Ghosts, gourds, goodies and goblins

Yowza. It's three weeks into November and we haven't posted anything about Halloween yet. Apologies to our loyal readers!

We had plenty of Halloween activities in October. When John was away at a Scrabble tournament in mid-October, our friends Terry, Georgina and Terry's 21-month old daughter Maddie invited Max, Leo and I to Saunders Farm in Munster (about 40 minutes outside of Ottawa) for their annual Halloween extravaganza. Maddie's dad Gavin was whooping it up at the tournament with John. Max and Maddie had an absolute blast exploring multiple playgrounds, sandboxes, crooked tree houses and pumpkin displays. Leo was a rock star and slept almost the whole time we were there. I think this will definitely become an annual tradition for us. We only really scratched the surface and I think Max and Leo will enjoy the haunted hay rides, corn mazes, fun houses, apple catapult, and other activities for many years to come.

Many, many thanks to Terry and Georgina for the invitation and all of their help with Max-wrangling.








Max also attended a pumpkin carving party and a party at the playgroup to which his caregiver brings him, but there are no photos of these events. Even gymnastics was Halloween-themed!

Halloween itself was jam-packed. For starters, we set off early in the morning for our Saturday playgroup. Max donned his Bob the Builder costume while Leo was a hippie in a tie-dyed sleeper. John went as a competitive Scrabble player and I had some festive accessories. Max enjoyed some Halloween crafts and seeing other people dressed up.





John and I spent part of the afternoon carving pumpkins to ensure that kids would know that our house was open for trick-or-treating. We thought we would get Max in on picking the pumpkin seeds out of the gunk for roasting but he was not impressed. In fact, he gave us that special face of his that, if it were a symbol in our alphabet, would be the symbol for blechh. You know, this one:


We had a visit from Auntie Melody and some friends from Yellowknife in the late afternoon and my mum, Auntie Karen and Laramie were here to share in the fun as well. John, Leo, Laramie and I set off with Max to do some trick-or-treating and Mum and Auntie Karen held down the fort and gave out candy at our place. John and I were thrilled to look up and down our new street and see so many kids out. Our old house was on a really busy street and we didn't even have a sidewalk on our side, so it was pretty dangerous for trick-or-treating. I was also thrilled that everyone recognized Max as Bob the Builder right away considering that his costume was put together primarily with consignment and thrift store finds. The only thing we bought new was the hard hat! After trick or treating, we enjoyed a yummy meal with everyone. Max didn't quite master the whole trick-or-treat thing (he kept saying it as we were leaving the houses) but I think he really enjoyed himself. He certainly enjoyed getting all of that loot!!! Especially the Smarties. It is pretty amazing to see Halloween through new eyes as a parent. I think Christmas is going to be extra cool the next few years as well.











John adds: I had a big smile on my face the whole time. This was what I remembered Halloween being: kids running door-to-door in clumps, parents with their warm beverages hanging out on the curb, occasionally walking up to chat with people they know... I feel very fortunate to be living in a neighbourhood that had that kind of feel to it on Halloween night. It was nice that the weather was amazing too (it might have been 10 degrees). Much better than the coin-toss chance of snow on the ground that Halloween in Winnipeg used to be.

Sentence update; pool time; recall

I just wanted to touch on three things today: for starters, that Max is starting to speak in sentences. Two weeks ago, he came out with his first two sentences. First, when Holly and Leo came to pick us up at gymnastics, she stopped by to say hi, and then went back to the car to get the lunch that she had brought. Max couldn't see her and said "Where'd Mommy go?". His second sentence came in bed the next morning when I was arguing with Holly over whether she or I should have the first shower of the day. Max looked at me and said "Daddy go have shower". Excited again, but sad that I'd been tag-teamed. And also that I probably smelled.

The next thing I wanted to mention was that Holly got to take Max to swimming for the first time in months and months on Remembrance Day. Holly and I have had a lot of brutal classes in the pool with Max, so it was finally nice to repay her for all of her rough times with a pleasant experience in the pool with a munchkin who wanted to be there. Leo really enjoyed his first trip to the pool - he spent all his time with me in the ring sling and had so much to look at. He was very content to chew/suck/slurp on his hands and my hands and arm until Mommy and Max were all changed. I suppose we're going to consider getting him in the pool as early as February or March...although that might be a little tricky logistically as Max is not old enough to go parentless in the pool. I still think it will be worth it though.

The last thing I wanted to touch on was a parent's powers of recall. Back when I used to work on a survey of children where we talked to parents about their children's developmental milestones and experiences, I always found it weird that a person would have recall issues surrounding things like first steps, first time sitting up, first time crawling etc. Now, I realize it's a lot harder to hold on to those things in your memory than I thought. Granted, my memory is nothing to write home about, but I just figured that those milestones would just pop out at you and be indelibly etched on my brain. It turns out that because a) the milestones keep right on coming, b) there's a whole second set of them to note when #2 comes along and c) family=brain clutter, it's pretty hard to keep track of all of that stuff. I always felt like the blog would serve as a nice posterity piece for the kids to have and read, but I never realized that I'd want to look back at it for information...less than 2 years after starting it :) We've already consulted it to see how the swaddle-stopping went for Max and when Max got moved into his crib...things that have helped us move Leo to the next phase.

Tonight, Max took the first step in decorating his room. He has taken to reading some of our magazines and for some reason, latched on to this picture from one of my Sports Illustrateds from last month. We asked him if he wanted to put it on his wall and boy did he get excited. It will be interesting to see how long it stays there without getting ripped or something.


While I'm at it, I might as well post a video of what it looks like when Leo is under his mobile. Apparently, Holly indirectly convinced multiple parents in her play group to get the same mobile. Maybe the company will send us some coupons.

ABDs

For those of you who have yet to hear Max singing his ABCs (or as he calls them, ABDs), here you go. Sorry about the weird colour scheme - I was messing around with the camera settings.



Currently, this is #1 in Poland and the club mix is doing well in Andorra.

Leo breaks free

Leo is getting cuter and cuter. Holly called me from home today and I could clearly hear him cooing over the phone. Babbling is only a couple of months off, but for now, cooing is the cutest sound ever. I'm also loving that he responds so much to the songs Holly learned through Hush-a-Bye. This guy's going to be some character.

In any case, the big news I wanted to share in this post is that two days ago, we finally got Leo out of his swaddler for his night time sleep. This is about the same time we broke Max out of his evening prison . . . actually it's about 2 weeks earlier. Now that Leo has rolled over, it's mostly a safety precaution, given that a swaddled roll-over would be pretty disastrous. For awhile now, he's been relatively unhappy at bed time - it could be the swaddling, or it could be general malaise about getting to sleep. I read the posts regarding Max graduating from the swaddling blanket and it said something about him not liking the swaddled position either. It's funny how I don't remember many details about the transition. Which makes me think about back when I worked on the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. The survey asks many questions about development milestones and it always stunned me when there were comments made about parents exhibiting recall error. I figured "Hey, who would forget anything about their child's development?" Now I get it. At the time, every little event is so important...but gradually memories get replaced by others and, possibly with the assistance of sleep deprivation, some of the details fade into nothingness. At the very least, we'll always (I hope) have the words in this blog to help us recapture some of the best times of Max's and Leo's developments.

But I digress.

Even if Leo wasn't a fan of being swaddled, we couldn't really argue with the results - 7-9 hours of sleep a night was certainly better than anything Max ever gave us in the beginning. The first night that went swaddle-free (Wednesday), Holly had gone to sleep a little early and then I put Leo to sleep. I hovered over him playing face-goalie for a few minutes, deflecting his twitching arms until he settled into sleep. Unfortunately, he whacked himself just as I was leaving his room - I was going to go back, but figured that he'd have to try to sort it out on his own. I stayed up for 30 minutes, expecting to have to pick him up and re-settle him, but he never got up. I then went to sleep, figuring I'd need all I could get before Leo'd get up in an hour or two. I woke up to screaming at 2:30. . . except it was Max who needed the soothing. Somehow Leo crashed through the whole episode. In fact, he only got up after 8 hours of sleep. I guess that should be a "!" I would have written about this yesterday, but a) I think we got really lucky and b) I didn't want to jinx the process.

Last night didn't go quite as well. The 10:00 put-down failed and Leo woke up, fairly alert. Holly packed it in and I hung out with Leo until we tried again at 11:15. Sadly, he got up again at midnight and stayed awake until 12:30 or so. His nose was so junky with this cold he's picked up that I thought I'd have to get him with the nasal spray (which would have made me go get Holly for a feeding). I held off though and when we went to sleep, he stayed there until shortly after 6. While this wasn't as good as the swaddle sleep he got previously, I'm still not arguing over 6 hours. Also interesting, in the heat of the moment, it didn't really feel like time was dragging that much, but now I look at this and think "that took 3 hours from first rock to comatose last night . . . 3 freaking hours!!" Crazy.

On some level, it was kind of empowering to be fending for myself after dark last night, trying to soothe Leo without any breast milk (bottle or human automatic dispenser) at my disposal. It seems like we came to a reasonable agreement and I hope it continues over the next little while (or at least please please please for tonight:).

Here's a video showing what I'm trying to defend Leo's face from:

Needles for everyone! Leo rolls over! Holly gets busted!

It was a crazy weekend around here (Halloween!!!) and we have much to blog about as per usual. John is out with Kerry at a Jay-Z concert and I should get to bed promptly in case the time change interferes with the sleep of either child so a link and a few tidbits will have to do for now.

John, Max and I all got our H1N1 vaccinations on Friday (Leo is too little). Kerry wrote a most excellent post on her blog about our experience from start to finish. Check out the story and photos.

One minor correction to Kerry's post - Max is actually high priority on his own as a child six months to six years. Of course, he is also a household contact for Leo so I guess he is doubly high priority! I totally agree with Kerry that the City of Ottawa staff at the clinic did a most excellent job. Shout outs to Dale, giver of wristbands, for his great demeanour in the face of many frustrated and cold people.

Big, big, BIG thanks to Kerry for getting us into line on time, hanging out with us, and just general awesomeness. It was a big relief to get the shots done with the possible shortage of vaccine supply this coming week and more and more stories of co-workers, friends of friends, etc. getting the flu. Friends like Ker are real treasures.

In other news, Leo rolled over on Thursday. I put him down on a blanket on the floor and was talking to my mum on the phone and he just did it. Wild! We had never seen him so much as lean over onto his side so to see him go completely over and get his one arm out from under him was pretty cool. He hasn't attempted anything since so John is a bit skeptical but it really happened. I can't believe that he will be four months old on Tuesday. It is definitely a cliché but time really does fly!

One other tidbit before bed - I got totally and completely busted earlier today. Lately, I have been trying a little trick to get Max to do things. I give him a choice between two things I want him to do or eat or put away. It seems to have been working as he feels like he is choosing and doing something he wants to do. Until today. We had this conversation post-nap this afternoon.

Me: "Max, would you like a banana or an apple?"
Max. "Chocolate. BIG chocolate, please."

It was really, really hard to suppress a fit of the giggles. I gave him a little piece of chocolate and he eventually ate some avocado and watermelon. Still no banana or apple but I can live with that. He is a smart little cookie.