Sass

Memories of Summer, Len and Adara

The tent

Here's the infamous tent that Greg made for Liam and Adara when we were up there in August. Kristen and I had went back to the folkfestival for night time bands and Greg came up with this awesomeness which they all slept in. This is the morning after the sleepover.

Goodbye Summer

First Day of School

Here's Adara's first day of senior Kindergarten. We've moved her to a new class in order to try out a teacher with a little more structure, a little more seriousness. And man, is she serious! We knew that, so it's all good, but holy cow! Today she insisted on writing on Adara's backpack and outside of her shoes her name in sharpie. This was after they were already clearly marked with pretty little labels. Ayah! This lady is intense, but gets results with her kids which is why we put Adara there.

Hello, we're here

No really, we are. We just had some major technical transitions to make that have made it hard to post. I still can't do pics, really. We got rid of one computer, added one, removed a lot of software, and so on. This resulted in my blackberry not syncing for a long time. And, i've recently discovered, I only really seem to take pics on the bb, I never have the camera with me. So, Adara and I have been very busy. Poor Len has been busy working and now is out west helping to take care of his family a bit. Meanwhile Adara and I went to Owen Sound for the folkfest with the family. Adara proved to be a total trooper. She managed in one weekend to fall asleep by a campfire, in a running speedboat and under a picnic table in a very noisy beer tent. That girl parties til she drops. We also went out this week camping near Lake simcoe with some neighbours and their kids. Chaotic, but good. The camping came two days after our huge neighbourhood bbq, one day after my bday and the day that Len unexpectedly headed out west. Needless to say we've been busy. So, now I have a cold and she's asleep. More another day, someday with pics!

Canada Day and the week that followed

So, we started off our nine days of vacation with a drop off at Jenn's house for a bbq, marshmallows and fireworks, plus a good bit of flag waving!

Then it was off the next day for a week of camping at Miller Lake near Tobermory. Awesome! WE'll post pics later, but suffice it to say that it was perfect. A short list of fun goes like this swimming (lots of it) Paddleboarding ( a bit for mamma) basketball (2 games to 1 on 21, I'll get you next time Stannard!) ping pong fishing (Adara with Pappa) Ticket to ride board game ( a new thing in our lives, thanks Pablo) Adara going to the store with the big boys (three times, pretty exciting) naps (many for Adara, none for me. Adara would just fall over where she stood and sleep at all times and places) Live music at a great pub feeding the ducks in Tobermory sparklers spinning on the end of drill(super fun, thanks Dave!) and lots of glow sticks! Plus much much more. It was entirely perfect.

Visiting with Uncle Maurice

On a beautiful day in mid April Adara and I headed off to visit our 80 some year old Uncle Maurice. This says pretty much everything about the day that Uncle Maurice and Adara had.

Dufferin Grove Park

About the end of March or so we were out in the west end for a birthday party. Adara had been very patient and agreeable at the party so we wanted to give her a special treat by going to a new park. I had remembered hearing about Dufferin Grove Park with it's legendary pizza oven, play structures and the like. The description doesn't do it justice, it's a kids paradise. There's evening a whole section that's just a massive sand pit with full size shovels and huge logs for bigger kids to move around and build out of.

After an hour and a half of unexpected play, I ran across to the local grocery store and grabbed a hunk of cheese, a hunk of sausage, some bread, carrots and mini tomatoes and we stayed until the sun went down.

Cats Away

The cats (both of them) are away out west visiting Len's family this week so I am playing. I just came in from a huge run, and have the extremely exciting plans of writing an assignment for my hr class and cleaning the house up a bit. It actually makes me really happy to have a quiet moment to catch up on a few things. I also have all kinds of plans with friends this week too. Adara has been the travelling gal this month; she'll make it to school a grand total of 12 days in May. This is probably for the best as she's bored by it, unmotivated and ready for a break or a new challenge. The week before last she had a vacation with grammy and poppa in Goderich. It seemed to involve a lot of painting and drawing and dressing up, so a pretty good vacation by her standards. I was away at the professional association of Canadian Theatres conference and Len was busy replacing the main floor of the house with some new hard wood. It was a great week, Len finished his major project and I got to see some long held hopes comes to fruition at my conference. Its complex and industry involved, but suffice to say that we've been working for some new approaches in theatre making for nine years and we finally seem to be getting somewhere. So, I'm looking forward to the family rest this week, but also to them returning. In the meanwhile I run, write, read, socialize and sleep.

Dinner

Kinda smug about tonights dinner. It was a straight up meat and potatoes kind of thing; chicken, mashed potatoes, asparagus and carrots. But I got smart and seared the chicken in some butter on my cast iron casserole dish, added a dash of stock and popped it in the oven.
It made the BEST GRAVY EVER! That's all. Just a wicked good simple dinner and I am feeling smug.

Lovin' It.

A skating skirt, bat ears and cape. Thanks Grammy for the 35 year old skirt, thanks Fancy Pants Kids and Gretel for the costume awesomeness. It takes a village!

For the Love of Liam

No one else is in the room when her cousin is

Birthday cake

Last week Adara and her friend who was over visiting helped me to make and decorate Len's birthday cake. As he's allergic to wheat, It's always a big of a production to make him a decent cake. Thank heavens for my friend Dennie who gave me the definitive gluten free baking cook book and my sister in law Janice who gave me the definitive gluten free easy weekday meals cookbooks. My angels!

The kids went to town on the decorating with the piping bag that Len got me for Christmas that I thought that i would never use but already have used twice.
They made a bit of a mess of it, but it tasted good and was fun!

Family Day

We asked Adara what she wanted to do for Family Day. Since we live in a big city, there was a tonne of options. Zoo? Science Centre? Movies? Family fun Fair with camel ride and bouncy castles? Nope. She wanted to "go out for breakfast so you don't have to cook, have a dance party, watch a movie, play a game and have a picnic" Ok, we can do all of that since dance party refers to just her and me dancing and picnic means on our living room floor. As it was a beautiful day we threw in a little playing on the equipment at the beach for good measure.

The picnic it turns out was to be costumed. So, the Lone Ranger, A caped crusading bat, and a slightly over jewelled princess had dinner on the floor with candles. Can you guess who was who?

Photographer or Music Teacher

Tonight at Bedtime Adara was talking about how she wanted to be a music teacher, which I was thinking was the first time that she'd mentioned wanting to be anything at all. Then she reminded me that she'd wanted to be a photographer but had changed her mind for now. The photographer thing came up over Christmas when I suggested to Grammy that she lend Adara her digital camera to play around with for a while. Here are the results.




Not bad for four years old, eh? Really, though, with two theatre people in the family, neither music teacher or photographer is really floating my boat. How about stock trader or computer programmer? No? Oh well, fine then, be what you want to be kid! :)

Memories

I absolutely love when I see a photo of a friends kid on another mom blog and they're wearing something that Adara once wore. It immediately takes me back to that moment and time with her, to whatever age and stage she was at. I compare her at that age to the child currently in the clothes and think happy thoughts about both of them. It doesn't even have to be something that was Adara's to begin with. There are a series of sleepers that have passed back and forth between my friend Jenn and I and I love them just as much each time that I see them. It's like your life, briefly matched to the life of someone else that you love. Perfect.

Singing Bird

Adara loves the website for tvokids. It has some good videos and some great little games that she can play herself without help. So, while we limit her screen time, I would rather that her screen time was spent playing a game which she actually has to interact with rather then just watching. It helps her with hand/eye coordination, letters and numbers and computer literacy. This is all true, it's also what I tell myself to make myself feel better when my kiddo is playing a computer game so that I can make dinner in peace.
One one of the games on tvokids, there is a little singing bird. When Adara clicks on him to play one of his games, he sings a cheery little song "I'm clicking and learning, and surfing and singing...". It is a very cheery, happy little song that reminds me that she's learning and makes me feel better. Which is, in fact, why I think that bird is there. I think that that bird is specifically in tvokids in order to make parents feel better so that they'll let their kids go on the website. That weirds me out a bit, but I still like his little song.

Growing up girl

Someday she will stop sucking her thumb and not need to take her cows everywhere with her. But hopefully not soon.

Poppa. That's all.

Quiet Christmas moments

This holiday was pretty awesome. I had two full weeks off. Which means lots of time to play board games, watch movies, eat good food, visit with friends and even fit in a mommy's spa date. Kinda perfect really.
Adara finally learned how to play the complex little domino game that my family plays on holidays, Mexican train. That was a major victory and she spent the whole day before her big cousin arrived perfecting it so that she would be able to play to his standards. Success!

Feminism and the Modern Mamma

I've been thinking a lot this weekend about feminism and being the mom of a gorgeous blond little girl. There's been a series of things that have brought this to the forefront.

First up, Adara's new soccer class. She's in the 4 to 7 year old age group this time which is much more serious and actually uses soccer skills. She's the only girl in a group of eight kids. When I asked her after her first class this weekend if she noticed what was different and what the same between her and her team mates she talked about shirt colours, kicking ability and how much they did or didn't whine when kicked. No mention of gender, so I didn't mention it either. She held her own although there was one seven year old who had a killer soccer kick, hard hitting and fast. As a side note, moms, what do you do when one kids skills are so far ahead that it's actually a bit dangerous for everyone else? Not his fault at all and he's a lovely kid who doesn't shoot at people's faces, but this kid has one serious boot. Thoughts on that?

Second up, we were making a cake and decorating it with our new cake decorating kit yesterday. Adara and I like to bake together, it's our thing. We like mixing and making a mess and decorating. We don't actually eat most of it, we give it away since none of us has a huge sweet tooth. So, after making and decorating the cakes, Len was cleaning out the icing bag for me. He hasn't had much time with Adara lately so I suggested that he go play with her and that I'd clean up. To which Adara responded with "Yeah mamma, it's your job to clean up this big mess, Dadda and I are going to go play". I was trying decide whether to react to that or not, when Len did, gave her heck for telling me to do all of the work and asked her to apologize. She did and we went on with the afternoon. Now, if she and I had been playing and she'd told Len to clean up, would we have reacted the same way? Was it the traditional role models that set us off or the bossy pants tone?

And finally, this morning she says to me "Sometimes girls can be scientists, right?" To which I said "Yes, your cousin Lana is a scientist, you can be too." But why the "sometimes". Girls can be scientists all of the time. Why "girls" and not just "Sometime I could be a scientist, right"? What does that mean.
Thoughts on this moms?

Dancing Queen

Here is Adara this morning at Highland dance lessons. She is doing a series of steps known as "pas de bras" or in kid language "jump the pond, show your sticker (which in on the inside of her sock), squish the frog". She's been pretty pleased with herself about how well it's been going. After seeing a performance by this dance group in the summer at the beaches celtic festival she was pretty sure that she needed to know how to do that. So, we enrolled in saturday morning dance class.
But, here's the secret, I love doing saturday dance class. It's in the lovely beaches, a mere 5 minute drive or 20 minute bus from our house. I don't have to stay for the whole class if I don't want to and it's a lovely walk to a local tea shop that's not a chain and has amazing croissants of all varieties. It's across the street from a wicked breakfast place where a friend occasionally meets us after class. Plus I get to watch my little piece of business own it in the dance studio. Perfect.