Aurora Wells

As we creep into the dark season, and Aurora’s room gets light later and later in the morning, our whole schedule is slowly moving later and later in the day. Aurora’s 7:30 bedtime turned into 8:00, and after a weekend of fun late nights, we’re closer to 8:30.

On Friday night after Daddy got home from work we went to the Zaber Open House. They just moved a few months ago from Rob Steves’ (the president’s) house in Steveston to a real office in South Vancouver. It’s a much shorter commute for Andrew-Bruce, who lives in our basement, and Jesse, who lives across the street from us, but Rob is not fond of the 30-35 minutes it takes him to travel to work now. Their new office is really nice, but the highlight for Aurora was the dog, Penny, who hangs out there most days.

Andrew-Bruce and Rob took us on a tour of the new facility.

We knew a surprising number of the guests at the party, mostly from our Ballard connections.

Aurora discovers glass block windows.

Barrett enjoyed making friends with Penny, who was incredibly well-behaved for such a large gathering of people.

Daddy and Aurora entertained themselves for almost half an hour by going up and down the stairs – what fun!

stairclimbing – going down

Then on Saturday night, we had the Milleys over for dinner:

Agatha and Jaegen read a story together,

Edmund (a fellow Disneyland fan) modeled the latest in designer headware,

And lovely, lovely Jenn did the dishes with me, while Brian bathed Aurora. Although someone whose brain is still not quite working right set the rice cooker to “warm” instead of “cook”, we managed all right, and the cake I spent three hours on was delicious, thank goodness.

And just to top it all off, here’s another couple of pictures of Aurora, who now seems to enjoy being in her crib, as long as she’s accompanied by all her stuffed animals.

As some of you may already know, back in September many of the Mid-Main Mommies and I entered our kids in a contest to be Robeez models and win some shoes. When we didn’t hear back from them in October, as scheduled, we thought, “Oh, well, I guess we weren’t chosen”. But then, surprisingly, Cara and I got emails last week saying we were on for this week, and were we still interested? Sounds like fun to me; besides, I never turn down new shoes!

So this morning Aurora and I drove to the photographer’s studio and experienced the fun and excitement of being a fashion model! She got her hair blow-dried (it was raining outside), we changed her into a bunch of different clothes and shoes, and she took a whole lot of photos, both crawling and standing. Now if I tried this at home there would probably be at least one conniption fit, with screaming, squirming, and otherwise antisocial behaviour. However, I relied on the fact that when Aurora’s meeting new people and experiencing a new situation she’s too interested to be cranky, and it worked! Not a single scream the whole time, and after an hour and a half, she was still posing for the camera, although her patience was obviously wearing thin.

Here we are trying to get Aurora to crawl for a shot of these cute new flowery sandals. The Captain Vegetable puppet is the lure I was using.

Later they were setting up for the next kid with a chair, and Aurora took the opportunity to pull to standing. Then we changed her into a pink and green striped dress – I’ll post some of the photographer’s pictures as soon as he sends them to me.

Afterwards, Aurora and I went to our final Mother Goose class. We’ll miss the rest of this semester while we’re in California, and then we won’t be going back again, seeing as how Aurora is past the target age of the class. Thanks so much to the sweet and adorable librarians, Mona and Minh, for leading the class these past many months.

Aurora and I watch this one together almost every day.

I feel like this is an in-between time.

Aurora is not willing to take two naps a day anymore, but she doesn’t quite have the stamina for only one, hence some drama while we’re adjusting. “I’m not tired! I don’t wanna go to bed! Let’s play some more!”-Clunk!

The garage’s framing is all but finished, and we’ll get the roofing done (cross fingers) in the next week or so. The inspector is coming tomorrow and I hope he approves the somewhat unconventional structure, with its steel I-beams. Although Brian still has to do the doors, windows, and siding, and the electrical, plumbing and finishing will also take a lot of time, it feels like we’re almost finished (I know we’re not even close).

I also set myself a goal to get all the holiday stuff done by December 1st, so that I can have a stress-free December vacation and holidays. I’ve been trying to take a good greeting-card picture of Aurora, but her moods and the weather can’t seem to cooperate. My next big project is editing a year’s worth of baby video footage, which I’ve been putting off for… a year! Hopefully with Daddy’s help we can get it done in the next week.

Which leaves me with one final transition to tackle: the transistion between post-partum, nursing-mom figure and yummy-mummy, back-in-my-old-clothes, size 10 figure. There’s no better time than the holidays to decide that enough is enough (right!) so I’m calling on all you friends and family for support. I’ve been trying on my own for a year, with no success, so here’s the challenge: I’ve got 25 lbs. to lose, and an absolutely crazy sweet tooth, so please, please, please don’t offer me any gingerbread men, Christmas cookies, eggnog, pumpkin or apple pie, holiday chocolates, etc. this year. I’ll have a few latkes at Chanukah and split a Terry’s chocolate orange with Brian at Christmas, but otherwise, please help me be careful this holiday season. I want to be the slim, energetic mom that Aurora deserves!

So as the days get shorter, and the air grows colder, let’s think warm, happy thoughts: One good, long nap per day; a beautiful, finished garage/workshop; a relaxing December; and a newly slender Mommy. Sounds good to me!

Aurora did some entertaining this week, with Mommy, Daddy, and her best friend, Bear. Thanks, Jenn, for the lovely little tea set.

We’re not sure if she gets the “let’s pretend” aspect of drinking from empty cups or not because she’s still somewhat ambivalent about drinking from real cups. She loves “drinking” from cups as long as no actual liquids come out.

Last Sunday we attended Morgaine’s baby shower at Morgaine and Craig’s lovely new home. Aurora was quite taken with the four-legged inhabitant of the house.

The cat did not seem to be so fond of Aurora’s attentions, however. Perhaps if she didn’t approach with such an ear-splitting screech of excitement? As for Morgaine, impending motherhood has made her even more gorgeous than ever. I must admit, however, that I was a little shy about taking out my camera and snapping any pics of her, since she’s the first professional portrait photographer I’ve ever been friends with. Look at the amazing work she does!

As for the cat lover, we’ve decided for sure to get a kitty in the spring, probably around Brian’s birthday. It just seems too cruel to let in the neighbourhood cats for 10 minutes, have Aurora screech with delight, then let them go. Once she has a full-time kitty of her own, she may not get so hyped up about it, and so disconsolate when they have to part ways. She’s even started saying what we think is, “cat”, although it sounds more like, “at-at”.

Did I mention yet that she’s honest-to-goodness talking? She’s definitely saying “banana” (”na-na”) and “Daddy” now. She says “Mama” all the time, too, but not usually in reference to me in particular. She’s also got about five sign language signs, for “milk/nursing”, “eat”, “potty”, “more” and “all done”. The upshot of all this is that with every new word, there’s a little less screaming, because Aurora can make her wishes known. Yeah! Of course, even when she can say, “No thanks, I’d rather not go to sleep now,” it might not make a difference.

Everyone has them; those little nuggets of wisdom, or at least snappy one-liners, that Mom & Dad used to throw out at you to keep you in line. Or maybe they still do! I’m not talking about the tired, old, “Because I said so” crap. Got anything with a bit more bite, a bit more humor? I have a few favorites up my sleeve, ready to go when Aurora gets a little bit older:

When child cries, “You’re a mean mommy!” simply reply, “Well, the meanest mommies have the nicest kids.”

“Stay away from the schmoe people,” means watch out for the losers that can get you hurt.

“Tough Noughies!” when all else fails, and you just aren’t going to buy them that checkout-aisle treat.

I actually found myself telling Aurora, “Tough Noughies!” the other day at Chapters, when she kept grabbing toys and books off the shelves. Anyone else got any useful zingers?