Aurora Wells

This week Aurora and I are in SoCal with Grandma Gail and Grandpa Larry, enjoying some time with family and friends. We had a pretty good flight on Air Canada, with an empty seat for Aurora, a tv screen on the seat back in front of us, and an iPod full of games and videos to entertain us. Let’s not think about what awaits us on the return flight on United, eh?

Grandma and Grandpa have really pulled out all the stops to turn their house into a daycare centre, with a preschool’s worth of toys, books and activities for Aurora to use. A climbing house/slide, a wading pool, a sand & water table, a wooden doll house, and a kitchenette are all fantastic playthings for a girl who’s just visiting. The bubbles, however, are really cool!

Grandma’s had this enormous bubble wand since I was a kid, and it still has the power to enthrall.

Pop!

Yes, you really can make 3-foot-diameter or larger bubbles with a bit of practice and some really good soap solution. Good one, Grandma!

After a couple of spills on wet, soapy pavement while chasing after big bubbles, I sat Aurora up on this bench to be more of a spectator than a combatant. She quickly made friends with Grandma’s Stone Squirrel.

After a few hugs and kisses, she seemed to be happy on the sidelines.

Grandpa came home early today, so he was able to join us for bubbles, dinner, and a trip to a frozen yogurt shop before bed. Here they’re singing “Meep meep” (Ode to Joy) together on the swing. How cute is that?

I can see that in the not-too-distant future, Aurora’s memory is actually going to be better than mine. Not long at all, in fact. She’s now remembering people, places, and pets that she hasn’t seen for a while; she’s getting references to books we haven’t read lately; and she’s asking for things that are not immediately present or being talked about.

This afternoon I was reading her a book about a girl and her dad making a pretty flower planter box for mum, when about two-thirds of the way through, Aurora saw a grey/brown striped cat. She exclaimed, “Bombur!” and “More Bombur!” quite clearly, and completely lost interest in the story, only wanting to see more of this cat. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Bombur is a gigantic cat belonging to Blair and Judith, whom Aurora sees once every few months. It’s been about a month since we saw him last, at their apartment. Bombur doesn’t like to move much, so Aurora very graciously found small objects on B&J’s entry table and transported them down the hall to the living room to place them, one by one, between Bombur’s front paws, right under his nose. Bombur appreciated this small person’s deference to his greatness (he does, after all, outweigh her), but I had no idea he’d made such a lasting impression upon her.

Mostly, I am just impressed with how much more of Aurora’s inner world we’re getting to know, now that her vocabulary is developing so rapidly. Pretty soon she’ll be managing more full sentences, singing songs (Beaker’s Ode to Joy is the current favourite), and chatting away to invisible friends. Gads, I love this age.

For many, many years, Brian and I have been traveling together. Road trips across the continent, camping and B&Bs from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Barkley Sound, British Columbia, visiting family in the Okanagon and California. We’ve gotten pretty good at dealing with the stresses and unexpected opportunities of being on the road, I think. But throwing a toddler into the mix definitely shakes things up.

Our trip this past weekend to the Sunshine Coast of BC was neatly bookended by a pair of long waits in the pouring rain at the Horseshoe Bay and Langdale ferry terminals. If we’d planned the trip a little earlier, we could have gotten ferry reservations, but we decided to take our chances anyway and paid the price with a four-hour wait on one side and a nerve-wracking, two-hour, barely-squeaking-on-the-boat wait on the other. In the old days, a book and a bag of cookies would have made the time fly, but Daddy had to entertain the youngster (Mommy was too burned out), and it was pretty exhausting. Highlights: Aurora saying, “horn” repeatedly, waiting for the ferry to sound its very loud one; meeting Cleo the golden retriever in the park in Horseshoe Bay, after which all dogs are now named, “Cleo”.

Luckily, those ferry waits were the wettest weather we encountered on our whole trip. The rainy weekend forecast turned into sunshine both Saturday and Sunday, which we were happy to see, since our plans included canoeing. Our late (11 pm) arrival at the hotel Friday night meant that we didn’t get an early start on Saturday, but after a hearty breakfast, we headed over to the Sechelt Farmers’ and Artisans’ Market, which featured a lot of fine artisans, but very little in the way of produce by eleven in the morning. I bought some sea asparagus – oh, no! I was supposed to cook that tonight! – and garlic scapes, lusted after some pottery by Diane Amaral, and had a blast watching Aurora dance to a local marimba band. We even ran into Gaylin & her daughter Cassidy, our friends who moved to the Sunshine Coast a couple of years ago!

After a nap that never happened back at the hotel, we struck out for Halfmoon Bay, aiming for a half-remembered canoe rental shop in a quiet inlet of the coast. Ninety minutes later, with no luck on the canoe rental front, we gave up driving in circles and ended up at the beach.

Mommy helps Aurora carry water up the beach

so that she can carry out the hard work of doing whatever it was she did with the sand and water

for the next two hours.

Aurora’s first shell – Daddy, look!

That evening, we had a ridiculously fattening but oh-so-tasty Italian dinner at the Old Boot Eatery. While we were eating we heard loud rock and R&B music coming from far away, and assumed it was someone blasting a stereo at first. I could have sworn I was listening to CCR, Pearl Jam, and a bunch of other great rock bands. When we got closer, it sounded more and more live, but I couldn’t believe this great music was being played by the four guys on the stage we spied through a weed-covered fence. We walked around the block and entered Shishalh First Nation lands, hoping to catch a better look at what was going on. There, on a simple stage on the grass next to the tribe’s community centre, a few guys were happily jamming their favourite (and many of our favourite) tunes for the 30-odd people sitting on benches and around the lawn. They were so completely awesome we couldn’t believe the whole community wasn’t out for the concert.

Being so obviously non-native and not wanting to trespass (too much), Brian and I stayed back on the fringes of the lawn until a jovial, heavy-set guy named Phil came up to us and invited us to join the party. “It’s okay, y’know,” he said, “we’re friendly folk here. And it’s Aboriginal Day – everyone’s invited!” We wondered aloud why there were so few people enjoying the free music (although with their incredible sound system, you could hear them for miles around). Phil said it wasn’t really advertised, and there were lots of other parties going on that night. That’s right – I’d forgotten that it was the summer solstice. What a shame. They were really, really good. I asked him for the name of the band, and he had no idea. Then I asked the guy at the sound board, and he had no idea, either! Well, we could have listened to the Great Sechelt Mystery Band for hours, and at 8:30 it was far from dark out, but we had someone who was long overdue for some sleep, and Aurora had to go to bed, too. After dancing to a few songs and waving goodbye, we slowly made our way back to the hotel for the night. As we fell asleep, we could still hear faint but recognizable strains of music coming from across town.

On Sunday we walked along the Sechelt waterfront near our hotel, and had breakfast at Wheatberries Bakery, about which I have posted before. We played at the local playground, then headed back to Gibsons, to find one with good swings! Aurora was having so much fun on the swings at Cliff Gilker Park that I decided to practice shutter speed control on my camera.

Way, way too slow. 30 or so photos later:

Finally caught it! Daddy was a pretty good sport about pushing the swing for half an hour, and Aurora was in heaven.

Happy Fathers’ Day, Daddy!

Cliff Gilker Park has a trail with a beautiful little waterfall tucked away behind the playground – an absolute perfect spot to relax and soak up some beauty.

After a quick lunch in Gibsons and an even quicker walk near the harbour (looking for fish in Gibson’s Landing’s pocket park, above), we headed over to Gaylin’s house.

Gaylin and Pete bought this house only a few years ago, (Gaylin used to be in my reading group) but they’ve been working like crazy to improve the house and yard. In the background of this photo you can see a few of their eighty-six (86!!!) tomato plants, as well as a number of other gardening projects. Despite having nearly 4-year-old Cassidy to look after, these two have been super productive renovating and improving their new place. We couldn’t stay long enough to really catch up, though, because Gaylin warned us the ferry lineup was almost full for the next sailing. Yeesh!

Twenty minutes later we were sitting in our car in pouring rain, hoping to get onto the 4:30 ferry sailing, which was actually at 4:50, due to heavy traffic delays. There’s very little for a toddler to do in a car at the end of a trip, when you’ve already played with all the toys you’ve got and already eaten all the food you’re willing to eat. So she sat on Daddy’s lap and played with all the controls for the car (except the parking brake). Aurora had no trouble operating the blinkers, the fan, the radio, the hazard lights, or any of the other buttons and switches on the dashboard. Daddy remarked, “if only all her kid toys were this easy to play with (she still has trouble with many toy functions, especially squeakers)!

Finally on! There couldn’t have been more than 25 cars behind us when we made it. Whew! Bye-bye Sunshine Coast! Daddy threatened to never go back again if we didn’t make it on to that ferry, so I’m really, really glad we did. As we drove through the north shore mountains, less than a half hour from home, Aurora finally conked out, at nearly 6 pm. You don’t want to know about the catastropic meltdown she had when we got home and she was awoken, so I’ll just leave you with this photo of the most peaceful, angelic-looking child you’ll ever hope to see:

Took my girl to the park the other day, and had some fun:

riding the duckie,

playing with Max (and Mom, Nicky) with the old toys someone so generously abandoned last month,

seesaw consternation,

and seesaw glee.

At home, we investigated the anatomy of seed pods,

keeping Aurora totally engrossed for a half hour or more at a time, a few days in a row.

Aurora is actually growing, albeit slowly, and when I removed her too-small sleeper from the weekly rotation, she had trouble letting go of this one.

Trying on the toddler-sized life preserver we borrowed from Barrett. No, that’s not blood splatter on Aurora’s cheeks and upper lip. It’s juice from the first cherries Mommy pitted with her new cherry pitting tool.

The best gifts are the ones which enable you to enjoy life more, and there’s little more enjoyable than sharing the plump, sweet deliciousness of fresh summer cherries with your plump-cheeked, sweet, delicious little girl (without having to spend hours and stain your fingers pitting cherries by hand). Last summer with my paring knife and fingers I couldn’t keep up with the speed Aurora wolfed down cherry pieces. This summer we’ll have as many cherries as we wish. Thank you, Daddy, for the wonderful gift!

Last night we had the pleasure of co-hosting Blair’s 40th birthday party in our backyard, and what a great time we had! Brian built a doorframe in the yard for the main event of the evening: the 40 pull-ups Blair told us he would do since the time he was 37.

It was close, but he triumphed in the end, and then celebrated with a drink from the first (and possibly only) keg to grace our property. Happy 40th, Blair! May the rest of us meet the day with as much spirit and dash as yourself.

My own contribution to the evening was the design of a lantern string (Brian did the wiring and hanging) to give us a bit more festive ambiance than our existing floodlights-glaring-on-construction-site style.

The first time Brian took me to the Okanagan to meet his parents, I was a little nervous. His dad sounded like a pretty gruff character, and I wasn’t sure how well we’d get along. The night we arrived at their house, Bill and Shaun decided that I needed to see The Slides. In a big cardboard box they had decades of family photos in slide format, which had to be shared with any prospective daughters-in-law (in order to weed out the faint of heart, I presume). At some point in the past the slides had fallen out of their boxes and been shuffled, therefore losing any semblance of chronological order. So, with clicker in hand, Bill took me on a tour of random birthdays, camping trips, pool parties and other family memories. Shaun did her best to fill in the chronology of the events, but after a while it became a blur, punctuated by Bill’s exclaming, “Fish!” every time we saw a whale at the aquarium. Even without the help of alcohol, we all started laughing and shouting, “Fish!” whenever a 7- (or 8-?) year-old’s birthday party was interrupted by a lovely photo of some aquatic (and definitely non-fish) mammal. I knew then that I would somehow fit in with Brian’s decidedly non-Nestor family.

That’s the memory that sprung up when I unloaded the photos from my camera just now, looking at one after another blurry, blue photos of beluga whales at the aquarium. Yesterday we went with Grandma and Grandpa Wells to see the brand-new baby that the 20-year-old whale named Aurora had on Sunday. Grey and wrinkly, the baby is almost exactly a year younger than the other youngster in the tank, her “niece” Tiqa. After waiting 15-20 minutes to be allowed into the viewing area (only 25 visitors at a time) we were able to watch them swimming around together for ten minutes.

There’s the baby, in between her mom Aurora and sister Qila. Our Aurora was very well-behaved, watching the whales with interest, and only shouting once (silence is mandatory so as not to disturb the new family).

Watching the marmosets with Grandma Shaun (and yes, there’s that finger in the ear again, but it’s the only picture I have of Grandma from this week!).

I saw this snake in exactly the same position last month when we came with Grandma Gail. Does it ever move? Next month I’ll try using manual focus.

Hey! Don’t feed the animals, Grandpa!

Cute girl! Aurora’s been such a good girl on outings and at restaurants lately. She gets shy, and charms the staff with her gorgeous eyes, then graces them with a sweet smile when she warms up, just before leaving. It’s a pleasure to go out with her!