Careful what you wish for

My Christmas wish came true. My blog host won't let me upload photos or video for some reason that I can't fathom. Besides, I wielded the camera on Christmas Day so there are no shots of me, and sadly George & Lorraine left their camera at a restaurant - never to be seen again. I swear it wasn't me.

Tonight, it's off to a family-friendly New Year's Eve party and then home at a decent time. As tomorrow morning, we have our family traditions to fulfill - which include opening another huge whack of pressies and then hosting friends and neighbours for our annual Open House.

Happy New Year!

All I want for Christmas is...

not to be in the photos. I have yet another cold (I only got over the last one 10 days ago) and didn't sleep much last night, after staying up last night wrapping presents.

George and Lorraine have arrived and we are off for a big Christmas brunch/lunch. So I will try to post some photos of everyone else this afternoon or tomorrow.

Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating across Canada and around the world!

Good to the last lick

M had the audacity to get up early one day to make the world's best cupcakes for a potluck at work. He then left me with the dirty implements and a hyped-up 5 year old - and get this, NO cupcakes. He took them all.

Two ta-daaaaa-s for Nana

Every year I mean to make a gingerbread house with Sebastian (and now Sophie). But it's a lot of work and the kits always say that they may have come in contact with peanuts. So this year, Nana came to the rescue - of sorts - by digging up a rice krispie square recipe and sending us her own kit - recipe, instructions, the world's largest box of rice crispies (dyed red & green!), plus 2 big bags of marshmallows, a tub of icing and enough candy to sink a ship. So the pressure was on.

Everything takes ages at the moment, so this little festive treat turned into a 4 day event, complete with child-like meltdowns. With some cutting and decorating help from dad and after several scoldings of Sophie to not sneak in and pick at the house, we have masterpiece - or something.

Unfortunately, having it just sitting out has proved too much for a 5 and 2 year old. So the house has been placed out of view and will come out for Nana & Gramps' visit on Christmas Day and then again at our New Year's Day Open House, when we will invite EVERYONE to demolish - in the hope that that will limit the amount of sugar that our kids ingest!

Next year I am going to make a real gingerbread house - from scratch. You can quote me...



A birthday cardie from Nana.

These are for Grandad

Not that my dad is or ever was a cowboy, but he did give the kids this stylin' hat.

If they can't model

They could try for a career in radio...

Modelling Careers

I don't mean to brag but... my kids have serious modelling careers ahead of them - or - at the very least, they believe modelling is a serious affair. I mean, look at those expressions of concentration (when you are not staring at the toothpick nature of my son's whole body).





The fact that the goggles were so tight that they left indentations on Seb's face for an hour (!) didn't deter him or his glee.





Oh, and yes, Nana has been charged with finding a new to us swim suit for Sophie, especially if we are going to Bermuda in February (not that we will swim in the ocean then, but maybe, just maybe a pool...).

Blog goes silent

It's been quiet in this neck of the woods because we have been busy and because we hooked up with both sets of grandparents last weekend in Montreal - so the pressure to "show off" the kids and their doings has been reduced somewhat.


Stripey Soph was very taken by Auntie Deb


We all celebrated Lorraine's birthday at le Jardin de Panos, which some of you might remember.


Unfortunately, I didn't get a snap of pass-the-parcel (Seb' favourite new game). The birthday girl won a glow-in-the-dark stick (which she gave to Seb).


Playing in Westmount Park in the snow.



Sophie in her orange and mauve winter get-up.

Procrastinating

This is what I drew tonight instead of getting down to some paid work. Beats what I usually do - laundry, surf silly websites, dither, do the washing up, tidy up toys and books, etc.

Great smiles

Some shots that have got away in the last few days.



The kids both love marmite!

Imagination - what a wonderful trait

A couple of days ago I put Sophie's very, very fine hair in "bunchies" for the first time. Well, Seb wanted some too. So I put his very long locks in a semi-mohawk. Nah, that's not what it was. It was a dinosaur-do. Triceratops to be precise.

And then she turned two

Sophie wore one of her many special dresses and look at those gorgeous shoes from Nana (& Gramps). The sibs (Sebastian, Sophie and baby Brad). For her birthday, Sophie finally got some clothes (a set of scrubs) for her baby. Her stylin' new hat from Syd and Deb. Good shot of the new haircut and specs! Sophie loves cake.

We had a small bash for Sophie this afternoon. Just cakes and balloons with 8 adults and 7 children. It was good fun and not overwhelming (like we anticipate Sebastian's to be...). No presents but the birthday girl dressed up and looked smashing. One cake was the eggless/dairyfree standby (jazzed up with apricot jam) and the other was a divine caramel cheesecake from She Takes the Cake...

Please, say it ain't so

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH. This is not a joke and it's set to roll out across the planet next year. AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-worlds-first-barbie-store-comes-to-the-land-of-living-dolls-1017963.html

And being completely tranparent, yes, I had a Barbie. But it was 1976, and she was swimming Barbie.

A celebatory detour

How was a week away from home responsibilities, children's demands, work pressures?

How was a week away just to focus on my love and me?

How was a week away waking up when we wanted and eating anything that took our fancy - allergens be damned - in some of best restaurants (including "Seb's") in town?

How was a week away full of whipping out the credit card to buy wine, more food, post-nursing lingerie, clothes (for me!), books, and gifts?

How was a week-away when it seemed that friends lined up to see us and took time off work to make it happen?

How was a week away that revolved around my birthday and a great party?

Need you even ask how it went?!

P.S. Thanks, George & Lorraine for holding down the "fort" here and Mark & Mary for opening their "castle" there.

Seb's big day

Here are some shots of the birthday boy enjoying his big present. I like the shot of M from the rear; it's basically how he spent his morning. Well, he also made birthday pancakes (banana and chocolate chips) and took Seb to his gym class. It was so warm here that we ate lunch outside - it's NOVEMBER.

At Dewson school, each birthday child is presented with a ribbon. Well, you can just imagine how chuffed our fellow was. He made sure that everyone at the park and the farmers' market saw it. Lots of video footage for another time. To celebrate, each one of us enjoyed a whole sticky bun - the best in the city and we each got a whole one. Good thing birthdays are only once a year.

Sophie loved playing in the leaves, wearing her New Brunswick tartan dress. Baby Brad was a happy doll too. He likes birthdays.

Off to the airport, go we.......

Sophie with hat-head.

She can't always look her best...

Seb's first 5th birthday party

Dashing off in hours to our childless week in British Columbia. Here are some photos to sustain people. These ones are of the fun get-together we had on Sunday at my friend Deb's in Montreal. Sophie thought the eggless, dairy-free cake was yummy! The blinking, red plastic noses were a hoot - and a hit. Sophie wears a lovely dress that Grandma "gave" her; while Seb chose his own outfit to "look smart" for his friend, Jacob (who would rather have been wearing shorts with no socks).

Another (inspirational) detour

Open Letter to Barack Obama from Alice Walker
Nov. 5, 2008

Dear Brother Obama,

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being
the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because
you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver
the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after
decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the
flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And
yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a
different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you,
North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We
knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of
the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would
actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your
rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a
balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the
world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the
world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however,
is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits
sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely
daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to
seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as
the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and
stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of
scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate.
One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no
excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real
success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may
buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and
space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet
clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the
reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most
damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those
feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain
religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies,
but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is
understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and
are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely.
However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often
fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing
of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of
ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor
people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the
Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the
Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that
must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be
lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to
animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And
your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust
characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy
self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find
an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the
world.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker

A slight detour

This blog is usually about the kids and how precious they are to us and fill our lives with glory and hope. But there is a big world out there and sometimes, it just has to barge in and shake up the domestic bliss. DR Congo is one of those stories. Eastern Congo - a place and region that M & I had the pleasure and duty to visit several times - is back in the news. In fact, it hasn't been out of the news if you looked. The article below is a straight-talking call to take action and see this is you want more evidence: theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081030.wcongo1030/BNStory/International/home

Personal solutions?
1 - find out more - go to any of the following: oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/where_we_work/drc/rankin_exhibition.html
nytimes.com
savethechildren.org.uk
crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1174&l=1
hrw.org/english/docs/2008/10/29/congo20093.htm
The Congo Advocacy Coalition - hrw.org/english/docs/2008/07/28/congo19486.htm

2 - talk to people, including our governments; ask questions

3 - ask where things (and if possible, the bits and pieces in things) you buy come from (it might be good for your health and the planet)

4 - remind ourselves to buy less stuff (it's good for peace, the environment, your pocket book)

And no, I'm not going to rush off to DRC this week. I am going to Sudan in 3 weeks anyway...

How we fuel Africa's bloodiest war
What is rarely mentioned is the great global heist of Congo's resources
Thursday, 30 October 2008 The Independent


The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting again – and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of the slaughter in your pocket. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this is a "tribal conflict" in "the Heart of Darkness". It isn't. The United Nations investigation found it was a war led by "armies of business" to seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The war in Congo is a war about you.

Every day I think about the people I met in the war zones of eastern Congo when I reported from there. The wards were filled with women who had been gang-raped by the militias and shot in the vagina. The battalions of child soldiers – drugged, dazed 13-year-olds who had been made to kill members of their own families so they couldn't try to escape and go home. But oddly, as I watch the war starting again on CNN, I find myself thinking about a woman I met who had, by Congolese standards, not suffered in extremis.

I was driving back to Goma from a diamond mine one day when my car got a puncture. As I waited for it to be fixed, I stood by the roadside and watched the great trails of women who stagger along every road in eastern Congo, carrying all their belongings on their backs in mighty crippling heaps. I stopped a 27 -year-old woman called Marie-Jean Bisimwa, who had four little children toddling along beside her. She told me she was lucky. Yes, her village had been burned out. Yes, she had lost her husband somewhere in the chaos. Yes, her sister had been raped and gone insane. But she and her kids were alive.

I gave her a lift, and it was only after a few hours of chat along on cratered roads that I noticed there was something strange about Marie-Jean's children. They were slumped forward, their gazes fixed in front of them. They didn't look around, or speak, or smile. "I haven't ever been able to feed them," she said. "Because of the war."

Their brains hadn't developed; they never would now. "Will they get better?" she asked. I left her in a village on the outskirts of Goma, and her kids stumbled after her, expressionless.

There are two stories about how this war began – the official story, and the true story. The official story is that after the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu mass murderers fled across the border into Congo. The Rwandan government chased after them. But it's a lie. How do we know? The Rwandan government didn't go to where the Hutu genocidaires were, at least not at first. They went to where Congo's natural resources were – and began to pillage them. They even told their troops to work with any Hutus they came across. Congo is the richest country in the world for gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice – so six other countries invaded.

These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa. They were seized so they could be sold on to us. The more we bought, the more the invaders stole – and slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a surge in deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily in Congo. The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 [CANADIAN & BRITISH] others. (They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.

There were times when the fighting flagged. In 2003, a peace deal was finally brokered by the UN and the international armies withdrew. Many continued to work via proxy militias – but the carnage waned somewhat. Until now. As with the first war, there is a cover-story, and the truth. A Congolese militia leader called Laurent Nkunda – backed by Rwanda – claims he needs to protect the local Tutsi population from the same Hutu genocidaires who have been hiding out in the jungles of eastern Congo since 1994. That's why he is seizing Congolese military bases and is poised to march on Goma.

It is a lie. François Grignon, Africa Director of the International Crisis Group, tells me the truth: "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit."

At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune from the mines they illegally seized during the war. The global coltan price has collapsed, so now they focus hungrily on cassiterite, which is used to make tin cans and other consumer disposables. As the war began to wane, they faced losing their control to the elected Congolese government – so they have given it another bloody kick-start.
Yet the debate about Congo in the West – when it exists at all – focuses on our inability to provide a decent bandage, without mentioning that we are causing the wound. It's true the 17,000 UN forces in the country are abysmally failing to protect the civilian population, and urgently need to be super-charged. But it is even more important to stop fuelling the war in the first place by buying blood-soaked natural resources. Nkunda only has enough guns and grenades to take on the Congolese army and the UN because we buy his loot. We need to prosecute the corporations buying them for abetting crimes against humanity, and introduce a global coltan-tax to pay for a substantial peacekeeping force. To get there, we need to build an international system that values the lives of black people more than it values profit.

Somewhere out there – lost in the great global heist of Congo's resources – are Marie-Jean and her children, limping along the road once more, carrying everything they own on their backs. They will probably never use a coltan-filled mobile phone, a cassiterite-smelted can of beans, or a gold necklace – but they may yet die for one.

Fofo do...

Sophie can…
· Open the fridge door, wrestle the rice milk box out of the fridge, open said box and pour it in her mouth – and on her clothes;
· Open any door she wants in the house - except the front & back doors (thankfully!);
· Open the catch on the diaper pail;
· Open paint pots and wield a paintbrush like no other;
· Hear that someone has passed gas from across the room, point to him/her and say “excuse me” in the most charming way;
· Drive a fire engine (or so she believes).

What a wonderful weekend!

We had a very busy weekend. M and I managed to go to the 2nd of our season's plays - a one-woman show by Anita Majumdar, called The Misfit. Fantastic actress - she tackles 6 characters - who was also trained in formal Indian dance. Blurb says: "The Misfit introduces us to Naznin, a respected, Canadian born Kathak dancer, with a dark past. After running off with an Indian hotel steward/aspiring pop singer boyfriend (Lucky Punjabi), Naznin is disowned by her parents all in the name of “honour”. In India she finds asylum as a choreographer for a dance troupe that performs classical Indian dance to English MTV pop music at wedding receptions. As we travel through the play, we soon discover that Naznin isn’t the only dancer to fall victim to her community’s hunger for misogyny." Really worth seeing if she comes to your town. Then we ate a tasty veggie meal at a local Ethiopian restaurant (we have many within 15 minutes walk).

Saturday was cooking and preparing for our Night of Dread gathering. Seb made kleenex ghosts - one for each guest so they could identify their main fears and chase them away. I made roast tomato and blue cheese soup - yum, plus we had 2 dips and a large batch of pumpkin muffins. At 4, people started to arrive lugging pumpkins. We soon transformed them into a range of jack o'lanterns. Our French babysitter Alice showed up for her first carving session. No blood was spilled, though the adults did most of the work. We had so many people carving that we spilled out into the backyard (check out our late harvest grapes. I'm thinking of making ice wine!). I love how our "flame" Le Creuset pots look like stove-top pumpkins!

Then at 5.30, we headed out the door with a muffin in hand and everyone (who wanted) had a thermos of plain or spicy (Mexican) hot chocolate. We walked over to Dufferin Grove to watch and walk with the Night of Dread parade. We ended up back at the park an hour later and watched the first bit of the ghouls being chased away by the fire dancers (blazing hoola hoops!). It wasn't cold, but it was getting late so some of us headed back home for the hot food.

Very early on Sunday, M left for Montreal to be a helpful son-in-law. The kids were up at the normal time, so we made more muffins (Dewson St pumpkin muffins are to be recommended). Then at 9.30, Seb's friend Xin was dropped off and we headed to the first of 3 plays that we had given him as a birthday present. Sophie was dropped with the babysitter for a few hours and the boys and I got to ride the front seat of the TTC subway. The production was fine (bit young but they chose it) and Seb got right into the sing-along ,wave your hands bit.

We then spent the afternoon at the ROM with Sophie and 500 other kids and parents. That's where I snapped the archeologists hard at work and the one of Seb befriending a living statue. In that, you can see the ladybird costume he wore all day.

We got home in one piece, had supper and a bath, read books and I still managed to walk out their door at 8 pm.

What a great weekend!