S-P-H-M-W Family Photo Shoot

I've been meaning to post these shots from the Stardom-Petrie-Harnden-Morrison-Walker family photo shoot for a while. In early July, we decided to take advantage of my Auntie Jan's visit from Victoria and my cousin Krysta's visit from Guelph to take some family photos. We are close-knit but very rarely all in the same place together and we haven't ever had photos taken of this group. We spent a lovely morning at Britannia Beach and came away with some real winners.











The photos were taken by Justin Van Leeuwen, an Ottawa-based photographer and friend. If you are in the market for a great photographer with a creative and modern eye in Ottawa, I highly recommend Justin. You can check out his portfolio at http://jvlphoto.com/pixelpost/index.php.

What's bigger than hip-hop?

Man, I totally forgot I had these videos. I've been meaning to post them for so long. Last year, Max was enrolled in hip-hop for preschoolers. Allegedly, he learned a few things in class, but every time I showed up at the end of class to check out what he'd learned, Max would play shy and not show me. So Leo and I went to his "show for the parents" class to see if Max would deliver. He did, but not really anything in the "dancing" category.

Exhibit A: Max warms up. At this point, we're about 2 minutes in and Max still has energy to perform (and mug for me).


Exhibit B: Max serves up an attitude walk. Not bad, actually.


Exhibit C: Uh-oh. Max starts off OK, but then fades.


Exhibit D: Houston, we have a problem.


Exhibit E: The coup-de-grace. Max waves the white flag and another student follows suit. We like to call this move the "turtle".


Exhibit F: Max gets his certificate!

Puppets Up!

Puppets Up! International Puppet Festival in Almonte

We spent a wonderful day at the Puppets Up! festival in Almonte. We went out early in the morning with the boys and caught two puppet shows. The boys were absolutely enthralled with the first show we saw (a pirate-themed story with lots of humour) and a bit less with the other shows we saw.

Holly's best friend from high school, Jenn, lives in Almonte, and her stepmother, Noreen Young, is the founder and artistic director of the festival. Noreen is an acclaimed puppeteer and puppet maker and an Order of Canada recipient for achievements in children's television.

Here are a few pictures from our day in Almonte:

June in review

Before getting started with June's pictures, I have a quote from last night to pass along. Max was running around, throwing himself on the couch at high speed, and we had told him a number of times to stop because it was dangerous and somebody was going to get hurt. Sure enough, about three launches later, he tripped on the rug and bonked something. I said I had no sympathy for him and that we'd told him to stop. He said, in a highly questioning tone, "Daddy, you're happy that I got hurt?". Yikes.

Anyway, here are the things that happened in June that we haven't already covered.


Early on in June, the boys and I did an "Ottawa tourism" day. We started at the Royal Canadian Mint's headquarters, where they had this Mountie Moose. The kids loved this guy! I loved the $600K gold brick I got to hold.

Here's this month's horrible picture. Wow. It's possible Max took this one.


Leo's gymnastics classes wrapped up in June. He had a blast and even finally warmed up to his instructor by the end of the session. This is Leo singing on the balance beam and snaking his way down a plank to get his hands stamped. Odd how the only adult visible in each picture is the same person. Seriously, there were other parents.

Here are the boys with their friend Grace, right after she turned 2. We had an awesome park party involving great food and a little splash pad time.

Yes, that's me. On Father's Day. Soaking wet from being pelted with water balloons. I repeat: on Father's Day. Thanks, kids.

Another photo from Father's Day when we took the kids to the super old-school wooden splash pad at Andrew Haydon Park. It's Leo, but man! it really looks like Max, back in the day. Such a weird picture.






The above six pictures are from our adventure on the Hull-Chelsea-Wakefield steam train. We drove across to Quebec and hopped aboard in the morning. After a slow, scenic ride, we grabbed a box lunch for our stopover at Wakefield, picked up some ice cream and chased some bubbles. We also got to see the locomotive get turned around on the manual roundtable AND check out the sweltering engine from the inside (it was 30-35ish outside and even hotter inside). Finally, a quartet of French-Canadian musicians performed some acoustic travellin' music. The musicians also serenaded the train cars throughout the round trip. I should also mention that at the end of June, the track was flooded out and service is still suspended, so our timing was pretty awesome.

Max has spent the summer learning some soccer skills with the Westboro Popsicles. It's a little bit of soccer and a lot of herding cats. The kids do a bunch of drills like soccer ball "red light - green light" (and - purple light, where they do a silly dance), dribble around the cones, punt the ball at the coach (if you hit them enough times, you can demand that they act like an animal of your choice) and even chase-the-coach (pictured above). Max is pretty engaged with the whole thing but, as with all of the other kids, thinks that the popsicle at the end is the best part.


Ahh, Ribfest. The Stardoms and Reids hooked up for a whole truckload of chicken, ribs, pulled pork, beans and corn. YO!!!! Oh yeah, I think Max liked the apres-ice cream too.


Auntie Jan came to town for a visit and went with Mommy and the kids to the Agriculture Museum. Summertime is definitely a great time to take in the barns full of animals and some of the special goings-on at the farm.

Auntie Laramie took the family strawberry picking in June. Lots of berries. Lots of jam. So delicious. Thanks Lambsy!


At the end of the month, Iona Park (right near where we used to live on Kirkwood) was supposed to be hosting a big party to celebrate the opening of the park's wading pool for the summer. I literally didn't get the message that the party was postponed due to inclement weather and so the boys and I trotted off into the rain to hang out at the park. As you can see, it wasn't all bad.

I think this is a cute picture of Max. It was taken at the national Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind training facility, which we visited with Auntie Jan. The boys got to see a whole bunch of dogs, meet a few blind people (a really neat experience for Max) and devour some cheeseburgers. The facility was located in a beautiful rural setting south of the city so the kids got to roar around outside for a while after the demonstration. Super fun and informative!

Max has this Leapfrog (R) toy that is supposed to teach you how to write letters and draw pictures. He has used it a lot, but produces mostly shaky pictures. Until the last day of June, when he busted out this impressive sailboat while doing a connect-the-dots type game where you follow a blinking light and only see the picture once the light stops moving. It really blew me away.

Sometimes I'm just amazed

As mentioned in the previous post, at the start of the month, we moved Leo from his crib into a bed and moved him from his own room into a shared-room situation with Max. It's amazing to think how much the boys' sleep routine has changed since that day.

The first night was a disaster: both kids were overtired and decided that jumping on their beds and generally ignoring us would be the best thing to do at 11:30 p.m. To be fair, they had just arrived home from Winnipeg to see their new room and new beds for the first time but it was still mayhem. The second night, Leo was kind of upset so one of us stuck around for a bit before remembering that we wanted to cut short this routine of hanging around in his room for an hour or more, waiting for him to fall asleep.

Then, the most peculiar thing happened. Over the following four nights, I don't believe the kids were ever awake past 9:00, nor did they ever require more than 30 minutes to put to sleep. Best four consecutive nights in a couple of years? From some points of view, heck yeah. From what I can figure, the emotional stress of the re-entry into daycare took a lot out of the kids and so when it came to putting them to sleep, nothing was difficult.

On the weekend, things were not quite as good, but still not a disaster. The most interesting shift was that the kids suddenly decided to change their wake-up time to 6, not 7. Not surprising, given that everyone was getting to bed an hour earlier.

The highlight of the past two weeks definitely happened last night. When I left the bedroom, Leo was upset, but I was determined to give him at least a bit of an opportunity to settle himself. I hung around the door and then heard Max trying to settle Leo. Max went over to Leo's bed, hugged him a few times and offered some words of support and repeated the process for a couple of minutes until Leo was quiet. Three things occurred to me: 1) Max will never cease to amaze me; 2) my kids will do a great number of amazing things that I will not be party to...that's a little sad to me; and 3) it's possible that Leo still "needs" someone in the room with him to get to sleep, it's just that the person in question now is Max, not a parent (why didn't we try this months ago????).

This afternoon, Max stunned me again. I had slipped a treat in his lunch and told him it was for being so sweet and helpful at bedtime last night. When we picked Max up at daycare, I asked if he liked his treat. His response? "I didn't eat my sugary junk because I never ate all of my peppers and cheese." Wow. I never indicated that those were the rules so that was all him. Now I'm really starting to feel like I'm going to miss out on a lot with the kids and I spending so much less time together in the future. Sigh.

Videos from the vault

I noticed that we haven't really been posting videos much lately. Mostly because it's a real pain. Oh well. Let's see if we can get some together here:



This is a rare video from early March, in that one week where Leo said "Lilo" before he graduated to "Leo".



A video from early April that shows Leo on the move and Holly with long hair. Leo is saying "net", for the record.



Some members of our families are smokers. It seems that Max has taken it upon himself to be a walking public service announcement. And surprisingly, not due to a lot of encouragement from his parents.



So Leo doesn't really speak in the first person. This video clearly shows his love of the third person. This morning (July 8) at breakfast, I'm pretty sure he said "Leo don't want".

Now Leo too...

It's official. I'm home alone. This is the weirdest feeling.

It's the Wednesday after an extended holiday and there has been a crazy amount of transition happening around here so the kids are a little manic these days: we're adjusting to a) our normal Ottawa routine, b) having Leo in a bed, not a crib, c) having Leo and Max sleeping in the same room, d) getting Max back into daycare and e) introducing Leo to daycare. So it's really no surprise that the kids are really tired and that Max has been crying all morning each morning until I leave his daycare's premises. I hate seeing him like that, but I'm still convinced that this sort of routine for August is a good idea. I'll have to wait until later to see how Leo's day went, but he was too distracted by all the new toys and boys at his caregiver's (the same one Max used to have) to give me the time of day as I was yelling "Goodbye" to him.

Anyway, I'm going to go exercise and clean for the morning. How domestic!