Hello and welcome to our Second pandemic year in review letter!
Fewer plans got dashed this year than last, so that was nice. The plans did shift a bit as we opted to do more things outside than we vaguely recall choosing to do before the pandemic. This did mean less «young child indoor playground», so it wasn’t all bad. At all.
Depending on whom you’re mostly interested in hearing about; our lives largely consisted of programming and riding along for the adventures of a 4 year old, or having your parents ride along on your adventures.
This past winter, the pandemic instigated a shut down of shinny hockey on the rink in the park behind our house. Zoe took advantage of the considerably more open and available ice to become a skater! Part of her birthday party was held on the ice.
There are a lot of great ways to get out in nature around Ottawa. A neat feature of many of the greenbelt trails is that the chickadees expect to be fed by walkers. Mer Bleue, Mud Lake, and Beaver trail were all seen repeatedly by us. Ottawa’s Dominion Arboretum is lovely in the winter. We spent quite a bit of time there sledding on the hills. We may try to get out there in the early Spring to do some owl surveying.
Spring brought some notable milestones. Zoe learned to ride her bike, and we became a family that biked places.
We saw a surprisingly large number of turtles around Ottawa– Dominion Arboretum (again), Macoun Marsh, Rideau River, and Patterson Creek.
We spent our Summer in Poland visiting Ewa’s friends and family. Yup, we travelled internationally during a pandemic. We lucked out, and were moving about when covid was globally at its just about lowest levels. We spent much of our time with Zoe’s Babcia Ela (Ewa’s mom) at her home in Biskupiec. Zoe’s cousin Taddeusz and wujek Marek were in from Sweden and she was able to cast some memories of her Polish-Swedish but mostly Polish family. We also got to spend some time hanging out with Zoe’s Polish Ciocas– Ilona and Agnieszka.
We took a train ride to Hel, which sounds more clever than it reads. Hel is at the end of a peninsula on the Baltic and there are some pretty good beaches there. Zoe tried her snorkel mask in the shallow clear water and immediately came face to face with a jellyfish! With Zoe on my shoulders and my eyes training to see what’s what, I was able to see the jellyfish. Then another one. And another, and another. We checked with the lifeguard and were assured they were Medusa and not really jellyfish, and that there was nothing to worry about. The 8 year olds seeking them out catching them with their hands and putting them in buckets convinced us.
Our autumn was eventful– Zoe started at maternelle. She rides the school bus to school in the mornings, and spends the days in the same class as her friends from the neighbourhood. There were a number of outbreaks at school and weeks spent at home here and there. We spent much of the time outside, we got in to pumpkin carving at a family level, and ran the Santa Shuffle virtually again.
Working from home has resulted in many fewer kms on the bike than in years previous– going to and from work 5 days/week would easily put 100kms on the bike. We’re a biking family now, but we’re not making up that difference. I made up for some of this with a good «Monday, Fun Day, Run Day» committment. There were some skipped weeks, but equal or more multiple run weeks– I’ll end the year with an average run per week pretty close to 1.
There’s usually a fishing story in the Xmas letter that pokes a little fun at my fishing abilities. But I’ve allowed my goalposts to shift a bit. I’ve got a daughter that, for the moment, is interested in fish and fishing. I’m going to run with this as long as I can.
We caught fish. Lots of fish! Lots of really, really small fish!
Little sunfish and minnows aren’t the most discerning game. So we caught lots of them. Off the docks in Poland we caught red shiners. In Patterson Creek in Ottawa’s Glebe we caught crappie, sunfish, and perch.
We took a canoe out on the Rideau River with Adam. As we bobbed around, Zoe’s line brought a small bass into the boat. Adam’s line didn’t catch anything and between managing Zoe’s line and paddling, my line didn’t even make it into the water. But I score this as a very successful fishing trip.
The musical playlist of our house is a little eclectic this year. Ewa and I experienced it vicariously and repeatedly through Zoe, who has become fast-friends with Alexa.
We had:
/XMAS/assets/audio/2021-12/pokemontheme.mp3
/XMAS/assets/audio/2021-12/im-intounknown.mp3
/XMAS/assets/audio/2021-12/erw-allisfound.mp3
/XMAS/assets/audio/2021-12/katy-perry-roar.mp3
/XMAS/assets/audio/2021-12/monBeauDrapeau.mp3
/XMAS/assets/audio/2021-12/o-canada.mp3
/XMAS/assets/audio/2021-12/bnl-jinglebells.mp3
You’ll need to upgrade your subscription to this newsletter if you’re interested in the premium content such as: video of us following along with summer camp’s choreographed dance of the Pokémon theme song as directed by Zoe.
After getting part way through a book I’d already read last year, I decided to keep proper tabs on what I was reading– title, author, a couple notes or thoughts– nothing too serious. This proved handy for keeping track of which books in which series I should be looking for and– broadly– what kind of stuff I was reading. It is mostly entertaining detective/chase/murder stuff that I read. The more memorable ones didn’t fit that classification though. I really enjoyed:
I’ve been trying to cultivate an appreciation of birds in my daughter– it started a couple years ago when I put a bird feeder out on our back balcony. Then along came the perfect storm: I was watching Pokémon cartoons with Zoe and realized that there is a fuzzy matching bird identifying app that can be installed on my smart phone (Merlin– its a really great program!).
Now, I could be the Pokémon trainer (bird watcher) that catches (photographs) various Pokémon (birds) and learns about them!
I got hooked. It is a fun thing for Zoe and I to do while we’re out and about. We’re heading out on a bird watching adventure this month looking for raptors around Ottawa– apparently the snowy owls are back in town. Ewa will need to find something else to do with all her free time this Sunday.
There are a couple updates Ewa suggested to me for the Christmas letter. They are:
We’re all doing well– Ewa included;) We’re fortunate to remain minimally impacted by the pandemic, and we are thankful for it. We’re looking forward to a calm and low-key holiday break. However you’re celebrating this year, we hope you are able to stay safe and enjoy. Hope to hear from you in the new year. Best wishes, Tim, Ewa, & Zoe