Parental pride

*Note: I started this post on Sunday, February 23. Sometimes it takes a while to get things done around here!

I think being a parent means being impressed and proud that your child can do things that other people don’t really care about. But the thing is that this very same little person is doing something that they couldn’t do even a week ago. And since kids are always developing and growing, the amazement at their growth/change is pretty continual. So this is one of those posts where I am amazed at my daughter and it is perfectly OK if you are not also enthralled :-)

Earlier this evening Maren drew a picture. It looked basically like every other picture that she draws, but then suddenly she started writing, and wrote an entire sentence. It looks like this:

The writing, in case you have trouble reading it, is this:

KoHSku
Frum
Mare
N
TU

IAMH
APETHE
TYUOL
I
V
T
F
O
R
SUHSALO
NGTIM

Translated, it says: To Koshka, from Maren. I am happy that you lived for such a long time.

I am amazed and impressed for so many reasons. First, she is independently trying to write entire sentences, which she could not do last week. Second, she is handling death/grief/loss really maturely. She seems to understand what death means, and expresses how she feels about losing Koshka very openly. She does not have a super good handle on expressing or labelling all of her emotions (about a week ago she was yelling and screaming at me through tears while stomping and hitting the air saying “I AM VERY HAPPY!,” because I dared to suggest that she was angry). But at four years old using words to express any feelings seems good.

Maren is one amazing kid, which can be hard to remember through the day to day difficulties. She is definitely four years old, and is what some people call a “spirited” child - meaning that she is not really a go-with-the-flow, mellow kind of person. Also, she talks almost constantly and does not like it when you are not listening (like when Jeff and I are trying to talk to each other). So it is good to notice that through everything she is kind, caring, super smart, and sensitive. I sure do love my little kiddo ❤️

Not so fast...

Just when I thought I was almost Canadian, Canada said not so fast. Unfortunately, my passport has not been stamped each and every time I entered and exited the United States. Therefore I am required to submit a freedom of information act request to US customs and border patrol asking for a record of all of my entries and exits. I have to wait for this then submit that to citizenship and immigration Canada, and then I am pretty sure I will be invited to take the oath of citizenship. So for now I sit and wait for my FOIA request to go through.

In the meantime I turned 40. Someone in the moms group I attend had a bit of an existential crisis because he turned 30. I just laughed. I also thought I was kind of old when I turned 30, and surprisingly 40 doesn’t feel like anything particularly special. I think maybe because I have a lot of what I wanted at 30 — a stable job, a couple of kids, a house. A lot is different from what I expected, but a lot is just how I wanted it to be.

To celebrate my birthday we had some fancy “artisan“ ice cream. We brought home pints of three different flavours from a local ice cream shop that does small batches of high quality. Chocolate raspberry ripple, strawberry shortcake, and salted chocolate caramel “brookie” (a cross between a brownie and a cookie).

And you wouldn’t even know that they are vegan. The salted chocolate caramel brookie has a definite coconut flavor, but the other two don’t even though all are coconut milk-based. I am finding that there are really some good options for vegan ice cream. I made a coconut milk-based mint ice cream with Girl Scout thin mints, and it was really good and not at all coconut flavored.

I am going to try to make some chocolate and see if I can keep it from tasting too much like coconut. I may have a perfect and simple recipe figured out!

Almost Canadian

Last Tuesday I took my Canadian citizenship test in Saskatoon. This is the second to last step in becoming a dual citizen (American and Canadian). I passed the test and the interview, and now I wait for an invitation to take the oath of citizenship and participate in a citizenship ceremony. It will all be done in the next few months.

We had a good 24 hour visit to Saskatoon, which included visiting the modern art museum there, going to an awesome Asian fusion (mostly Chinese) restaurant with a huge vegan menu, and visiting an indoor park/children’s museum called Wonder Hub. Maren is now a great traveller – very easy in the car on long drives, sleeps pretty well in new places – but Linden is not there yet. It is just over 2 1/2 hours from here to Saskatoon, and especially on the way there Linden couldn’t wait to get out of the car. She cried a lot. On the way back she slept most of the way, but that was mostly because she hardly slept overnight. Jeff left the hotel room with her at 4:30 AM so that Maren and I could get a little more sleep. There’s not much open at 4:30 AM. Jeff tried to go to Walmart and even they weren’t open yet. He and Linden went to a breakfast restaurant as soon as it opened, and they were the only ones there the entire time that they were there. I hope Linden gets better at travelling as she gets older.

One highlight on the drive back is that I saw a wolf.  Even though it is mostly farmland, there is still wildlife throughout this part of Saskatchewan. It was walking along train tracks that hardly ever get used. That is the only time in my life that I have ever seen a wolf in the wild.

Meanwhile, Linden continues to be adventurous, and Maren and Linden are really learning to play and have fun together:

This week in videos

Last weekend a stomach virus tore through our house like a hurricane. This was on top of a cold that we all already had. We are all reasonably healthy now, and every second night or so we are getting reasonable sleep. So things are on the up.

Skill, I am feeling fairly behind on everything. Like our Christmas lights are still up, and I feel like that should’ve been taken care of definitely before February hit. Everything is kind of like that at the moment. So here are a couple of videos to tell about our week: