Dog sweater

Ever since I started this project, Maïa has been begging me to finish it. I had done up the hat quickly and lost interest or zeal or something, so I left it. The hat was too big for Maïa anyway... But she loved it and really, really wanted to wear it.

So I finally decided to finish it up, and here it is. It was a very easy project: a beginner could figure this one out without any difficulty. I finished up the stitching today and left it out for Maïa to see. As you can see from the photo, she put it on right away.

When the rain stops

When the rain stops
The moon comes out,
The sky is black,
Dark, dark black.

Composed by Maïa, with accompaniement on a toy guitar that sounds surprisingly like a Japanese shamisen.

Reasons to smile: number 78

It was nice while it lasted

Solanne's adventures in potty-land were short-lived but welcome nevertheless. For one whole week, she would ask or happily agree to go to the bathroom at least twice a day (which not only means two fewer diapers but also no poopy diapers at all!).

In wonderful Solanne fashion, she just decided one day that she was done with that. "Non!!" is her reply when asked if she wants to go to the potty. Ah well, I expected it. So I've posted a visual to remember the happier potty-days.

Is "knat" the past of "to knit"?

I love to knit. It's a great pass time, and in the end, I have something to show for it. According to some sources, knitting is the new "urban" or anarchic thing to do. It's also the old-fashioned-mommy thing to do. So I have decided to identify as the "urban mommy."

I learned to knit when I was four years old. My mom had just had surgery and there wasn't much she could do but knit. So I sat next to her and learned. I don't recall spending much time doing it, however. Later, when I was about nine years old, I started knitting little clothes for my dolls. They were so popular, my friends asked me to make some for their dolls, too! The novelty wore off after a while, and I gave up the whole thing until I was pregnant.

I made a little outfit for my baby (whose sexe I did not know). It was a long and painful process, mostly because my technique was completely wrong, but I was unwilling to learn the "right" way. I finished it and it was nice, but Maïa outgrew it in a matter of weeks... After that I began various little projects in fits and starts, but always lost the motivation.

Last summer, I sat down with my mom and asked her to teach me to knit properly. "It's about time!" she said. I learned, and I started and finished up a sweater and hat ensemble for Solanne in a matter of weeks.




Inspired, I knit a toque for Maïa for her birthday. I actually finished it withing 24 hours. I was hooked.


Next, I decided to finish up a dress I had started for Maïa about 18 months ago. Of course, now it would be for Solanne. It was about half done. And I finished it within a week of taking it up again.




I have also started and finished a little outfit, which I cannot describe or show just yet... but it will be posted soon. Currently, I am finishing up a hat and sweater outfit for Maïa. I had finished the hat up before Solanne was born, but I never got around to the sweater. I have only to sew the bits together, and it will be done. Look for the "dog sweater" in a future post.

There it is: urban mommy busy whiling away her daughter's afternoon naps, knitting (when she's not working). I have a few more projects in the wings. And after that, I think I'll just have to bug all my friends to have more babies so I can knit up some newborn outfits. So get on it, y'all!

Grey hair

Parents often joke that the grey hairs on their heads were caused by the things their children did. I used to think they were kidding, but since Maïa was born, I have learned that there is an unmistakeably direct correlation.

Derek and I were very youthful looking (and youthful) when Maïa came into our lives. When Maïa was just a few weeks old, we were sleep deprived, shell-chocked, and generally overwhelmed. And somehow, through the fog of fatigue, I saw it: the white hair on Derek's head. It was coarse and unruly and unabashedly white. And I pulled it out. And I haven't seen it since.

Fast-forward about two years. When Solanne was just a few weeks old, we were sleep deprived, a little less shell-shocked, but still generally overwhelmed. And again, through the fog of fatigue, I saw it: the white hair in Derek's beard. And I pulled it out. It has since grown back and brought with it three more friends.

It would seem that we can now track how much stress the children have each caused Derek: if there are many white hairs on his head, Maïa has been the culprit; if there are many in his beard, Solanne is to blame. So far, it would seem that Solanne is "winning."

The question remains, however, who is causing the hair loss?

Maïa's lexicon

I would venture a guess that every family has secret "family" words. Of course, it's impossible to verify my hunch, given the secret nature of these words. But I have had a glimpse into a few people's familial lexicons, sometimes by invitation, sometimes by accident (like the time I overheard my supervisor ask his wife for the Skizors - their pronunciation of scissors!). Derek's family has a few of their own: bisabeen (limosine), pillodlee (pillow)... you get the idea.

Often, these words are created by the littlest people in the family. They mess up a word, ever so charmingly, and long after they get it right, the rest of the family still uses the mispronounced version. It's sweet, it's intimate, it binds us together.

Right now, we have three such words (apart from the occasional ones we remember from when Maïa was much younger). They are still in current use by the creator herself, and Derek and I have taken to using them, too.

ness-lick


re-sliking


spider-roll

Reasons to smile: number 127

Because this is my boot matt:

Solanne's trick of the week

Bathroom affairs are semi-public around our house (as witnessed in the Friends entry), which is almost a necessity with small children around. Solanne has developed her own baby sign for potty: it consists of her screwing up her little face and making a "poo" grimace.

Last Friday when she made her potty sign, I asked her if she wanted to try going on the toilet. She nodded, so off came the pants and the diaper, and on went Solanne to the toilet. And lo! and behold! out came a poo. This trick has been repeated at least once a day since last Friday. It's a great trick, and I'm not sure who's more proud: Sol or me!

Maïa's quote of the week

Maïa: I don't want that!

Daddy: Maïa, you're so picky.

Maïa: No I'm not! I'm soft.

Random photos from January

Just because we have a digital camera now, it doesn't mean that the pics get online any faster... not these days, anyhow...

Daddy's birthday cake at Grandma's


I bet you can't get cake in your eyebrows!


Some of the beautiful people in our family:

Nick


(Grampa) Ken


Naomi


Pat


Maïa was very interested in the glasses on Nick and Naomi's wall:

Hair

Look Ma! I have pig tails!!

Maïa's name: addendum

I nearly forgot: Maïa has another, honorary name.

Ookpik is an Inuit name given to her when she was about 5 or 6 months old by an Inuit friend of Derek's. It means "snowy owl." I find it very fitting, given her seeming wisdom and her alabaster skin. Interestingly, it is the official bird of Québec.

What's in her name: Maïa Blake

Choosing a name for a child you haven't even met or seen can be a challenge. Derek and I went back and forth on girls' names before Maïa was born. In fact, we only settled on the name Maia in the delivery room (the umlaut was still up for grabs at that point, however). So how did we pick her names? Here's a little history and fun facts about Maïa Blake and her name.

Derek and I visited Chapters quite a bit in the months leading up to Maïa's birth, reading and re-reading name books. Derek would suggest a name, I would say something like, "naw, I knew a girl in gradeschool with that name and she had a crooked tooth" (or something equally preposterous). Derek would veto the names I presented, too: "I like that name in French, but it really doesn't work in English." Yeah, months of this, I swear! We didn't know our first baby was going to be a girl, but luckily we had already decided on a boy's name, so we were only fighting a battle on one front.

In the last month or so before Maïa was born, I had grown partial to Maya, but I liked the spelling with an "i" - like the ancient Greek earth goddess. So I mentioned it to Derek. "But I suggested that name months ago and you rejected it: something about a girl in your highschool with a large head..." I said that I had gotten over it and that I liked the name now. Well, he had since changed his mind. In any case, every day, I would look at him over dinner or while we were out for a walk, or on any occasion, really, and say, "Maia is such a great name!" And he would smile. And he would find a new way, every time, to change the subject.

So how did I get my way? I think it had something to do with the fact that birthing a child is a long and arduous task, and perhaps he felt sorry for me. Or he felt that I had earned the right to name her. Or, maybe, just maybe, I had finally worn him down! In any case, he looked at me as I lay on the OR table, waiting for the emergency C-section to begin, and said something to the effect of: "I think Maia is a good name." (I don't remember the exact words as I was blissfully drugged up at that precise moment.)

We have since learned that besides being the ancient earth goddess to the Greeks (older even than Zeus!), Maia/Maya is also a south pacific sea goddess; she is also a Roman goddess, wife to Vulcan, and the month of May is named for her (so possibly a fertility goddess); it means "love" in an Eastern European language; it means "water" in Egyptian Arabic ("mayim" is Hebrew for water); and in Hinduism it means "illusion" (like the illusions through which we perceive the world). And let us not forget the Maya people in Mexico and Latin America.

A funny little aside: in our prenatal class, there were seven couples. To these seven couples, seven babies were born: two were boys, five were girls. Of the five girls, three were named Maya/Maia/Maïa. Not kidding. Ours was the first. When we sent out the birth announcement via email to our fellow classmates, we got one back from our friends (who thought they were having a boy) and they said that Maya had been on their list, too. Well, they had a girl. Also, one of the moms of the boys had Mya (same pronunciation) as the first girl's name on her list. I honestly don't know what it was about that name that year... That was back in Ottawa. I have yet to meet another little Maya/Maia here, so perhaps we've escaped it...

As for Maïa's middle name, some people have been known to jump to the wrong conclusions about it. Blake happens to be the name of Derek's favourite poet, William Blake. But that's not why we gave Maïa that name. She is my brother's namesake.

My brother, Jeffrey Blake Robillard, died on November 1, 1996. He was 35. He left behind four beautiful young children, who barely remember him now, I'm sure. They have since been adopted by their step-father and they carry his name. Until November 1, 2002, my brother had no namesakes, no one to carry on his name and his memory. So it was fitting, as Maïa burst into this world three weeks early and on the anniversary of Jeff's death, that we give our daughter Jeff's middle name.

And what's up with the umlaut? It's a French spelling. And I like it. And so does Maïa, for now. Her "i" is special because it has two dots. You'd think that someone with the odd spelling of Cristina would learn to give her kids normal names that everyone can spell. But in the end, I like my name without an H. There's a story there, in the absence of a letter, and what's a life without a story?