SPD

QED

You can count on a couple of things when Matthias comes to visit.
Something in the house will get fixed, or improved.
Somebody will somehow "fail" to see a no trespassing sign.

I'm pretty sure everything below the high water line is considered public property.

I'm pretty sure the geese didn't get yelled at.

But then, neither did we.

There's something about unkempt (referring only to myself, of course) people with cameras that inspires security guards to trust them.

Must remember this for future criminal ventures.

Or even just future trespassing.

Oh, decrepit industrial areas. How we love you.

Sadly, and thankfully, we will never be in short supply of same around here.

33 X 100: A Tour

You might think 33X100 refers to the size of our lot, but no, it refers to how many pictures are in this post. That's right, one per square foot.

Seriously though, I never thought I would tolerate life on a small-ish city lot. Never mind consider it acceptable roaming space for my children. (Actually, I don't, but I'm coping for now.)

So, to add insult to injury, 33X100 (feet!) is plenty small to start with, but then there's not only the annoyance of the actual house taking up a good chunk of that, there's also the pesky front yard. Which has its perks, it has flowers (really), it's shady on hot days (rare), and it gives us a place to chuck stuff when we clean out the car (also rare).

What the front yard doesn't have is a fence, making it a place of much peril, what with the street there and all. Though, having said that, Sebastien is wary of the street, and sounds the alarm plenty loud if Felix so much as looks at it. So I can actually weed the (not mythical, but not shown) front garden sometimes for 8 seconds at a time.

In other news, the back yard looks a lot bigger if you sit in the very, very back corner of it. And point the camera at the sky. See? It's huge!

To add interest and trip hazards to our yard (which I so hunger to call the property, except it would be so ludicrous) we've added a few stations. Kind of like the "stations" we refer to with tiny babies - you know, places you can park them and they are kind of happy for a few seconds. Except my babies only ever had one station, and that was me. But I digress.

Station #1: Chiminea. Chimenea? Outdoor firepit thingy.

Something I would have (and no doubt did) cheerfully mocked in my more rugged rural days. What an urban device. Who needs an appliance to make a fire outside?

According to city bylaw, we do.

But I really like it. Felix really wants to climb into it, which is problematic, but note here that being thwarted from scorching himself, he huffily went in the opposite direction. He's such an extremist.

Also a good place for phone conversations, if half your family is currently soaking wet or mostly undressed.

Which takes us (in no discernible fashion) to the next station. Gardens!

Or, what used to be a garden, and then turned into Sebastien's "workin' place." I pointed out it was actually a garden, so then he amended it to "my play garden." And there was much negotiation and scheming and warning of impending planting, and in the end, Sebastien was ok with losing his digging place.

Felix, on the other hand, was unimpressed.

That chicken wire? In theory it's to keep the squirrels from eating the strawberries, but it's also pretty effective in keeping toddler and baby bums out of the garden. Funny how they like to sit on plants.

Felix found his revenge/happy place in the end. He beheaded most of my chives. I thought it was a pretty reasonable compromise.

Then of course there are the traveling stations...the turtle. It's a pool, a mudbath, a bucket to put the weeds in...

And the crabby dwarf in the corner. Funny how crabby kids tend to be drawn to him...

Since we're not entirely without a sense of justice and fairness, we replaced the "play garden" with something even better - a sandbox! With a lid, to keep the rain and the cats out. Also hides the toys inside nicely if we ever want to pretend the yard is tidy.

And lo and behold - they can play together! This game actually started as Sebastien pouring sand from high in the air, as close to Felix's head as he could get away with...with me standing guard and Felix gazing up at the sand cascade, mouth open. It's kind of shocking that what seemed inevitable didn't actually happen.

Much as small Felix is Mr. Independent in many ways, he's pretty thrilled when he and big brother actually interact.

And the redeeming feature, the one that makes the 33 X100 bearable, and not at all claustrophobic?

The alley, of course! More to come on that. I couldn't in good conscience make this post any longer, could I?

Lilac Lamentation

The upside of being one of the last places in Canada to have lilacs flower is that we get extra long to look forward to it. If we go anywhere before lilac season, we get a double lilac season!

And the upside of living where we do in Thunder Bay is that there is a big-city owned bank of steep land not 50 m from the house, that is covered in lilac bushes. Leading to fun adventures up crumbling concrete stairs, clippers (and stuffy moon) in hand.

This bucket? Filled FIVE times! It was a great year for lilacs.

We have two small lilac lovers in this family. Sebastien refers to them, endearingly, as "flowering lilacs."

Felix points to them and yells "lila! lila!", and now that the lilacs are pretty much done (hence the lamentation), he seems to have adopted that particular word for anything he really, really wants. Which is usually something sharp.

We had enough lilacs to go around - there was no need to squabble over them, and I could afford to hand Felix a stem each time he squawked "Lila!!!!!"

Sebastien will probably remember mostly that he fell down the steep bank while we went to get lilacs, but that he didn't fall very far, and that he landed in a lilac bush, and that, um, maybe his Mama couldn't help laughing at the sight of him upside down in a lilac bush, clutching his stuffy moon. Not his clippers.

Now, we wait for strawberries.

Food for Thought

There's no denying our back deck is ugly. It has no real foundation. It's been sort of painted a weird pinky-beige colour at some point in the distant past (and not by us). It's faded enough that you can only kind of see it, but not enough that you could get away with anything short of painting over it. It has visually jarring, yet infuriatingly functional benches.

We could try to fix it, but being who we are, it would then be worse, and we would have to actually take responsibility for it.

The upside is, now that we can eat outside on the deck, we don't dread supper anymore.

Exhibit A, three year old boy eating of his own volition, sitting on his seat (as opposed to draped across it, or on a parent lap), and eating something other than bread.

Exhibit B. One year old actually showing an interest in food that has not yet been on the floor. Felix's usual MO is to sit in his high chair and throw the few proffered morsels on to the floor, and then clamour to get out. At this point, he will crawl around under his chair, eat said morsels, and then climb on my lap and try to throw my food on the floor. Sometimes I think about putting his bowl on the floor, but it seems so wrong.

Exhibit C. Felix sitting still. Otherwise unheard of.

And hey, the adults like eating outside too. Even though sometimes it's really not warm enough to do so, we generally give in to the request, because the wildlife cleans the floors for us out there.

If I had blog categories, this would go under "things I probably shouldn't admit." But since no one reads this blog, I think I'm safe. Right?