i must bragg

I must bragg! No, not about the garden, but about my mother. She spends the better half of the year taking care of my garden in Toronto and helping me take care of my kids, yet still, when she gets back to her own garden in Latvia she manages to have it look like a botanical paradise in no time. And it's not like all she does is gardening. At the moment she's managing a demanding interior design project for an agricultural building. Go figure!!!

a long one

I think I owe Stella and her grandparents and dad a little update regarding the milestones she has reached in the last few weeks, because I have been a lousy blogger and have not recorded the updates as they come… sorry guys! My shoes have taken priority. Ha!

Well, Stella has been crawling (or shuffling along is more like it) for the last two weeks. She began shuffling along ever so slowly a few days before her 7 month birthday and by now she has learned to do it in three speeds. The first I call “she’s not moving” move. She does it ever so discreetly and slowly, but before you realize that she’s moving she has already reached an object which should have in the first place been way out of her reach. The second speed is the so called “shuffle” speed, which gets her across a medium sized room at a decent pace, especially, if she sees something she likes on the floor ahead of her. The third is the fastest, but also a little dangerous, still. When she gets super excited, she likes to lift her butt up, get up on her hands and knees, then swing back and forth a few times and plunge forward sometimes moving her hands in a position ahead and sometimes not. Needless to say, at times she ends up face first on the floor and that isn’t always the happiest of situations. However, as days go by she gets better and better at it and probably by the time we get on the plane she’ll be a crawler. As if I need that on my hands! And speaking of planes… My mother has abandoned me. I will be flying back with my two kiddos on my OWN. No. I cannot say I’m happy about it. Not one bit!

Stella is also sitting on her own these days. It has not been long, just a week or so, but it most certainly has opened up new possibilities. Playing while sitting instead of lying down on ones stomach is a whole new thing for Stella. And it buys me more time to do some of the things I want to get done during the day and cannot, if Stella is sitting in my lap, on my hip or in a baby sling across my shoulder. You see, traveling restricts a parent to only a handful of smaller sized baby gadgets and it makes one appreciate the oodles of high chairs, baby seats, jolly jumpers, excersaucers and other equally terribly named and badly designed plastic objects made in China. As much as I hate the look of these items and often will curse their poor design (under my breath, of course) I have to admit that they are cheap and give me much needed time (with free hands!) while keeping Stella thoroughly occupied. Of course, if I had oodles of cash at my disposal I’d buy the stuff that’s well designed, beautiful and made in Canada. Some people do make beautiful baby gear!!! However … I opt for the next best thing … second hand and freebies left on the curbside by those, whose kids have outgrown these large plastic contraptions.

On June 18th Stella popped her first tooth, but I forgot to mention that only a few days later came the second and now she is a proud owner of two very sharp teeth and she bites, bites like crazy! She also looks very funny with these two little saw blades behind the bottom lip. She’s constantly touching them with her tongue and occasionally even bites her own tongue. It looks very cute! Charming… especially when she giggles and laughs while doing it. She is a very happy and smiley baby, still very mellow and easy going compared to her older brother. And a great sleeper!!! Comparing Kaspar and her in that field is impossible. They are like the opposite poles. Even though it’s obvious that Stella is still teething and most likely will be going home with not only two but three teeth, she still sleeps “like a baby” (Don’t you love the absurdity of that saying?) and hardly ever complains at night!

Now, speaking of the older brother… He’s turning three on Thursday! That’s tomorrow. Yikes! I do remember him turning two last year, but I hardly remember the year in between. It seems like it’s only been days since he turned two and only months since he was born. Time is a speedy little creature! Kaspar is so excited about his birthday! He keeps asking me: “How many more times do I have to sleep and wake up before it will be my birthday?” He’s been singing the “happy birthday to you” (you wouldn’t know it, if it weren’t for the lyrics, of course) song all day today. “But I’m only practicing, mommy”, he tells me. We’ve promised him balloons for his birthday. He wants “all red balloons, all red; and one yellow, and one green, and one blue, and a pink one, and a white one and orange, too, but not black; black balloons are angry; let’s have all red balloons, ok?” Pleasing a three year old on his birthday is not as easy as some might have you believe!

an ode to an old shoe

My favourite summer slippers just fell apart. Fell apart completely. Un-fix-ably so!!! And I’m sad to be getting rid of them. They have been my companions for five summers. They have traveled to Latvia several times, to Spain and Lithuania and Estonia and probably some other countries I cannot think of at the given moment and many trips to cottages of friends and relatives and gone through dry and wet weather and finally they have decided that enough is enough… So, I bid fare well to my good old Fluevogs slippers. And it would only be fair to say that even though I have only ever owned four pairs of Fluevogs in my life, they have always grown to be the shoes (or boots) I wear the most and wear the longest. Let’s all have a cheer for Fleuvogs! And the best part - I only paid 39$ for them!