Ode to the apartment we are leaving

Goodbye quirky old apartment
with your dusty-rose bathroom fixtures,
your warped parquet hardwood floors
(sloped perfectly for a baby and a very round ball placed just so),
and your must-have-been-for-milk-delivery cabinet outside the door.

I will miss you, sweet old apartment, for all the memories you hold.
Our first (and so far only) on-our-own Christmas.
So many summer nights sipping wine on the deck.
Cheering for the Canucks
with the rest of the neighbourhood
behind their equally thin walls.
Picnic dinner on the front lawn every night
during the hottest days of summer.
Those (thankfully few) sub-zero days
when the butter in cupboard
was as hard as the butter in the fridge.
Thirty hours of labour in the comfort of home
before it was clear
that what I'd planned was not to be.
Coming home too many nights without our baby,
until that oh-so-sweet day
when we three came home together.

I will not miss
your lousy, leaky, I-can't-believe-we-lived-with-it-so-long plumbing,
your moldy, mildewy, window sills,
your (probably lead-based) chipping paint,
and your paper-thin single-paned windows.

Goodbye dear apartment.
You have been just the right place at just the right time.
You have been home.

And I have been very very happy here.

I am glad we are not going far.
And I am looking forward to being able to operate
the coffee maker and the microwave simultaneously.


kb

If you were this cute...

...you might want to give yourself a kiss too.

kb

Toys?

Drew loves to play with anything he can get his chubby little hands on. Typical nine month old in that regard (yes, nine months - we've managed to keep him alive that long). However, while toys are good, they're no match for non-toy play things. Top of that list is medical paraphernalia. Top of that list is oxygen tubing and ventilator hoses, of which we offer the following example.

Dear Drew,

That is all very true, and very sweet.
It would be equally (if not more) sweet if you would sleep for more than a 2 hour stretch.

Just sayin...

Love,
Mama

Dear Mama,

I'm sorry that I woke up all night long last night. And the night before. And the night before that.

I miss you when you are at work all day, and it seems a shame that we spend so much of our time together sleeping. So I decided I wouldn't. Why should I drink milk during the day from a bottle when I can get it straight from the source at night? Plus, I have to make up for those first two months when we spent our nights apart.

You know you really do like looking at my sweet sleepy face at 3am.

Remember, Mama, this stage won't last forever. It won't even last very long in the grand scheme of things. There will come a time when you will wake up on your own and look over to see me sleeping and you will miss these days.

Until then, this is the reason they invented the double Americano.

Love,
Drew
(who is still napping at noon to make up for the sleep he missed at night)