Five December Pictures

Who says that every blog post has to be about a big event? Well, it would seem I do. Holly always wants to produce more photo-heavy posts about nothing in particular, so I'm going to do my best. Here goes:


Did I ever tell you about the time that I fed Leo some cheese that I only discovered was moldy after starting to cut some up for Max? All of the mold was hiding behind the opaque part of the packaging. Leo had maybe one or two bites and then his face exploded into welts, hives and swelliness. Good one, Dad.

We went to our friends J&T's place for a sushi night in December and at some point, all of the kids present decided that it was dress-up time. This western jacket paired with a turtle on his head made Max all serious for some reason. He pranced around the house clasping his hands like a choir soloist about to deliver. Apparently, his great-grammy did that a lot too. The hand-clasping, that is, not the turtle-hat-wearing.

They won't clean up the house, but boy do they love the Children's Museum's mops. Actually, I mentioned to Max yesterday that he never cleans up, which somehow struck a nerve and made him exclaim "I do! Watch me!". And he did. Weird. Almost as weird as his yelling "I DO KNOW BETTER THAN YOU! I KNOW BETTER THAN EVERYBODY!" Oh boy, someone's going to be disappointed.


These two pictures were taken on a mild day when we decided to take the kids for a snowy walk through one of the local parks. Max and Leo each got a sled to ride on and we pulled them through the snow for about an hour. The park is a popular park for dog-owners, hence the dog sniffing the tree behind Max in the second picture. The kids were a little nervous about the pooches, but nobody got mauled.


Here are a couple of videos of some downhill action from our sledding day. I believe this was Leo's first slide.

Max's first skate

What a month. We've been a bit slammed at Casa Stardom. First, Leo had what was possibly the flu. It turned out to not be the flu, but Max and I got our shots anyway. Max was (as always) cucumber-cool, saying "Ow" with a deadpan tone as he got his shot. Awesome. Then, Leo had something that looked more flu-like (with a good vomit all over his car seat in the van!) that compelled Holly to get her shot. It turns out that Leo had (another) double ear infection so antibiotics for him. Then, Holly somehow developed a rashy reaction combined with an infection at her flu shot injection site, leading to a round of antibiotics for her and many sleepless nights. Then, I got sick for the first time since being off with the kids (it was a great run). It was a good sinus cold that lasted about a week, so not serious, but not great either. Then, yesterday, I wrenched my back at the Science and Tech museum with the kids. It was a LOOOONG walk back to the van and super fun trying to get the kids in their seats. Max has been OK, aside from a strange fever that popped up mid-day this past Monday and Tuesday and then disappeared. Leo is teething furiously (he's up to 11 now) so he tends to only nap 45 minutes each day and is waking up at 2ish each night. That whole "Leo will put himself to sleep" thing lasted about a week and now he'll let us leave the room but can't seem to seal the deal without some rocking or maybe back-rubbing. Oh well, the extra hour of grown-up time each night is still awesome.

So in the midst of all that, we've been able to do some cool things this past month. One of the coolest was getting Max skating for the first time. We had planned to go a bit earlier in the month with Max's friend Maddie and her entourage, but had to spend some time running around town getting Max skates and a helmet. Canadian Tire had the bobskates (two blades instead of one for stability and they attach to his boots) - cheap and adjustable so we'll be able to reuse them easily for Leo. We splurged on a new helmet for Max at Sport Mart - we had heard that it's really hard to find helmets that are small enough for 3-year-old heads so I figured it would be even harder to find them used. So when we tried this youth helmet on and it fit with a little bit of room to spare, I took it. Maybe it will fit again next year. If not, Leo will surely be in the zone.

Max has had some issues recently with saying that he's really excited about something new, but then when he gets to whatever we're going to do, he balks and decides that he doesn't want to do it anymore. I was a little concerned that was going to happen with the skating too, but then again he's so into the idea of playing hockey that maybe his fears would take a back seat. When we got to the rink, he was still keen. He was really excited to be wearing the equipment so we gave it a go. While I would be dealing with Max, Holly skated Leo around the ice in his stroller.

I started by holding one of his hands while his other hand was on the boards. However, the slipperiness of the ice and all of the other emotions overwhelmed Max and he cried, wanting to leave after a few steps. I was determined to make it work, so I took Max's mitts off and held both of his hands, skating backward while he slid/walked along. By the time we got to the end boards, he was beaming. If he slipped, I was stable enough to keep him upright so I figure he felt pretty safe. After that, we toured the rink, checking out where goalies stand and the faceoffs happen. Then, Max and Maddie decided to have some fun falling down and sprawling all over the ice. I'm glad this happened because I think Max was a bit nervous about falling. Before leaving, Mommy and Max checked out the players' benches and the penalty boxes. Max absolutely loved it. In fact, he said "Now that I know how to skate, I'd like to play hockey next time". How's that for confidence?

Here are some pictures of our skate night. Many thanks to our friends who snapped the pictures while we were with the kids!

Mini update

First up, Happy New Year to everyone. Max and Leo (and I) are slowly readjusting to not having Mommy at home after a nice break over the Christmas/New Year's week. Max is settling back into his school routine and is also working in some swimming and more hip-hop classes (we didn't think he took to them, but one day he asked us why he wasn't taking them any more and begged back in...dying to see how it goes this time around). Leo will be taking the toddler sequel to the Hush-a-bye music and song classes both he and Max took as babies. With Max in full-time care after he turned one, it wasn't really an option for us before. I'm curious to see how Leo likes it - apparently, it is much more active than the class for newborns/babies. Given that Leo loves to dance and listen to singing, I think it will be a big hit.

The other big updates on our end are some major changes with respect to sleep, all of which came about in the last couple of weeks. First up, Max has pretty much completely abandoned his naps. The nice part about this is that he seems to have settled into an earlier bedtime routine, which gives us an extra hour of grown-up time every night. Leo has combined his two morning/afternoon snoozes into a single afternoon nap. Most of the time, he gets up after an hour, still needing more sleep, but he's generally willing to be soothed back into nap 2.0, giving me some good one-on-one time with Max in the afternoons. Leo has also started to allow us to leave his room at night before he falls completely asleep. Sometimes, this means he's squirming for 5 minutes or so after we go and sometimes it means he's babbling and singing to himself for half an hour. Either way, this has also opened up some more grown-up time in the evenings and has made us feel a lot more comfortable about leaving babysitters in charge of night time routines.

So we finally seem to be settling into one of those nice (yet typically too-brief) periods of feeling good about how things are going: we have the ability to get some rest/jobs done at night and the kids are generally happy and healthy. Happy new year indeed :)