Category Archives: Photographs

Twenty-Six Months Old!

It is becoming increasingly apparent to us that we have a child instead of a baby, a child who can hold conversations, communicate abstract concepts, and with whom we can negotiate instead of legislate.

Among his favourite books these days are My Working Mom, Seuss’s In a People House (which he can read almost all of, so long as a parent supplies some of the connecting text), and Fish Wish. He reads the action depicted in pictures, describing what’s happening, often with snatches of actual story text interspersed. Lately he’s taken to running his finger along underneath certain words and saying the word itself. He’s not actually reading it, although it’s the first step: he’s recognising that these letters in this sequence means a particular word. Words that are mostly similar, such as ‘fish’ and ‘wish’, fascinate him. Compound words like ‘starfish’ and ‘jellyfish’ are very interesting as well.

His current favourite film is The Incredibles, although Lilo & Stitch is a close second. On Saturday mornings we sometimes allow him to watch Kids’ CBC on TV, so he has discovered and loves Arthur (which is fun because HRH worked on the show), enjoys Lunar Jim, and gets up and dances to the Doodlebops.

Among the new words in his vocabulary are enormous, cheeseburger, we, I, burgundy, too and also, sea anemone, trailer, whatever, Benjamin (as in Peter Rabbit’s cousin), and “yes, Mother” (a direct quote from the animated Tom Kitten story). If you ask him if he’d like something, he pauses for a moment then says “Ahhhhh…” as if he’s considering it, followed by a perky “okay” or “no”. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ are used nine out of ten times, and without prompting (including when he and his younger cousin were racing around and around his grandparents’ house and he accidentally ran into a chair: he bounced, blinked, said “I sorry!” and kept on going). If we get in the car he asks, “Listen to Cars music too, now, please, again?” Sometimes we say sure, and other times we say that we need to take turns when we’re in the car and Mama or Dada wants to listen to something else for a change.

In his world, every computer is connected to the Pixar website and can immediately play Pixar trailers. Except Grandad’s computer; it shows plane and train pictures instead.

He’s taken to going into the pantry and surveying what’s available before requesting what he wants for breakfast. Lately oatmeal with added raisins and a swirl of maple syrup is his thing, spurred early this week by seeing the new bag of oatmeal on the shelf. (He asked for the raisins with it; I offered the syrup.) He spoons the stuff up with great gusto and eats it in no time flat, only asking for parental help to chase the last bits of oatmeal around the edges of the bowl. At his grandparents’ house he fell in love with organic kamut flakes, and I can’t blame him: they’re sweeter and crispier than regular cornflakes. After warning him away from the green tomatoes in the back garden and waiting impatiently for them to ripen, I gave him half a red cherry tomato this week and he spit it back out again. Blueberries may be the most awesome part of August; peaches, not so much. I made homemade cherry popsicles and he loves them. Sauteed mushrooms over pasta with freshly grated cheese tossed with a bit of butter is the best meal ever. He has definitely discovered doughnuts, and they are the food of the gods. Chocolate milk is a huge treat when we’re out. He drinks from a regular glass at the table, and only uses his booster seat when he’s in a particularly active mood and we need him to sit in one place for a bit.

He asks for crayons by specific colour. Circles are his newest favourite thing to draw. When he colours in an outline drawn by one of us or in a colouring book he no longer scribbles randomly: he colours very specific portions of the image. Red may be his favourite colour, followed closely by blue, if the frequency of the request for a crayon of that colour is any indication.

When he leaves somewhere he says goodbye to everything he can see (and can’t see), including ‘up’ and ‘in’ and ‘out’. He played in a big pool for the first time this month with his caregiver, and after resisting it he fell in love with it. He loves to play soccer and kicks the ball around the yard, and he likes flopping over a swing on his stomach to swing back and forth while staring at the grass. Lying on our stomachs and watching ants is still a great way to spend twenty minutes or so. He’s so good at walking while holding someone’s hand now that we can walk through stores instead of locking him in a stroller or a shopping cart.

We appear to be raising a small geek (which will come as no surprise to most, I’m sure). Not only can he recognise Superman and Spiderman along with their associated logos, he appears to have absorbed the Doctor Who revival as well. This will amuse PDaughter:

GRANDMA: [speaking of her sister] … so I made her go see the doctor

LIAM: The Doctor!

GRANDMA: Yes, Liam. Do you like your doctor?

LIAM: The Doctor! Sonic!

(As in, a sonic screwdriver. The one used by Doctor Who. Yeah. Grandma was mildly baffled.)

He “sings” along to songs on movie soundtracks, echoing repeated or random phrases in the song, and inserting movie dialogue at the appropriate places. When he hears tracks from a film score he can describe what’s going on in the film at that time, making him the only person I know who can visualise and identify musical cues better than I can.

He wears size 3T shirts, 2T pants, size 5 diapers, and size 3/4T pullups. Toilet training is going so well that I bought him his first set of underwear last week, which he wears with great pride and excitement in the late afternoons and evenings. He’s barely fitting into his size 6 1/2 shoes, and has worn through the toes of his racecar sneakers. Good thing we have a pair of size 7 sneakers in the wings.

Maybe it’s because our friends all have bright kids who are being raised in a similar fashion, but to me Liam doesn’t seem any different from them developmentally. And yet I’m told by people who work with kids not associated with our circle of friends that Liam is unlike other children his age. Whatever. He’s Liam to us. He is normal for who he is. We read to him; we communicate basic values like responsibility and sharing and turns and respect and courtesy; we insist on a regular early bedtime, naps, and toothbrushing; we share time with him and ask questions and talk to him. And if that makes him unlike the average kid, then I don’t know that it’s the kid in question who’s different, or the parents.

Twenty-Four Months, AKA Two Years Old!

Two years makes for a big, big change. (Okay, twenty-three months in the case of this picture. But what’s a month when you’re looking at two years? All I can say is that he was much smaller and thinner than this when he was born.)

HRH and I were talking about two years ago the other day, and how insane that first month was. “I don’t remember work,” HRH said, and I said, “I think I must have been kind of dazed and moving through life in a Zen way.” That’s the only way I can imagine living through going through morning rush hour traffic to the hospital, seeing the boy for ten to twenty minutes, driving to drop HRH off at work, driving home, writing insane amounts of the GW book to meet the slightly revised deadline, unpacking from the move two weeks prior, driving back to get HRH, driving through rush hour traffic to the hospital to spend half an hour with the boy, then driving home again. Zen. Doing what we had to do and rolling with it, because to fight it would use up precious energy we were channeling into a very small person to keep him alive. We just did what we had to do. We rolled with things. “I remember telling people not to call after dinner,” said HRH, “because every time the phone rang we jumped, thinking it was the hospital telling us something was wrong with the baby.” Sure, there were one or two times when things went off the rails — like one morning when we couldn’t hold him because they were moving his IV, and when we went back that night I asked someone to take him out of the neonatal isolette for me and a nurse snapped that it was too close to his feeding time and she wouldn’t do it, so I went out into the hallway and cried because all I wanted to do was hold him once that day (thank goodness for other nurses seeing what happened and firmly escorting the snappy nurse into the next room to tell her that they do not make stressed and strung-out mothers cry when they freaking commute in through an hour and a half of traffic not once but twice to see the child in the neonatal unit that they’re not allowed to bring home, and then returning to take my son out of the isolette and handing him to me).

It’s hard to remember that time of our lives when we look at the boy now. Now he’s taller and slightly heavier than most kids his age (34.75 inches and 30 lbs the doctor has just told us). He runs. He falls. He climbs. He turns somersaults. He reads. He laughs like a loon. He eats a startling amount for a toddler. He talks to us about everything. He wears size 7 shoes, size 5 diapers, and 2T pants with 3T tops. He’s sleeping for ten to eleven hours at night, with a two-hour nap after lunch every day. Still no sign of the two-year-old molars. They finally stopped moving and making him cranky a few weeks ago, so we’re trying to enjoy the respite as much as possible before they start growing again.

Developmentally, we’re told that “At this age, your child should be putting two words together (‘Go car?’) and following two-step commands (‘Get your sweater and come to the car’). She also should be learning more words every day and naming some pictures in books.” Liam was doing this months ago (the latter a year ago, in fact), so we’re officially throwing the guidebooks away (not that I’ve paid much attention to them for the last year anyway). “Dada pancake all gone,” he said when HRH polished off the last bite of his breakfast on Saturday. “No no Maggie, no eat balloons,” he said to Margaret today when she tried to chew on the trailing ribbons dangling from the foil helium birthday balloons. “No eat Liam’s balloons,” he clarified, just in case she was unclear on why snacking thusly was wrong. Sometimes he uses a possessive, but it’s rare. This morning he said “I do it” when I showed him how to erase the magnetic doodle board Arthur gave him as a birthday gift. “Liam’s turn,” he will say when he decides he wants something I’m using. We told him could take one of his new cars to bed with him tonight and he tried to pick up the truck with all the cars loaded on it. I can’t argue with how clever it was, but bringing the whole unit to bed was unthinkable so we clarified one of the small cars from the set. “All of them, all of them,” he pleaded. “Tea all gone,” he told me this morning when he finished his cambric tea. “Mama drink tea, Miran drink tea. More tea?”

Concepts he’s grasping include later, after, other one, and another one. If he asks for a cracker and I give him one, he says, “Another one?” because he likes having one in each hand. He’s using the term ‘making’ instead of ‘doing’ sometimes, which is interesting.

New words: look (he used ‘see’ up till last week), bumblebee (instead of simply ‘bee’), Spiderman. And this is a good a time as any to phase out the new words portion of the monthly Liam-post because it’s new phrases now more than new words. Although we’re continually astonished at how easily he echoes a new word we say for him. (Except for: “Liam, can you say ‘precocious’?” Pause, then: “No.”) If he does something he shouldn’t or drops something or breaks something as you ask him what he’s done, he sighs and says “Oh, Liam”. ‘Uh-oh’ has evolved to ‘oh dear’.

His current favourite movie: Toy Story 2. I get a sweet hug from him every time Jessie hugs someone in the movie. “Jessie hug,” he says tenderly, and puts his arms around my neck and rests his head on my shoulder for a few wonderful moments before he turns back to watch the film.

His current favourite books: On the Day You Were Born by Debra Frasier (known as the “Liam dancing!” book), plus his older favourites like The Patchwork Cat, Mog and the Baby, Moonbeam on a Cat’s Ear are still going strong. There are several new books he received as birthday gifts that we are certain are destined to become favourites too. He can already recite much of Up Down and Around, the book on working in a vegetable garden that my parents sent to him for his birthday, when we read it.

His current favourite music: He seems very fond of the Rankin Family when he hears them on the radio and will dance immediately, commanding me to dance too. When the music changes to something else he looks at the radio and says, “More dancing!”. I put on a Rankin Family CD for him one day when he looked sad because the song was over, and he had a blast. HRH caught him conducting to Bach’s sixth Brandenburg concerto the other day.

He blew out his Nemo birthday candle in one puff at his party. As proud of him as I was about how cheerful and polite he was with everyone, I think that single action made me happier and I don’t know why. He got to hold the candle and licked the icing off the bottom, then later we caught him smooshing the candle’s base in the frosting in order to lick it off again. I honestly can’t blame him; it was awesome icing. (Next time I double the recipe for the cake, though, I will bake it for the same amount of time a single batch would need. It was delicious, but too dry for my taste.)

Last week he lay on his tummy in the yard and we watched ants for about half an hour, then we discovered a bumblebee checking out all the crevices in Scarlet’s prepped herb bed. “Bumblebee, bumblebee,” he said over and over, crouched down in that toddler way, getting as close to it as I would let him. HRH joined us and explained that some species of bumblebee are burrow-dwellers, and we all learned something new. Liam was mildly put out that we wouldn’t let him touch it, but the memory of touching the daddy-long-legs on the stairs up to the deck was still fresh in our minds. (“Pider! Pider!” “Yes, Liam. Just look.” The hand darted out; the spider squealed and fell to its doom. “Liam — what did you do?” “Poor pider,” he said in a very remorseful voice.)

Last week I walked in after his nap and found him standing up, both hands on the top rail, and one foot hooked over the edge. He looked at me; I looked at him. “Up,” he said. It would seem that the notion of climbing out has now occurred to him. It hasn’t happened in actuality, but we’re preparing for the transition to the bed just in case it has to happen sooner than we think. We’ve got the bed rails; the bedding is en route. A couple of weeks ago he climbed up into his bay window and sat there, too. He’ll try to climb just about anything. Also, he does not walk; he runs. The swings no longer make him nervous (and I still have no idea what happened to change his joy in swinging to anxiety; no one does).

There’s an odd sort of double reality happening. In one life, we’re moseying along living side by side with our easy-going toddler. In the other, we’re racing to catch up, to think ahead, and come up with things to challenge or entertain him. It’s no wonder we’re tired: keeping up with him mentally is a challenge, quite apart from running around with a quicksilver toddler who weighs almost a third of what I do.

Liam Is TWO!

Longer post later. For now:

June 11 2007

The new wagon, June 10 2007

The Nemo cake! June 10 2007

Awesome party, even though most of it happened while I wasn’t looking. Excellent behaviour on Liam’s part; much politeness and cheer. Despite the assurance that no gifts were necessary he had a pile of really terrific presents to open, and he very obviously enjoyed each one.

Thank you everyone for a wonderful day, and for helping us celebrate two years of having such a wonderful little soul in the world with us.

Argh

So naturally, since I chose today to begin printing photos for Liam’s photo album, the colour ink is low and there’s no point in going any further because I’ll just waste photo paper and what’s left of the ink.

To be fair, I think this is the first time I’ll be replacing it. I can’t really complain about the longevity, only the timing.

On the bright side of things, I got not one but two boxes of books in the post.

Gig Recap

Honestly, this has been the Best Gig Ever. It makes me wish we weren’t going on hiatus, and that’s a good thing: it means I’m looking forward to getting back together already. Actually, I’ve been feeling increasingly positive about band for the last couple of months, as our set coalesced and we just got better and better. As much as I’m excited right now and wish we could just keep going, I know the break will do us all some good.

I was thrilled that my parents and in-laws could finally come to a gig, particularly as this might have been the last gig Random Colour presented (it’s possible; after all, the original proposal was to stop entirely, commuted to a six-month hiatus before re-evaluating). I was also thrilled at the size of the crowd, even though about half of it left before Random Colour took the stage (your loss, people). I know Invisible is a more crowd-pleasing group because of the kind of music they play; that’s the sort of live experience people expect. It’s just a shame more people didn’t or couldn’t stay to experience something totally different and intriguing. It’s mildly annoying that we can’t seem to win: if we open the night people arrive late and miss us, and if we close the night people leave during the equipment change or halfway through our set. Anyway, the evening started out as standing room only, even with extra chairs being brought in. I loved the new venue: the stage itself, the sound, the lights. A heartfelt thank you goes out to everyone who came to share the evening with us. I even saw people I hadn’t seen in a year or more, which was a lovely surprise.

The sound check experience was covered very well by Mousme here (along with gig notes too). I may have been one of the only people who didn’t get a lesson on technique from Perry the sound guy, despite his efforts to reposition my pickup ( “No, I guess you were right, that does seem to be the sweet spot.”) Despite his scolding and pointing out our flaws and weaknesses, we all love him and want to annex him permanently as sound guy and manager. We didn’t get to actually start checking until after six, which was when we’d all expected to be finished, so I raced home as soon as Random Colour was released to change and eat and bring HRH back with me. The guys started about twenty minutes after their expected start time, and we danced and sang through their set. (Note to self: Don’t sing and scream so much, if you want to have a voice left for your own set directly following. It ended up not mattering much because I forgot to position my mic for the song in which I do backup vocals, and I couldn’t get it close enough during the song itself, so my lack of voice wasn’t much of an issue.) There were a half dozen or so originals mixed in with the covers, and the range of music they presented was eclectic enough to give Random Colour a run for their money. I am so glad the “notes guys” got the chance to do an instrumental, and the fact that it was what they refer to as the PPK medley (Peter Gunn into the Bond theme) was tremendously cool. I Blame My Woman was hilariously suited to the three vocalists who each took a verse. The Blue Moon medley was also absolutely phenomenal. And of course, the new original The Rocking Thing, written primarily for Mousme (but played for the whole girls’ band, we were assured) was thrilling and just plain fun. It was fascinating to see and hear how the Invisible sound is really settling into something unique.

I have been reassured that it’s not a bad thing that I want to throw myself at the lead guitarist’s feet when he’s onstage. Bandmates tell me that I am in good company.

Our set and presentation were solid, and this was absolutely the most secure we have felt going in to a performance. So naturally, there were technical difficulties, but they were all dealt with coolly and professionally and didn’t adversely affect the performance. (Hands up, everyone who saw my cello endpin slip multiple times!) I’m not going to describe it in detail, as both Mousme and Karine have already done so. I played with my eyes closed a lot, just listening to how the sound was blending, with that ten percent of my brain that provides a running commentary (the other ninety percent busy doing what it’s supposed to do) marvelling at how excellent the sound was. The speed and energy were ideal, except in two songs, J’veux pas viellir and Enter Sandman. I ended up improvising a cello solo around the bits that I actually remembered in J’veux pas viellir (which the rest of the band says was slower than usual and I know was actually a touch faster, being the one who has to keep up during the verses, but it makes sense that it would be perceived as slow because of how it’s positioned in the set list and because of the adrenaline of the final rehearsal and the gig) … but despite these two very minor things it was absolutely beautiful and I loved the sound. Enter Sandman had so much energy that it ended up being played much faster than we’d ever done it. We kept up with one another and aced it, however, and I’m really looking forward to listening to the recording to hear the crowd response to Sandman once the cello and the kick drum start and the song digs in, and again when the unison riff begins. Wheat Kings, First We Take Manhattan, Moon Over Bourbon Street — they were all smooth and beautiful, and I loved playing them. We made real music. And it was good.

What I really love about Random Colour is how we arrange songs. There are no songs that we can play without adapting and arranging them, because we’re never going to find a song written for the instruments we have (unless we write them ourselves, and yes, we have one, and at least one other on the way which has been on the way since May of 2006, but they’re for the future; the latter is now waiting until Jam Sessions is released for the DS, thank you very much!). We really, really nailed these songs, and one of the reasons they succeed the way they do is because our arrangements are fresh and showcase the songs in a completely different way. One of the bits of feedback I’ve been hearing from various people, particularly about Wheat Kings, is “How did they do that with those instruments?”. We have inventive and experimental musicians. Ironically, this is also one of the reasons why we have to take a break from the band. We have to invest a stupid amount of effort and energy from the very start in order to make the songs work, and it’s very draining. We cut an excellent song from our set list the week before the gig because it was an almost-but-not-quite-there song, and it broke everyone’s heart because it was very possibly the song we had put the most work into over a year or so. It’s challenging, being the band we are. We get cross with one another, and frustrated, and worse, we get really really down on ourselves individually for not being as good as we think we ought to be. We tend to forget that what we’re doing is incredible in the first place, that we choose really tough songs to cover, that some of us have only been playing for two or three years. Hell, we get up in front of people to do this. That takes guts, and determination, and a soul of steel. Nights like the one this past Saturday remind us of why we do it.

I will miss band a lot. The hiatus will be good for us. But I’m already sorting through the wishlist of songs I’ve been building up.

PS: Didn’t make it? Were you there and want to see things from a different angle? Check out the gig photos taken by Everyone’s Mother’s Favourite Guitarist!

Gig Countdown

We went out this morning to buy some new jeans for HRH, because I’m the one who has to look at him, and well-fitting jeans are infinitely preferable to the ones that are a size too large, and then we wandered around the local mall, just having a relaxing time looking at things like fountains and trees and patches of sun that shine through the skylights. I bought Liam a secondhand Finding Nemo game for us to play together on the DS (congratulations, Liam, your very first video game!), and HRH and I picked up a secondhand Goblet of Fire Xbox game to play together. That was one of the original reasons for giving him the Xbox and a second controller as an anniversary gift a few years ago, after all: so we could play together. We never have, because most of the games he’s interested in are one-person, and the ones we’ve found so far with a multi-player option don’t interest me. Apart from that, I got none of the books I went in for because they were all out of stock, despite having verified the store stock online.

While wandering I found an awesome short black skirt that would complement the corset. It looked fantastic on, and fit terribly well. Did not buy it. It was, erm, very short. Even with a pair of full-length tights under it, it was not conducive to cello-playing.

Rehearsal last night was lots of good, even though most of us were tired and everyone blanked or tripped up at some point. I’d sliced the inside of the first joint on my left index finger while opening the new keyboard box yesterday (the only thing worse than a paper cut is a cardboard cut, especially in a tender and frequently-used place like that), then proceeded to further slice it open again on a string while sliding during a shift last night. I felt mildly foolish, particularly since it was minutes after Mousme’s dramatic spatter pattern incident. Hers was more serious; it’s not like there’s blood involved in mine, just several layers of skin open to the air and metal of the strings, and it stings like someone is dripping acid into it when I wash it or accidentally touch it to something. I am investing in some of that liquid skin sealant stuff this afternoon; I don’t care how expensive it is. Metal strings and open wounds do not play well together, no matter how well-cleaned they are.

Thanks in advance to everyone planning to come to tonight’s invitational gig, and to everyone who wanted to come but was prevented by time, geography, or previous plans. We know you’ll be there in spirit. We intend to have a band-load of fun.