The Bump Arrives!

We are cozy at home, now the four of us. Safiya is happy to announce that Zinadine arrived yesterday at 4:40am after a rather intense and dramatic 5 hour labour. He's tired now, and is going to have a nap. And a feed. And a nap. And a feed.....nap, feed, nap, feed. It's a hard life, being just over a day old :-)

Getting Ready to Bloom

Today is a day of sun and warm breeze and, of unexpected peas!

Everything at our house is getting ready to bloom...


Including me!

Content, I have to laugh at a sidewalk chalk game that Safiya made up, 'cause it's something that I'm whispering to The Bump all the time now:

So Start!

Preparing for The Bump: Puddle Pads

One of the best investments that Mr. S. and I ever made was in our bed. After a lifetime of foam and springs, our hand-made 100% wool bed by Shepherd's Dream really was a dream. It's warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We don't use air conditioning, and the wool bed keeps us so cool and dry during hot muggy summer nights.

To protect it I use big thrifted wool blankets, which I just put down on top of the mattress under the fitted sheet, but considering how many accidents, leaks, and general wetness that accompanies newborns, I wanted something easily changed but still effective. We have two wool puddle pads that we got way back when we got the bed, when Safiya was still a babe, but they're now a little out of our price range (they were well worth the initial cost, though - over the years they've washed beautifully, stayed thick, cozy, and soft, and absorbed wetness and odour very well).

So I thought I'd just make a little stack of puddle pads for on top of the sheets, planning to whisk away the top ones as they get wet. Thrifted wool blankets run about ten dollars around these parts, and after felting them I can get four puddle pads from one (I just cut them and zig-zagged the edges). They're not as thick and luxurious as the ones from Shepherd's Dream, and the weave is a bit looser, but at about $2.50 each, I can afford to double them up....actually, I can afford to sixteen-uple them up, which would be the equivalent cost :-)

Cozy, cozy! One more thing ready for The Bump...

After the Long Winter...

Hey! It's really spring! The signs are everywhere; today we finally had warm-even-without-a-jacket weather, chalk drawings adorn our neighbourhood sidewalks, and bluebells are gracing the lawns.


That, and the sidewalk-painting/mud-making fun has begun:


At the end of the day, I sat on our slightly dilapidated front steps with mending on my lap, delivered pizza in my hands, dirt standing in for a front lawn before me with dirty children in it making believe, Mr. S. to lean on, and the warm sun caressing my face.

...and I said to myself, "what a wonderful world"...

Changes

For many years, my brother-in-law Z. lived with us while he was in law school, and included in the many changes that have transformed a lot of the space in our house lately was the re-doing of his old room, or, as we now call it, the "spare room", or, the "kids' room". Not "Safiya's room".

There was no way this was going to be "Safiya's room". Mr. S. and I could care less, but it was interesting to see her reaction when we talked about moving some of her stuff in there.

"But I sleep in our room. (pause) It's o.k. if my toys are in here. (another pause) Will Granny still sleep in here when she comes to visit?....Hmmmmm.....maybe I could try sleeping in here once. But just once. (head nodding up and down with finger pointing for emphasis) Because I sleep in our room."

And that's perfectly fine with us, because just like everything else, she'll make changes in her life, whatever they are, when she's ready to.


Case in point: I've been working hard to finish up an order of wool blankets, and today Mr. S. came to me and said "I have an idea". huh.

His "idea" was that he and Safiya could go ahead today and travel out-of-town to visit family as we had planned this weekend, and I could stay, finish the blanket that I needed to, and join them...tomorrow morning.

This sounds like a normal plan. No problem, right? One small detail. I've never slept away from her. Even when I've been really really ill, the farthest I've been is the next room. Mr. S. has had to endure nights away from Safiya, but not I.


I said, "Um, o.k.?" and that was that. Good thing that I had work to do, because what else was I supposed to do all night? Sleep? Clearly not. Two things:

First, when she called from my father-in-law's house to talk to me before bed, I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried a little. It was her little grown-up voice, and knowing it was coming from that far away.

Second, when there were plans being made today about the trip, when I walked into the kitchen, Safiya turned to me and said, excitedly and very adamantly:

"Mama! We're going on an adventure! And you're not coming!"


Like I said, I'm not worried about her and change...

That Fierce Love of Making

I really love this. I love working hard on an order, immersing myself with this soft skin of quiet around me. Maybe that's why I push deadlines sometimes - deep down I know it'll be an excuse for uninterrupted time in the studio. And late-night coffee.

Co-existing with my love of work-time with Safiya is this love, and sometimes I fantasize that I really want to live like I imagine the (male, I guess - is that sexist?) artists of yore: hours in the studio, someone brings you food, the house gets cleaned, you go wandering in the city seeking inspiration, you procreate with abandon because, well, you can, and someone will take care of the children....Of course, there's always the problem of finding patrons and having to live in poverty if you don't, but somehow that doesn't factor into my fantasies :-)

I saw a little of this part of myself in Safiya today, actually. She had planned a project, drawing it out, making a pattern, making a list of things she needed. There's been more of this lately; more long-term planning on her part.


She wanted a companion for her pigeon that we swapped for last year at the Queen West Art Crawl from Fish on Fridays, and I knew that encouraging her in this way would result in the satisfaction of working of a longer project rather than just the pleasure of the end result (i.e. me making it for her).


What happened was that fierceness that arises when you are not to be swayed from your task at hand; she needed neither sustenance nor washroom breaks, apparently. The only way she would come to table was if the project came with her.


I was glad. It sits here, next to my work, waiting for her hands tomorrow. I wouldn't give up being here for that for anything.

Mending Mondays

Having recently removed the last remnants of Things That Do Not Belong from my studio in the basement back to their rightful places all over the rest of the house (post-bathroom renovation), I was aghast to see that my mending pile had secretly and mysteriously procreated when I wasn't looking. I say "mending pile" as if it's had that allocation my entire life. As if my mother had a Mending Pile to which she tended, and so I too, was destined to have a Mending Pile.

This one got created late last night....corralled might be a more appropriate term. And so, I have instituted Mending Mondays. Today it was buttons. And also, the removal of some embellishment on a thrift store jacket find for Safiya. I get that she's a girl and she likes glitter, but I fail to see the need for a bunch of sequins to be situated at her hip on a jacket as if she's going to toss her hair and wink at me from across the kitchen. She's four.

So, because it takes me ten minutes to eat breakfast and it takes Safiya nearly ten times that, my fingers were kept busy while she ate and drew and we chatted about things that matter to us both, mainly dinosaurs and time machines. Unfortunately, any documentation of my progress did not turn out well, due to the dim light this morning.

Why dim, you ask?


Arg! Snow! or...rain?....Whatever!....Bah!



The bunnies want to go outside and play.....


We made do with crossing the backyard for an impromptu tea party in our currently-being-fixed-up-shed. Just us, tea, and the wood shavings, while it was miserable outside. It was lovely, really....

..............................................

p.s. I think my early morning mending enthusiasm might have stemmed from the Repair Manifesto (found via Swiss Miss) which might get carved into our fridge, I like it so much ;-)

A Different Kind of Investment

Sometimes, when I sit down to write, the screen stares back at me and says, "Yes, but that's not what you're really thinking about, so let's cut the crap, shall we?" And then my fingers lift off the keyboard and I go and pour anxious energy into something else. It's been like that for a while because Mr. S. and I had a rather large decision to make. Not a negative one. One that we had the opportunity to make from a position of privilege and opportunity, for which I am grateful.

We are not selling our house.


There, I said it. Our lives were headed one way, and then in the middle of yet another discussion I realised: we could move, which would be the fiscally responsible decision (my vote) or we could stay and tough it out, and I would have a partner with a little bit more peace in his heart (arg! also my vote). The two, it seems, were mutually exclusive. That's not to say that Mr. S. wouldn't have gamely gone along, it's just that......

The problem, you see, is that Mr. S. trusts me. I am very fond of telling the story of how we (read me) put an offer on this house, sight unseen by Mr. S. You see? It's problematic, that amount of trust. It comes back not to bite you, but to nuzzle you with big hazel puppy dog eyes, and then what am I supposed to do? Good thing I think Mr. S. is cuter than our realtor ;-)


So for the past month and a bit there was tearing down and organising and making things presentable in Order to Sell, and now there's building up and reorganising and deep breathing because now it's really ours, because we have Made a Decision.

Whew.

February Love

I love February. It's when the sun comes back into the house. November/December/January are gone, melted away in their darkness, and February arrives; still a little chill, a little coy, but leaving you with sun-warmed hair on a bright still day.


The true passing of the year is marked like that: the first musty smell of dried dead leaves in the fall, the first day that the sun leaves the back of your jacket between your shoulderblades warm, the first new earth smell of spring, and that day in August when it's so humid that the crooks of your elbows stick.


That's too far right now.

Now. Now I need to bring things back, closer to home. For more days like these:


There's a lot going on these days. Most of it very good, some of it everyday-worrisome. But home has been on my mind a lot lately. It's been February for a while, and for me that means the beginnings of my new year. Time to re-assess and re-imagine. We'll see what happens....

Tonight I Hunger

Tonight I look at this picture and think that there could be nothing more exquisite than that beetle. It lives, along with myriad upon myriad of other fascinating things, in something called the Tree of Life Web Project.

Except that of course, it doesn't. So far tonight I've watched a couple of short clips; a swan eating grass, a malaria sporozoite inside a human liver cell... As I watched that swan eat and move there was a familiar ache in my heart that is rooted in my now normalised disconnection from nature. "Really? So that's how a swan moves?" I'd forgotten.

The website is amazing, and I am grateful for people doing that kind of work so that I can have the opportunity to immerse myself in it, and I look forward to sharing it with Safiya tomorrow. But it is bittersweet, isn't it? Because the beetle isn't really there.

Safiya asked the other day if reptiles have belly buttons. We've talked about it together, she's had some hypotheses (including umbilical cords with pointy ends to get through the shell to the embryo), she's talked about it with someone else (who is an obstetrician), and we've mentioned getting books out from the library or looking it up on the web.

Just now it occurred to me how ridiculous and sad it is that my first thought was not:

"Why don't we check out a couple of reptiles?"

A Fine September Day

I love this time of year. The chill morning air gives room to breathe. There are signs of fall, and yet the bees are still poking around...


Our neighbours still have green tomatoes on the vine....


And the earth is still producing bounty, sometimes with weird and curious results...


The farmer very prosaically explained that the watermelon had rested on vines. I prefer to think of it as a magical watermelon tattoo. It's so beautiful. And it was in relief, so there we were at the market, Safiya and I, caressing this watermelon in wonder.

Sometimes that's all it takes to make a day fine.

In Which Mr. S. Has Delusions That Become Reality

On Friday I had a little surgery to rid my leg of veins that were threatening mutiny - a condition I inherited and have been putting up with since I was 16. But the point of this story is not poor me, the point is that Mr. S. is a masochist. A sweet one, to be sure, but there are times like this where....

Well, like I said, the surgery was on Friday. Afterward, Mr. S. drove Safiya and I down to my Mom's to hang out while I was off my feet (and to have a lovely baby shower for my new sister-in-law - yay!), and as for the picture above, that was what our kitchen looked like when we left. I'll not show pictures of the floor, which was in a miserable state.


This is what I walked into when we got home Tuesday morning. Cabinets painted beautifully and floor tiles regrouted. It wasn't a surprise; I knew it was going to be done. And that's the scary thing - I knew it was going to be done....in three days. You see, he gets this look in his eye when we are discussing stuff like this and then he says "You know what? I bet you...I bet you I can get it done in three days." And then he shakes his head emphatically "yes", looks at me with three fingers held up and says "three days!"

Like I said, masochist. Not that I'm complaining ;-)

It Could be Worse

I have not been languishing on the couch for two weeks. Shortly after recovering, Safiya and I went out of town to hang out with Nana, who is Mr. S.'s grandmother, and who lives with my Father-in-law usually, but he went on a well-deserved vacation. So we Nana-sat for a week-and-a-half. Nana can take care of herself, but she's at that stage in her life where if she falls, there needs to be someone there to help her right away - someone to check in on her every day at least.

One of Mr. S.'s favourite utterances is "it could be worse!" Hence the book above, which is a charming re-telling of the folk tale where a small house is crowded with too many people getting on eachother's nerves and then the wise one in the village advises them to bring in all their farm animals and then eventually tells them to remove all the animals and hey presto! the house isn't quite as crowded as it was before and everyone is happy.

With the house closing in on me in the middle of January, fighting sickness, and tired, as I told a friend, of the perpetual twilight of the city, I was craving darkness and quiet and room to breathe. Nana-sitting? Perfect. They live on the outskirts of a major town, in a quiet condo/townhouse/subdivision arrangement, but close enough to the countryside.

Ahhhhhh, how useful a change of scenery can be. For realising how good you have it, that is. I forgot about the driving. There is no public transit where Nana lives, so the car it is - for everything. Not even a corner store. And everyone drives, so there's noone outside to acknowledge even if you did go for a walk to....nowhere. And the sameness of said subdivision could make you cry - the unmoving facades of identical houses staring back, unblinking, when you hopefully look out the window in search of scenery. The isolation is oppressive.

We did enjoy visiting, sharing everyday rhythms with Nana, watching game shows, watching her thoroughly enjoy harassing me about what are you going to eat? (she wouldn't touch anything I made - claimed that the only thing I eat is seeds :-) and listening to her mutter about how I don't understand any of her language (enough to understand the swearing, Nana! :-) I brought the dictionaries to translate, we even managed a shopping list together, and we laughed at my ineptness.

But I'm glad to be home. Home where a quick errand outdoors gives me the opportunity to chat for 5 minutes with my neighbour and say hi to another. Home where the kids walk to school, gaggles of them laughing and their parents haranguing them up the sidewalk. Home where I can use my legs to get around, for which I am rewarded a healthy glow instead of a car-induced headache.

Thank goodness for a little perspective. It could be worse!

Cozy

Yesterday the world was thick with beautiful, heavy snow. The kind that is good for snowballs and sledding, and makes trees look like strange sea anemones waving gently in the wind. Inside, however, it's toasty and warm:


The first window quilt is up, with others underway. Nothing fancy (nor ironed :-), just a piece of thick wool sandwiched between cottons, hung up with cup hooks. I used bias tape for the loops 'cause I'm lazy and I've yet to add the bottom loops so that you can actually do up the quilt to look out the window. This one is in the spare room, currently occupied by my law-student brother-in-law (I'm working from most drafty to least). It's reversible, and I put a not-quite-sure-it-matches-but-making-do-with-stash print on the other side in the event that this room gets transformed into a room for Safiya some day.


A newly thrifted bedspread was going to be cut up to make a window quilt for the main bedroom and to cover a small extra blanket, but when I brought it up, it was just too too pretty to cut up.



And so it will stay, spared the scissors, to warm our toes and cheer my heart.