I used four whole eggs instead of eight yolks. I’m not sure why I continue to use new recipes for special occasions because so much can go wrong, although it didn’t in this instance: it was lovely and moist, although the frosting I made was essentially my regular frosting with about a half-cup of maple syrup added to it for flavour, and since maple syrup is sweeter than sugar it was a bit cloying. Now I understand why people use maple extract.

Sunday morning we introduced the boy to The Rocketeer, one of our favourite films, and it was a hit, as we’d expected: it has racing planes, a dirigible, and a rocket backpack. After lunch we got tidied up and headed out for my spring recital at the seniors’ residence, meeting my parents there. The last time my parents saw me in recital was at my first and only big public one about twelve years ago, where I played the full Breval Sonata in C (my mother tells me I have definitely improved, which is a relief). We had a really big crowd in attendance this time; either the seniors were more active, or our fame has spread. (I doubt it’s the latter.) We had two more cellists, and three violinists, so there was an increase in attendant families as well. There was a bit of oddness during setup when we discovered that the piano was tuned to A443, which meant we had to crank our cellos up three notches above the 440 we’re used to, translating to about a quarter-tone on my instrument in yesterday’s weather. You get used to A440 sounding one way, and when you adjust the tuning across the instrument it sounds really wrong to your ear for a bit even though it’s in tune with itself. The opening ensemble piece felt unsettled to me and a couple of other cellists as a result, but the audience probably didn’t notice a thing. Apart from that, I think that this is the recital I have enjoyed the most so far. Everyone did a wonderful job with their solos, and the ensemble pieces were great. I was comfortable both physically and mentally, I aced my trouble spots in my Lully Gavotte, and we delivered lovely versions of The Entertainer (all of it, no shortcuts; it’s a longer piece than people expect in its proper form) and Ashokan Farewell. All the ensemble pieces were good, but those two really stand out in my mind. Our final piece was a unison performance of the traditional fiddle tune Soldier’s Joy, and we had four violinists, a pianist, and twelve cellists playing it. We did it three times, each time a little faster, and at the dress yesterday our teacher reminded us not to speed up during each repetition because then the final set would be too fast for precision. Well, of course that’s exactly what happened, but everyone hung on and made terrific noise. My parents told me that the little kids had a blast barrelling along at the end, and it was a great way to finish the programme. I’ve never left a recital feeling that good about myself and the class. I felt like I looked good, I sounded good, and I felt really secure about everything. So secure, in fact, that when HRH complimented me repeatedly on the way home about my sound and delivery he didn’t make me feel awkward or self-conscious. I got some very nice comments from my classmates about my sound at the dress rehearsal, too, which was nice, detailed comments that went beyond the basic encouraging sorts of remarks, too.

My parents came back with us and we sat in the yard talking while the boy splashed about in his pool again, and then we went out to dinner, which was fun and pretty good. I can’t believe the amount of food the boy ate over the weekend. HRH and I wonder if he’s on the verge of another growth spurt, which would be just crazy. We parted ways in the restaurant parking lot, and after putting the boy to bed HRH and I sat down and seriously went through the latest list of houses our agent sent us for review. I think we’re ready to start this again after a few days off to heal.

It was a lovely weekend. We had lovely weather, we enjoyed great food and great family time, and the boy had a blast doing what the boy does.

Five Years Old!

Five years ago today, during a humid heatwave that was nothing like the cool damp weather we’re having these days, we unexpectedly found ourselves with someone who wasn’t scheduled to arrive till after the Wicca book proofs were handed in um till after the first draft of the green witch book had been handed in er till the nursery was ready well till we were fully unpacked from the move for another nine weeks.

One…

Two…

Three…

Four…

FIVE!

Last night after he went to bed I put up some of his party decorations (we’re doing a space theme this year, since he is newly obsessed with the space shuttle) and got his present ready by the side of our bed, because in the past he has bounded into our room for a first-thing-in-the-morning birthday thing. Today HRH had to go scoop him up out of his bed, although I think he was already awake, and carry him to ours, where he burrowed under the covers for a moment before popping upright and saying, “I’m five now!” We sang Happy Birthday to him and gave him his present, and he hugged us both before unwrapping it. Lo and behold, there was the Lego Atlantis submarine he had repeatedly told us he wanted. “You got me what I asked for! Thank you!” he said, and gave us both another huge hug. (The original plan was to get him the Playmobil police station, but he had stuck to the submarine request for a month, so it was clear to us that it was what he really wanted. The station can wait till Christmas.) Then I made pancakes for everyone as a special weekday treat, and I put a birthday candle in the boy’s buttered and maple-syruped stack, which amused him.

His building skills are extraordinary. The educators at school kept a biplane he assembled from Lego, but he can do pretty much anything with any kind of set like Knex or Tinker Toys. It shouldn’t surprise me because HRH is really excellent at three-dimensional modelling, too, but when I get comments from educators I listen a bit more closely. I’m also impressed at how he can follow the instruction booklets, something else HRH has taught him. (I will, however, be the one to teach him how to read the instruction booklets that come with video games, because HRH doesn’t even look at those.) Seriously, I’m going to start hiring him out to assemble Ikea furniture for people, because if he can assemble advanced Lego sets by reading the pictorial instructions, then Ikea furniture should be a breeze.

He has decided that perhaps he will not play the cello after all; perhaps the violin is where he wants to go instead, which is fine. He will probably never know how much of a gift he gave me when I met him after his kindergarten orientation day two weeks ago, and he said, “Mama, I have to show you… there’s a whole music room in this school!” He showed me the piano and touched the keys gently and lovingly, and he would have stood there for an hour with it if HRH hadn’t herded us out. I’m thankful that he loves music enough to want to play anything. The excitement on his face when I told him about the little strings-only music school that runs in the area in which we’re house-hunting was wonderful. Whether he ends up playing the cello like me or a violin, or even branching out into wind or brass instruments, or chooses piano or guitar or percussion, I will support him with love and find the necessary equipment and education. And again, just as I’m not surprised at his three-dimensional modelling and building skills, his love of music doesn’t surprise me either; you learn what’s around you. He makes up songs that are make rhythmic and make metre-sense, knows how to insert words or sounds into existing songs and match the beat, and loves to sing along to soundtracks.

Reading is coming along. He knows how to spell out the word he sees, then sound out each letter (if we can break him of the habit of sounding each letter out twice the way they do on Super Why, it will make hearing the word in his head much easier for him), and he’s starting to break the whole-word pattern down into smaller patterns to sound out. This morning he looked at the Atlantis logo on his Lego box and said, “That almost looks like it spells ‘Atlantis.'” And I give him full marks for that, because the font is highly graphic and the letters don’t look like the ones he’s used to. We had this problem with the Via train logo a few months ago because the A doesn’t have a bar across it, so he knows now that sometimes letters don’t look exactly alike all the time, depending on their design. We’ve been working on sounding things out and recognising repeated words or patterns (like ‘ch’ makes its own unique sound, it’s not ‘k-h’, and the word ‘the’ spells ‘the’ no matter where it is on the page), and he ran to find HRH one day when he read a whole sentence from a Mr. Putter & Tabby book ( “It was summer and the weather was very hot”, just for the record).

Recent films he has been into include The Lion King (and believe me, you haven’t lived until you’ve been in the car with the boy singing ‘I Just Can’t Wait to be King’ at the top of his voice, something that makes HRH want to burst with joy) and Atlantis, which has initiated a whole discussion about the Atlantis myth. He looked at us this morning and said, “You mean it’s a real place?”, to which we responded with an explanation of what a legend is. He decided we should build a three-man sub and go looking for it ourselves.

He’s pretty open to any kind of food, except when he’s not, which is typical of any kid, I think. The big stumbling block seems to be tomato sauce. I made him a bechamel-based lasagna that he ate with gusto and complimented me on; the recipe needs refinement, but we’ll work on it. He also has a thing about onions, and doesn’t want them anywhere near his plate. He loves pasta tossed with garlic butter, likes the idea of lobster but passes on it every time, and no longer is interested in salmon or shrimp. He gets excited about pork chops, and has lately been manfully eating the salad we put on his plate. I don’t know when we stopped preparing a separate meal for him in certain cases, but we haven’t done it in ages; he eats what we eat, or he doesn’t eat at all.

We haven’t had a doctor’s appointment since December, but we know he’s about 42 lbs and about a metre plus eight centimetres tall. He wears size 4 or 5 shirts, size 4 pants, and size 11 shoes (!!!). He sleeps about ten hours at night; naps officially ended a month or so ago, although we still suggest one on hard days or when he’s sick and he’s usually willing to do it. Otherwise, quiet time is good.

He’s five now, and as I have previously mentioned I’m going to officially cease the monthly posts here. They’re great records for me, but they take a lot of energy to assemble, so from now on I’m going to do boy-themed posts as they come up instead. I wanted to end this monthly review series with some kind of huge flourish, but instead there’s just the figurative bang of the back door as it closes behind our boy, who has run out into the backyard looking for adventure, leaving us inside with a cup of tea, wondering where the past five years have gone and what the next five will bring.