At mama's knee

 

Ten months old

 

and already driving a car!

Snow!

 

I bundled the wee man into his snowsuit and took him out for a bit of frolicking. He didn't want to frolic, though. He just wanted to sit and watch the flakes come down around him.

Movember!

I've always kind of envied guys' ability to totally change their appearance in just a few days by growing facial hair. Not that I'd want to have to shave every day. But it would be cool to be able to look like someone else at the drop of a hat.

Douglas is taking advantage of that ability this month, and all for a good cause. Check him out at:

http://theworldlikeadog.blogspot.com/2010/11/movember.html

snowfall

 

La Nina is here, with her fluffy white blanket. I think we may be in for a record snowfall this season. Which is funny after last year, when the Olympic Committee had to truck snow in from other towns to cover our poor, bare ski hills.

We are already out, romping in the drifts. I wouldn't say Theo knows what to make of snow quite yet, but he will soon....

 

 

the red heart of memory

 

I knitted a little lacy cap for Shelley's wee bairn-to-be. She had her baby shower today, so I can now post pictures without worrying about giving anything away. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The yarn is a luscious red, and very soft. If only I could remember what type it is.... I'm so bad about keeping ball bands. I know I bought it in SLO - Celine, maybe you can help me out??

 

 

The shower was lovely. There were no games involving diapers and crushed Mars bars, just good food and conversation. Shelley and I have known each other since we were about 13. We and 3 other women have been good friends since high school, and 3 of the 5 of us are having babies within a year of each other. It's amazing to be able to compare experiences with friends who share so much history. We can remember sitting in the high school hallway giggling about boys, and passing notes in Physics class. And now here we are, having children.

 

 

papa and his boy

 

This shot was taken at the end of a long-seeming but actually very short trip to Saltspring to check on the boat. Theo fell asleep in my arms on the busride from Ganges to Fulford. When I couldn't hold him anymore, we made the delicate transfer from my arms to Douglas', and the wee man remained bonelessly asleep.

I think Dreamland must be larger than Earth. It has stronger gravity - I swear he's heavier when he's asleep.

Commando

Theo crawls without picking up his belly, as if he's approaching a ridge and worried that a sniper will get him. He's pretty fast, in spite of how he drags his round belly along the ground.

This video is about a month old. We found it in the giant archive of Theo footage last night, and I thought it was too cute not to post.



These were early days when it looked like it took every ounce of concentration to move forward!

the wee swabbie

 

just like Nancy Drew

When Theo's really pleased with himself, he kicks his feet and waves his arms so he rocks and bounces in his chair, thump, thump, thump. He squinches up his face and snorts with laughter. I'm doing my own version of that right now.

Yesterday I learned how to do something I've been wanting to know how to do for over a decade. I've tried off and on, with very mixed results. I finally solved the puzzle, and I feel the most immense satisfaction. It's a feeling of profound completeness, like I got back a missing limb, or found the magical key in a fairy tale.

I made a really good loaf of bread.

I don't just mean edible. The crumb is silky, chewy, and light. The loaf has the perfect, proud roundness of a chickadee in a birdbath. And when it came out of the oven, the crust sang to me, a song about its golden, crisp perfection.

This is the bread I sometimes pay $6 a loaf for. I'd tried and tried to duplicate it, turning out crumbly tasteless brick after flat, doughy brick. I was beginning to suspect this bread was made by bakers with bionic arms, or was baked in commercial ovens hot as hellfire. Or maybe just straight-up summoned by the black arts.

But here it is! In my kitchen (and my belly). Made by me. I never have to buy bread again (well, I'm sure I will, but it'll be because I want to).

How did I do it? I read a book. This book:

http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/

It was laughably simple. There are only a few new tricks in their procedure, and I think the key is the cup of hot water poured into a roasting pan just as you put the bread in the oven. It gives the dough oven spring like I've never seen. It's a hockey puck when it goes in, and a balloon when it comes out. So much spring, in fact, that in spite of the two deep slices in the top, the bottom of the bread cracked, too. I suppose it was just busting with pride, like me.

Kind of ridiculous, I suppose. It's just bread. But it's BREAD.

Most importantly, I didn't just do it halfway, as I often do - tinker, get bored, move on. I got to the bottom of it, like Nancy Drew.

So I'm bouncing and snorting like Theo. He inspired me to it, in a way. Watching him learn a new skill every week - laughing, crawling, standing, surfing - made me think I could learn at least one new thing this year.

 

Northern Exposure

 

Alaska is just a few hours' drive north of where we've been for the past 3 weeks. The snowline on the mountains almost reaches the edge of town, and we saw a moose on one of our weekend walks. Of course, we were only midway up BC - there are hundreds of miles stretching between Terrace and the Yukon. But we still felt pretty far north.


View Larger Map

Douglas was working on a month-long project in Terrace, and mr. t and I flew up to join him for 3 of those weeks. I had an added incentive to go: I grew up right near there. When my parents immigrated to Canada in the late 1970's, they moved from sub-Saharan Africa to Kitimat, and were greeted by 6 feet of snow. My mom says that as the plane circled the landing strip and she looked at the town below, buried in snow, all she could think was "What have we done...?!"

It all turned out pretty well, of course. And we really enjoyed our time in Terrace. People are friendly. I think I had more conversations in the course of a day there than I do at home, even though most of them are with strangers. The town is small enough that I could walk across it in less than half an hour, but big enough that in 3 weeks I felt I hadn't fully explored it. When Douglas left for work in the morning (a 4-minute drive), we joked about whether he'd hit traffic, and should take an alternate route. Coming from a town of 90-minute commutes, where you can easily be stuck in traffic for an hour, this seemed just a little too good to be true.

Instead of fighting traffic, I spent my time wandering around the town discovering its little quirks. Like the pet tarantula, Maxine, at the library. When I asked if I could take her photo, they pulled out her molt and a huge stuffed spider for added interest.

 

 

The wool shop has an amazing selection of Norwegian wool, pewter buttons embossed with tall ships, and a stern knitting grandma in the back who offered advice about wool. The baker grinds her own flour in-house, in an old-fashioned mill. And at the shoe shop, they have a weaving loom set up next to the all-weather boots, for when business is slow. Crafts, food, and weird pets - I was in heaven.

Of course, the town has its dark side. One afternoon at the library, a middle-aged First Nations man was arrested for being drunk and disorderly. I was reading magazines in a corner window while Theo surfed from chair to chair, and I heard someone whooping and hollering deeper in the stacks. I thought 'Hm, someone's having a good afternoon', and kept reading. But when I was checking out my books, I saw him go by, on the arm of a police officer. He was so drunk that the cop needed help to help him out of the library. Unemployment and addiction, the double whammy.

That wasn't the only police activity we saw, either. Driving back from a weekend in Smithers, we saw about 10 cop cars go screaming past us on the highway, heading in the opposite direction. We didn't think there were that many police in all of Terrace. We heard later that they had closed the highway just behind us. They let a few more drivers through, with instructions to drive straight on, and not stop for any reason at all. And then they closed the highway for 36 hours while they hunted for an armed man in the woods.

We spent the rest of the week happily exploring, remembering what it's like to live in a small town. Terrace is surrounded by mountains - snowy peaks in every cardinal direction, and more in between. It's not far from Prince Rupert, the rainiest city in Canada, and on grey days it can be pretty dismal. It feels a bit like you've been packed into a box full of cotton wool, and someone just put the lid on. Your feet get wet the first time you venture out, and they never dry. But on sunny days, shreds of cloud get stuck on the trees like cotton wool on velcro, and the snow glitters with possibility. It was a good month. Time away from the hurly burly of the city let us get centered. Re-energized.

All rugged up...

 

...as my Kiwi friend Amy would say, and ready for anything.

Kicking up his heels

While we were in Terrace, mr. t learned to pull himself up to standing. He's now confidently pulling himself up on all sorts of objects, and surfing along them. I think I'll be running after him before I can blink.

northern autumn

The rivers in the north are gorgeous silver braids of water twisting through fields of smooth, round rocks.

dreadlocky

 

The tiniest Who in Whoville at play.

Look Mama,

 

I can feed my own self (and my shirt, and the table, and the floor). I can even put some in my ear to save for later. Handy.

little bird

 

first blood

 

Theo's first bloody nose, poor little guy. He was crawling around at my feet, and somehow bonked his nose on the chair. I'm still not sure how he managed it. Not the last time, I'm sure...

playdate

 

Gabi and Simona came over for a playdate, and for the first time, Theo was really interested in interacting with another baby. He thought it was fascinating that she was his size.

smooth...

 

Theo's style with the ladies needs a little work. Here he is poking Simona in the eye. Lucikly she's tough.

crawler

 

With a helmet, for safety. 8)

Thanksgiving

 

We were so busy eating that we forgot to take many pictures. We only got this one of me and my dad carving the roast duck. Luckily, the baked yams with (homemade) marshmallows are in the foreground!

basil harvest

 

I harvested the basil from one of my two gardens today, and I think I'll be spending the rest of the day ripping it up and turning it into pesto...!

rice crackers, hooray!

 

The wee Mr. T has two teeth now, and he's using them on some baby rice crackers, an amazing food that he can feed to himself!