On his way home from work Alex pulled up a coworker's crap trap between Keats Island and the Gibsons pier and got these two beasts for dinner. When I got home I found them half alive wrapped in a garbage bag in the fridge, then watched him tackle them, boil them and shell them. The kitchen was a salty, facintating place for a while. The plan was to make crab cakes but we got derailed and ended up eating Annie's pasta for dinner instead... Oh well. Tomorrow we will take advantage of the fruits de mer.
There have been coyotes around Granthams for the last couple weeks. I don't think this is unusual, but I'm surprised at how long they've been lurking. We've even seen them in the morning along Marine Dr eating trash on garbage day and we see them outside our livingroom window at dusk in the same place, overlooking the ocean. Growing up in more or less the boonies wild animals weren't really a huge concern. We were always aware of black bears, and often heard the eeriness of a pack of coyotes howling in the forest. Once Lee was stalked by a cougar in the middle of the day. But there was no point in really worrying about it beyong taking the usual precautions. But here, with town so close and development now surrounding almost the entire area, I think the threat of unpredicable wildlife is a little more serious. Food is obviously lacking in the animal world right now if the coyotes are here night after night. I've been keeping an extra sharp eye out for plump and juicy little Sebi in the garden.
Last night I was washing dishes and outside the window was a scraggly old raccoon. He looked so sage and kept reappearing as though he was standing there to listen to our conversation. So I went outside to see him. Usually I want nothing to do with raccoons but there was something about this old guy. We stood outside together for a long time, just looking at each other. He played with a stick for a while. Then later as Alex and I were drinking a bottle of wine on the deck the raccoon climbed the cherry tree and sat in the branch almost overhanging the deck, like he was just hanging out with us. Then we saw the coyote. As it got dark we lost track of the raccoon and suddenly heard it being shredded in the driveway by the wild dog. It was over quickly, no fighting, just that fierce snorting sound raccoons make when they're going down and the viscious snarls of a creature about to have a meal. I guess like the crabs, the raccoon didn't stand a chance.

Officially, Sebastian's first word after mumum and dadadada is "hot." The root of this comes from the stove, naturally. A way to warn him not to play around the spitting bacon fat or the warm oven. Every time he sees the stove he whispers seriously, "hot.hot.hot.hot.hot.hot." (This doesn't stop him from climbing into the expensive stainless steel oven drawer and rocking around in it). Some days almost everything in the adult world is "hot.hot.hot.hot." When I lift him up to the counter so he can see his lunch being prepared or when we're watering the garden things are often, apparently, urgently hot. (Right now, apparently my ipod is hot.) I wasn't aware. But he also has his own language, one which he barks out with a stern face or babbles sweetly in. He's also developing an industrious side, no doubt from all the DIYing around our house. Alex seems to always be hammering something outside, and I'm constantly making bread and gardening so of course he joins us. It's very important work, piling dirt outside the planters, throwing rocks and banging wooden blocks on the glass door. Hmm.
He's also standing more and more. Those jolly jumper legs are paying off. He clings to my legs and sometimes I look down and realize he's not clinging, just standing. I don't think he realizes it which makes it comical, this tiny person standing the middle of a room with no obvious self-awareness. Then he collapses. He's been able to walk holding onto things for a long time and now he's attempting to run while holding on the couch, which usually results in him tumbling immediately. I hear the trouble making really begins once they learn to walk, so I'm not especially concerned about the next steps.
Another advancement in Sebastian's life is the new found skill to take off his diaper. That's a fun one. I try to let him go nude a lot of the time but other times it's not worth it. Like naps, or going into town. The other day he was trying to go down for a nap and after a lot of noise from his room subsided into silence I crept in with a blanket and there he was, little piquano, fast asleep, naked. He cracks me up.
The other day Sebastian and I walked to the beekeepers for some honey. The deal is there's basically an old unplugged fridge in the driveway stocked with hen and goose eggs, jars of honey and whatever else he's offering. You put your coins in his mail slot. It's nice. The walk took about an hour each way as we tend to meander. After the jutting hills of Granthams (with many stops to eat our apple and drink our water and, well, rest because I'm kind of out of shape) we followed the long quiet road at the foothill of Soames. It's a bit of an old country road, if there is such a thing in this part of the province. Straight, flat, pretty. At one point we looked up and realized there were cotton blooms in the air, an unusual sight here. Snow on a hot, blue sky day. On the way back we picked salmon berries and daisies. It was a wholesome kind of day.

my view when i look down most of the time

alex started his new job on keats island this week

the best way to trick a baby into wearing sunscreen is to let him put it on you

Claire and Cindy, cheeky aunties

Annie, Emma and Sara looking badass if you ask me

Elspeth and Andy

It's been almost a year since Alex and I got married on the bridge in Wakefield amongst most of our closest relatives and friends. We'd kind of overlooking our anniversary until about yesterday. It was swept up in other things: working, Father's Day (I've suddenly got TWO fathers to appreciate on Sunday and in one town, too), and maybe a bit of indifference on both of our parts. But we love the excuse to dress up and go out, so we usually succumb to such events. Our approach to our wedding was somewhat similar. It was swept up in the anticipation of the birth of our first child, in forty hour work weeks, and, well, some indifference. Neither of us felt like a wedding would represent much that we hadn't already vowed or knew or believed in. But as we started planning a little tiny ceremony it grew as we realized for reasons we probably didn't really understand that it was important to have a wedding. I don't think I fully understood why we were getting married until after our wedding, although I did think about it a lot before hand. I didn't want to speak empty words to Alex up there on the altar, I mean, bridge planks. But I think the wedding was less for us as a couple as it was for us as family. Not just Alex, me and Sebastian-the-fetus, but for everyone. There was something really nice in our love and commitment to each other being openly supported, acknowledged and celebrated by those who attended. I think it was the enthusiasm of our family and friends that really made the wedding special. When they got wind of a wedding (which I think we originally imagined with one or two Montreal friends at City Hall or something) they insisted on being there. I realized it was as important to them to bless us into this union as it was for us to let them. I'll never forget how my childhood friends Annie and Emma came (somewhat last minute) from Europe and Vancouver and how my beautiful aunties came (even more last minute) from BC, or how my mother-in-law graciously planned and hosted the entire reception. So this year I'm looking forward to spend some time just with Alex, a calmer, less distracted acknowledgment of our marriage than last year. And on Sunday, our anniversary, Father's Day, we'll naturally be all together, the way it should be. 

During the last few months, actually since about December, we've had the luxury of an abundance of at-home family time. Alex has been working a few days a week at Fred's and on Gambier Island which have been fairly casual and fortunate jobs. We've caught up on some sleep, taking turns sleeping in and napping to make up for the madness of a cross-country move and, well, having a baby and enjoying leisurely afternoons walking to town with Sebastian or taking turns writing and getting the house and garden in order. We've also had a lot of visitors that we've had a lot of time for. But, naturally, with a graduate degree on the horizon (and possibly a bit of tuition and certainly lost work-days so Alex can stay home with Sebastian) and dwindling projects at Fred and Leigh's, it was time to move on. We've been really fortunate in how easy it's been for Alex to find work here. It's hard to make a living on the Coast. Half the population seems to commute daily to downtown Vancouver and the other half seems to work at the mill or in labour jobs here and there so we were a little worried about how to sustain a life here. But after an afternoon at The Shed chatting with people going down to the dock, I'd found Alex a job and, simultaneously, he'd found himself an assistant carpentry job. So he got to choose.
As of next week, he'll be working over on Keats Island five days a week and I'll be working the other two days a week at The Shed. Our summer is officially immobile, but that's okay. Our summer was more or less filled with people coming and going anyways, I don't know if we could have found the energy to go on a trip. It's also nice because travelling with Sebastian isn't always a great experience. And he's at the age where putting him to sleep on someone's bed at a party is long-gone. So we'll be here. Trying to cram writing and gardening and relaxing into the crevasses of non-work time.

sleep, baby, sleep

We've undergone a revolution: in the course of a week or two Sebastian had learned how to sleep. It's been a few weeks now, so I assume it's fair to breath that sigh of relief I didn't think would ever come. At first he would toss and turn in our bed when he joined us in the middle of the night, then he starting waking up every hour, half hour, tossing and turning. It was exhausting. Then, at bedtime he didn't need us anymore. He happily lay down in his crib and babbled or sometimes off-and-on cried to himself, but not for us, just out of tiredness. In fact it was better if we weren't in the room. We just put him down and he worked it out on his own. THEN an amazing (and kind of frightening thing happened). One three a.m I woke up with a start and realized the little dude hadn't woken up yet. I tiptoed to his room to make sure he was still alive and there he was, breathing peacefully, fast asleep. It was a strange night. I couldn't get back to sleep. I was so used to being up a few times a night, sleepily offering him milk, or sitting on his bedroom floor as he tossed and turned in his crib, looking up once and a while to make sure I was still there. I mentioned it to a friend of mine and she laughed and said, "Yah, what's even more amazing is when you sleep through the night for the first time."
The next night, he didn't wake up until five, had some milk, then went back to bed for a couple more hours. How far we've come... a month or two ago we were still rocking the thirty-pound brick to sleep while walking around because heaven forbid we should sit down. Then that didn't work anymore, and there was the screaming for an hour, reaching through the bars of his crib before a forty minute nap phase. That was fun. I guess looking back on the last couple months we've all been slowly adjusting to this change, Alex and I yearning for it but not expecting it anytime soon, and Sebastian slowly evolving.
I'm proud of all of us. I also think it's funny that we assumed Sebastian would co-sleep with us for years to come and that we were more or less okay with that, but that Sebastian decided he wanted his own bed. A part of me is a little sad to see that phase go, but a kid's gotta do... Alex and I didn't want to leave him to cry for hours to learn to sleep better, and we didn't. We sacrificed a lot and employed a great deal of patience for a gentle transition and Sebastian adjusted way quicker than we even imagined. I know a lot of parents would be shocked at a ten month old just learning to sleep on his own, and that some babies sleep through the night after their first few weeks. Well, good for them.

I've been collecting pieces of writing to start a different blog or website, something more to the tune of the writing project I had imagined when I started filling this little space. I'm happy to leave this one as a record of Sebastian's development and a way to keep him in far-away friends' lives, but also want to start building something more artistic, less intimate. I'll let you know once I get it up.
So, what to say. It's been a great weekend here. Lots of sunshine, gardening, visiting with friends from out of town and those just returning from adventures, drinking beer on the beach and sitting by the fire. And working, which I'm loving. It's a pretty cool place, good people watching. I'm getting a better idea of who's in town, and realizing there are a lot of artistic and friendly people here, and most have young kids. It's an interesting little world, this marine life-- one I never got to know very well growing up outside of town and having no reason so linger on the docks for too long. The girl who runs the Shed grew up on a boat down in the marina and her parents live in a sail boat a stone's throw from the restaurant, so we get a lot of local business as well as tourists. You get to see people lumber off their boats, some just in for a day, most from West Van or thereabouts and every afternoon the prawn fisherman come in and unload. It feels good to be social again without a baby clinging to me, although I have to say I do miss Sebastian. He and Alex usually wander down to say hello and have a fish taco. The other day I happened to turn around and glance at him sitting there in the little highchair and Sebastian was twisted all the way around staring at me with this ridiculously huge and loving smile on his face, and he continued to do so almost the entire time he was there. Oh man. It was a beautiful sight. Coming home to him and Alex is all the sweeter.
What else can I say? My brother Simon came home last week from his crazy adventure sailing around the world. He sailed from Panama City to Sydney Aus in three and a half months on a fifty footer and then hung out with our family in Aus for a month or so before coming home to teach sailing the Bay in Gibsons. We all went to the airport to meet him and it just so happened that some of the Young relative who immigrated to Australia instead of Canada back in the day were coming over for a visit and were on the same flight as Simon, so almost all of our Chilliwack and Vancouver relatives made it their business to be there. It was a little family reunion in the airport, hilarious. It's great to have Simon back.
Other than that, with this sunny weather the garden is finally starting to take off. I planted a bunch of seeds last week and they've all emerged. I think we have: (so freaking many) beets, red russian kale, swiss chard, sunflowers, beans, broccoli, sweet peas, two types of squash, zucchini, strawberries, lettuce, spinach, basil, rosemary, margarome, mint, sage, chives, parsley, "wild" flowers (I sowed them), and of course, Alex's tomatoes, which he has painstakingly been trying to coax from their pots but which we planted outside too soon and seem to be stunted (but looking very healthy, nonetheless). I would have liked to grow, and will hopefully try next year or maybe this year if I can manage, quinoa, potatoes, corn and onions.

our fireplace

granthams is hilly as shit, you do what you can

our pilaging capacity has reached new heights. this wooden box, ancient window frames from the beach, tables and fire wood are some of our more cherished finds.

sweet pea flowers

the cherry tree and this weird plot i'm trying to resurrect.

us/our window/our balcony/our kitchen/outside.

baby blue: sleepy, teething