summer

* the beach (need i say more?)

* the crispy crunch of sunchips (a bit of sand accidentally kicked into the bag accounts for part of that crunch)

* the fizzy, over-the-top sweetness of dr. pepper on a sizzling day

* five cent candies and licorice

* lazy afternoons with  the perfect blend and sun and breeze on your face

* the smell of trusted coppertone (we rock a super high spf (50+!) now with toddlergirl around)

* evening light that lasts until 9pm

* bonfires with idle sit and deep conversations

* waking up to a breakfast of strong coffee and fresh crepes and setting the day to repeat…

i love summer.

to better things (like holidays!)

steph

toddlergirl summer

walking on a spider web.

this spider web was made right outside our back door in the course of less than two hours!  we had come in for dinner, and then were about to embark on more outdoor play and voila!  a huge spider web in the glistening evening sun. 

 

backyard summer

my new favourite photo

ps- dear nana and grandma, don’t print on your computer paper,

i’ll print you out a copy to be delivered soon:)

my baking helper

 

 

perspective.

it’s been a rough couple of days (for a myriad of reasons, but mostly sleep deprivation) 

and this photo represents how i feel. 

black and white and gloomy and weepy and exhausted. 

rocky point park, bw trees

 but…. i’m trying to keep perspective that tomorrow is a new day and it might be better.

photo taken in same location, same park, same day, just a different angle. 

“smelling/noticing the roses” (if you will).

rocky point park, yellow flowers

to better things,

steph

july 9, 2008 update:

it seems my words and photos had a stronger impression than i meant them too.  sorry for the misinterpretation and thanks for concerned friends.  it was mostly a culmination of events that furled themselves into a giant ball and then flung itself into my face.  of course, compressed all in a few short hours. 

we are finally getting help for toddlergirl’s sensory processing disorder  and sleep issues, but it comes in the form of seeing four different doctors or health care professionals at one time.  this means appointments.  endlessly.  routine (which i am trying VERY hard to maintain, is hard to maintain when driving hours and waiting and explaining and figuring out).  i could give hugs and largely loaded coffee cards to some of these doctors who have helped us come to new understandings and coping mechanisms with toddlergirl.  most of these people are my heroes.  i could rave about them for a long time.  some have literally changed our daily life.  while other doctors (okay, one in particular) wants me to continue to graph every sleep and wake cycle endlessly.  it is tedious and i’ve already done it for him for a month.  (to get a sense of what it’s like: set your alarm to wake up at least 3 different intervals during the night and then get out of bed, resettle a kid that won’t sleep, and then remember it all for the morning, write it down, graph it, AND “please shade it”.  repeat almost every night for over 700+ nights to get a sense of sleep deprivation).  he doesn’t seem to understand a team concept and we feel as though we have to defend ourselves.  not my idea of a good time.  and especially not on 4 hours of sleep.  we were booked to see him that day.

my inquiring eyes noticed advertising for a festival and more searching led me to the fact that my super duper cool wedding scout locations were being taken over by an enormous caribbean festival (happening in a country, po-dunk kind of town).  now, who would expect that?  i’m thankful i found it out ahead of time and had time to rescout and now i have some great locations (better, maybe even?!) lined up for this weekend. 

that, my friends, is what was making me remind myself to:

1) take a deep breath and 2) keep it in perspective. 

perspective gained.  thanks for listening.

to better things,

steph

standing in line.

the post office.

i have to admit that i miss the old post offices where the scent of the building was noticeably different when you walked in.  the smell a distinct mixture of paper, glue, and ink.  for some reason everyone talked in hushed tones, as though it was a library or a sacred building.   the same post office lady would ask how your day was and make polite weather related conversation.

nowadays the accessible convenience of the drugstore/post office combination is the new thing.  under the fluorescent lights, you can mail a parcel and pick up shampoo or a pack of gum in the same store.  handy, i admit.  but somehow the charm is lost, at least on me.

toddlergirl and i had to make a trek to the post office.  we rounded the crystal light drinks and snack aisle to see a line at least five people deep snaking all the way back into the pringle chips and pretzels.  the mail i had to send needed to go.  there was no putting it off.  we stepped up into the line.  and waited. 

toddlergirl was attached to my hip.  it works for both of us in this situation.  a certain level of cuddles and attention for her.  a certain level of control and not-losing-our-spot in-line-running-throughout-the store-chasing-her, for me.

this put toddlergirl at eye level with the lady in line behind us. 

“oh, helloooo there!” the old lady in a stained floral (in a bad way) shirt sings to toddlergirl.

toddlergirl blinks.  observes.

i look over my shoulder. smile. nod.

“i wouldn’t want to be her age.  these days the world is not good.  not good indeed.  imagine how the world will be 18 years from now for her.”  the floral lady chimes on in more of a statement than a question.

hmmm…  (i ponder).  what is the response (if any) that i should be making to this nutty old lady?

i have noticed that when you have children the world feels a little bit more entitled to step in and make comments, judgments, suggestions.  most of which i am glad and happy to entertain or amuse.  having a child has made me, forced me to realize just how different we all really are.

the conversation shifted immediately (on her behalf) to the dvd she was mailing her nephew who just graduated from high school.  she had spent the last year and a half compiling old family photos and scanning them to make a slide show presentation.  she carried on to tell me that her parents had both passed away already and that she wanted to have a reminder for her family and the generations to come of who she was. 

the cynical person in me bit my lip to remind her that the digital media she was using was a product of the fast-paced world we live in today.  a product of the ever changing world in which 30 years ago people in post office lines might have looked at each other and clicked their tongues and went on about “what was this world coming to?”  i bit my lip again in thinking that the world we live in today that allows us jpegs, mpegs, raw, pdf, zip, psd, flash, embedding, dvix- the programs and formats she was using to be remembered by… were probably not going to be very accessible 20 years from now.

instead i smiled and chatted. 

i answered her questions as to why her black and white photos from the turn of the century scanned better than the color shots from the 1950’s. (that would be that cameras were more common in the 1950’s and you can thank the industrial revolution for the mass reproducing and suburbanization of technology).

i answered her questions as to why the people in the old black and white’s were so stiff looking and didn’t smile (long exposure- the camera was a relatively new invention-portraits were taken to document a family, not necessarily evoke emotion-photographs were replacing painted portraits).

i wondered if she realized the irony in her statements about “the world these days not being good?”  is she fearful of the future? 

yes, toddlergirl will have a different world to live in than i did.  i have a different world to live in than my parents.  my parents have a different world to live in than their parents.  and so it goes. 

how do we bridge or join the gap between family generations that this always shifting world we live in creates?  how does “standing in line”- the time line, the linear family tree, look to you?

i kind of liked her family slide show idea.  if i do anything like that i’ll just make darn sure to transfer the files along with the newest media format.