From upstairs, sounds of merriment. A little too much merriment. Beloved goes up to investigate.

*laughter*

*indignant sounds from Beloved*

*silence*

I look up as Beloved comes back down the stairs, his eyeballs visibly rolling. I’m almost afraid to ask.

“Remember those new electric toothbrushes I bought last week?” he asks.

I nod.

“They were racing them across the bathroom floor.”

I pause, considering. “Um, they had wheels?”

“No!”

Ick.

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And then I watched this video.

Doesn’t it make your heart soar?

www.facebook.com/youngartistsforhaiti

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So I have to admit, I haven’t exactly been taking pictures every day. Some days I take a dozen pictures, and some sad days, I don’t even touch my camera at all. (Well, that’s not quite true. I still lug the poor thing around with me everywhere I go, I just don’t always remember to stick it to my face as obsessively as I did all through last year.)

Aside from birthday parties, here’s some of the other ways beauty crept into my life in the last couple of weeks.

Discovering the toddler’s secret lair under the kitchen table was a treat, for instance.

And speaking of treats, we had a family dinner at a friend’s place recently, where she endeared the kids to her forever with a make-yer-own-cupcake dessert. I’m surprised the boys didn’t pack their bags to go live with her on the spot!

Beauty hides in the oddest places. I found the light falling on these dirty towels irresistible!

After that I entered what will now be known for all time as Dani’s Late Winter Tulip Period. (Yanno, like Picasso’s Blue Period?) I got a bouquet of tulips to welcome my folks home from a trip and filched a few, then got a surprising amount of photographic mileage out of them in the subsequent week. Who knew tulips were so versatile?

You’ve got yer tulips with a texture overlay here:

You’ve got yer through-the-viewfinder tulips here…

… and here:

And then you’ve got yer straight-up-with-a-side-of-overexposure here:

If you were paying attention, you might have noticed an earlier version of this shot a few weeks back in TtV format. I particularly like this one because I finally managed to get the white background exposed well enough that it more or less disappears into the background.

Sometimes, the simple shots become your favourites. I like this one because it tells a whole story, and invites you to ask a little bit more too.

The weather around here has been uncannily beautiful lately, and we’ve been taking every opportunity to play outside where we can enjoy it. This is what springtime looks like in suburban Ottawa:

It’s been a lovely couple of weeks!

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It’s not too often that I get dance-around-the-house excited by blog pitches, but this one did it for me!

This week, I got an e-mail from the National Arts Centre (NAC) offering me two tickets to a special bloggers-night-out at a performance of Mysterioso: Music and Magic, a part of the CTV Pops series. Here’s the NAC’s description of the show:

Described by Johnny Carson, as “one of the classiest magic acts you’re going to see in a long time! The best I’ve seen!”, Joseph Gabriel has performed on virtually every major television variety show; for ten consecutive years in Las Vegas, and in an unprecedented 18 month Broadway run. His masterful sleight-of-hand and spectacular illusions will be in perfect harmony with our Pops Maestro Jack Everly leading the NAC Orchestra in magical orchestral gems guaranteed to leave you enchanted.

Here’s Jack Everly describing the event:

Doesn’t that sound like a wicked-fun night out? (A night out? Oh my, I simply can’t remember the last time Beloved and I had a night out. And you know what? Next Thursday, the night of the show, is the 15th anniversary of the night we met. Kismet or what?)

Even more fun, the NAC is offering special media access for photographs at the beginning of the show, and computers and wifi for tweeting before and after the show and during intermission. I love the NAC, and miss the days when we used to go there regularly. I’ve seen some fantastic shows there, from the Canadian Brass to Steven Wright to Holly Cole.

And of course, everything is more delightful when I can share it with my bloggy buddies. That’s right, I have a pair of tickets to give away to one lucky reader. Yay!

Here’s the details:

• The tickets are for the 8 pm show on Thursday March 18. Please don’t enter if you’re not sure you can attend!
• To enter, leave a comment on this post telling me something magical — I’ll leave that to your interpretation!
• You must leave a valid e-mail address, so I can contact you.
• I’ll use the random number generator to choose a winner on Monday March 15 around noon.
• The winner will pick up the tickets directly from the NAC box office.

Music! Magic!! A chance to wear grown-up shoes and lipstick! Squeeee!!!

(And, good luck!)

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Okay, bear with me for one saccharine minute. Please? I promise, it’s no worse than yesterday’s introspective moaning. (I swear, I blame it on Douglas Coupland. I still credit Generation X with getting me motivated out of a bad marriage, and I’ve spend the last three weeks reading The Gum Thief. He gets into my brain and messes with it in a way that no person in my real life does!)

Oh, and I have to say, while I really really REALLY appreciated your comments, I think I misrepresented the depths of my despair. The blog was never really at risk of ending — I don’t know if I could stop if I have to. But it just hasn’t been any fun at all for the largest part of the last month, and I don’t need another chore in my life. The blog is my escape from the housework, and shouldn’t be a drudge.

So anyway, this is where I was going today: I woke up with the Beatles’ song The End in my head, a propos of nothing. And as I’m making coffee, the line keeps bouncing around in my head: And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

It’s karma, baby. I truly believe that. I keep putting out good things into the universe, and the universe sends goodness back to me. And the past couple of weeks of bloggy constipation and soul-searching? That’s probably because I totally stole that guy’s parking spot at Costco last month and then shrugged and shot him the “Who, me?” innocent look. I was in a hurry!

So if I can blog about taking inspiration from a half-century old song that came to me in a dream with only the slightest cringe of self-consciousness, I can get through any lingering ennui.

And besides, I’ve got a wicked-cool giveaway for Ottawa peeps later today. Stay tuned!

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Last week when I put up the quick post with the TtV tulip shot, I mentioned that I felt I’d been neglecting the blog lately because I’ve been so crazy busy and “feeling a little unsettled.” Bless her observant little heart, Angela picked up on it and asked me “Why unsettled?”

Sigh.

It’s been about three weeks since the whole stupid thesis thing, and you know what? I still can’t find my footing. Oh, how I wish I could close that damn Pandora’s Box. I’ve tried to write this post a dozen times, and I can’t come even close to getting it right. Ever since that whole kerfuffle, I feel so exposed and so self-conscious and so — and this is where I get stuck, every time. Not only can I not blog about this, but I can’t blog about *anything* without feeling weird and awkward about it. And I hate it.

I have this idea in my head of what the blog is to you, dear reader. I like to think you think that it’s a place for fun ideas of things to do with your family, of places where we have interesting discussions about the foibles of parenting in the 21st century, a place where I show you what the world looks like through my eyes by using my words and my camera, a place where I can turn the minutiae of my life into vignettes that resonate with you and will be treasured by me when the moment has long since passed. In the last couple of years, it’s also been a place where I hand-pick what I think are useful or valuable or just plain interesting products and services, and find ways to get freebies for all of us.

By the time the dust had settled, I felt like just another mommyblogger writing about potty training and takeout dinner. I’ve never felt so misunderstood, not even as an angsty 16-year-old with more attitude than brains. And then as it rippled through our little corner of the Internet, people said I was “indignant” and “overreacting” when in fact, I was none of those things. I was perplexed and weirded out, and I felt like someone had taken something quite valuable to me without my permission and turned it into something that made me uncomfortable. As it progressed, I felt like I was the one who had been wronged, and yet somehow I had to defend myself for it. And you know what? It drove me crazy seeing all these people saying, “Well, you put it out there, what did you expect?” Um, not that. As if that weren’t enough fun, then I felt awful because of the brutal comments — none of which I made but many of which I felt responsible for, because they happened in my space — eviscerating the thesis and its author. So I went from weirded out to defensive to guilty to wishing I’d never found the damn thing in the first place. Damn Google.

So I kind of tried to wait it out, putting up meaningless little posts while not blogging about the elephant in my throat, and hoped that I’d shake it off. I tried to go back to a contented sort of oblivious bliss, but I just couldn’t find my way. And then I read that Theryn is planning on writing another paper about the reaction to the thesis, and I felt even more exposed and more vulnerable because I don’t *want* to be a part of anyone’s thesis ever again so I sure as hell don’t want to feed that fire. But after five years of group problem solving, I don’t really know any other way to address an issue like this except to blog about it.

Gah.

I had decided that I would not write this post, that I would just suck it up and swallow my anxiety whole and muddle through, because this is exactly the kind of revealing, wallowing, indulgent sort of post that I really don’t like to write. And then I read this paragraph on the Canadian Weblog Awards post about Nova Scotia blogger Kate Inglis of sweet | salty. I’ve read Kate’s blog on and off through the years, and found her to be an amazing writer and photographer, but this paragraph in her interview on the CWA blog spoke to exactly where I am right now:

Choosing not to delete my blog at that moment was a turning point. To keep going, I had to shrug at the rest of the internet. The trolls, the bickering, the melodrama, the need for validation, the exposure fetishists. The shit. I had to make the internet into something else, at least in my corner, and not internalize the rest of it. I made an effort to find kind and interesting people for whom blogging was just a platform for something else. Good writing, ideas, photography, art.

That’s it, exactly. I’ve got to find that place again, where I can write from my heart without feeling like I have to put up walls to protect myself and the things that are important to me. I hope it’s not gone for good, because I liked that place. It made me happy.

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My sweet baby Tristan,

You are eight years old! No longer a “little” boy, but a boy to your core. How could I call you “little” when I can rest my chin on the top of your head? Not so long now, my son, and we’ll be seeing eye-to-eye literally as well as philosophically — for a week or two, anyway, until you shoot right up past my height!

You are my adventurous spirit, my companion in neighbourhood walks, my artistic soul, my daydreamer. Your imagination is limitless, even if your attention-span is occasionally limited. You love to draw, especially characters from the books and cartoons and video games you love. Your walls are currently full of pictures you’ve drawn of Super Mario and characters from the Bone books.

To say you love Lego is an understatement. You can follow even the most complex instructions, and it won’t be long before you’ve moved beyond Lego and are building our Ikea furniture for us. You love to show off your various Lego creations, mostly exotic ships with secret trap doors and hidden missiles. There is not a room in the house that doesn’t have some bit of Lego that has drifted off of one of your creations.

You, my boy, are an extremely patient older brother to Lucas. You tolerate him colouring on your homework, yanking apart your Lego creations, and otherwise torturing you, with an impressive amount of tolerance. Usually. You don’t mind fetching a snack for him, or reading books to him, or otherwise finding ways of diverting him from mischief while I’m trying to make dinner. Your other brother Simon is your best friend and mortal enemy, and the two of you are locked in a power struggle that sees you bickering for solid hours at a time, only to be followed by cuddling under the same blanket to watch TV together.

In the last year, you have continued to impress us with your scholastic achievements. You read with an easy fluency that still makes my heart swell when I listen to you read out loud, and you speak French with a perfect accent that I could never hope to replicate. At school, you are exceeding expectations in both math and reading, and the only complaints we ever receive from your teacher are when you dig in your heels and decide to show your bullishly stubborn side. Lucky for us, this doesn’t happen too often.

Your best friends are Will and Colin, and you recount tales of recess adventures filled with opposing tribes and ne’er-do-well girls. Girls! You still have no use for them. You love physical play — running, tumbling, climbing, leaping. You come home from school soaking wet and dirty more days than not, but happy in your mess. You recently finished a second year of skating lessons, and you love nothing more than to zoom around the rink as fast as your legs will carry you. When I asked if you wanted to play hockey next year, you considered for a while but thought you might prefer something new instead, like guitar lessons. Be still my heart.

You seem almost incapable of remaining in your chair through an entire meal, so I’m not sure how your teacher manages to keep you in your desk all day. Just when I think that maybe I should be concerned about your absolute inability to restrain yourself, I catch you engaged in reading or drawing or some other creative act and realize that you’ve been absorbed and motionless for impressive stretches. Apparently colouring engages a calming centre in your brain that conversation with your family does not!

Right now you love Super Mario Brothers, Spore, Lego, Star Wars, Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Bone books, Calvin and Hobbes, Pokemon, Garfield and the Vancouver 2010 Olympic mascots. Your favourite foods are McDonalds hamburgers, chicken fingers, pogos, pizza with just cheese, cheddar Sunchips, and sweet red peppers.

You, who were my most finicky eater, have miraculously become my most flexible eater. In the last year, you’ve come to love meatloaf, chili and salad. In fact, there’s very little that I serve that you won’t eat, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that! Even vegetables are no longer your enemy.

My sweet baby Tristan, you are eight years old, and I love you with all my heart. Happy birthday, my son. You make me proud to be your mom.

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So I have to admit, I’ve been looking forward to today’s Lego birthday party with equal parts excitement and dread. Custom Lego birthday party for eight boys? Wicked awesome! Eight boys in my house? Questionable. Four of five family members felled by stomach flu in the five days leading up to the party, leaving the birthday boy vulnerable? Nerve-wracking. Three of said party guests, including the birthday boy, spontaneously and independently naming the party-in-progress “Best birthday party EVER!”? Priceless.

This is what an eight-year-old’s perfect birthday looks like:

The boys were astonishingly well-behaved, and utterly engaged with the Lego Guy’s instruction at every step of the way. Things only got a little crazy when they took their newly assembled Lego Mindstorm Robots into the wresting ring for a final challenge. Take a quick peek, it’s only 30 seconds but I bet if you’re even a little bit in touch with your inner eight-year-old boy (what, you don’t have one?) it makes you smile!

Did I mention? Best! Birthday! Party! EVER!

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I feel like crap, because the stomach bug that started with the baby and worked it’s way to the middle boy visited me last night. And I feel bad because I am totally neglecting the blog lately. Too busy, and a little unsettled.

And so to assuage my guilt for ignoring you and to distract you with a gorgeous hint of spring — hey, look over here! Pretty!

More soon, I promise!

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Curse you, Facebook!

For my whole life, I have believed that I was unique in the world. To begin with, Danielle was a very unusual name in London, Ontario where I grew up. There were no other Danielles in my classes as I moved through school, and I didn’t meet another Dani until I moved here. Back in London, there were three listings for “Donders” in the phone book: my dad, his dad, and his uncle. Now that we’ve moved to Ottawa, Dad and I have cornered the Donders market in the phone book.

Oh, I know there are other Donderses out there in the world. In fact, I have a whole book written in inscrutable Dutch, following the various Donders lineages. But never, ever have I imagined there could be another Danielle Donders.

Until now.

I found the other Danielle Donders on Facebook when Beloved set up his account last month, and not too long after found this profile from a social media hub called Hyves. We don’t seem to have too much in common, based on this limited profile information. She lives in the Netherlands, and likes Armani, Bacardi, Diesel, G-star, Hyves, Jean Paul Gaultier, Opel, Replay, Samsung, T-Mobile, Vero Moda, and Zwitsal. I’ve once visited the Netherlands and heard of a few of those things — but not most of them.

It’s weighing heavily on me, this sudden challenge to my uniqueness of nomenclature. I suppose it’s still a relatively unique name — my cousin Mike Smith would certainly argue that it is! But for 40 years I’ve been comfortable in the knowledge that I was the *only* Danielle Donders in the world and find myself surprisingly unsettled to be disabused of the notion.

I wonder if she googles her own name and is annoyed by the first three or four pages dominated by references to an obscure Canadian blogger with an addiction to the Web? (And, yes, it was this post that I was writing a couple of weeks ago when I stumbled upon the infamous “creepy thesis.”)

Are you uniquely named? How would or do you feel about sharing your name with a stranger?

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