from pennies to posh

Plava has just started eating "real" food in the past couple weeks. She started on the usual bland rice cereal, and she could hardly get enough of that, but I've just started her on some squash. Wow. She loves it. Its so funny to see her in that classic baby pose - sitting waiting for the next spoonful with bright orange stuff smeared all around her mouth and nose. Funny. She's got a favourite pose when she's eating too. Arms straight out towards me, just holding them there. She cries when it's over, and has adopted the usual baby attitude towards having her face wiped off after eating - hates it.

Our new place is great. What a moving day it was! It was pouring! We couldn't have asked for a rougher day to move in! But we did it, with a bunch of help from our families and friends. It was great to finally get in here. We'd been living in boxes for so long, or so it felt. No, we really had. Ryan and I have a rather opposite way of doing things. He likes to get things started as early as possible because he feels like it'll be hanging over his head otherwise. I like to do things in a rather last-minute fashion. Not to say that I'd be panicky, but I'd be happy to take the last week before we move and go bonkers. I'm glad to say that Ryan won out this time, because in the end, I realized it would have been really hard to go bonkers with a baby on my hip. Yes, little Plava slowed us down a tad, but she wants her mama and dada time too! Who can blame her?

It took us a whopping day and a half to set everything up. Again, I commend Ryan on his drive. By the day after we moved in, we were hanging paintings and picture frames. Very satisfying!! It was a rather difficult thing to figure out where all our furniture would go too! We've just downsized to a smaller place, by the way. Hence our difficulty. We have 3 couches and just a smallish living room. But after much deliberation, and a lot of moving things around, we figured out a way to get it all in without it looking really cramped. It looks "cozy", yes, but that's a good thing! And we even managed to have a good chunk of space reserved for a "Plava play area". I can hardly believe we did it, but we did! How satisfying.

I went for a walk today - my first in the area. It was nice, though colder out there than I thought it seemed when I was inside. We really only went around the block, but the blocks here are long so it took a good 20 minutes. And there were some good hills so I even broke a decent sweat. Man, I'm out of shape... The area is really nice. It's rather woodsy and for the first time today I found it kind of country-ish. There are lots of huge properties with modest-styled houses on them. It feels like we're out in the "country" rather than just in a big city. It's nice though. I even had a guy with a mustache drive by in his raised, extra big wheeled pickup truck. Yep.

Then there's the other side of the coin. I went to Save On Foods yesterday to do some grocery shopping. We're pretty close to a rather posh area, and this is where that store was. What a weird culture shock feeling I had! I awkwardly pushed my buggy (that didn't fit Plava's carseat very well) through the very narrow aisles past older women clad in matching tops and bottoms and scads of golden jewellery, mothers leading around their little "gap kids", and women toting posh doggies in handbags.

I admit, I used to be accustomed to this kind of thing. Although I grew up in a poorer area in relation to many areas in the lower mainland, I moved to an area similar to "poshville" when I was in highschool. I felt quite at home in it for some years. I didn't particularly feel like I fit in, but I felt comfortable. I moved though, to Japan, which couldn't be further from that type of place, and then through a number of different areas around Vancouver which didn't come close to poshville. Anyway, it was quite the grocery experience.

Let me just say a quick word about the price difference too. ARGH!!!! Wow. Yes. I proudly proclaim that I'm a Real Canadian Superstore girl, myself, and so it was quite a shock to pay the amount I did for that buggyfull of food. Suffice it to say that I will most likely not be returning to Save On Foods anytime in the near future. Yes, Superstore it is. Superstore it is. Aaaaaah....


Thanks for listening and have a great day...