As you may or may not have guessed, we were out of commission for pretty much the whole month of August - we took a week to hang out with the Walkersons at a cottage in Lac des Loups, QC and then jetted to Winnipeg, MB for another two weeks of summer adventures. Over those three weeks and the three weeks since getting back, a lot has happened. I'm just going to hold my nose and dive right in.
Leo has had the least amount of crazy stuff happen to him, so that's where I'll start. After seeing the speech therapist in July, Leo and I have been working on his K sounds. They're coming along OK, although progress seems to be a lot easier when a K sound is at the start of a word rather than in the middle or at the end. Also, the first K sound he could make was "key" (all of the other K sounds come out as T)...I was pretty excited about this until I asked him to say "tea" one day and it came out as "key"...so the natural position for his tongue is a K when preceding "eee" sounds. Who knew?
Leo's still a little rabble rouser, getting himself (and Max) into as much trouble as possible. Lots of potty words and talk about guns and kicking people in the head. Plus, his dream job apparently involves either being a policeman or a soldier "so that he can hunt aminals". We'll see about that. He's still a walking paradox: rough-and-tumble yet head over heels for princesses. He's perceptive too - while we've started to become aware that Max listens into more of our conversations then he lets on, Leo is also gleaning all sorts of things from here and there. In the van on the way to the airport to go to Winnipeg, "Holocene" came on the radio. I'm a bit of a hipster wannabe (no plaid/ascot combos here, though) and have been exposing Max to my music collection so I asked him who was singing the song. Max didn't look like he could remember when all of a sudden...Leo screamed out "Bon Iver!" My little 3 year-old hipster.
Max has started senior kindergarten (although that should probably be maternelle senior, given that it's in French) as of the 6th of September. There's been a bit of a hiccup - as a result of his being switched to an afternoon class, he's all by himself in his age cohort at daycare in the mornings and therefore buses to school by himself at lunch time. Cons: we're not sure he's getting all of the social stimulation he needs in a given day (he's not alone in the mornings - the daycare has put him in a class with younger preschoolers). Pros: our morning drop-off schedule is simplified; Max has the same bus driver as last year so he gets to hang out with Fred every day; ever since getting moved away from his normal daycare buddies, Max has stopped getting coerced into swearing (yeah, I know... :( ) and his behaviour at daycare seems to have improved dramatically. On the bright side, on the way home the other day, Max decided out of the blue to practice writing letters in the van (on paper, not the van) so his attitude toward learning and putting work in to get new skills might be turning a corner. Yay!
Max has also turned five years old, making Holly and I wonder where the last half-decade has gone. He is about to get back in the pool and take another crack at preschool C and I'm hoping to get him signed up for Beaver Scouts this year. Max's current obsessions are Lego, superheroes (especially Batman and all the villains), the Backyardigans and playing grown-up board games (Catan and Dominion with slightly altered rules are current faves). Smoking might have also made the cut - somehow Max's brain is really snagged on smoking, why people do it and why they don't stop. His choice line to me was "Dad, I think smoking is cool because I'm interested in it, but it's not cool because it's a bad idea." Can't really dispute that. Typical questions: "Why do people smoke away from other people?" "If your daddy smoked but your mommy didn't, did she get sick?" "Why don't people smoke more pipes when I see pipes in my [old] books?". Crazy. Any information you give this guy has the potential to take you straight down the rabbit hole. Plus, with his steel-trap mind, you have to shoot straight lest you contradict yourself down the line.
Which brings us to Henry. Before we left for the cottage, Henry had two teeth, was unable to climb stairs and woke up about three times a night. While we were at the cottage, he learned to go up a stair or two, popped out a couple more teeth and continued to sleep poorly. Although he started to do this interesting spin on crawling: he'd crawl on his hands and one knee and then use the bottom of the other foot to push him along. Anyway, this all evolved in Winnipeg when he started to cruise along furniture pretty well and he put two great nights of sleep together...before getting a cold...and then popping out another tooth. In the two days after we got back, Henry learned to do our whole set of stairs, clap his hands and kiss. Since then, he has mastered standing up on his own (and staying there for a good 10 seconds), started using a sippy cup and is trying to make sounds/words (in Winnipeg I could swear he was trying to say "duck" and now he's really close to "car"...although one night he woke up at some ungodly hour, crawled over to Holly's bed and said "mama" and made a kiss sound. Sounds pretty official to me). So his brain is pretty much on fire.
Henry has also started to go to daycare with the same caregiver who took care of the other boys. We're really excited about the arrangement! Henry is transitioning wayyy better than Max and Leo did - two of his first five drop-offs were tearless, he's napping without much coaxing (Holly is WAY bitter about that one, considering that he basically didn't nap for most of the last year for her) and he's reportedly enjoying his trips to the local playgroup. Everything looks to be settling in nicely just in time for Holly to head back to work.
Before I leave you with a couple of pictures, I wanted to tell a story about Monday night. We went out to see Bon Iver at the Ottawa Folk Festival (thanks for babysitting, Nana!!), got back late and went to our respective beds (me upstairs with the big boys, Holly downstairs with Henry, due to the repairs in his room). At 2:20 a.m. I woke up to the sound of Henry...which is funny, because usually the distance between us prevents me from ever hearing him. He wasn't getting quieter so I figured Holly had come upstairs to trade spots, which sometimes happens if things get really rough. But then I woke up, realizing that the crying was coming from beside the bed? Where was Holly? Was she getting a drink or going to the bathroom and Henry just crawled into the bedroom? Did I drift off? Very confusing. Now he's making a lot of noise and I'm yelling for Holly to pick Henry up because he'll wake up the kids...I think I even said something along the lines of "this isn't funny if this is a joke!" No response. So I got Henry and hobbled into the kitchen where...there was nobody. I saw lights on in the basement so maybe Holly had gone to the bathroom down there, which would explain her not hearing me. But that's getting disturbing, thinking of Henry getting up the stairs without supervision. I bounced downstairs and couldn't see or hear Holly. Now I'm really confused. I went back into her bedroom where she was STILL ASLEEP. It turns out that Henry had crawled off his mattress and, without waking Holly up, left the room, went up the stairs, went through the kitchen, rounded the corner, went all the way down the hall and then came into my room. WHAAAATTT?!?!?!! Needless to say, we kind of freaked out. There are so many "what if?"s here that the mind completely boggles. Imagine if we had closed the gate at the top of the stairs? Henry has no idea how to get down stairs... crazy. He did all of that travelling in a sleeper with slippery feet! Holly has been extra careful to shut the door ever since and we are moving his crib to the basement this weekend.
On that note, here are a couple of pictures. I promise a picture-heavy post soon.
Ahh, back in the day when we could put you on the ground and you couldn't get into much trouble...
Seriously, this is like in the top 5 percentile of group pictures that we take these days. Can't you all just look at the camera????
There seems to be some intense relationship between the boy and his Fudgsicle.
Henry along for the ride at the beach with mommy and auntie
One of the last few pictures taken before Leo lobbed a shovelful of sand in the lens of the camera.
The older boys and their friend Maddie take in a high school band at Westfest (an amazing free street festival close to our house)
Batman was on hand too. He told the kids that Joker went "that way" and the kids promptly lost it when it was time to turn around and go home. Thanks B.
Again, can't you all just smile at the same time?
Yummmmmm
Lobsters were on super sale one night in June so Holly got a few good-sized beasts as a treat for me and we invited Nana over to share in the buttery goodness. The kids were really interested in the biology of lobsters and it turned into a bit of a science fair. At one point, Max even forbade me from eating the last lobster. At least Nana, Holly and I enjoyed it.
This last gem is also from Westfest. We ducked into a seniors' centre for some respite from the heat and humidity. They had snacks, tables and chairs, and lots of fun activities. Holly decided to try her hand at some Scottish country dancing. As you can see from the video, the Scottish reel moved Leo as well.
