Category Archives: The Boy

Thirty-Eight Months Old!

I think the biggest milestone over the past month has been Liam’s first official haircut. I’ve been cutting it myself at home when I could, but it was getting to the point where I couldn’t keep it as even as it should be, so in he went. He was pleasantly distracted by the movie they were showing (CARS!), and ran up to his stylist to thank her twice at the end of it all. He chose a red lollipop, naturally; they seem to be his favourites. The other big thing this past month has been the bike trailer. He has dragged everyone who has stopped by down to the garage to show it off.

His current favourite books are the Henry and Mudge series. Like lots of the other books we read together they’re early reader books, but they’re perfect to read aloud. Henry is a very Liamish boy. Mudge is, well, a huge Great Dane. Liam started calling Gryff Mudge for a while. And let me tell you, when they galumph and chase one another up and down the hall, Gryff certainly sounds like a Great Dane. (HRH told me the vet weighed Gryff when he was taken in with the infected bite, and he’s eleven pounds now. Gah.) I love looking in the rear view mirror while driving and seeing him sitting casually in his booster seat, legs loosely crossed, a book held open on his lap.

In the food division, the recent winners are ice cream bars on sticks, corn on the cob, and any kind of meat on a bone of some sort. Seriously. It gives us both great pleasure to watch him hold a bone in his hands and tear the meat off with his sharp little teeth. His snack of choice is fresh mangetout peas from the garden. (Note to self: plant lots and lots more mangetouts next year.) Last week he ate a banana as if it was a cob of corn — peeled it completely then held it horizontally and ate bites out of it that way. He has also discovered what he calls ‘iced cappuccinos’. I crush some ice cubes in the blender, add some milk and chocolate syrup, blend it all together, and serve it to him with a straw. It’s basically a chocolate milk frappé, but to him it’s a very grown-up drink and he loves it.

Current fave music is the Snacktime album by the Barenaked Ladies. He’ll even dance to it, and encourage other people to dance as well. He still won’t let other people sing it, though. “No,” he’ll say, “that’s my song.” Meaning, of course, that no one else is allowed to sing it. He’s still a big fan of ‘The Mesopotamians’ and ‘Dr. Worm,’ too.

He’s been having trouble with his sleep patterns lately. His naps have been comparatively brief (an hour instead of two), and he’s been fighting bedtime in general. He gets up after the door has closed, cries, and pushes our buttons. It’s hard to keep the frustration under wraps. He wakes up between five and six AM, often with a mid-night waking as well. We’re buying a set of bunk beds from HRH’s officemate next month, and I’m hoping the novelty of a big bed will help him stay in it. We’ll get to choose new sheets and a coverlet, too. We plan to set up the bunkbeds but leave the upper mattress and the ladder off the unit. Voila: instant tent once one has hung fabric off the two open sides.

On the other night-time hand, he’s only wearing a pull-up at night in case of emergency, and he’s dry more often than not. So good for him.

We’ve been having problems in general with whining and encountering resistance to any idea that isn’t his own. We try to remind him or tell him ahead of time about things so as to avoid the sudden change of direction or activity, but the immediate response to any prompt is still resistance. In fact, he’s been resisting things in general, running the gamut from deliberately doing the opposite of what we ask to simply ignoring us, to throwing a fit. I know he’s working things out, testing boundaries and confirming structure, but it’s very wearing. He’s also been very screechy and shouty. Liam is a very strong personality, and it’s hard to grit one’s teeth when he looks at you and does something deliberately to provoke you. Forget the terrible twos; these are the infamous threes. Not to imply that he’s a stress all the time; there are long stretches of fun and cheery Liam, and then suddenly there is a horrid moment of vexation derived from naughty behaviour or something positively Not On, for which he gets a turn in the Time Out chair. (Suddenly turning around and biting Mama for no reason until the teeth meet but the skin isn’t broken qualifies as one of those Not On things. Especially when followed by laughter.)

I figured it was about time he got to play with one of the consoles, so I bought Endless Ocean for him to play, and he’s having a ball. He feels extremely important holding the Wii remote, and once we’ve set the game up he won’t let us touch it. We’d opened it and played it before HRH came home that day, and Liam took great delight in showing HRH how things worked (going so far as to say, “Here, Dada, I’ll show you how it works” in a very officious manner). He’s lost his game a couple of times by hitting a sequence of buttons, but he doesn’t care; he likes being able to move the diver around and switch between first-person and third-person views. And he is very chuffed about having figured out where the A button is. He acquired his dolphin friend over the weekend and now has way too much fun making it do tricks.

When he sees that my computer is on he gathers a bunch of his trains up and patters into my office, eagerly saying, “Hi Mama, can I play in your office? Can I watch Thomas and friends?” He has discovered the joys of YouTube, and the seemingly endless supply of child-directed reenactments of Thomas episodes using the actual episode narration and toy trains moved around in front of a video camera. It’s the main reason I want the laptop up and running properly again, so I can work and he can do his internet-related stuff at the same time. ( “I’m working,” he said importantly the other day when I’d gotten the laptop up and running, albeit temporarily, as he sat there and typed away at the keyboard. “I’m sending you a message.”)

He is very sensitive, and he’s working that out in his own way too. He unintentionally made me cry the other day. He trundled his blanket-covered toy shopping cart up to me. “Mama,” he said in a coaxing singsong way, “I have a surprise for you!” “Really? A surprise?” I said. “Wow! What is it?” Liam whisked the blanket away to reveal the little stuffed black and white cat he now calls Maggie. “Ta-da!” he said. “It’s Maggie-cat!” And I burst into tears, surprising both of us. He looked very unsure as I reached out and picked the toy up and crushed it to my chest. “Thank you,” I said. “Mama?” he said uncertainly. “Are you okay?” “Yes, lovey,” I said through the tears. “It’s just that you surprised me. And I miss my Maggie-cat so very much, more than I thought I did, I guess.” He still looked kind of spooked, so I held out my arms and cuddled him along with the toy. I couldn’t stop the damn sobbing, not for a while. He cuddled me and patted my arm, and finally said, “It’s okay Mama. It’s just a stuffed Maggie.” And I laughed through my tears. I his world, it made sense. And sometimes we need to take a three-year-old’s point of view and say to ourselves yes, it’s just a stuffed Maggie. There’s no need to be upset. She’s something to squeeze and love and play with, and if we can’t have the real Maggie (as he seems to finally understand, or at least he’s stopped saying “We’ll find her again later” at any rate) then a stuffy is just fine.

Liam-themed posts over the past month:

– The new bike trailer
– Mama’s birthday, Liam’s first car wash, and Mama’s new bike

If you missed the 37 month post (and didn’t we all) I did one a couple of weeks ago and back-dated it.

Non-Cello Content

I discovered yesterday, while the boy and I tested the new bike and trailer for the first time, that the trip to the library involves going uphill both ways.

I am serious. I will be using this fact as guilt trip material somewhere down the line.

The good news is that I am not dead today. This is huge, because of the limited energy/chronic fatigue thing. And despite the bike being a one-speed (while reverting to the use of coaster brakes was surprisingly easy, many were the times I forgot I could not simply reverse the pedalling to reset my legs) it generally handles well. Sure, I wish I had at least three speeds when going uphill from a stop (which, as I pointed out above, happens an awful lot), but it’s very good for what it is. The boy decrees the trailer Very Cool. I was somewhat surprised to find that we can carry on a conversation at a regular decibel level and hear one another while cycling.

The boy had his first ever Official Pro Haircut yesterday. I’ve been trimming it when necessary, but I lack the knowhow to do it properly. So off all those lovely curls across his brow came. He was very, very good, and got a certificate and a lollipop.

Saw the doctor this morning (and a medical student, who played the role of main doctor while my doctor oversaw the appointment) and we’re upping the dosage of my meds a wee bit to help with the lack of deep sleep thing that’s creeping up again.

I have just discovered Schumann’s string quartets. Not sure why it took me this long.

I picked up Guitar Hero: On Tour last week for my DS (after wibbling about it since its release, but Ceri finally told me I could do it, so I did). After failing miserably for a few practice songs I suddenly understood what the game was asking me to do and how I could do it. Even though most of the songs are unfamiliar to me I have an advantage in being able to absorb rhythm and therefore hit things at the right time. I flew through two levels on Monday night. The grip is made for someone whose hand is slightly larger than mine, and I have to lie my left forearm on a pillow in my lap to keep my hand relaxed enough to play, though. There’s a decent amount of humour involved in it too, so it’s not as annoying as I feared it might be.

Gryffindor went to the vet last evening for what looked like an abscess that was leaking on his tail. Turns out one of our sweet little hellion girls bit him, and the bite became infected while we were gone. When we came home it was bald from his obsessive licking. He got a huge antibiotic shot and came home in a little Elizabethan collar, which he managed to ditch within the first four minutes at home. Not only did he ditch it, he hid the damn thing. After searching for it allover we found it on the lampshade of my little reading lamp next to the bed.

Monday saw 1300 words added to Orchestrated. They were transcribed from my longhand work. Maybe today there will be new words. Despite having a brief synopsis and expanded outline, I still don’t know exactly what happens where. This is frustrating, because I know how the overall story goes and how it ends (that’s new for me), and still can’t write the thing. Grr. I may choose key scenes that I know happen and write them, then figure out how to link them. Give me a break, I’m trying an entirely new process, here.

Birthday!

This morning I have received an aggressive kiss on the nose to wake me up, followed immediately by the boy chirping, “Hi Mama, it’s your birthday! Here, take this.” I mumbled a thank you and peered at the folded piece of paper he’d given me, with crayon all over it. “It’s a card for you!” he explained enthusiastically. “See, these are butterflies!” Then there were toys brought in and played with on the bed, as well as many snuggles. Then he hauled HRH’s guitar out and played and sang me a birthday song extempore, on the spot.

We returned the 7/8 cello Number 3 to the luthier this morning. “And?” he said. “Almost,” I said. “Almost, but not quite.” I explained that the two-week home trial had confirmed that the 7/8 size is indeed perfect for me, but that this particular instrument just didn’t have that certain something that clicked and made it mine. He asked if there was anything particular, in order to avoid it when selecting another for me to test, and I shook my head; there wasn’t anything specifically wrong. It just didn’t grab me and say, ‘You cannot part with me.’ I like the tone, the overtones, the balance, the construction, the feel under my fingers, everything; it’s just not this one that I need. He has another 7/8 in his Laval workshop and will bring it in for me, but I’m on holiday the last two weeks of July and he’s closed the first two weeks of August, so we’ll pick up again then. In the meantime there’s the two shops in Toronto, and the Scarlatti 7/8 Number 2 to take home for a test, and I’ll think about the one in Alaska too.

On the way to the luthier we treated ourselves to breakfast sandwiches and iced cappuccinos, and the we went through the car wash for the first time with the boy, who found it very exciting. Unfortunately we ran into not one but two road detours in St Lambert and Longueuil due to festivals or triathalons which rerouted us way out of the areas we needed to travel in or through, so the trip was about twice as long as it needed to be.

My birthday present from HRH was a new bike! It has been many, many years since I have owned one. As he carted it to the back yard yesterday the next-door neighbour said, “You got a n new bike?” HRH said, “It’s not mine, it’s hers.” “But it’s a man’s bike,” the neighbour replied, confused. Yes, it is a man’s bike, but I preferred the shiny red and white paint with a back rack to the blue and white with a plastic basket in the front, complete with fake flower, and with flowers painted on the seat. The blue was nice, but give me a rack over a flimsy plastic basket any day. Also, a red bike is just cooler. The next purchase is a bike trailer for kids so the boy and I can bike to the library and the grocery store, or just go for a ride together. My parents gave me a lovely blank book and a copy of Martha Stewart’s cookie recipe book. I got birthday money last weekend from my in-laws, which went to new summer shirts and a skirt (and a new bike helmet and lock!). There was a cheque in yesterday’s mail from my grandmother, which will buy a new printer. I have received numerous birthday wishes from all over via e-mail, phone, and journal posts, the weather is spectacular, and I am having a wonderful birthday so far. There’s a late afternoon picnic in my future today, and I have been promised sushi tonight after the boy goes to bed. Tomorrow there’s a birthday dinner with the in-laws, too. Life is good.

Thirty-Seven Months Old!

This is a retrospective photo post; I missed the date and was swamped with other stuff.

First of all, we have Liam cutting out cookies being baked for his third birthday party:

Here we have Liam and I playing in his pool:

Gryff may the the one with the most patience where the boy is concerned these days. Here he demonstrates just how tolerant he can be of Liam’s shenanigans:

And finally, Liam took helping his father get my new birthday bike ready very seriously:

Liam-themed posts over the past month:

~Liam’s third birthday party!
~Explaining death to Liam
~Liam demonstrates the preschool love of Great Tragedy as played by his Collection of Trains
~Liam discovers The Sound of Music
~Liam loves They Might Be Giants
~Liam has a nightmare
~Liam and Mama pay the car registration
~Liam’s first Canada Day concert!

Canada Day Concert Recap

Can I get away with saying “Best Canada Day concert ever?”

Not really, I suppose. And it wouldn’t do posterity any good, either. The main reason I journal is so that I can go back and refer to it, after all, so a bit more detail is necessary.

First of all, hearty thanks go out to the following in the order I saw them before the concert: my mum and dad, MLG, ADZO, t!, Jan, Lu, Ceri, Scott, Marc, Miseri, Mousme, tcaptain and J. One of the reasons I love this concert is because I see friends I don’t see often. Your presence was deeply appreciated, and I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. And thanks go out to everyone who wanted to be there but couldn’t as well.

And of course, deepest thanks go to HRH and the boy, for making it an extra-special concert. This was the first concert the boy was old enough to attend properly and be aware of what was going on. He’s known for weeks that it was coming up, and as the date approached I reminded him, shared some of the music with him, and looked through his book about instruments to explore the different kinds of things he’d see. He stayed for the warm up and by all reports enjoyed himself thoroughly, sometimes tapping along with the rhythm on the back of the pew in front of him, sometimes conducting like Douglas. After the warm up he pulled me outside to a jungle gym-type thing next to the school across from the church where he proceeded to throw himself up ladders, across hanging bridges, and down slides in all possible ways, encouraging me to do the same. Then MLG and ADZO showed up and he exhorted them to join him in his play too. Then he called some random teenagers over: “Hey, hi! Come play with me! Come slide!” and he did it with such openness and enthusiasm that they did so with decent humour. We met up with a few other people (Lu brought me swag from the BEC! I have an TSFT lace hairband among ARCs and books for the boy and other things!) and then I headed back to join the others preparing for play. (The music kind, not the jungle gym kind.)

We were fortunate in the weather. There have been awful, awful days when the night has been dreadfully humid and sticky, and there have been nights where the wind has been so bad we lost music and stands. But this night was just about perfect. It was hot (it’s July, after all) but fingers weren’t slipping on keys or strings and shirts weren’t sopping wet. It was pretty much perfect.

There’s something remarkably special about playing the national anthem. First of all, the cello line is so unlike the melody we sing that it’s really unique to hear how it all fits together. Second, there’s something very powerful about how the drum roll steadies and then initialises the orchestra. Third, it’s incredible to sense the audience suddenly recognising what’s happening and surging to its feet, joining in with the vocal line around the third note. Finally, it’s just so damn cool to play it and to hear a few hundred people singing the anthem to orchestral accompaniment. And there’s always an extra bonus when people applaud. Traditionally the anthem isn’t applauded, and while I’m sure there’s some sort of philosophical reason for it, I can’t think of a time when I’m more prompted to applaud than after a stirring rendition of the anthem, partially for the anthem itself and the nation (yay us!) and partly for the performers. Besides, it was Canada Day.

While I never hit the cello zone, I was very comfortable throughout this performance and please with my work. I enjoyed myself a lot, which on its own is huge. I had no major technical issues during the concert. The finger I use for pizzicato froze up during “Younger Than the Springtime” as it always does, but apart from that and some minor intonation issues (I can’t hear a thing in that church, it melds all the sound together), and a bit where both the principal and I stopped in frustration because the cellist behind her was playing very loudly and racing ahead in a certain passage in the first piece and we couldn’t hear things well enough to keep the proper pace going, it was a very good concert from the performance side of things. It was lovely from the artistic side, too. I like to begin with a piece I find pretty because it gives me confidence for the rest of the night, and the Symphony no. 3 (by not-really-Mozart) has a beautiful and expressive second movement that I love to play. I greatly appreciated not beginning with the Figaro overture, as it has some finicky technical stuff that would have frustrated me had I played it cold. As it was we did a very good job of it, nice and quick. The church may muddle sound but it also makes it sound very large and well-blended, so the overture had a very nice overall presentation that allowed some of the less precise stuff to slip through without calling much attention to itself. The 32nd symphony went well too.

The second half of the concert was the musicals, and we nailed them. We absolutely nailed them. In the past we have done passable renditions of some medleys, but these are decent arrangements and we were really on. It helps to have a good brass section for these things, and ours handled things just fine, thanks. I heard people in the audience singing along at a couple of places, and there were people crying at the end of The Sound of Music medley (of course they were, the ‘Climb Every Mountain’ arrangement was specifically designed to rip shamelessly at heartstrings). It’s always good for the ego to see people surging to their feet almost as soon as the conductor has cut the orchestra off, and to hear the wave of applause crash into us.

Sitting right next to the conductor means I make a lot of eye contact with him throughout the concert, and I get to see his face as soon as we’re done each piece. He winks at us with a crooked grin, or beams, or clenches a fist in a “yes!” motion, or nods and places his baton on his stand, or gives us a wordless smile to tell us we aced it before turning around to accept the applause and bow. Seeing his immediate emotional reaction is worth a lot. He’s genuinely happy for us, or thrilled at what he pulled out of us; he acknowledges what we’ve done. I like to smile back at him and nod, to reinforce what he’s given us and to thank him wordlessly in return. I often get a chance to thank him in person after the concert as well, and he always seems so hesitant, so unlike the caught-up-in-the-moment triumph in the moments following the final chord. He told us at the dress rehearsal there would be no encore, that he’s not “an encore kind of guy”. “Leave them wanting more” is more his style, and I can see his point. It’s great to leave things on that much of a high, vibrating with that much energy. An encore is satisfying in a very different way. (Besides, where could we go after ‘Climb Every Mountain’? Nowhere, that’s where.)

My deepest hope for this concert was that the boy wouldn’t fall asleep or get so cranky that HRH would have to take him away from the concert. He was fine but squirmy, and HRH took him to sit on the steps to listen to the music. And when we began the Sound of Music he looked at HRH and said with excitement, “That’s from my movie!” “Do you remember what it was called?” HRH asked. “Sound,” the boy said after thinking about it for a moment. “The Sound of Music, that’s right,” said HRH. Another parent with a girl on the steps looked at him incredulously and said, “He’s how old?” “Three,” HRH told her, “but his mother is in the orchestra.” (We apologise for his precociousness, it’s subject-related, we assure you.) HRH brought him back in during the post-concert applause and they both applauded. HRH tells me the boy applauded enthusiastically after each piece during the whole concert, too. I was so pleased that he’d lasted the whole night, and that he’d had the opportunity to listen to the Sound of Music medley. I knew it would be exciting for him to hear us play something he knew.

As we’d expected, the boy was tired enough that we had to head directly home; no fireworks for us this year. He laid his head against the edge of his seat and stared out the window until he pulled his cap down over his face and drowsed. When we got him home at ten o’clock he went right to bed. I snuggled next to him, and he said sleepily, “Oh no, Mama, we forgot your cello at the concert!” I assured him it had been in the back of the car and it was safely home again, and he was asleep in seconds. We heard the faint sounds of fireworks in the neighbouring boroughs as we got ready for bed.

This was one of my favourite Canada Day concerts. It also marks the end of my seventh season with the orchestra. This time of year is always bittersweet for me, because I like to ride the high of a concert and use it to propel me into the next set of music. Without the structure of rehearsals every week I tend to lose momentum and stop playing. I have the ongoing search for the 7/8 to keep me going, but being on hold financially takes a lot of steam out of that project, and without rehearsal to test the various cellos in a group environment I lose out on that aspect of the home trial. (In fact there’s a post due on the current 7/8 trial; it will come soonish.) It’s hard to walk out of a concert on that kind of high and know you won’t see everyone again for two months. We all scatter with instruments and stands and sometimes you can’t even find section mates to bid them a good summer. I did get the chance to thank our substitute principal for stepping in to help keep us even and confident for this concert, and thank our conductor for a wonderful concert and an excellent season. The orchestra as a whole thanked our secretary/librarian/general manager with a lovely bouquet of roses; she really has done an incredible amount of work this season.

I’ve gained a lot of technique this year, and I owe a lot of that to our section leader. I absorb so much by simply sitting next to her. There’s also a certain amount of pressure that comes from sitting right in front of the conductor (oh gods, he hears every wrong note I play), and it’s done me a lot of good. I think my expression has firmed up a bit too, partly from the kind of music we’ve been playing, and partly from reading things like The Art of Practicing, Making Music for the Joy of It, and Rosindust, all of which talk about the emotion associated with playing and how to communicate it. It’s important to remember that we make music because we love it. I think one of the reasons I prefer to play in ensembles is because I can relax more and merge my sound with someone else’s. (I had a partial solo of two notes this concert! Yes! I played them with the principal, sharing the first note and playing a different note afterwards! If you were there you probably didn’t notice. That’s okay. I know it was marked ‘Solo’ in the music and that’s what counts. And yes, I played it very nicely.)

I should really think seriously about lessons again.

Okay, this is very long, and more than enough. It was good, it was great, I loved it, I’m very pleased with how I played and with the overall evening. The end.

No, wait, one more thing: I hate it when audience members rush the stage to talk to people or to get to the bathroom before anyone else. We have sensitive and freaking expensive instruments here, people, and there’s a mess of stands and chairs. The amount of times I had to step in front of people so they wouldn’t kick my cello or knock a stand over onto someone or another instrument was unreal. Sheesh. At one concert we made an announcement to the effect of “stay back you thoughtless mob until the musicians have left the stage, thank you”; I think we should do it every concert. Also, people who won’t step out of the way when one is attempting to carry an instrument past/around them annoys me greatly as well. I move to the side as much as I can, but they just stand there. I’m not sure what they expect me to do, other than to politely repeat “Excuse me, may I get past?” Gnarr.

All right, now I’m done.

ETA: No, I’m not. I added photos. Finally someone has taken a picture of me playing in the orchestra! HRH did a simple point and shoot while corralling the boy while we warmed up. I like it. I needed to lighten it a bit, but it’s decent regardless. The only problem? It demonstrates how a mid-calf length skirt is Just Too Short on a cellist. Damn chairs; damn cellos. A bit too much leg, there. (HRH: “I liked it.” ME: “Yes, and I’m sure the most of our friends did too, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s inappropriate.”)

Blue

I don’t know if it’s the weather, the new to-the-penny financial stress (one wonders what the point of trying is, really) or scheduling hassles that are getting me down, but I’m down today. Actually, I think it may have begun sometime yesterday afternoon in a pale lilac shade, has slowly deepened more towards a violet, and now is well and truly blue. Part of it is the post-concert blues, of course. These are always especially bad after a concert as excellent as this past one, because there’s more of a high from which to tumble down. There will be a concert recap later today. Part of it is also the ongoing stress of waiting for paycheques that don’t come. Every day I think, Hey, today could be the day when there might actually be a cheque in the mailbox! and every day I’m disappointed.

I had a good day with the boy yesterday. We didn’t do the caregiver thing as is customary on Wednesdays because we knew he’d be up late on Tuesday and that he’d be off on Wednesday as a result. We paid the car registration (while we waited, the boy entertained himself by bringing me leaflets and saying, “Let’s read this book, Mama!” Sure, kid. How about I skip the words in the one entitled ‘In the Event of a Hit and Run’ and we just play the ‘identify this road sign’ game?), chased butterflies on the way back to the car, then went to the big book store to pick up a book I’ve been waiting for for months and months. (I now have my very own copy of Elizabeth Bear’s Ink & Steel, having finally tracked down a staff member in order to ask her to check in the back, because despite the computer insisting that there were two in stock there were none on the shelf. She returned reading the back cover copy and said, “Wow, this looks really good!” so I cheerfully did a reverse hand-sell of all Bear’s work to her. Nothing like selling to a book store employee. Good times.) The boy actually agreed to only look at the trains and not play with them, and he was very nearly true to his word. He very transparently steered me down an aisle and affected surprise when it opened up into the play area, saying, “Oh, look, Mama, the train table!” I let him put his train on it and run it around a bend before reminding him about our deal to go to the pet store to see the animals instead of playing with the trains, and he came quite willingly. So to the pet store we went and saw many many animals, including a very sweet Senegal parrot who quietly leaned its head against the bars and gazed into my eyes until I reached a fingertip in and scratched its head gently for a few minutes. It never took its eyes from mine. It broke my heart to eventually walk away.

After a lunch the boy went down for a nap (three hours! well, he didn’t get to bed until ten after the concert, so it wasn’t unusual, just very welcome). I fully intended to read Ink & Steel all afternoon but I’d only read the first couple of chapters when I realised I wasn’t in the right mood to do Bear’s work justice, and as I’d been waiting for The Stratford Man duology for so damn long I didn’t want to ruin the reading of it. I picked up Frank Conroy’s Body & Soul instead and read it cover to cover by bedtime. I somehow also managed to read all of Charlie Bone and the Hidden King. Go me; three books read this month by July 3.

I wish I didn’t feel so melancholy. My throat is swollen and my eyes are stinging for no particular reason. I should go light a whole bunch of candles. They’ll help take some of the water out of the air, too.

Nightmares And New Days

The boy appeared in our bedroom doorway rather precipitously last night around ten past one, eyes somewhat wild in the dim light. I sat bolt upright in bed. It’s astonishing how awake one can suddenly be when progeny is involved. “What is it, lovey?” I said. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“Yes,” he said in a slightly desperate, slightly muffled voice. I held my arms out. He ran around the bed and flopped onto me.

“It’s okay now,” I said, hauling him up onto the bed and rolling over with him, snuggling him in between HRH and I. “Mama and Dada are here, and you’re safe. Nothing can happen to you.”

And we slept that way for the rest of the night. I say “slept” but it was mostly heavy drowsing on our part. We’re not used to sleeping with a restless three year old. This morning HRH got up with the boy around six-thirty (the boy himself woke up around six, went and got a colouring book, and coloured quietly at the end of our bed for about twenty minutes), and I got another hour and a half of sleep. When I got up the boy told me about his dream.

“There were cracks,” he said. “But there are no cracks any more.”

“Cracks?”

“In his room,” HRH said. “When we walked into his room this morning, he looked up and said, ‘Oh, there are no cracks any more. It was just a dream.’ He told me that he’d dreamed the walls were cracking and the house was falling apart.”

I know he’s had nightmares before, but this is the first time he’s been able to articulate what he dreamed and to understand that it was just a story his mind told him while he was sleeping. It’s also the first time he’s settled down and slept when he’s come to us in bed. Usually he tosses and turns and sits up and decides it’s playtime, but then again, we’ve tried to bring him into bed in a vague attempt to encourage him to snuggle and drowse for a while, because it’s usually around five-thirty when he wakes up too early in the morning.

He’s off with the caregiver today. HRH and I have tidied the entire house (again, argh — that makes the third time in five days!) including overhauling his room. We sorted through a lot of baby toys and packed them away, and designated certain containers for certain items. There’s a box of assorted trucks and vehicles in his closet (out of sight, out of mind) and the box of baby toys and another of stuffed toys have been taken downstairs. We also thinned out his cars and Thomas stuff, putting the extras away in a storage case that’s still in the living room if he decides he needs something in particular, but at least it isn’t all out on the train table or the bookcases. And in case we haven’t mentioned it to you in person, no more Cars toys or Thomas stuff! It was nice that he had two main things people knew he loved to play with, but we’ve reached our limit of associated items. (Our limit is much lower than many other people’s, we freely admit, but still, enough is enough.) If you want to treat him to something, art supplies are big right now and get used up, so frequently need to be replaced.

HRH and I are treating ourselves to a film this afternoon: WALL*E, of course! It’s nice to know that whenever a Pixar film comes out we know it will be good, so we don’t have to worry about spending time and money and walking out of a theatre wishing the past two hours could have been more worth it. We really, really don’t see a lot of films in the theatre. I think the last movie we saw in a theatre was The Golden Compass.

Tonight is our dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s concert. I’ll be bringing the 7/8 to see how it performs in a group environment. There’s no way I’ll use it tomorrow at the concert, however, even though the luthier crossed out the ‘no public performances with the instrument on trial’ clause on the contract, of his own accord.

And finally: the crazy lady downstairs is moving out. Most of her stuff went last Thursday. Tonight is her last night here, and good thing; without all her stuff to absorb noise her TV or radio or whatever it is that she listens to awfully loudly is positively intrusive. We could hear every word of it clearly in the kitchen last night. Heck, Scarlet and Blade upstairs could probably hear it too. You have no idea how much we’re looking forward to July. Not just because the four of us get to take over that one and a half as shared office space, or because we get to unplug her ancient appliances, multiple fans and dehumidifiers and garner a greatly reduced Hydro bill, but for sheer peace of mind. We don’t need to worry any more about her falling asleep while cooking something to a burnt and fire-alarm-tripping crisp, or her letting thieves into the building, or her claiming nothing is wrong when her washing machine is leaking and ruining our stuff in storage in the garage, or allowing her jammed dryer to run all night figuring it would eventually fix itself, or her ambushing and verbally abusing us, or taking paranoid complaints to our landlord because she is convinced we’re trying to kill her. Liam will actually be able to play in his room and we’ll be able to use the kitchen in the morning without her banging on her ceiling. I have no idea what kind of place she’s moving into, but I hope she is very happy there, and I hope that her lack of comprehension concerning what life in a shared dwelling is like doesn’t negatively impact her situation.

Right. Time to tie some things up before we finish the house and head off to see the film.