Month o' birthdays

I'm about to roll over to the top end of the 30s and Leo has now turned 3.  So there have been some festivities around here.  Question: is Leo now officially no longer a toddler, but a preschooler? Not sure. But he's now fully potty trained, holding his own at daycare and just being a wonderful, loving, sharing child these days. I won't mention anyone by name, but his behaviour has also been relatively good lately, at compared to all non-babies in the house.  Also, Henry just had his 9-month+ checkup and he is 72 cm long and weights 19 lbs. 2 oz.  C'mon doc, mixing and matching Imperial with SI is torture to me.  cm/kg or ft/lbs, please.

The logical thing to do would be to throw birthday pictures up here, but the camera's upstairs, I'm lazy and we've got quite a backlog to work through. So here are some more pictures of other things:

This used to be just a neat picture, but now it's a sad picture. Last week, there was a massive brush fire west of town that apparently burnt quite a bit of the Lime Kiln trail. The kids had a great time this past spring on a hike there, exploring ruins of the kiln, "being in nature" and watching birds eat out of our hands (Max was pretty skittish about it and Leo didn't even want to try, but they liked watching it). This is obviously a pic of Henry checking out a chickadee up close. 

The two intrepid explorers mounting the old kiln wall. 

Mom and the older boys. 

At the end of April, the Ottawa Senators made the playoffs and Max got really swept up in the whole thing. The night of their first home game, we let the kids stay up late, munch on popcorn and catch the first period. Sadly, the Sens lost the game 1-0 to the Rangers and lost the series in seven games. Ask Max who won the Cup though, and he knows. 

Grandpa Wayne gets some good family time in with a super happy Henry. 

This picture seems so dated now. Tuesday, Henry was in the exersaucer for the first time in a while and was actually into it. Generally speaking, though, he crawls too much these days to be anywhere near this happy all penned in. 

We continue to convince ourselves that this ladybug shirt makes Henry looks manly. 

Henry, loving his Auntie Melody. Someone must have just said something funny. 

OK. This past May/June, Max was signed up for a 4-5 year-old soccer league. The teams had all sorts of appropriate names: Cheetahs, Cobras, Grizzlies, Li'l Giants, Eagles, etc. Somehow, Max was on the Zombies. ZOMBIES! How the (&$^% am I supposed to explain zombies to a 4-year-old? He just barely got death. Anyone want to take a crack at "undead" with him? In any case, Max didn't love soccer and daydreamed his way through the season. He was most engaged when put on defense and especially as goalie, but even then, he spent most of the games not focusing at all. He definitely had a couple of nice saves though that clearly made him feel good - that was great to see. It also took him a couple of games to break him of the expectation of getting popsicles after games and instead getting used to post-game fruits. Thanks, Westboro Popsicles... 

My boy is cute. 

Yep, still cute. 

Here are a couple of close-ups of the older boys at Dow's Lake for our annual Mother's Day visit to the Tulip Festival. It was a beautiful, clear day and we had a great time. 

What an epic picture. Everyone's looking really cute and loving and...is Max flipping the bird? Yes. In fact, about a week ago, he comes up to me and flips out his thumb and middle finger and says "this is my new symbol". Option 1: ignore it and hope it goes away. Option 2: let him know that the gesture is offensive and insist that he never do it again. I chose 1 as Max is the kind of guy who would do it just because it's offensive and because I said not to. So if Max ever flips this on you, don't be offended: he doesn't know what it means and, hey, it's his symbol. 

Here is a video of the kids goofing around at Lime Kiln.