mixed bag blogpost

LOVE this! I love love my girl :)

This morning, the perfect Saturday morning happened: Alana slept through the night (for the first time in MONTHS!!!) and awoke happy, we ate pancakes and then Hendrik sat on my lap and we read The Bunny Who Found Easter, twice. The rest of the day was pretty ideal too - good phone chats with my bestie WHO GOT ENGAGED last week (SO exciting!), a restful afternoon, and dinner with friends. And may I add that last night was also top notch - I went for a run, signed up for my first half-marathon (this one) and had an unplanned impromptu skype with my sis-Sarah. Yes!

Okay, now... where to start. I think it'll have to be with Hendrik's first gymnastics class, which happened on Wednesday. The class took place at the sports centre where the national team trains, which means our schedule should fit with Steve's - we all headed to the gym together and then parted ways at the gym doors. The class was in french, and this may or may not have added an extra element into an already shy-to-start mix - Hendrik hasn't been too immersed en francais here (yet), but it could have been nothing more than his usual reticence. Anyways, I translated a bit and this is how it went: circle time (touch your toes, do some jumps, crawl like a cat etc), circuit time (follow the kidlet in front of you - crawl through the tunnel, jump into hoops, slide along a bench etc), and free time (on the big trampoline, beams and a bar, of the parallel bars). Fourty minutes later we were putting our shoes back on and heading out the doors, and I was wondering if we couldn't come twice a week. Hendrik had a great time, and it was a close, easy, fun activity - and do-able for all three of us (Alana spent the class in the carrier). I came home gunning to find another class for him, and just today nabbed the last spot in Sunday morning's Frosty Blades class at the Sandy Hill Arena... yay! It's something I definitely won't be able to do with a babe on the bod, but Steve should be able to go most weekends, and if and when he has practice I'll look for someone to help with the Miss.

Also of note is Hendrik's follow-up appointment with the eye people at the hospital - that happened Thursday. His eyes are healing as they should be and everything looked good; he was cleared to do all activity, so hopefully we'll make it to the pool in the next couple of days. Dr O'Connor asked how everything went post-op, and when we told him that Hendrik hit the ground running hours later, he wasn't too surprised. He said that adults come in a week later looking glum and down and dopey-mopey, but kids... kids recover so quickly. It has to be a combination of learned behaviour and age-related recuperation-regeneration, but how much of each/either contribute to the difference in recovery time is unknown. Anyways, we'll go back in three months, and at that time the doc should be able to tell just how effective the surgery was, and whether or not Hendrik will need another procedure done. Until then... fingers crossed!

Okay, and now... the memo board - I LOVE it! I haven't stuck much up there behind the ribbons, but that doesn't matter; it looks good just the way it is. By way of complete fluke, there are some colours in the fabric that match the paint that lives on the walls... so, ooh la la it all works just so well together. As soon as I finished the project up, I was already thinking about making another one, which prompted Steve to ask me just how many of these memo boards I was planning on making. Since then, the fabric is back in the closet and other creative plans have taken over (catch up/do baby books, make a photo yearbook type thingy) - we'll see when I find the time for that. Anyways, I more or less followed this tutorial, but found that the whole taping the ribbons down with scotch tape thing to not work at all. Instead, I used athletic tape (no shortage of that around here) to tape the ribbons down on the sides of the canvas, and that seemed to work well. And the rest was pretty easy-peasy... yay!

fabric from Ikea ($4.99/metre!), canvas on sale at Michael's, batting, buttons, ribbon, thread from Fabricville

And lastly, one of my most favourite things is Hendrik acting out his favourite book, and one of his current top picks is Beady Bear. I bought it only because I like a few of the author's other books (Corduroy, Earl the Squirrel, A Rainbow of my Own), and knew nothing about it before it arrived on my doorstep (Amazon!). I can't say that it's one of my top picks, but Hendrik loves it; it's about a toy bear that ventures out on his own to find a cave after being left at home alone to read that bears are supposed to live in caves. The toy bear finds a cave, and then makes his way back home several times to pick up things that he needs: a pillow, a flashlight, something to read (the evening papers), and is finally found by his person (a boy named Thayer). Hendrik and I spent some time in our own cave, reading our own evening papers, under a blankie. It was lovely.

reading the evening papers