at the beach

at the cottage. Everyone was here yesterday, but Dad had to go back into town today for the night, so it's a girls (plus the boy) night, wooh! Right now though, the girl is napping, the boy is down at the beach with his grannie, my sister and her wee lass have gone for a drive to get some air conditioning and see if that makes wee lass feel a bit better, and I'm up here, all by myself. It's quite lovely. Quiet, breezy, nice. I'm going to lounge around and read a book I think. Should last at least another 5 minutes, I better take advantage!

quite something, really

I've been posting for 7 years on this site. It's moved around a bit, had different names, but 7 years nonetheless. And in that entire time, I've posted at least once a month save for 3 months. I find that very impressive. And I am not easily impressed.

That's not true, I'm actually really easily impressed. And amused. But I like that about myself, it keeps things interesting.

then again, maybe 4 is too young for team sports

I knew 3 was, which is why we didn't put the boy in soccer last summer, but all of his friends had played, so we decided he could this year. Or should, whatever. Anyway, he mostly had a great time running around "playing soccer", but the last few games he would get really sour when he didn't get the ball or didn't score a goal. We tried explaining to him that everybody is trying to get the ball, and it wouldn't be fun for anybody else if he always had the ball, that you have to take turns, blah blah blah, like reasoning with a piece of bacon, but to no avail. To the point last night, his last game of the season, which I had to bring little girl to because the man had to work late, where he got so upset about not having sole custody of the soccer ball that we got to the "either stop crying and go play with your friends, or we're going home to bed (a good hour earlier than usual)" stage. He opted to not go back out and play, so we did indeed come home and go to bed. He fell asleep almost immediately, as, thankfully, did the little lady, who almost always has a very hard time falling to sleep if we keep her up past 6-6:30. We're discovering, to no great surprise, that there is no reasoning with upset 4-year olds. It doesn't matter what you bribe or threaten him with, he just is upset and will continue to be that way generally until you just leave him alone and he calms down on his own. We're hoping this is a phase. It's a phase, right?

good heavens

June? Really? I'm sorry. It's not like I've been busy working or anything. The minutae of my daily grind just haven't inspired me to keep a journal, you know? July was absolutely gross, as far as "summer" weather goes. I don't think we had more than an hour of sunshine the whole month. The first day of summer was decidedly un-summery, and it continued from there. We've had a few nice days so far this month though, so hopefully it will keep up. Having said that though, the nights are quite cool already, and although the boy likes to keep us guessing as to what he'll be wearing to bed, going to bed in one set of jammies and getting up the next morning in another, or in underwear...the girl has made the move to long sleeves and legs. Not of her own wishes, clearly, she still doesn't have much say in the matter. I tried to let her pick out of the drawer a few times, but she really doesn't have a firm grasp on the type of jammies vs type of weather correlation, so it doesn't generally go well. We're not to the flannels yet, but we're out of the cute little shorts and t-shirts. Silly girl won't wear a blanket, so we have to dress her a little warmly.

We've been to the cottage a couple of times, the man has been quite busy with his course and with work, so we took off for the better part of a week and left him here. I think he didn't really mind too much, and despite the weather not being terribly welcoming, we had a lovely time. We all went for the long weekend, as did my sister and her man and their new sweet baby girl, and it was LOVELY weather, and the baby was relatively cooperative, as far as 4 week old babies go, and we got some very nice family pics taken by our cottage neighbour. All in all a good time! We made ice cream for mom's birthday (belated) but our technique was not well thought out, so we ended up with nice chocolate ice cream with great giant gobs of (natural) peanut butter, rendering it slightly inedible. Tasty, but difficult to manage. We'll try again, I'm sure. I actually haven't made ice cream since the delish peanut butter stuff, and that was probably 2 months ago, so I'm due for some new I'd say. The man and the boy only ever want mint chocolate chip, the boy actually prefering his without the chips, so that gets a bit boring. I like mine with about as much excitement as possible, but then I'm the only one who will eat it.

Hmm. I can't even remember, did I tell you about my job for the fall? Yes, I did. Ok. I just finised up the training for the French part, and was quite impressed with how well I was able to understand and speak the language, having been quite out of practise these past 5 years or so. Like riding a bike! I think teaching French this new way is going to be really good, much easier than drilling lists of vocab and grammar, and probably more enjoyable for the kids. People who have been teaching for years though are having a bit of a time adjusting to the new way. It's very logical, did you learn your first language with grammar drills and vocabulary lists? Likely no. But you learned, and learned pretty well. So why not apply that same learning style to 2nd languages? It seems to work. People hate change though, is the thing. Not change for me, I've never taught that way, so I'm a happy camper! I've also found someone to look after my sweet offspring, which is nice, but I'm still not at all looking forward to that part. She's a lovely woman, she came recommended by several people I work with, she even has kids the same age as mine, and a swingset, but the boy at first refused to get out of the car the first time we went, and the girl cries just about every time I leave the room, if there's anyone in that room who she's not intimately acquainted with, so the first couple of weeks should be just wonderful. I'm going to bring them for a couple of hours here and there before I go back full time, hopefully that will help. I know we've done it before, and at least the kids will get to be together, but it just still really sucks.

The man is taking vacation the last week of August, he'll be finished his course and I won't be back to work yet, so we'll try to make some great plans for that time. Camping, maybe? I think that would be better for the men / boy folk than for me / the girl, but we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll drop the kids off somewhere and have a night to ourselves for the first time in...a really long time. Endless possibilities. Endless.

I painted a mural from the Curious George movie on the playroom wall. It's pretty cute, it's from the part where George gets into the lady's apartment and she's having it painted, so there are all these open cans of paint lying around. That's just asking for trouble, if you ask me. Anyway, George takes it as an invitation, and paints a jungle scene with palm trees and giraffes and whatnot all over the walls. He also paints himself and the man in the yellow hat, but I didn't do that part. The boy likes the mural, but did point out that we were missing those 2 key things. I told him we didn't do the *whole* thing, just a part, so hopefully he'll let me not paint that part. Memory like a steel trap, that one. It's going to serve him well I'm sure, but for now it's a pain, because you can't get away with anything. My memory is terrible, so he definitely got that from the man.

As usually happens when I sit down to do something, the little lady is waking up, so I should probably go get her. She's likely soiled herself, it seems to be her favourite way to wake herself up from naps. I'd choose something else, but to each her own.