Summer vacation

Fun in the sun or fun with daddy's sunglasses:

Relaxing lazy days on the beach:

Anouk throwing rocks into the water:

This beach was really fun until I was spooked by a snake scuttling over our quilt and then a multitude of jellyfish in the water:

Climbing on driftwood:

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catch up

It's September and cool weather is settling over the city. An end to a beautiful summer - although I am still banking on some warm autumn days...

I need to catch up on some posting here and there is no way to summarize this in one single post, so I will just publish a sequence of posts that I should have written and published weeks ago...

Here we go!

"happy goodbye"

"Happy goodbye" is what the daycare calls a child's last day at daycare when the child's time at the centre is celebrated and the child then moves on to either the next centre or to school.

Liam had his last day at daycare on Friday. It was a huge day for him and for me. To think that he was only six months old when I went back to work and he started his daycare days... And now he's five and ready for school! It is these days that we realize how time goes by and how our children have grown up.

I really wanted to mark this last day and so I got organized with the other parents whose kids were going to Kindergarten. I wanted to make a quilt to leave at the daycare, a quilt that would represent all the children who were going to school this year.

Every parent emailed me information about their children and I chose fabrics to represent them. It was an incredibly rewarding and satisfying process.

For Liam I chose fabrics that would show his love for books and for stories. A book reading a book in the centre, stories and music all around and a strip of astronauts. The astronauts are for Liam's goodbye song, a song with which he was sent home every day: "Zoom-zoom astronaut, do you know you name or not?" Then a long pause would ensue when Liam would ponder a character from a story that he wanted to be, then after some prodding he would say "Sophie" or "Harry Potter" or "Saucepan Man".

Here is Liam's square:

And here is the entire quilt:

For his last day Liam wanted me to bring lemon cupcakes with lemon icing for his last snack to share with everyone. I also wanted to bring something for every child. In Germany children get a big cone filled with school supplies and candy on their first day of school: the "Schultüte". I thought this would be a wonderful tradition to share with all his friends. So Mark and I made 24 little cones that we filled with a couple of candies, a pencil, an eraser and some stickers. We bought all the school supplies at the Japanese dollar store (which is definitely one of my favourite stores in town!!).

Here is the making of the Schultüten:

Here is Liam talking about the tradition and what this is:

Liam and his friends eating the lemon cupcakes:

The Schultüten in the kids' cubbies:

One of the many beautiful things the daycare does for the deprting kids is to make an album for them about their time at the centre. Here is Liam's teacher reading through Liam's goodbye book with everyone.

I am forever grateful to the daycare. They have been a fantastic and valuable part of our family.

Giving them a quilt was my way of giving the warmth they have given Liam back. A way to say thank you.

And making the quilt was cathartic as I was wrapping my head around Liam growing up, as he leaves the safe environment of daycare and is off to school.

I am glad we have a wonderful (and much needed!) vacation coming up before we have to drop him off at school for the first time...

The flower lady

These bouquets could be found all over the neighbourhood. People bought them from the flower lady on 8th. She had this amazing garden with these flowers that she cut and bound into bunches and sold them for $1 or 2 each.

She was elderly, a bit hunch-backed and usually either in her garden or in her driveway making the bouquet wearing a large straw hat.

I often bought flowers from her, from her little stand with a jar for the money. I never talked with her, except for a quick "Hello, beautiful flowers today!" - she never seemed like she wanted to talk.

She brought a lot of colour and joy to this neighbourhood and I think not many people knew much about her. I didn't even know her name.

Now I do.

Her name was Georgia. She was born in 1920 and passed away in 2010. The little stand that used to be filled with her flowers now just has note with her name and the year she was born and the year she died. Someone is putting fresh flowers on the stand in her memory, in the same mason jars her little bouquets used to be in.

Thank you for your flowers, Georgia!

Summertime

Nothing says summer like a plate full of cold watermelon on a hot afternoon:

Eaten in the shade,

with juice dripping onto your belly.

Just hanging out in the sun.

Later painting with water colours at the kitchen table:

After painting on paper, trying some body art:

This is the beautiful picture Liam made for me:

Lazy, happy day in the sun!

Bliss.

Ready or not, here we grow!

I cannot believe how quickly the kids are growing up!! Liam turned 5 last weekend and we had am "Enchanted Garden" birthday party. Liam wanted a costume as a garden fairy in yellow with green buttons and an orange wavy border.

This is how it turned out (together with the costume design drawing he made):

Here he is wearing the garden fairy costume with his fairy crown:

We had a puppet show, balloon animals and a wading pool set up for the kids. It was a lot of fun! And we were so lucky with the weather!! It was one of the rare sunny days of this summer.

Yesterday I was helping Liam brush his teeth when we noticed that one of his front teeth is loose. I almost teared up... It seems like yesterday that we went through many tears while he was teething and those teeth came through...

Anouk is talking more and more every day. She loves to sit on the front steps and say "hi!' to everyone who comes by, "hi doggie!" "hi people!" "hi bike!".

This morning when I dropped her off at her daycare and said "Bye-bye, I love you" she looked at me and smiled and said "Love you!" and then ran off to play. She is so full of energy and full of life - and already so independent!

I am very proud of these growing children!! ... although I did make Liam promise not to play with that loose tooth, because if it falls out it really means that he is growing up and I'm not sure I am ready for that. He just gave me his Liam grin and told me it was inevitable, he was going to grow up whether I was ready or not.

How true.

Flying

As we walked to daycare today Liam announced he had a big project today. He was going to work on it all day.

"Oh, that's great" I said, wanting to encourage him to dedicate his day to his wonderful, creative project.

"What is your project?"

"I'm going to fly."

"?"

"Yeah, it will be great."

"OK."

Then I thought of him jumping off the climber, the roof or any other high structure to fly. I saw us in the ER with a broken arm...

"...so you know that flying is only pretend, right?"

"Hmm, I think I can do it. I'll work hard on it all day."

OK, so the whole, if you dedicate yourself to a project and really work hard on it, your chances of success are high thing - he got that. Good. Just not that it won't work for flying.

"Humans can't fly, we don't have wings." I said, hoping that this very reasonable objection would make sense to him and make him realize that nobody is flying around town...

"Oh, well, I am going to use a broom."

OK, I blame that entirely on Harry Potter. So now my picture of him jumping off a high structure has been modified to include a broom.

By that time we were at the daycare. I went up to one of the teachers and let her know about Liam's big plan for the day. Just as we were discussing climbers, brooms and broken arms we overheard Liam announcing that he was going to fly to another parent.

We then talked with Liam about birds and wings and pectoral muscles and how we humans don't have any of those. The we talked about helicopters, paragliders, airplanes and other flying devices. We talked about how a broom is just a broom and can't fly. But, it didn't seem to matter. When we saw his determination, we, the adults mouthed "Ikarus" to each other.

OK, so now my image is Liam on a broom on a climber flying to near to the sun and then falling and breaking his arm.

When I left we had decided that he would illustrate and write a book about Liam flying.

Hopefully this will work. I will be waiting all day long for the phone call that I need to pick him up since he just jumped down from the climber and has a broken arm.