After a Long Absence...

Alive and well(ish). Here are a few things we have done over the last 3 months or so.

Impersonate Batman on the First Day of Kindergarten.

Great fun at the Fall Fair.

Less fun at the Fall Fair when we discover the ride does NOT last forever.

Eat the puppies that Brother won us at the Fall Fair.

The Badness Centrifuge. (It didn't work. Possibly the badness was concentrated into the feet. I have no idea what Laurel is doing.)

Chillin' at the beach.

Fun on big slides.

I have no idea.

Lunch with Snug the Puppy.

Other things that we did, in approximate chronological order:

• Tisha finished her distance ed math course;
  
• kept up on gardening through approximately half the summer;
  
• fought slugs all summer;
  
• started Kindergarten (first meeting with Madame Dow to discuss our behaviour: day 5);
  
• music festival;
  
• chased after a frantically active Baby Girl;
  
• Darren got a Temporary Assignment with Crown Lands (I am now a "Land Officer");
  
• patch an ugly hole in our house;
  
• painted our master bedroom (burgundy - never again with the reds);
  
• continued to nurse a bad back;
  
• abandoned our husband while on a "no talking" yoga retreat weekend;
  
• survived visits from both sets of parents;
  
• hosted Jenny while in between hunting and partying events (please note: the hunting and partying was done by Jenny, not us - and our lawn STILL bears the scars of salting that deer hide!);
  
• interviewed with every principal in town;
  
• landed a TOC (sub) position with the district;
• got my bike stolen off our front porch;
  
• other stuff that I cannot currently recall.

Take care all, give us a call sometime - or better yet, come up for a visit.

Darren, figurehead of the family.

June 1, 2008

So how was YOUR weekend?

Ours was sunny.

Lots of time in the garden and at the beach.

Yes, this is another lazy, mostly-photos entry (we were busy, and now its late)

May 1, 2008

Random Pictures from Darren

Two of Ben's Lego creations. Blurry Mommy. Dirty (but happy) Laurel. Redneck Daddy (no, it's not a permanent look). A contemplative (irritated?) Lego master.

Garden fun, and a couple big piles of dirt.

Ok, lazy time here! Here's what we've been doing this past month instead of posting on the blog.

Um.....April 1, 2008?

In my defense, most of these pictures were taken on or around April 1. (Guess which one was mid-month!) Missed the picture of the house (I need to trespass on the neighbour's property to get that shot and just didn't get around to it.

May 1 coming soon....

Happy Birthday Baby Girl

So, in one short year, we've gone from this...


to this....



and this....



and of course some cake too...

March 1, 2008

Energizer Baby

Last night, Laurel went to sleep at about 6.

She had napped for all of 10 minutes yesterday afternoon, so she was a little tired.

Despite a bit of an ear infection, she's been sleeping fairly well for the last week or so, since her second upper tooth came in. (note: no, not through the night, but fairly well).

So, we thought that MAYBE, just maybe she'd have a really good sleep last night.

Or not...



Laurel's Evening Schedule:

6:00 - Sleep

7:00 - Wake up. Nurse. Try to smack mommy in the face when done nursing. Get put in crib. Voice displeasure. Spend an hour screaming at daddy when he's not picking me up, screaming at him when he does pick me up. Also, scream at daddy.

8:30 - Get taken out of sleep sack and (gently) dumped on the floor of the living room. Roll around looking tired, then scream at mommy when she tries to cuddle me.

9:00 - Take mommy's hat off of her head (score!) Spend the next half hour putting hat on, taking hat off.

9:30 - Find a ball. Spend the next half hour throwing ball around and crawling after it like a maniac.

10:00 - Learn about the theory of magnetism. Sometimes magnets stick to the fridge, sometimes they don't. It's more fun when they don't because it's noisy. Also, they don't stick to the dishcloth hanging on the fridge, or mommy.

10:30 - Daddy comes home with pizza! (whole 'nother story) Mooch pizza crusts.

11:00 - Hey! The kitchen floor is slippery! Slide around the kitchen floor on stomach.

11:30 - I'm not tired, I'm just resting my head on this nice blanket while pouncing on it.

12:00 - Back to sleep.


She's now having a nice, hopefully long nap. Just to add to the fun, it was Oli and Tina's last night with us, and we discovered part way through cooking the pizza that the oven wasn't working right - friends that would normally be on top of the list for oven-mooching are currently in Mexico, and the oven that we did end up mooching was small and heated up inconsistently, resulting in a burned crust.

So we'll see how tonight goes. The ear doesn't seem to be bugging her anymore, but there are always teeth. Plus she has learned how to stand up all on her own now, and seems to have hit a whole new developmental level, as demonstrated with the hat and magnet (shifting from automatically tearing apart everything in her path to sometimes trying to put them back together again).

Comprehension

Laurel is now 10.5 months old (I know!) and well into the phase of letting us know her likes and dislikes.

She is VERY good at this. A bit too good.

For one thing, she now understands "NO", which usually generates one of two responses:

But I WANTED to throw my food on the floor!

or

This is what I think of THAT idea (look close, that is a raspberry)

In other words, I think we're in trouble. The crying happens when she has no control over the situation (in this case, we took away the food she was throwing on the floor). The non-crying raspberry/grin-of-evilness is the more usual response. She'll actually get up to the gate, give it a little shake to get our attention, and then really shake it while laughing at us.

Bwah ha ha ha! Look what I'm doing!

All in all, its kind of new territory. Ben was BUSY. Insanely busy. We used to joke about how we could hire him out to check out other people's babyproofing. If we stopped him from doing one thing, he'd just move on to another (and another and another). Laurel, to put it mildly, is more persistent.

So, yeah, looking forward to her adolescence.

Can you read this title? Ben can!

Warning: Serious parental bragging ahead (since I don't want to be snubbed at playgroups)

So, Ben started reading last week, and isn't showing any signs of stopping. He's even trying to read "deep in his head" (silently). He's also been getting up early (6:30, ug) and quite happy to get up by himself for a half hour or so and read his books. There is some sounding out of words, but for the most part, he seems to just know what a lot of them are.

So, at least we know he'll be academically ready for kindergarten. Physically, he's come a long way since the summer - he jumps and hops all over the place now, and is taking skating and gymnastics, (Thanks Nanas and Papas!)

Plus he could probably pass a science 9 biology test. Quick! Where are the following parts of the body: ossicles, pancreas, radius, gall bladder, cochlea, bladder, adrenal glands?

Here's a little help from Ben!

All in all, we're quite impressed. The downside is that I feel like I need to downplay it a bit, since I don't want to a) be considered a braggart (except for here, where people can just stop reading) or b) be thought of as one of those pushy moms who have been using flashcards and phonics programs (that would require some sort of organization). So, Ben is reading and pretty much no-one in town knows it except for us.

The other downside is that we are getting some regression in other (mostly behavioral) areas as well - part of it I think is just Ben being a boy (probably not helped by his boy-heavy pre-k class: 12 boys, 3 girls, 2 poor teachers), but also there is so much going on inside his head right now that rules and routines that we have done FOREVER are constantly being overlooked or forgotten. Plus he's waking up earlier again, and having problems falling back asleep (ok, this is kind of more a problem for us than it is for him, but some days he is soooo tired and any extra sleep we squeeze into him just gets undone with the early wake up time)

Other non-Ben news this week: Laurel just got one of her top teeth and is about to get another, so maybe we'll all get a bit more sleep soon!

Flatterer

Ben, trying to get Darren to keep telling him made up stories:

"That was a GREAT story, Daddy. Could you tell me another?"

and

"I LOVE your stories Daddy. Make up another one please"


It worked really well.

Daddy, can you tell me stories ALL night long?

Feb 1, 2008

Minus thirty-seven with the wind chill....

...and we managed to go for a walk yesterday! (many MANY layers of clothes were worn, and the kids had a hot water bottle in the uberstroller with them)

It was fine except for the part where my eyelashes froze together.

And yes, I just remembered that I have this blog thing. In which I write. More posts coming soonish!

Jan1(ish), 2008