Why hello!

Seems I got bored with blogging this year and didn't post a single update! This despite the fact that we've been living it up in Norway since August and enjoying many blog-worthy adventures. A shame, really, but I'm in luck! Tom turned the emails he'd been sending to his colleagues into a blog, so you can give it a look if you're interested in what we've been up to. Since August, at any rate. The first half of 2010 is lost. Lost!

Merry Christmas

I'm back! It's hard to believe that several months passed without a single update, but I offer no excuses. I just didn't feel like writing. Anyway, Tom and I are relaxing after a very busy Christmas Day here in Ottawa. This is the first Christmas we've actually spent in Ottawa, so it was the first time we had a tree in this house. It's also the first Christmas Henry has ever spent without grandparents on hand, which was a little sad. But we had fun keeping things small-scale, and definitely appreciated skipping the trip to the airport for a hellish trip west!

The kids were good to us this morning. Dexter woke up at 7, and we woke Henry up at 7:30. The great unwrapping proceeded like a great tornado through our house, and the pile of presents was quite overwhelming. Dexter even lost interest in unwrapping his remaining gifts near the end; he left them for a few hours until Henry started opening them for him. We spent the rest of the day hanging out and playing with the new stuff. For dinner we went over to the home of our friends Robert and Jolanda, whose son is Henry's age and also loves dinosaurs. We were able to enjoy something resembling a grownup dinner while the boys kept each other busy in a whirlwind of mayhem. I splurged on a very nice bottle of Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir for dinner, and it was worth every penny. Of course we missed all our peeps out west, but overall, it was a great Christmas.

Now, I said no excuses about why I haven't been blogging lately, but there was one big factor: my old PC laptop was on its last legs, and I found it just incredibly annoying to even boot the thing up and work on it. But recently I got a new MacBook Pro, so I'm back online at home. I really only bring this up because the one drawback of the Mac is that I haven't figured out an easy way to upload photos from iPhoto. I'm sure there's nothing to it--I just don't know how to. So, Christmas photos will follow soon. Promise!

Paging the Tooth Fairy

Henry just lost his first tooth. Time to go rummage through my change purse.

Sniff. My baby is growing up so fast!!!! Sniff sniff.

A sentence for Dexter

This morning he went for a short walk with Tom while I was getting ready for work. When he came back inside, he said, "Dere was a cat outside hiding in da bushes."

Yet he can't identify colors. Toddlers are funny creatures!

A milestone for Henry

He has a loose tooth!

Birthday boy, avec gateau

 

Dexter is Two!

Happy birthday, my sweet boy. We had a very mellow day, with just a few presents in the morning and nothing else. After last year's washout of a neighbourhood party (everyone was out of town for the long weekend), I decided not to organize anything this year. Besides, we already had a party in Kelowna, and Tom's parents will be in town this week, so we'll do a cake then.

Tom and Henry left town around noon for Henry's first overnight camping trip, so Dexter and I spent a rare day together, just the two of us. He happily napped though a big part of a long walk in the stroller, waking up in time to watch boats and ducks on the canal. Stories on the couch , then an episode of Thomas so I could have a little cat nap. We enjoyed some fresh corn-on-the-cob for dinner, then headed out for another long walk, this time with him on foot. We made it all the way to Brantwood Park, had some quality swing time, then headed home. Bath, stories, night-night at 8 on the dot. All-in-all, a very nice birthday for the two of us.

So, what's he like these days? To me, the most striking thing about Dexter at age two is how much he talks. He uses 3- and 4-word sentences regularly, complete with articles and prepositions. The challenge is that a lot of it (not all) is quite garbled. There are a number of sounds he can't make when they appear at the beginning of a word (like "S", "F", "Z", and "T" & "W" to some extent), so he'll drop it and leave us to translate. So "snake" becomes "nake", etc. Other sounds and words he squishes together in a sing-songy way. And then he blends the half words and multiple words together into sentences that really do stump us sometimes. For example, today whenever he heard an unusual sound in the distance, such as machinery, he'd ask, "What's doing it?" But it comes out sounding almost like, "Let's doonut". I spent several minutes this morning trying to figure out why he was thinking about donuts before I deciphered what he was actually trying to say. Henry didn't talk nearly as much at this age, and he was a bit slow to start stringing words together, but we was exceptionally clear in his pronunciation. Dexter is all about the toddler small talk. Once he can consistently speak clearly, this kid could really be the life of the party.

As for other traits, he still loves music and has added some crazy dance moves to his repertoire. Dexter is more social and physically adventurous than his older brother, and less inclined to get deeply absorbed in a play task he's performing. He's also a lot less stubborn than Henry was at this age (one of the first phrases Henry learned how to use was "No help!", and he wouldn't do things like ride in a stroller. He'd insist on pushing it instead). It still kind of blows my mind that I can set a plate of healthy food in front of Dexter and, provided he's hungry, he'll just dig in and eat it with no further drama. That kind of stuff was just impossible when Henry was two. So, Dexter definitely has his moments, but overall he's easygoing. Except when he's in a bad mood, at which point he becomes FRICKING IMPOSSIBLE to deal with, but that issue is its own post. In broad strokes, it's starting to seem that he's more like me, personality wise, while Henry is more like Tom. Of course they're both individuals and totally just themselves in all the ways that matter, but if I was going to put it in a nutshell, that's how I'd characterize them in relation to the rest of our family.

And, oh yes--he's inherited his brother's love of dinosaurs. Not surprising, given his total immersion in all things dino since birth. He's very cute when he's in dino mode, stomping around chanting "'ino FEET! ino FEET!" and roaring. When we were in Kelowna, he came downstairs one morning and woke us up by announcing, "I am ceratops! I am ceratops. ROAR!" He meant "triceratops." He's getting there with the big names.

He's shown no interest in using potty since we returned from our long trip, which is unfortunate, but not something I care about that much at this point. Once the new year rolls around, we'll start up in earnest.

Finally, if the story I've heard about how you can double a male child's height at age 2 to estimate his adult height is true, well, let's just say that I won't be signing Dexy up for the basketball team. Not a lot of promise there. At least he's outgrown most of his 12 month clothes. Most of them. . .

What more can I say--he's a gorgeous little boy with an impish personality, tons of fun and absolutely adorable when he's in a good mood. As I intimated before, life isn't all sunshine and roses with him, but his less savory toddler traits are a subject for another post. I won't get into all that now, after a wonderful day together and lots of warm thoughts about the past two years of fun years. So, happy birthday, my sweet pea! I can't wait to see what you accomplish in year 3!

Planes, trains & automobiles (and a boat)

Hello, blog readers, if there are any of you left. Life around here is returning to a normal (albeit summer) routine around here after 3 weeks of Momentous Travel! Yes, I had three entire weeks of vacation to burn by August 31, so we headed to the west coast for an extended stay. Our itinerary included Portland, Cannon Beach, Seattle, and Kelowna. We hit the beach, celebrated Independence Day the proper way (home fireworks, BBQ and tequila shots), bombed around the big city, visited many old friends, and spent time with my family. The boat part was my high school reunion, which featured a houseboat "booze cruise" on the lake.

It was very tiring and logistically challenging to take the kids on an extended, multi-stop trip, but definitely worth it. We had so much fun! Some random observations:

• Portland is indeed as hip and livable as its reputation suggests
  
• The Oregon Coast is every bit as wonderful as I remembered
  
• I wish we had something like the Jamison Fountain in Ottawa
  
• Good lord do I ever love summer in a humidity-free climate
  
• I simply do not understand how or why so many Canadians cling to this idea that American beer is inferior to our suds. Please sample this baby (which I did repeatedly) and rethink your outmoded assumptions.
  
• I'm glad I made it to the reunion. I got to see a few people I never deliberately lost touch with. Funny how fast 20 years can go by.
  
• My parents' back yard is sure a nice place to be on a hot day
  

With everything we packed in, the trip was quite the budget-buster, so we'll probably be staying put for a good while. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. No matter how much fun you're having, traveling with small kids is hard work. Especially when one of them **cough cough DEXTER cough cough** is prone to titanic meltdowns over issues that are minor/completely incomprehensible to adults. Overall the kids were troopers, but lets' face it--you'd have to look far ans wide to find anyone who'd say a not-quite-2-year-old makes a great traveling companion. During more challenging moments on the road I reminded myself that family travel will probably get easier from here on out. I remember noticing that Henry got distinctively easier to deal with on the plane around the 2.5 year mark, mainly because his attention span had expanded past its previous 8 second limit and he could occupy himself with a coloring book or short video. Next summer Dexter will turn 3, and should be long past the screamy/smashy/squirmy stage that makes a toddler such a pain to deal with when you're moving from A to B. I can hope, can't I?

Photos soon.

Name That Tune!

Name That Tune from NIGEL on Vimeo.

A shocking development

Out of nowhere, Dexter has decided that the time is right to start using the potty. I guess the nanny just put him on it a few times and he was like, "okay, I can handle this." I am beyond shocked. I'm almost too surprised to be happy about it. Given what a struggle it was with Henry, I had no plans to even start potty training in the next 12 months! He's a long way from being capable of staying dry, but he has no issues when it comes to sitting on the thing and doing his business.

That's parenting for you. Sometimes easy things are hard. Sometimes, hard things are easy. You've just gotta roll with it.

Birthday photos

Let's get this party started


Cupcakeapoloosa!


The builder, the boy & the backyard lab



Mothers at the Tulip Festival on Mother's Day

Henry Hits the Big 0-5

Phew! Another birthday weekend survived. Henry is now officially 5, and the event was suitably feted with a visit from Grandma Eileen and Grandpa Bop Pop, a party, and many, many gifts, including Grandpa's hand-built playhouse (a.k.a "The Lab") for the back yard. Also, a birthday phone call from Henry's favorite paleontologist, who happens to be a personal friend of our neighbor, who arranged the call. Henry told him about the real fossils he received for his birthday and learned of Dr. Larsen's summer plans to excavate a baby t-rex skeleton he discovered last year. Exciting!

For me, five is an important birthday because age five is traditionally regarded as the dividing line between "small child" and "child." When you want to explain why your house is a horrible mess, you're always tired, and you spend most of your free time at community centers partaking in activities that require you to sit on the floor, you can say, "I have kid(s) under 5," and everyone understands that they'll have to touch base with you in a few years, because right now you're BUSY. But after age 5, life with your kid starts to change. Over the past 6 months or so I've already noticed how much less hands-on parenting (literally) we have to do with Henry now. Rather than wrestle him into his clothes, I can tell him to go get himself dressed, and he does it! A mere two years ago we were fighting a hellacious battle to get him out of diapers, but now he doesn't even want us in the bathroom when he's doing his business. He shuts the door and even washes his hands on his own. He can play outside with no more supervision than the occasional peek out the door. He goes to sleep on his own and stays asleep all night long. We still resort to feeding him (i.e. scooping up food for him and shovelling it in his mouth) some nights, but that's more a function of our impatience than any need on his part (I swear, if we didn't practically force-feed him, he'd take 2 hours to eat dinner. He is the slowest meal-eater in the history of meals. Dexter eats him under the table).

In short, parenting is becoming less about grunt work and more about developing and enjoying our relationship with this autonomous little individual whom we happen to have created. And Henry's a fun guy to hang out with. None of my friends are into time-travel, prehistoric animals, prehistoric animals from space, fossils, or games of tag that involve prehistoric animals from space that are also zombies. But that's what an hour with Henry is like. He's also very affectionate, a wonderful big brother to Dexter, and generally a great kid. So happy birthday, my boy. I can't wait to see what the next 5 years bring.

I'll post some birthday week photos tomorrow. I swear!

P.S. Have I mentioned that he can read really well now? I'm so far behind in my blogging. . .

Amazing paleontological discovery

This is a longish video and a huge file, but if you want to hear Nigel interview the Pastasaurus, I recommend it.

There Will Be Chocolate

Easter weekend. Three days for most. Four days if you work for the government, like most people in this town. Shining sun. Cool spring air. And chocolate eggs. Oh yes, chocolate eggs galore.

Good Friday was sunny and relatively warm (we're talking 8C/46F range), so Tom and I decided not to be lame and actually go out in the morning. With the kids. You know, get them fed and dressed and into the car several hours before noon. This is every day for some parents, but since we got a nanny last year, we rarely have to get the kids ready in the morning. She shows up, we leave, and voila. So we are rusty! Also, Henry is a big dawdler and we have to remind him every 33 seconds to stay on task and put on his shoes, zip up his hoodie, put on his shoes, PUT ON HIS SHOES! All while trying to wrangle squirmy Dexter into whatever stuff he needs to wear for the trip. I'd been hoping that the end of winter gear would mark that start of easier family excursions, but I'm slowly accepting that until it is socially acceptable to take your children out on the town in bare feet and underwear (the kids, not the parents), it will take FOREVER for us to roll out the door with both of our pokey boys in tow. I say all this just so you don't think there's anything normal about us going out with the kids in the morning. Normally it's something I put off until late afternoon.

ANYWAY, we went to the Experimental Farm, which was hosting all-day Easter Egg hunts and "meet the baby animals" events. These attractions, combined with the fact that the weather was not awful, inspired approximately 72% of families with children under 5 in the Ottawa-Gatineau region to do the same thing. The Farm was a zoo! I've never seen it like that before. Instead of Good Friday it felt like Black Friday at Wal-Mart with waves of humanity coming at your from all sides, threatening to mow down the weak with their massive strollers.

Nevertheless, Dexter loves animals right now and had a grand time admiring the livestock, while Henry gorged on easy-to-find chocolate eggs. Really, it was a fun morning.

Saturday saw us at another morning event, this time in our neighbourhood. The new Children's Garden had an egg hunt, so the boys loaded up yet again. Then they went to an egg decorating party at the neighbours. And, of course, the Easter Bunny visited our house on Sunday.

After all this egg hunting, we are well stocked with that crappy, hyper-sweet faux chocolate confection stuff that's unpalatable to adults but CRACK to preschoolers. So now I'm playing the roll of reverse Easter Bunny, stashing foil-covered "chocolate" eggs in places where the kids, or at least Dexter, is unlikely to find them. This is necessary because if my sweet little Dexter so much as spies that shiny foil from across the room, it goes down like this:

Dexter, pointing: "Egg? Egg? Egg? Egg?"
Responsible parent: "No Dexy, no egg now. You've had enough today."
Dexter, angry: EGG. EGG. EGG. EGGWaaaaaHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

He then enters a phase we've labeled "Nuclear Meltdown," a full-throttle, no-holds-barred, drooly, snotty, screamy toddler tantrum. Let me tell you--this kid can throw them down. This will go on for HOURS (i.e. 5 minutes). Then I give up just give him the damned egg, because I'm a weak, ineffectual parent. Also, I figure he's too young to learn lessons from his behavior, so the fight doesn't seem worth it. For that reason, no chocolate Easter eggs can be visible anywhere in the house. Prevention is my only effective strategy. What can I say--the kid likes his treats. I can't imagine where he got that from...

Next year my strategy will be to acquire higher quality Easter treats and eat down the stash myself, behind the kids' backs. You can save time by putting my Mother of the Year award in the mail now!

Let's make cookies!

I managed to get a few in the oven before all the dough mysteriously disappeared.

Call me Nigel

For the last few months Henry and I have been engaged in this extended imaginary scenario in which he is an expert palentologist and I am Nigel, time-traveling dinosaur rescuer. This is not pure imagination on our part; it's the premise behind the show Chased by Dinosaurs/Prehistoric Park, where a dude named Nigel travels back in time to rescue ferocious beasts and lure them back through his time portal to live at Prehistoric Park, his sanctuary for otherwise-extinct animals. I don't remember exactly how I ended up in the role of Nigel, but it stuck. There's just one problem: Nigel is English, so when I'm Nigel I have to affect an English accent and speak in an agitated tone, which I find challenging. And I have to be Nigel a lot. If I forget the game is on and slip into my regular voice, Henry will say, "wait--you're Nigel" and make me repeat what I just said. Henry enjoys it immensely, but let me tell you--my English accent is the worst. Really, really horrible. At best I sound something like John Cleese would if he had a bad cold and a concussion, and was imitating an Australian accent. It's brutal. The funny thing is that Tom is really good at doing foreign accents and could really go to town on this game. But I'm Nigel and he's not, so I must struggle on while he laughs at the way I butcher the role. Henry, obviously, thinks my faux-English accent is just dandy.

Besides the annoyance of having to speak in an accent I find awkward to use, the Nigel game is lots of fun for us. It's pretty much shaping all of Henry's imaginative play scenarios when I'm around. Even though it's based on a TV show, we've really made it our own. Today Henry decided that we would need a Shark Car with fins instead of wheels to complete our mission, so he drew up his idea and we then pretended to build it before heading underwater to rescue a sea monster. I wrap in some educational elements, too. One thing we do a lot is draw a map together with different areas of terrain where our target could be found. Then I'll write up a series of equations for Henry to solve (he can add, subtract and do simple multiplications with the help of a counting abacus). We use those numbers to create coordinates that pinpoint our target location on the map. Then, off we go!

This game creates so many funny moments for me to enjoy and just marvel at the inventiveness of Henry's overactive brain. For example, yesterday he decided that Mr. Pooples, his penguin huggy, should come along on the mission. When I asked him what good a penguin would be on a dinosaur rescue mission, he thought for a moment and came up with three things:

1. He could use his sharp beak to chip through hard rocks during fossil digs
2. He could carefully place band-aids on wounded dinosaurs with his flippers
3. He could use the claws on his feet to scratch itchy dinosaurs, since a dino like therizinosaurus would probably get hurt if he tried to itch himself with his long, sharp claws.

So there you have it--three jobs for a stuffed penguin to complete while on a time-traveling dinosaur rescue mission. After all, we wouldn't want to bring back an itchy therizinosaurus, would we?