A Rite of Spring

One of the coolest things about living in this region is the proximity to many, many sugar shacks come springtime. We had the most glorious early spring weather this Saturday - sunny and really warm - and our dear friends J & R invited Max and I to the sugar shack for the morning (John missed out on the adventure as he was tied up at a charity Scrabble tournament).

We went to Stanley's just east of Ottawa. It was fabulous! We started out at the buffet and had a blast. There were no high chairs left so Max sat nicely in a booster seat. He is getting so big. He plowed through some pancakes, ham, half a plate of baked beans, and some juice. He really, really loved the mystery orange punch they were serving. After three glasses of punch, I let him know that there was no more. But this kid is no slouch. He demanded to be taken down off of his booster seat and then made a beeline to the giant plastic juice dispenser near us. He pointed at it and made the sign for "more". What could I do? The kid had a point. So, it was back into the booster seat for a half-glass of juice.

After brunch, we ventured outside to explore the grounds. Max was making his own way so it was an interesting and not very straight line to anywhere but we enjoyed watching him explore on his own. We went over and looked at the horses in a field first. Max definitely pointed at the horses and acknowedged them but he was more interested in the various tractors and farm vehicles around the property. Perhaps his love of big vehicles is overtaking his love of animals at this point? They had a petting barn so we ventured in there. I had Max in my arms but he decided quickly that he really did not like the petting barn. It was pretty crowded in there and did smell funny but I was surprised at his reaction. Everything was fine again when we got outside. Max explored the play structure and got reasonably close to a few giant animal statues they had outside in the children's play area.

As we were leaving the farm, I decided to get some maple taffy as it is my favourite sugar bush treat. I thought Max might like a taste of my treat. Big mistake. The kid got a hold of my popsicle stick and refused to let go. He was clutching that thing like he would never let it go. This continued well into our car ride home. When I finally wrenched it out of his hand because the taffy was melting everywhere and forming a casing around his wrist, he had a screaming fit and only quieted down when he fell asleep. I guess he inherited my love for maple taffy.

All in all, it was a most excellent adventure and a wonderful way to spend a sunny spring morning. Thanks to J & R for the invitation.

Here are some photos of our adventure:

Max's Art Gallery - Inaugural Show

It has indeed been a busy month but I wanted to make sure I got a few posts up here before tomorrow.

Max has been getting more interested in the creative arts lately. This mostly involves taking the caps off of pens and drawing on tables, sheets and other things that aren't scrap paper but he also been doing some crafts at the playgroup that our caregiver takes him to. I read somewhere that it is a good idea to take pictures of your child's art so you can save it without having to save oodles and oodles of paper. Those of you that know me well know that I already have a little problem with hoarding paper so I think this is good advice.

Without further adieu, you are cordially invited to Max's first art show. Enjoy!


This holiday piece shows a striking use of colour and shine. He definitely enjoys the multimedia collage.


A simple composition for Valentine's Day.


Animals are very popular around here.


His latest creation - the classic wax paper stained glass window.

What a month

Another busy week! This one was crazier than most in that we've chosen to pull up our roots and move! Not too far, mind you, but a couple of kilometers further west from where we are currently. We've stumbled onto a real gem of a house and are extremely excited to start our new life there toward the end of May. Hopefully Max won't mind stuff gradually being packed up and disappearing from our house...or the fact that he will have a new room. We'll definitely be posting some dispatches as the move progresses.

This past week has been full of dinners with family and friends as well as house-related running around. The weather has also gotten nicer with highs hovering around 2-5 above 0. What this has meant for us is that Max has started wanting to spend a lot more time outside. He has started to prefer hanging out on our deck or in our driveway after getting picked up from daycare instead of just heading inside to play. In fact, when we eventually do go inside for dinner, Max typically has a disastrous meltdown and wants to stay outside. Should we encourage this or quash it as soon as possible with video games? heh heh. It's awesome that he loves being outdoors and we look forward to taking advantage of this. The only thing that will make outdoor time better is being able to be outside without mitts and a toque. A lighter jacket would be nice too. And if OC Transpo could use the imminent rate hike to put more buses on the road, Max would NOT disapprove.

Speaking of buses, I went to a party at our neighbour's Friday night and one of the other attendees brought their 2-year-old son and some of his toys and books. One of those books was Richard Scarry's Cars, Trucks and Things that Go, a book that I had as a young boy. I saw it on eBay the other month and somehow assumed that it wasn't available in print anymore. Holly made a trip to Chapters this morning and picked up a copy - when Max was going through the book, his head just about spun off in excitement. Crazy-looking large vehicles? All driven by animals? Max's heaven.

Yesterday, we spent the day over at Holly's mom's while we had some work done on our house. Max had a fun time with the family and had a killer nap. He also enjoyed hanging out with me by the Transitway overpass watching buses go by. Unfortunately, he had a little tumble outside and knocked his head on Grandma's driveway. Not much of a bruise, but a good dose of road rash on his temple to show for it. I'll try to get a picture for posterity. Max wasn't upset for too long, as he had family members to entertain him, a piano to play, food to eat and a couch to dive on (see the accompanying video). Last night, I'm not sure if it was the injury, Max's ongoing congestion, or the playpen we had to put him in, but he ended up getting up before midnight and needing to sleep with Holly in bed, occasionally on her chest while she slept sitting up, in order to clear the congestion. I'm not sure if this bodes well for the next time we'll need to have him sleep in a playpen. It's entirely possible that he's just a bit too long and/or active in his sleep at this point...

Today, Max and I went to his first session of Tall & Small 1 gymnastics. It's at the same place as last time, but it's earlier and not mixed in with a Tall & Small 2 class this time. There were two holy terrors in this class. It will be interesting to see whether they were just having bad days or, if that's just the way they are, whether their parents are going to give up on taking them and start staying home instead. Also, one of the children from Max's original play group is in the class. It's really interesting how we keep running into the other members of the playgroup through Max's activities, and cool to see how they're developing as compared to Max ('cause it's all about keeping up with the Joneses right?:):) The early gym class meant that Max had more energy for the class, but it also meant that he had an early nap afterward, which led to him being megacranky this evening. Tonight was the first night in probably two months that Max was asleep by 7:30.

I'll leave you with a brief word regarding Max's verbal development. He has worked DAD/DADA into the mix, so I'm pleased about that. Also, DUCK and DOG are coming along nicely (at least the D and the vowel sound). Max can also tell you that a cow goes MOO (although most of he time, he misses the M...I like to make him say MOM then MOO so that he remembers the M sound...although it isn't the most flattering string of words). He came pretty close to JUICE the other day and also goes bananas whenever we see a bus, with something that sounds like JE JE JE JE JAH! Our daycare provider believes he might be trying to say DID YOU SEE THAT...a stretch, but plausible. Max is also understanding a pile of new things, but the cutest is that Holly has gotten him to lie down to get his diaper changed on request. It doesn't always work (it's definitely mood-dependent), but when it does, it's magic.

Here's Max identifying some dogs on his PJs:

Here's Max destroying our cupboard:

A good night

I'm just going to smash this one out quickly. Tonight, Max and I had a bit of a guys' night in. We've had a few of these lately as it's been a crazy month schedule-wise, and most of the time, there's a bit of a pattern to how the night goes. We get home, Max plays a bit, but inevitably heads to and crawls up into his high chair, demanding food before his typical dinner time of 6 p.m. Over the last couple of weeks, dinner time has amounted to less than a dozen pieces of cereal, maybe half a fruit and if we can stuff some yogurt into Max before he snaps, it's a good night. He's hit a bit of a food wall, something that likely stems from his being sick...but who really knows?

After Max signals the end of dinner by destroying the kitchen with the food he won't eat, I clean him up and I drag him upstairs against his will to get ready for bed. He usually puts in 15 minutes of high-octane fun before demanding to be read book after book. Finally, I show Max his bottle of milk and he runs over to the chair where we have our final drink and read session, before a rock, a song and a smooth entry into dreamland. So some highs and some lows, but fairly routine.

Tonight was a little different. First off, Mommy let me put in a bit of extra time at the office and picked up Max herself. I got home to an empty house at 5:45 and waited for them to walk in the door at 6:20. It turns out that a) Max hadn't had a nap today (in other words, it might be a cranky night, but at least it will be a short one:) and b) Max stood on the arm of the couch at daycare today - he didn't fall, unlike yesterday when he pitched off of something and gave himself a goose egg, but is starting to terrify our caregiver. Max and Mom weren't late for either of these reasons, although they may have contributed to Max's general crankiness, which led Holly to take a detour off to our neighbourhood toy store. This place (Play Value Toys - an ironic name given the price of their merchandise) is like a two-room warehouse packed to the gills with toys having a more educational bent.

After a whirl through the toy store, my family came home to me. Max romped around with me and had some fun...until he stood up on a cardboard box and fell over while trying to hip-swivel it into submission. We have got to do something about his lack of fear...

After Max calmed down, we set him down for what turned out to be a fairly skimpy meal (again). Mom left partway through to attend a social event...and that's when the wind shifted.

It was like Max drank a whole jugful of happy. He finished up the dollop of hummous I gave him and allowed me to clean him up without fussing. We ran around the main floor a bunch and then he gestured for his bowl of peas. I said "whatever" and gave him a spoon...which he used to eat at least 50 peas. Yay food! When I suggested it was time to go upstairs, he did so with a big smile on his face. Then he wanted to go back down the stairs and I juked back and forth to get in his way. Normally, this would have elicited squeals of frustration and maybe tears, but tonight: giggles. I pushed my luck and proceeded to change him, cram some ointment in his eye and zap his nasal passages with some saline spray...success x 3. OK, so he might have put his hand in some poo, but he didn't get upset.

To cap everything off, Max actually opted to put some books on his floor back in his bookshlef before hopping on my lap for milk ' story time. Tonight's books were both thanks to Max's aunt and uncle in Winnipeg - they purchased Swimsuit by Kit Allen for Max for Christmas and we liked it so much, we got the winter version (Longjohns) recently and he loves them both. Now we just need Sweater and Galoshes to complete the set:) Too bad they're only available seasonally. Once Max finds out what sledding and seaweed are, he'll get an even bigger kick out of the books.

So all in all, it wasn't really a special evening in any way, but at the same time, it was. I don't think I would ever classify parenting Max a burden, but at times, I start to get comfortable with the routine (be careful what you wish for, blah blah blah...). But every now and then, he throws me a little curveball. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always memorable and fodder for future storytelling. I wonder what will happen tomorrow...

Here are a couple of pictures:


Max's first game of Settlers. He won.

Max's first attempt at photography. I had to dive to get in this one.

Max sending Mommy off to a hockey game in which our favourite Canucks trashed the evil Senators 4-2. Thanks Grandma for babysitting!!


Someone has been playing oven-mitt puppets with Max. It wasn't me.

Happy 1.5 little buddy

Wow. A year and a half. Everything is just accelerating these days. Everyone's settled into a bit of a routine in their new jobs and with daycare and time is just flying. Max is growing and developing at a faster rate than ever - here are some highlights.

Max climbs on everything. For a while now, he's been able to get into his highchair. Now, that's baby talk. How about that poofy ottoman? Done. Toilet? Easy. Bedside table to get access to the top of Dad's dresser? That was last Friday. Coffee table? A little more challenging, but if Max pushes a step stool or the ottoman up to it, no sweat. Dining room table? That's the piece de resistance. With the help of a tall chair, he can swing himself up onto the chair and then onto the table. It turns out that if he stands on the table, he can almost reach the chandelier. Great.....

Max cannot get enough book reading. He wakes up, he wants books. Done eating? Books for dessert please. Play time? Nope, make that reading time. He still can't say much, but he certainly likes to hear the sound of our voices. Who am I kidding, our voices are secondary to the pictures of animals in these books. I was going through one vocabulary book today and he started flipping the pages. I told him to stop and kept plodding through a page at a time. Max was patient and listened, up to the point where there was a dog on one page. His head just about spun off as he jabbed his finger at the dog. Scenario 2: there's another book that Holly has gone over and over with him in the last couple of days, but I had never picked up until this afternoon. The first page reads "This little baby is waving hello". So I open the book and I think I said "This.." when Max points at the baby with his left hand and starts waving with his right hand. Come on now. This is the type of jaw-dropping event that seems to happen once a day, on average.

On Thursday, I heated up some quiche in the microwave for Max and popped it on his highchair tray. Unfortunately it was too hot to pick up so Max recoiled when he tried to pick it up. An expected first reaction. His second reaction? He started blowing. Yes, he seems to have drawn a relationship between my blowing on hot food to cool it off. He wasn't actually blowing on the food, but whatever...

At the moment, Max is getting over a case of pink eye and Holly and I are enjoying the fun task of cramming ointment in under his bottom eyelids. It's particularly hard to do when Max is already crying or upset - it turns out that he's been working out and his eyelid muscles are quite strong. However, even when he's calm and receptive to his parents messing around with his face, his gorgeous eyelashes jack everything up. We can't win:)

Holly and I both think that Max is starting to get into that "terrible twos" mode in that he is probably starting to get frustrated that he can't communicate certain things to us. Often he'll ask for certain things and he doesn't get what he wants. In some cases, it's because we don't want to give him his way all the time (or it's just not a good idea), but in other cases, we just don't know what he wants. We're pretty good at guessing, but you can't read minds all the time. The problem is that I don't think Max can tell the difference between these two situations and he might think that if we knew what he wanted, then we'd comply. Which would be pretty frustrating because the big stopper would seem to be an inability to communicate. He can finally say NO, YES and MOM (truth be told, I think NO came first). Oddly enough, he still doesn't seem to be very close to dog, cat or duck, three of his favourite book animals. Given the progress of the past few weeks, though, it shouldn't be long. No guess as to when he'll pull DAD off.

Finally, I want to leave you with a whole bunch of pictures from yesterday's gymnastics class. It was the last class of the session and so all parents were allowed to attend and take pictures. Although parents were supposed to do their best to keep siblings off the apparatus! We've really enjoyed sharing this time with Max, watching him get stronger and more nimble and we're looking forward to starting the next session in a couple of weeks.











This last picture is of Max with his gym certificate. He refused to let it go, until he fell asleep in the stroller on the way home and it fell onto the street.