If On A Winter's Night...

My son turns 7 today. Gulp! I really don't know where the time has gone. As a parent of a 16 year-old remarked to me recently, with young kids, when you are in the thick of it, every minute feels like a lifetime and then it's all over before you even have time to blink. So true!



I can still recall the night before he was born. I awoke around 2AM feeling something was just not quite right, and my husband and I sheepishly decided to head to the hospital, slightly embarrassed in the belief that they would take one quick look at me and say, "false alarm: go home." A light snow had just fallen and the city was basked in a magical white glow. We lived only two blocks from the hospital and so made the journey on foot. As we passed the Corner Bistro on Jane Street, we could see and hear the people inside toasting with good cheer through the fogged up windows.

We arrived at the hospital to find they were fully booked in the maternity ward and so left us to get comfortable in a triage room that they turned into a makeshift lodging. No easy task for my husband to fold his impossibly large 6 foot 3 frame into the small collapsible metal chair they left for him! No sooner had we settled in did the obstetrician on-duty return with the news that we would be checked in -- we were going to be having a baby that day. I can't recall ever being so frightened in my entire life. No matter the fact that we had 9+ months to plan for this moment, knowing that we would soon be entrusted to a small, helpless baby terrified me to my core. Needless to say his journey into the world was a long one (I was in labor for over 15 hours) so by the time he finally appeared, he was a welcome sight to us tired, weary parents.



And now here we are just a few years later. That moody, helpless, never wanting to sleep baby has turned into an over-active, inquisitive, funny, charming and still moody 7 year-old. He is entering the Age of Reason as they say and I just hope that means an end to the constant "betises."



For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you know that we spent the week of New Year's Eve in London. It was a fabulous trip - my son is just the right age for it (though my 2 year-old held her own too). London is a great city for kids and we didn't waste a day visiting the London Transport Museum, The Natural History Museum, the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park and a tour on one of the famous double-decker buses amongst other attractions (like Primrose Bakery - yummy! Okay that one was for me!). My son delighted in the dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum, including the living, breathing and snarling animatronic T-Rex. I was inspired by our visit to make my boy a dinosaur cake using my new giant cupcake tin (also purchased in London). This is one of his favorites: a chocolate cake with clementine buttercream at the base and chocolate-clementine buttercream on top, decorated with home-made gumpaste dinosaurs in party hats.



So, glass held high - Happy Birthday to You, my Poussin (I think I will likely have to stop calling him that soon as I'd imagine it's gonna start to be an embarrassment in front of his friends). I love you!! You have given your father and I more joy than you could ever imagine, and lots of laughs as well as grey hairs along the way!

PS Thanks to www.beaucoupdimages.com for the above picture of the snow scene in New York. And if you don't know it, the title of this post refers to a work of fiction by Italo Calvino, one of my favorite books, and a rather fitting title for my winter baby.