Category Archives: Photographs

Forty-Four Months Old!

Our house is all Star Wars, all the time. The boy is alternately Artoo, the Millennium Falcon, and either the Imperial Star Destroyer or the Rebel Blockade Runner. Lego is now material for creating X-wings and TIE fighters and Star Destroyers. I found an R2-D2 figure the other day (Clone Wars figures, who knew?) and bought it for him. He’s still thanking me. He drew about nine pictures of Star Wars characters and ships last week, which I should find and put up on the fridge.

I love that someone can mention something about the moon, and I can say, “That’s no moon, that’s a space station,” and without missing a beat my son will reply, “It’s too big to be a space station. Maybe you should turn the ship around. Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right.” While he plays with Lego spaceships in his room I can hear him recite passages of dialogue accurately, complete with inflection and accent.

In the book area we’re revisiting picture books as we search for a new series of early chapter books to read aloud. A Bear Called Paddington didn’t work; neither did The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The ratio of illustrations to text needs to be higher.

January was music month at preschool, and as part of the unit he made a guitar out of an empty Kleenex box and the long roll from gift wrap at school, complete with rubber bands stretched across the box opening. The picture says it all.

The biggest thing this past month is his sudden fascination with babies and how they grow. After seeing a woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy (as in, one could see and/or feel the baby moving) he asked where babies came from. Rather than get into super-specific technical explanations we told him that there’s a little bit of each of the mother and father that is grown inside the mother’s tummy over a long, long time. He then (incorrectly but understandably) inferred that the food one eats is what grows the baby. No no, we explained, the baby actually grows underneath the tummy, not in the stomach where the food goes to be digested, although indirectly yes, the food one eats is what helps the baby grow. And then he decided that he had a baby in his tummy and could feel it moving. So we had to disappoint him by saying that alas, only mothers could do this particular trick, although if he wanted to find a way for fathers to do it too when he grew up then more power to him. He then decided that there was a baby growing in my tummy, specifically a baby sister. And he cheerfully started telling people this. Which made things slightly awkward at times, until he decided we needed a new Maggie-cat, and included the information that there was a baby Maggie and a baby sister growing in my tummy. (Just to be absolutely clear: No, on both the kitten and the baby.)

We’ve begun talking about where we will eventually move to next, although it’s certainly not any time soon. He was quite upset by this for a bit, saying that he didn’t want to move to the new house, that he wanted to stay here, that this house was fine. I asked him where this hypothetical little sister would sleep. “In my bunk bed, with me!” he said. “She’d be too little,” I pointed out, “she’d need a crib.” “We could move my easel and put the crib at the end of my bed,” he said, which was very generous of him. While they were out on a walk or a shopping trip he and HRH saw a puppy, and talk turned to owning a dog someday. When they came home Liam burst into the house and said, “Mama, we have to get a new house and then we can have a dog!” So suddenly the new house isn’t such a bad thing. He’s decided that the bathtub will be bigger, the kitchen will be bigger, the living room will be bigger ( “And we will bring our new TV!”), and he will have an office of his own, like Mama and Dada do, with his own computer. To which I said hey, sure, because HRH has already let the IT guys at work now that the next time the eMacs get replaced he has dibs on a couple, one earmarked for the boy himself.

I mentioned that there was a level-up somewhere around Christmas. Well, there’s been another in the past two weeks. The reasoning and language and behaviour and associated stuff has refined yet again. It’s great. On the other hand, he’s hiding his reading skills from us and still trying to convince us that he can’t dress himself or draw. He pretends all over the place and tells exciting stories, and is getting better at lying down in his room and playing with trains or cars for a good half hour or so, constructing elaborate conversations between them and narrating the action.

He has recently gone crazy for raw snow peas. He’s been horse-like in his appetite lately in general (as in eating horse-sized servings, not preferring grass and oats) but particularly so for raw peas and carrots, bananas, blackberries, cantaloupe, and corn. The nap habit is kind of iffy; at school we’re lucky if he naps for half an hour, because there’s so much going on to distract him, and the older kids don’t nap any more. And as he hangs around with them, well, he sees it as perfectly reasonable that he doesn’t need to nap either. Which is, alas, untrue, because if the nap is missed he’s a whiny cranky horror by six o’clock. He naps around an hour and a half with his caregiver and Grandma, and about two hours at home, though, so heh, the nap is not a thing of the past yet, my son.

Something that amuses us is a sudden aggressive politeness. When you tell him to do something and he angrily says, “No, thanks!“, it’s really hard to hide the smile. He has also recently taken to moaning, “Oh, I never get to do [thing you won’t let me do]!” when we tell him no, and we’re very hard put to not laugh out loud at the dramatic hyperbole. Especially when it involves playing with cars, Lego, trains, colouring, watching a movie, or eating crackers. Because you know in our house those fun things Just Aren’t Done. Ever.

Other Liam posts this past month:

~ Liam is introduced to Star Wars

Unrelated Reviews Of Things

I played the 7/8 yesterday for my entire practise time. It was that good. Usually I get frustrated with the lack of response I expect to get and switch back to my own instrument.

It’s… resonant. A bit less clear on the C string, but that can be adjusted. It has really nice tone colour. There’s a good balance across the four strings, nice response, and did I mention it’s resonant? Holy cow. There were times when it sounded uncannily like my cello. In general it sounded much, much more developed than the last one. At least, it sounded that way from behind the instrument. We’ll see what happens when I cart it to my lesson Friday night.

I kept hitting adjacent strings because the bridge/fingerboard combo is less curved than mine. I initially thought I’d want that increased but then realised that most cellists probably wish it was the other way around in order to use the minimum amount of effort/energy possible in switching strings. It’s even easier to play than the last one in a physical way, too; the action is even sweeter. (The action was pretty much the only thing I liked about the last one.) What I find interesting is that they’re both 2007 instruments, so they’re roughly eighteen months old, and yet this one sounds so much more played-in. Just goes to show how wide a variety you can find within the same model and production year.

I’m looking forward to hearing it played by my teacher. You hear completely different things when you’re sitting in front of the instrument being played than what you hear from behind it.

And now that I’m potentially close to finding The One True 7/8, I’m panicky. I don’t really need to change instruments. I love how my instrument sounds, and I like how it handles. (I may just be used to it; a 7/8 might handle even better once I adjust to it.) What if I switch and it’s a bad decision? (I sell the 7/8 privately and don’t take much of a loss on it because 7/8s are hard to find, or even sell it back to the luthier for not much of a loss.)

I took pictures last night because she’s really, really pretty. I spent more time that I ought to have because I couldn’t really capture the colour correctly. But here’s an idea of what she looks like. The first picture is the standard comparison shot of my 4/4 and the trial 7/8 (standard, ha; I haven’t done this since I brought the first one home last July, but it shows you the colour difference and reminds you of the proportion differences as well; it may not look like much in this tiny pic but click and you’ll see there’s about an inch of difference at the base, a half-inch at the top of the body, and a good inch of the scroll). The second is a full shot of how she looks, and the third is a close-up of her ‘dimples.’ I’ve touched up the last one colour-wise to give you a better idea of her true colour:


I’ve just realised something: I’ve started calling the cello ‘her’ instead of ‘it.’ That’s the first time this has happened. Hmm. This could be dangerous. (Or appropriate. Who knows?)

And now to shift topics entirely: I have realised that I have not yet given any kind of review of my stand mixer. That’s mainly because all I’ve used it for so far is to mix and knead bread dough. It does this very, very well indeed. I am positively in love with how easily the dough slides off the dough hook after the kneading is finished. It mixes and kneads very well, yielding a satiny smooth dough that rises and bakes up nicely. I do miss kneading by hand, but being able to watch the dough hook do it is the next best thing. First of all, it isn’t hidden away like dough inside the bread machine is, so I get to watch it and it’s strangely relaxing. The hook really does a nice job gathering it up and constantly rolling it around. It also doesn’t make an unholy banging noise the way the machine does. I’m also fully in control of how long the kneading process goes on for.

I do like the way the head lifts, and how the different beater attachments go on and off; it’s all very simple and well-thought out. All the attachments and the bowl are super easy to clean, thank goodness. So far I’m very impressed. The only drawback I’ve found so far is that the thing weighs a bloody tonne, and because I don’t have space near an outlet in which to store it, I have to lift it and move it when I want to use it. I only need to move it a couple of feet but the height of the counter robs me of most of my lifting power, and there’s that fibro thing too. I may look for a power bar with an extra-long extension cord for the kitchen.

That’s all from here at the moment.

Forty-Three Months Old

This is going to be a short one because Christmas happened, so there was lots of other stuff journaled about the boy to refer to if you want update-type stuff.

Poor kid, he was sick on Christmas Day, then sick with bad colds not once but twice in the next ten days. It made for a very tense holiday period because we couldn’t toss him out in the snow the way we wanted to. So there was a lot of book-reading and movie-watching instead. This is the month that will be remembered as the month the boy officially entered the world of Harry Potter. Sure, he’s kind of known about it before, but this month he watched the first two films (Harry Potter and the Hogwarts Express, and Harry Potter and the Flying Car. What, you know them by different names?) and really got into them. He can name all the houses and identify that he’s a Gryffindor (“That’s the house I live in!”). The basilisk in Chamber of Secrets makes him a bit anxious, but he’s pretty brave about it. Of course, being brave means watching the snake from behind a chair or casually from around the corner in th hall, but he does it. The other day he requested a lightning-shaped scar drawn on his forehead, which e wouldn’t allow to be washed off for three days. He then dashed around with a rolled-up piece of paper in the shape of a wand, pointing it at things and saying ‘magic words’ that resembled people’s names from the Potterverse. This exchange occurred in my office:

    SPARKY: [points his wand at the computer monitor] Dumble-a-dumbledore! [makes a static/lightning strike sound]

    MAMA: Wow. What was that?

    SPARKY: That was my magic wand! Look, all the letters are gone from there!

    MAMA: Uh-oh!

    SPARKY: Yeah!

    MAMA: Well, can you put them back now?

    SPARKY: [earnestly] No! They’re all in the wand! And I don’t know how to get them out!

(I see through you, small child. I know you’re trying to get me to stop working to play with you. )

We’re currently reading the Magic Tree House series of books, and he’s really getting into them. (I, on the other hand, am going crazy with all the sentence fragments, and am calling a halt to the month-long odyssey at the end of this story arc.) He’s getting better at reading, too. He can somewhat reliably read ‘cat,’ ‘dog,’ ‘in,’ ‘out,’ ‘wow,’ ‘mouse,’ ‘book,’ ‘train,’ ‘Canada’ (you had to know that one would be among the first words read), ‘home,’ and others I’m forgetting. I think we’ll try the Nate the Great series next. I tried reading him the first Time Warp Trio but his sense of humour isn’t quite there yet.

We are encountering the three-year-old push for independence and control of his environment. There’s a lot of “no” and “after I finish this” and “no, you do it,” which are fine in some contexts and just sheer frustration in most others. We know he’s being better-behaved at school than he is at home, and it’s somewhat frustrating to hear people say, “But he’s such a thoughtful, well-behaved, polite child!” Yes, we know that, and it would be nice if he demonstrated some of that at home these days. I know he’s working things out, and pushing to ascertain boundaries, and testing structures to make sure they’re consistent, but wow, it gets old fast.

He has joined the first-ever local pagan three-to-nine-year-old kids’ circle, and had a blast at the first introductory session with masks and the drum and snacks. I’m so excited about this, because he’ll hear about elements and deities and seasons and cultural celebration from someone who isn’t me, so he’s more likely to listen. (It’s just the nature of things, and I understand that.) And at school they’re doing a month-long unit on sound and music, so he comes home with all sorts of little tidbits of information there too.

The other day he picked up two bits of thread from his snowsuit and twiddled them together in his fingers. “I’m knitting!” he told HRH when he glanced in the rearview mirror. HRH told me this story when they got home and I couldn’t help but think of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe story about Sam and his hockey team knitting. He’s bright, he’s eager to learn, and I’m sure it won’t take long before he’s wrapping string around sticks and somehow managing a rough approximation of a knitted object.

Other Liam-themed posts this past month:

– Mama is cool because she has awesome movie music
– Liam rediscovers The Philosopher’s Stone
– poor Liam is sick on Christmas Day

Yet More Wiktory!

The tassels are on. The eight-foot-long Gryffindor scarf is Officially Complete. Proper pictures to come. (Ravelry is down, AUGH!)

A sneak preview:

Because of course the damn cat can’t leave the wool alone, even when it’s all knitted up. What is it with my cats going crazy for wool? (Not yarn, the wool itself. Roman and Maggie once chewed a hole in a pure wool cardigan of mine. Roman was particularly bad, and used to roll and drool all over it.)

Remember, the cat is ginormous. It may be an eight-foot scarf and eight inches wide, but when it’s on HRH it will look like a normal scarf. It will still be impressive, but not as impressive as it is when I unroll it on the floor.

ETA: Ta-da!

And if you know how big HRH is, you know exactly how wide the scarf is:

Mischief managed. That’s one very happy geek man.

Yule Update

I haven’t journaled since Friday, so here’s a quick recap.

Saturday dawned bright and cold. We went to the mall and got the boy out of his snowsuit and boots, and into his shoes. We waited in a very short line for Santa, who was wonderful. Liam found his little Santa hat this morning and tucked it into the tote bag we brought with us, saying that he was going to be Santa’s helper when he got there. He put it on just before he got his turn with the Santa, and told him (rather shyly, for some reason, we aren’t sure what happened to the exuberant kid who’d been waiting in line) that he wanted a train. “A train? Like a Thomas train?” said Santa. And the boy turned huge eyes upon him, as if to say, You *do* know everything!

Then we picked up another gift that I hadn’t been able to get the day before, and we did groceries, and picked up the photographic proof that the boy saw Santa. (Good grief, look at how tall he is, especially when compared to last year.) Then we went to get the tree.

The tree was a bit of a challenge this year. Usually we get our tree at Ikea, because they plant one for every one sold plus give you a twenty dollar credit toward a purchase in the new year. I thought to check the web site before we left to see what time they opened, and found a note informing shoppers that they were out of trees and were not expecting another shipment. Crisis! So we decided we’d get it at Canadian Tire, our pre-Ikea supplier. Except when we drove there after the Santa visit, we discovered that Canadian Tire wasn’t selling them at all this year. What to do? It was past lunch, and we needed a tree or the boy would move into Irreversible Cranky Mode thanks to being out among crowds all morning, an empty tummy, and the increasing need for the regular nap. So we stopped by the independent seller halfway home and discovered that their prices were entirely reasonable. I chose one and HRH and Liam carried it to the car, the boy quite proudly holding the trunk end while HRH tucking the branches under his arm. When we arrived at the car HRH said, “I’m going to put this is the trunk.” “You can’t do that,” I said. “Why not?” he said. “It’s the same size as your cello.” I squinted at the tree and began to laugh, because he was right. It was still wrapped up in netting so it slid in quite readily and all he needed to do was bend the top in around the edge of the opening.

We let it rest for a bit and melt while the boy napped. HRH found the stand, set it up so the branches could relax, and we discovered that I’d picked a very nice little tree indeed. We brought the boxes of decorations up from the garage and put the lights on. When the boy woke up he was very excited and helped hang ornaments (including the Lightning McQueen one, which he was delighted to see and kept petting while he hung other ornaments; he has been warned about playing with it and the other decorations and so far so good) until he decided to watch a movie. This was fine, as we were getting to the more delicate things anyway. In what has now become our Solstice eve tradition, once the boy was in bed HRH and I ate sushi and finished decorating the tree. I also made a pecan pie for the next day’s party, and HRH and I co-made two batches of ginger cookies. Not gingerbread, not exactly gingersnaps, just ginger cookies, made with real fresh ginger (plus some black pepper because I find everything ginger tastes better with pepper).

Solstice morning was lovely. We had the upstairs neighbours down for our traditional Yule gift exchange and brunch. Blade made his incredibly light, fluffy, and delicious cinnamon rolls, stuffed with pecans and raisins (and I ate four of them!). HRH made waffles and we broiled turkey-pork sausages. Between the rolls and the waffles, though, we opened our stockings that hang from the banister in the stairway between our flats and the bigger gifts that were under the tree. My entire stocking, and I do not lie, exaggerate, or engage in hyperbole when I say this, contained chocolate in some form or another. (Oh, wait; there was a vial of red ochre powder. But it’s the exception that proves the rule!) There were truffles, fleur de sel caramels, organic Belgian drinking chocolate (solid chocolate that must be melted before imbibed!), and there was another container of drinking chocolate under the tree. Plus I got HRH’s peppermint bark, because he knows he’s going to eat piles of treats at Christmas so I inherit his chocolate, muah-hah! Saxon Chocolates, the official sponsor of the contents of my Yule stocking, are now one of my favourite chocolatiers; I can’t wait to taste those caramels. The boy was very excited because he got a Hot Wheels dune buggy and Lego vehicle sets as well as a Thomas milk tanker he’d wanted forever (now out of production… I love eBay). Somewhere around the end of brunch it began to snow, and it wasn’t just snow, it was heavy, thick, gorgeously blizzardy snow.

Sunday afternoon we were scheduled to be at a co-coven Yule party, so I made the second dessert (the evil chocolate torte that has rapidly become my signature dessert) and my contribution to the Secret Santa cookie exchange that we do. Since my recipient specifically requested that I make corn bread if I had drawn his name, I made a batch of corn muffins while I mulled cranberry juice to take with us for ritual. Thanks to the blizzard we were late, but everything was cosy when we arrived. We laughed and talked and exchanged presents and snacked. Our hostess had found old-fashioned ribbon candy, which I haven’t seen in years! Everyone was pretty much thrilled with the gifts they got; we’re a pretty good bunch when it comes to checking wishlists and buying things that people really want. I got a copy of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s Yarn Harlot book, and the Philip Glass: Portrait album that Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà released this year, so I was filled with squee. (Thank you, Aurora!) We ate a delicious spaghetti dinner with the best meatballs I’ve ever had, and the pecan pie and chocolate torte were served for dessert. Our ritual was short and focused and also seemed to give everyone what they needed, and was sealed by toasting with the mulled cranberry cider. Then, as much as we wanted to stay, it was back home through the blizzard to relive the local grandparents of Liam duty.

Today the boy was dropped off at school, and HRH tried to do the last of the holiday shopping. We gave up in exasperation. Everyone’s getting gift certificates this year. That way everyone can choose what they want or need. I’m odd; I’m a firm believer in gift certificates being the perfect gift, but I still like to give people things that they can unwrap. Ah, well. It’s the thought that counts, and we really did try, but nothing we needed or wanted was in stock or in the right colour. The parental units will understand. (While being foiled at Chapters I did finally see two copies of Elizabeth Bear‘s latest hardcover, All the Windwracked Stars, for which I’ve been searching since its release. I know where I’m going when the 30% off hardcover sale starts post-Christmas!)

And that brings us to just about now. The sun has started its journey back to us, we have all survived the longest, darkest night, and the season now continues to unfold with light and joy and family and love. My parents spend the day with us on the 24th, and both sets of parents are here for the 25th. Tomorrow we pick up the turkey where it waits for us, and it will defrost in the garage. I’ll brine it as usual. Looks like HRH and I won’t be exchanging gift(s) (it was to have been a co-present) again this year, but it’s a minor issue. Tomorrow we have dear friends over for a session of seasonal music-making and food, and Saturday we see even more friends. Apart from today’s shopping argh, things are wonderful, and the rest of the week looks to be increasing the wonderful quotient.

Slightly Fuzzy Proof Of Recital Fun

My stand partner just sent me a couple of pictures taken at the recital. See? I’m smiling! I’m having fun! It’s slightly out of focus but a cheerful souvenir anyhow.

Not as much fun: Being told that you’re a week late on an assignment that you never got. No initial contact regarding the assignment, no file in the FTP folder, just an automated “you’re late” notice. My contact has apologized for the glitch but wants to know if I can do it anyway. Sigh.