SPD

Goodbye, Summer

We'll miss you. We will be happy to see the colourful leaves of Algoma next week, though.

Time to get the woolies out...

Alley Cats

Unfortunately, the stray cats around here roam far beyond the alley. Most notably into my gardens in search of poop possibilities. They've been mostly thwarted this summer, but it's still maddening.

Digressed already.

In a thousand pictures, and a few words, here is our beloved alley. It's the everyday that stands out. We take a gigabillion (even more than my standard gabillion. I've gone digital in my exaggeration) pictures when we go anywhere, but somehow never post them on here.

The alley we take pictures of all the time, because we're there all the time.

In the spring, it was the excitement of realizing that Sebastien could open the latch on the alley gate all by himself, and his constant entreaties to come "chase me in the alley!"

The alley is a shortcut to the beloved Maltese Grocery.

The alley has charming wooden shed walls to walk by. I obsess over these walls. I crave faded old wooden walls, with hollyhocks growing up in front of them. Though for now I will have to settle for horseradish.

Next spring, we are planting raspberries in the alley. Cause sometimes we get hungry out there.

This fall, we found a fence down, and apples all over the ground. So we scurried around to the front door and begged permission to pick up said apples. The boys made sure the apples were good by taking a bite out of each one.

It's like our own park; there's never anyone there, except the occasional cat.

The light is good, and silliness is not frowned upon.

Lovely.

Turtle Revisited

I'm currently in a Thanksgiving rant mode. But I'll spare you the details, except to say, those of us living high on the hog in North American middle class society ought to be thankful all the time.

Which leads me to my point: Hallowe'en. A holiday I've just never really liked, elementary school sleepovers at Allyson's house notwithstanding, because that was good fun. Me not liking Hallowe'en of course meant that once I had children, I get to live it all the time. Which is totally fun, unlike Hallowe'en itself.
Confused yet? Me too.

Exhibit A: The Turtle

I made said costume two years ago. It was cute, he wore it one evening to a cute toddler Hallowe'en party, I had fantasies of him cuddling beatifically on the couch with shell. Or maybe bucolically.
They say dogs can smell fear. Kids can smell a parental agenda a mile away.

So now, he loves the turtle costume. This is exciting, because it gets him out of his seasonally inappropriate, hideous, worn for 4-months-straight-I-kid-you-not Lightning McQueen outfit. He got the outfit courtesy of Grandmaman's cleaning lady. There's a part of me that loves that she wanted to get him something. There's another part of me that has dreaded the inevitable meltdown every time we have to wash said outfit, and watched him snatch it from the wet laundry basket and put it on wet.

But I digress. The small obsessive one is gleefully a turtle, and of course only the green pyjama pants that are 3 inches too short will do to go with them, and the green t-shirt he inexplicably will only wear backwards. The baby outfit is out of the rotation for the time being, there is new material waiting to make flannel lined fireman jammies for the fireman obsession, and Sir Topham Hatt has made a few cameo appearances around here lately.

In the meantime, Felix is picking up the fireman slack.

And Sebbie is trying a few new identities on for size.

And why so long winded? I'm procrastinating writing an uplifting rant about Thanksgiving. It just makes my eyes roll back in my head, and makes me wonder why I said I would.

Not Pictured

Some of the best moments elude the camera.

For those of us who share a house with a teacher, the week before school starts is when reality sets. Suddenly, the Papa is gone for most of the day, our play is messier, to say the least, and I forget the camera.

What I don't have pictures of?

Finger painting in the bathtub. A rainy, wet, miserable cold day, Papa's first day back at work, Papa gone at bedtime...Felix desperately wanting to squirt paint on SOMETHING, and hey, it was bathtime. So fun. So messy. And kind of pretty.

Flying a kite at Marina Park. It's hard to launch a kite one-handed on a gusty/calm day, with 25lbs of velcro baby on your other hand, and little boy getting tangled up in the string all the time. It's fun to hand your 3 year old the kite string, and know that he'll let go. It's also fun to watch your kite NOT crash when he lets go of the string, and watch the string holder get caught in the top of a tree, and watch said tree fly your kite for 3 or 4 minutes! We came home with a kite, but with a lot less string. So fun. So crazy. And very pretty.

Trying to chop and roast some zucchini, having pulled the plant out of the garden at last. Said velcro baby wanting nothing to do with floor time, so up he comes to a chair (with arms) by the counter, and is given a butter knife, and generous chunk of zucchini to work on. A solid hour of joyful zucchini excavation (ok, and some counter washing. He could reach the sink...) ensued. So fun. A bit scary. And not at all pretty.

But here's some pretty messy fun we did capture. Ahh summer. We will miss you.