Weather depending.

Summer is officially over now, and WEATHER has started. When we lived in Calgary, there were maybe three days in which we didn't leave the house. But our house in Calgary was tiny and you HAD to leave it or lose you mind. Our house here has more options for indoor roaming.

BUT. So I promised myself I'd try to leave the house every day, even just for half an hour. And then the very next day, it rained. Eleanor didn't mind.

We went to the park and she collected water droplets off of the railings.

She also tripped in her boots, and slid along the sidewalk for a bit on her face.

She minded that part.

The next day, IT WAS STILL RAINING. I needed, I don't know, bread, so we walked to the Shoppers, and usually, walking anywhere with Eleanor is a total headache because she's like, Oh look, a rock! A flower! An ant! That rock I was looking at a second ago! But that day she was all *stride, stride,  stride* Behold, puddles ahead that I must stride through!

Every puddle. Little puddles.

Comically large puddles.

She just...she loves it.

Today dawned bright and clear, so we went to the Pumpkin Festival at a local farm. They made us pay $10 for parking, and I would have gladly spent $10 on a pumpkin and maybe some pumpkin-based eats and/or activities AND have been less put out about the whole thing, but paying for parking made us miserly. No pumpkin bread or catapulting for us. BUT they had a handful of free activities, like a tiny hay maze.

And the big one. Eleanor kept tearing on ahead and then being like, ARE YOU GUYS COMING OR WHAT.

Then we doodled over to the pumpkin patch and Eleanor was not down with all the dead vines crunching underfoot. We wandered about three pumpkins deep and then she was like, No thank you, vines? So we wandered along the periphery

and stopped to pet a pumpkin

and hug a pumpkin

and sit on a pumpkin.

But every time she stepped on a vine she'd be like, NOPE. And head back to the dirt.

It's supposed to rain again tomorrow. I'm trying to lure a friend over to my house so I don't feel so badly if we just stay inside all day. Eleanor loves visitors.

In Which Eleanor Tries To Enjoy A Club Soda Because She Thinks That's What Grown-Up People Do

*sip*

URGH. I mean...acrid. I mean...dry?

*sip*

With hints of...mosquito bite in the mouth.

*sip*

*gargle* Aghhhter taghhhste oghhh...*swallow* varnish.

*sip*

HAHAHA but seriously, you guys slipped me a joke can, right? This isn't what it actually tastes like.

Right?

Sometimes you just gotta snuggle through the day.

We love having house guests, but there's always a bit of a letdown when they leave, even if we aren't also sick immediately afterwards. We have to spend a day or two just hanging out with the two of us, enjoying each other's company. Wherrrrre's Eleanor?

Peek-a-loo.

Sometimes she puts Snuggles on her head and walks around looking like a Pharaoh.

Like, for a while.

Sometimes she just shuts her eyes while she's eating. Like an extended, 10-second blink.

Sometimes you gotta lay on the kitchen floor in unflattering pants and have a read.

Sometimes you go to the library and just read the entire thing.

Tante tante tante!

Eleanor's tante Tina came for a visit. Eleanor was leery for about five minutes, like she does, and then she was wildly in love. 'Tante hold a hand?'

'Tante sliiiiiide!'

'Tante wear a sunglasses!'

'Tante lay down!'

'Tante read it?'

'Tante read it more book?'

'Tante ALL healthy!'

Eleanor is not, however, all healthy. She's been running a fever since yesterday, and after Tante left, she went from this

to this

to this

in the space of one Disney's Robin Hood.

If our track record is any indication, we are allergic to family. There has to be some sort of inoculation against this.

Waffles and things.

Every time we move, I am like, Ugh, I have to find new friends. And LAST time, Chelsea (whom I've known since we lived in Victoria) was also moving to Calgary, so I had a ready-made friend, plus any friends she happened to make along the way. We drank a lot of tea together.

But we moved again, and I sent out my usual feelers, like, Does anyone that I know know anyone who lives in Saskatoon? And then Josie emailed me all, Hey, we once briefly worked at camp together and have several mutual acquaintances and also I have two small children, so all I do all day is go to the park. Which, those are things she and I have in common.

On Saturday I ran the Color Me Rad 5k, but Joel was on call and Eleanor is still too young to leave home by herself (I mean, just barely) so Josie came and picked her up from my house and took her home, and then brought her to come pick me up after my race, and then made me pumpkin spice waffles with strawberries and whipped cream and pecans and caramel sauce.

I'm doing alright for friends, is what I'm saying.

About the color run: it isn't timed. You just run it for the fun of running and being pelted with color. It was exhilarating. And every kilometer, a crowd of volunteers just CHUCKS handfuls of color at you, and you can see it coming from a way back, it is like running into a fog of color.

And you start off clean

and finish looking like you bathed in Skittles.

Next year I'm making Josie do it with me, which means I have one year to find someone else to watch my kid and cook me waffles.

We're all full up of strawberries and beets.

Keeping busy to ward off the whomps. The pools (I may have mentioned) are closed, but not all of them are LOCKED, so we have been running very amuck in them.

There's a lever on this post, and no one - not the other moms, not the lifeguards - knows what it does or used to do. Besides tickle Eleanor's fancy.

Eleanor got her 18-month shots, only 2 months late! We brought her pterydactyl and her syringe for comfort and distraction. She didn't cry at all, just looked at my irritatedly like, Why are you holding my arm? Also, something hurts.

I cannot stop taking pictures of her, eating. They are always my favorite pictures.

You, of course, remember old Sock Hands.

We went to the Farmer's Market. Eleanor had to bring her backpack so she'd have a way to carry Snuggles without actually carrying him (she spent most of the time just carrying him anyway. Along with her packpack).

They have a story time there on Wednesdays. It's not very good, it's just a woman reading books for an hour with no songs and no opportunities for movement, but mothers who don't want to be ceaselessly reading to their own children can't be choosy.

We painted with water on the paving stones, which is what you do when you want to paint but you don't want to make a mess.

We are going to do this all the time now, until it gets cold.

Our neighbor's neighbor is in his 80s, and his whole yard is a garden. His kids don't come by for produce as much as they used to, so he gave us an armful of beets.

We went to the Strawberry Ranch today. Eleanor thought she'd died and gone to heaven, berries everywhere. She'd go, Ohhhh, GOOD one! And I'd go, You found a good one? And she'd go, YEP. Like we weren't surrounded by good ones.

And I'd say, Is it a red one? And she'd go, Nope, lellow one. And I'd say, Just leave the yellow ones. So she'd put it in the basket, and I'd have to explain that I meant leave them on the plant. And then she'd go, Ohhhhh, nanother good one!