picture perfect

Why you should never work with animals and children.



Jack and his daddy.



Monkey toes!



"GAH! Paparazzi!!"

new day

Thank you for all of your very kind words and for thinking about me. It truly means a great deal to me. I wish you all chocolate-coated love, delivered by nude firemen/showgirls (delete as appropriate or feel free to add your own).

I've been thinking about home a lot lately because of my grandpa, having just read another Kathy Reichs book, and preparing for our Canada Day festivities. Celebrating Canada Day is slightly tongue in cheek (we're not renowned for being overly patriotic), but it is important to me that Jack learns about his Canadian roots, even at this early age. Starting, of course, with an introduction to Canadian beer. I managed to get my hands on some beer via a company based in Norfolk. The only Canadian "beer" you can usually find here is Labatt Ice (ewwwwwwww) and Moosehead (slightly less ewwwwww but still not very imaginative). Although the selection was very limited, I got some Sleeman's honey brown ale, and two from Quebec: La Fin du Monde, and Maudite. It pains me to think how much this cost in Canadian dollars (I'll give you an idea: one bottle of Sleeman's was £0.99/$2.25 CDN), but it warms the cockles of my heart to see bilingual labelling and a little glass-embossed beaver on each bottle.

My friend Ruth and I were discussing Canadian food, and I always get stumped by this. Quebec has its tourtiere, pea soup, poutine, tarte au sucre, beaver tails (not real ones, stop giggling), and other such goodies, but do any other provinces have dishes they can call their own (the only thing that springs to mind are Nanaimo bars)? When we say "Canadian food" here, people think maple syrup and pancakes with bacon. Unfortunately, we are so saturated by American culture that we don't have a lot of our own, from a culinary perspective - Kraft Dinner excluded. I grew up eating burgers, hot dogs, and pizza, and going to American chain restaurants like Red Lobster. My childhood food experience was unique thanks to the Japanese side of my family including things like sushi and green tea in traditional holiday meals, but on the most part, we ate "American" food. Maybe that's what defines Canadian food - taking dishes from various cultures and incorporating them into our "traditional" meals. So many of us come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, and being a new country in the relative scheme of things, maybe that's why we haven't established many traditional dishes that are uniquely Canadian.

And so, for our barbecue, I shall present my English/Kiwi/Irish/Welsh/Italian friends with beer and maple syrup poured on something (haven't decided what yet) and we shall wave little flags around and say "eh?" all day long. Half of us will speak French (and those speaking English will have to do so at half the volume) and perhaps we will hold a referendum if things get dull (we can vote on whether or not London should be sawn off and relocated down the Thames). We can play road hockey out front, which is ideal as we live on a cul de sac. It'll be lots of very polite and orderly fun!*

*(Note to those coming over on Saturday: I'm joking about the events/activities listed here. Don't worry; we'll likely just burn something to a crisp, get a sunburn, drink too much, and I'll endure endless jokes about Celine Dion and beavers.)

missing

My grandpa passed away this morning after having a stroke on Wednesday morning. He would have turned 88 this November, and up until recently, was always fairly healthy. However, after my grandma died in 1991 from ovarian cancer, my grandfather's mental health rapidly deteriorated. At first he was simply absentminded, forgetting a few unimportant things here and there. Over the following years, he thought his neighbours were trying to steal his house, he would drive places and forget how he got there, and eventually, he had no idea who any of us were. Despite all this, he was still in good physical health and thoroughly enjoyed seeing us, even though he hadn't a clue that we were related. The last time I saw him was at Christmas a few years ago, and he said "I have no idea who any of you people are, but it was really nice of you to invite me over." with a genuinely pleased smile on his face.

He was amongst the thousands of Japanese Canadians who lost their homes, businesses, and almost all of their possessions during World War 2. He was apart from my grandma when she was pregnant with my oldest uncle, because men and women were interned in prison camps separately. He managed to get work as a truck driver during the war, and the family were forced to relocate from British Columbia thousands of miles east to Ontario afterwards. There they became fruit pickers, and eventually he worked in the Del Monte factory until he retired. He always said that they were lucky; others were sent to work in beet fields in Alberta, which he thought was much worse. He was immensely proud of his successful children and was infinitely pleased that they fared much better than he. In this respect, he maintained that a great deal of good came out of what was a horrific experience during wartime. Never bitter, never regretful.

He loved the Yankees (they were simply a much better team than the Blue Jays), Swiss Chalet, growing vegetables in his garden, beer and tomato juice, his baseball caps, and most of all, my grandma. He was my last living grandparent and it breaks my heart to know that Jack won't meet him. At the very least, I will make sure Jack knows all about his great grandparents on both sides, so that they will still be around in some way.

Being a grown up really, really sucks sometimes.

let's hear it for the boy

Much joy and congratulations to the lovely Ms. Tilly Mint on the birth of Kendal Oliver Hands (pictures on her site - go see!). Tch, I've gone all weepy. Not broody, mind you - just weepy. He's just so adorable. *sniffle*

soon he'll be borrowing my car keys

Jack Jack (which has been his nickname since we saw "The Incredibles") is four months old today! He is currently celebrating this exciting milestone by sprawling on his back and snoring. Par-tay!

Attention UK mums: I got some fantastic deals on baby clothes at Sainsburys yesterday, but I'm not sure if this is specific to our shop or if it's a chain-wide sale. I got 7 short-sleeved sleepsuits for £4.50 and two pairs of shorts for £2.50. What's more, the sleepsuits aren't all blue! It's always a thrill when I find non-blue boy clothes - out of 7 sleepsuits, only one is blue. The rest are white, green, or multicoloured stripes with various prints on them.

a bit o' this, a bit o' that

When pregnancy books mentioned that your hair may fall out after you have a baby, I thought they meant in the first few weeks after giving birth, not four months later. Seriously, I'm turning into Kojak here. Little tumbleweeds of black hair drift around the house, and every day I pull long black hairs out of the clenched fists of my son. On the plus side, molting for the summer helps keep my head cool.

I ordered a high chair for Jack yesterday so that he can get used to sitting in it and can join us at mealtimes. It can adjust to any height and the seat has three reclining positions with a safety harness, so it'll be good for him. Most highchairs are positioned too far upright for little ones who are still a bit wobbly when sitting. At the moment, the only places we can leave Jack are either low on the floor or in his cot, so he's not able to see much when we eat. He peers up at us with his big brown eyes, wondering what's happening on top the big flat thing that's high up off the ground. It'll be nice to give him an alternative view for a change.

His latest development is clutching on to things with his legs and feet, like a little monkey. He's been kicking at his toys for the past couple of weeks, but now he also grasps on to me with his legs and wraps his feet around my arm when I stroke his tummy. When I greet him in the mornings and rub his belly, his hands grasp mine and his legs wrap around my arm while he giggles like a loon. I never liked mornings until I had moments like this to look forward to.

Newsflash: Jack has just rolled over completely on to his tummy! Whee!

spaced

Enough with the heat, already. I am not built for hot weather - I have black hair, I can't wear skimpy clothing, and my skin recoils in horror from the sun and turns an angry shade of red after 10 minutes (then fades back to its usual bluish-white hue). The ants have returned, along with a million different species of spiders, gigantic houseflies that can't comprehend that large open windows provide a means of escape and smacking your tiny little body into a closed window repeatedly is not accomplishing anything, and some sort of large spindly insect that looks like a Mayfly. Maybe they are Mayflies, I have no idea, but they are big and keep landing on me. A huge bumblebee trundled through the living room yesterday (but at least bees are clever and can find their way out an open window), there was a beetle in the bathroom this morning, and there's something sticky on my basil plant that is undoubtedly caused by one of the several varieties of wildlife currently taking over our house. At night, I'm half expecting to hear a tiny little insecty voice say to me "Shove over - you're taking all the covers."

We ventured out into the heat on Sunday for a family Father's Day outing at the National Space Centre. Every time we drove up the M1 and saw the sign for this place, we always wondered what it contained. Mystery solved; it's full of kid-friendly information about space and it was quite fun. Pictures of our day out can be seen here. Apologies for the picture quality, but I used my old digital camera and it was fairly dark in most of the building.