The last couple of weeks have been quite interesting. To start, we were treated to a visit from the boys' Uncle Murray, Auntie Kathy and cousin Hannah. The Winnipeg Stardoms came down for the last week in March and the boys had a great time connecting with their relatives. We took the boys out of school and daycare for three days and mixed in a few adventures, including a visit to IKEA, a night trip to the Canadian Museum of Nature and a sushi lunch. The visit got off to a bit of a rocky start as the younger two kids had some trouble sleeping the first couple of nights. It seems that Hannah was having difficulties adjusting to her new environment and got over that after a few days. As for Henry, he scored his first ear infection but antibiotics took care of that over the course of the week. Leo upped the ante by developing some awesome congestion on night 3. When we were picking up Henry's prescription, the pharmacist mentioned that the swing from super warm temperatures to normal spring temps had wreaked havoc on a lot of people so it ended up being unsurprising that the kids got nailed.
Another big excitement was that on the Monday following the visit, Leo started his new daycare life away from our longtime caregiver. We got a call from the kindergarten & school-age program Max attends after school to let us know that they were expanding their facilities and opening up a preschool room. This was a bit of a turnaround, given that there was talk in October that the program might close down (the school in which the program is located is going to full-day kindergarten next year and they had semi-threatened to reclaim the daycare rooms for classrooms). But we were pretty happy about the opening - it hasn't ended up making the mornings any easier (particularly given that Leo is still melting down a little bit due to the change in routine) and we're really sad about disconnecting from our caregiver of three years, but Holly and Henry now get to spend almost 30 minutes a day less in the van, it's one less in-and-out of the van for Henry, the boys get to play together outdoors every afternoon and now Leo won't be the youngest in the room all the time. One of the requirements for attending this preschool, though, is that you have to be pretty gung ho about potty training so Leo has had a pretty intense introduction to pull-ups and potties this week. It's going OK so far and it's really great to see Leo's face light up with major successes. Max is being really supportive too...which is a little surprising, but great to see.
I suppose the third big deal around here is that Henry has started eating solid food. Up to now, he's had about 4-5 rice cereal dinners and gave sweet potatoes a spin last night. They weren't a big hit, but we can't tell if it was because he didn't enjoy them or if he was too tired (you know, from having slept 45 minutes from 9 a.m. to dinner time...sigh).
I also want to throw in a word about Max and reading. Over the last three months or so, his class has had a program where kids are supposed to bring a book home every day from their in-class library to share with their parents. I think the idea is to simultaneously encourage reading or sharing books with parents while starting to introduce the idea of homework. (newsflash - Leo wakes at 6:48...not bad). We've taken this opportunity to get Max reading and apparently he's coming along really well relative to his classmates. His love of books definitely makes things easier - we've even recently started sharing chapter books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Wizard of Oz. The evenings are still a bit crammed around here so reading time typically gets bumped to the morning. Leo has even taken a shine to Max reading him books in the morning, sometimes asking for "book in a bag" on the weekends. Hopefully Leo will be excited about reading as well.
Finally, I want to throw some kudos out to Max for passing Preschool Swimming B after only one try. We've already enrolled him in C - this will definitely make me feel more at ease about having him and another boy (or two) in the pool with me this summer.
So Happy Easter everybody! It's now officially 7 and Max is still not up (exhale). It looks like we have a big family dim-sum lined up for this morning followed by naptime and a visit from the Easter Bunny (who went down to Watertown, NY to do some shopping with Henry on Good Friday). Hopefully you have some great Easter plans too.
Here is an assortment of pictures, unrelated to this post (Holly has taken to using her new smart phone to take pictures more than the camera lately so I've got to get off my duff to load those on the computer):
