The First Day of Winter
Happy solstice everyone. It feels like the sun is a looooong way away these days.
We’ve just been whacked with a massive snowstorm and cold snap, with about a foot or more of snow falling over the past day or two and temperatures dropping to about -15C. Everybody’s pipes are freezing, cars are sliding off the roads, and most people just gave up today and stayed inside. We bought Bea a sled and ventured out in the snow to go sledding at the park. If all the adults who need to drive and commute are miserable about the snowstorm, the giddiness and glee of all the children sliding down the hill made up for it.
I’m in the Christmas-prep home stretch, almost done all the baking and cleaning and knitting and kitchen-construction. The bump is growing, and getting bigger faster this time, but whether that’s due to pre-stretched muscles or all the cookies I’ve been eating is debatable. We had a scan on Thursday night and I succumbed to temptation and asked the tech if she could give us a hint as to the sex of the baby – it looks like a girl! It’s kind of interesting knowing it’s a girl this time. Somehow I feel more realistic about the whole thing now, and I can imagine scenes with Bea and a little sister and everything seems less hypothetical than before. Not that I really doubted that there would be a real baby at the end of the nine months, but everything I could imagine was always prefixed with a maybe – “maybe it will be a boy and I’ll have to sort through those second hand baby boy clothes from Kyla” or “maybe it will be a girl and Bea will have a little sister”.
We’ve finally found a solution to the ongoing spraying problem by getting Louis a large dog crate (aka “the clink”). I felt mildly guilty locking him up at night and when we went out during the day, but now that it’s been almost a week with no spraying AT ALL and significantly subzero temperatures and a huge snowfall, I feel so thankful we finally went out and forked over the money for a cage.
I sorted through some more photos today and put a few more up on Flickr, so head on over there if you’re interested in seeing just *how* much snow we got here in mild, rainy Vancouver.
