avery

Such grand ideas I had for a blog post celebrating Avery’s first birthday. A retrospective photolog, a heartfelt reminiscence, some suitably momentous composition to mark the landmark event. But I find myself staggered by the immensity of the undertaking.

She is the bedrock of my universe, the most fragile of wisps of wonderment. She is the limitless reservoir powering my lifelong mantra, “Stubbornly refuse to become blinded to the beauty that is still in the world.”

So I have to think about this some more. Until then, here is a picture worth a thousand words.

Shnykees, people. Avery turns ONE in a week and I’m still working on pics from when she was eight months old.

Ok, Barbados. Part five. Boom.

Funny, looking at those, Avery seems passively accepting of all that goes on around her. Maybe that’s relative to the whirling dervish we live with now. Have no fear, she was a bundle of joy back then as well.

So here we get to the super deluxe portion of the adventure: Crane Beach and Resort. Marjorie’s research had suggested that this was not to be missed. You wouldn’t have thunk it from the parking. That 5th frame there – the road that ends at the water – park where you will, that’s all there is. I wasn’t expecting much, so when we walked around the corner on those blazing hot concrete tiles and saw THAT beach, I was doubly amazed. Beautiful. And the resort that overlooks it, gorgeous.

Maybe that’s why I forgot to put the tether on my expensive new glasses. Or forgot to take them off. Or forgot to turn into rather than away from the wave that stole them off my face.

And forgot all of that and did the exact same thing two days later with the nice replacement sunnies. Exact. Same. Thing. Exact. Same. Place.

Moron.

We still had a very good time, not to worry. I was just squinty. Avery napped in the shade lovingly built and continually tended by Marjorie. And after Avery awoke, she thoroughly got past her fear of the great big ocean. That’s my girl. Initial caution soon overwhelmed by the love of adventure.

An important note for those who enjoy a nice rum punch: every rum punch you have ever tasted in your entire life, no matter how tantalizingly tangy, no matter how transportive, no matter how transcendent, is absolute poo compared to the nectar of the gods concocted by Cutters Deli. No joke. Get on a plane for this. If you are taken aback that a fella could go on for five lines about booze when he only used one word to describe the beach where he drank said booze, you’re not going to get it anyway, so move on.

Pretty tasty, is the general impression I’m trying to convey.

Nice thing about Cutters Deli – great food, celestial beverage, and they will bring it to you on the beach. With plenty of ice. Yep. Damned civilized.

I should have brought home a case of that punch. Gonna have to go back.

With vacation time running short, we gave daddy what he wanted: a tour of the Foursquare rum plantation/distillery/museum/ohnevermindit’sclosedforsomereason. Actually, while the main doors were tightly locked, the service door twenty feet to the side was wide open, so in we wandered. That’s right. Adventure.

I’ll say this: the sugar cane fermentation process does not smell anything like what one might call… “pleasant”. So Marjorie and Avery had a nice look around the first few displays and took the exit for fresh air. Adrian persevered to plunder more mysteries. Learned lots. Took a few pictures of an all but deserted distillery. Wandered beyond the rope a few times just because I could. Admired barrels upon barrels of rum. Figured it was near cocktail hour and rallied the troops.

Dinner, meanwhile, was at the Crane Resort, in their cliff’s edge posh posh restaurant. Had to check it out. Maybe it was because we were early, but for whatever reason, we were the only table. With that kind of choice we took the table closest to the water. The waves were literally crashing – booming – right under us. Marjorie and I took turns toddling Avery around while local musicians played quietly on the sound system and the breeze wafted in through the wide open doors.

I have no idea what I ate. But the setting and the company were perfection. On the way out, we booked breakfast for the next morning.

I believe that evening we finished the last of our Cutters VSRP by the pool and toasted all that is unbelievably good in our lives.

And then it was morning. Our last morning. And we packed all our luggage and loaded the car and said goodbye to our little villa and its one monstrous cockroach that nearly scared Marjorie to death.

All was not bittersweet. The airport, but first, a pitstop at the Crane Resort. Brunch was marvellous. A buffet to end all buffets. Two kinds of bacon. Three kinds of sausage. An omelette bar. Pancakes and waffles. Canadian maple syrup. Mountains of fresh fruit. Sunshine, surf, laughter. A local gospel choir that thought Avery was the bee’s knees, and she gave them smiles for miles. How perfect an ending is that?

We are doing great, folks. 4 months on and we’re on part 4 of the Barbados pics. Imagine if we were tracking the Italian Honeymoon (Sept 2011) pics. I will get to them any day now.

So, part 4. We are now at the Barbados Wildlife Reserve, in the parish of St Peter. A wondrous treasure established and funded by Canadians, thank you very much. Sort of like the Experimental Lakes Area but not recently screwed by Harper oh zing sorry moving on.

The Reserve was founded to look out for the Green Monkey population – they didn’t look particularly green to me, but then again they weren’t brown, per se. So green it is. They are sociable, fearless, curious, but most definitely wild. Do not try to touch the monkeys. They will bite you and you will die of strange tropical infections. But you can be near them – really near them, and that’s pretty cool.

I could have watched those monkeys for hours. There may have been a dozen or so, maybe more, and you immediately got a sense of their community. Hierarchy. Fascinating.

The deal with the Reserve is that the animals can come and go as they please. I suspect this mostly applies to the monkeys, who can climb the fences, but the principal is there. The peacocks were several and glamorous. And competitive. Speaking of, there were lots of red-footed tortoises (tortoisii? It should be tortoisii.) And the thing about those tortoisii is that they were getting. It. ON. The first pair we saw was a bit of a surprise, and kinda neat. By the fifteenth pair – or gangbang – the ol’ grunting and thrusting was losing its Wild Kingdom charm. I know, you still want to see. Fine. YouTube will oblige you here. You’ll have to take my word for the gangbang thing. Nature is a fascinating thing.

Anyway, lovely peacocks. And the Cuban Iguanas are huge. Pretty sure I could get my head in their mouth. If that was the sort of insanity to which I were prone. I am not prone. No sir.

And there were lovely parrots and other tropical birds. Caiman. Red Brocket Deer. These freaky-looking guys. Snakes. Bunnies. Probably the bunnies were more for the snakes, if you take my meaning. Very jungley. If you go to Barbados and miss the Reserve, you are missing a very cool thing. We want to take Avery back when she’s old enough to have more of a sense of it. As it was, the difference between our cat Thomas and those Green Monkeys is negligible.

Since the day before had been a bit of a loss with all the exploring- no, I’ll rephrase. We did a lot of exploring the day before, but not much in the way of destinationing. So we made up for it by doubling down on our day with the Reserve and the St Nicholas Abbey. That’s another one of those abbeys which has never seen a nun. Plenty of rum, though. So that makes its own kind of sense…

Where was I? Oh, St Nicholas Abbey. A sugar plantation dating back to the 1600s. A rich history of scandal, slavery, and damned fine rum. Mmmm. The rum…

I’ll just say it – I bought a bottle of 15yr old rum there for something like $150. But dude, it’s drawn directly from the cask into the bottle. Single cask rum. They only make 30 barrels a year. 15 years old. I tasted it straight out of the barrel. You had to let it sit for a few minutes to let the charcoal taste mellow out! Interesting trivia: the casks are bought from a certain American bourbon outfit. That’s my kind of recycling.

And blah blah the abbey grounds were very beautiful.

Man, that was April 30th. I have photos up til May 5 still to go. So much adventure. Actually, I think from here out it’s beaches, bars and baby. We’ll lose two pairs of glasses (both mine, both at the exact same location), battle cockroaches from hell, and splash around in the pool in the rain. All sorts of fun still to come.

Meanwhile, back to the future. Avery is ten and a half months old. She’s got four proper teeth and who knows how many more lurking just below the surface. She’s drooling in overtime, so I suspect a swarm. She’s also eating just about anything we put in front of her. Loves watermelon. Loves sweet potato. Loves BBQ chicken. Loves veggie burgers. Not crazy about the bushy end of broccoli rabe. Maybe she’s my girl after all. Parents beware: we tried a bit of hamburger bun, you know the store-bought white bread kind – she devoured it and lost interest in anything else. No wonder kids are fighting obesity these days. That stuff is crazy addictive. Addictive is too strong a word, but still. Mind the white bread, folks. It’s all sugar.

So she eats pretty much whatever we’re eating. We’re shopping organic and wild. That means she’ll miss out on all the growth hormones they stuff into the meat and dairy, and she’ll have a flat chest at 12 when all the other girls are filling out and buying maxi pads, but I’m willing to help her weather that storm. And no antibacterials! I avoid it even in the soap, though Marjorie tends to outflank me there. People need a chance to fight off a few little things, or they won’t have what it takes to fight off the big things. Fact. And all the antibiotics out there are breeding superbugs, so she’ll need all the fortitude she can muster.

She’s >this< close to walking on her own. She took four steps tonight – a new record. She’s fine when she’s not paying attention. She could have been walking solo two weeks ago. But as soon as she notices she’s not holding onto anything she drops down to crawl. And on some level she knows this, so she has to have something in her hands to fool herself into thinking she’s got support. Her big red ball is a favourite. Probably because she knows she can fall on it. Such a smart girl.

We’re trying to wean her off the soother. She’s fine with the idea, truth be told. She goes most of the day without it and she’s at her chatty best. It’s when she has a tumble or she’s over-tired that the soother must be present. And it’s part of the routine in the crib. It’s an advanced mental connection, you see. The soother would fall out of the crib, she would start crying, and we’d go hook her up again. So now she reckons she can toss out the soother to summon Mum or Dad. And we don’t really have a choice because she’ll go mad without it. So we’re working on that. Daytime first, then let it all happen organically. So far so good.

Man, I should write more frequently. I could go on for pages. It’s been a full and adventuresome summer. We took Chris and Rita for their first visit to Governor’s Island, coinciding with a fair of sorts featuring a slew of vintage carnival rides. Pics to come, obviously. My parents will be here for Avery’s 1st birthday. That’s neat. Things are at a really exciting place for Chaos on several fronts (4 I think?) – we need an agent! That deserves its own post. It all does. Time for bed though.

I leave you with this little series I’m into at the moment.