Not quite the wedding of the century, but...

Once upon a time, long before Max and Leo came into this world, two teens fell in love. Sigh. They studied together (well, not quite together...feminist math would be a heck of a reading course though). They lived apart, then further apart, then together, then all over the place. They watched junky TV together. They played sports together. They cooked together (HA! Just checking if you were still reading). And then they got married.

Things remarkably got even better after that. More degrees, bigger trips, an actual house, a wicked part/full-time job at HMV...the world was the twosome's oyster. Then, they had a baby boy. And then another. Remarkably, things got even better. More laughing, more tears, less sleep...oh wait, I said "better"...a vehicle, new friends, getting familiar with the Treehouse TV lineup.

So this might apply to some other couples out there too, but I'm actually talking about Holly and I. Mid-May, we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary and it provided me with a great opportunity to think about all of the things we've done together. It's one of the first big events that I've celebrated where instead of saying "I have no idea where the time went!", I really do appreciate how much time has gone by since our Vancouver Island wedding and how much we've gone through in that time.

To mark the occasion, Holly threw a party at the local Legion Hall and invited many friends and family members to share in the fun. I have no idea how she pulled it all off. Seriously. If absolutely forced, I could have had everybody there with worse food options, no decor at all and the worst thing to happen at the party would not have been "the trivia started 10 minutes late". I guarantee it. So a SUPER BIG thank you to my wife for making this night such a special event. I was also really glad that Max and Leo could share in the merriment. They are (obviously) a huge part of our lives and to have them and their friends over (seriously, 21 kids under the age of 5!!) to join in the fun was pretty cool indeed.

Here are a couple of pictures from the evening. Thanks again to everyone who was able to attend or contribute in some way. It really was a great night!


The spread!!!

Holly and Jenny share a moment in front of the photo wall.

Max's 3rd visit to the dessert table. He eats the iced parts of cakes and then leaves the rest for somebody else.

Leo, showing off Kids' Corner.

The family distracts the little guy with a book.

After 174 laps around the room, Leo needed a little love from Dad.

After donning his PJs, Leo posed for some pictures.

The winning trivia team: the Colpitts Family & Friends

The happy couple. And yes, we paid for our own cherubim.

The wedding of the century

Where were you for the wedding of the century? In bed like any other sane person? Glued to your TV with 2 billion others around the globe?

I had the great pleasure of attending a Royal Wedding viewing party hosted by Auntie Melody. Despite the 5:30 am start, we were a chipper crew of guests and we thoroughly enjoyed CTV’s extensive coverage (CTV was the broadcaster of choice for the colour commentary of comedian Tracy Ullman).

Auntie Melody and Dad put together an English breakfast to rival the fanciest hotels – bacon, eggs to order, bangers, fried mushrooms, potatoes, fried tomatoes, kippers, fruit salad, crumpets, scones, clotted cream, and jam. We washed everything down with mimosas (a virgin one for me). I was so full that I barely ate any lunch. Auntie Med sent us off with fruitcake muffins, to echo the fruitcake at the actual wedding.

There were also contests – one to guess what colour the Queen would wear (yellow – won by Dad) and one for the best hat/fascinator. I was delighted to take this prize home for my handmade fascinator which included feathers and a very bright parrot Beanie Baby. The prize was a commemorative wedding plate which is currently on display in my office. It is sure to become a family heirloom.

Here are some photos of the event:


The feast!


My prize-winning fascinator - Beatrice and her toilet seat have got nothing on me!


The chef takes a brief break to catch some of the action.


The ladies show off their hats and early morning style.

The first sentence...kind of

So tonight, the family was over at Nana's to send Grandpa Wayne off in style (he has accepted a job in Coppermine, NWT but will be back in Ottawa for visits every 8 weeks or so) and shortly after dinner, Leo may have dropped his first sentence. Well, it was only three words and there were no conjunctions or prepositions, but it was certainly subject-verb-object. "Mama open baby". Leo was carrying a set of Russian nested dolls with him and sure enough, he wanted Holly to break them up and play with them. Wow. It's been pretty wild this past month, seeing Leo pick up all of his new words. I have no idea how many he has now, but he's willing to try chaining 3-4 syllables together at this point. Which means he's willing to take stabs at longer words or more short words in a row. I'm not sure what holds a child back from doing this right from the get-go...is it being able to remember the sounds in order to repeat them back? Is it gaining the ability to wrap your tongue around that many different consecutive sounds? Both? In any case, we're clearly at a point where Leo understands most of the nouns and verbs we use and we're starting to get a lot of information from him. We're much more capable of figuring out what he wants throughout the day, which obviously helps everybody out.

In other news, Max is now entering his last two weeks of preschool!! I have no doubt that of all of the decisions we made over the past year, getting him that year in preschool was one of the best. It's been a great way to expand Max's socialization skills (and, frankly, provide me with some social opportunities :), give him more of a chance to trust authority figures other than Holly and me and structure his days and weeks nicely. We've just managed to secure a spot for Max in a daycare program for the coming year and its philosophy and class areas look like they will dovetail nicely with what Max has done this past year. Max was really excited when we went for our visit and didn't want to leave. It's nice that this time, unlike with the pre-preschool visit, Max didn't completely lose his nut and understood that we had to go. Max technically starts in July so we'll have plenty of time to ease him in and get him settled before school starts in September. I'll just have to keep an eye on when wading pools in the neighbourhood are open so that we can schedule lots of pool days!

Here are a couple of pictures:


Leo loves to run around and kick things. Sometimes, those things are even supposed to be kicked. Like soccer balls.

Holly fashioned this awesome helmet for Max out of foil. He had a great time with it until it started slicing his neck.

Our baby can talk!

For a while now, I've been blown away by how Leo seems to be communicating well, using primarily words that I can understand. Well, he hit a new high last night.

Saturday, Leo was running a good fever and was generally not happy. He had picked up a cold earlier in the week so we had a feeling that things might go the ear infection route again. We drugged Leo, thinking that we might have to hit a walk-in clinic on Sunday, but then he was generally fine the next day. Monday night, though, Leo had a hard time getting to sleep - a lot of crying - and then at 11:00, he woke up shrieking and again had trouble getting back to sleep. I asked him if it hurt and he said "YEAH". I said "Does your mouth hurt?" (silence), "Does your nose hurt?" (silence) "Does your ear hurt?" ("YEAH"). Good enough for me.

We got him into the doctor's today and the diagnosis was confirmed. When I asked him which ear hurt, he indicated the correct one. We are so at that point where we can get really useful information out of Leo. Too bad the new meds tasted so bad that Leo threw up at lunch:( The second dose went down a little smoother. Yay jellybeans!


Here's Leo at T&T Supermarket, after he ordered us up a dim sum breakfast. OK, just kidding. He can't order dim sum just yet.

May already

Yikes. How did that happen? It seems like we have one or two big things happening per month and that the blinders are on, focussing on those things and then the rest of the days melt away pretty quickly.

It's not like we have nothing to write about the kids either. The funny thing is that the kids are at totally different types of developmental stages right now. Max has kind of plateaued, in the sense that really cool developments are much rarer events these days (e.g., he has learned to spit and therefore can use grown-up toothpaste occasionally; he has recently acquired a Strider balance bike and has really taken to it). Meanwhile, Leo is exploding so that it's hard to keep track of the things that are "new". Best new example - Leo totally ratted out his brother for the first time a couple of days ago. I heard a smacking sound and then Leo crying from the next room over. I went in to find Leo crying and Max with a police helmet in his hand. Conjecture: Max had clobbered Leo in the head, knocking him over. I asked and Max said no. I asked Leo (!!!) and he said "HURT". I asked "where?" and he said "HEAD". I asked "did Max hurt you?" and he said "YEAH". AWESOME! Max quickly backpedaled and claimed that he only dropped Leo to the turf because Leo had pushed him first. This is officially where things get interesting for Max.

Clearly, Leo is talking up a storm. Shortly after returning from Coachella, I realized that Leo had started attempting two-syllable utterances. Which also meant that he was tackling things like "Thank you" (translation "aa ooo"). He has his vowel sounds down and is really good with b, d, h, m, n, p, r (surprising to me), t, and v consonant sounds so some words sound really good. I think my current favourite is hammer, which sounds perfect. About a week ago, I noticed that Leo had shifted to speaking almost entirely in words he knew. Only one at a time, though, so it's not like he's stringing sentences together. However, if you spend enough time with Leo that you can kind of understand his lexicon, then almost everything he says is interpretable and makes sense. This helps a lot. Duh.

We are very happy that some good weather has finally hit Ottawa on a weekday. Since coming home, I had to endure 8 rainy weekdays before this past Thursday happened. Since then, we've been out on bikes, in parks, playing in the yard and just generally being outside as much as possible. I feel like I probably didn't get the kids outside enough during the winter so now I'm making up for lost time. The kids are really good about playing with each other so I'm actually able to squeeze in 20 minutes or so of gardening before somebody stops sharing with somebody else and I have to go deal with the situation. I look forward to walking or biking Max in to school in the morning over the next little while...if I can get my act together in time in the mornings. Punctuality has never been my forte.

So it occurs to me that I still haven't shared many of our March pictures. This would seem like a good time to do so. Enjoy.



So Max really likes blueberries. Frozen ones are best. However, they leave him looking like this. Just a week or so ago, he finally stopped saying blueblerries. I'm going to miss blueblerries.

So this one day, Leo falls asleep in the van and he needs a nap. Dilemma: he also needs a diaper change. Enter the skills of a master changer. It took five minutes or so, but I managed to get him changed and dressed again so that he looked like this. Still asleep. I was awesome right then.



It's really weird to look at these picture of Auntie K's birthday up at the cottage and believe that there was this much snow. Leo was loving snowballs. Max had a great time cavorting around with family. Everyone got together and put up a sweet snowman. Altogether, we had a great weekend.

Here's Max doing a St. Patrick's Day craft at the Children's Village. There was a brief time earlier in March where Max seemed to be more interested in crafts than normal. Since then, things have gone back to normal. Pro: we don't have a closet full of art in our house. Con: it would be nice for Max to unleash his creative side a bit more.

Mmm. Me Sandwich Monster. Me love sammies. Myam myom myom myom!




The above four pictures are all from this past year's visit to a local sugarbush. On the way over, Leo got his hands on a smartphone and checked out an episode of Dora the Explorer. The picture of Max and the maple cotton candy and the picture of Leo are to show that they had a good time - 'cause you can't tell from the last picture.

Officially the worst kept photo of the month. How did this even get on the computer? I have no idea where or what this is.

Phrase uttered immediately before this picture was taken: "But I LOVE lemons, Daddy!"

Sometimes, captions can't possibly do a picture justice. I like the wrench tucked into the bottom of the undies.

So this is what reading time looks like these days. Leo and Max both love books, but not the same books. This is a little tricky to manage (aside from taking turns) when it's just me...but when there are multiple grown-ups on hand, the kids know exactly what to do: divide and conquer.

Leo in the spring sun

John had one of his last duty days at Max's preschool this Monday so Leo got to spend the morning at Auntie Melody's place. Auntie Melody, Dad, Nana and I were hitting the garage sales in Merrickville this past weekend so there were some awesome new toys to play with and no big brother to share them with. I think Leo was in heaven! Auntie Melody snapped this photo and sent it to me at work and I melted so I thought I should share.

Easter 2011

Here is a quick post with lots of photos from Easter weekend. The boys and I were happy to have John home from his California adventure so that we could all enjoy an extra long weekend together.

The weather was beautiful on Good Friday so we strolled through the Byward Market and picked up some fixings for an al fresco picnic. Then, we headed home to play and do some gardening work outside.

On Saturday, we hosted our friend Jen’s family from New York City and Halifax for a bagel brunch. Serving Montreal bagels to New Yorkers was great and all agreed that the Montreal version is much, much better. Here is a photo of the gang:


On Sunday morning, we took the boys to the Agricultural Museum at the Experimental Farm for the Easter festivities there. Max had a blast collecting plastic eggs around the barns and trading them in for chocolate treats. We didn’t see the baby bunnies or the lambs but the fluffy chicks and new calves were super cute.





In the afternoon, we headed over to Nana and Auntie Karen’s for the big egg hunt and family dinner. Both the boys enjoyed the egg hunt. Leo caught on pretty fast! He was running over to me with foil-wrapped chocolate treats and saying “Leo! Leo!” His little face is pretty hard to resist these days so he had a belly full of chocolate in short order.




We also posed for some family photos. Thanks to Auntie Laramie for the boys’ new holiday shirts:




I had to include this particular picture because I think it captures the exact moment before Max wiped his booger in Leo's hair in a nonchalant way. Laramie and I both caught it and burst out laughing. Not the most appropriate response but we couldn't help it.

Max likes to gesticulate with his hands when he talks and John caught this great series of photos as Max was recounting a story to Auntie Karen on the back deck:




On Easter Monday morning, Leo and John went to gymnastics and Max and I headed off to IKEA. The ball room was a mob scene so we had a blast playing house in the various furniture set-ups and eating meatballs in the restaurant while watching an animated movie. We had a bit of a lengthy adventure getting home because all of the buses were on holiday schedule but they are building a gigantic new IKEA so Max saw at least a dozen cement mixers up close and all but one waved or honked their horns at us. It was nice to have some time just the two of us.

All in all, a stellar weekend full of good food and time with family and friends