Things are finally starting to settle down around here after a fairly busy start to the fall. September was probably the craziest month that went by, with Max's fifth birthday, Henry's first birthday, Holly's birthday and her return to work all coming into the mix. That last one was a real doozie as all of the amazing things Holly was able to do at home during the daytime got bumped to evenings or, more likely, the weekends. It had actually been since June of 2009 since we were both working so it took awhile to recalibrate ourselves to food shopping (and various other things) outside of work hours. We also had to decide on a drop-off/pickup routine that would work best. Given that I was already responsible for getting the kids shipped off to daycare in the morning (as well as breakfast, lunch prep and the rest of the mobilization duties), we decided that it made sense to keep me in the lead-off position while Holly (dinner prep extraordinaire) would bat clean-up. We're still trying to perfect the art of getting kids up at the right time to get them out the door on time and get us to work on time, but we're doing fairly well. Almost all of our dinners are cooked at home, the kids get almost as much sleep as they need and we are putting in full days at the office.
The big news recently is regarding Henry. First, he sleeps through the night most days, which is a gigantic turnaround from the 3-4 wake-ups between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. that he was giving us just 3 weeks ago. It all started when Holly started giving Henry a huge bottle right before bed. Then, he got over a nasty cold and I switched onto Henry duty overnight. Some combination of these three things clicked and now Henry sleeps from 8-5, waking up once for no longer than half an hour every couple of days. The unfortunate thing is that when Henry was sick, the other boys got sick too and started sleeping poorly. So now that I'm downstairs with a sleeping toddler, Holly's bed is getting routinely invaded by the older bros upstairs. Maybe we'll have to switch again... The other big news is a by-product of this new sleep schedule: Henry has weaned himself off breastfeeding. For the first time since early 2007, Holly has sole ownership of her body. Weird! So Henry is doing whatever he can to escape babyhood.
I doubt it was mentioned in the past post, but Henry is also now fully walking. It's a rare sight to catch him crawling anymore. In fact, he's already climbing onto stools in dark rooms so he's a fearless little one too. Henry took his first steps right before his birthday at the end of September and was able to chain a couple together to reach for a favourite toy by the start of October. Over Thanksgiving weekend, his brain exploded and within a couple of weeks, that was the end of the crawling. Henry's really doing well these days (aside from this psychotic diaper rash) and is loving time with his caregiver and her other boys. In fact, (milestone alert!) at the start of October we had a sitter put all three kids to sleep by herself for the first time. Holly and I try to minimize inflicting the bedtime version of our children on other people so this was a brave call on Holly's part. Everything went well and the sitter has now been back a second time. SCORE!!
Some final notes regarding Henry: he is starting to understand some commands and phrases. For example, when you say "Can you say...", he understands that you want him to speak and tries to ape the first consonant sound of the word you say. (Can you say "CAR"? KUH! Can you say "DOG"? DUH!). He has started to sign and has mastered "MORE", one of the best signs to have as "MORE" isn't really a thing you can point to. He's also got "MILK" and is trying "ALL DONE" (another useful one), but that will need a bit more time. It is really wonderful to have a child like Henry whose sole purpose around here seems to be to make things much easier than they could be.
On the other end of the spectrum, Max has turned into a five-year-old teenager. We think that he's just tired more often than not and this is where his "I'm never tired and I won't nap" attitude it kind of biting everyone in the backside. Disrespect, testing parents and teachers, not listening, you name it. Oddly, he's still relatively shy and well-behaved in public situations (when it counts, right??), it's just when he's in a familiar environment that things go a little sideways.
Max is doing very well in school in terms of learning, though. The French is going really well - he's very good with vocabulary and pronunciation - and he seems to get a real kick out of knowing that there are other names for things in this other language. Max has also gotten fairly good at writing his letters (even lower case) and numbers and is drawing more often these days.
By far, Max's favourite activity is building with blocks. Regardless of whether he's playing with Duplo or Lego, he has a great imagination and a good sense of how to translate it into a block creation. Playmobil's a bit on the back-burner for him right now, although he's still always looking in the Playmobil catalogue and telling us what he's saving up for. Max now earns an allowance as well. He helps put his lunch dishes and dirty clothes away and empties the dishwasher a couple of times a week. So far, he has only purchased one Lego set with his own money, but it was pretty obvious that he took some pride in choosing something for himself and knowing he earned it.
Leo is hitting that hilarious stage where his vocabulary is exploding and he says all sorts of ridiculous things. At least once a day, he says something that makes us chuckle. Especially with his hand gestures and his facial expressions. My favourite might be when he tries to tell us he's serious by adding "For real life!" onto the end of something.
Leo's still plugging away with the speech therapist. We've found it pretty hard to stay on top of the homework we are given to do with him, but he is definitely improving. We've cruised past the K/T differentiation and moved onto J/SH/ZH/CH sounds. It's been interesting seeing the different approaches that the therapist takes to test Leo's capabilities while trying to keep him focused.
Leo has also started playing with Lego. It's been really interesting watching him latch on to pretty much all of Max's interests. I had heard that siblings develop their own interests so that they can maintain some sort of individuality but the opposite seems to be happening here. Not only has Leo gotten into pretty much everything cool older brother Max has liked to do, but recently Max maaaay have suggested that he wanted to save up for a princess castle. Weird!! The one big difference is that while Max runs right to the building stuff or the various toy catalogues we have in the house when he has some spare time, Leo runs to the bookshelf. He'll grab a book and flip slowly through it...then grab another and another and another. The little guy certainly loves to look at books! And, like his older brother, he loves being read to.
So all in all, life is good. The kids are growing way too fast....like warp speed fast....but everyone's happy and healthy (ok fine, except for Max's current bilateral ear infection) and doing great.
Part of the reason that there haven't been any updates recently is that I've wanted to post some pictures. However, the memory card somehow got corrupted and it took a few trips to camera stores including letting our camera go away for six weeks as the warranty fixit folks tried to figure out what was wrong with it until finally, Holly ran into the salesperson who sold us the camera and, after an hour of troubleshooting, managed to figure out what was going on (yay! it wasn't the camera) and extract the pictures from the camera. That came way too soon on the heels of fixing the camera after Leo chucked the sand in it. So here are some recent pictures of the boys:
Henry chillin with his cuz West. We can just tell that these two are going to get into some trouble together. Look at those smirks!
Experiencing the fall colours at Kingsmere
I think he might be excited to crack open this box. This is the set that he bought with his allowance and some birthday money.
Max, losing his mind at the Ottawa Geek Market. The ParLUGment folks (the Ottawa LEGO Users Group) set up a massive LEGO display.
Are you flirting with me?
Leo, getting used to toque weather at Saunders Farm.
Max and Henry putting in an offer on a house.
Henry looking for a pumpkin he can carve
"Leo and Ariel sittin' in a tree..."
I love my boy when he's fresh out of the bath :) Holly thinks he looks most like Max as a baby when she sees him like this.
So that phone call was J-Crew, right? Holla!
The Halloween lineup 2012
Heck yeah, I'll take more Goldfish!
Photographic evidence that we were all out together this year!
Leo may or may not have had some loot from his trick or treat bag by this point.
