May nine.

I have a writers block tonight, combined with that dreadful feeling of having read over several stories I thought weren’t half bad only to discover they are, in fact, quite bad. So I thought I could at least blabber on here for a while.
Alex, Sebastian and I are now happily in our new home. It’s so lovely. I can’t get enough of it. The constant reminder that I am home on the West Coast is magnified by the huge windows of ocean, mountain, beach, cedars. Tonight at dusk I walked down to the beach and sat in the Squamish First Nations land, which is a long stretch through the forested coastline of creepily abandoned houses. They’re planning some sort of development for this area but for now it’s a long row of boarded-up beach houses. People must have just up and left their homes, all at once, because there are still chairs on the decks, kids toys scattered about, damp mattresses. Apparently there is still food in some of the cupboards, in the fridges, mould everywhere.
Shipping six hundred pounds across the county paid off. We don’t have a car here, are fairly isolated from main amenities and the two thrift stores are pretty unreliable for practical items, so it was nice to open boxes and find things we needed. Packing and unpacking, carrying box after box from car to house always makes me want to purge more. We’d been living out of backpacks for the last two months and when I discover several boxes of clothes I had literally forgotten existed it’s easy to question whether or not I actually need them. The answer is no, by the way.
I’ve been reconnecting with some old friends and enjoying some solo time here and there. I went to Vancouver alone the other day. I’ve never been apart from Sebastian for more that like four hours, so I decided it would be nice to take that old methodical trip into the city and see some friends. The month of May is full of visitors. In a few days Aja is coming over which I’m so looking forward to.
Sebastian is changing a lot. He doesn’t seem like a baby anymore. He likes to play and make us laugh. He wants to be carried around a lot, wants to see the world from our level, wants to explore the house alone sometimes. He’s not consistent in a lot of ways, more demanding. Grocery shopping with him, for example, is risky; sometimes he mutinies.
He’s also shifting into putting himself to sleep, much to our excitement and also exhaustion. He is figuring out how to sleep on his stomach without crawling. Last night he crawled then flopped around in his crib alone for a long time and then… silence. It was amazing. He’d managed to entirely put himself to sleep. But in the night when he wakes up and joins us in our bed we have to deal with a restless kid. Sometimes he sleeps horizontally, stretching us to opposite sides of the bed, testing our patience. We don’t have a go-to thing to help him sleep anymore. Milk doesn’t often help, swaddling definitely doesn’t help. Songs are the best we’ve got, but basically he is all he’s got and it’s been a long-time adjustment for him. I am exhausted, and so it Alex. Sometimes Sebastian wakes me up every ten minutes, sometimes I’m awake with him for an hour or more in the night, just patiently waiting for him to find a comfortable position, or trying to soothe his frustrated screaming. Man oh man. I’m finding my memory loss is out of control, as is my unabashed lust for coffee. But I know we’re on the brink of something, just stretching over this little phase, and with that in mind it’s easier to endure