big merge adventure

big merge adventure? does that even make sense? it does to me: "merge" is a gathering of young adults (18-30ish) from around BC. this year again in abbortsford - which is a short hop of 1hr and a bit down the highway.

"short hop"??! for someone who can only see 2ft in front of his nose, i'll have you know abbotsford is beyond the end of the known universe ... it may as well be somewhere exotic like swindon. [jas-y, dad here, you may want to reconsider the use of the words swindon and exotic in such close proximity in a sentence] what's weird about travelling to abby is that if we'd driven a few extra k's we'd have been stopped from going south, as I don't officially exist yet. of course we can be crazy mean terrorist machines us 8-day olds, I may be recuiting you subliminally for works of US devastation even as you read this!

anyhow, the merge. mom and dad said they'd been dreaming of taking me to meet people there for ages, so I did my best to be a little angel: I fed at the right time in the night, woke well, packed a hooge bag of stuff, and we rode out ... into POURING rain. so much for the amazing far-reaching mountain views! mom and dad aimed to arrive at 9:30 and we got there at 9:45. how incredible are we? :o) slept a lot while meeting people (not unusual), and particularly enjoyed bouncing to johnny p singing "glory" - definitely one of my fave songs ever! Since my name means "The Lord is God" and I'm named after a prophet, then it's particularly cool when I sing "no I won't be ashamed, when I lift up your name to let all the world see, You are my King". while we're on the subject of names alexander means "defender of the people" or "helper of the people". I like my name, it's amazing.

we're back from the merge now, and in desperate need of sleep, so, TTFN, be in touch soon. Joel

guy fawkes?

so please could someone tell me who guy fawkes is. I'm canadian, the name means nothing to me, indeed the date means nothing to me .. except it's my one week birthday of course. dad tells me I'm too young for him to share the story of guy fawkes, and refuses to tell me what grandpa used to do with this guy called fawkes each year.

anyhow .. what a day. phoned great granny and great grandad, cried and hiccup'd on cue .. you gotta love me :) sent an email to a friend timothy greenaway, he's pretty young (3 days), so his dad had to help him with the email. invited him to play street hockey with me in 2016 .. should be fun. dad mentioned to mom that I should attend conductor courses one day, learn the whole music thing. so I thought I'd show them how good I already am, by conducting a great portion of Prokoviev's Romeo and Juliet. it's on video ready for me to be embarrassed at my 16 birthday party :( mom and dad laughed ... lots ... I was a bit sleepy.

had a visit from the community health nurse .. I have so many friends it's amazing.

another trip out .. this time to safeway with mom. dad stayed at home and missed me (confirming the sop in sopwith .. pathetic). gerhard came round to visit too, and enjoyed a chocolate cigar with dad (courtesy of the lovely anne and dennis). had a nice chat with uncle greg from upstairs. the excitement of a full day just keeps coming! mom and dad enjoyed nice dinner together AGAIN. I shall have to put a stop to this soon before they become angelic model parents!

celebrate - day 7

hi, I'm a week old. I just had a little party (it's now 3:50am) since I'm officially one week old, I thought we should celebrate. mom and dad kindly turned up, but I didn't see the rest of you. still I sang at high volume, just so the neighbours know I'm a week old.

leaves

just got in from helping dad and parker rake some autumn leaves from the front lawn - they're really nice leaves, I like living here. we should learn how to sleep a bit more during the day, but adventures are too much fun =:)

lyrics

piano

the last 12 hours I really showed mom and dad how well I can behave. lots of feeding without complaint, and even a few hours sleep. it's a bit harsh the way they wake me up every 3 hours, but apparently it's good to put some weight on, and get back up to my beloved 8lb10oz.

dad just played me the piano, now that I could listen to all day. he seems to enjoy it, so I'm going to request we do some more of that soon. hey you should have seen his face when he drank his first coffee in 5 days.

song of the day "your latest trick" by dire straits, in honour of my rather sublime efforts at feeding the way mom wants me to.

beach - day 6

just returned from the beach where I got my first glimpse of the city. whoaa, nice. it took us a while so the sun was setting by the time we got there! came back home via pizza and lots of helpful plastic boxes for joel's world!

photo shoots

dad took some neat photos of me this morning at 5am ... and then some more photos in the evening, check this one out!

I had to teach him how to use the lighting properly, and a little coaching on the self timer and tripod ... but he may pull through as a portrait photographer one day. went to see the doctor today - wow another trip out in the car - life is just too exciting.

some very kind people brought us all supper tonight ... just a couple of cooing blobs to me, but mom and dad seem to know who they were. roast beef, spuds, veg and cool canadian salad. I grabbed a drink and let them eat together at the funky breakfast bar in the kitchen. they look pretty tired, but had a lovely meal. I could tell, because they kept looking at each other and going mmmmmmm, then closing their eyes for a few seconds. they didn't talk much!

return visit

so now we discover that I'm not the only kid in the world that makes breastfeeding really difficult. We return to hospital to see someone who can help us out ... a little progress ... but frankly I prefer it when dad opens my mouth and pours the good stuff down my throat from a little cup.

Mom and dad did laundry, checked email mom made bread and dad cleaned the bath today. not bad considering the amount of sleep I gave them :( if it wasn't for the fact that I wrote it in my journal, they wouldn't believe that happened on day one at home!