The Peg

I just noticed that we went 0-fer in November. That's a little embarrassing. Oh well, hopefully a few of you are still reading.

The main reason that we didn't blog in November was because we were having too much fun visiting family in Winnipeg for the bulk of the month. Given the number of times Max made it to Winnipeg before he hit two years of age, I seriously had to keep reminding myself that Leo had not yet seen my old stomping grounds. Leo's Winnipeg grandma, aunt and uncle had all made it out here to see him since his birth, but I still had other family members who had yet to lay eyes on the little smurf. Although he's not so little anymore...

We went down on the 11th in order to attend a family wedding on the 13th. The kids were great on the plane and gave me hope that my trip back (solo) was going to be OK. The wedding was really nice and kind of brought Holly back full circle to her first trip to Winnipeg in 1997, when she saw my cousins married at the same place. The boys' BC grandparents were in town for the wedding, giving the kids a bonus visit with them too. I imagine it was weird for Max to see them somewhere other than on their farm.

It was also a great opportunity to see Auntie Kathy's burgeoning baby bump. Max and Leo will have their first cousin in March! The baby has been named Cousin Fred, who is the cousin in the Berenstain Bears books.

The first week, Grandma took some time off work and the five of us spent the week seeing the sights in town. We checked out the science gallery at the Manitoba Museum (free, thanks to our ottawa museum membership!), Fort Whyte Nature Center, the local shopping center, and the Assiniboine Park Zoo, where Max was enrolled in "B is for Bird", a workshop for preschoolers to learn all about birds. We also got to eat at Dingo's Wild 'n Crazy Dogs, kind of like a hot dog version of Ottawa's The Works. This was a big deal as the boys' Uncle Murray had recently designed their September Dog of the Month (Chili + Mac 'n Cheese) and, while we weren't able to sample it, we got an idea of how crazy it was, based on the normal menu offerings.

After a whirlwind week, we settled into holiday mode and celebrated an early Christmas on the Saturday. The tree was put up and decorated...I should mention that it was redecorated over the following week by Leo, who proceeded to rip all of the ornaments he could reach from the tree in order to play with them, hide them, or place them in the toilet. Needless to say, these shenanigans had us rethinking the tree options for our own house this year - the tree is now up and decorated but it looks a little strange with no ornaments on the bottom two feet of the tree! Max and Leo were both spoiled rotten and are still busy playing with/reading all of their new things.

Sunday, Holly bid the boys adieu and returned to Ottawa to work. The boys got to spend lots of quality time with Grandma in the mornings of the second week, including visits to the main gallery of the Museum and KidCity, a recently-opened Winnipeg version of Cosmic Adventures. The kids also took part in an open swim in the pool where their dad learned to tread water - that was a really neat moment for me. That and being able to show them my old house and schools. Leo probably didn't care, but Max obviously thought it was interesting.

Then, finally, it was time to come back home. Everybody saw us off at the airport and then the three of us got on the flight. I had been dreading the flight for a while, but once you're seated, what are you going to do? As it turns out, the kids were amazing. Both were kept happy watching cartoons, reading books, playing with toys and nibbling on snacks. Leo even fell asleep on me as we were landing. Lots of post-flight kudos from the families around us - some didn't even know that Max was there. SO AWESOME. That's two A+ report cards for Max and Leo; thanks a lot guys!

It was a wonderful couple of weeks, reconnecting with the rest of my family and getting some face time between the boys and their Winnipeg folks. We all enjoyed the family dinner hosted by Uncle Murray and Auntie Kathy, the farm tour at my cousin Wendy's, the great pre-Christmas Christmas, a visit from Grandma's cousin Joyce, an aquarium-viewing visit with my aunt and uncle, a great opportunity to see our Grand Forks family, and so much quality time with my Mom. It was a great trip overall and now that the kids travel so well, I suppose it's time to think about where the next one might be :) :)

Here are some pictures:


A preview of things to come: Leo was a crazy clambering monkey throughout our entire visit. Holly also adds that Uncle Murray was closely supervising nearby.

These next pictures are from the wedding we attended. A couple of highlights: Max may have found a future wife (Robin) and I apparently looked like a bureaucrat.




Here are three pictures from Fort Whyte: two of the amazing indoor Kiwanis-sponsored touch-some-taxidermy display (initially, I thought it was a bit creepy, but then again, where/how else are you supposed to find out what polar bears, skunks and wolverines feel like?) and one of an old sod house outside.



And now for some family pics: a Jeannie's cake (if you were from the Peg, you'd know), my Dad's side of my Winnipeg family and a picture of Max helping Grandpa, who was struggling with a 24-piece Cars puzzle. I swear that's contempt on Max's face.




Now, to confuse everybody, I'll switch to below-photo captions. This is Max and cousin Wendy after some hard work in the tractor.

Leo and lemurs. I don't really need to explain more, do I?

Uncle Murray, famous Dog inventor.

Dingo Dog's "Baba" dog. Like a hot dog and pierogi all wrapped up in one.

The size and the quality of the drippings take these dogs over the top.

Grandma and the boys digging trenches on a massive water table at the Manitoba Museum's Science Gallery.

There's a joke in here about Holly answering a science question of Leo's, but I won't go there.

The kids, playing with a vintage Fisher Price Little People village set that Grandma kept around from when I was a youngster.

This is such a weird picture to me now. Not because there are diapers all over the Christmas tree, but because Max doesn't really wear diapers anymore except at night. It seems so long ago...

Leo, in the midst of his weeklong ornament-stealing rampage.

Mom and the fans decorate their first gingerbread house.

Leo learns to rip wrapping paper.

Max loves Christmas crackers!

One of the malls in Winnipeg had a play area set up for kids 0-5 right in the middle of the mall. Max and Leo both loved the slide.

Grandma did a lot of reading while we were in town, especially from this Richard Scarry compendium.

Uh-oh. It's official. The kids are officially attracted to swimming pool lockers, just like every other kid. Seriously, what is it about those lockers?

Just before the flight home, the boys took some time to scope out all of the vehicles zipping around the airport.

Max killing himself laughing at some YTV show on the airplane. Kid vs Kat I think.

All Hallows Eve

OK, so the Christmas carols are playing everywhere from elevators to the grocery store and we have yet to post any Halloween costume photos! Shame on us.

Halloween weekend was great. On Friday night, a friend of ours invited us to the Halloween party at her son’s preschool (her older son is the same age as Max and her younger son is a few months younger than Leo). Truth be told, the party itself was no great shakes but it did provide a few awesome photo opportunities. John even got in on the costume action:




On Sunday, Max participated in the pumpkin carving with me at home. He helped me to hollow out the pumpkins and scoop out the guts. I decided that he would design his own pumpkin and I would carve it. Here is the picture he drew:


Here is the finished pumpkin:


On careful study, you will notice that the eyes are reversed. In my defence, the drawing had only one eye when I started carving so I had to get a little creative. I still think it is pretty true to the drawing!

Nana and the Ottawa aunties gathered in the early evening to see the boys in their costumes and to staff our house while we were out. Auntie Melody brought some awesome candy bracelets. Much to our surprise, Max didn’t last very long on the trick or treating beat. We made it down one side of our block and around the corner before he decided that he was done. It was quite cold. When he decided he was done, he really meant that he was finished with trick or treating because he didn’t even want to stop at the few houses on the other side of the street between the corner and our place. I dropped him off at home and caught up with John and Leo. Max had an absolute blast giving out candy at our place. Leo LOVED trick or treating, if only because it meant that he could try to get into lots of different houses. I can’t blame him; it must be pretty weird for him to have someone open the door and then not let him in. He also saw his fair share of one of his other loves, dogs.








When Leo, John and I got back, we had a nice dinner of homemade fettuccine carbonara and salad. The boys had a few treats and the adults snuck a few too. Thumbs up for an awesome night!

What the heck? Let's head across the river.

I got one post together today, might as well do another.

Last month, I was trying to figure out what to do with the kids one day. A few people had been suggesting going to the Canadian Children's Museum, located inside the Canadian Museum of Civilization. We have memberships to three other museums in town and I figured that there was no need to go to a different museum where I'd have to pay (I know...skinflint!). Well, I finally caved and drove across the bridge to see what the fuss was about.

Wow. The museum itself isn't all that big, but it's stunning how much stuff is packed (in an organized fashion, to boot) in the space. The whole thing is structured under a global travel theme, where the kids are given passports when they go in and they get to stamp it every time they visit a certain part of the museum. I didn't count the number of stamp stations but it might have been over 20. To hit the highlights, the kids:

acted out a scene or two at the theatre which was equipped with costumes and a stage with curtains

hopped aboard a Pakistani bus and a tuk-tuk

painted some pictures art at the museum's studio

played some Nigerian bongo drums

donned builder outfits and assembled part of a wall

went to a toy store and assembled some puzzles

sat down for a game of Parcheesi then stood up again upon seeing the long list of rules

created their own adinkra cloth pattern at a clothier's store

performed an Indonesian shadow puppet show

sat on a fake camel

crawled through a pyramid

used a working crane (!!!) to load and unload cargo from a boat

prepared and served fake sushi at a restaurant

delivered parcels to some of the storefronts in the museum

Yeah, if that looks like a long list, try doing it with two mobile chickens. YIKES! Max says his favourite part was the sushi, but he spent well over an hour working on that boat. Apparently, there were mops to swab the deck, but he only had eyes for the crane. Leo was deadly every time I let him out of the stroller. At his most devious, he had discovered a chess set on the ground (that I had yet to see!) and, one by one, was smuggling the pieces into our stroller. Eventually, I found some pieces, but then I had to find where they came from. Then the fun part was finding all of the pieces he had taken.

Thankfully, school had started by then so there wasn't much of a crowd at all. There might have been 25-30 people in there at any one time (except when this tour group of seniors/foreigners came through taking pictures of each other climbing all over everything...that was weird) so it was really relaxing. Summer must have been bonkers. By the time we got home, both kids were completely spent and I seem to remember scoring over 2 hours of simultaneous sleep out of them. Truth be told, that was worth at least three times the cost of admission :) :)

And now for the best part, the photo evidence:

Long overdue

Wow - I think this is my first post in a month. Thanks to Holly for holding the blog fort down in my absence.

I've been meaning to dedicate a blog post to Max's preschool adventures for a long time. Max started at Westboro Village Cooperative Preschool back in the first week of September. His class is made up of 20 kids who all turn/turned 3 years old in 2010. A couple of the kids have January birthdays, so they're almost 4. In fact, one of Max's classmates was also born September 9th! The class is fairly boy-heavy: the ratio is 6 girls to 14 boys. I don't think this has ever meant anything to Max as I'm sure girls only get icky after kindergarten.

The first week at school, the class was broken into thirds and each third got to go in on their own day to get acquainted with the classroom, the teachers and each other. The next week, it was all systems go for the whole class with preschool from 9:15-11:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. For a while, Max's selective memory definitely got in the way of my finding out about what went on in a typical day. I knew from drop-off time that the kids roared around in a gym (the preschool rents out space inside a church) with a pile of toys in the morning, but once they went upstairs to the classroom, all was a mystery. As in "What did you do today?" "I don't know". "Who did you play with?" "I don't know" or, better yet, "Nobody".

Given that the school is a cooperative, parents are expected to pitch in in a variety of ways, including providing in-class assistance as a "duty parent". At the end of September, I finally got to do my duty parent shift and answer a bunch of my questions about Max's day. The two classrooms are connected by a bathroom with a couple of stalls for the boys and girls. Each classroom has a few tables set up with a variety of different play stations set up. Most of the stations involve tactile play for motor skills development (everything from Potato Head building to Play-Doh to building block to dollhouses to a sandbox and water table to an arts & crafts corner). The two teachers typically staff the art area and the reading corner, leaving the duty parents to engage kids at other stations or help kids who just need a little nudge to get started.

My first duty day was a Monday, which is Max's favourite day of the week. On Mondays, the kids only use one classroom while the second is used for music class. A dedicated music instructor comes in for the morning and sings songs, plays recorded music, introduces the children to musical notes (quarter, eighth, half, etc.) as well as the diatonic scale. I got to sit in on Max's class that Monday and participated in everything. I really like how the duty parents become a part of the children's learning experience. It's really cool to start reading a book to somebody and have 8 other pairs of eyes swivel and listen in, or start a crazy building spree where the kids can't wait to show you their latest creation.

The one hitch with duty days is that I can't bring Leo and so I need someone to cover me at home while I'm with Max & co. Mommy stuck around the first time, Nana had a fun morning with Leo the second time and next week, Auntie Melody will get a turn. Thank you to all the awesome caregivers - you make everything so much easier!

All in all, preschool has been great. I get to stimulate my punctuality muscles which had pretty much atrophied since May. Also, I get to spend a little bit of one-on-one time with Leo, including swimming classes on Mondays (roughly an 8-1 mom-to-dad ratio so unlike the weekends, it's the moms who have to wait around for showers after class...YES!). Finally, Max gets the socialization that he's been missing since leaving full-time care AND gets a gentle prep for REAL SCHOOL. Who knows, this might be the first step to a rewarding career with the police force.


Epilogue

As a complete non sequitur, I wanted to let you all in on a little moment the boys and I shared tonight. Both were pretty cranky today, due to a lack of sleep. However, just after dinner tonight, I noticed that it had started to snow. I grabbed both of the boys and walked them just beyond the lip of the carport to let them feel it coming down. Max immediately started to catch flakes on his tongue and Leo just hung on with this stunned look of amazement, opening and closing his hand. They both got a real kick out of it and so even if I have to stare out my window at the cm+ of snow on the ground, I can be warmed by the thought of grabbing a few flakes with the boys tonight.

When Daddy is away, Mama and the boys will play!

While John was Scrabbling in upstate New York, the boys and I had a wonderful weekend with lots of adventures.

On Friday, I had the opportunity to meet Max’s teachers at preschool and his hip-hop dance teacher. It was pretty cool to meet some of the people that are having such a wonderful influence and impact on his life lately. He has a mini-recital at his last hip-hop class on November 5th so we’ll hopefully get some video to share with you. In the meantime, ask Max to see his moves the next time you see him.

Saturday was a blur of activity with a quick visit to the weekend playgroup we belong to and then a great lunch and visit to Saunders Farm with our friends Terry, Georgina, and Terry’s daughter Madeleine (dad Gavin was in Lake George with John). We started this tradition last year and it was so lovely to do it again. I think the highlight of the visit was getting the front seat on the very fast tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch and having dirt clods fly up and hit us in the face. The boys loved it! We didn’t even bother getting off at the pumpkin patch; we just rode the tractor again so we could get the front seat.







What a difference a year makes – last year, Leo slept through almost the entire visit in a sling and this time, we could barely keep up with him as he explored every nook and cranny of the place. You should have seen his face on the tractor ride!

On Sunday, our dear friends Jen and James and their twin daughters Rose and Lily hosted us for a morning of “Mess Up Time”. Mess Up Time is a childhood memory of Jen’s that she wanted to recreate for our kids. We dug the seeds out of tiny pumpkins then painted with chocolate pudding and played with orange and green Jell-O. The kids got totally covered and had an absolute blast. I got in on the act and put pudding and Jell-O in my hair and on my face too which caused the kids to have many fits of giggles.







After all that, we spent Sunday afternoon at a birthday party at Starr Gymnastics – Max is beginning to be a regular at that place! We capped off the weekend with a quiet dinner at Nana’s with lots of reading and playing. Definitely an exciting weekend full of adventures.