Aidan’s crib broke the other day.

Wednesday last in fact. Gwen leaned into it to push the rail edge beyond the catches, and “Snap!” the top rail of the drop side broke. It hasn’t completely broken, but it has cracked through. The teething rail is helping keep it together.

Our temporary solution has been to put that side of the crib against the wall and deal with retrieving him without lowering the rail. Not a big deal given his size and mobility.

But what to do with the crib? It’s not exactly dangerous as is, but not 100% safe either. Gwen called Storkcraft (a local company would you believe) and, surprise, surprise, our crib model (“Ashley”) is discontinued and they don’t have any replacement bits. $280 dollar crib, 3 years old, and broken. It’s not like we abuse the crib, and I’ve never seen him stand up and rattle the rail either, so it’s particularly disappointing.

So, do we do a home-fix, convert it into a toddler bed, or get a new one? Well, I think getting a new one is out of the question right now — seems pointless. Fixing it is do-able: I think that effectively putting a splint on the rail will keep it together pretty well. Metal straps will work, but I think I could patch it up pretty well with fibreglass; unfortunately Gwen’s put the kibosh on that.

And then there’s the option of transforming the crib into a toddler bed. I’m leaning towards this, but the fact is that I don’t think Aidan’s ready for it. He likes his crib. He doesn’t try to get out of it. He happily plays in it for hours. We’ve asked him if he wants to sleep in a big boy bed, and Gwen’s gone to Ikea to get him to test drive some of the beds there, and the reaction ranges from tepid to outright rejection.

So, what to do?

14 degrees and sunny. Ah, February in Vancouver. Amidst the gloom and rain, it always seems we get one week of sunshine in February. So, we did what any sensible family does, we went out and enjoyed it … by doing some geocaching!

We grabbed a few from UBC campus (True North, Strong and Free, and The Whaler’s Pole) and then headed down to the foreshore…

Here are a few from a cache appropriate called Strait of Georgia View:

And these were all taken from a cache called “Acadia Beach” (sadly many klicks away from Acadia)

Gwen tries to hide from muggles while putting the cache back:

More from the beach:

And yesterday I managed to squeeze in a “nemesis” cache: Top Arch. You might get a kick out of my original DNF log and the final find log.

And, oh!  Our 7th placed cache (replacing a cache we had adopted): Rock One Hundred.

Yesterday, my second cousins Hendrik and Andreanna came over, Hendrik with his girlfriend Lisa, and Andreanna with her husband Sean and their kids Nellie and Juliana. Aidan and Nellie and Juliana are third cousins, which is to say, they are the children of second cousins, who are children of first cousins, who are children of siblings. Got that? Aidan’s great-grandmother and Nellie and Juliana’s great-grandfather were siblings.

We got the party started in the usual way, with wine, Guitar Hero III, and mutual humiliation.

We got down to some serious eating, and managed to squeeze everyone around the table:

Nellie liked Aidan’s doll:

And Aidan and Gwen liked Juliana. Aidan was really quite gentle with his baby cousin.

Apparently a Starbucks nearby (4 blocks away) was blown up last night, around 2:30am. As of right now, it seems that someone blew it up, and the Starbucks, and 4 other businesses have been complete destroyed. The medical offices that occupy the higher floors of the building seem to have lost windows, and I bet they have at the very least smoke damage. London Drugs and other businesses facing the explosion have lost windows, and even the Holiday Inn half a block west has lost some windows. The pictures on the TV news are pretty impressive, but I can find too much on the web yet.

As it is, we didn’t hear a thing, and are sufficiently away from the centre of action that the only thing that affects us is that Broadway is closed down for a few blocks and that busses are going to be rerouted until noon. Actually, since Gwen doesn’t need to go down that way, and since I commute by bike, the biggest effect is the swarm of news helicopters circling overhead.

(Image taken from the News1130 site, uncredited there, uncredited here.)

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More links:

• CBC Radio (with links to interviews)
• CBC
• Vancouver Sun
• Global TV