Last Saturday was Xavier’s first birthday party. We did a burger lunch party in the yard with family and friends. It rained!! but we did ok with a couple shelters, and luckily the rain only started after lunch.

We didn’t take many pictures ourselves, but happily grandma Lucie shot over 200, so I drew from her reserve to put together our online album of the day – a little shorter, but still including 60 pictures. Since I added comments to the pictures relating the day, I won’t repeat myself here, but I invite you to have a look at the album. I especially recommend the funny cake pictures.

I leave you with my favourite :

For all of Lucie’s 209 pictures, you can go here.

Little (narcissic?) note from myself: my eyes got irritated a lot on Thursday, so much so that, to my great regret, I had to spend the week (including the party) without my beloved contact lenses, with my old glasses in the face. *sigh* Now that’s said.

Xavier made his first drawing today at Jinny’s. He is quite the artist isn’t he ? I really like how he matched the colors, and the lines, they are so straights and curved at the same time. Xavier also tasted most crayons while drawing his chef d’oeuvre.

Daemons are cool. I’m talking about those little animal-shaped exteriorised souls of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. I just finished the first tome, and so tonight’s web surfing brought me to the upcoming movie adaptation’s website, which has the neat feature of creating one’s very own daemon, through a set of 20 questions. My result is what’s showing above. At the present time, it’s a crow, but it might possibly change if people start agreeing/disagreeing with the personality test included. We’ll see.

The reading list
Just to update my reading list…

I continued with “Reine de mémoire – 1. La maison d’oubli” by Elisabeth Vonarburg since my last update, but I still haven’t finished the book. It’s quite interesting, but just not engaging enough to keep me up late. I know Vonarburg’s works are really rewarding once read, they’re just not page turners… and thus I tend to cut it through with other novels:

The Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb
I had gotten the first tome (”Fool’s Errand”) as a Brightweavings.com Secret Santa gift at Christmas, and read it during the winter, but due to time constraints and other great books at hand, I had not continued on with the rest of the trilogy, even though “Fool’s Errand” was engaging literature. I did so just recently.

When I first heard about Robin Hobb, I was looking forward to read her Liveship trilogy, but felt I should pick up her Farseer trilogy to begin with, as it was set in the same world at a prior time. I’m glad I did so. I loved both trilogies, in the end, for different reasons. I was not quite content with how the protagonist’s (Fitz) story ended after the last Farseer novel, and so I was glad to pick up the third trilogy, “The Tawny Man”, which follows through Fitz’s story some (15?) years later.

Oddly, though, it was the second tome of this last trilogy, “Golden Fool”, which I prefered – mainly because Fool became one of my all-time favourite litterary characters. And although the last tome manages a well done happy ending for Hobb’s whole series of books, it was not exactly to my liking so I was not quite as delighted as I should be. SPOILER ALERT : Mainly, I felt Hobb really pushed – pushed? crammed is more like it – Fitz and his lost love’s reuniting at the end of the story, while I’d been rooting for a good part of the book for Fitz to head into a relationship with a certain notable character – whose ambiguous gender let my imagination run and project a truly amazing pure and true love story in the works. I know this imagined ending might have ruined some of what the author was trying to achieve with this relationship, but on another level it would have been just SO romantic. Much more than this quick reunion with a long-lost character that’s just half-mentioned throughout most of the books. Anyway – maybe it’s just me.

Artemis Fowl book 5 : The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
A quick read (youth literature), I quite liked this fifth installment of Artemis Fowl – although that ending is getting me to wonder how much longer Colfer will be able to keep Butler in the run, the way he’s aging him every other book. It was better than the fourth (”The Opal Deception”), but it still lacked by Juliet’s absence in my opinion (I liked reading about Juliet Butler, even though she was far from being a main character).

His Dark Materials book 1 : Northern Lights (or “The Golden Compass” in the USA, I believe) by Philip Pullman – read in French
I started this one a long while ago, but was not engaged enough to finish it – probably because I had picked it up originally while in Harry Potter withdrawal, and was hoping for a similar fix, which it is NOT. The upcoming movie raised my interest in it again, and I’m glad to report the book proved worthy of this second chance. It might feel a bit slow in the start, but once one gets in the mindset of the work, it’s a nice piece of literature. I’m looking forward to the second tome, “The Subtle Knife”. The movie looks like it will gloss over the religion theme – and probably also some of the darker stuff in consideration of the kids’ delicate minds – but it should, nonetheless, play to its strengths and expand on the amazing imaginative and fantastic scenes of the book. Eyecandy à la recent Star Wars, without the tacky lasers and spaceships.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling.
I haven’t got my hands on it yet, but for sure it is on order and the next item on my reading list. And despite hosting Xavier’s first birthday party in 10 days, I’m sure to find some time to spend at Hogwarts in the next while.

My first day back at work is now finished. Generally, in many regards, it was oddly as if I never really left, more so than it was like starting a new job. It ended up that my desk was in the same spot it was when I left – I was supposed to move to another office initially – and, even if I spent part of my morning installing software on my new machine and if the main service I was in charge of was shut down during my leave, the tasks I accomplished today were the same kind I was doing before, so the transition went without any major mishap.

Regarding fatigue, it seems it did me good to enter again a work schedule – which it sort of what I had been hoping for, while apprehending the as-likely possibility that the reverse become true. In addition to the new schedule – and the fact that working sitting at a desk all day is a quieter activity than running behind a one-year-old toddler – I think the A.C. helped a lot too. It was sort of cold at the office, but at least the paralyzing heat wasn’t weighing in on my fatigue and nausea.

As for our new routine, well everything fell into place. We could almost hear the “cluck” of each element of our day slotted into its place. We have now achieved a level of routine never-before-seen : we get up and get ready > we get Xavier ready > we drop Xavier off at the babysitter > we go to work > we have lunch > we go back to work > we go back to pick up Xavier > we prepare dinner and eat it > we play with Xavier and try to finish off some chores > we give Xavier a bath > we put Xavier to bed > we enjoy a little free time > we go to bed. (repeat until the weekend, except on wenesdays)

Xavier, on his part, was a little irritated when François left him with the babysitter – he’s starting to realise we’re going and leaving him there for the whole day now – but apparently it was short lived. Jinny says he has not cried at all the whole day, that he even had himself a great nap of two and a half hours in the afternoon. When I went to pick him up he was quite busy with a toy – too much, even, to notice his mommy had come for him.

He was pretty upset and crying during bathtime : it’s probably due to his little behind, which is all red, poor baby! With his nose running as well, we’re strongly suspecting his molar teeth of starting to show the top of their crown. We applied loads of the appropriate cream, which seemed to soothe him, and he went to sleep in my arms without a peep after his bottle.

Frank is gone to the grocery store, and I’m going to bed with the first tome of “His Dark Materials” (Northern Lights) of Philip Pullman, which I’ve picked back up for reading recently, after finding out there will be a movie out soon. In fact, I’d be due to jot down my last reads soon, less I forget what they were.

I’ll leave you with a picture (which I’ll be trying to turn into a new tradition). It’s Xavier on the first morning he went to daycare/babysitter.

Transl. Xavier in hot water

There’s now a small video of Xavier enjoying a dip in his grand-parents’ jacuzzi in our Video Archives in our Picasaweb albums. I’ve also started his July album and created a new album (52 pics!) of our visit to St.Edouard Zoo. It’s not a big exotic zoo – mostly wolves, wildcats and llamas – but it’s close-by and an adequately short trip for two toddlers who won’t notice the difference anyway (we went with Mathieu and Christine with their son Félix, now 14.5 months).

I’ve been quite tired, which has dragged down the number of activities we embarked on during our vacations, but other vacation activities included for me a trip to Ikea and another to see the new Harry Potter movie in Mtrl with Karine – I liked the movie, it was quite better accomplished than the 4th in my opinion, and the adaptation from novel to movie length was no small feat. We also spent a couple days sans Xavier, which were sort of vacation in their own fashion, and finally, yesterday, we all went to the local fair to see yet more farm animals and where Xavier and Félix enjoyed their first rides.

The end of vacation… a year’s worth

Well I wouldn’t call vacation the whole of last year, which was my maternity leave, but it will indeed end tonight, as tomorrow is my first day back at work. I’m not really nervous about it – I went back for half a day already, and it was pretty much like riding a bike. Some staffing changes and office configuration aside, work doesn’t change much. What I’m most concerned with is how tired I’ve been feeling lately, and how that will translate into the busy schedule of workdays and caring for Xavier. I’ll have Wenesdays off with him; I’m not sure those days will be as relaxing as they sound, but at least I’ll get to see my son a little more than 2/7 of a week.

I’m hoping to keep the blog alive even after I’m back at work, but post occurence might slow down.

Our summer feels like it’s ending with vacation time – especially with the grey skies above – but there’s still plenty of stuff to expect, in fact, notably Xavier’s first birthday in two weeks, and the awaited-for-with-trepidation first ultrasound on August 15. I hope everyone is having a good summer so far!

The Zoo St-Édouard’s website

I went to Jinny’s house for the third time today, by myself and for almost the whole day. Mostly, it was fun playing with all these new toys, and with the other kids, too.

I did pretty well, except for lunch I was a little uncertain and I didn’t eat a whole lot. Same with naptime – I’m not used to sleeping in a portable bassinette and around so many kids. I could only sleep for 40 minutes… after an hour of crying and whining. Mom and dad said they would mention to Jinny I sometimes like to fall asleep after a bottleful of good warm milk. We’ll see.

I’m going back on Friday. Mommy says it’s so that I get used to going there – I’ll go there everyday when she starts work again next week – but I know she’s planned it so she could use that Friday off to go see the new Harry Potter movie in Montreal with auntie Karine.

- Xavier