Remembering

Yesterday at school Mimi and Ami had a Remembrance Day Ceremony. They have lots of questions about Remembrance Day and War and Death. I love how Canadians have Remembrance day rather than Veterans Day- it just seems more all encompassing. I love the poppies and the poetry and the remembering. I also love that both my kids were wreath-bearers (representing their respective classes) at their assembly. I hope they teach Timo everything they know.

Sleepy-time

so sleepy

so, so sleepy

can't get enough sleep!

sleepy baby boy in traditional boy colours

sleeping in a sunbeam

sleepy baby boy with sleepy big sister

Stroller triumph

isn't it a great colour!!

Sleeping beauty in his stroller

the bassinet part which detaches from the wheels means 

sleep can happen anywhere!

Well, so much for my goal to post every day. I fell asleep last night super early (almost before Mimi went to bed) and so my evening blogging time evaporated. Now I am sitting on the front porch at Applecross with a sleeping babe in his stroller/bassinet. I am feeling very pleased by my purchase of said stroller/bassinet. This is a very fancy stroller [Bugaboo Frog] that I bought at the local kids' consignment store (Abra'kid'abra) for a fraction of the original purchase price. I needed some sort of little bed for the baby while in Victoria and it is super nice to have a "new" item for your new baby and my sister Bridget swears by hers (justifying justifying)... I have been fixing it up for Timo since I got it about 5 weeks ago. It needed a good cleaning of the fabric (the washing machine worked wonders) and the wheels needed greasing and cleaning. The little basket underneath needed a tricky repair (I am tricky!) and the strap-that-you-can-put-around-your-wrist-to-prevent-runaways-on-hills needs to also be trickily fixed (I have a plan!). The stroller came without a canopy/hood but I ordered up one and it is waiting for me in Spokane.The ticket price on these strollers is over $1000 so I am feeling pretty pleased with the $140 I paid!!! Plus I have enjoyed the project of fixing it up!!

Blogvember

My sister Caitlin is blogging every day in November and I thought I'd better keep up with her seeing as she has a newborn only 10 hours younger than mine! There have been so many changes in the past couple of months and I know that there are those of you out there that might want to see pictures of the latest addition to our family so here goes!!

   The most recent news is that Timothy and Michael are the latest grandsons in our family! Timo was born at 17:04 on October 24th to me (Phoebe) and Miho was born at around 03:30 on the 25th to Caitlin. My Mum is convinced that it was the picture of Timo that she emailed to Caitlin on the evening of the 24th that precipitated Caitlin's labour! Here we are in August at our sister and cousin-fest. We joked that we could have babies on the same day but never imagined that it would actually come close to happening! We had very different births and we were both a little disappointed that we couldn't be each other's doula (labour support). As it is the babies have their own birthdays but they qualify to be twin cousins too!

i don't know why his nose was so red!

 Timothy was born at Victoria General Hospital under the care of our Midwives Misty and Heather and also the obstetrician Dr Denny. It was great to be surrounded by loving professional women and to have their presence at each of the stages of Timo's birth. I was very glad that the midwives were able to take pictures when every one else's hands were full (and we didn't bring a camera!)

i didn't recognie that it was Martin who brought our baby over for me to see! I hardly recognise him in his clericals let alone scrubs!!

 

 My Mum and Ami and Mimi followed us to the hospital and waited very patiently to discover what kind of baby we got. All the nurses, doctors and midwives were super impressed by how patient the kids were. They waited and waited and waited and waited until they could come into the recovery room to see me and our new baby boy. The waiting was all worth it in the end.

Ami and Mimi meet their new brother!

I wonder who would use a microscope in this room...! I guess it has to get stored somewhere!!

an afternoon adventure from December 2010- somehow it didn't get posted before...

This is a series of pictures from a little adventure that the kids and I had back in California in December of 2010. 

We were exploring the Point Isabel Regional Shoreline in Richmond and enjoying the wind and the sun and the shadows and the views of the Bay.

New Adventures

Well, maybe this is not really a blog anymore if I make a post once every six months!
We have made it to the next stage of our adventures but we are still in limbo and waiting to know what direction the next stage will take us. The kids and I arrived in Sorrento last night and they are very happy to be here- so much grass to run around on! It is a bit deserted here with the youth staff arriving some time next week and hardly any guests here either. I also realized that much of my day is used up cooking and household things but here at Sorrento eating at the dining-room that is not something that will fill up the hours here. There was a big wind, thunder and lightening storm last night that was really dramatic and today is rainy which makes deciding what to do a bit tricky. If it stays this wet we need to get Mimi some rubber-boots before we can do a lot of exploring in the woods or even tromping through the grass. I'm hoping for many visitors this summer so that we have lots of people to play with- both for the kids and for me.

A great weekend

I see I am woefully behind on posting here but it's not for a lack of things to blog about. Instead of recounting our wonderful Christmas with Mum and Dad here in Berkeley or our impromptu trip to Hawaii last week I am going to tell you about the fabulous weekend we just had.

Yesterday's highlight was the purchase of a new teapot. Our first Berkeley teapot met its end over christmas but i think it did its due service to us after coming to us from a garage sale 2.5 years ago. Our other teapot found in freecycle was irritating us no end- too small, drippy, dangerous capsizing lid etc. We got a beautiful teapot from BeeHouse (of Japan) which we are LOVING!! It looks cool, it pours beautifully, it has a fixed lid that you can remove (if you so choose), and it makes wonderful tea!!

Then last night I did a runthrough of my Works for Unaccompanied Voice recital which I am preparing for two lower mainland performances in February. It was at All Souls Church in their church hall. About 15 or so people attended (I expected about 3!) and it was so great to engage them with this rather unusual music and for them to be so brave to attend something that they knew nothing about! They were so generous in their praise and interest and I was quite touched by that. I was very glad to get a chance to sing the repertoire with an audience to give me the experience and to teach me what I need to work on before the next performances.

Today we went to church and it was a very nice service with a good sermon and then we went to he AGM of All Souls Parish. It was only an hour long, included a light lunch and childcare outside, and it was standing room only! We came home, the kids played outside until it was time to head out for an adventure to the City (SF) to see SF Opera's film version of Elixir of Love created for kids. It was at the Herbst Theater which is next door to the opera house. It was free, we found great parkade parking for $4 very close to the theater and it was a great show. It was an english language version in a live performance recording edited down to 1 hour and with Nemorino as the narrator. The treatment of it for film was very good.

After the show we went out for dinner at Burma Superstar which had been recommended to me by a friend of Julia's at her wedding this past summer. It is also on a number of "where to eat in SF" lists and it was fantastic. We found a free parking spot and we got a table almost instantaneously! (not an easy feat as they don't take reservations and I think there is always a line!!) We had their tealeaf salad, rainbow salad, garlic noodles, samusa soup, platha (bread) with a coconut dipping sauce and the Classic Burmese Chicken Casserole with Cardamom Cinnamon Rice. The kids were their agreeable selves and tried everything. They preferred the noodles and the rice dish and we ate every last drop of everything!!! Our waitress was very impressed by us especially the kids and their adventuresome pallets!! 

Now we are home enjoying tea from our tea pot and reveling in the reality that we can go on adventures to San Francisco at the drop of a hat.