In the yard

Birthday faces

Here are some of the people pics from James' birthday outing. As the pictures suggest, I spent most of the time on the blanket with Walter (and taking pics), James fished, and Logan slept in the car until a few minutes before we had to head back...

It's been

The first half of this month we spent without hot water. What started as a simple fix was upgraded to the whole system being condemned and many complications snowballed the repair time. As much as this sounds like a huge inconvenience, the major things it impeded were showers, dishes, and laundry (I use cold water but the dryer vents beside the furnace so was off-limits during the work). Oh, and lots of banging and having to answer doors for workmen. Unfortunately James really hurt a muscle in his back right as the situation commenced. One of the main ways he deals with back and muscle pain is to take showers and alternate hot and cold water. I am not brave enough for this and have not experienced enough pain to think it necessary but he has had great success with it in the past. I do not know if he had had ready access to a shower if it would have healed faster but his back is still in pretty bad shape and it has affected other surrounding muscles. It is strange how when we were without hot water things actually seemed more manageable. I think because there was a problem that had an end in sight (as much as that end continually receded) it was something we dealt with. But now it has been fixed for a couple weeks and we are just getting to the point of catching up to where we were before. And James' back is still bad. He's living with the pain (he lives with more pain that I ever want every day) but I think even for me (because this is all about me...) this back pain is more of an inconvenience than the hot water situation. Strange how I don't always realize just how much he helps out with everything. Also we've been trying to help his mom in the enormous clean-up in order to sell the house. As much as I would have liked to have helped more than I did, it wasn't actually practical. Thankfully her daughter was a huge help so a lot of the necessary work was taken care of. Despite it all we managed to have a good Thanksgiving weekend and 40th birthday celebration. I felt bad I hadn't done much for organizing a party but then I remembered he got a car so yeah, that even broke the card budget. And Mom made a cake and we sang Happy Birthday while everyone was there at Thanksgiving. Thank goodness my family's large and loving enough to stretch for both of us now! Well, I shouldn't say that entirely. It's been interesting becoming part of a family that isn't mine. I don't exactly know how to explain this but, as much as I feel as though my family is the norm, the more I see of how other families function (or dysfunction), the more I realize how different the one I was raised in is. But all this not to boast about how lucky I am but to say that when I joined James' family there was one rift but while this recent rift has opened, the other has amazingly started to close. This past year has made me realize that you never know what the future will bring. I would never have imagined that James would be happy to save his car from his brother and put it out at my mom's. We've spent more time in the past year with his sister's children than his brother's. Although that's not hard: I've only seen the boys very briefly once this past spring. At least James was able to steal an opportunity in the chaos to tell them that we loved them and always would the last time he was there. Little victories, I suppose. It is great that we now get to see the other half of his family but it just seems such a shame that, although perhaps not at the expense of, it was congruent with the destruction of first half I knew. I know life is about ups and downs and more often than not a hearty mixture of the two but it's the unnecessary ones that trouble me the most. These pictures were taken on James' birthday when we were able to take a little drive just outside of Ottawa and do some fishing and relax. As much as I have misgivings that I should have planned a party for him, this is really all he wanted.

Flying Time

As much as my younger boy is going through milestones at a faster pace than my first one, I have been reminded that my elder boy is still growing and passing through phases. So this post comes as a bit of an update on what he has been doing and how he has been changing. In the past few weeks I have noticed that he is much more open to interacting with people he may not know as well. He is speaking on the phone these days (instead of nodding and smiling through a conversation) and waves at people we pass on the street. I think some of this new confidence stems from the fact that he is speaking more distinguishably and people are understanding what he is saying (without me explaining it to them). When the cashier asks how he is doing, he now replies with a, "Doing good." or "Being a good boy." On a side note, this awareness of whether he is being a good boy or not stems from our system of privileges only being bestowed when he has been obedient and helpful previous to the time. I have some reservations with this being the model of what it means to be good or bad but I think the innumerable nuances of the concepts can be applied as his understanding grows. But to return to the original topic, he is at the point where most people (if he talks loudly enough) can discern what he is trying to say. There have been several people who mentioned that he seems to have a bit of a British accent. As much as it may seem likely that this stems from my unabashed status as an Anglophile, I think it has more to do with his careful diction. He uses several phrases quite frequently. Unfortunately, I don't think that I will remember all of the ones I have hoped to write down. He uses "last night" to refer to pretty much any occurrence in the past. He has just started to say "yesterday" but it comes up a lot less than the first. He prefixes quite a few phrases with "only just" such as Walter is "only just little" and he's "only just going to the kitchen". Then there is the physical side of things. His disposition is generally a careful one and I never had to worry about crazy antics or his overreaching his limits but recently he has been much more boyish and dare-devil-y (for him, in any case). He loves to do headstands on the couch and climb and balance on any accessible high point. He enjoys letting me know his likes and dislikes. He also wants to pick his clothes most of the time and usually does a good job of it (sometimes I'm happy that we're not going anywhere when he wears certain outfits, though). He now sees ads (usually those involving chocolate... What can I say? He is my boy) and has to tell me each time, "I like that one Mommy." As evidenced from these pictures, he found the flying-ace style winter hat one day and had to wear it all day (despite it be a fairly warm day) and, on and off, asks to wear the "hat with sunglasses". I think it's beyond adorable but try not to gush too much! On the down-side of all this development is his increasing use of the word "no". This crops up especially when I am busy and unable to follow through on backing up whatever I have asked him to do. For a child his age, however, he is very tractable and reasonable. I also try to remember that my final goal in all this isn't to control him but to teach him to control himself. It just gets frustrating when I find a reasonable request negated despite obvious benefits to himself or necessity. I need to wrap this up but over all I am thrilled to get to know more and more of my boy and see how he grows and develops. Time is flying by but we're certainly enjoying the ride!

Porches

Daddy's boy