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.