2008-10-26 - 10:04 a.m.

..unhealthy balance...mobility...grass...

Susi made the type of recovery from bronchialitis that only a child could - she went from being completely pathetic to bouncing off the walls with cheer. In fact, she woke up Saturday morning and demonstrated her new state of health by crawling - FORWARD - across the room. (forward is key - she's been a backwards michael jackson moon crawler for weeks!).

Her new mobility is not just forward crawling. Yesterday she made a regular habit of pulling herself up, sitting down, dropping things and picking them up (a GREAT new game), and cruising from object to object. When K left for Europe a week ago, he jokingly said, "when I get back she'll probably be walking and crawling." He's not far off the mark. But in all cases, I'm just so happy to see her back to her normal, cheerful self.

Of course there are tradeoffs. Right now she is upstairs and is supposed to be napping. Instead I hear banging sounds that make me think that she's actually building a bridge up there. The other tradeoff is that I was hit full force by her illness. I had a sore throat was coughing all last night, and I'm feeling kind of beaten up. I'm trying to ignore it.

The strategy of ignoring it worked pretty well yesterday - we went on a 4-mile walk to Strathcona and back. We were pretending to go off to an open house (and indeed it was a very cute little house), but in reality we were going off for some exercise in the Autumn sunlight. Today we are walking off to goodwill to see if we can find the little one a mallet (she needs some help with that bridge up there).

In other news, we've hit another housing quandary, in that my parents and I saw a near-perfect house yesterday. It's two blocks from where we live. It's got the extra bedroom we need. It's got tons of storage space. It's got a beautiful and well-organized kitchen. It's got lots of light, and french doors that open onto a wrap-around patio, and a one-car garage. It's right where we want to live, and it's new (read: no horrible clawfoot tubs that require tons of extra cleaning).

So what's the quandary? Well...it's being offered at about 10% more than our maximum price, and our max price is becoming more of a stretch, especially given that interest rates are all over the place at the moment, and the economy is spiraling downward (unless you believe that lone optimistic guy at the Bank of Canada). Furthermore, forgetting that one optimist, other folks are suggesting that property prices are about to plummet by as much as 100k over the next year, even in Funcouver. So maybe near perfection just isn't perfect enough. The last point? I've really been holding out for a more substantial outdoor space. Maybe this is an unrealistic dream, but I want Susi to grow up able to put her bare feet in a patch of grass in the garden. It doesn't have to be a BIG patch of grass. But I remember growing up on a farm going barefoot EVERYWHERE. I remember lying in the soft grass under the oak trees in our front yard, with my head resting in the little white and purple wildflowers, listening to the wind and the flies, and looking closely at whatever little black insect happened to be crawling past. Those oak trees were huge, and I remember them so clearly. I don't think that I'll be able to give Susi some oak trees, but wouldn't it be wonderful for her to have a patch of grass??