Aurora Wells

Happy Belated Easter, everyone! I’m a little late posting our Easter festivities, so here goes.

I wasn’t raised in the Christian tradition, so perhaps I’m overcompensating a bit now that I have a kid to spoil, but after the relative austerity of Passover (”Here, kid, chew on this dry matzah bread as a treat!”) there’s something terribly unsettling about the sugary abundance of secular Easter celebrations. I only remember two occasions in my childhood when the Easter Bunny included me in the bounty of the season; once, when I was fairly young, my brother and I found a humongous basket of treats on our Lake Arrowhead cabin’s front porch, along with a mass of deep gashes on the front door, which led me to believe that the famous “bunny” was more of a frighteningly large clawed beast; and once, as a teen, when my good friend Stephanie included me in her family’s egg hunt, at which I was introduced to some of the more disgusting candy-foam-and-chunky-bits-type treats hidden within seemingly innocent-looking chocolate eggs.

I’ve admitted before that the lovely, cheerful pastels of Easter and spring make me unreasonably happy, and that I tend to fall carelessly in love with all the pretty treats and decorations on display at the beginning of March. Maybe next year I’ll be a bit more cautious about it, for Aurora’s sake. Between the neighbourhood Easter hunt at Cambie Village, the egg hunt in our backyard, and the later egg hunt at Grandma’s house, Aurora got more candy in one weekend than a kid should get in a whole year. After a few days of chocolate, jellybeans, and more chocolate, who’s to wonder that the child is fluctuating every 20 minutes between sobbing anguish and bouncing off the walls?

The “I can’t quite believe it’s true” face when she discovered that the Easter Bunny really came to our own backyard this year. I love the outfit she picked out – Halloween’s spiderweb leggings and her current favourite dress.

What is that huge gold thing behind the wisteria?

The Easter Bunny must have ordered this confection from Williams-Sonoma. I hope he got it at the just-before-Easter sale price!

Aurora also found hidden the twelve hollow eggs she dyed before Easter.

Not a bad haul, kiddo!

Grandma Shaun’s new backyard doesn’t have a lot of hiding places, but the Easter Bunny did a pretty good job here, too.

Ah! The joy of discovery!

Cousin Livvie shows off a pink egg to Mommy and me.

Opening the eggs takes some serious concentration, you know.

Cousin Kayden was very dilligent – most of his candy was gone before dinner.

I just want to squeeze this girl!

I just want to squeeze this girl, too. Here she is on the front porch with me, on Good Friday afternoon, having mint chocolate rooibos tea in a special blue mug.

The weather was so beautiful Friday afternoon that a photographer was roaming around our neighborhood taking actors’ head shots. Aurora wondered what the big silver circle they carried was for, so I demonstrated how to bounce light onto her face with a big red chair cushion.

I think I got some rather nice portraits, too, but of course I have the most adorable model!

I love this girl. Even when she’s not gold & sparkly.

Catching Aurora in a sweet moment when she was in a good mood and the afternoon light was beautiful. The look on her face is definitely an “Okay, Mom, I’ll humour you and not make a funny face at the camera” sort of smile.

They change pretty rapidly, but Aurora’s likes and dislikes at 3 & 1/2 include:

Likes: Girly stuff, for a change; Tinkerbell (as opposed to the days when she would only be Peter Pan, and Daddy had to be Tinkerbell) and all her fairy friends; My Little Pony; purple; rainbows; Moshi Moshi Kawaii (a Japanese “Where’s Waldo?” for little girls); baby dolls to dress up and feed bottles to. She also still likes the “Berenstained” Bears, the Mouse House, bouncing in place, telling “two-person” stories, and her favourite stuffed animal, Polar Bear. She is a die-hard, cutthroat Candy Land player, and she’ll play ten games in a row if you have the patience to go along with it. Favourite foods: fruit smoothies, candy and chocolate.

Dislikes: being scared, watching scary movies (although Halloween is hands-down her favourite holiday), being tickled, being shown what to do, and being told to go potty. Her food dislikes are too numerous to mention.

This week’s milestones: (Re)learning how to drink from a cup, doing a somersault unassisted in gymnastics class, and beating Uncle Jim in a running race. Jim claims that her remarkable speed and endurance were the result of drinking so much milk from a cup, and I have no reason to doubt him.

Or at least that’s what Aurora told us, repeatedly, when we went to the beach last weekend. It wasn’t a warm day, or even a sunny day, but the sun was in our hearts (awwww!) as Aurora laughed, hopped, tiptoed over to feed the crows, and squealed with glee when they flew down to get her cracker crumbs.

With a busy weekend approaching, and the only free family time on Saturday day, we gave Aurora a few choices on Friday night. “Would you like to go sledding in the snow? How about going to see the eagles near Squamish? Anything you want to do, kiddo.” So kiddo says, “Let’s go to the beach and build sandcastles!” Okay, sure, it’s only five degrees with a 60% chance of rain. She wanted to have a picnic, too, so we packed up some drinks and cheese and crackers, and headed out to Jericho Beach.

Luckily, the Jericho Beach Sailing Centre had covered picnic benches, and the beach was fairly sheltered from the wind. For about an hour we fed the birds. One of them Brian named “Crankypants” because although it cawed and cawed and cawed to complain about the limited food offerings, whenever Aurora placed a cracker piece on the ground, he let one of the other crows get to it first. “Piggie” the crow picked up five or six in one beakful before finally dropping the one that Crankypants managed to pick up. This waterfront entertainment is way, way cheaper than going to a musical at the Waterfront Theatre, and there’s even a place to get warm drinks next door. (Nothing against Seussical; it was a really fun play.)

We spent so much time feeding the crows that we didn’t have long to build a sandcastle before the rain started in earnest.

Daddy & Aurora’s creation ended up being more of a sand pyramid.

I took pictures of a flock of beautiful Barrow’s Goldeneye ducks. That’s it! It took me about four hours to edit together that super-fantastic video, so I hope you enjoy it!

Yesterday Aurora watched an episode of The Berenstain Bears on YouTube, called The Berenstain Bears Count Their Blessings. So now Aurora knows what it means to be thankful for the things you have. While I counted mine for her (a wonderful daughter and husband, a nice warm house, etc.) she counted hers for me (a mouse house, a flashlight, a teddy bear, etc.). At age 3, counting one’s blessings seems somewhat akin to counting one’s toys.

This morning I found out that a friend of mine just lost her mom to cancer, and I feel so terrible for her. My mom is one of my most amazing blessings, and I can only imagine what my friend is going through. The Berenstain Bears have it right. Instead of wasting a single minute counting the things I wish I had, I want to treasure the things I still do have.

Tonight at dinner Daddy, Grandma Shaun and Grandpa Bill were all remarking on how amazing it is that Aurora is three years old already, and hasn’t the time passed by in a flash. Why am I the only person who seems to register the entire three years of Aurora’s existence? We tossed out ideas like, I’m with her all day, every day, and so on, but I think it comes down to this: I blog it all. This tremendous, public journal I’ve been compiling for most of the last three years really makes me think, all the time, about where we are, where we’ve been and what we’re doing now. People who are around me a lot of the time know that I have a tendency toward negativity (complaining, really) in daily life. In the blog, though, I recognize and acknowledge so many of the things that make Aurora so remarkable, loveable, and miraculous to me.

Daddy and Aurora came up with a beautiful bedtime ritual a couple of months ago, which I also use when it is my turn to shut off the lights. Once Daddy and Aurora settle on who she is at that moment (let’s use Nemo as an example), they begin their “goodnights”.

“Good night, Nemo.”

“Good night, Marlin.”

“Sweet dreams, Nemo.”

“Sweet dreams, Marlin.”

“I love you, Nemo.”

“I love you, Marlin.”

“I love you, too, Aurora.”

“I love you, too, Daddy.”

Aaaahhh.