The Best Week in January

The pictures for this post say it all. 

We love and miss you, Grandma Susie.

Yoga Boys

Begin with the breath.

Inhale...

Lower your eyes to the layer of dust on the carpet. Discover the missing playmobile parts beneath the couch. They were not lost after all. 

Exhale. 

Arch your back. You are snake about to strike. You are cobra warrior. You are ancient lizard ancestor.  

Hisssss....

Press your heels down and lift your tailbone to the sky. Show your butt to the Gods and make them giggle. 

Finish with flair.

Namaste.

Terror Birds

Rare footage of two Terror Birds communicating over a meal...

Happ-E New Year

A celebration of 2011 and her big sister 2012 documented in E's photos. 

Friends and family, gather round. Uncork the wine. Steep the tea. Sit a while. Let yourself breathe. Don't look at the dishes that need to be done. Neglect your phone. Be here, for this moment. When it breaks, let it go. There will be another. Love it as you loved the first. Live moment to moment, pausing just long enough to remember you are here. Be glad for it. 

And every day that follows this, put on your imaginary party hat. Wear it with a smile. 

Oh Brother

When J was a little girl, her mom was fond of reminding her that she had only one sister in the whole of the world and that was good reason to be good to her. J got so used to this saying that she'd often finish her mom's sentence midway, more often than not with the yeah, yeah, enough already tone of the adolescent know-it-all. Then J grew up and had two sons. Two brothers. Now she understands. 

Once upon a time E was an only child. Up until two months ago E was an only child. E spent nearly four years of his life as an only child. Is it any wonder he had trouble getting used to the new role of brother?

Admittedly, this little brother is hard not to love. He makes cute little bubbles and cute little farts and stretches his cute little fists over his head like a cute little superhero. He is a bundle of cute. Perhaps that's why E finds it so hard to resist him. He wants to hold him, kiss him, sing to him, smother him, pinch him, punch him...oh dear. It's all so easy to understand when it's written down in black and white. Only son, sole sparkle in his parents' eyes, is suddenly displaced by bundle of bubbling, farting baby. Sure, he loves the little squirt; but that love doesn't come without its jealousy. Poor little man. Poor little M.

But hey, all siblings go through this, right? J's sister once bit through a winter jacket to leave a painful welt on her big sister's back. J never even saw it coming. For her part, she once nearly scalded her little sis with a pot of piping hot macaroni and cheese. Revenge by Kraft Dinner. Twenty-odd years later they're as tight as can be, each wearing the other's scars with loving pride. These are the wounds that bond. And these two brothers will bond. Already, M is giving his big brother adoring smiles. E is as proud and protective of his baby brother as a sabretooth tiger. He calls him The My. M calls him bubbles.

The bottom line is that it's good to have a brother. It's good to be a brother. It's good to know that someone's got your back, that someone will understand you when it seems no one else in the world can possibly know. It's good to have someone to fight tooth and nail with without risk of losing their love. It's good to know that you can love another even when they drive you up the wall because loving them makes you a better person and being driven up the wall is a part of life. That same brother will be there to help you climb back down. He'll be the one to catch you if you fall. 

And Then There Were Two

J went into the hospital a few days after Remembrance Day. When she came out, the world had exploded into Christmas. The effect was dazzling and boy did J feel dazzled. Where had the time gone? And what had happened to her little boy? It seemed E had become enormous overnight. Next to M he seemed a giant. It didn't help that he behaved like one too. For the first month the Js were at a loss to understand, let alone control, E's wildness, his explosive anger. Then the shock wore off. Two months have passed and both boys are relatively unscathed. It's something of a miracle.

The distraction of the holiday helped. J had two weeks off work and became E's constant playmate. Their adventures were epic. Some days they were Vikings, fending off attacks from invisible skeletons. They even let Milo tag along. Other days they were time-travelling zoologists exploring the dangerous Ordivician seas, riding orthocones and tussling with vicious sea scorpions, adding new scars to their collection.

On the first of December, the Riouxs decided it was time to get a tree. J and E hung decorations while M slept on his mommy's chest, serenaded by Sufjan Stevens (by far the best Christmas music yet). In fact, M did a lot of sleeping during the month of December. There are those who may consider it bragging, but J figures it her well-earned right to report, with pride, that he even slept through the night six hours at a stretch. This was not, not ever, the case with her first born. True to his namesake, M is both mellow and mild, a much needed balance in the Rioux famille.

Christmas is a magical time. The Js discovered the joys of sneaking around the house on Christmas Eve, when the kids are in bed, stuffing stockings and assembling toy sets. When he woke, E was ecstatic that Santa had come -- perhaps he had assumed he was on the naughty list; fortunately the old elf is a real softie -- and spent most of the morning building castles out of mega-bloks with his dad. It was a perfect day. No tantrums, no meltdowns, no timeouts for hitting the baby. Apparently all you need to do to ensure good behaviour is play a kid with presents, let him eat candy for breakfast and have half-a-dozen relatives around to play with from morning till night. J figures she should write her own parenting book and share this secret with the world.

Also, J learned the only thing better than a kid on Christmas morning is two kids, two blue-eyed kids with cupid's-bow lips in their holiday jammies. Merry Christmas indeed.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

Waiting is a curious thing. It is both active and passive. You wait and you are still. You wait and you are constantly looking for a way out of the waiting, only to be brought humbly back to the beginning, which is also the middle, which is never the end of the waiting. You wait and you lose track of time. You wait and time is all you can focus on. And then, without warning, the wait is over. You're still not entirely sure you can trust it, or believe it, but you have finally been released from the wait. You can open your eyes again. You can recover your breath.

This is how it was for J. Maybe it was because E came two days before his due date that she expected this second baby to make an early appearance. Maybe it was because she was fixated on having a baby before (or on) Halloween so she could plan costume parties and bat-themed birthdays. Maybe it was because 9 months is a really long time and she was done, just plain done, and ready for this baby to come. But he didn't. Not by Halloween, not even by Remembrance Day. He made her wait. He played knock-knock ginger (or ding-dong ditch if you're living in the states) a couple of times and when he did both the Js jumped. They even called the grandparents to watch E one night and drove all the way to the hospital only to return to the waiting game at home. J tried everything that was suggested to make that baby come. She drank castor oil and took blue cohosh. She ate spicy thai food and climbed Bear Hill. She was this close to giving in and being induced when she finally went into labour at midnight on the Sunday of her 42nd week of pregnancy.

Yes folks, for those of you who are counting, that's a full two weeks overdue.
They made it to the hospital in time and Milo Alexander came into the world an hour later. He was long and lean and lovely, but he didn't have the lungs to give a healthy cry so they bundled him and brought him to the NICU where he stayed a full five days. So it was that the waiting continued for the Js, and for E, and for everyone around them who had all but held their breath in anticipation of meeting the littlest Rioux.

E plays with the Smilodon toy that M got him as welcome gift.

J stayed in the hospital and time passed in surreal slow-motion. She made the walk from her room to the nursery every two hours, day and night, to nurse. J and E stayed at home and tried to pass the time between worrying and wondering when their family would reunite.



Waiting has a way of fooling you into thinking you know what you are waiting for.

Hello, little man. Welcome to the zoo.

Where Did We Leave Off?

Yes, we left you hanging. What have we been doing all this time? Well, it hasn't all been laziness on our part. There have been a few...distractions.




J had his wisdom teeth removed. He took it like a man, though he acknowledged the surgery gave him renewed respect for the pain J was about to experience in a few months' time (more on that experience in the next post).

 The Riouxs also hosted Thanksgiving and J prepared his first turkey. They bought a free-ranged bird that weighed 22 lbs and cost more than their hydro bill. J used a dry-brine recipe and took pride in each step. He also took a lot of advice from well-meaning family members that may have had a little trouble keeping out of the kitchen. Everyone ate well that night and well into the next week.

The rest of the month was devoted to Halloween and all its fanciful gore and glory. E did his own make-up to dress as a zombie for an early costume party. He also busted out some pretty original undead moves.

The season has so much to offer and the Riouxs took advantage of as much as they could, all the while wondering when they'd need to make use of that hospital bag that lay in patient readiness. They navigated the corn maze at Galey's farm, picked field-fresh pumpkins and carved gruesome, gleeful Jack-o'-lantern faces. J stitched together a spider costume for E to wear door-to-door and his dad taught him to sing "Halloween apples" like they do in the prairies. J stayed home to hand out candy to a handful of trick-or-treaters. The boys arrived home with a sack full of loot, which E piled high on the livingroom floor and basked in the sugary glow.

J did not expect to be pregnant passed Halloween. Time slowed to a standstill as she waited and those around her waited and the baby still didn't come. She began to feel she was living in a surreal sort of constant repeat, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. She began to measure time by pleasant distractions: Ethan's craft and splash class, a family hike up Bear Hill, yet another visit to the midwife, then the acupuncturist. She learned a birth song and sang it in the bath every night: I am an open bamboo / Open up and let my babe come through.

She waited and she kept you all waiting.