Another update

Wow has it really been a month? Crazy. An awful lot has happened since our last post...I'm just hoping I don't forget too much. So when we last spoke, Henry was sleeping pretty horribly, the older boys were sleeping pretty well and a wave of sickness had just finished ripping through the house. Let's start with Henry - he's the baby so it always seems like so much is happening with him.

Shortly after our last post, right around when Henry hit 7.5 months, he popped his first two teeth. This is a couple of weeks before Leo had sprouted teeth and over a month before Max. So, early teeth. Better than early walking, I guess. Once the teeth came through, the sleep got a little better too - lots of nights where Henry only got up once or twice. There have even been two nights in the last month where Henry slept all the way through the night. And then he reverted right back to 4+ get-ups like the last two nights. Maybe some more teeth are inbound? We'll have to see.

Henry's been putting his teeth to good use too, starting to introduce himself to all sorts of food. Vegetable purees are a big no while fruit purees are a big yes. Especially when mixed with cereal and heated up. Mum-mums are (of course) a big hit. Henry also likes Cheerios and gnawing on sticks of cucumber and red pepper. Recently, he has also started nibbling on chunks of banana and melon and has even had his first fish - he loves salmon! Looking back at the amount of puree Max ate, we've really changed our approach to feeding a baby over the past 4 months. Our current approach is kind of in line with Baby-led weaning and is supposed to help babies get used to real food right away instead of teaching them to like purees and then reteaching them to eat something else.

Holly and Henry have been keeping up with the standard play groups and Hush-a-Bye classes. However, they've also made a routine out of getting together with Auntie Laramie and Cousin West for gym dates three mornings a week. They all go to the gym, the babies are left in care for 30-60 minutes while the mommies get smoking hot and then everyone goes out for lunch. Sounds like a good deal to me.

In other news, Henry is also now able to sit by himself for very long periods of time. Eventually, he ends up tipping over occasionally. But most of the time, he can ease himself down to the ground and roll or drag (yes, drag!) himself to whatever he wants to reach. This is all fairly new, maybe within the last 10 days, and we are learning that this has been the "hands-on" turning point that we've been waiting for - Henry can now be left in many places around the house under distant supervision, rather than being stuck on one of us around the clock. The new problem that this poses is that the older boys have to be A LOT more careful about their small toys (Lego, Playmobil, etc.) lying around. Good thing that Max keeps getting the idea in his head that he can tidy up certain rooms of the house for pocket change in order to save up for $300 Playmobil sets :)

Leo has also had an exciting month. Five weeks ago, Leo's daycare introduced him to sitting on the potty and trying to get him out of diapers. We moved to pull-ups for a week or so but then the daycare decided that it was time for underwear. Definitely way before we were ready for underwear at home. The first couple of days, there were a ton of accidents, but then Leo decided it would be best to just hold on to it all day long...and then have a mega-accident in the classroom just before pick-up, or in the van :( However, Leo seems to be putting stuff together the past couple of days. He still has a late-day accident every couple of days, but now he's starting to routinely use the potty at home, which makes it possible to have dry nights. Last night he even let me know that he needed a diaper for the other business. Fine by me! Yesterday was Leo's first dry day, wire-to-wire, so we're definitely going in the right direction.

Leo's vocabulary is exploding too. I get so much more out of chatting with him these days. He's using a number of mannerisms and descriptive words now that are really helping him communicate how he feels. This is, of course, when he's not absorbed in potty talk. I did want to take a second to commemorate a couple of my favourite things that Leo says before they disappear forever. First, instead of saying "I am", Leo instead says "I'm am" - this sounds completely adorable. The other big one comes up when Leo and Max are pretending to be certain people or Playmobil/Duplo figures: Leo always asks in a really plaintive voice "Who I can be?". Unfortunately, Max can be a bit of a jerk and seconds later, we hear Leo whining "Max says I can't be nobody!". Before I forget, I also love how Leo feels the need to put all Playmobil/Duplo people's arms straight up in the air, like they're in the middle of doing the wave. He sometimes even gets mad at me when I'm holding a person without putting their arms up. I wonder what it is he sees in real people that makes him think that people should have their arms up in the air...

Max has started playing soccer with the Fisher Park Rec Association, the same crew that ran his skating lessons. This is cool, particularly because every week he seems to be playing against at least one child he knows or has known. He also plays on a team with our former neighbour's daughter so there's some familiarity already on the team. The downside is that while other kids are playing for the Grizzlies, Canucks, Cobras or Tigers, my four year-old is playing for the Zombies. The Zombies. Four year-olds. Four year-olds don't even get dying, let alone dying and resurrecting in order to eat brains. Oddly enough, a couple of days before we found out about this whole Zombie business, Max had asked about this Threadless shirt of mine (that I once most awesomely wore while greeting Jehovah's Witnesses at the door) and I had to try to explain the commonalities between Jesus and zombies. So maybe it was karmic. Max futzed around the first couple of weeks, not really paying attention to what was going on, until the coach put him on defense. I'm not sure what the coach said to him, but he turned Max into a psycho net-protector. Yeah, sure, Max ends up almost standing on top of the goalie, but at least he's focusing a bit more on what's happening now.

The last broad highlight worth mention was that Max got his first ear infection in a long time about 10 days back. Not that Holly and I fully believed him at the time - Max has been telling an awful lot of stories lately and he was ridiculously tired at the time (state of being, actually) so we decided to wait for the verdict from the doctor. Thankfully, it turns out that Max did a really great job of identifying what was going on and totally nailed it. I think he finishes up his meds tomorrow.

You'll have to forgive us on the absence of photos for now - Leo threw a shovelful of sand in the lens of our camera at the beach last week so we're waiting to take it in before extracting the memory card. We'll post pictures ASAP.

The awkward hour...

The title refers to anything in the 5-6 a.m. range. I hate being awake to see anything starting with a five because it's minutes until the day begins. Or maybe not. Go back to sleep? Do something productive? Is Max really going to get up after only 9 hours of sleep today? The deepest philosophical questions always seem to pop up around now. It's now 6:03 and Henry just got back to sleep after partying for the last 90 minutes. The boys visited their friends Rosie and Lily last night and we ended up being out a little later than planned. I'm REALLY HOPING that Max & Leo hang out in bed until at least 7. After all, it is Easter :) Certain little brains are going to be exploding all day, it would be nice if they had a bit of rest to smooth things out. In the meantime, here's a little update.

The last couple of weeks have been quite interesting. To start, we were treated to a visit from the boys' Uncle Murray, Auntie Kathy and cousin Hannah. The Winnipeg Stardoms came down for the last week in March and the boys had a great time connecting with their relatives. We took the boys out of school and daycare for three days and mixed in a few adventures, including a visit to IKEA, a night trip to the Canadian Museum of Nature and a sushi lunch. The visit got off to a bit of a rocky start as the younger two kids had some trouble sleeping the first couple of nights. It seems that Hannah was having difficulties adjusting to her new environment and got over that after a few days. As for Henry, he scored his first ear infection but antibiotics took care of that over the course of the week. Leo upped the ante by developing some awesome congestion on night 3. When we were picking up Henry's prescription, the pharmacist mentioned that the swing from super warm temperatures to normal spring temps had wreaked havoc on a lot of people so it ended up being unsurprising that the kids got nailed.

Another big excitement was that on the Monday following the visit, Leo started his new daycare life away from our longtime caregiver. We got a call from the kindergarten & school-age program Max attends after school to let us know that they were expanding their facilities and opening up a preschool room. This was a bit of a turnaround, given that there was talk in October that the program might close down (the school in which the program is located is going to full-day kindergarten next year and they had semi-threatened to reclaim the daycare rooms for classrooms). But we were pretty happy about the opening - it hasn't ended up making the mornings any easier (particularly given that Leo is still melting down a little bit due to the change in routine) and we're really sad about disconnecting from our caregiver of three years, but Holly and Henry now get to spend almost 30 minutes a day less in the van, it's one less in-and-out of the van for Henry, the boys get to play together outdoors every afternoon and now Leo won't be the youngest in the room all the time. One of the requirements for attending this preschool, though, is that you have to be pretty gung ho about potty training so Leo has had a pretty intense introduction to pull-ups and potties this week. It's going OK so far and it's really great to see Leo's face light up with major successes. Max is being really supportive too...which is a little surprising, but great to see.

I suppose the third big deal around here is that Henry has started eating solid food. Up to now, he's had about 4-5 rice cereal dinners and gave sweet potatoes a spin last night. They weren't a big hit, but we can't tell if it was because he didn't enjoy them or if he was too tired (you know, from having slept 45 minutes from 9 a.m. to dinner time...sigh).

I also want to throw in a word about Max and reading. Over the last three months or so, his class has had a program where kids are supposed to bring a book home every day from their in-class library to share with their parents. I think the idea is to simultaneously encourage reading or sharing books with parents while starting to introduce the idea of homework. (newsflash - Leo wakes at 6:48...not bad). We've taken this opportunity to get Max reading and apparently he's coming along really well relative to his classmates. His love of books definitely makes things easier - we've even recently started sharing chapter books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Wizard of Oz. The evenings are still a bit crammed around here so reading time typically gets bumped to the morning. Leo has even taken a shine to Max reading him books in the morning, sometimes asking for "book in a bag" on the weekends. Hopefully Leo will be excited about reading as well.

Finally, I want to throw some kudos out to Max for passing Preschool Swimming B after only one try. We've already enrolled him in C - this will definitely make me feel more at ease about having him and another boy (or two) in the pool with me this summer.

So Happy Easter everybody! It's now officially 7 and Max is still not up (exhale). It looks like we have a big family dim-sum lined up for this morning followed by naptime and a visit from the Easter Bunny (who went down to Watertown, NY to do some shopping with Henry on Good Friday). Hopefully you have some great Easter plans too.

Here is an assortment of pictures, unrelated to this post (Holly has taken to using her new smart phone to take pictures more than the camera lately so I've got to get off my duff to load those on the computer):

So there's this running joke that every time Max opens a fortune cookie, his fortune is about him being a born leader. Prior to getting the fortune in this picture, I think it had happened 3 out of 4 times. At what point does it really become a prophecy?

In February, we went to the Children's Museum and Max was getting the biggest kick out of preparing fake food meals for Holly and then slapping a giant fake kiwi right on top (Holly's allergic). Hahaha Max.

Ever since Max has starting writing more in class (learning to write the letters of the alphabet), he has also gotten more interested in drawing. It's super interesting to see how kids translate what they see into drawings. This is Max's interpretation of his family. Clearly, our eyes are important. Either that or we're secretly zombies.

Leo dropped a toy behind our couch and decided to go looking for it himself. KILLER DUST BUNNIES! Time to vacuum.

Max and Maddie went to go see Disney on Ice in February and had a great time on their first date. The show was WAY too long for something starting at 7 p.m. on a school night, but the kids enjoyed the show. Max has been singing "Just Can't Wait to Be King" from The Lion King ever since.

Holly, Henry and Max went to IKEA during Quebec March Break and they had tons of family activities, including $1 kids' meals and amazing free face painting. Max has had "face painting" before, but never face painting. He thought this was really cool and hated taking it off. The face painter's website is at www.alittlebitofbling.ca

Oh Henry. Yes I had to use that title at least once.

Hello everyone! It's 3 a.m., I may have just successfully put Henry down to sleep on his stomach for the first time and I feel like posting something. Note that Holly has gotten pretty good at the tummy sleep thing over the past couple of days, but my technique seems to be lacking. Note also that part of my staying up to blog reflects my confidence in Henry staying asleep (25%?)

It has been a long month. Transitioning Henry out of his swaddler has been no picnic. Perhaps it's the rose-coloured glasses talking, but I feel like both of the other boys adjusted to freestyle sleeping a lot faster. Then again, Max wasn't even sleeping in his own room at this point (that's crazy to think about - I feel like I've shared a room with Henry overnight fewer than 20 times) and Leo had other issues so it probably all evens out. It's been nice over the past couple of nights to see Henry finally able to get some reasonable sleep outside of his car seat. Did I mention the car seat? Shortly after taking the swaddler off, Henry got a nasty cold. We remembered that the semi-upright position of the car seat helped the other boys get some air overnight so we went right to it for Henry...except that then, we had a very hard time getting him to sleep elsewhere. So it's been about a month of battling for a couple of hours at the start of each night to get Henry to sleep somewhere normal and then, out of desperation, firing him into the car seat to get at least some sleep in before dawn. With the amount of blah blah blah I've done about sleep over the past 4.5 years, it's no shock that parenting magazines always run with at least one sleep story a month on their covers. It certainly provides an excellent crash course in problem solving, patience and persistence though. I just wish I'd gotten more Bs. Or is that Zs?

Other than the nights, Henry continues to be an absolute joy to be around. He is a really expressive baby, always ready to fire a barrage of huge smiles at anyone willing to make googly eyes at him. He is starting to get really grabby so we're having to watch what might be within his reach at all times. He dragged his hand in my bowl of tomato soup at dinner last night! However, this means that if there's a toy or something safe-interesting around him, then he can get it and stick it in his mouth himself. The play gym continues to be a big hit, but the Exersaucer is the big winner these days. Swings are out; tummy time is in. The 3-6 month clothes just got passed on to cousin West this past week (although we're hanging on to the pants for a bit). Sleepers in the daytime aren't the norm anymore. Holly even took Henry to the pool this past week and he apparently loved it. Here's hoping that I can get one Stardom boy through parent and tot lessons without wire-to-wire screaming.

Briefly, the rest of the family is doing very well too. Everyone is finally healthy, the weather has got the kids thinking about biking and parks (who cares what it is, they can get outside for long periods of time again!) and Holly and I are starting to get out of the house once or twice a week for personal rejuvenation. This feels really good to me, but then again the option was always kind of there, given that I'm not the breastfeeder. Now that Henry's pretty reliable with a bottle and seems to be able to go quite a while being happy without a top-up (a great combination, if you ask me) it must feel REALLY GOOD for Holly who has been getting out to the gym occasionally as well as to social events with friends. I'm pretty proud of her - I'm not sure I'd be able to get through those first five months with a smile on my face.

Anyway, I'll save details regarding the other munchkins for another post. In the meantime, here are some Henry pictures. PS Henry's still asleep. Yay!

I wish I could caption this one well - the look on his face is priceless!

Q is for Quilt

Max's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Noakes, is doing this awesome program with his class where a different letter is featured every week with themed activities, stories, word games, crafts, etc. This week's letter is Q and today, the class made a quilt. Here is an excerpt and a photo from her daily email:

Today we made a quilt with the pictures the childen made yesterday. Mrs. Gordon, a volunteer, showed the children the three parts to making a quilt: the pictures, the batting in the middle and the backing. See attached picture of our quilt:


It's hard to see with the size of the photo here but Max's square is the orange star on the lower right quadrant.

We spent part of the night talking to Max about all of the quilters in our lives like Auntie Krysta, Auntie Karen and Kerry. Super cool!

A little bit of chaos + some Feb recap

Hello all, We're coming up on the end of February and have had some really good times with the kids throughout the month. Things are a little screwy at the moment, though, for a couple of reasons: 1) My back is all spasmy again. Sigh. Eventually I'll take care of this, right? Holly has been a real trooper (again) doing most of the heavy lifting around here (literally) while I work on getting better.

2) Henry has gotten so good at rolling around that he started doing it in the night in his swaddler. Holly and I both quickly decided that this wasn't really safe so we cut the swaddler out cold turkey. Unfortunately, this has had a major impact on Henry's sleep pattern. He's trying to figure things out and this has left us with some pretty unpredictable sleep situations (3 hours, 2 hours, 3 hours; 5 and 3; 2, 2, 2, and 2; 0 until 2 a.m. and then 5 hours straight...we seriously have no idea what to expect on any given night)

Anyway, let's flash back to the start of the month and pop some pictures out here of things that we did a couple of weeks ago.

On Groundhog Day, I took volunteer leave from work and helped out at Max's school for their kindergarten Winter Carnival. I was primarily stationed at the Chateau Woodroffe event - kids were instructed to bring in ice blocks made in as big a container as possible and dyed with food colouring. Kids stacked the blocks up to make a wall and then water sprinkled from a watering can was used to "glue" the whole thing together. The end product was pretty cool and is still standing outside the school today. Here's a picture of Max's class with what half of the morning students were able to accomplish:

On the 3rd, Holly did a little brunch with Auntie Melody, Laramie and West. Here's what Henry wore:

That's our boy - always ready to slay fools with unbridled happiness:) We also took a video later on in the day of Leo and his new favourite hobby - blowing milk bubbles. Here it is.

Three Star(dom)s at the NHL Fan Fair

Ottawa hosted the NHL All-Star Weekend this year so Max, Henry and I decided to take in one of the public events, the Scotiabank NHL Fan Fair. The Fan Fair was a massive, interactive indoor hockey festival held at the newly renovated Ottawa Convention Centre downtown. There were two full floors of booths and activities.

One of the real highlights of the day were the various mascots walking around. We had stopped for a snack and were seated beside the escalators. Mascots were coming up the escalators every few minutes! They were also having a blast hot-dogging down the escalators which the kids loved. After a bit of hesitation, Max got right into it and was high-fiving everyone. I took a few photos:

Max with Wildwing (Anaheim Mighty Ducks)

With Sparky the Dragon (New York Islanders)

With N. J. Devil (New Jersey Devils)

With S.J. Sharkie (San Jose Sharks)

We also saw Thunderbug (Tampa Bay Lightning), Tommyhawk (Chicago Blackhawks), Carlton (Toronto Maple Leafs), and Nordy (Minnesota Wild). The mascots were AMAZING - interacting with kids and adults in goofy ways, posing for creative photos, engaging the shy kids, etc. Sadly, there were no Spartacat sightings.

Another fun feature of the event were various booths where you could get cool photos taken and sent to you via email. Here, we do our best Ron McLean and Don Cherry impressions on a faux Hockey Night in Canada set:

Channel-hopping over to TSN:


With some dress-up clothes in the Scotiabank Photo Booth:

We enjoyed some time in the kids' area with Max playing Timbits hockey and all of us building some hockey-themed Mr. Potato Heads. We didn't line up to get our picture with the Stanley Cup but Max loved seeing it.

Classic Max - Smelling the roses while the hockey action is very clearly going on somewhere else.

Henry reaching out for some Mr. Potato Head love.

Max with the Stanley Cup in the background.

Max at the Sirius DJ booth. Shortly after this, he danced his butt off to the Justin Bieber classic "Baby".
The Fan Fair was absolutely HUGE; I think we saw less than half of it but we were totally spent when we left. I wasn't entirely sure how much Max got out of it at first because it was a really overwhelming experience but he spent a big chunk of time that night telling John about all of the things he did and saw so I know that he enjoyed it. It was definitely a once in a lifetime event for me so it was really special to share it with Max.

Successes on the home front

This is just going to be a quick one, but I want to announce that this past Monday was a big day in the Stardom household. A day after he demonstrated to us that he was capable of rolling over, Henry showed us that he could also roll back. He doesn't quite do it at will yet, but we are definitely not leaving Henry alone on any elevated surface anymore. It was nice to be able to witness the first roll this time, instead of being out of the room and getting burned as our child goes sailing off the couch (sorry Max). The other big success was Max's. Max has been signed up for a lot of activities over the years, but they've all been of the variety that when they're over, you just get a certificate and that's that - there's no real chance to fail. Well, over the past year, he's been in a preschool swimming class that you actually can't get past until you're able to do everything on the report card. Monday night, after his last class, Max graduated to the next level. It's been a lot of hard work - when Max went to his first class, he was unable to be on his back in the pool at all and he was really uncomfortable getting his face wet, let alone putting his face underwater. Now, he can back float to some extent and voluntarily puts his face in the water and is apparently ready to roll for Preschool B. I'm really proud of him and I can't wait to see how he tackles the next challenge.