joy rides

Ooh boy. I know it's been awhile. There has been much to juggle in this little world of ours - some extraordinary, others just the usual hustle of family life.

But somehow in the middle of all the things, the wife got her driver's license. And our lives are forever changed.

For all the years the wife and I have shared together, neither one of us has had a driver's license. We never owned a vehicle. We didn't feel we were missing all that much of the world. We loved to walk. We didn't mind commuting. We occasionally relied on the kindness of our friends and family.

With the babes in our lives, we were finding it more and more necessary to pursue getting car-mobile. The time for us to shuttle them around to their various social, academic, and extracurricular engagements is just beginning and we've had enough with all the cab rides already. We happened to get a deal on a teenaged van ("Leroyd MilF" is his name. The boy named him Leroyd and I like to think of him as our Millennium Falcon - a little old, a little clunky, but reliable, road-worthy); and the wife, with all her tenacity and commitment -  on top of home life and work responsibilities - got the thumbs up to drive. us. places. As in, ANYWHERE we could possibly want to go.

I understand that this isn't a novel idea for the lot of you who've driven since your teen years. The wife and I have been together since our late teens and we only just had our very first car date a MONTH ago. Imagine that. It is all very weird.

And amazing. I think we went to the ocean, like, 8 times in the last month - unheard of without our parade float on a bus, in a cab, or with an exasperated friend or family member.

Of course the kids are loving this new chapter in our lives. They're both so proud of their mom, which is lovely to see. They're napping IN THE CAR instead of whining about how tired they are.

It's a bit guilt-making, this kind of luxury.

My home is so messy. Blogging has fallen off the priority list. Laundry is so perpetually behind that when it becomes the grand project of the week (12 loads this week, for example), I want to throw a reunion party for us and all of the clothes we forgot we had. And it gets very tense getting in and out of the car for all the appointments we never would have scheduled on the SAME DAY just because Leroyd could get us there. You know?

Don't get me wrong - I am very grateful to be car-mobile. I just feel like we have to find a way to balance the impulsiveness that comes with novelty of being car-mobile like everything else, with measured mindfulness.

We leave for Toronto tomorrow. I have a sneaking suspicion we'll be leaving what looks like a frat party aftermath behind. But this is a very very much needed vacation away from our every day, time we've carved out to visit with beloved family and friends and to enjoy the sights and sounds of our hometown.

Gotta go! I have ambitions of bringing rhubarb custard pie for our plane picnic.

I won't promise post cards but I will most certainly try to pop in and say hi.

hunting tradition

We tell them the Easter Bunny (E.B.) comes to our house to steal the eggs we decorate so he can hide them and we can hunt for them. The eggs disappear from the bowl we prepare and E.B. leaves the kids a note complimenting their eggs. This year, the word "dope" was used in the note - utterly confusing to toddlers, I realize now (well done, wife). 

The boy woke up at 02:45 very early on Easter morning, and of course, upon discovering the missing eggs and E.B.'s note, proceeded to carry on like it was time to wake up and make breakfast. We tell him to go back to sleep.

After being kicked awake by an over-excited boy, and then pacified by a giant latte (thank you, wife), we tell them (repeatedly, though not quite exasperatedly) that E.B. will text us the time and location of their hunt. We tell them that E.B. likes to play these games around the world with many families, all a little differently. Our hunt will happen when it happens. We tell them again. And again.

Finally, the text comes shortly after the wife is "called to work." She tells them that she is following a map sent to her by E.B (nice one, wife). 

I really was hoping for another hunt at the beach but the weather report called for rain all weekend and we just didn't want to risk getting soppy, being that we're all still recovering from our fourth bout of colds this year. So the train tracks served as our venue once again.

It went quicker this time. It will get quicker every time as these guys get older and wiser, which means that we will get all the more predictable. 

Not long from now our tradition will evolve into already-assembled Easter baskets - but not before this ruse of ours becomes more elaborate. The wife and I are already talking about actual maps they'll be able to read, perhaps a buried treasure, And actual bunny foot steps. We can even arrange for real bunnies if we wanted to really mess with them.

But for now, stumbling upon the eggs we decorated together and the candy eggs that are always a surprise in familiar stomping grounds - it's all a wonderful adventure for them both. They're still talking about it. 

I hope you had a lovely Easter weekend and a great start to the week!

mothering sound byte: on the girl's birthday eve

When we began our birthday tradition, I never thought or even expected that the children would care to be involved in any of the birthday eve preparations. 

The week before the girl's birthday, this boy was relentless in talking me into letting him stay up so he can help bake the cake and decorate the house.

I didn't take him literally. 

I let him stay up on the girl's birthday eve - intending to put him straight to bed the moment he got grouchy signs of toddler fatigue struck (wishfully thinking this would be a maximum of an hour after the girl went down).

The next thing I know, I'm in the kitchen, gathering ingredients and reading from a recipe - when I realized - I wasn't doing any of the baking. The boy was doing nearly all of it. I remember blinking, then thinking, "my goodness - he's baking his sister's cake!" He's baking his sister's cake! This boy who is really only kind to his sister half the time, is baking his sister's cake and doing a really good job scraping down that bowl!

It was like I took an instant joy elixir! I turned to him and squealed, "You're baking your sister's cake! All by yourself! Oh my goodness I'm so proud of you!" I think I hugged him or kissed him or snarfed the top of his head or something. I may or may not have also startled him. He responded by half rolling his eyes, giving me a look, then saying, "don't get happy!" At which point he turned back to his work. 

I howled, tears in my eyes, a smile so wide my face disappeared. "Shhhh! You're going to wake up [the girl!]" he says. 

When I told the wife of this exchange, she responded with, "how is he already 17?"

The boy stayed up until midnight and we all worked together to get the house birthday ready.

He was mostly helping. 

We knew we would pay for it the next day. And we did. Toddlers aren't meant to stay up until midnight. He's not actually 17 (thank goodness!). So we were totally prepared to deal with the wrath of the boy who got too little sleep. We were all calm and light to his irritability (which probably made him a bit more irritable but we got hugs and some smiles back in return).

He baked his sister's cake. 

He helped us make magic. 

He added to the tradition.

Sorry kid, this is kind of stuff that gets me squeally happy.

parade float upgrade

on the heels of our happy dance, and since it was feeling like our little parade float was a bit ridiculous for a summer full of plans to venture over to the river, it felt right to treat ourselves to an upgraded parade float. which, of course, we took for a test drive to the river just as soon as it was assembled - which was just as soon as the wife came home with the box.

 

if i was being honest, it's not as nifty as our old favourite. it doesn't hop up on curbs as easily. nor is it as user friendly.

but oh, it has already served its purpose.

see? 

the wife and i actually had a conversation on the way home. then we had dinner and drinks. and then stressed about the fact that the kids would be up all night because they napped so well and for so long, well past the point of no return (that's 3pm to non-parents or if you don't remember caring for toddlers). i don't think we actually got them to bed until midnight. 

but it was oh so worth it.

knit parade: sock stories

there's always a sock on my needles. mainly because they have become a pretty mindless knit. but also because i have ambitions of creating drawerfuls as the wife has always had a thing for socks. and also, hand knit socks are obscenely soft and profoundly comfortable. if your feet have ever slipped into a pair, you'll know what i'm talking about.

and then there's the fact that sock yarn comes in a variety of insane colours and self-striping patterns that alaways result in the most unique pair of matching/mismatching socks. oh the yumminess of all the sock yarn in the world. 

i could go on. but i won't. i promise.

so without further ado - behold, my wife's valentine socks. i made these quite a long while back. but i dropped a stitch on one of them and procrastinated the mending so she's been forbidden to wear them until now. (when i felt like finally fixing them last week.)

the yarn is crazy zauerball and i am smitten with this colourway. i've lost the ball band but every single colour on the socks are on the wife's favourite colour list, which is why i couldn't resist buying it and putting said yarn in her stocking 2 years ago. she started a sock but, being a newer knitter, was, at the time, a bit discouraged at how long it was all taking so she abandoned the project. i thought starting over and presenting these to her for valentine's day would be a good present (however late). 

the yarn has a lighter hand than most of the sock yarn i am used to knitting with but oh my are these socks just delicious on the feet. (that's right. i tried them on. i always do. i also almost always make them so that they fit me - however different our shoe sizes are. but i wanted this pair to be all hers. so they are a bit snug on me.)

i used the only sock pattern i have committed to memory: susan b anderson's how i make my socks pattern - which is perfect for showing off the beauty of self-striping and self-patterning yarn, not to mention an excellent tutorial at that (i highly recommend it if you're a new sock knitter and wear a size 6-8 shoe). 

and she loves them. success!

now when the wife declared she would like to try knitting socks again, she decided to knit the boy a pair of socks. i coached her through the process by basically following the sock pattern i always use, but i also consulted a few free kids sock patterns for guidance around how many stitches to cast on and when to start short rows for the heel. i gotta say, she did a pretty awesome job - especially because she improvised with using the magic loop method!

may i present the results?

when the wife finished the first sock, the boy said to her, "see mom, i told you, you can knit!"  now that the wife has finished the second sock, the boy hugged them -actually hugged them upon presentation - and said he loved them! 

she used knitpicks handpainted stroll sock yarn in the retro colourway. and he does absolutely love them. wouldn't take them off for a while. he even insisted on wearing them to school.

(i'm trying not to be bitter that i've had to wrestle him into pretty much every piece of knitting i've ever made for him.)

on my sock needles right now are a pair of socks for me - same pattern, different yarn. the yarn is the lovely knitpicks felici in its rainbow colourway. 

i am ever enchanted at watching the colour change as i knit. the yarn comes in 50 gram balls - of which, i'm absolutely guessing that i had about 15 grams or so left - so i also finished a sock for the girl (using this pattern). it's so wee, it only took me a few hours in a couple of days to work.

not that i'm bragging.

socks are my travel project. they come with me on the bus, to the playground, in the car - because i can pick them up and put them down and pick them up again without a second thought. so i reckon it will take me another couple of weeks to finish. which i think is pretty reasonable when you think about the fact that i only head to the office on the bus once a week, playground knitting on any given day is a grand total of 5 minutes, and i'm in a car for about 20 minutes at a time once every 2 weeks. 

and yet the boy think that the wife is a faster knitter than me because he has a pair of socks and the girl only has one.

(i'm really not bitter.)
(i'm really not that competitive.)
(i swear i'm not this petty.)
(apparently, just about the knitting.)
(can't blog. knitting socks now.)

easter finale

easter sunday marked the end of what was a very full, wonderfully eventful month: just full of celebration. there were so many ups - and though i'd prefer not to admit it, just as many downs. 

making magic was absolutely exhausting; made possible with the help and encouragement of family and fantastic new friends - but exhausting all the same. 

i would be remiss to say that magic march was also full of gratitude. 

i'll take luck any time and any where i can find it. and i choose to give in to bliss - even if it's to suspend my own disbelief that the easter bunny really comes to our house just to steal all our eggs and hide them so my kids can find them.

i hope you had a wonderful easter weekend and that you've managed to enjoy some of your own brand of magic this past month.