Festival season lives on.

We went to Saskatoon's first Food Truck Festival (food trucks only having been a legal thing in Saskatoon for about a year). I put a bow in Eleanor's hair. It lasted about half an hour, but look how adorable she is.

Geneva was like, Ha ha why is it so cold though are we camping again?

The Shreyer's BBQ Smoke Shack truck broke down and couldn't make it (dammit), and Saskatoon doesn't really have a thriving food truck culture yet (OBVIOUSLY) so it was mostly just the fancy hot dog truck and the popcorn truck and Big O's, who show up to everything which is why we get poutine at everything.

Hella long line, though.

And then we got a sloppy burger because man cannot live on poutine alone (though, one of these days, man is gonna try)

and I am totally going to get the Death by Donuts from Big O's ONE OF THESE DAYS but this day of long lines was not the day, and besides, they were totally running out of shit already and the line-up at the ice cream place was extremely non-existant so we got ice cream.

OH YES, and Geneva turned 4 months old yesterday. Happy birthday, Geneva.

Keep working on that soother.

Tumbling!

I put Eleanor in gymnastics for the fall because she'll need some sort of physical outlet once the weather turns, and if NOTHING ELSE that child is going to learn to roll down a hill.



I feel like I've failed so far in my duties as a parent. ON THE OTHER HAND, that drop into the foam. Right? That's, like, several times her height. So brave.

Also, her Koala Bear Hang is pretty great.

Cold Camping

Cold camping is the worst.

You wear the same outfit for two and a half days because you only brought one pair of pants, one hoodie, and besides, getting changed is so miserable.

It isn't warm anywhere.

You have to take your hoodie and shirt off in the morning to change from your nursing-while-sleeping bra to your nursing-while-awake bra, and you are like, This is hell. Hell hath frozen over.

Nursing is also hell. You have to unzip your hoodie, and then your neck and your chest and your one boob are so, so cold.

The baby has cold hands and she keeps PUTTING THEM on you.

Nursing at night, you pull the sleeping bag up over the both of your heads and just hope the baby doesn't smother. Your husband wakes up and pulls the bag off of your heads because he's more worried about smothering than about your cold neck. You wake up and pull it back up.

We meant to go camping on Monday, but we looked at the weather report on Saturday and Sunday was supposed to be the Last Good Day, so we rush-packed and booted it out the door Saturday afternoon.

Look at that kid. She's wearing a skirt and flip flops. That was the last time we were even close to warm.

Saturday evening clouded over, and Sunday drizzled until it outright rained, stopping for a few hours in the afternoon so we could go (hurriedly, briefly) to the beach for Eleanor's sake.

Sunday night rained and rained, and Eleanor had to pee in the middle of the night so we ran to the bathroom in the rain, and her only warm jammies are the kind that zip up all the way and have to be almost completely removed for bathroom breaks. Oooooh, she says, sooooo chillllllly.

Our tent leaks when it rains, and we keep not buying a tent because we HAVE a tent, only now we don't have a tent because we threw that piece of shit away rather than pack it up. GOOD RIDDANCE.

Last year, our second camping trip started out in the rain and gradually improved. This year, it got colder and wetter and we had a whole second child to deal with.

And Joel and I are looking at each other grimly, saying Let's just survive this, and then Eleanor, who is sitting in her CAMPING CHAIR! and eating a NECTARINE! from the FARMER'S MARKET! looks up from her chomping and declares, WE. ARE. CAMPING.

This is why we bring her to things.

Fall is falling.

There's an undertone of cold in the air, now. And I love fall as much as the next white girl wearing yoga pants, but winter is coming omg and it's sort of hampering my boots-and-sweaters excitement. I'm trying to love fall for fall, and not hate it for a harbinger. Because rain is kind of fun, right?

And we still have a garden.

And it's not too cold to go in the pool on its last day (thanks for staying open until Labor Day, Kinsmen Park), but it's cold enough that you need a sweater after.

And because it's still technically summer, we're wiping a few last items off the bucket list.

Find new splash park: we just picked one off the map one morning and oh man, Parkridge is a run-down splash pad.

Plus the adjacent playground is for kids like five years older than Eleanor, so everything was too big. Whatever, live and learn.

Eat an early supper and then bike down to River Landing afterward: one of my favorite things about last summer was biking down to River Landing in the evening when the heat of the day had burned off and the crowds had dispersed. We have SO MANY KIDS now, and Joel's schedule has been so erratic that this was the first (and last) time we managed to have dinner by 5:30 and get our butts down there.

Oh Geneva, you goof.

Big girls are the best girls.

These are Eleanor's friends from the park.

Not the belligerent-looking girl in the middle. She just glommed onto us that day, and was all, I GET TO BE IN THE PICTURE, TOO, and then she and Tekia got into a slap fight about it, and then the daycare worker came over and was like, I'm sure it's not a big deal if she's in the picture, and then looked over at me like, Right? So obviously I couldn't be like, Well actually...

But then we took a silly picture and Cranky Pants wanted no part of it so, good. These are my nine-year-olds, my unpaid park-based babysitters. To be honest, they exhaust me a bit, because whenever we show up they swarm Geneva (if she's sleeping, they peek on her until I tell them to stop. If I'm holding her, they swarm ME), but they also play this game with Eleanor where one of them pushes her on the swing, and the other ones pretend like she's kicking them over.

It's amazing.

We didn't see them all last winter, and now that the pool's closed, we probably won't see them until next summer, when they are ten. Hopefully they're still SUPER into toddlers.

Dribs and drabs.

Geneva's feeties are always plotting something.

Eleanor's new thing is to creep into Geneva's car seat and then drape herself with blankets.

Peek.

I remember when Eleanor was a baby being like, HOWWWW am I supposed to amuse you all the time? But with Geneva, half my work is done for me.

Lotta sistering going on.

Some whatever this is going on, too.

What're you doing, Eleanor?

You want to bite this face, you know you do.

Nightgown, literal crocs, backwards sweater.

Killing it.

Corn festival my eye. Also, pie.

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor Joel being gone...you know what, definitely those first three things, probably. But that last thing can't stop us from attending something with the word 'festival' in it, even if we have to walk all the way there, and even if it ends up being SUUUUUUPER lame.

The Corn Festival was just Regular Farmer's Market With Half the Booths Closed Because It's Thursday, plus a corn-shucking contest, plus corn.

Whatever, we like corn. Also, we are becoming complete degenerates with Joel out of town. We had pancakes for dinner last night and PIE FOR DINNER TONIGHT LALALALALA.

Geneva Wren says what's up.

One down.

Joel is gone for four days now. This is like a dry run for a few weeks from now, for when he's gone for EIGHT WEEKS except weekends. So far, so good. We went to the mall for the morning

and had burgers for lunch

and made fresh muffins to have with butter for dinner.

We painted

our toenails

(washable, my ass).

On the downside, Eleanor fell off of a kitchen chair onto her face, and has had, like, ten time-outs (which is sort of par for the course these days, because I am swift and merciless with my time-outs. Also, the numbers are a bit skewed because she can't help hollering through the first time-out, the penalty for which is another two minutes. So really, she had, like, five double-time-outs today. Toddlers, man), and we ran out of both milk and coffee cream and had to make an after-dinner walk to the store in the rain.

I carry the baby, baby carries the grocery.

But everyone is in bed now, and I'm obviously not going to tidy since I've already sat down. I AM going to get up to get a bowl of ice cream, though.