Chez PLJ

Friend Judith celebrated her 40th with a great party last week. And we all got loot bags with subversive smuggled goodies! Well, maybe not smuggled, but we don’t print on M&M’s in Canada, and whoever does in the States doesn’t ship them up here, so there was some sort of clandestine border-crossing arrangement to get these into our hot, little hands. Within which they did not melt.

I turned 40 the other day. I only knew Laura was up to something on the computer just prior to us leaving for the cottage, since she as much as admitted it, but I also knew it couldn’t be anything very big, because SHE HAD TOLD ME THAT. Oy. I’m not too bright.

So we get home from the cottage and an hour or two later she casually sends me a link to “a cute site” called http://projectbegonia.ca. Which it turns out most of you knew about already. Suddenly she’s sitting beside me, watching my reaction. Which is fairly gobsmacked, quite frankly. It was amazing! Astounding! So many people got creative! And it was a fitting revenge for the 40th Birthday DVD I gave her last year.

Thanks to everyone who was part of it, and apologies to anyone who missed out because of bad email addresses and such. Both Laura and I agree that future projects, surprise or otherwise, will be a lot easier when you can share the trials and tribulations with the other creative in the house.

My sister Pam showed up the same afternoon with her hand-created hardware version of my life: an amazing series of collages recollecting my life to date and peppered with layers of references from our childhood. Wow!

Thanks everybody!

Dateline: mid June to this week. Well, my brother-in-law, David Laurie, took another day of his life and he finished the sidewalk. It was all quite straightforward, aside for a run to get even more gravel, and the exciting, though neither of us showed any worry at the time, run up to Eglinton to return the rented plate-compactor before the shop closed for the weekend. We made it with time to spare, specifically two minutes.

All the was left was two bricks that had to be custom cut, the polymeric sand swept in and watered, and it was complete.

Next step was a little bit of dirt that was left in our backyard.

5 cubic yards of dirt in our backyard

It’s gone!

My mistake, here it is!

If you read the comments, you’ll remember a couple of offers to help with the dirt, and thus David Barker was there to join me in a game of no-fun heavy labour. A tip to those who are hiring a disposal bin for anything–the companies involved (I ended up having to go to a second) don’t seem incredibly motivated to provide….what do you call it?…oh yeah, SERVICE. I requested a bin for “early as possible”, they amended that to “late morning” and got it here after three nagging phone calls by 2:00 p.m.

Many thanks to the fabulous Davids, the multi-talented Misters Laurie and Barker.

We spent a week at the family cottage last week. Ontario is in a real hot spell right now, generally in the 30s with humidity taking it into the forties, with no real relief in three weeks. But the cottage generally features a north-westerly wind straight from Lake Huron and down Georgian Bay, which makes things much more pleasant.

Until mid-week, when someone turned off the wind.

We’re talking complete doldrums; no waves to play in on the water, and in terms of swimming the water in the bay warmed roughly to the temperature of primordial soup. Cooling off through not moving was the only real option, but I can’t say it was entirely relaxing.

Jon pushed the envelope in his swimming prowess; we needed to find a place to jump in, given that this year it’s far too shallow off of Grandpa’s dock. He and I kayaked to a communal raft anchored in the centre of our little bay, because IMHO it was too far for him to swim. Well, after we had our jumping jollies on the raft, Jon insisted on swimming back to land alone (in his PFD, and me nearby, of course), but when he got to shore he turned right around and went back to the raft, where we played some more, and then he swam home again.

Lastly, I turned 40 while we were there: my parents took us out for dinner so that Jon could eat more than any of us, then Laura made an amazing triple layer chocolate birthday cake for afters! My absolutely favourite!

After literally months of wondering when Jon’s two wiggly front teeth were going to come out, they finally — finally! — did. Late June we were predicting that things would be happening soon, as a huge gap started developing along the left front incisor (the better to give the adult tooth a fighting chance to come in straight-ish). Then the tooth started getting longer and looser as it was pushed out by the adult tooth underneath. Peter said it looked like a country store sign, a flappin’ away in the wind.

Our son Fang.

The tooth came out on July 4 and Jon was much happier, as he could now eat more comfortably…for a few days.

Won’t take long for the big tooth to come in!

Almost immediately his right incisor started getting really loose, and it finally gave up the ghost on July 18.

Jon and Austin with mouths newly denuded of teeth.

Unfortunately there’s no huge gap on the side of that tooth, so it’ll be veerry interesting to see how his new teeth will fit. If Peter’s orthodontal history is any indication, we’re in for some very expensive times ahead…

Patti, David, Meghan and Austin have a new puppy! Look how cute the widdle cutie-wootie-poopoofoo is.

Dateline June 28:

“Could a star shine any brighter than Jon this year?” Okay, I may be a lifelong professional brown-noser and mark grubber, but I was left in the dust when Jon came home with that particular opening statement in his report card.

Shortly before the end of the Jon’s “third-grade” year, he finished his Grade 1 reading curriculum, straight from the book without magnification or CCTV enhancement. Or put another way here’s his progression over eight months:

From this, to this (same scale)

Jon’s spelling, typed on the computer, started out at 10 words with weekly tests, but after he finished 300 Dolch words (meaning the first three grade levels), his teacher sweetened the pot. At first she went further into the Dolce list, but Jon could call his test at any time. His test was upgraded to typing ten sentences, each featuring a test word. Jon immediately started to use novel or challenging words in the sentence along with the test word, and any of those that were misspelled were add to future lists. Jon started to call his tests every 3 or 4 days. His tests have always been 100%.

Jon has been doing his creative writing often since January. Tami intended him to dictate his sentences to her, she’d write them out and then he’d transcibe, but he immediately took to typing it from his head, and shortly thereafter refusing to tell her what he was about to type until it was onscreen. This meant that his creative writing compositions also became a source of new spelling words.

Math is still a sticking point. Jon seems to think that it’s a code related to spelling, somehow (which is of course a code he’s cracked). A very neat thought process, and I can’t help to think sometimes that he’s just overthinking it. We will keep working on math, but while reading is hot, we will obviously keep stoking that fire.

Clearly Jon and his teacher Tami are on an amazing hot streak, and we are so happy that Tami has decided to keep with Jon and his class for another year. She has big plans for Jon again in the next school year, and I can’t even imagine what they are. We are so lucky Jon has a teacher and support team like this, who can come up with creative ways around any obstacles he comes across, but also adjust to let him fly if he shows signs of exceeding expectations. What a bunch!

I think it goes without saying the we are incredibly proud, but in many ways it feels more like it’s all we can do to keep out of his way simply support him as he puts all of his efforts into this work.