Max's first skate

What a month. We've been a bit slammed at Casa Stardom. First, Leo had what was possibly the flu. It turned out to not be the flu, but Max and I got our shots anyway. Max was (as always) cucumber-cool, saying "Ow" with a deadpan tone as he got his shot. Awesome. Then, Leo had something that looked more flu-like (with a good vomit all over his car seat in the van!) that compelled Holly to get her shot. It turns out that Leo had (another) double ear infection so antibiotics for him. Then, Holly somehow developed a rashy reaction combined with an infection at her flu shot injection site, leading to a round of antibiotics for her and many sleepless nights. Then, I got sick for the first time since being off with the kids (it was a great run). It was a good sinus cold that lasted about a week, so not serious, but not great either. Then, yesterday, I wrenched my back at the Science and Tech museum with the kids. It was a LOOOONG walk back to the van and super fun trying to get the kids in their seats. Max has been OK, aside from a strange fever that popped up mid-day this past Monday and Tuesday and then disappeared. Leo is teething furiously (he's up to 11 now) so he tends to only nap 45 minutes each day and is waking up at 2ish each night. That whole "Leo will put himself to sleep" thing lasted about a week and now he'll let us leave the room but can't seem to seal the deal without some rocking or maybe back-rubbing. Oh well, the extra hour of grown-up time each night is still awesome.

So in the midst of all that, we've been able to do some cool things this past month. One of the coolest was getting Max skating for the first time. We had planned to go a bit earlier in the month with Max's friend Maddie and her entourage, but had to spend some time running around town getting Max skates and a helmet. Canadian Tire had the bobskates (two blades instead of one for stability and they attach to his boots) - cheap and adjustable so we'll be able to reuse them easily for Leo. We splurged on a new helmet for Max at Sport Mart - we had heard that it's really hard to find helmets that are small enough for 3-year-old heads so I figured it would be even harder to find them used. So when we tried this youth helmet on and it fit with a little bit of room to spare, I took it. Maybe it will fit again next year. If not, Leo will surely be in the zone.

Max has had some issues recently with saying that he's really excited about something new, but then when he gets to whatever we're going to do, he balks and decides that he doesn't want to do it anymore. I was a little concerned that was going to happen with the skating too, but then again he's so into the idea of playing hockey that maybe his fears would take a back seat. When we got to the rink, he was still keen. He was really excited to be wearing the equipment so we gave it a go. While I would be dealing with Max, Holly skated Leo around the ice in his stroller.

I started by holding one of his hands while his other hand was on the boards. However, the slipperiness of the ice and all of the other emotions overwhelmed Max and he cried, wanting to leave after a few steps. I was determined to make it work, so I took Max's mitts off and held both of his hands, skating backward while he slid/walked along. By the time we got to the end boards, he was beaming. If he slipped, I was stable enough to keep him upright so I figure he felt pretty safe. After that, we toured the rink, checking out where goalies stand and the faceoffs happen. Then, Max and Maddie decided to have some fun falling down and sprawling all over the ice. I'm glad this happened because I think Max was a bit nervous about falling. Before leaving, Mommy and Max checked out the players' benches and the penalty boxes. Max absolutely loved it. In fact, he said "Now that I know how to skate, I'd like to play hockey next time". How's that for confidence?

Here are some pictures of our skate night. Many thanks to our friends who snapped the pictures while we were with the kids!

Mini update

First up, Happy New Year to everyone. Max and Leo (and I) are slowly readjusting to not having Mommy at home after a nice break over the Christmas/New Year's week. Max is settling back into his school routine and is also working in some swimming and more hip-hop classes (we didn't think he took to them, but one day he asked us why he wasn't taking them any more and begged back in...dying to see how it goes this time around). Leo will be taking the toddler sequel to the Hush-a-bye music and song classes both he and Max took as babies. With Max in full-time care after he turned one, it wasn't really an option for us before. I'm curious to see how Leo likes it - apparently, it is much more active than the class for newborns/babies. Given that Leo loves to dance and listen to singing, I think it will be a big hit.

The other big updates on our end are some major changes with respect to sleep, all of which came about in the last couple of weeks. First up, Max has pretty much completely abandoned his naps. The nice part about this is that he seems to have settled into an earlier bedtime routine, which gives us an extra hour of grown-up time every night. Leo has combined his two morning/afternoon snoozes into a single afternoon nap. Most of the time, he gets up after an hour, still needing more sleep, but he's generally willing to be soothed back into nap 2.0, giving me some good one-on-one time with Max in the afternoons. Leo has also started to allow us to leave his room at night before he falls completely asleep. Sometimes, this means he's squirming for 5 minutes or so after we go and sometimes it means he's babbling and singing to himself for half an hour. Either way, this has also opened up some more grown-up time in the evenings and has made us feel a lot more comfortable about leaving babysitters in charge of night time routines.

So we finally seem to be settling into one of those nice (yet typically too-brief) periods of feeling good about how things are going: we have the ability to get some rest/jobs done at night and the kids are generally happy and healthy. Happy new year indeed :)

Intense Face

I'm not sure if you remember, but back in the day, Max played the Serious game. We'd say "Serious!" and then get our serious faces on and Max would attempt to mimic before completely cracking up. Full disclosure: in the end, this game wasn't so smart/funny because when we tried to get serious with Max, he would just end up laughing. Oops.

Anyway, I had always been wondering what wacky thing Leo would end up doing to make us laugh like this. Enter INTENSE FACE.

It all started in late October, possibly while Leo was squeezing something in his hands. I can't even remember at this point. Leo would squeeze his hands into fists. So hard in fact that his eyes would get wide, his mouth would stretch open and his face would quiver. The big breakthrough came on Halloween night, when Nana and Auntie Karen were over. Everyone was laughing at Leo's shenanigans so much that he started doing it on command. The phrase "intense face" was definitely coined that night and now, Leo can't hear "intense" without busting it out. Even the other day when Max said "In ten seconds...".

It's hilarious. It's a little creepy. I kind of wonder if he'll be doing it into his teens.

I present Intense Face for your viewing pleasure:


We also managed to take one still photo that captures Leo at his intense best:

Merry Christmas!

A photo essay of Christmas Day . . .


Max opens pure Santa paydirt: a fire truck!

Leo got the hang of opening presents pretty quickly.

Somehow, Max has yet to teach Leo that sharing is pure evil.

While Max was off doing something else, Leo snuck some time with the fire truck.

As Daddy assembled Max and Leo's new art easel, Max gave the paint supplies a whirl.


A couple of pictures of the boys enjoying some quiet TV time in Nana and Auntie Karen's basement.

Family portrait; yes, Leo is saying "cheese".

Leo tackles his first ever drumstick.

Max gets some help assembling some construction Mega-Bloks.

My boys

Yes, the Christmas spirit is finally starting to hit me. In the absence of office parties and due to the fact that I already celebrated a chunk of Xmas in Winnipeg in November, it's taken me a while to rev up the engines. But now we have a tree (with the ornaments arranged out of Leo-reach so that it looks like the bottom ornaments were eaten by deer or something), lights are up, cookies are baked and I'm getting all schmaltzy. Although I've still had enough of Christmas music, which has been playing since Nov 1st, I swear.

This past weekend was a busy one, involving a lot of parties and running around. But we managed to sneak in a little time as a family to go out and stroll in the snow. The weather was warm, the kids loved being dragged on their sleds and it was a great time to be together. Together with all of the merriment of the season, this time together really got me thinking about my awesome little boys and how much I've been enjoying this time off with them.

Max is definitely growing up. He's in underwear almost all of the time now and I don't think he has any clue how much older that makes him in my eyes. Every time he gets a haircut, he comes out looking about 5 years old and it repeatedly blows my mind. It's also getting a lot tougher to get things by him anymore. His steel-trap memory is still reminding me every now and then that I promised him X or Y so I have to be a lot more careful about announcing tentative plans to him these days. He's also starting to process things faster now, making distraction a little bit tougher. It's hard to dupe him into having a nap he doesn't want to take. All this to say that he's definitely giving our negotiating and diplomacy skills a workout.

I'm really glad we chose to enroll Max in preschool. I think he's gotten a lot out of the more structured setting and the social interactions with his classmates. When he comes home, we spend a lot of time talking about his music classes (he loves to sing the latest class song for us!), the friends he gets to play with during the day and his teachers. He says he already misses school, but I'm sure the Christmas break will have enough going on to keep him busy.

One other thing about Max that just kills me is his vocabulary. He uses a lot of words that I never expected a 40-month old kid to use properly, but he's also picked up some expressions that have surprised me. Every now and then, he says something that sounds so grown-up. Like "actually", "I feel like...", and "so I guess...". While we're on the topic of Max's words, I suppose I should treat you to a few more funny Maxisms we've jotted down:

MAX: I don't like the sun.
DAD: That means you don't like the summer. Is that right?
MAX: I like summer! I like the construction!

MAX: Why did Bob put his hammer in his lunchbox?
DAD: Because he's a forgetful guy and sometimes he puts things in strange places.
MAX: Just like Dad.

(At 7 a.m., two months ago)
MAX: I thought it was nighttime. It seems that it's not.

DAD: So are we going to play or what?
MAX: Can we do a little scoochy over here to where I am?






Watching Leo grow up at this point has also been amazing. When Max was 1 to 1.5, he was in full-time care so I only had evenings and weekends with him. Watching Leo full-time as his brain explodes and slurps up all sorts of new tricks is really something else. I'm pretty sure that Max is responsible for teaching Leo a lot too (these days, he's trying to get Leo to say "Merry Christmas", as in "Leo? Can you say muh, muh, muh? Merry Christmas!!"). Leo doesn't need any assistance to walk around anymore and, in fact, is a crazy climber. His favourite thing to do is to climb on the dining room chairs, which leads to either a) grabbing things on the dining room table or b) getting on the dining room table. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time pulling Leo, crying, off the chairs. I've even been known to stack the chairs on the table to keep them out of reach.

Leo has also learned to indicate yes and no by nodding and shaking his head. This has been super helpful, particularly at meal time. It's so nice to get some information from Leo when we don't know what he wants. He's also picking up some more words, particularly those starting with B. At this point, he has Bob (Bob the Builder and all others wearing hard hats), ball, balloon ("boon"), bye-bye, baby, more ("mo"), mama, dada (although he still doesn't always associate me with dada), dump (dump trucks and all other heavy machinery...as well as the act of dumping out), jump (easily the cutest thing he says), moo, nana, and attempts at barking, roaring and gorilla-grunting.

Finally, Leo officially weaned earlier this month and so we've been able to work him into a much better sleep routine. This makes our night-times a lot easier and makes Leo much more baby-sittable at night. In the mornings and after naps, when we pick Leo up, the first thing that he does is wrap his arms around our necks as tightly as possible and serves up some super hugs. It's really cute!






I feel really lucky to have a pair of kids who are well-mannered and socially adjusted enough that I'm not really concerned to have them in any situation. Restaurants, museums, parties...they're a real treat to have around.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Macs are awesome. If for no other reason than the Photo Booth application.

Merry Christmas!

Love, the Bizarro Stardoms

Gingerbread Mayhem!

A quick post to show you one of the things we were up to this past weekend. My colleague and friend Stephanie invited us over to her place for a gingerbread house decorating and assembly party. Max was absolutely thrilled to attend as he is a major gingerbread fan. We were the first to arrive so we had some fun decorating spare pieces of gingerbread and stuffing our faces with candies and egg milk (egg nog for those of you not fluent in Max-speak). The adults enjoyed their egg milk with amaretto - a new twist for me and definitely something that I could see us repeating! Assembly began just as we were leaving but we were able to participate in putting the base walls up.

I should add that this was no ordinary house that we were assembling; it was THE House.

Here is the spectacular finished product:


The apple is there to give you a sense of scale.


In case you don't recognize this Ottawa landmark, here is a link.

I think my favourite part is the Library of Parliament on the back of the structure. I don't know the weight of this whole thing but it was four batches of gingerbread, oodles of homemade Royal Icing, and lots of candies.

Both the boys had an absolute blast. We asked Max to tell us three favourite parts of his weekend when he was getting ready for bed last night and his first and only response was "Stephanie". Many thanks to Stephanie and Chantz for inviting to such an awesome party!