The Red Pager
Years ago, at Beaches Presbyterian Church in Toronto, one of the gentlemen (and the title truly applies) I sang with in the choir was a man named Michael. He had been trained in the British Church Choir tradition, and was one of the finest musicians I have ever sung with, but he had a very interesting day job.

He was the head chemist, for one of the nuclear (or as W. would say, Nucular) power plants in Southern Ontario.

Once he came to church not only with his usual cell phone (which was attached to his hip), but a bright red pager.

"New Pager?" I asked. "That's pretty flashy."
"No," he replied. "It's my turn this weekend."

It turns out, that several of the managers had to take turns carrying this pager, which only beeped when there was a ... shall we say... incident?

"So when it goes off, that's bad?" I asked innocently.
"My goodness. Yes."

On Tuesday of this week, I'm pretty sure Michael's pager went off. But they finally traced the source of the full blown multireactor nuclear meltdown to a quiet urban street in Hamilton, where there is normally no nuclear activity at all.

Yes, Isaac has entered "the terrible threes" In fact, everyone I know with kids old enough says that the 'twos' are actually quite pleasant. It's the threes that get really interesting.

Well, Isaac turns three in ... dear God, is it really?...under two weeks, and he has gotten a little jump start on the whole "asserting his independance thing".

Tuesday night Noelle had to go in for a meeting for Grit Lit (Hamilton's literary festival, she's the co-chair, because with a three year old, a 7 month old, a husband who's often out of the country, and a small business to run, she felt there were some gaps in her schedule she needed to fill), and Isaac was going to have his own way that night.

Her leaving was fine, but putting him to bed, was another story entirely.

I won't bore you with the details, other than pointing out that Sam at 7 months is hitting his "Seperation Anxiety" right on target. So he really doesn't like to be left alone for any length of time. So bedtime on Tuesday was running back and forth between floors, to alternately console howling children.

And the worst part. I can't complain. At all. Even though I just did. I'm leaving in three weeks to spend another week in Managua. I am going to have to come back with a pretty significant bribe if we're going to get a whole week of good behaviour out of Isaac.

Meanwhile, Sam has a new thing he does. We know he likes his food. Alot. But he also likes your food, no matter what you're eating, no matter how impossible it would be for him to eat it with a baby mouth, and no teeth.

Let me explain. Did you ever have a friend in High School, or University who was terrible with money, but wanted to hang out and do the things everyone else did. So when you went to dinner, they would come, but they would order a glass of water. Then they would watch you eat, bite by bite, until you couldn't take it anymore, and you would offer to let them have some, and they would dig in like a lioness who has just given birth to a litter of 6?

That's the look Sam uses when you're eating, well, pretty much anything. He has huge blue/hazel eyes that stare up at you with the most sincere expression of "Where's mine?"

Don't get me wrong, I mean look at the photos, the kid's well fed. But he just always wants what we're eating. It's gotten to the point I can't snack around him. Which is probably just as well, as I do a little too much snacking anyway.

That's the news for now.