an 80 year old and the boys

Asher's been enjoying lots of company the last 2 days. Check it out!

Here he is with his great nanny (yes, that's the birthday girl from last month). She's up visiting for a few days.

And this week we're getting our drive-way paved so Papa has been home from work to "oversee" the process (that shouldn't surprise you after the last post about Greg!). Here's Asher outside watching the crew work with his Papa.



He seems to really enjoy being with the boys and watching the trucks!

what's going down

Asher's bib says he is "going places". And he certainly is... like down!

It IS fun to stay at the YMCA!

We had our second swimming lesson today at the Y and I'm very proud to say that we made it through the entire class! Whoo hoo! Except there was this tad, itsy-bitsy bit of crying around the half-way point, but the good news is we were able to recover from it and continue on. I'm so thankful for that. Saved by the cute rubber duckies that distracted Asher!

Asher really enjoyed checking out the other babies, especially this cute older chick that was next to us during circle time. She was 6 months old and Asher google eyed her a lot. Asher also almost dunked all the way under water! This is one thing we are encouraged to do with our babies, but don't have to either. Last week I didn't even attempt it, but today we went up to Asher's nose. He did swallow a bit of water, which he wasn't crazy about, but he just coughed a little and was back on track.

I'm looking forward to more swimming lessons coming up. I think the more Asher gets used to them, the more he will enjoy them.

no-see-um's

Last night after Asher was in bed, I was working in the kitchen. I, of course, had the patio screen door open to let in some cool evening air. Well, as I was working away, I noticed some little flies buzzing around. I at first thought they were fruit flies because I was washing and preparing cantaloupe and grapes. Only after I squished one and saw blood did I realize they were no-see-um's. I immediately shut the door because I know the little buggers can make their way through the screen, but this happened after it had already been opened for, oh I don't know, an hour or more. Now there are too many no-see-um's in my house for me to count and they are too small and too fast for me to squish and people I am going mad here! Mad I tell you, absolutely mad!

Hopefully tomorrow I will have something more dignified to post about.

Blink

I just finished reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Wickedly interesting read. The book is about what Gladwell calls rapid cognition; the kind of thinking that takes place in the blink of an eye and forms our first impressions. He draws on a crazy amount of research from every field imaginable (psychology, military history, health care, etc.) to show that by using very small amounts of information, we can make decisions that help us make sense of the world.

The opening story for the book is about the Getty Museum's purchase of a kouros, an ancient marble statue. Since this type of statue, especially one in such good shape, is so rare, the Getty conducted 18 months of research, including complicated surface analysis, and determined that the statue was indeed authentic. The odd thing was that when art historian's looked at the kourus, right away they felt it wasn't real. In the end, despite massive amounts of data that indicated otherwise, the kourus did indeed turn out to be a fraud. Gladwell's book is about how the art historian's knew this truth the instant they saw the statue.

One of the studies I found fascinating in the book was done by a psychologist named John Gottman. After years of fine tuning his method, he and his team are able to look at a 1 hour segment of a couple interacting and predict with 95% accuracy if they will divorce or not. Isn't that crazy?

There's lots in this book to talk about, and just so I can do that, it may make my next book club selection for the group to read.

It's fun to stay at the YMCA... ok, maybe not

I enrolled Asher in swimming lessons at our local YMCA. He's in the "splashers" program for babies age 0-18 months and today was his first official lesson.

We went to the pool earlier this week just so Asher could warm up to the place; I didn't want his first experience there to be during a structured time. He did great during that visit, so I was optimistic about the class today.

So today we arrived for our 30 minute class and all started well. Asher really enjoyed looking at the other babies and he actually participated in the activities, which mostly involved singing action-oriented nursery rhymes that led to splashing, and me carting him around in various swim-like positions. Then about 12 minutes in, it all went down hill. I don't just mean a little cry or fuss, although it started out that way. We quickly progressed to a full-blown, all-out cry fest, which included Asher's new move of screaming-at-the-top-of-my-lungs-like-someone-is-ripping-a-limb-off. And, I'll have you know, that in that large, open room, his cry and scream had quite the echo, which meant that all 12 moms and babies, and, oh, the 30 or so seniors doing aqua-aerobics in the next pool, were all staring at us. Nice. Needless to say, we left early.

And the crazy thing is, I'm totally going to bring him back next week. Those Little Swimmer diapers are pretty much a buck a pop and we have 11 left to go through.

Wish us luck, friends. Lots of luck.

Love Salad

This recipe is one of my favorite dishes ever! I got the recipe from a friend a couple of years ago and it's been a regular in our house ever since. Greg used to think it was okay, but unfortunately I think I over did it, and now he's a tad sick of it. Not me though!

Love Salad
1/2 package fresh spinach, chopped (I just use baby spinach)
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
1.5-2 cups of rice (brown, basmati, anything really)
2 or 3 of the following, chopped: celery, carrot, pepper, mushroom, onion
1 cup cashews

sauce: 1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup oil (I use olive)
1 clove garlic, crushed or minced

Shake sauce ingredients together in a jar, and mix over rest of ingredients. Serve (I usually add the rice when it's still hot and opt for a warm salad, but you can eat it cold too).

The long awaited unveiling of the "material" I collected on Greg during our vacation...

My husband is the ultimate geek. I mean, it is crazy how he just needs to know information and understand how stuff works. Even about things that I think are absolutely irrelevant.

Most recent example: we had noticed this crazy flying grasshopper on our lawn the last couple of weeks. My husband, could not let this go without knowing more about this critter. So, of course, he did research (wikipedia is just not detailed enough, folks), including looking through tons of photographs of different kinds of grasshoppers and learned that our lawn is home to the club horned grasshopper. And, for the record, this grasshopper is not considered a pest, which means that, although they scare the crap out of me when they whiz in front of my face as I walk, we should let them hang around. Stink.

The running joke in our house when Greg sees something that he doesn't know about is I'll expect an email detailing the specifics in about 3 days. Never fails. See a crazy plane in the sky? Email received. What kind of flower is that? Answer found. What's the scoop on the mushrooms growing on our lawn? Research completed. Why is there steam coming out of the man holes in the winter? The answer is not as simple as you think, and after hashing this out with a civil engineer, he figured it out.

On our vacation we drove by Sackville's Relay Station owned by Radio Canada International and people, I am not joking here, I received nothing short of a 500 word essay explaining why this thing is so friggin' cool. In case your interested, they offer tours in July and August (I think I see one of these in my future. Oh dear).

My husband reads manuals and Microsoft help files for fun. Earlier this week we had a meeting with our life insurance consultant, which Greg had thoroughly prepared for by reading and re-reading booklets and websites on the topic. During the meeting our consultant said that most of the adviser's at the company she works for don't even know the stuff Greg knew and she pretty much offered him a job on the spot.

So with that little bit of background info on my dear husband, you won't be surprised to find out the 2 interesting things that were uncovered on our vacation. I just had to share with you all, friends. It's un-freakin'-believable.

If any of you have ever travelled further than 2 minutes outside of town with my husband, you'll know that all trips are mapped out using Microsoft Streets and Trips and monitored using our GPS system. In order to make this process more streamlined (and to let his wife off the hook for having to help with the stupid thing, especially since I can't ever seem to figure out if we're travelling South or North-East or whatever... why can't this "helpful" device just use terms like left and right and straight... you know because since I'm travelling to a city I don't live in, clearly I don't know what direction North is!). Anyways, my clever husband devised the following contraption so he could mount his laptop in our vehicle and monitor our precise location and travel direction himself. On top of that, he took 14 million pictures of the process and of the finished product. Here's a little sampling:

Isn't that unbelievable?!?!

Oh that's not even the best part yet... and then (and then!) one day Greg comes strolling upstairs after having spend a couple hours in the basement. He brings to me, with a little grin on his face I might add, a bunch of little items that he found he had stowed away in a box somewhere. Here's a sampling of what was in there:

Yes, that's a bunch of little gadgets that Greg had from when he was a kid. Included in the lot is: crayons from preschool, his first ruler, little screws, solar panels from calculators, random little metal gizmo's, little rubber numbers he cut from a calculator pad, and, do you see that little book with scribbles at the top? In that book Greg recorded details from his first job picking strawberries. Every day he would write down the hours he worked, how many baskets of berries he picked, and how much money he would make as a result. Isn't that unbelievable?!?! When I asked Greg why he had all these gadgets, his response was that he thought he may need them someday to make something out of.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that Greg actually thought he could use these things, or that he still has them after 20 years.

Yup, that's my husband :)

Listen up!

Asher has been cooing away these last few weeks. We think it's super cute when he does. Listen to what he had to say today.

"Hey, look at me! I got it!"

Over the last couple of weeks Asher has been working super hard at learning how to grab things with his hands. He's getting pretty good at it. Check him out! He managed to pick up those toy keys all by himself, and in this clip I think he's trying to get them in his mouth.

Oh, and that's Asher's bumbo seat. We just got the tray for it so he could also play with some toys while he's sitting in it, rather than just sitting there staring blankly :)

More me

I love the discussion and thought that comes out of a group of women sharing their perspective on a book. After my book club meeting on "Eat, Pray, Love", I left with a lot on my mind.

I was inspired by the author and her relentless search for her truth. The distance she went to do what she needed to do, with no holds barred was so courageous, in my eyes. I shared at our meeting that I didn't think I would ever have the guts to do what she did. To take off for a year, by herself, and travel to all these crazy foreign countries.

Perhaps it was some combination of thinking of the author's choices, and sitting in a room with a bunch of women that I admire, that really got me thinking, "There are some really fascinating women out there". And I felt so absolutely boring when faced with it all. In my book club alone is a woman who composes music and actually gets published for it (she's planning on putting a piece she wrote up for competition for the new Hockey Night in Canada theme song), a woman who buys a farm share, another who takes belly dancing lessons, and one from an exotic country. I think the most interesting thing I do is attend a book club (ha!).

I guess, for me, I often feel that I have a ton of hopes and dreams and ambitions and curiosities festering around inside, but I never really manage to do anything with them. I'd love to travel the world, learn other languages, learn sign language, take up dance again, play the violin, really invest in jewelry making, become a lactation consultant, write, run, become more like or less like something else, but I always find something gets in my way. Underneath my excuses of not having enough time/money/patience/ability/motivation, I think I am actually fettered by my own insecurities and lack of self-confidence. And frankly, well that's sort of sucky.

One line from "Eat, Pray, Love" encourages me; "God dwells within you, as you".

When I get to the end of my life, I don't want to look back with regret at all I didn't do. I want to pursue the passions that God placed in my heart, because I do feel He placed them there. I don't want to be some insecure and mediocre version of what I could be. So here's to taking more risks, and chancing that just maybe, I too could be more interesting. More me.

Eat, Pray, Love

I am so ridiculously excited to talk about this book tomorrow at book club!

Basically the author, after a divorce and serious depression, takes a year to travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia on her search for pleasure, faith, and life balance. It's a wickedly interesting memoir of her experiences and journey as she discovers the truth for her life for herself.

Gilbert is a kickin' writer, with tons of courage, who's not afraid to take risks. I admire her willingness to truly and relentlessly search and fight to find joy, truth, and peace. It's perhaps that admiration, combined with the fact that I am so insanely interested in travel and other cultures, that made this book one of my favorites an a long time.

You should totally check it out!

We're totally going back...

Yesterday Asher and I checked out a super-cool program called Reel Babies at our local movie theatre. It rocked! Essentially once a month they play a movie during the morning and parents can go and bring their babies. It was so cool! There was a swing, rocking chair, bouncy chair, exercauser, play mat, and change table set up all around the movie theatre. They left the lights on dim and adjusted the volume so we could hear around the crying babies. And I was so pleased that Asher wasn't the loudest baby there! Not even close. Maybe that's because he essentially slept through the whole thing, but still, it was so very good for me to see other crying babies. It's not just Asher!

I was also surprised at the turn out; I'd say there were at least 60 moms and their babies there, and a few dads too. And guess what movie we saw?!?!

Oh Mamma Mia! I think Asher will look back and be proud that the first movie he ever went to in a theatre was a musical, don't you? :)

I also realized yesterday that Asher and his new friend had a few things in common.

Pretty cute, huh?

"The places you'll go, the people you'll meet!"

So getting back to that trip. The biggest highlight was all the very important people that got to meet Asher for the first time. Here's his great-nanny Mansfield:

And his "pops" (that's my dad) who managed to entertain Asher with this new feature, the "spider", on his bouncy chair:

His cousin Erica and great aunt Lee. I've found a handful of great babysitters in this bunch. If only they didn't live 5 hours away!

And with their help, Asher managed to FINALLY catch hold of those toys with his hands. It's a move he's been practicing ever since!

His cousin Brody, who's just 3 weeks younger than him:


And with the birthday girl, his great-nanny Anderson:


Oh and then there's also Nanny's 11 children, 22 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, plus their spouses and kids! Too many people!

And here's more of the birthday girl herself. Happy 80th birthday Nanny!

A few reunion pictures of Asher and I:

And some pictures of the trip home:

Totally fun!

We're back!

So we all survived the first big road trip to visit my family for the reunion! The drive normally takes 5 hours with no stopping, and we made it down in just over 6 hours. I was pretty impressed with Asher.

He was a little unsure at first about what all the fuss was about:

Then we settled into some playing and reading (because what is a road trip without some reading!)


He did a little bit of sleeping, but not too much.


And, of course, he did a little bit of this...


BUT it was a lot less then I expected!

I've got too much to say to sum it up in just one post, so stay tuned for more. For now I'm gone to work on the post-vacation laundry. I should be done it by tomorrow! :)