pack unpack pack upack

 Pack unpack pack upack… we are back from a weekend in Toronto and will get ready for Jamaica take-off any time now (aaaaany time now, really) – we’ll drive back to the city again tomorrow night, so as to avoid an early start with a mess of other commuters on Wednesday morning. And then we’ll be in Jamaica! On a beach, with warm sunny weather all around! I hope. Here’s a quick recap of our weekend in Toronto:

We started it off with a bed pick-up; I found a travel bed/travel tent on Craigslist and snatched it up for less than half of the regular in-store asking price. Any time we sleep away from home (which is never, right?), we fold up the pack and play and mattress and cart it around. Sure, it’s convenient, but it’s also heavy and cumbersome and it makes traveling light (with two children) seem like a reality only to be found light years away. I thought the new red bed might mean we could travel with just one portable cot… but we’ll see. On night one Alana slept with me for most of the night (she was fussy fussy fussy), and on night two, both kids were in separate fold-up cribs. Anyways, from there we continued on to lunch at our very favourite pizza place, Pizzeria Libretto – I’ve blogged about the to-die-for-delicious pizzas before, and the lunch deal is still as good as gold. The $15 set menu allows for a choice of an arugala-walnut-pear salad or a beet caprese, a margharita pizza, and gelato or biscotti for dessert. Plus bread and oil and your choice http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=776151006586619354#editor/target=post;postID=4928158167715168937of sparkling or still water… I love it! We were all in food heaven for a good hour before our parking meter ran out and we had to attend to our next order of business – the library. I’m on my way to becoming obsessed with H.A. Rey, and found a small list of hard to find books at one of Toronto Public Libraries many branches, and voila! it was just around the corner from our lunch spot. The kids fell asleep in the car, and Steve stayed with them while I spent an hour or so drooling over some seriously hard to find, expensive books. I could have stayed there all afternoon but then… Steve called and Alana was crying her eyes out in the background and I quickly came down from rare-book-heaven and back to the reality of a nursing mom – I have to feed my baby eeeeek! Anyways, it was all good.

books!

hendrik, upside down in alana's carseat... he was on.fire.

 And then – and then (and here I feel like I’m just getting into way too much detail but whatever) – we get to our hotel and I’m waiting with the kids with our pile of stuff while Steve checks in, and picture this: I’m feeding Alana and Hendrik is climbing all OVER our stuff, into Alana’s carseat and upside down and jumping on the crib mattress and rolling around on the floor as if the waiter snuck a double espresso in his gelato… and meanwhile, the lobby is overflowing with people and bustle, and Hendrik is commanding a good deal of attention - rambunctious little two-year old (or was it our mountain of stuff?) goes berserk! Most folk were wearing conference name-tag thingies, and I asked someone what was going on and what was it but a READING conference. I could hardly contain myself! And there were booths galore downstairs – all geared towards literacy and reading and educating educators with the goal of encouraging the development of a lifelong interest in reading. Ak! After we get keys and schlepped all of our stuff upstairs, Hendrik and beelined down and got past security with a special tag (we caught the last 20 minutes before tear-down began) and ogled at books, and of course, bought a few (The Biggest House in the World and Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature). Fast forward a few hours and Steve goes out for eats and to the Raptors game with a bunch of his buddies, and I hang out with the kids. Saturday we walked around The Bay and then met friends for an afternoon playdate. Sunday morning we hit up the ROM and Hendrik and Hunter (Rob’s kiddo) ripped around the awesome dino exhibit, and then ripped around some more in another wing of the enormous museum. After lunch we drove out to Mississauga to see Peter and Lisa Turpin and their new little guy Mason who is just two weeks old, eek! And then it was back to B-ville where had supper waiting for us – amazing! It was a great weekend, full and fab.

museum dads, museum dudes: rob, steve, hendrik and hunter

And since I’m doing my best to stay off the grid in Jamaica, this might be the last post for a week and a half or so – we’re just bringing the ipad so maybe maybe I’ll sneak one in there… but maybe not. And now it’s time to pack.

skating, round two!