Nate, you are 12 weeks old today! I guess that means you’re also three months old. That part always confuses me, because you were born on the 24th of the month and today is just the 16th, so that doesn’t really make sense. I guess the math doesn’t really matter all that much.

The important thing is how much you are growing and how many smiles you add to our day. In fact, it doesn’t even seem to matter if we smile at you first now. Sometimes I just look over at you and you are smiling your little face off without us even being nearby.

Your very favourite thing in the world these days, other than nursing, of course, is to look at the books in the bookcases we have in the living room. I can put a blanket down on the floor at the base of these bookcases and lay you down there and you will coo and smile and wave your arms in the air, all excited about these books. I am secretly thrilled that you like books so much already, even if you don’t know what they are or what wonders they hold in store for you. I take it as a good omen that you will grow to love books and reading as much as I did as a child, and still do as an adult.

You’ve started going to bed at a more reasonable hour, lately. This doesn’t mean that you’re sleeping a whole lot more through the night but it does mean that your dad and I get a little bit more time to ourselves to do some things around the house or just sit together and watch tv without being interrupted. Your bedtime these days is sometime between 8:00 and 8:30. It just happened one night that you looked awfully sleepy and I swaddled you up and said to your dad, “I’m tempted to see if he’ll go down in his crib now instead of later,” and when I did you stayed there asleep for three and a half hours. You did the same thing the next night and the next and now that is your bedtime.

During the day, sleep is a different beast, however. You only take catnaps so far, sleeping for just twenty or thirty minutes at a time. These brief naps seem to refresh you, though, so I guess I should just take what I can get at this point! You still sleep your best naps in your swing, but I’m hesitant to let you take all of your naps there. I really hope you will take longer naps in your crib someday soon.

You are all about your hands these days, too. You hold your tiny fists up in the air and just stare at them as though you are trying to figure out some kind of puzzle. You put them up to your mouth and lick them like they are little ice cream cones (you can’t stick your tongue out as far as other babies do because you have a slight tongue-tie). In the last day or two you have realized that the things you touch with your hands have different textures and that seems to fascinate you. The other night I knelt down to your level on the floor and you touched my face clumsily with your hands, grabbing my mouth and swatting at my cheek. I loved every moment of sharing that experience with you for the first time.

Tonight I put you on your tummy in your crib and then squatted down to the side and looked through the bars at your face. You held your head up high, and your elbows propped you up, the way Charlie Brown and Linus sit with their elbows propped up on that brick wall, and when you saw my face through the bars of your crib your face lit up to see it there and my heart melted. It seems to me that the experience of being pregnant and giving birth are entirely separate from the experience of being a mother to you. Nothing could have prepared me for how it makes me feel when I look down at you and remind myself that you belong to me and your dad. That we are a family now. The newborn baby you once were is gone already, and the little guy you’ve become is so interested in and curious about everything…seeing the world through your eyes makes every middle-of-the-night feeding worthwhile.

I turned our second-hand, ugly-as-sin dining room table chair cushions into something slightly less ugly!

The fabric for six chairs on sale came to a whopping sixteen bucks.  The chairs still need a little work, but this way I want to barf way less when I look at them.

Aaaaaand….here we go with Canadian election madness.

A consortium of television networks has once again decided not to let the Green Party participate in the nationally televised debates for this election.

I call bullshit.

The consortium announced on Monday (as reported at the National Post):

Three parties opposed the Greens inclusion in the debate, the consortium said in a news release, “and it became clear that if the Green party were included, there would be no leaders’ debates.”

(Three parties, meaning everyone but the Liberals, I should add.)  The Green Party has a lot of support in Canada, and it deserves to be heard by the same audience as the other three major parties, as well as the Bloc Quebecois.  Over 660,000 Canadians voted for this party in the last federal election.  Does it sound right to you that they are being excluded?

I want to hear Elizabeth May take on Harper and Dion and Layton…she’s earned the right.  It’s undemocratic to shut her out.

If you agree, head on over to Demand Democratic Debates, a site the Green Party has set up to allow Canadians to join in their fight to participate in the nationally televised debates.  The petition will be sent to the presidents of the major Canadian networks, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. There you can sign a petition demanding Ms. May be heard at the debates. There’s also a section for bloggers, where you can grab a badge to help the Green Party’s efforts.

(For a concise run-down of where each party stands with respect to environmental issues, head on over to BlogHers Act Canada to read my post, Go Green or Go Home: Canadian Election 2008.)

Update: Elizabeth May is in! I wonder just how much Layton and Harper’s 180 degree turnaround had to do with a certain lawsuit that was pending? Regardless, we’ll be able to hear her speak at the televised debates October 1 and 2.

(Cross-posted at Moms Speak Up.)

“Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking…welcome to Toronto. The local time is 11:02 pm and the temperature is a warm 25 degrees Celcius. If Toronto is home, welcome home. If you’re visiting, enjoy your stay. Thank you very much for flying with Air Canada…”

Toronto isn’t exactly home, but it was close enough. Hearing those words made me smile. It made the dude sitting next to me gulp back the last of his second gin and seven. I grinned and laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Suck it back, eh?” I said to him, sounding oh so Canadian. It had been a bit of a rough landing, but I was so happy to be back, only a car ride down the highway to my cats, my garden, my bed and my husband.

When I got in the door last night, Graham was waiting upstairs in bed for me, and actually laughed out loud when I came around the corner into the room. How wonderful it is when someone is that glad to see you. And I was that glad to see him.

The homecoming got even better.

Today, while we were sipping coffee in the living room Graham said, “You know, when you were away I really started to appreciate how much you do around here. It’s a lot of work, taking care of this house…laundry, cleaning up after the kitties, vacuuming. I should do more to help.”

I think my eyes popped out of my head.

He laughed when I responded that I was trying to think of the household chores I least enjoy. For now we’ve established that vacuuming would be Graham’s job from now on. Needless to say, I tossed an extra pile of catnip on the kitchen floor after dinner.

I feel as though something inside me has changed since I’ve been away, as though some of that hippie California air has rubbed off on me. I feel that I have a new-found faith that everything is just going to be okay. Even though our bank account is in the red, Graham didn’t get to work his full hours this week due to rain, our roof needs to be reshingled and the restaurant re-opening has been delayed, I just know that we’re going to make it.

It doesn’t matter if there isn’t a lot of money in the bank. There is food in our garden and a roof over our head. This month is a bump in a long and winding road that is far from being a dead end street. One month in an entire lifetime is nothing. Our love for one another is solid, and I know with every inch of my being that he and I will just…make it work, somehow.

I don’t know how I know. I just do.