notes from the city

I'm not even going to weigh in on Pope Francis except to say, Yay!  Mucho excitement about what the wonderful Holy Spirit is up to.

I find myself this March Break in Halifax with the twins and Baby Sarah.  This was a long-planned trip but we only broke the news to the kids a few days before departure.  We made sure that Ben and Joe won the consolation prize, tickets to see the Ottawa Senators.  Somehow, in their limited understanding of family economy, an NHL game is equal to a week in Halifax.  Whew.  Let's not talk about Isaac.

I have now spent over eight years in small Ontario towns and a trip back to the city is becoming increasingly foreign.

Here are my thoughts in point form.

1.  Taxis still exist.
2.  No evidence of ice fishing.
3.  Teens accessorise with something other than camouflage.
4.  Everybody has a dog.
5.  I am not the only runner.
6.  It's true, we do have a big family.
7.  People derive their ancestry from places other than Ireland and Poland (which leads to the next point).
8.  There are Protestant churches.  (No, the MV school gym doesn't count; nor does the ill-attended Anglican Church.)
9.  Macdonald is not a strange name, Kutchkoskie is.
10.  A religious Jew could not survive spiritually in Barry's Bay.
11.  Where are the pickup trucks?
12.  Where is the sawmill?
13.  What do you mean you can't readily identify hunting season on the calendar?
14.  Everybody is renovating and the only people who look familiar are the workmen.
15.  Not every ambulance contains an acquaintance.  Sirens are not a cause for personal concern.

Off to put Sarah to sleep.  And in news almost as exciting as Habemus Papam, I am going out for supper after 6pm with a real, live friend.

Must keep at this

Yes, I must keep at this.  Part of my trouble is that I have given up looking at blogs for Lent; thus, mine also gets neglected.  And, wow, does one week ever fly around here.

It turns out that I spoke too soon about the February Scourge.  Apparently, it had neglected to send me a change-of-name notice and arrived exactly as March did.  Dave was the first to go down and the rest followed like dominoes.  God is merciful, though.  I prayed that I would be sick through the night so as to avoid having to nurse the baby (she sleeps through the night).  My stomach began its gymnastics approximately ten minutes after Sarah nursed to sleep on Sunday and the worst of the onslaught stopped shortly before Dave brought her in for her morning feeding.  I still felt rotten all of Monday and Dave stayed home so that I could lie in bed all day - what leisure!  (He was also recovering from his bout with the flu.)

Joseph seems to have dodged the bullet despite Sarah beginning her first stomach-flu experience by throwing up on Joseph as he held her.  He arrived at my bedside cradling his hand like a wounded dove.  With tears in his eyes (and in his Jimmy Dean voice) he said, "Baby Sarah just threw up all over me.  I think I am going to be sick because I am covered in her germs.  My hand is burning and it needs to be wrapped up."  He then passed me a green bandanna with which to wrap his germ-infested hand.  I rolled over and sent him off to wash his hands.  His teacher told Dave later that week that he told her the same story and kept warning her of the imminent arrival of his stomach flu as he was "infested with Baby Sarah's germs."  Dave also overheard Joe at school talking with one of his classmates, "So, Hayden, when are you going to invite me to that birthday party of yours?"  Hayden looked perplexed as, to the best of his knowledge, his birthday doesn't arrive again until Fall, "Umm, I guess in the Fall."  "OK," responded Joe, "I'll be waiting for my invitation."  Dear Hayden, I hope you know that he means business.

The winter shows signs of retreat as birds are beginning to arrive back on the branches of our evergreens; the streets are slick with water rather than ice; and Baby Sarah requires one snowsuit, not two.  We are all in desperate need of a change of season and the season-changer that is March Break is only hours away.  Funny to think that we will soon be complaining about black flies and wondering how our world was only just covered in snow.

Lent this year has coincided beautifully with the end of winter and the longer days are a balm to the soul much as the arrival of Easter is soon to be.  In fact, the daylight has so increased that Ben asked us at supper why we were eating so early.

Sarah is growing up far too fast:  she is nine months now.  Despite her first birthday being only three months away, she has yet to cut a tooth or show any desire to do much other than sit quietly in one place on the floor (or, in the middle of the table).  Her lack of precociousness is almost exactly like Ben's and Hannah's.  Hannah didn't crawl 'til a year and walked at 15 months while Ben waited until 16 months to take his first steps.  Nice siblings after which to model one's self.

And now I am rambling.  Hopefully I'll be back with some photos or a story.

A Picture Post

 I know I've said it before, but pardon the grainyness of these photos, they are iPad quality.  The other camera is lost somewhere in the bowels of the house.  Not only can I not find the camera but neither can I locate the bowels of the house.  I have decided to include myself a little more in the photos (and I need to work on Dave) as kids need to look back and see mom and dad in the family photos:  what did they look like in their 20s, 30s etc.?  I know that I cherish the few pictures that I have of my parents throughout their lives.  And, wow, isn't Sarah turning into a little beauty?

 Isaac regularly steals Jacob's glasses.  He also spends a great deal of time naked, but we don't need to talk about that here.  He looks cute both ways.

 I found this photo on our iPad after we spent a morning at the local rink while Dave coached broomball.  Sarah's godfather was guarding the iPad for us and, apparently, he took some photos.  When I found this photo, I showed it to Dave and asked, "Do I make that face a lot?  Because I have never seen that face before and I hope that's not my default face because, if it is, something needs to change."  Dave reassured me that this is not a regular Elena face; however, he did go to Confession that afternoon.

 Hannah and Ben love to dress Sarah in her clothes and do her hair.  Ben also likes to brush my hair.  He followed me around the house with a brush last night as I attempted to get ready for a talk that Dave and I were giving.  He never got a chance to work on my locks but he does brush his own into a mohawk.  (For those of you who know my Uncle John, the similarities between him and Ben are many! not the mohawk, the hair-brushing.)

 Ah, the sisterly relationship.  Finally, there are sisters in our house and, oh, how they love each other.  The other day when Hannah arrived home from school Sarah squirmed in my arms until Hannah came to take her.  Beautiful.  I pray that their relationship is close despite the large age difference.

 And this picture, my friends, is so like photos of me as a baby that I might just be able to stop having children.  What a narcissistic family-planning process...

 Hmmm, proof positive that some naughty twins got hold of the iPad.

 This shot catches the essence of both Joe and Isaac:  happy, happy, joy, joy with a dash of near-fatal accident thrown in.  Believe it or not, this is Isaac on his fully-dressed days.

 Sammy has a friend!  Friends of ours (two of the best additions to the Bay) have a lovely girl dog called Aowyn.  We have a bit of a dog-exchange agreement so that when one couple leaves town the other couple watches the left-behind dog.  Sammy absolutely loves when Aowyn comes to visit and Ben is in his element with more than one animal in the house.  Aowyn actually has a very calming effect on Sammy and I quite enjoy when she is here.  We do, nevertheless, contain them with a chair when eating a meal; they are dogs, after all.

Continuing with the chair theme, this is evidence that Isaac also found the iPad:  this and fifty other pictures of the exact same chair rails.