14

The time does go by too fast.

14 years ago yesterday, I woke up to pinchy pains at 5am. I'd been up until midnight the night before, sewing burp cloths (pesky nesting urge), so I wasn't surprised when I finally realized I was in labour. What I was surprised at was the thick layer of ice that covered everything. There had been an ice storm in the night. Montreal was pretty much shut down. We'd rented a car, so my parents (who had flown out two days earlier from the west coast) could drive our car while they were in Montreal, and both cars had about an inch and a half layer of ice coating them. Sealed in a tomb of ice.

My dad hopped out of bed, and, dressed in an undershirt and trousers, slipped into his opened-and-ready-by-the-door skidoo boots, and raced out to the cars to start chipping ice. There really wasn't a rush, as it turned out.

I remember standing on the blue carpeted steps in our front hall (the only place that had a mirror near an electrical outlet) and curling my hair while I rocked back and forth saying stupid things like "if this is labour, this is a walk in the park. I've had period cramps worse than this." My mom had a good hearty laugh at that one.

Yeah. An hour later, when the ice was finally chipped off the cars, and we were crawling along the ice-burdened Highway 20 into LaSalle to the hospital, doing probably 12 miles per hour, I was ready to claw my way out of my skin every 3 minutes. But hey, if it was hurting this much, that MUST mean that the baby was nearly here!

Yeah. 20 hours later....

Nearly-10-pound babies take a little longer to come down the chute, apparently.

(ok, kind of cheating. He's already 6 weeks old here. Where are all his baby photos? OH right. I've packed them up for the remodel).

Happy Birthday, Skip.

Hmmm. Looks like you need to have an earlier bedtime, now that you're FOURTEEN. Look at that Zombie Stare!

OK, this is better:

Our son. The nudist.