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:

Desperately seeking sleep

Linden appears to be going through some serious development in all areas. She has suddenly learned to climb a full flight of stairs, take a few steps holding onto a push toy, stand independently long enough to clap twice, climb anything less than about 12 inches high, climb onto the rocking horse and rock like crazy on it, and basically do all sorts of things that we didn’t expect her to do at this age.

We are exhausted. Partly from chasing her around making sure she isn’t doing anything too dangerous, but partly because she also isn’t sleeping very well.

Besides all of this she seems to be trying to use words. I am pretty sure she has said “mama” a few times in reference to me. Maren heard it this afternoon and agrees that it is different than the ma ma ma she says all the time. I also think she has been trying to say Maren, ball, bear, book, and a few other things. I am always surprised when parents are 100% sure about their babies’ first words. It seems like babies have to try things out a lot of times before you can be certain they are saying things in reference to something. So I am not completely certain that Linden is actually using any of these words, but I am certain she is trying things out that are approximating language.

She seems to be having some emotional development too. She has been getting super angry lately. I was at a moms group this week and one of the other moms started laughing while Linden had her back to me. The mom said that Linden was making a super expressive angry face that you don’t often see on babies. Another baby was playing with one of her toys and apparently she didn’t like it.

With all this going on it’s no wonder that she isn’t sleeping but I really hope sleep settles down soon because we are so so tired.

Cousin lovin’

Last week we took a trip to Eugene. My sister and her family were also there visiting from Norway. It was super fun to have all the cousins together.

It was also my first time travelling with my trike. I took it on the airplane instead of my scooter, and used it throughout the airports. It worked really well. I needed a little help getting up some of the steepest ramps, but other than that it was perfect for air travel. That also meant having the trike in Oregon, which meant being able to go out for walks. Unfortunately my mom lives in a very hilly area so I needed some help getting around there, but we also went for a walk at Mount Pisgah in some of the flat areas and it was really nice.

We had some flight delays and ended up not getting home until about 2 AM last night. We are tired today but glad to be home and glad to not be in airports anymore :-)