Snow and Ice Month

Posted on 2/12/2016 by boj Posted in Baby2 Comments

Parenting has been feeling like an Olympic sport lately. One in which you are pretty much guaranteed to not get a medal. Lucky our kids are so cute. The other day instead of arguing with them about something like not misbehaving after screen time, I decided to read the 2015 archive of Fowl Language with them. Owen really connected with this one. Trevor had to admit that this one is pretty much true.

So yes, ten points for us for allowing kids access to full English language.

We take them skiing too. Markus loves skiing but can’t do anything than sort of stand on skis. No turning, no snow plow. I have to put him inside of my snow plow, and let him hold on to the poles that are folded under his armpits. I managed to ski for about two hours like that. Think I can do six next time?

What I definitely can’t do is write coherent blog posts. I used all of my mental powers teaching half a dozen grade schoolers how to use Dewey Decimal System today. I think they got it too, I am so proud.

Film: Moonlight Kingdom

Posted on 6/17/2015 by boj Posted in Baby, Film

Trev and I spent the day downtown on Thursday. He had a doctor’s appointment in one of the skyscrapers and then we met up with Maria to eat street food. Trevor went for a burger and Maria and I got sticky buns. We run into Nona and Nada and later Trevor got to chase some ducks that stubbornly decided to live in the Confederation Park fountain. After a nice walk down Elgin street we said bye to Maria and headed off to the Nature Museum to see “Animal Inside Out”.

I feel ambivalent about nature museums in general. Despite the creepiness, I can’t object to taxidermy, I think displaying the animals as close to the real thing makes sense and the museums themselves would lose much of its richness had they resorted to papier-mâché versions of the real thing. I still find it eerie that the objects are kept in some sort of pre-decomposition stasis for such a long time. Plastination resolves the decay issues but is like taxidermy on speed; interest and creepiness both amplified to 11. OMG, a Cerebus!!! No, it is just a camel with its head split open into three…

After we finished the exhibit, Trevor wanted to stay and see all the other parts of the museum which took us to supper time. There were two restaurants on Bank street I have been wanting to visit for a while, so I arraigned with Chris to meet us at the Korean place with the rest of the crew. We rarely go to restaurants any more (other than quick lunches on workdays) so going as a family was an event in itself. The boys ended up eating Chris’ meal, Chris ate Trevor’s dish, I ate the boys’ soup, Owen cried until we ordered him tofu salad and then ate tree forkfuls of it because that’s all he ever wanted, the waitress was spoon-feeding Markus and so on. Surprisingly enough the outing was not a complete disaster.

Now I am sorry I did not take pictures of the day, but it is something that I very rarely do anyway. When I am doing something with the kids I tend to not want to distract myself with the camera, besides, Chris is the designated photographer. It was nice to spend the day with Trev. There have been a number of challenges in school and Chris and I have been racking our brains trying to make the best decisions. It is hard to understand why there is so much of head butting at school when at home he is as easy going as eight year olds come.

Resolutions for 2015

Posted on 1/5/2015 by boj Posted in Baby, Film, Gardening3 Comments

Though usually stoic on the subject, this year I am bubbling with New Year’s resolutions. This is not surprising, birthing and taking care of small children was exhausting and somehow I feel 2014 was the bridge year for us. I think I am ready to stop merely making do. The kids are now big enough for me to be thoughtfully proactive in most aspects of life.

Vacations
Over the last few years I heavily relied on “sanity days”. These are the vacation days that I set aside about once a month to catch up on sleep, chores and appointments. These were also a great time for Chris and me to go out for lunch in lieu of hiring babysitter and going out on dinner dates. Alas, this meant that I was not able to use those vacation days during the school holidays or PD days. Markus will no longer be in full time daycare as of next Septmber so the cost of Chris or me working on days the kids are not in school is adding up. For 2015 I have not set aside any sanity days and will stay home during the school holidays instead.

Diet
I am quite enamoured with our CSA and will continue to get veggies and meat from the farm in the next year. The downside is that once the CSA season is over we fall into a dietary slump. There are only so many pasta/meat/veggie disshes I can eat. When I was a kid I used to love stews, particularly bean and/or barley stews but I have no idea how to make them! Whenver I’ve make a bean stew it inevitably ends up in the freezer to be thrown out a year or two later. This has got to change as I will endeavour to perfect at least one good bean recipe. I am also going to look into stocking up on root vegetables at the end of season and finding a good way to keep us in good supply over the winter.

Gardening
While I don’t keep track of how much money we spend on fruit, I am convinced that at least 1/3 of our grocery bills cover berries. I am not the least bit interested in removing or reducing berries form our table, but I would like to find a more economical way to do so. We have planted our first berry shrub in the back yard last year and are hoping to expand the berry farm and make good harvests within a few years. The challenge will come with finding an approproate way to store the berries for the winter (freeze or dry???) and to incorperate them in our diet in this form.

Movies
I really miss seeing movies at the Bytowne. Particularly at this time of year when newspapers publish lists of noteable movies of the year, I am sad to have missed some films that I might have enjoyed. However, going to Bytowne on a regular baisis I did half a decade ago is just not an option for me. For a number of Good Reasons, on weekdays from 5:45AM to 5:45PM I am on strict work/designated patent duty. To maintain this lifestyle I really need to call day a day by 10PM. Weekends are likewise booked. While there is not much I can do to support lovely establishements like Bytowne, I can at least see some movies that are out on iTunes or Netflix. My goal this year is to select a film each month and set some time aside to watch it.

Snotface and books

Posted on 11/19/2013 by boj Posted in Baby, Books1 Comment

You know what happens when you kiss this face?

You get a pretty nasty cold. Not without warm fuzzies though 😉

Anyhow, here are some of the books I’ve read in the last little while…

War and Peace
It took me well over a year, but I finished it. The media that won out was the audio book. Though the Croatian translation published in several volumes I borrowed from the Cres library was my favourite by far, I am now a big subscriber to audio books. Overall I liked War and Peace though I must admit to enjoying the fiction sections more than the discourses on the various historical and philosophical topics.

Gone Girl
My resourceful neighbors have started a book club. What fun! Gone Girl was the first book we’ve read. It’s a thriller about the spoiled New Yorker who one day disappears. Where did she go? Why? Suspense!

Complicated Kindness
This was a Canada Reads winner from a few years ago so it was a re-read for me. Strangely enough this book seemed much darker than the first time I’ve read it.

Night Circus
A story of dueling magicians in a magical travelling circus. I hope someone makes a silent movie out of this book. It reminded me very much of “The Artist” and “Blancanieves” films in atmosphere.

Calculating God and The Diamond Age
I put these two Sci-fi novels together because I find them to be kind of the antitheses of each other. They are very much like Star Trek and Star Wars. One takes a philosophical concept, or in this case examines problems with current scientific understanding of particular topic and suggests a fictional resolution and the other one creates a fantastical world with compelling protagonists in an unrelenting bildungsroman.

We have not decided on the next novel yet but I am sure it will be fun!

Kalendar maja
Each year I try to read at least one contemporary Croatian novel. It is a bit more difficult to do in the year I don’t go there. Fortunately, last time I was in Cres the librarian recommended a book but was not able to lend it on the account that it was out and there was a waiting list for it. Nevermind, I wrote down the name and the author and bought it before going back to Canada. I did not read it until this summer because, well, I only read Croatian books in the summer. Kalendar maja is one of the best written Croatian novels I’ve read in a long time. It is somewhat r-rated so I would not just flagrantly recommend it, but it is very good. At 600 pages of small tightly spaced text it is quite substantial but I could not put it down. The novel opens with recently retired Zagrebian gynecologist drinking coffee on a Gornji Grad patio and spying a glimpse of what he thinks might be his ex girlfriend. He decides to orchestrate a reprisal of his graduating class cruise. As he and his septuagenarian comrades slowly float down the Adriatic he recounts his youth from the late forties into the mid seventies.

A Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime
An autistic boy puts on a detective hat in order to figure out who killed the neighbour’s dog. This novel contains the most interesting take on commuting by train.

That’s it for now. I am reading the latest issue of Bicycle Quarterly and First Class Tips for Suzuki Parents while waiting for the next Book Club choice to be announced.

We’ve gone on holiday by mistake. We’re in this cottage here. Are you the farmer?

Posted on 7/31/2013 by boj Posted in Baby, Bike, Travel1 Comment

Our long anticipated ten day trip to Prince Edward Island turned out to be only a day long due to some negligent and/or unscrupulous business that rents out cottages full of mould. We tried in vain to find other lodging but it was not to be at the height of the season that only lasts a month or so. I am in the process of putting in a formal complaint and hopefully we will get some positive results.

While most of our time was spent travelling and dealing with the above mentioned nonsense, we did manage to check off some of the PEI must-dos.

The bridge was truly impressive.

First we hit the beach.

At the beach there was a little brook draining into the sea and Trevor made a dam on it. We came back in intervals of several hours and he was amazed at how the tide slowly swallowed up every dam he made. Yes, if you are going to make a dam a stick with beaver teeth marks is the way to go. Trev found it among the flotsam.

Owen loved the large seashells and refused to throw anything smaller into the Northumberland Straight.

We saw some cool boats like the fully enclosed life-raft and this fascinating fisheries research vessel.

Lobsters were the #1 conversation topic. Owen was even warned to stop telling people he is a lobster lest he ends up in a boiling pot.

We sneaked in a bike ride. We did not make it as far as the Confederation Trail, but we did ride down a red dirt road.

As long as the dirt was dry the cargo bike handled well but Chris discovered that slicks were not the best choice.

Realizing that we only had a couple of hours left on the island, we made a bee line (as in we zigged and zagged the island trying to figure out where it is) for the Shipbuilding museum and the Yeo House, one of the few sights Chris remembers from his last visit.

Alas, some of the outdoor artifacts have decomposed leaving us with merely a few geometrically arranged logs. Trev was pretty angry about this.

Turns out that none of our kids are afraid of heights as they clamoured to climb into the cupola of the Yeo House.

We could not leave PEI without a Lobster Supper. I was a bit confused as to how to carve the beast until I realized it is just like a big scampi.

There are things that we would have liked to have done like visiting a lighthouse or taking a boat ride but it was not to be. While the cottage situation was a big annoyance it was nice to spend some extra time with the boys. They handled the long drive better than I thought they would and were nice to each other at least as often as they argued. We’ve had so many nice vacations over the years, statistically it was time for a dud. I suppose this will go right up there with the time we run out of gas in the Pyrenees or attempted to pass though Italy on the train.

Film: The Internship

Posted on 7/17/2013 by boj Posted in Baby, Bike, Film

When people realise I have three kids one of the most common comments is “You must be really busy!”. The answer is no. The busiest time in my life was with two kids, full time job, household and a Masters’ degree in progress. Three kids, full time job and household is actually way easier. And by easier, I mean less stressful. We do what we have to do and then we do fun things. The rest does not get done; whether that is good or bad, I am not inclined to tell.

These days we are having a wonderful spell of summertime fun despite the heat wave.

Post Industrial Brambles

Category: Baby