Happy Thanksgiving

   
  

We've taken another trip to Wellesley, this time for the best holiday of the year. No, it isn't the largest celebration of Oktoberfest outside of Germany that draws us home (even though that's happening in Kitchener-Waterloo right now), it's Canadian Thanksgiving. That's right, Americans, Canadian Thanksgiving happens in October, BEFORE Halloween. It's just the way it is up here. I used to have a thirty-second spiel about the history of Canadian Thanksgiving memorized to explain this fact to Americans I knew, but that information has long given way before baby brain and the onset of my thirties.

As you can see, Morgen has been a bit conflicted about this holiday. Perhaps that is her American half asserting itself. Or, could it just be that she isn't sure how she feels about frilly dresses?

Happy Thanksgiving, friends and family. 

   

Dress Down, Dress Up

 
 

We thought we'd throw a few more pictures out there, you know, shake things up a bit, prove that we really can post more often than once every week or so...for what it's worth, here are a few shots of the baby all dressed up, and all dressed down. Notice though, that no outfit is complete without fingersucking. 

 

Uncle Matt!

Florida had one less resident this weekend, as Uncle Matt forsook his sun-drenched new home in Juno Beach, FL for the chance to meet his niece for the first time - and, as what must have been something of an afterthought, to see his brother and sister-in-law. Matt and Morgen had an instant rapport and bonded over their mutual fascination with fuzzy red blocks. 

Then we took Matt and Morgen on a little tour of our local park - I'm not sure if either one was particularly impressed by this. We also ventured down to Little Italy and Kensington Market for some authentic Mexican food. All in all, I think Matt discovered just how domestic our life has become, considering that we thought the Little Italy trip was pretty daring.

 

ABC Festival...giggles galore.

Once a year, on the last Saturday in September, the population of the town my parents live in swells by ten times, reaching nearly fifteen thousand. Most of this number congregate on Queens Bush Rd, where long picnic tables and a large stage become the focal point for all kinds of yummy goodness (apple fritters, pancakes and sausages) and entertaining displays of the local residents' talent, be it musical, line dancing ability, culinary, or crafty. It's the Apple Butter and Cheese Festival, or the ABC Festival for short, but it encompasses so much more than just apple butter and cheese.

We're talking pony rides, oldey timey bands that set up on front porches, a craft show that has lots of things like handmade sweaters, hobby horses and rag dolls, and more. I like this festival so much that I make a point to visit it whenever my schedule makes it possible for me to do so, and needless to say, there was no way Morgen was going to spend her four-month birthday anywhere but in the midst of it all. Even if she was going to be cranky about it. Which she was, unfortunately. I think it was asking too much of her to set her so near the sausage without allowing her to eat any of it.

The Wellesley community peacefully throws together old order mennonites with people living what we non-old-order mennonites consider a "normal" life. In previous years, I was always convinced of the innocence of Wellesley in general and of the ABC festival in particular. But this year, I noted the presence of worldly intolerance in the form of a racist musical marionette being played by an elderly white man (think: antique percussion instrument that looks like a tap-dancing black man). I suppose the uncomplicated way in which the marionette was presented on the front porch in the middle of a down-home country band is an argument in favour of small town Ontario - at least it doesn't hide its prejudices behind nods to political correctness. Or perhaps I missed the point of the whole display, and it really was a self-aware reference to the undercurrent of regionalism and insular life embedded in the lyrics of the music the band was playing? Those lyrics that encourage you to marry your neighbour, stick to your own kind, that sort of thing. Either way, the doll was disturbing. It is so rare to see an artifact from the era of open racism outside of a museum that I have to confess that I was shocked. And I'm not certain if my naive notion of the ABC Festival will ever recover.

Long story short: although I'm still processing how I feel about the marionette (Did the performer know it was racist? Did the performer care? Was its inclusion actually paying homage to and or raising awareness of this element in his music? Did it matter that there weren't any people of colour in the audience? Down, musicologist, down. If you really needed to know, you would have asked the musician. Why didn't you ask? Etc. ad nauseam) I will say that the rest of the festival is fun for the whole family, even if one third of your family is a cranky baby who looks like a pumpkin.


By the time we got Morgen home and settled with her Daddy and Grandpa, she was back to her usual smiley self. And, as we say in the Manning family: "Lookit!" We finally snapped a picture of her "'I think you're goofy!' grin" that nearly does it justice. This picture is nothing to the ones Angela took on her spiffy camera. But in my defence, my camera only takes one shot at a time.

Apples!

Is anything better than picking apples? Other than eating freshly picked apples, of course!

Yesterday, our little clan went on an outing to a local orchard. The outing was organized (and largely funded) by one of the local family drop-in centres in Toronto, and our friends David, Angela, and Rowan were on top of things enough to get us all signed up to go. So, we all boarded a school bus (Morgen's first school bus ride!) and took the 45 minute trip to Chudleigh's Apple Farm, where there are, of course, apples to be picked, as well as a variety of other family-friendly activities. We spent some time picking Cortlands, Royal Galas, and MacIntoshes. And then, after a picnic lunch, we headed to the petting zoo, thinking Rowan and Morgen would like to see some animals. Rowan was really interested in all the animals at first, though his enthusiasm waned a bit when the big sheep became a little too interested in him (this picture captures the moment of his tactical retreat).

Morgen, however, had other ideas entirely and missed most of the fun. And Jessica, well, I'm not sure she's ever identified so closely with an animal before.