School's In!

After a summer full of a little of this (that would be us getting off the Metro):

And  a lot of this:

An possibly even more of this:

And a bit of:

And a lot of:

And even more:

And quite a few batches of:

And a little bit of:

And more than enough of this for my taste:

And plenty of:

. . . . we have finally made it to the first day of school. Summer with four busy children. What a ride that was.

After this touching scene of "quick, run on the bus before Mom hugs us in front of people or can take photos for her blog"

I returned to the relatively quiet world of the two littlest ones.

I

Oh, don't worry mom. We'll be sure to keep you busy for the next ten months . . .

Friday Adventures in Montreal - The Biodome

One of the things I promised my kids this summer was that we would finally explore Montreal. We have been here for three years in August, but it has been a very busy time full of babies and job changes and studies. My oldest son loves exploring and adventures, including the traffic jams and getting lost and ending up somewhere different than you intended. This is good, because when you go places with me, this happens a lot.

In any case, in our weekly schedule (I might do a post about that too later) we have made Friday "Adventure Day". I will try to keep up with them on this blog as best I can.

This weekend is the Jazz Festival in Montreal, but I didn't feel up to taking four kids by myself to such an open area, so we opted for the Biodome. (Tip for Montrealers: if you go down to the basement and buy a year family pass, its only a little more than one regular family admission and you get full year access, plus free entrance to the Planetarium in November.) The Biodome is part of Olympic Park, which is across town from us, so we started the day with a big adventure on the bus, then the metro (the subway).

The three older kids loved the metro. Owen was not happy with riding on my back for 30 min. of underground.

Here is the Biodome - I love the Modernist concrete architecture around here (plus a Silvercity, of course). Is it just me, or is there something really Canadian about random, optimistic concrete structures? Two out of the three universities I attended were also full on Modernist concrete. I think it must have just been that everything was booming in the 70s.

But I digress. Here we are getting off the subway. The photo below is a great photo of me but not so good of Owen - have I mentioned that I got a haircut? I did. And I finally found a good hairdresser. Hooray!

In typical toddler style, Owen's favorite part of the Biodome was the puddles outside.

I love the colours and design in this poster (La Presse is the French Language daily newspaper in Quebec). I know, I'm such a quilt nerd.

I

When we got there, we had to wait in a giant line up, as it was Friday and the week of the Jazz festival and there were tourists everywhere. It was real fun with four small children. Fortunately banana bread came to my rescue - I had a whole loaf in my bag and we nibbled away at it while we waited.

In typical Jill fashion, we got all the way to the end of the line only to discover that you buy the year long passes down by the coat check - where there is abseloutely no line.

The Biodome is pretty cool. They have reconstructed a tropical rainforest, a maple forest, the Saint Laurence salt water coastline and the arctic. You can walk through and watch all the animals in their semi-natural environment.  My favorite feature is that under the habitats they have water tanks, so you can see the fish and beavers and things as well as the above ground action. There is also a beaver cam and a lynx cam, so you can still see them if they are in their dens. Things like that always amuse me.

 Of course at this point my camera ran out of batteries, but I did get a shot of the turtles in the rainforest.

And at the very end, my kids' favorites - penguins. When Emma saw these she yelled, "Wow! Penguins really DO exist!". Again you can see in the water, too, so you can watch the penguins swim by.

In the lobby there is presently a display of cool birdhouses - this mosaic-ed one was my favorite.

After our tour of the Biodome we went to the Naturarium, a kids' room full of hands on nature props, microscopes with things to look at under them, and old stuffed animals. It was well worth the visit, and  I'm happy we have the year long pass, as some of the animals were sleeping or had just had babies.

We then did the whole metro / bus trip again, which went just fine. All in all, a successful first adventure. It really is nice to have kids at an age where these sorts of things are actually fun - not just a huge headache for me. I really do enjoy older kids.

So, hopefully I'll keep you updated on our summer adventures.

Oh, and my husband is mending up fine. I'm still on duty for most of the house / kids stuff, but at least he can do things for himself now.

Why I haven't got to sew this month . . .

I have been working away on my friend's baby quilt, but other than that, I haven't got to much sewing this month. Do you want to see why?

Owen is climbing on top of all kinds of fun things.

Owen is into everything. Finding toothbrushes, pairs of shoes and a full set of anything these days is a challenge. He LOVES to relocate things.

And he loves OUTSIDE.

Can we go out NOW, Mom?

And he's realized there's a BIG world out there that he wants to see.

Not to mention all sorts of exciting things to explore in the house.

And then the call of outside again.

Keeping this little boy safe is a full time job these days. Not to mention the other three kids who need to be kicked off Netflix, sent into the back yard, helped with puppets and playdoh and forced to clean up themselves and their assorted messes . . . sigh. Parenthood is good and glorious and hard. Just as it should be, I suppose.

But sewing has to go on the backburner until we can regularly find two matching shoes again . . .

Two steps forward, one step back . . .

Well, I had my baby quilt all laid out, and only had to add a few more blocks (as the yellows I chose were WAY too bright), and then I decided to give Emma a few of the extra blocks that didn't work to play with while I was busy with the baby and the dishes . . . and I came back to this:

Sigh. So, I need to make 8 more white / peach blocks, and then put it back up on the design wall . . .

Owen's Quilt

Two weeks before his first birthday, Owen's quilt is finally done! Fortunately, its big enough for a toddler (40 x 48) so I'm not too worried about the lateness! Emma was sick and mostly wanted me to sit around with her yesterday, so I got a lot of crafty type things done, including stitching down the binding on this quilt.

I finished the piecing in the middle of last month, but then when I started machine quilting it, my machine got grumpy and kept leaving snaggles of thread and ugly ridges all over the quilt. This was mostly because I was lazy when I basted it, but rather than re-baste it, I simply decided it was small enough to hand quilt, and smooth out as I went.

I quilted with purl cotton, making x-es in the squares along the outside of the quilt and random sized boxes in the rest of the squares. I am not a super good hand quilter, but I really liked the slightly heavier texture hand quilting added to Emma's baby quilt, and I thought it was a nice size to practice on, so I went for it.

This quilt was easy to put together, and really shouldn't have taken me almost a year to make. But there are so many busy fabrics in warm and cool shades that I wanted to use that it took me a while to figure out how to give it a sense of order. In the end I simply alternated dark and light outside blocks, while trying to scatter both the novelty prints and the super busy prints evenly throughout the quilt. In the dark outer squares I also alternated warm and cool fabrics. This quilt was on and off my design wall several times at several stages in between other quilts.

In then end, I'm glad I took all that time, since it is a quilt that is living at my house and I have to look at it every day. When I was finished, I laid the quilt out to show Owen. He was most impressed with the Horton the elephant block.

The back of this quilt is two organic cotton prints - one bought with the intention of backing this quilt, and the other bought because is was so darned cute. The little paper boat print is one of those prints that would have otherwise been scattered through everything I made for the next few years, but I think I'm happy using it on this quilt that I will see every day for many years to come.

I was laughing at myself, as it was a cloudy day yesterday, and I was sad that I couldn't photograph this quilt. Then suddenly the sun came out, and I ran outside to hang it on the clothesline (our back yard is a mud and ice pit), and then drape it across various chairs around the house, madly clicking pictures before the sun disappeared again.

Its been a busy week of finishes - I'll have more to show later in the week (unless more children get colds, in which case I might be too busy making lemon - honey drinks and passing out kleenexes).

The sun is finally out, and the snow is melted in front of our house, but not yet in our dark bottom-of-the-hill-surrounded-by-duplexes back yard. Last Thursday (also garbage day - my apologies)Emma and Aaron decided to try out their new Spring box of sidwalk chalk.

They spent a while tracing each other on the sidewalk and drawing on the side of the house.

I love watching these two play together. People often laud the benefits of having kids really close together so that they will play. But Emma and Aaron, at almost three years difference, are the fartherst apart of all my kids.

When we first moved to Montreal, though, they were the two kids that went off to daycare together, and stayed home with Dad together. This means that they have spent a lot of time together.

Now that Aaron is in school, they don't see each other as much, so it is always a joy to watch them re-connect and play together. Their play is very visceral and physical and involves lots of jumping, dancing, and running. This little girl LOVES her big brother and is always happy to have his undivided attention.

Sometimes I feel guilty for all the quiet home time with Mom that they missed. I feel bad that their early childhoods were so full of upheaval - moves, job changes, changes in caregivers.

But I am glad for this beautiful relationship and bond it has created between these two siblings.

I really hope they can carry this closeness with them through life. What a blessing and gift that would be for both of them.