Happy New Year!

Ahh. NOW, 'tis the season! The presents are all opened, the fridge is devoid of egg nog, the kids are back at daycare, there are no sugarcentric holidays within the next three months, Casey Kasem is counting down the top hits of 1987, two months' worth of pictures just got imported to our computer and I'm ready to blog again. Trying to push the pageviews past 10,000 (500 to go!). Yeah! We enjoyed a busy holiday season with the boys this year - lots of parties, visits and snow for everyone. Christmas started early this year with a visit from the boys' grandma from Winnipeg. Grandma stayed for an extended weekend and got to read with the boys, see Leo's hip-hop dance recital, help put up the Christmas tree, and see some of Ottawa's sights. Here are some pictures from the visit:

Max and Mommy check out the tree.

Leo having a good time and sizing up his certificate.

Grandma congratulating her little munchkin.

Grandma got down and dirty with the kids, building Lego creations and becoming a Play-Doh dentist.

West and Henry: total frenemies.

Grandma enjoying a little gingerbread house construction. It looks like this was the 34th time we had told Leo to stop snacking on the candies.

Oh, and that gingerbread house just happened to be Kerry's first. A pretty awesome thing to share with the kids.
After Grandma left, it was time to go check out Max's Christmas concert at his school. The concert featured the kids in his SK class performing three French Christmas songs. Max was a little bit more forthcoming this year as compared to his year-end performance last year. Well, a tiny bit I guess (see the video after the pictures below).

Max at his angelic best (he had found out I'd be pulling him from school early).

The next big event was Henry's first haircut. We took him to the same place the older boys get their locks snipped...but it probably wasn't the best idea. Henry did OK, but by the end of the appointment, he could have benefited from a seat on my lap. Unfortunately, my booty doesn't fit into their Mater/Lightning McQueen/Barbie car seats. So he had to suffer through it alone and all of his writhing likely contributed to the nice triangle shape shaved into the back of his head. Either that or the stylist (who conveniently had laryngitis) was not up to snuff. Regardless, Henry instantly became a big boy.

Auntie Krysta and Uncle Steven visited just before Christmas and we all got together for a couple of dinners and the Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean on the weekend of the 22nd.

The Stardom boys chilling in the Walkersons' movie theatre

The whole crew at the Walkersons' table.

We all got out to build a snow fort in the back yard. Something threw Max off big time and he wasn't really in the mood for a picture. Too bad.

Mommy and Henry enjoying some fresh air.

Max getting intellectual with Uncle Steven.

Uncle Steven taking on his annual role of builder-of-kids'-gifts.

Mmmm...cake pops!
Stardate: Christmas Eve. Every year, my office lets people bring their families for a brunch. Santa also makes an appearance. Here are some of the things we got up to that day.

Check the details in this picture. Max and Leo were standing in front of Santa while gifts were distributed to about 30 other kids. It's like they're reassuring each other that any second now, it would be their turn.

Charlie's Angels? Max, Leo and Maddie got together in my office and did their very best to destroy it.

Here we are at our annual dirty bird dinner with the Screids and the Bills - nothing like ingesting as much KFC as possible the day before turkey day with six kids five and under. Still not sure why one of their deals is called "streetwise".
CHRISTMAS!! Thanks to Lar and James for hosting. We had a great time!

Leo is a little obsessed with the Lorax these days. Santa did a pretty good job to dig up a book and a stuffie for Christmas.

Henry was actually a pretty solid present-opener.

REALLY not sure what Leo was doing here. Having a good time with a paper roll.

Henry loves things that roll!

Look at all the happy people! I bet this is before I reminded the boys that they needed a nap.

And now the boys get a turn on the couch with the men. Max seems to be fading. I seem to be styling.

This look says "Awwww yeeeeeah! Lego!"

See, it looks like Max is giving Leo some love here. However, this is how he secretly convinces Leo to do something to get his own way.

Auntie Melody and Leo share a moment deciphering Leo's new Spiderman toy. The little magnetic Spiderman figure it comes with does cool stunts and Henry is a big fan too!

Happy parents on a great day.

Henry hanging out with his grandpa.

I'M SO HAPPY THE STUFFING IS DONE! NOW COOK BIRD!.

Max gets down to business with his Batman Lego set.

Daddy gets to play with the finished product.

Henry getting some auntie love.

Auntie and Mommy lookin' goooood.

Again, 60% of family members doing the right thing in a picture is about as good as it gets.

Tickle time!!!

After Christmas, we got up to a couple of things in Ottawa including a trip to the Science and Technology Museum. Here are a couple of moments from our days in town.

Snack time! Like his older bros, Henry really likes popcorn...

...and spaghetti.

A creepy couple of pictures. There's a place in the Science and Tech Museum where you can learn about telecommunications and you can speak on the phone to someone while both parties can see each other on TV screens. Henry obviously recognized his mom and started waving frantically at her.

Henry was pretty upset trying to crawl through the Crazy Kitchen (a room built on an angle but with furniture placed so that it looks flat...VERY disorienting!)
Well that about does it for everything interesting that happened over the holidays. PSYCHE! We also had a little road trip to Guelph for a New Year's Eve wedding...pictures from that shindig will follow in the next post!

Grandparents' Reading Day 2012

We wanted to share this photo of Max and his Nana taken during Grandparents' Reading Day at Max's school on December 7, 2012. Max was thrilled to have his Nana in the classroom! Nana reports that a good time was had by all and she didn't crush the princess dreams of any little girls this year.

Ho-cubed

Two weekends ago, we thought we'd beat the rush and whisk the kids off to see Santa on his annual stop to Carlingwood Shopping Centre before a yummy dim sum date with friends. Santa opened his gates at 10:00 sharp (when the rest of the mall opened) so that's what we aimed for. We showed up a minute or two late and found a line of probably 20 families. At about 5 minutes per (at least), that's an hour and a half wait which a) was going to run over dim sum and b) was going to destroy us as a family. So we explained to the kids that we'd have to see Santa some other time. I was shocked by how well they took it...but then again, we hit Bulk Barn for some treats. Good ol' distraction.

We returned to the mall this past Sunday and this time, we meant bizness. We showed up at 9:35 and were second in line. We were disappointed to only see about 12 families show by 10 (kind of like failed Schadenfreude) but were ultra happy with the quick in-n-out of seeing Santa in 15 minutes. The boys were both very much in awe and had a hard time saying much. Max did mention that Lego was what he wanted, but he completely forgot what kind or which set or anything specific. Leo, well he could barely remember his name. They each got solo pics with Mr. Claus before we mixed in a little Henry for a group shot. Henry looked at Santa, looked at us*, looked back at Santa, looked back at us and started crying (thankfully, elf-lady got a couple of pictures at the *). Here are the 2012 Santa pictures featuring the Stardom boys!

Say cheese, padawans

In our last post, I put up a picture from the Ottawa Geek Market, an event held October 14th at the Nepean Sportsplex. I had taken the older kids to a comic book store once almost a year ago but the whole thing was kind of lost on them. Since then, they have REALLY gotten into Star Wars, Batman and the Avengers via the corresponding lines of Lego toys (no, they have not seen any of the movies). They have catalogues with these figures in them, underwear bearing their likenesses, they recognize the characters on cereal boxes and other merchandise... When Holly brought up the idea of going to this event (that would have a pile of vendors hawking all sort of geeky stuff), I thought 1) the kids' minds are going to explode and 2) the kids are probably going to see some things that they might not be ready for (e.g. guns, weapons, skimpy clothing). We figured it wouldn't be over the top and that the kids could probably handle whatever they'd see.

So we arrive at the event, pay for our tickets and go inside. It's busy and a little cramped. The first thing the kids see are a pair of guys dressed in full Klingon gear. They handled that OK, but were pretty unsure of what was going on. We hook a right, walk 10 steps and find ourselves at a table hosted by the 501st Canadian Garrison (I'm not going to get into the details of who these guys are...just follow the link. Although I will mention that we've now seen them in two Ottawa Santa Claus parades:)) In conjunction with the Make a Wish Foundation, the Garrison was offering pictures (by donation) with some of their members who were onsite. Holly and I looked at one another and thought "This would be cool for the kids! Right?" So we paid and two of the gentlemen led Max and Leo over to where the pictures are taken. Both boys were kind of in awe/stunned until the )*#&%ing Stormtrooper gave Max his gun. It was like one of those slow-mo "Noooooooooooooooooo" movie sequences. Our jaws drop in slow-mo while Max's grin gets Cheshire-wide and his eyes fixate on the blaster...

Here's the picture:

(Holly adds: One funny thing about the boys' current fascination with guns is that they actually call them "G-U-N-S's". Then they spell it out in plural and use that for the singular - "Max has a G-U-N-S.". Whenever we look at the Playmobil or LEGO catalogues, they talk about which sets have "G-U-N-Ss" that would have to be taken away if they came into the house. Obviously, spelling things out wasn't going to work forever but I thought we had a bit more time.) On a different note, the boys' Auntie Laramie and I were enrolled in a board game tournament later in the day (a triple-shot of Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan) and we tied for first! I have a picture but have to dig it off of Holly's phone - we won some gift certificates and used them to buy a couple of new games for us or for our kids when they get old enough to try to take down Holly (the Lord of all strategy games). All in all, it was a strange but great day.

Life is good

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.

See ya August

Hello Blogger my old friend.  I've come to talk to you again.
As you may or may not have guessed, we were out of commission for pretty much the whole month of August - we took a week to hang out with the Walkersons at a cottage in Lac des Loups, QC and then jetted to Winnipeg, MB for another two weeks of summer adventures.  Over those three weeks and the three weeks since getting back, a lot has happened.  I'm just going to hold my nose and dive right in.

Leo has had the least amount of crazy stuff happen to him, so that's where I'll start.  After seeing the speech therapist in July, Leo and I have been working on his K sounds.  They're coming along OK, although progress seems to be a lot easier when a K sound is at the start of a word rather than in the middle or at the end.  Also, the first K sound he could make was "key" (all of the other K sounds come out as T)...I was pretty excited about this until I asked him to say "tea" one day and it came out as "key"...so the natural position for his tongue is a K when preceding "eee" sounds. Who knew?

Leo's still a little rabble rouser, getting himself (and Max) into as much trouble as possible.  Lots of potty words and talk about guns and kicking people in the head.  Plus, his dream job apparently involves either being a policeman or a soldier "so that he can hunt aminals".  We'll see about that.  He's still a walking paradox: rough-and-tumble yet head over heels for princesses.  He's perceptive too - while we've started to become aware that Max listens into more of our conversations then he lets on, Leo is also gleaning all sorts of things from here and there.  In the van on the way to the airport to go to Winnipeg, "Holocene" came on the radio. I'm a bit of a hipster wannabe (no plaid/ascot combos here, though) and have been exposing Max to my music collection so I asked him who was singing the song.  Max didn't look like he could remember when all of a sudden...Leo screamed out "Bon Iver!"  My little 3 year-old hipster.

Max has started senior kindergarten (although that should probably be maternelle senior, given that it's in French) as of the 6th of September.  There's been a bit of a hiccup - as a result of his being switched to an afternoon class, he's all by himself in his age cohort at daycare in the mornings and therefore buses to school by himself at lunch time.  Cons: we're not sure he's getting all of the social stimulation he needs in a given day (he's not alone in the mornings - the daycare has put him in a class with younger preschoolers).  Pros: our morning drop-off schedule is simplified; Max has the same bus driver as last year so he gets to hang out with Fred every day; ever since getting moved away from his normal daycare buddies, Max has stopped getting coerced into swearing (yeah, I know... :( ) and his behaviour at daycare seems to have improved dramatically.  On the bright side, on the way home the other day, Max decided out of the blue to practice writing letters in the van (on paper, not the van) so his attitude toward learning and putting work in to get new skills might be turning a corner.  Yay!

Max has also turned five years old, making Holly and I wonder where the last half-decade has gone.  He is about to get back in the pool and take another crack at preschool C and I'm hoping to get him signed up for Beaver Scouts this year.  Max's current obsessions are Lego, superheroes (especially Batman and all the villains), the Backyardigans and playing grown-up board games (Catan and Dominion with slightly altered rules are current faves).  Smoking might have also made the cut - somehow Max's brain is really snagged on smoking, why people do it and why they don't stop.  His choice line to me was "Dad, I think smoking is cool because I'm interested in it, but it's not cool because it's a bad idea."  Can't really dispute that.  Typical questions: "Why do people smoke away from other people?" "If your daddy smoked but your mommy didn't, did she get sick?" "Why don't people smoke more pipes when I see pipes in my [old] books?".  Crazy.  Any information you give this guy has the potential to take you straight down the rabbit hole.  Plus, with his steel-trap mind, you have to shoot straight lest you contradict yourself down the line.

Which brings us to Henry.  Before we left for the cottage, Henry had two teeth, was unable to climb stairs and woke up about three times a night.  While we were at the cottage, he learned to go up a stair or two, popped out a couple more teeth and continued to sleep poorly.  Although he started to do this interesting spin on crawling: he'd crawl on his hands and one knee and then use the bottom of the other foot to push him along.  Anyway, this all evolved in Winnipeg when he started to cruise along furniture pretty well and he put two great nights of sleep together...before getting a cold...and then popping out another tooth.  In the two days after we got back, Henry learned to do our whole set of stairs, clap his hands and kiss.  Since then, he has mastered standing up on his own (and staying there for a good 10 seconds), started using a sippy cup and is trying to make sounds/words (in Winnipeg I could swear he was trying to say "duck" and now he's really close to "car"...although one night he woke up at some ungodly hour, crawled over to Holly's bed and said "mama" and made a kiss sound.  Sounds pretty official to me).  So his brain is pretty much on fire.

Henry has also started to go to daycare with the same caregiver who took care of the other boys.  We're really excited about the arrangement!  Henry is transitioning wayyy better than Max and Leo did - two of his first five drop-offs were tearless, he's napping without much coaxing (Holly is WAY bitter about that one, considering that he basically didn't nap for most of the last year for her) and he's reportedly enjoying his trips to the local playgroup.  Everything looks to be settling in nicely just in time for Holly to head back to work.

Before I leave you with a couple of pictures, I wanted to tell a story about Monday night.  We went out to see Bon Iver at the Ottawa Folk Festival (thanks for babysitting, Nana!!), got back late and went to our respective beds (me upstairs with the big boys, Holly downstairs with Henry, due to the repairs in his room).  At 2:20 a.m. I woke up to the sound of Henry...which is funny, because usually the distance between us prevents me from ever hearing him.  He wasn't getting quieter so I figured Holly had come upstairs to trade spots, which sometimes happens if things get really rough.  But then I woke up, realizing that the crying was coming from beside the bed?  Where was Holly?  Was she getting a drink or going to the bathroom and Henry just crawled into the bedroom?  Did I drift off?  Very confusing.  Now he's making a lot of noise and I'm yelling for Holly to pick Henry up because he'll wake up the kids...I think I even said something along the lines of "this isn't funny if this is a joke!"  No response.  So I got Henry and hobbled into the kitchen where...there was nobody.  I saw lights on in the basement so maybe Holly had gone to the bathroom down there, which would explain her not hearing me.  But that's getting disturbing, thinking of Henry getting up the stairs without supervision.  I bounced downstairs and couldn't see or hear Holly.  Now I'm really confused.  I went back into her bedroom where she was STILL ASLEEP.  It turns out that Henry had crawled off his mattress and, without waking Holly up, left the room, went up the stairs, went through the kitchen, rounded the corner, went all the way down the hall and then came into my room.  WHAAAATTT?!?!?!!  Needless to say, we kind of freaked out.  There are so many "what if?"s here that the mind completely boggles.  Imagine if we had closed the gate at the top of the stairs?  Henry has no idea how to get down stairs...  crazy.  He did all of that travelling in a sleeper with slippery feet!  Holly has been extra careful to shut the door ever since and we are moving his crib to the basement this weekend.

On that note, here are a couple of pictures.  I promise a picture-heavy post soon.

Ahh, back in the day when we could put you on the ground and you couldn't get into much trouble...

Seriously, this is like in the top 5 percentile of group pictures that we take these days.  Can't you all just look at the camera????

There seems to be some intense relationship between the boy and his Fudgsicle.

Henry along for the ride at the beach with mommy and auntie

One of the last few pictures taken before Leo lobbed a shovelful of sand in the lens of the camera.

The older boys and their friend Maddie take in a high school band at Westfest (an amazing free street festival close to our house)

Batman was on hand too.  He told the kids that Joker went "that way" and the kids promptly lost it when it was time to turn around and go home.  Thanks B.

Again, can't you all just smile at the same time?

Yummmmmm

Lobsters were on super sale one night in June so Holly got a few good-sized beasts as a treat for me and we invited Nana over to share in the buttery goodness.  The kids were really interested in the biology of lobsters and it turned into a bit of a science fair.  At one point, Max even forbade me from eating the last lobster.  At least Nana, Holly and I enjoyed it.

This last gem is also from Westfest.  We ducked into a seniors' centre for some respite from the heat and humidity.  They had snacks, tables and chairs, and lots of fun activities.  Holly decided to try her hand at some Scottish country dancing.  As you can see from the video, the Scottish reel moved Leo as well.