Mangos Verdes

I feel like life is kicking my butt these days.  The nausea has lifted but the overwhelming tired feeling has remained.  Will it ever go away?  I have no idea.  I think most people know that pre-kids, and even with 2 I’m a morning person.  I used to wake up at 7am regardless of what day of the week it was.  Even on vacation!  With kids, it slowly crept up to 7:30-8am, which isn’t too bad.  But right now my new normal is at least 8:30am and once on the weekend it was 9am.  If I didn’t feel so guilty about leaving Mike alone with the kids (let alone getting them off to school and the fact that he has work too) I think I could easily stay in bed until 10am.

I even have the benefit of help – my parents are more than happy to take the kids to babysit for a while and have started having both kids to sleep over.  I’ve taken advantage of this twice in the last week.  But there has been a lot of events going on lately, ladies nights out, dinners with friends, Canucks games.  So I’m still not feeling particularly rested.  I really need to slow down, but with Mike’s birthday and Chinese New Year this weekend and Aly’s bday party coming up, that’s unlikely for another couple weeks.

We have at least gotten a lot accomplished at home in the last little while.  We bought a bunk bed for the kids over the Christmas break and finally set it up this weekend.  Aly’s bed and dresser went to my friend Priscilla’s to await use by her daughter Lexi.  Aly is happily sleeping in the bottom bunk and at some point we will pick up another twin mattress and transition Gavin into the bottom bunk and she will go up top.  At the same time, my parents decided to get rid of their really nice 5 piece bedroom set so we upgraded our dresser to a much nicer bigger one and the kids got a big armoire.  All this extra storage space is very welcome!  We’re slowly reorganizing and fitting things into these spaces.

Finally I finished our 2008 album (I had to wait a couple months to get Aly’s ultrasound slides developed and printed by Black’s – it took them forever!), ordered it and it arrived yesterday.  I’m very happy with it.  There is one photo that turned out pretty dark and one printing error (no biggie, a caption that was underlined that shouldn’t have been).  I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Photobook.  I have 3 more groupons to use up for 2009, 2010, and 2011.  I have to work fast since the next one expires Feb 28!  So I’m skipping up to 2011 since our photo production declined significantly last year with 2 kids on the move.

All in all, I have way more than I can handle at this point.  So if you ever come by, excuse the state of our place, my bedraggled appearance, or my habit of yawning all the time.  I really am that exhausted.

Once again, no photos…I will upload some at some point.

Wow, it’s been a really long time since I’ve blogged.  With good reason though.  I haven’t felt much like posting since I’ve been feeling fairly nauseous with pregnancy #3.  The feeling seems to colour all the experiences we have and it seems like it would be excluding quite a lot to just not mention it.

To update what has been going on since my last post, things have been a little chaotic at home.  We started renovations in early October and finished them in early December.  Cindy and Chad recommended us a great contractor who we were really happy with.  Our millwork supplier was recommended by our designer, and we weren’t so happy with the product or service.  Anyways, the millwork delays were what kept our renovation going for so long, and pretty much every weekday of that time we were hanging out at my parents place to stay out of the way of the workers.  Not easy to get stuff done at home when you aren’t there.

Aly has been doing great in school.  She’s learning how to sew and tracing her letters and numbers.  Socially she’s blossoming and not as shy as before.  Her teachers are happy with her progress.  They got quite excited when she did some montessori puzzle called the binomial cube by herself on the first try.  At her parent teacher interviews they told me she’s going to be starting basic math (addition, subtraction concepts) and starting on compound sounds in phonics.  Outside of school Aly is still enjoying gymnastics and music and is moving up to the next level (Turtle) in her swimming classes.

Gavin is growing up into quite the little boy.  He’s able to communicate quite well these days, with probably about 50 words.  He’s endlessly fascinated with diggers, trucks and cars and is obsessed with books, images, games that feature them.  He’s a charmer that knows how to kiss with a hearty “mwah!” and he loves sticking his hand down your shirt or up your sleeve caress your skin and fiddle with your clothes.  He is starting to go through that terrible twos stage though and has thrown some big tantrums where he’ll throw his body on the ground with no regard for his well being and kick and cry and scream and bang his head on the ground continuously.  I can only helplessly watch nearby until he decides enough time has passed and then will crawl into my lap and lay his head down and suck his 2 fingers in silence.  He can play favourites too, refusing one parent for days at a time (Mike was the lucky one to deal with him in Hawaii).  He’s also gone on food strikes, not eating anything but bread, crackers, or cookies over the Christmas 2 week holidays.  Luckily things seem to be back on track.  Right now he’s a joy to be around and he loves calling out “Mama” just to hear me respond “Yes Gavin!” and he’ll crack the biggest smile.

We had a great trip with the Loks, Edges, and Lowes to Kauai in November.  Incidentally, I found out I was pregnant the day before we left.  I felt pretty good during the trip since nausea didn’t set in until later.  This was probably the most laidback vacation that I have ever taken.  Every day was planned around going to the beach.  We didn’t do too much sightseeing except to drive to different beaches on the island, take the train at Kilohana Plantation, and do the drive to Waimea Canyon (where we discovered that windy roads make Aly carsick and she threw up all over herself near the top!  Thank goodness Lexi had a large jacket to spare.)  It was nice to relax at the beach while all the kids played together.  The guys got in some boogie boarding and I did a bit of snorkelling.

Christmas activities weren’t as frequent this year.  We were trying to finish renovations and clean up to decorate and I wasn’t feeling great.  We caught Bright Nights with some friends and the Santa Parade.  Aly elected to see the Nutcracker with Daddy instead of Mommy this year and then we all came down with nasty colds which carried on through Christmas Day.  It knocked the kids out so they both slept in late after getting up a couple times in the night to blow noses, etc.  We hosted Christmas dinner for my family and Mike’s mom and the kids were spoiled rotten by all our relatives.  Thankfully, our health has returned and behaviour has returned to normal – the kids with all the excitement of Christmas, lack of sleep with sickness, and large doses of sugary treats had not been on their best behaviour in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

We’re looking forward to 2012 and all that it’s going to bring us.  With a new baby on the way and celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary this summer, we have lots to look forward to and be thankful for.

**Oops, didn’t realize I forgot to post this!  Languishing in my draft folder forever!  I wrote this the first week of Sept!**

Summer just seemed to fly by in August when the weather finally started to get really nice.  Our trip to Alice Lake with the Blommesteins was great.  Alice Lake was a wonderful place to test out camping.  It’s nice and close and there is a playground for the kids, plus the lake itself with its sandy beaches and a bike trail for older kids.  The kids all got along really well and had a ball playing with Maddy and Ethan’s bug containers.  Gavin in particular really loved playing with the dirt – something he doesn’t get to see very often in down town!  The kids were all very safe with our open campfire and enjoyed smores and watching Uncle Josh chop wood – then Maddy and Aly decided to colour it with chalk so we would have a pretty fire.  Sleeping wasn’t much of an issue.  Gavin slept in the peapod inside our tent and Aly went in a sleeping bag beside him.  She was so excited to sleep in a tent and sleeping bag she kept asking if it was time for bed.  The first night Gavin cried a bit and we put Aly down an hour later and they both slept through the night.  The second night we put them both down at 9pm and they were so tired from our fun day they both fell asleep right away.

(this is as clear a photo as I could get when Aly and Maddy decided to put on a “show” with lots of singing and dancing!)

On our last day, we decided to try doing the 4 Lakes Loop before heading home.  About 15 minutes in we ran into a conservation officer with a very big gun and tracking dogs.  She told us there was an aggressive cougar in the area they were hunting and we should stay off the trails.  They were just about to close the area to hiking.  So we didn’t get to go hiking (and incidentally it was in the news just yesterday they killed the family of cougars).  With the rest of the day free, we headed up to Whistler and had lunch and Aly did some go-karting in the Adventure Zone and we introduced the kids to beaver tails – huge hit!

The rest of August we did some biking on the seawall to different water parks (Granville Island and Stanley Park) with different groups of friends.  Getting out with the kids was a lot of fun since we spent a lot of time indoors last summer with Gavin being so young.  We invested in a lot of gear – I bought a bike, we bought a cargo trailer so we could tote picnic gear in the future and we spent the best $60 ever and bought a sunshade, the Sportbrella.  We’ve already used it 6 times in the last month.

The kids have been growing up so fast.  Aly is back at montessori 3 days a week and she’s doing great – no transition problems at all.  She’s really comfortable with her class and has started formally learning letters in school.  She’s pretty good at tracing and copying at home – her biggest problem is S since she finds it hard to control the curves.  Aly is also really confident with her bike and can ride around the park and on the seawall and we don’t have to jog along side her to make sure she stops properly, she’s gotten much better at braking.  And I noticed her actually starting to draw things in her artwork instead of just scribbling as well as shading and colouring in the lines.

Gavin is really starting to move fast.  He’s moving at a pace faster than a speedwalk but not quite a run yet.  And he’s getting very agile.  We’ve started gymnastics and I’ve noticed him climbing all over everything.  He’s learned how to climb up on the ottoman and couch and we were quite worried about him falling off them but he’s learning how to get off them properly.  He still tries to go down the stairs by walking like an adult since we are always with him and he just wants to hold our hand and walk normally.  But what we really should have been worried about was the crib.  If you haven’t heard already, he flipped out of it on Sunday morning.  We didn’t realize what had happened until he was banging on the door crying and he greeted us on the floor.  We took a look at the video monitor footage and this is what we saw.

The rail was at mid chest height before all he had to do was lean forward and get his shoulders over the bar and the weight of his head tipped him all the way over.  Luckily he missed landing on his head and he doesn’t seem to be hurting at all.  I got him checked out at the chiropractor just in case.

In other Gavin news, eating has been uneven since his incisors are coming in – he only eats yogurt and blueberries all the time, everything else he could either gobble it up or turn his nose up at it depending on his mood.  And sadly, we are not having much luck with pottying these days.  Ever since he started walking it’s been hard getting Gavin to go on the potty.  And now he seems to have a preference pooping standing up (???!!!  I know, weird!  But seems to be pretty common in boys).  I’ve caught a couple poops here and there, but Gavin doesn’t seem to mind sitting in poop and unless I’m looking right at him it’s hard to tell if he has to go.  No grunting or hiding like Aly did.  Plus I’m so distracted with 2 I can’t pay as much attention.

But otherwise he’s a happy kid and he’s learning to communicate really well.  He’s picked up signing for milk, yo-oort (yogurt), grandma, dada, papa, eeeetin (ethan), and “aahwandat” (I want that).  It’s amazing how much a lot of his babbling sounds like words.  I think there might be more but I’m not 100% he’s actually meaning what he’s saying.

Aaah, back to school.  I love September and the start of a new school year.  It always holds so much promise for what’s going to be learnt and how great everything is going to be.

It’s quite sad, I’ve been working on our 2008 photobook (yes, I’m VERY behind, but the book is done, I just have to get one of Aly’s ultrasound slides develop and scan it, then on to 2009…I bought groupons for Photobook Canada that expire next summer so I have a deadline!) and there are so many cute blog posts from back then about things Aly is doing that I had completely forgotten about.  I was still posting every week or so!  I don’t know where I found the time…anyways, the reason it’s sad is I can’t post even once a month sometimes about Gavin and what is up with him, there won’t be nearly as much material for his book =(.

The weather has been very uneven this summer, but we’ve been getting out still.  Since a lot of the kids are out of school it’s been easier to organize play dates with the Blommesteins and we’ve gone to the water park a bunch of times with the Mayede/Loks and Lams.  There is just so much to DO in Vancouver in the summertime it’s great.  Whoever said it was no fun city?

We went to the Canada Day Parade with the Chins downtown…the parades are all starting to look kind of the same – we have a real dearth of good floats here.  We used to like to the Pride Parade, but I’m not sure how I’d explain everything to the kids yet.  Anyways, Aly loves all the floats and dancers and would get up and boogy when she heard a song she liked.

We hit the jazz festival for 2 days at David Lam.  Gavin had fun toddling around visiting people and discovered that water bottles have things in them and would screech for a drink whenever he saw it, so we resorted to having to hide it.  Then he started walking around to visit all the people sitting around us…lots of big smiles wherever he went.  Aly tried to hulahoop and met a bunch of girls to play with.  Mom and dad were happy that all the street food came to them and we got to try out all these new vendors.

It was Vancouver’s 125th birthday a couple weeks ago and we biked out to Stanley Park (I rented and Mike toted the kids in the chariot).  Funnily enough, not minutes after we got there we ran into the Blommesteins.  So the kids got to play a bit and make wooden boats and eat ice cream before they went home and we walked around and enjoyed the Bollywood skits, circus workshops, enormous jenga blocks, etc before we headed home.

I found out that I enjoy bike riding so we’ve bought a bike for me and we’ve been riding around the seawall and going to water parks.  I’m not as sore as I was at the beginning and it’s nice to get some exercise.  I miss rollerblading, but we can’t do it with the kids and I’m enjoying the fact that the pavement isn’t such an issue when you bike.

Gavin is 100% walking now and getting quite fast.  He can’t quite run, but he can really motor with a fast “speedwalk” and can almost keep up with me at a normal pace.  Now that he can walk we’ve been exploring the park quite a bit and he can climb up the baby jungle gym and he loves sliding down the tunnel slide headfirst at Cambie Park by himself.  He still have to figure out how to turn himself around and get down from the slide, but he’s mastered it when he’s sitting in the kids chairs so it’s just a matter of time.

At home, he really picky about food.  He’ll start of eating his own food but if he sees us eating something else he will point and say “EEEhhh” until he gets it.  If he isn’t in the highchair and he sees us eating something (especially something he knows he likes, like ice cream or peaches) he will SQUAWK and flap his arms in a frenzy to get our attention to get some.  It’s really quite funny, he reminds me of a baby bird begging for a worm from his mom.  Only a ton louder.

He’s using the foogo and drinking from the straw – he never did figure out the sippy cup.  He’s getting better at it, but at the beginning he would some times open his mouth to stop sipping when he still had a mouthful of milk, so we’ve been living with messy floors since the milk smears  are everywhere.

In terms of sibling interaction, Gavin is really starting to hit back to get something he want (and consequently Aly is getting better at taking turns!).  Flashbacks to my childhood.  I hear a lot of “Mommy he pulled my hair!” or “He pinched me.” and “AAaaaah, mommy help!”.  I suppose it’s only right that the kids pay it forward.  But yes, Gavin is starting to take what he wants and sometimes he is in the wrong, so we’re trying to teach about turns, because it really frustrates Aly to no end that he doesn’t “play by the rules”.  I think he also senses “If I cry, mommy will give it to me.”

Aly has finished school, but she really enjoyed the summer program.  There were cool field trips every week, including to the farm where she fed the goats and held a chicken and baked bread and also to the Planetarium – now she’s full of questions about outer space and what the planet is made of.  She’s enjoying her time off now since we fill our days with play dates, bike riding, water parks, and visits with family.  She’s had a couple of really bad falls since she’s so much more active now so she’s starting to get “scared” of doing things – like every time she gets on her bike she gets a bit freaked out about trying to brake, but after about 5 min she’s back to normal.

We’re also sounding out all the letters and trying to string together the sounds to make words.  Writing wise, she has trouble with the letter “s” but can spell (and has memorized) her name and can do Gavin, Mommy, Daddy, Grandma if she has something to copy.

We’re off camping this weekend with the Blommesteins, have a nice weekend!

We’ve been teaching Aly all about gardening and where our food comes from since the spring.  We’ve turned our balcony into a mini-garden of sorts and have been experimenting with different things to grow.

We grew almost everything from seed (except the strawberries) and we weren’t really sure how everything would turn out since our balcony is north facing and only gets morning sun, but we’ve done ok.  We’re not ready to swear off the grocery store, but it’s a start and definitely something we are going to continue with.

We hung a netting along the wall and planted a variety of climbing peas.  Our first peas in the pod are just starting to come out.

We bought 3 ever bearing strawberry plants so we would have a small supply of strawberries all summer and they are just starting to ripen enough to pick.

We started out with 6 heritage tomato plants and started them indoors from seed.  2 died through our own fault (we broke the stems), but 4 have thrived into hulking 5 foot plants.  The flowers are just starting to bloom, so by August we should have a bunch of beefsteak and elizabeth tomatoes.

We had 2 boxes dedicated to salads.  One for spinach and one “Asian lettuce mix”.  The spinach has turned out quite well, but we’re not sure the Asian greens are turning out.  There are more flowers than leaves, so we think the bad weather (including 2 bouts of hail) might have killed off all the leaves.  We’ll try again in mid August for a winter harvest.

Last August, I bought some organic garlic off of Sharon.  I took 4 cloves and planted them in October and have these large plants that hopefully have bulbs underneath that will be ready to harvest in August.

And finally I saw a deal for a mushroom kit to grow 10 lb of oyster mushrooms.  I left it alone for a month since we were so busy with the rest of the garden and I saw it was starting to sprout on it’s own!  I couldn’t use those mushrooms, but I opened the kit and started to properly grow the rest of the mushrooms and they are starting to get big enough to harvest.

All these things were really easy to grow, with just instructions from the internet (what they can’t teach you these days) since both Mike and I had no previous experience gardening.  Just some pots, rocks (for draining), soil, organic fertilizer and watering every couple days in the spring and now every morning since the weather’s warmed up.

Actually, since we decided to start gardening, we picked up an indoor composter.  We keep it on our balcony and there is minimal work involved.  No bugs or worms, just some basic instructions and sawdust.  Now we have our own fertilizer and we are really reducing our garbage and landfill footprint.  Metro Vancouver is starting to pick up food for compost soon, but there isn’t a solution or timeline yet for multi-unit dwellings.

Aly is quite fascinated to learn where our food comes from.  But she hasn’t connected all the dots yet…we got our bulk chicken order today and at the farm we went and looked at all the baby chickens and some that were ready for slaughter.  But she hasn’t made a connection yet between the cute feathery birds to the things we eat.  I’m not sure what to do when she does.  I remember making the connection myself at about 8 years old and I stopped eating duck (from the peking duck).  I guess we’ll cross that bridge once we get to it.

Happy summer!

You might have seen on Facebook that Aly busted her runner bike a while back.  She accidentally went down a steep hill and ran into a cement block and flew over the block, landing in the garden it contained.  She laughed and shaked it off no problem, but her bike was done.  Since it was wood, the impact broke the front and bent the internal screws holding it together.

We took the bike to MEC (where we had bought it) to see if we could replace the broken part.  With their fantastic return policy, they actually took the whole bike back and exchanged it!  They agreed that a kid obviously learning to ride a bike is going to crash it and it shouldn’t break like that.

We had been contemplating getting a pedal bike for Aly this summer, so we decided to save the brand new bike for Gavin (hee, the kid has to get something new once in a while) and get Aly her pedal bike.  So we went to Toys R Us and after looking through the zoo of a bike department we settled on a bike – thankfully not covered in Barbie or Princesses, but it is still pink.  If you’re looking to buy your kid a pedal bike, we had saved a great post from Yoyomama that detailed all the things to look for, here.  Our bike ended up being 14″ wheels, since 16″ was way too big.  Aly needs to grow a little bit so she can straddle the seat and touch the ground, but she’s pretty close.

We took her riding on a flat open space across the street from our place.  Check out her evolution learning how to ride a bike.  She still needs to learn how to brake, but she never wants to practice that since she’s always wanting to go go go.

It doesn’t seem like Gavin has been in our lives for only a year – it seems like he has always been part of the family.  Looking back at all the complications and the stress we had with him being in the hospital, we’re lucky that things have turned out so well.  Gavin is a laidback, happy baby and he’s progressing really well.  Just after I wrote his 11 month post, he took his first steps.  We got sick so he didn’t attempt it again for a week or so, but he’s really moving now and able to stand up without pulling up on anything, walk a fair distance, change directions and turn around.

With all this movement, sleep suffered a little, so he was waking at 6am for a little while.  But he’s slowly worked his way back to a 6:45-7am wake up and his parents so happy to have that extra cycle of sleep!

We’ve attempted some more new food and still no reactions.  So we’re now able to eat as a family fish, eggs and goats milk.  And because Gavin always wants what we’re eating he’s also had french fries and ice cream way younger than his sister did.  But Gavin’s favourite food are hands down bananas and cheerios.  He starts screeching whenever he sees a banana and can eat one and a half bananas for a snack.

Gavin is also getting very insistent on feeding himself (part of the reason he likes cheerios so much).  He started fussing while eating, which was odd since he ate everything.  It turned out a spoon to hold himself was all he wanted.  But he started fussing again and now he wants to dip his spoon into his food and feed himself.  We’re now vaccuuming 3 times a day and still not getting all the mess clean.

For Gavin’s first birthday we participated in Child Run and got all our friends to join us.  Together we raised over $8 000 for BC Children’s Hospital.  They took great care of Gavin when he was born, so we’re happy we could do something in return.

Yes, Aly’s birthday was a really long time ago.  3 months ago.  But we did have 2 fabulous parties, so I do want to acknowledge them and the milestones that she has reached.

Our first party was in January before our vacation.  We were lucky enough to win a free birthday party at Jump! Gymnastics.  Which is one of Aly’s favourite places so that worked out quite well.  It’s funny, birthday parties are one of the only places that I see people at now, but it’s so busy it’s really hard to catch up with anyone in a meaningful way other than “hey, how’s it going?”.

Aly’s birthday party at home was the first time we’ve mixed school friends and our other friends.  It was very interesting – Aly was clearly very attached to her new friend Julian from school.  In every photo the two of them are together.  It’s actually progressed to the point now where they have to separate them at school for half an hour because they can get so silly together, plus the teachers want them to socialize with the other kids too.  I’m glad that Aly has started to reach out to kids on her own at school.

In almost every photo, Aly’s friend Julian was there too!

In Mauritius my parents threw a party for Aly there on her actual birthday.  The party was more for my parents to get all my family and their friends together to welcome us (heh, especially since it was the day after we arrived).  But Aly had a nice time meeting her cousins, swimming, eating cake, and of course, meeting Babar and dancing to lots of music.  It turns out Aly was very excited to meet Babar even though she had only seen his show maybe once or twice in her life.  Mickey and Minnie were a big hit at cousin Kenji’s party too, so we’ve started to discuss the possibility of Disneyland next year after Gavin turns 2.

So excited to meet Barbar

In terms of development, Aly started to sleep through the night with only underwear right after we came back at the end of February, so she’s completely out of diapers which is a relief.  School has also helped make her more independent when it comes to going to the washroom, so she can do the whole routine by herself, complete with wiping and washing her hands (although she has a tendency to play with water).

We’ve also noticed some progress with her school work.  She still has a tendency to scribble rather than draw, but she is better able to colour in a picture in a colouring book and she’s also started writing her letters.  We’ve been using an iphone app, the leapfrog scribble and write, as well as flash cards to practice her letters and she is quite good at a few of them.  I also received a Mother’s Day tea invitation that she made at school and she wrote her name herself.  She’s doing well and I feel kind of bad I haven’t been sitting down to do it with her one on one more often, but so often when Gavin is napping I just turn on the tv so I can rest or so she doesn’t make noise.

We had parent teacher interviews a while back and we got to see examples of her schoolwork and her teachers said she’s really starting to come out of her shell and be more vocal, especially when it comes to show and tell.  I notice too that it’s easier to get her to talk about her day at school and find out what she’s been doing.

Finally, we’re seeing some real movement on the food front.  We’ve had a couple showdowns at dinnertime – the “you sit there until you finish your vegetables even if it takes you all night” kind that our parents used to do.  I know “the books” tell you not to do that, but really, after I’ve prepared 2 or sometimes 3 dinners which she has liked in one point in time or other, I’m pretty frustrated.  And I do think it’s been working.  She’s been eating way more greens (liking all types of choy, asparagus, broccoli, spinach) and being more adventurous about trying different things (mango, strawberries – crazy I know because they are so tasty but she would never try new foods before).  Yay!

Our real trouble has been mediating Aly and Gavin as I mentioned in Gavin’s update.  Aly has never been great at sharing and it’s been a real eye opener for her to always have to give in to what Gavin wants.  She gets very frustrated when he wants something that she has and I make her give it to him for the minute that he’s interested in it.  Also, she’s not gentle when she takes things away that he’s not allowed to have (ie. like her books) since he’s mangle it by putting it in her mouth.  Her way of fighting back is to try and move him herself and she’s dropped him a couple times and also shoves him out of the way.  Fairly typical sibling rivalry stuff, but we’ve been doing time outs and more serious consequences of taking away trains for a whole week if she hurts him or moves him.  But all in all she’s much better with him than I was with my brother at that age and she’s just as likely to hurt him all the times she gives him hugs so I’m not worried about any long lasting animosity.

It’s a really fun age to get out and do things with Aly now and the weather has been (sort of) getting nicer.  We’ve been out and about as a family of four.  Hopefully I’ll get around to posting all about it sooner rather than later.

I’ve really dropped the ball on posting lately, but there has been so much going on that when I do have a minute, I haven’t felt like writing.

Gavin started to crawl a couple days after we came back from vacation in February.  I remember him doing the rocking motion in Paris on our hotel room bed.  Literally the day after we got back  he started crawling and within a week he moved on to cruising.  At first he would only crawl short distances and then when he inevitably couldn’t catch up with big sister or us would cry for us to pick him up.  But just last week he followed us from the living room all the way to the master bedroom bathroom, the whole length of our condo and kept up the with us the whole way.  In the last couple days he’s also daring to stand on his own, but he’s a little wobbly and his attempts at taking that first step have resulted in face plants.

Moving around has led to a lot of discovery about where things are and exploring new toys, so Aly is not as happy since Gavin is more able to get into her things or interfere in her play when he comes to see what she’s doing, so we have been doing more than our fair share of time outs to teach her not to push him or grab toys away from him.  Welcome to the rest of my life, mediating battles between siblings.  Other adjustments that have arisen out of Gavin’s mobility are that he’s now into cupboards and wall plugs so we’re back to the baby proofing.  Getting Aly’s toys out of reach has also proved to be challenging since he can now reach everything on her craft table and more than once I’ve caught him sucking on markers and pencil crayons (once he coloured his mouth and cheeks navy blue – I was too horrified to take a photo, but thank goodness for Crayola Washable Markers!).

Unfortunately, the one bad side effect of having a cruiser is that Gavin can now stand up in his crib, so we’ve had to move everything off of the crib ledge and take out the light bulb in the ceiling light since he can reach the lightswitch.  Luckily, he doesn’t have any problems going to sleep.

We’ve stopped keeping track of the foods we’ve been giving to Gavin.  He’s moved on to real food now that he has 8 teeth and likes pretty much everything including curry and cinnamon.  He’s still quite the squealer when he’s waiting for his food and he can see it, but we can preoccupy him with cheerios and he’s very adept at putting them in his mouth himself.

Gavin is very vocal, much more so than Aly was at this age.  He babbles away and it sounds like he’s talking his own language.  He is making all sorts of sounds and isn’t particularly fond of any sound (for Aly it was babababa).  In fact, Gavin has also started to call me “Mama”.  He’s not doing it consistently, but he definitely means me.  Usually it happens when he is very upset, like this week when I wouldn’t get him out of the crib at 6am.  (Oh yeah, he can really be LOUD too).  Gavin is also communicating through sign language too and has picked up “all done”.  He does it some times to signal he’s done eating, but more often he does it on the potty to tell us he doesn’t want to poop.

All in all, lots of progress has been made in the last couple months.  The countdown to turning one begins!

On our way home we spent 2 full days in Paris.  We weren’t sure how  the kids would take it after our long journey, so our back up plan was if the first day did not go well, we would go to Euro Disney the second day.  Our other concern was that we were completely strollerless, so no where to nap Gavin or rest Aly.  Luckily, Gavin loves the ergo carrier and happily accepted napping on me.  For Aly whenever she fell asleep we ended up taking the time to sit down and have a snack or meal while she slept.

Both kids ended up doing really well, so we got to do a ton of sightseeing, only at a slightly slower pace than we would if we had been on our own.  Our first day we started of with Notre Dame, which Mike and I saw in ’99, but we never got to see the outside facade, since all the churches were being cleaned back then for the 2000 celebrations.  The kids are quite used to being in church and Aly was very impressed with the stained glass windows, especially the 2 rose petal windows.

Then we headed for a short walk along the Seine to the Musee d’Orsay, which Mike and I had never been to.  We managed to see the whole museum (it’s not as big as the Louvre or British Museum) and we tried to break down paintings on Aly’s level, keeping it to discussions about expressions and what do you think the people are thinking.  Although, I did catch Mike trying to explain impressionism to Aly.  She quite liked looking at the statues and Degas’ ballerina paintings – ballet has been a big thing ever since the Nutcracker.

One of my dad’s friends met up with us at Musee d’Orsay and then took us to the Eiffel Tower, and then we had a Parisian dinner .(pate, prosciutto, and artisan bread, so delicious!) at his house with us and his family.  He has a daughter a year older than Aly and they had fun playing together.

The next day it rained, so we went to les Invalides, which is part hospital, burial place of Napoleon, and Museum of the History of the Army.  We did Napoleon’s tomb and then took in the WWI and II exhibits.  Aly liked looking at all the different uniforms, the maps and models of the trenches (some of them stretched 70 km long).  We met up with relatives who came with us to the Rodin Museum and then did the ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde before walking up the Champs Elysees when Aly finally fell asleep and we sat and had dinner at an Alsatian restaurant.

I was quite sorry to leave Paris.  It was only my 2nd visit and the first time was only 4 days long.  I think you need at least a week to really get a feel for the city and see it properly.  Unfortunately that’s not going to happen until the kids are older and able to understand it better.

Notre Dame

on the Pont des Arts, where couples celebrate their love by putting padlocks with their names on it on this bridge across the Seine

the Eiffel Tower

pointing out Paris on a WWII map at Les Invalides

at the Rodin Museum, in front of the Thinker

Aly’s only request in Paris was to ride this Ferris wheel that we saw at Place de la Concorde