The Family *roll

… in Toronto that is. After our initial two days in Toronto, where we introduced Ellie to A & A and DJ (whose “eccentric house,” as the real estate agent calls it, is a wonderland for taking photos), we headed to the cottage where we introduced Ellie to everyone in my family — all three sisters, my dad, my nieces and nephews, some of my cousins, my aunt, my cousins’ kids and some family friends during a trip to Kingston.

View from the deck

The first few days were a challenge. We had never been to the cottage before with a baby and, needless to say, life with a newborn at the cottage is a different game altogether. Of course, we knew that in advance, but I think we still secretly imagined that life wouldn’t be that different. Wrong. No more swimming at exactly the moment you want to, or sleeping at exactly the moment you want to, or eating at exactly…well, you get the idea. So, that was something of a psychological adjustment. More concretely, the cottage is afflicted with far more flies, of both the biting and non-biting kind, than usual. So, between the sometimes rain, cold mornings, and buggy days/nights, we were inside most of the time with E. We didn’t realize just how much that was getting to us until we returned to Toronto yesterday and went for a walk at 8.00pm. Glorious.

But enough griping. Once we found our rhythm (which took about two days — no one was very happy), things were fantastic. Ellie is now a full-fledged smiler and everyone spent lots of time tuned-in to the baby channel. In fact, something seemed to have clicked neurologically with E. over the past week as she now gives us long (i.e. 1 hour +) sessions of smiling, chirping and all-round being attentive. My parents were over the moon. My father makes a clicking noise with his tongue that he insists makes babies happy and he would thrust his face close to Ellie’s at every opportunity and click like a grasshopper. He met with limited success.  Lucille wanted Ellie at every moment and was loathe/refused to give her back.

We managed to swim every day, particularly as Ellie settled into long afternoon naps. I spent a couple hours in the water on Friday playing with my nieces, nephews and my cousins’ kids (is there a name for my relation to them? Uncle once removed?). We have an old windsurfing board which we’ve played with since I was little. The game is always the same — multiple people (try to) stand on the surfboard and the last person standing wins. These are very short games. We’ve developed variants to keep things exciting. A cooperative version involves two people starting at either end of the board and attempting to walk to the middle for a hug or some such. Ryan Barker, Emily and I mastered this one last year. The newest challenge involves two people trying to exchange positions on the board. My niece-once-removed Sophie and I had no success. Next year.

And, finally, we learned that my parents pronounce the word “aardvark” “Aht-Fauk” — apparently that’s how you say it in Afrikaans. Not knowing that, we all burst out laughing as Aubrey, in an effort to correct what he took to be our mispronunciation, kept repeating “AHT [pause] FAUK”. As Emily pointed out, the second syllable is the perfect mix of “fart” and “fuck” and, as such, very funny when Aubrey says it over and over again. Almost as good as Keith’s Dad and Micah’s parents talking about wanting a “dirty banana” (apparently it’s a drink).

There are all kinds of new pictures, but I’m not linking to them here. I’m training you, dear readers, to go our Picasa Albums side bar where the 6 most recent albums appear. Just click on one of the pictures. But here are some of my favourites:

Aubrey doing his best Elvis

Lucille with my nephew Jacob

"I will destory you all!"