A new family member!

Dear new cousin Hannah,

Welcome to this thing called life. Things are going to be confusing for a while, but eventually you'll get used to things like food, light, sleep and noise. But those are just the basics! Crawling's pretty cool. Books are awesome. Solid food...yum yum yum. There's also this thing called Elmo's World, but you're a first-born, so you probably won't find out about that until you get a sibling, and then it will be like non-stop. Oh yeah, and in a month or so, you'll be able to do this thing called smiling. If you could throw a couple of those smiles your parents' way, I'm sure it would be much appreciated.

We're really looking forward to visiting you sometime soon. We don't know much about girls. Mommy says she is one, but she just looks like a grown-up to us. Someday, we'll show you all sorts of fun toys like skid steers, robots, fire trucks and the top shelf of all sorts of furniture.

Your cousins,

Max and Leo



Here's Hannah Olivia - born March 15 just before 6 a.m., weighing 7 lbs, 1 oz.

A weekend well spent

We had a low-key but fabulous weekend at Casa Stardom so I thought I would share a few photos.

Friday night, Nana came over for dinner and then babysat the boys so John and I could get out to a movie. We saw “The Adjustment Bureau” with Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. It was frothy fun. We did get to see it in an Ultra AVX theatre so the seats were huge and comfy and the sound was great.

On Saturday, I took the boys to our regular Saturday playgroup at Hilson Public School near our old house. It is a great group of parents and kids. It was pouring rain on Saturday so it was great to have somewhere to take the boys to run around for a few hours. All of the mums and babies (now toddlers) with whom I hung around while I was off with Leo come to this playgroup so it is a great way to see friends and stay connected. After playgroup, I had a great squash match in the early afternoon.

After Leo woke up from his nap, we headed off to Carlingwood Mall to pick up a few things for dinner and get the boys a treat: a Booster Juice and a ride on the mall's mini carousel. It has three seats so we treated two other kids to rides too. Actually, a complete stranger treated the boys and a little girl to the second ride. I told the boys that I didn’t have any more loonies (the truth!) and this woman just gave me a loonie “to keep the kids happy”. It was a lovely random act of kindness.

Max has really been getting into cooking and helping us cook lately. When he gets into cooking mode, he dons a Cars apron and pulls out a little blue Rubbermaid stool so that he can get up to the counter. Max helped me make dinner on Saturday night and then, after dinner, the boys went to bed and Kerry came over for an impromptu games night. Super fun!

On Sunday morning, we woke up to a winter wonderland with a blanket of fresh snow. After Max helped me make French toast, we headed out for a walk in Hampton Park, where the boys enjoyed an awesome ride through the snow and visited with a bunch of dogs out for a walk. We warmed up with some hot chocolate and then (miracle of miracles) we all napped for part of the afternoon. Max hadn’t napped in more than two weeks and he was waaaayyyy overdue. After our nap, we headed over to Nana and Auntie Karen’s for a lovely Sunday dinner. After dinner, Auntie Karen offered to take the boys so we could play a game with Nana. Four games of Settlers in one weekend – heaven!! The boys enjoyed chocolate cake and videos and we capped the evening with our regular Sunday night dance party:)

Here are some photos:


Max with his heart-shaped French toast (his request).





The boys have so many awesome aunts that it warrants cool aunt t-shirts.


Leo and Auntie Karen enjoying the dance party.


The boys rocking out - Max with his axe and Leo on the mic.

The big 2-0

That's right - Leo turned 20 months this past Thursday. And that day, he treated us with a special gift: saying his name for the first time. He can't really say "Leo", so instead, what he says is "LIE-LOW". As in the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch. It's so cute.

Here are a couple more videos:



This is Leo at Ottawa's Asian superstore, waving at the fish in the tank. Tilapia, I think. Good thing he and Max didn't look up - a woman had just ordered a fish and the fishmonger was busy smashing it over the head with a mallet. At least it's fresh!



This one's a bit longer, but definitely worth it. This is the first time I'd ever seen Max read an entire book to Leo. OK, he's doing it by rote memory and not reading per se, but considering that I didn't even know that Max knew this book, it was a little shocking to see it happen the first time!

Leo's brain explosion

No, I'm not talking about his head splitting in two via staircase crash or excessive vomiting. I'm actually referring to Leo's vocabulary taking a major step forward this past week. I've already referred to the fact that Leo has surprised us with how many words he had by 18 months, but now he's already taking the quantum leap forward to lots and lots of words (and of course, as a parent, what constitutes a word to me is actually just the ability to communicate something using some sounds that sound kind of right...although there's no denying that his "Hi" and "Bye" are solid). This past week alone, Leo has picked up HI, BYE, ME, LIGHT, SNOW, HAT, HAIR and MEOW. Plus, he's switched what a dog says from "WAWAWA" to something kind of like "YIP YIP YIP". It's cool to see his excitement at being able to get his ideas across to everyone.

Also, Leo has applied his brain explosion to his Hush-a-Bye class. He has really started mimicking the sounds and rhythms that we sing to him and has really taken to performing along to actions in class (walking in a circle holding hands, hopping, clapping, etc.) It's really cool to watch!

There are a couple of cute things that Leo does now that should also be mentioned. Within the last week, Leo has started delivering killer raspberries to everybody's exposed parts: arms, bellies, legs, whatever! Also, Leo has started giving the cutest little kisses - he puckers up, closes in for the kill (he prefers the lips) and then closes with a little smacking sound. They really are awesome. We now present a raspberry attack video, as well as a video of Leo making Lego people kiss.



Oh yeah, here's another cutie of Leo killing an ice cream cone.

The last couple of weeks

Ugh. Bring on the spring. So the past two weeks here have really been something else. Let's start with the good stuff. We had a great visit with our friend Jen from Toronto - it was her first time seeing the kids since I took my leave so Leo was a very different boy. As per usual, we had a great time together hanging out, catching up, eating great food and having a couple of adventures, including Winterlude.


Leo loves snowballs!

Max and Daddy tag team a Beavertail.

Mommy and Max check out an ice sculpture.

The Monday morning after Jen left, Leo and I were going up the stairs from the basement and I let my guard down at just the wrong time. Leo logrolled down all 13 wooden stairs onto our tiled basement floor. It was pretty horrifying to watch. Leo grew an instant goose egg on his forehead and was really upset. It took him about half an hour to settle down and that's when the monitoring phase began. I kept a close eye on Leo all day, pretty nervous that he'd done some real damage. However, Leo's mood, behaviour and balance were all normal throughout the day. His nap was a little longer than usual, but his appetite was also normal. All in all, Leo has bounced back nicely. I'm posting a couple of visuals of the goose egg and ensuing bruise. Enjoy.





Had to put this video in here. For the longest time, Leo has been saying "Dumpaday" to himself over and over again. Not sure what it means. Sometimes, he just says it. Sometimes it's a song. Anyway, I had to film it for posterity...and it definitely shows the bumps and bruises pretty well.

OK, so by the end of last week, Leo seemed to be A-OK and I was psyched to get out and do something with the kids this week. However, in the middle of the night on Sunday, Leo started vomiting for a few hours. This was followed by a couple of days of nasty diapers and a horrendous rash. Wednesday morning, things weren't improving and so I took Leo in to the clinic. Diagnosis: double ear infection. That's four in four months. I mentioned this to the doctor to see if it would raise an eyebrow. However, it seemed like this was still within the realm of normalcy. Doc suggested that the infection accounted for the tummy issues, but then there was more, er, upheaval Wednesday night and....drumroll....Max joined the party Thursday night. I have a hard time believing that the two sicknesses were not coincidental and now Holly has a bout as well. So I guess I'm the last domino to fall. Thankfully, Leo's back in the game and after a couple more days, Max should be up and about again. In the meantime, this has been a crazy first exposure to family-of-four sickness. Obviously it won't be the last, so we're taking notes :)

P.S. Holly and I took this awesome "time lapse" series of photos. The first is at the doctor's office Friday morning, the middle ones are on the couch on Saturday and the last is at the mall Saturday night (when Holly was at her lowest point, I took the kids out to the mall to get some air). Yes, that is a baby seat that he is in.

Random January content

Before getting into the excitement that has been the past week, I have another batch of pictures and videos for all of you. Here goes.


New Year's Day - Max and Mommy hanging out in the Market eating Beavertails. Word on the street is that the Market is a pretty sketchy place to be the morning after New Years...lots of people looking like zombies.

This is Leo in his element. How high can I get off the ground, be reasonably sure that I'm not going to hurt myself, yet look like I'm in a really precarious position? My favourite is when he drags a step-stool into the middle of the floor and gets on top, saying "Jump! Jump!".

No caption needed.

So they had these Disney Princesses tattoos at Maddie's 3rd birthday party. We thought we'd have some fun with one. The best part is that, because his tummy is such a low-use surface, the tattoo stuck around for about two weeks.

McDonald's dinner+empty bag=dress-up time.


Welcome to Max-hearts-Maddie corner. Can't remember why the pumpkin outfit came out that night...

We went to see a friend play hockey at a community rink one night and Max was fascinated with the penalty box. I lifted him into it and he freaked out. Put it on the list of things Max is irrationally afraid of, which is still topped by opening the drain while Max is still in the tub.

After the brutally cold January weather cleared out, Max and Leo were pretty willing to play outside. Especially in our backyard, where we've cleared out some space on our patio. The kids don't really like deep snow, but they do love shoveling and trying to make snowballs.

Yes, this is Holly supervising 4 kids in one restaurant booth, none of whom were older than 3 years, 4 months. We all went to the Newport for the 3rd birthdays of Max & Leo's friends, Rosie and Lily. Lots of kids. Great food. A super fun time.

A caregiver of one of Max's classmates taught him this one. He thinks it's hilarious.


This was the first day Leo showed me he could kind of carry a tune.

Five December Pictures

Who says that every blog post has to be about a big event? Well, it would seem I do. Holly always wants to produce more photo-heavy posts about nothing in particular, so I'm going to do my best. Here goes:


Did I ever tell you about the time that I fed Leo some cheese that I only discovered was moldy after starting to cut some up for Max? All of the mold was hiding behind the opaque part of the packaging. Leo had maybe one or two bites and then his face exploded into welts, hives and swelliness. Good one, Dad.

We went to our friends J&T's place for a sushi night in December and at some point, all of the kids present decided that it was dress-up time. This western jacket paired with a turtle on his head made Max all serious for some reason. He pranced around the house clasping his hands like a choir soloist about to deliver. Apparently, his great-grammy did that a lot too. The hand-clasping, that is, not the turtle-hat-wearing.

They won't clean up the house, but boy do they love the Children's Museum's mops. Actually, I mentioned to Max yesterday that he never cleans up, which somehow struck a nerve and made him exclaim "I do! Watch me!". And he did. Weird. Almost as weird as his yelling "I DO KNOW BETTER THAN YOU! I KNOW BETTER THAN EVERYBODY!" Oh boy, someone's going to be disappointed.


These two pictures were taken on a mild day when we decided to take the kids for a snowy walk through one of the local parks. Max and Leo each got a sled to ride on and we pulled them through the snow for about an hour. The park is a popular park for dog-owners, hence the dog sniffing the tree behind Max in the second picture. The kids were a little nervous about the pooches, but nobody got mauled.


Here are a couple of videos of some downhill action from our sledding day. I believe this was Leo's first slide.