We're heading to Ottawa and Montreal in a few days, which is mighty exciting. We haven't been back since we left for good. It feels like it's been a long time. more than a year and a half. I've written a lot about Montreal, especially Saint Henri. throughout the last year. I didn't write much at all in Montreal which was really hard, so I'm glad to make something of it in retrospect. Somedays when I really think about Montreal, the mundane details like going grocery shopping, taking the metro and walking along the canal, I'm overwhelmed with nostalgia. Sometimes the time out East seems like a strange dream that I'm not necessarily eager to return to but that captivates me nonetheless. So I'm excited to go back and walk around the city for a couple of days, and to be able to show the old sights to a cognizant Sebastian Henri. We're also definitely looking forward to relaxing in Ottawa, taking advantage of eager grandparents for some time together, spending some time in a city, watching Sebastian connect with his part of the family he doesn't often see. I think he's getting excited too. 

I'm feeling really blessed these days. I look around and see everyone at different stages of their journeys and can recognize the amount of work that still needs to be done, but overall this seems like a prosperous time. I love seeing the hardships finally pay off in my friends life, to see people cycle back into gain. Sometimes the universe seems like its crumbling for so long and we work and work and work to keep it together or make some sense of it, and eventually all that hard work comes together and the benefit is incredible. I believe the pay-off is best when we've worked our asses off to get there, and looking around I'm proud of everyone's endurance. Elsepth has conquered the restaurant world with a stage at Joe Beef with various doors opening after moving to Montreal two years ago as a bit of a notorious wanderer, a timid Anglo and a dishwasher in a drama-filled restaurant. Andy is almost done his MA at Concordia, had his debut story published in the Matrix and seems to have found a real niche with fellow writers and intellects. Julia and Greg are a beautiful family and have concrete proof in Olive that they're doing a wonderful job and should have more babies! Fabienne is finally enjoying Montreal, is making amazing fabrics and projects at her textiles school and just got a long-coveted job at the Musee des Beaux-Arts. Annie has shed the confines of the London School of Economics and is tackling journalism at Ryerson, and I know she will be an amazing documentary maker.
I'm proud of my own endurance as well. This has been a really hard and strange year and a half for me, as I've said many times before. When I think of the state I was in this time last year I'm amazed with the contrast. We're so rich these days, spoiled with all of these full-time family days while Alex isn't working, having so little stress to distract us from just loving each other and being their for each other, giving Sebastian all the patience and attention that he needs, taking time to write and be with our friends. I also received my acceptance to the MFA program at the University of British Columbia this week which was a huge relief and I'm flooded with motivation to make the most of this opportunity for myself and my family. I worked really hard on my portfolio, and my undergrad degree, and feel a definite shift towards my opinions of university. During my undergrad, at the worst of times, when I had to take any courses aside from writing workshops I generally felt like just getting through it, didn't connect to most of the content and didn't feel like I could balance my personal life with what was expected of me as a student. There were a lot of great times and I certainly don't regret my time at university but I am aware of a lot of missed opportunity, and also a lot of wasted time on topics that I really didn't care about. Now I finally get to return to the aspects that I loved about university and won't need to water them down with extraneous obligations. This isn't about getting a degree anymore, it's about writing and I really feel ready for that challenge.
I catch myself thinking about Alex's place in all this a lot. I often ask him how he's feeling about the move, and always it's the same shrug and neutral, "Good." He says he's excited about the move in a lot of ways, but is also sad to leave Andy, his brothers and his parents. Alex has an amazing ability to be optimistic and accepting of any situation. He's incredibly easy-going and patient, and although sometimes I feel like I deserve this move to BC because I've sacrificed a lot in the last two years for him, I also realize that it's not about me or him anymore. It's about us. I have watched Alex go through so many challenges this year, many great, many not so great. He never stopped working at what needed to be done. He's become more outgoing and sociable and tackled some big projects while we've been in Montreal. Montreal has done a lot of good for him, so it's hard to say, "This isn't working for me." It's hard to be the one to steer us in another direction when I'm not sure what he will find in that direction. I think Alex has some more work to do, and I alone find that daunting. I imagine he feels it's daunting, too. His main ambition is always writing, and I think it always will be, and as a consequence having a job that detracts time from this is endlessly frustrating. I don't know what direction he'll go in. I hardly know that of myself, but luckily I have an opportunity to figure it out while investing in something bigger at UBC. I hope that he finds something that fulfills him soon because he really deserves it.

I've been having a lot of dreams lately. Strange, half-significant dreams, one after the other after the other after the other. There are themes running through them, too. The other night I had two dreams about holes, like in one I expected to stand in essentially a grave filled with straw while a horse towered over me, and in another I was crawling out of a hole in a hatch in the ground and I was covered in white sugar. Strange. I just packed all my books in a box and taped it up, otherwise I would dig out my dream decoder. I'm sure Freud would have something to say about it.
These last couple days we've been having people in and out of our apartment as we try to rent it. This weekend we're having a kind of open-house garage sale on Sunday so there will be even more people coming in and out, browsing through our stuff. It feels kind of gross. Strangers opening your closets, twisting your shower knobs, peering out your windows. So far no one has jumped at the chance to take the place which makes it worse. One woman refused to take her boots off so stood in our hallway on two sheets of paper dripping icy dirt and I wanted to be like, "Get the hell out of our house!"
Anyhow, I suppose the end is near.
Sebastian has been having a hard time sleeping these days. He wakes up a lot. There was a time when once he was down, he was down and would often sleep for ten straight hours. But now he wakes up at all hours, whining and yelling in his sleep, eyes closed. What wakes him up? How can I teach him to help himself? He is going through a lot of changes right now and because of that I am infinitely patient most of the time. Watching him struggle to worm around the tiles, learning to crawl, knowing his teeth are coming in, seeing how his mind is far surpassing his physical abilities these days is hard. I watch him watching older babies, toddlers, kids and know he understands something his body doesn't yet. No wonder he can't sleep properly! But at the same time, isn't he exhausted?!
There are also a lot of changes in our life, such as all these people coming in and out at his bedtime, nap time. Such as the last couple months, so much travel, so much socializing. I really feel like hibernating for a while, if not for my sake for his. It will be a couple more months until we can settle in somewhere, have a quiet bedtime, have quiet days, have a more baby-centered existence which I think he would benefit from. By then he will be so old! Sometimes I wonder about the habits he will develop in the meantime. I want him to have a positive relationship to sleep, to be relaxed and rested when he wakes up, to feel safe, such as when he is tired he has the opportunity to crash without people keeping him awake, at least until he learns what restful sleep is again.