Q is for Quilt

Max's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Noakes, is doing this awesome program with his class where a different letter is featured every week with themed activities, stories, word games, crafts, etc. This week's letter is Q and today, the class made a quilt. Here is an excerpt and a photo from her daily email:

Today we made a quilt with the pictures the childen made yesterday. Mrs. Gordon, a volunteer, showed the children the three parts to making a quilt: the pictures, the batting in the middle and the backing. See attached picture of our quilt:


It's hard to see with the size of the photo here but Max's square is the orange star on the lower right quadrant.

We spent part of the night talking to Max about all of the quilters in our lives like Auntie Krysta, Auntie Karen and Kerry. Super cool!

A little bit of chaos + some Feb recap

Hello all, We're coming up on the end of February and have had some really good times with the kids throughout the month. Things are a little screwy at the moment, though, for a couple of reasons: 1) My back is all spasmy again. Sigh. Eventually I'll take care of this, right? Holly has been a real trooper (again) doing most of the heavy lifting around here (literally) while I work on getting better.

2) Henry has gotten so good at rolling around that he started doing it in the night in his swaddler. Holly and I both quickly decided that this wasn't really safe so we cut the swaddler out cold turkey. Unfortunately, this has had a major impact on Henry's sleep pattern. He's trying to figure things out and this has left us with some pretty unpredictable sleep situations (3 hours, 2 hours, 3 hours; 5 and 3; 2, 2, 2, and 2; 0 until 2 a.m. and then 5 hours straight...we seriously have no idea what to expect on any given night)

Anyway, let's flash back to the start of the month and pop some pictures out here of things that we did a couple of weeks ago.

On Groundhog Day, I took volunteer leave from work and helped out at Max's school for their kindergarten Winter Carnival. I was primarily stationed at the Chateau Woodroffe event - kids were instructed to bring in ice blocks made in as big a container as possible and dyed with food colouring. Kids stacked the blocks up to make a wall and then water sprinkled from a watering can was used to "glue" the whole thing together. The end product was pretty cool and is still standing outside the school today. Here's a picture of Max's class with what half of the morning students were able to accomplish:

On the 3rd, Holly did a little brunch with Auntie Melody, Laramie and West. Here's what Henry wore:

That's our boy - always ready to slay fools with unbridled happiness:) We also took a video later on in the day of Leo and his new favourite hobby - blowing milk bubbles. Here it is.

Three Star(dom)s at the NHL Fan Fair

Ottawa hosted the NHL All-Star Weekend this year so Max, Henry and I decided to take in one of the public events, the Scotiabank NHL Fan Fair. The Fan Fair was a massive, interactive indoor hockey festival held at the newly renovated Ottawa Convention Centre downtown. There were two full floors of booths and activities.

One of the real highlights of the day were the various mascots walking around. We had stopped for a snack and were seated beside the escalators. Mascots were coming up the escalators every few minutes! They were also having a blast hot-dogging down the escalators which the kids loved. After a bit of hesitation, Max got right into it and was high-fiving everyone. I took a few photos:

Max with Wildwing (Anaheim Mighty Ducks)

With Sparky the Dragon (New York Islanders)

With N. J. Devil (New Jersey Devils)

With S.J. Sharkie (San Jose Sharks)

We also saw Thunderbug (Tampa Bay Lightning), Tommyhawk (Chicago Blackhawks), Carlton (Toronto Maple Leafs), and Nordy (Minnesota Wild). The mascots were AMAZING - interacting with kids and adults in goofy ways, posing for creative photos, engaging the shy kids, etc. Sadly, there were no Spartacat sightings.

Another fun feature of the event were various booths where you could get cool photos taken and sent to you via email. Here, we do our best Ron McLean and Don Cherry impressions on a faux Hockey Night in Canada set:

Channel-hopping over to TSN:


With some dress-up clothes in the Scotiabank Photo Booth:

We enjoyed some time in the kids' area with Max playing Timbits hockey and all of us building some hockey-themed Mr. Potato Heads. We didn't line up to get our picture with the Stanley Cup but Max loved seeing it.

Classic Max - Smelling the roses while the hockey action is very clearly going on somewhere else.

Henry reaching out for some Mr. Potato Head love.

Max with the Stanley Cup in the background.

Max at the Sirius DJ booth. Shortly after this, he danced his butt off to the Justin Bieber classic "Baby".
The Fan Fair was absolutely HUGE; I think we saw less than half of it but we were totally spent when we left. I wasn't entirely sure how much Max got out of it at first because it was a really overwhelming experience but he spent a big chunk of time that night telling John about all of the things he did and saw so I know that he enjoyed it. It was definitely a once in a lifetime event for me so it was really special to share it with Max.

Successes on the home front

This is just going to be a quick one, but I want to announce that this past Monday was a big day in the Stardom household. A day after he demonstrated to us that he was capable of rolling over, Henry showed us that he could also roll back. He doesn't quite do it at will yet, but we are definitely not leaving Henry alone on any elevated surface anymore. It was nice to be able to witness the first roll this time, instead of being out of the room and getting burned as our child goes sailing off the couch (sorry Max). The other big success was Max's. Max has been signed up for a lot of activities over the years, but they've all been of the variety that when they're over, you just get a certificate and that's that - there's no real chance to fail. Well, over the past year, he's been in a preschool swimming class that you actually can't get past until you're able to do everything on the report card. Monday night, after his last class, Max graduated to the next level. It's been a lot of hard work - when Max went to his first class, he was unable to be on his back in the pool at all and he was really uncomfortable getting his face wet, let alone putting his face underwater. Now, he can back float to some extent and voluntarily puts his face in the water and is apparently ready to roll for Preschool B. I'm really proud of him and I can't wait to see how he tackles the next challenge.