On Saturday, after sleeping the sleep of the dead, I woke up to crowds building on Beach Avenue. I had no idea what for, but I was pretty out of it: the night before, after speeding to the ferry after a long day at work and nearly getting a ticket, I went to the airport and Allison's plane was delayed out of Chicago for something like an hour. I nearly fell asleep leaning again a railing. Allison herself had been up nearly 24 hours, so we were a right pair driving to Surrey. I confessed to her that I'd never driven to Surrey from the airport before, so I just had to make sure I took the right exit... I did not... I shot past the Surrey exit and we ended up in White Rock, then I took the 99 north again, missed another exit, so I ended up taking us to Surrey along the 17, the trucking road beside the Fraser River. Crazy! I returned the car after 2am.
So, yes, it was the sleep of the dead on Friday night. On Saturday morning I looked out the window and watched as people streamed onto the beach, and figured out by a sign or two what was going on. I cooked my omelette and listened to D.O.A. screaming some garbled anti-war phrase. Surreal. Then I heard someone mention that Noam Chomsky would be on later. Noam Chomsky?
Noam Chomsky Talking on My Beach?Sevenoaks articleApparently so, but I had to head out on the Skytrain, so Allan and I could take the kiddies to Crescent Beach. On the bus I could hear people talking about Noam Chomsky, and I kick myself a bit now that I didn't hang around long enough to see him speak. After all, the man is now 75 years old, and not only was this speaking engagement a public, free event, but it was across the bloody street!
Anyway...
We took the kidlets to Crescent Beach and had a good time playing teeter-totter, making stick cities, and building pretend campfires. It's good to get the kids out of the House of Chaos.
This photo was taken earlier, maybe the week before or so.
Me with baby Megan. This is the
bigger twin. I got to hold both babies the Sunday before, for the first time. They're still pretty tiny, and everyone's still making the necessary adjustments to having them home. It's been a while since there were newborns in the house, now that Maddy is two and a half. I like the fact that the older 3Ms are talking and rounding out their personalities. They're much more interesting now that they have broader vocabulary!
Melissa, for one, is very verbose. She talks almost incessantly, but quality phrases, rich with hedging, proper grammatical usage of verbs, nouns, and adjectives, independent and dependent clauses, and all sorts of rather scarily large words for a 4-year old. Cheryl told me that she heard Melissa preface her sentence with,
"Incidentally, ..." ??
Michael isn't quite there yet, but his penchant for proper nouns rather than generic terms are hilarious (eg., burmese python, which someone had Googled and ended up here). The boy of 3 has an excellent memory for songs, too. I remember this even when he was barely old enough to form the words, let alone memorize them.
Maddy is talking a lot now, too, and her words are becoming progressively clearer. Before, she needed a translator -- either Cheryl or Allan. She still does a lot of repetition and uses generic words, but last year we were wondering why she didn't seem to care much about talking. Probably because Melissa wouldn't let her get a word in edgewise.
