Monday 28 April 2014

Seven Years

Tonight it's cold and it's rainy and it has gotten dark far too early. I am grateful to have a trip to look forward to. And this trip is a really big deal. We will spend a month in our old city, our old neighbourhood, back in the States. It was seven years ago this Tuesday, we arrived in Wellington. That's usually what I think about on the anniversary our arrival. But this year I am thinking about our departure. We woke up that morning, got in our rental car, and drove to our friend's flat to unload one more thing - an old computer. Then we stopped in a cafe - I think it was Royal Ground. We sat there with our coffees, looking across the table at each other, spending these last few minutes in our city. I was so busy with logistics up til that moment, that it hadn't hit me, really down to the bones hit me til then what we were doing. I remember that as the moment it started to feel real.

Seven years later we are going back for the first time. I am anxious about logistics once again - that's just who I am - but I'm starting to feel something else. Excitement. Anticipation. It will be so amazing to see everyone. It will be really strange but also really good to see our old city again. We usually spend our anniversary of moving to New Zealand by visiting a new place in New Zealand. But this is the year we look back at what we left behind. And it will be Spring. This year, we get an extra month of Spring.

Monday 14 April 2014

Last week in pictures

 Sebastian in his monster PJ's riding his bee down the hall with his stuffed piggy



Loren and Sebastian looking out the window on the train. We usually go out to brunch on Sundays. Sebastian really wanted to ride in his stroller instead of taking the car, so we got him in the stroller and walked to the train station. We went into downtown Wellington and walked around and had brunch at one of the cafes at Midland Park.




 Last day of my circus aerials class. I asked a classmate to take pictures. I especially enjoyed the tissu (what I'm on in this photo). This is me in a foot lock - not the most flashy move, but one I am particularly pleased to be able to do. It involves tying a knot around one foot with the other foot while up in the air, and it took me all nine classes to be able to do it. In the back ground you can see the apparatus we spent the other half the class on: the static trapeze.

We have been coming up with rainy-day activities as we get on into Autumn. Tutu got Sebastian some water colours to play with.

Friday 4 April 2014

This week: Playground and Garden

 Sebastian putting his hands in his pockets and looking so grown up

 We did an excursion (a.k.a. field trip) with Playcentre this week. We went to Central Park in Brooklyn (a suburb of Wellington). It's a nice playground, and far enough away that we had not explored it yet.




  He liked the playground's fire engine, of course. Here he is operating both wheels at once, and probably saying "vrooooo!"

 watering the new garden bed - and wearing Mama's gloves

Sebastian helped me plant sugar snap peas this week. On Monday, he collected worms from the compost heap with Granpa's help. This is one of Sebastian's favourite things ever right now - catching worms. While they did that, I dug out an old flower bed - a raised bed near the front door that has been mainly neglected by us. I put in some compost, and Sebastian came along with his worms so I asked him to put them in the new soil. He happily dumped them in, then helped me water the soil.

On Tuesday he helped me put up the trellis. Though there wasn't much he could do, being so short, so he also did some raking of leaves and inspected the large spool of twine I was using for trellis construction.

On Wednesday, I completed the trellis while my parents took Sebastian out to Pataka (the local art museum). When he came back, he helped me sow peas! I poked holes in the ground, gave him the peas, and he planted them in the holes and covered them up with dirt. He did about 3/4 of the row with me this way. Then he wanted to cut open a pea to see what was inside. I finished off getting the peas in the ground, then cut open a pea for him to inspect. I am a new but enthusiastic gardener, and I love that Sebastian is old enough that I can start to share this with him.

Sowing peas