This is a belated November post

Joe turned 16 at the end of November.  Amazing, because I started this blog when he was not yet one.  On his first birthday, he climbed out of his highchair and sat on the tray eating cake.  This would be telling of things to come.  On his sixteenth birthday, I drove him to get his Learners license in Pembroke.  (I'm still hopelessly lost on what level of G licensing this is, so Learner's it will remain.). We arrived only to be told that he needed a passport or birth certificate as proof of identity.  We had neither and we were 45 minutes from home.  Since it was Joe's birthday, I wasn't allowed to get angry at him.  Ben came to our rescue and drove more than halfway to meet us with a roadside birth certificate handoff.  It literally was a handoff because we found Ben parked on the side of the highway with his hand extended out the window and a birth certificate at the ready.  We brought him a hamburger in exchange and, dear Ben, is always satiated and dutifully thanked with food.

This little lady turned 8 at the start of November.  I managed to buy her a LEGO set that wasn't really LEGO.  Sigh.  I learned my lesson and will never not check the fine details on Amazon again.  Or, rather, I will have Sarah do all the shopping, which I should have done in the first place.  I also managed to buy Mariana three of the same LEGO sets at Christmas which we then had to gift to various friends who now own replicas of LEGO Friends Aliyah's apartment.  I doubt I will ever learn.  I can't find a birthday shot of our November girl, so this one will have to do.  Judging by the ceiling, it's from our fateful trip to Shediac.

 And these delightful puppies, ten of them, also share a November birthday.  They have all gone to their forever homes but their stay with us is always a lot of fun and great joy, especially over the Christmas break.  This year there was no snow until my birthday and raising the puppies was happily easy for Joseph.  Joseph and Ben do a tremendous job of raising Rosie and Bosco's litters.  Rosie's contribution is definitely at the front end and she gratefully watches her pups leave as she smokes her well-deserved cigarette while lounging on her settee.  Bosco kicks in with the role of fun father at about four weeks and is quite incognizant of the fact that he is in fact a father of 19 and not an overly large puppy himself.  He's not yet old enough for a cigar and we are surprised that Rosie deigns to enter into a relationship with him.  But he's pretty cute and a really nice guy thus proving that Rosie isn't much different than most women.

Matthew and Simon

Seeing how sorely neglected this blog has been, Matthew and Simon, being among the more recent children of the lot, haven't had much attention paid to them here.  As a partial remedy, here are two stories. 

Matthew asked me for hotdogs at lunch a few weeks ago.  I told him (in an act of immature parenting) that hotdogs were quite unhealthy and lead to cancer.  Knowing that Matthew was yet ignorant of that disease, I qualified what I had said by adding that Grandma Anne had died of cancer. He immediately looked circumspect.  With an arched eyebrow, he asked, "And did Grandma Anne eat a lot of the hotdogs?"  I wasn't quite sure what to say because Grandma Anne really wasn't a voracious eater of hotdogs and I didn't want to lay at her feet the blame for the disease that killed her.  Instead I just looked puzzled.  Matthew jumping on my uncertainty, and knowing that the rest of Grandma Anne's family was still very much alive, asked, "And did the rest of the family eat these hotdogs?"  And just like that he had outed me with a swift and precise cut of his sword of detection. Well done, little boy

I gave Simon a bath today at noon after a very early spring led to a very dirty little boy.  He asked for bubbles and I provided.  After the bath, I pulled him out and wrapped him in a towel and told him that I had wrapped him up like a little pancake.  When I came back with a diaper, he was still lying on the bed thinking:  "Waffle, mama.  Me little waffle." 

I then told him that I was going to take a shower.  He asked if I would use bubbles.  I responded that I would not.   With great effort and his growing mind, he formulated the next question, "You hate bubbles, mama?"