Around October 10 we were still having highs around 70°F/21°C. Then the weather started to get crisper and cooler, and then all of a sudden about a week ago the highs didn’t get above freezing. And the overnight lows have been frigid. We are supposed to get some better fall weather again starting on Tuesday, but winter is definitely coming.
I got new snowsuits for Maren and Linden, and I liked them so much that I wished they came in my size. Then I had a thought. Linden is in toddler sizes, but Maren is in kid sizes and is an XXS. Doing the math in my head, I started to think that maybe I could fit into a kid size extra large. I checked the measurements for the extra large in their online chart and compared that with measurements for clothes that fit me well right now, and they were basically identical. So I ordered myself a snowsuit and was happy to find that it does indeed fit. Now Maren and I are snowsuit twins, right down to the colour, but she said it’s OK with her so it’s fine with me too :-)
Linden’s language and pretend play have exploded. It took me watching this video a couple of times to catch everything. One big hint is that Ritz = witch, and surprisingly it took me a couple of days and a number of frustration related tantrums to figure that out. So watch this and just imagine that this goes on for several hours (which it does). She is fun to watch and also kind of exhausting :-)
Today we celebrated Thanksgiving. We had mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mushroom gravy, and soy curls (which are made of soy beans and are very tasty). We also had pumpkin pie and coconut whipped cream.
Last weekend was Maren‘s birthday but it was also a sad time for us. Our cat Maddy died. The last we saw her was after school the Thursday before Maren’s birthday, and then she went missing. The weather was nice and we thought maybe she was roaming and didn’t come in for the night when we expected her. But then she didn’t come back Friday and she didn’t come back Saturday. She had never been away more than a couple of hours before.
Last Sunday, Jeff did a really thorough search around our house, and also around our neighbours houses, one by one. He found her body under a neighbour’s deck. It looked like she stretched out for a nap and died in her sleep. We are glad we found her, and that it seems like she died peacefully.
We had a little funeral for her and buried her body in our backyard, right next to where we had put Koshka‘s ashes. Apparently it is illegal to bury the body of a pet in your yard in our city, and since we had a vet help Koshka die we had to have her cremated. We decided to break the law with Maddy because having a funeral and burying her body seemed like the right thing to do, especially for Maren and Linden.
For the first time basically ever, we have no pets in our house. It feel strange. We will see how long it lasts.
Yesterday Maren turned five years old. We were not quite sure how to celebrate given the current pandemic situation. We thought a lot about it and decided to invite her kindergarten class. We figured that she is already exposed to those kids so it doesn’t really add any risk. But in thinking about how to be safe we decided to specifically not invite parents, to wear masks the whole time, to purchase cupcakes from a bakery and have individual juice boxes, and to have the party outside.
Well. Things didn’t go exactly as we had hoped. First, Maren’s teacher didn’t get back to us right away regarding distributing invitations. Apparently she had to check with the principal to make sure it was all right. Then the invitations had to be brought to school and left for three days before being sent home with the kids. But Maren only goes to school twice a week so there was a long delay between getting the invitations to school and getting them back to parents. In the end invitations went home on Tuesday and the party was on Saturday, so people didn’t have much time to plan or RSVP. Only three kids were able to make it, but that was much better than the zero we worried would be able to come.
Then there was the weather. It was predicted to be sunny and warm, then sunny and relatively warm, and by Thursday night it was predicted to rain. So our plans for an outdoor party did not come to fruition. We decided that since so few kids would be coming anyway it wouldn’t be too big a risk to have it indoors. In the end it didn’t actually rain during the party but it was chilly. The kids went outside to play for a little while but got too cold and came back in (one of the guests was wearing a tank top dress and no socks and did not have a jacket with her so even though it wasn’t that cold they couldn’t stay out for very long). We were able to keep them pretty well distanced while they were eating their individual cupcakes, and their games consisted mostly of running and screaming so they kept a decent distance from one another then too. I think we did all right.
All in all the birthday party was kind of a normal five-year-old birthday party. Balloons, freeze dance, music, screaming, running, cake. Maren will probably just remember this as a birthday party, not a pandemic birthday party, which is good I think. Happy birthday Maren! We love you ❤️
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