What's bigger than hip-hop?

Man, I totally forgot I had these videos. I've been meaning to post them for so long. Last year, Max was enrolled in hip-hop for preschoolers. Allegedly, he learned a few things in class, but every time I showed up at the end of class to check out what he'd learned, Max would play shy and not show me. So Leo and I went to his "show for the parents" class to see if Max would deliver. He did, but not really anything in the "dancing" category.

Exhibit A: Max warms up. At this point, we're about 2 minutes in and Max still has energy to perform (and mug for me).


Exhibit B: Max serves up an attitude walk. Not bad, actually.


Exhibit C: Uh-oh. Max starts off OK, but then fades.


Exhibit D: Houston, we have a problem.


Exhibit E: The coup-de-grace. Max waves the white flag and another student follows suit. We like to call this move the "turtle".


Exhibit F: Max gets his certificate!

Puppets Up!

Puppets Up! International Puppet Festival in Almonte

We spent a wonderful day at the Puppets Up! festival in Almonte. We went out early in the morning with the boys and caught two puppet shows. The boys were absolutely enthralled with the first show we saw (a pirate-themed story with lots of humour) and a bit less with the other shows we saw.

Holly's best friend from high school, Jenn, lives in Almonte, and her stepmother, Noreen Young, is the founder and artistic director of the festival. Noreen is an acclaimed puppeteer and puppet maker and an Order of Canada recipient for achievements in children's television.

Here are a few pictures from our day in Almonte:

June in review

Before getting started with June's pictures, I have a quote from last night to pass along. Max was running around, throwing himself on the couch at high speed, and we had told him a number of times to stop because it was dangerous and somebody was going to get hurt. Sure enough, about three launches later, he tripped on the rug and bonked something. I said I had no sympathy for him and that we'd told him to stop. He said, in a highly questioning tone, "Daddy, you're happy that I got hurt?". Yikes.

Anyway, here are the things that happened in June that we haven't already covered.


Early on in June, the boys and I did an "Ottawa tourism" day. We started at the Royal Canadian Mint's headquarters, where they had this Mountie Moose. The kids loved this guy! I loved the $600K gold brick I got to hold.

Here's this month's horrible picture. Wow. It's possible Max took this one.


Leo's gymnastics classes wrapped up in June. He had a blast and even finally warmed up to his instructor by the end of the session. This is Leo singing on the balance beam and snaking his way down a plank to get his hands stamped. Odd how the only adult visible in each picture is the same person. Seriously, there were other parents.

Here are the boys with their friend Grace, right after she turned 2. We had an awesome park party involving great food and a little splash pad time.

Yes, that's me. On Father's Day. Soaking wet from being pelted with water balloons. I repeat: on Father's Day. Thanks, kids.

Another photo from Father's Day when we took the kids to the super old-school wooden splash pad at Andrew Haydon Park. It's Leo, but man! it really looks like Max, back in the day. Such a weird picture.






The above six pictures are from our adventure on the Hull-Chelsea-Wakefield steam train. We drove across to Quebec and hopped aboard in the morning. After a slow, scenic ride, we grabbed a box lunch for our stopover at Wakefield, picked up some ice cream and chased some bubbles. We also got to see the locomotive get turned around on the manual roundtable AND check out the sweltering engine from the inside (it was 30-35ish outside and even hotter inside). Finally, a quartet of French-Canadian musicians performed some acoustic travellin' music. The musicians also serenaded the train cars throughout the round trip. I should also mention that at the end of June, the track was flooded out and service is still suspended, so our timing was pretty awesome.

Max has spent the summer learning some soccer skills with the Westboro Popsicles. It's a little bit of soccer and a lot of herding cats. The kids do a bunch of drills like soccer ball "red light - green light" (and - purple light, where they do a silly dance), dribble around the cones, punt the ball at the coach (if you hit them enough times, you can demand that they act like an animal of your choice) and even chase-the-coach (pictured above). Max is pretty engaged with the whole thing but, as with all of the other kids, thinks that the popsicle at the end is the best part.


Ahh, Ribfest. The Stardoms and Reids hooked up for a whole truckload of chicken, ribs, pulled pork, beans and corn. YO!!!! Oh yeah, I think Max liked the apres-ice cream too.


Auntie Jan came to town for a visit and went with Mommy and the kids to the Agriculture Museum. Summertime is definitely a great time to take in the barns full of animals and some of the special goings-on at the farm.

Auntie Laramie took the family strawberry picking in June. Lots of berries. Lots of jam. So delicious. Thanks Lambsy!


At the end of the month, Iona Park (right near where we used to live on Kirkwood) was supposed to be hosting a big party to celebrate the opening of the park's wading pool for the summer. I literally didn't get the message that the party was postponed due to inclement weather and so the boys and I trotted off into the rain to hang out at the park. As you can see, it wasn't all bad.

I think this is a cute picture of Max. It was taken at the national Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind training facility, which we visited with Auntie Jan. The boys got to see a whole bunch of dogs, meet a few blind people (a really neat experience for Max) and devour some cheeseburgers. The facility was located in a beautiful rural setting south of the city so the kids got to roar around outside for a while after the demonstration. Super fun and informative!

Max has this Leapfrog (R) toy that is supposed to teach you how to write letters and draw pictures. He has used it a lot, but produces mostly shaky pictures. Until the last day of June, when he busted out this impressive sailboat while doing a connect-the-dots type game where you follow a blinking light and only see the picture once the light stops moving. It really blew me away.

Sometimes I'm just amazed

As mentioned in the previous post, at the start of the month, we moved Leo from his crib into a bed and moved him from his own room into a shared-room situation with Max. It's amazing to think how much the boys' sleep routine has changed since that day.

The first night was a disaster: both kids were overtired and decided that jumping on their beds and generally ignoring us would be the best thing to do at 11:30 p.m. To be fair, they had just arrived home from Winnipeg to see their new room and new beds for the first time but it was still mayhem. The second night, Leo was kind of upset so one of us stuck around for a bit before remembering that we wanted to cut short this routine of hanging around in his room for an hour or more, waiting for him to fall asleep.

Then, the most peculiar thing happened. Over the following four nights, I don't believe the kids were ever awake past 9:00, nor did they ever require more than 30 minutes to put to sleep. Best four consecutive nights in a couple of years? From some points of view, heck yeah. From what I can figure, the emotional stress of the re-entry into daycare took a lot out of the kids and so when it came to putting them to sleep, nothing was difficult.

On the weekend, things were not quite as good, but still not a disaster. The most interesting shift was that the kids suddenly decided to change their wake-up time to 6, not 7. Not surprising, given that everyone was getting to bed an hour earlier.

The highlight of the past two weeks definitely happened last night. When I left the bedroom, Leo was upset, but I was determined to give him at least a bit of an opportunity to settle himself. I hung around the door and then heard Max trying to settle Leo. Max went over to Leo's bed, hugged him a few times and offered some words of support and repeated the process for a couple of minutes until Leo was quiet. Three things occurred to me: 1) Max will never cease to amaze me; 2) my kids will do a great number of amazing things that I will not be party to...that's a little sad to me; and 3) it's possible that Leo still "needs" someone in the room with him to get to sleep, it's just that the person in question now is Max, not a parent (why didn't we try this months ago????).

This afternoon, Max stunned me again. I had slipped a treat in his lunch and told him it was for being so sweet and helpful at bedtime last night. When we picked Max up at daycare, I asked if he liked his treat. His response? "I didn't eat my sugary junk because I never ate all of my peppers and cheese." Wow. I never indicated that those were the rules so that was all him. Now I'm really starting to feel like I'm going to miss out on a lot with the kids and I spending so much less time together in the future. Sigh.

Videos from the vault

I noticed that we haven't really been posting videos much lately. Mostly because it's a real pain. Oh well. Let's see if we can get some together here:



This is a rare video from early March, in that one week where Leo said "Lilo" before he graduated to "Leo".



A video from early April that shows Leo on the move and Holly with long hair. Leo is saying "net", for the record.



Some members of our families are smokers. It seems that Max has taken it upon himself to be a walking public service announcement. And surprisingly, not due to a lot of encouragement from his parents.



So Leo doesn't really speak in the first person. This video clearly shows his love of the third person. This morning (July 8) at breakfast, I'm pretty sure he said "Leo don't want".

Now Leo too...

It's official. I'm home alone. This is the weirdest feeling.

It's the Wednesday after an extended holiday and there has been a crazy amount of transition happening around here so the kids are a little manic these days: we're adjusting to a) our normal Ottawa routine, b) having Leo in a bed, not a crib, c) having Leo and Max sleeping in the same room, d) getting Max back into daycare and e) introducing Leo to daycare. So it's really no surprise that the kids are really tired and that Max has been crying all morning each morning until I leave his daycare's premises. I hate seeing him like that, but I'm still convinced that this sort of routine for August is a good idea. I'll have to wait until later to see how Leo's day went, but he was too distracted by all the new toys and boys at his caregiver's (the same one Max used to have) to give me the time of day as I was yelling "Goodbye" to him.

Anyway, I'm going to go exercise and clean for the morning. How domestic!

May round-up

Eventually, I'll get caught up with these pictures. Likely not this month though. Here's May.


May marked the first time that Max was left alone at another child's birthday party. Technically, Holly wasn't going to leave him there, but when all the other parents ditched, she felt weird sticking around. So out she went. The party was held at 4Cats, a children's art studio in the neighbourhood we lived in when we first moved to Ottawa. The studio has lots of cool programs for kids and for birthdays, they let kids go bananas in the splatter room à la Jackson Pollock. A canvas on the wall is sent home with the birthday kid. After the party, Max came to the prize ceremony at my Scrabble tournament...thankfully, he hadn't washed up yet! Max is registered for a few workshops at the studio in August and September

The kids on their 26th (estimated) trip to the Aviation Museum. Possibly the first day that I might be fooled if I didn't know my kids and someone told me Leo was the older brother.

One of our best recent investments - the Strider bike. Max was having some difficulty pedaling a tricycle, which made going long distances on foot with both boys a little tricky. In the late winter, Max started doing a drop-in class at the local Rec Center where kids could learn to get around on these "push bikes" - two-wheel bikes that kids move by walking. Eventually they pick up enough steam to just lift their feet and coast...if they can balance. It took Max 3 or 4 tries to be able to get all the way to the library and back in reasonable time, something that he would never have been able to do on foot. It took him about 5 more outings to figure out how to balance. Now, he's a regular pro at coasting and he has actually been on one 3 km trek with me to one of his playgroups at the end of June.

Here's Leo, trying his hand at balancing things while waiting for service at a diner in town. Note to self, if Leo can stack and destroy 43 times over, the service is too slow and we should not go back to that restaurant.

It seems like half the big cities and small towns in Canada have these sorts of painted things all over town from cows to fire hydrants to mailboxes. These wooden tulips come out every year around Tulip Festival time. Here's Max, posing with one depicting Parliament Hill.

Here's Max, making his first batch of peanut butter cookies. Jenn from Toronto was running the show, although she ducked out of the frame of this shot. Verdict: the cookies were delicious.


So Max and I went to the first birthday party I'd been to that had been organized by the parents and just put every idea I've ever had to shame. The bar has been set high by this space party. Handmade helmets for all of the kids. A star scavenger hunt in the backyard. A bike ride "trip to the moon". A 5-foot-tall nosecone in the backyard for kids to sign as a card. A lunar landscape cake made by the grandmother. And the centerpiece, a handmade space shuttle pinata. I think this is what all birthday parties are supposed to be like, from a kid's perspective. From a parent's perspective, it seemed pretty intense. I have no idea how long they were ironing out the details, but the birthday boy was loving it.

It's funny - back when I took this picture, it was one of our first sunny days and I had thrown Max in this outfit for Beach Day at preschool. Now that it's summer a) he wears this type of thing all the time, so it looks like a normal picture and b) Leo is the one who wears this swim top. Crazy.

Back in May, our great friend Kerry ran a try-a-tri and murdered it. We all went out to cheer and had a blast high-fiving at the finish line. While waiting for Kerry to finish, we also scored a lot of fun, sunny cuddle moments like this one.

One fine day in May, we took in some sheep-shearing at the Ag Museum with the Screids. We showed up just in time for the final shearing, which was perfect as they saved the big ram for last. I don't know how strong the shearer was, but it was surely STRong, if not STROng. Start to finish, it took about 5 minutes and the giant hunk of wool that came of was worth about $6, if memory serves. In any case, it was just another one of those things that the kids and I all experienced for the first time together.


We were cheering on a friend who was running the marathon for National Capital Race Weekend, so of course, we busted out our orange regalia for the event. For whatever reason, Dovercat was at the spot we had chosen for cheering. I guess he/she/it was celebrating the race route coming close to our neighbourhood for the first time too.


Finally, we also Touched-a-Truck for the second consecutive year. This year's event was really wet and the kids got pretty soaked. I managed to keep their feet dry except when Leo snuck out of the Bookmobile through the side door and beelined right for a massive puddle. Oh well. Here, the boys are "driving" a dump truck and a crane. Afterwards, we went inside the mall next door to watch a strongman demonstration and ride mini-ATVs around a road safety course (I'm hoping to get that video up pronto - it's a riot).