Birthday Party Preparations

It’s party time at ours in a few hours. Enjoying the calm before the storm! Here is the cake – spicy pumpkin chocolate chip with cream cheese icing. Here is the happy little birthday boy – before he gets totally overwhelmed by everyone, and overloaded with sugar. Out for a walk now to clear our […]

A Whole Year of Family Life

This coming weekend we are finally celebrating Kazuo’s first birthday. After eventually ridding our house of the dreaded lurgy, that lingered around far too long for my liking, we are now ready to re-enter social circulation. I think it will really be a party for me… since I have only had three social encounters with […]

Holiday Highlights

When I last posted here, I had no idea how much of a toll the month ahead was going to take on me – both physically and emotionally. We have had a lovely holiday, and I hope you have too – but there have been some definite challenges. I had anticipated a few dramas as […]

Home Alone

It has taken me a good week to get enough perspective on this event to be able to muse about it publicly. With the winter weather well and truly set in for the duration (it was -11C last week and -7C today, with ice on the INSIDE of our feeble windows both mornings), we have […]

Knitting Progress

A few weeks ago I met a lovely woman at my new favourite mother-meeting spot – Winslow’s Home, which seems to be a great place to bump into other people who like homely little stores and coffee with their babies. It was a lovely sunny day, so we were all sitting outside, I was entertaining […]

Dogs

I’ve always been a bit wary of dogs. Perhaps it was growing up in a non-pet family. We had the occasional pet like the odd fish and a couple of kittens that came to premature ends due to our suburban life (cars and cats… not a good mix), but never any enduring critters. Perhaps it […]

Other Crafty Ideas

Today has been another one of those – Where Did That Day Go? Sort of days… the kind of day I would not ordinarily blog on…but I am compelled again by NaBloPoMo… and have not the time or the wit to think of something amazing/arcane to share with you of my own volition (though I […]

Books, Books, Books…

In typical English-teacher fashion, I began reading to Kazuo before he had emerged. I gathered up a small personal library of suitable starter books for him before he arrived, and made regular trips to the local public library for supplementary reading. In the early months, I read out loud to him any time I was […]

Where Did Today Go?

It began strangely, with our car being trapped in the garage because the door opener had bust a spring overnight (in fact we heard it, and wondered what that loud bang was – weird!). We had to wait for the landlord to come and help Akira heft it open and hold it up while I […]

Where Have the Last Ten Months Gone?

Today our wee pop is ten months old. I am still thinking about the passing of the nine-months mark, and suddenly another month has passed. Those first few weeks seem to last for ever in a fog of sleep deprivation and lack of any real structure to the day. But now, although the days are […]