Baby Makes

Picton yarn shoppe. Untried territory, distractions from homesickness GALORE.

I’ve been home for 12 hours. Its hard to believe that I have spent the last 5 days in breezy PE County; its almost like a dream.

My babies have grown. Jackson is HUGE. Cameron is a little boy with conversation and questions and statements. While I’ve been away the boys seem to have developed a kinder way of existing with each other. They seem more like brothers now than opponents. I can see a gentler side to Cameron and a tougher side to Jackson.

Arras is exhausted. His first week alone with the kids and he had something on each night as well. Whether it was a Arcade Fire at the Blues Fest or having friends over, he’s been burning the candle at both ends. He’s sleeping in now and then I think we’ll go out for breakfast…before I come home and do chores. Sweet sweet chores. I think I’m probably the only person who likes doing laundry and cleaning the bathroom.

My family makes me so happy.

I’m leaving tomorrow to stage manage a gig in Picton at the Festival Players of Prince Edward County.

Don’t be confused by the emotion expressed in the title; I really am excited to go but I’m really sad to be leaving my boys. With all the change they’ve encountered in the last few months, Arras and I decided it would be best for them to stay in their familiar environment with their usual caregiver Jovana looking after them in the days, rather than come to Picton and start a new daycare, only to start another new one in the fall. So we’ll miss each other greatly, but this is better for the boys.

We rehearse Sunday through Friday with a Saturday day off which means I’ll be back on Friday night, but the next few days are going to be very interesting. We’re rehearsing in a barn for the first two weeks, and then I don’t know where for our last week. But we open to HOARDS of adoring theatre patrons on August 4th in a tent with no tech. Curtain is at 6:30pm so we’ll perform our musical lit by the sunset in Prince Edward County, much like Arras performed The Outdoor Donnellys back in Blyth.

Click here for more information on my show; and keep checking in on these boys because Arras will be taking over the blog while I’m away.

We’re back. It was a week full of this:

And some of this:

A little of this:

and some of this (minnows):

There were:

And:

By day we would:

And at night:

And one day, when someone was supposed to napping, he got into the diaper cream:

Ah, discoveries.

We’re hitting the cottage for a week. See you later.

Cameron and Dada have a super favourite game you might have seen back here, and a while ago, when playing this game, they stuck the blue football up a tree. I wasn’t bothered at the time, that kind of thing happens, and hey, we wreck stuff, but then I started being able to see it from my seat at the dinner table. I started to feel for the football, up there so soon after being brought outside for the summer season, and so one night after the boys went to sleep, Arras I decided to set the ball free. Expecting this activity to be as accident-prone, injury-prompting, and laughter fit-inducing as these fiascos always are, I brought the camera. Alas, Arras has brilliant aim – had it be me trying to get it down, I’d be in hospital writing this post, but Arras nailed it in two shots, and posed for the victory shot.

Cameron and Jackson have been invited to Hadley’s birthday party today at 1pm. As soon as received the invitation and saw the time of the event, we started hatching plans. A lot of kids Cameron’s age don’t nap anymore, but Cameron still does and thank goodness because I can use the time to knit do chores.

So, plan hatch #1 involved skipping the nap altogether. The vision of consequences to #1 were too brutal to bear so we moved on. Plan hatch #2 involved putting the kids down early the night before so they would get up early the next morning so they could nap earlier and be ready for the party. Methinks the ‘getting up early’ part was too much for some us to bear so we moved on. Plan hatch #3 involved putting the kids down an hour LATER than real bedtime, in the hopes they would sleep in, and so could some of us, and we would still have steam to get through the party. We settled on this one. Some of us reluctantly.

Funny story. We put the kids to bed an hour later last night, feeling horrible that they were practically ZOMBIES by the time we mercifully let them go, and then this morning rolled around. Ah beautiful sleep in…

NO FREAKING WAY.

5:44am I woke up in a pool of my own where-is-my-AC? sweat.

5:48m Jax woke up, chatting away, then getting a bit more serious about getting out of bed.

6am Cameron woke up, all kids were changed and put back to bed…

6:20am or so we were ALL downstairs, ready to move on with Plan Hatch #2, the discarded plan.

What to do with kids who HAVE to sleep before a 1pm party? Feed them carbs for breakfast, pack a picnic and hit the water park.

8am and shady temperatures found this:

All kids are in bed now…we’ll let you know how the rest of the afternoon goes….

UPDATE:

Total success. Both kids were a bit cry-y just before leaving the house, and once Cameron arrived he was a bit shy and slow to warm up, but then? Both kids the JOY of the party, not just the life, AND the most well-behaved, and socially cool kids I have ever seen. What up with the adults though?

And we didn’t get lootbags, we got lootbooks – how great an idea is that? A Backyardigans book for Cameron (how did they know?) and a beautiful board book for Jackson.