Another Week Flying By

Hey there folks.  Quick guest post – Alicia started one but then discovered that she was really busy so it falls to me to keep some momentum on this glorious website!

The past week has been another good one.  Amelia is becoming even MORE interesting, mainly due to her picking up fun habits from her little buddies at daycare.  Lately the drama levels have been higher than usual, earlier this week she knocked her box of raisins over, looked at me, started to cry and then blamed Dexie for making a mess.  Smooth.

Wednesday she had her shots (18-months) and was very brave.  Some tears but the HankieBlankie came to the rescue and all was well.  No more diseases for Meals!Friday night Alicia was out, so I was at home with Meals – we took it relatively easy and read lots and then went to bed early. 

Saturday, Alicia took her swimming, here’s her exerpt on this one:“I had a rather late night and didn’t get home till 12:30 so I must say the 8:30am swimming class the next morning was slightly painful (that and having to put a bathing suit on).  This was my first time taking Meals swimming since the summer and I must say she is much more relaxed in the water now.  She has always enjoyed swimming but now she will lay on her back without a fight and she blow bubbles, she still waves her hand in my face when I ask her if she want to go under the water but it is coming along.”

Sat afternoon meals and Alicia went shopping then we all piled into Leigh & Rob’s party wagon (the new MPV) over to Heather and Adam’s for a boozeup and fancy dinner including the only bannock I’ve ever eaten, which now turns out to be quasi-fraudulent, in terms of its authenticity – SHOCKING. 

Sunday we lazed in the morning (1-star hangovers) then groceries/cooked/toilet etc. then dinner at the rents.  The toilet (which was leaking and being stubborn) is now fixed, though now there is a leaky valve in our laundry room, which may need some torching, we shall see…

On Monday, there was a ‘families’ party at Daycare, mainly to introduce new helper Larissa to everyone, it turns out that she is marvelous and fun and Alicia can summarize that one for me:“Larissa introduced Amelia to her husband as “the funny one”. Amelia wanted nothing to do with me but chased Mark (Edwards Dad around all night wanting to be picked up).  Her new boyfriend is Jaden. The kids ran around in a swarm, like they owned the place and couldn’t really be bothered with the parents. “

The rest of this week so far has been good.  Alicia and I have been busy with work and with trying to keep on our fitness on track.  Meals is out to get her haircut tonight in Streetsville, so we’re off to see my parents and indulge at Chateau Estes.  Woop!

Bonus

Okay a bonus post this week cause I forgot the two things I wanted to say about Meals in my last post.

 

Heather has been very good about making sure they know their P&Qs as was first noticed with the “Help please” that she would crack out at the most importune moment but the please always made it impossible to ignore. Now she has moved on to “Move, please”, she askes us to move please, the cats to move please, as well as she toys clothes and furniture.  We find it rather entertaining but our daughters polite behaviour is wearing off on my husband and no instead of being treated to fist shaking and some colourful language during rush hour on the way home my husband just requests the car in from of him to “Move, please”.

 

My daughter has also learned the art of manipulations… On the weekend she told Jeff that her snow pants “hurts hurts” as he was putting them on, then Dexter walked by and Amelia was going “Hi Dexie” hmmm not hurting so much now…  she has also told me she needed her diaper changed to get out of going back to bed (she was clean) and my current favourite is that she has tried to blame the sore on her thumb (from her sucking it) on Dexter, Maize, Edward or anyone else she can think to pin it on… bah!!  We have tried to talk to her about telling fibs but that one isn’t getting through yet.

This morning she is home with Jeff cause she has to FINALLY go get her 18month shots (she keeps getting sick and I keep having to put it off), anyways we asked her what she wanted to for breakfast and she told us “eggs”, Jeff asked her what kind and she informed him she wanted “green” ones… hmmmm I think Dr. Suess is making an impression

Rub a Dub Dub Sammy’s Sleeping in the Tub

Well lets see what have we done lately… not much we are still recovering from pre, during and post Christmas and we are hibernating. Friday night Mark, Chelsea and Sammy came for dinner at our place.  We got take out from Shala-mar on Roncie and it was TRES YUM!!!!  Post dinner the kids had a play, Meals showed off for Mark and Sammy had the privilege of tasting some new toys.  When it came to putting them to bed, I remembered that our playpen was at daycare and we didn’t have a bed for poor sam.  We contemplated a laundry basket but he is for sure too big and we didn’t have any suitable drawers so we settled on the bathtub.  By the time the guys finished his little nest I wasn’t too sure why we all didn’t sleep in bathtubs. The only issue with the tub option was that we only have one bathroom and so we had to pee very quietly the rest of the night… After the kids were counting sheep, we played trivia pursuit and although Mark and Chels got out to an early lead we were pretty evenly matched.

Saturday was pretty quiet, Meals had swimming in the morning with Pake again, again I ran home and Jeff was back to Saturday hockey. Once we all arrived home we were all pretty tired.  45mins after Amelia got home from swimming she requested a “doe doe” and when I asked if she wanted to read a book first or sing a song, I got “nooooo Doooooeee Doooeeee” yawn. Evidently swimming wipes the kid out.

Julie came over in the early afternoon and Julie and Jeff did a bunch of cooking while I tidied and cleaned.  Jeff tried to get Amelia involved but for some reason she had a paralysing fear of my mixer and was not too keen on getting near it.  I had a very satisfying time sorting out Amelia’s toys and putting away all the ones that she is too old for now, ha ha.  Her toys now fit back into the two baskets that we have, yippee!!! Saturday was really quite quiet and nice, it was great!!!  Julie left after dinner and I watched Devil Wears Prada and Jeff played computer.

Sunday, Jeff and I headed to the gym with Leigh while Amelia stayed at Leigh’s with Ronan and Rob.  Sunday afternoon Jeff and John (of John, Jen and the girls fame) went off to the Raptors game together and Meals had a nap and I did more cleaning and sorting (I have been very remiss in my cleaning so there has been a big backlog, hence all the cleaning). Sunday evening we headed over to John and Denise for our Mexican warm up dinner, yum yum. Only 4.5 weeks till we are all off to Mexico, can’t wait!!!

Hmmmm, now what is new in Meals world. Amelia is no longer the only full timer at Heather’s, Edward (pronounced Egbert by Amelia) started a couple weeks ago full time and yipeee Amelia best bud Macy started full time this week.  The two of them are two peas in a pod and by all reports from Heather are pretty inseparable. Meals vocabulary continues to expand at what we find a pretty crazy rate, she cracks out some pretty crazy words at times that floor us.  I also am amazed at how much she remembers, the other day I was singing Pattie Cake with her (she finishes the lines for me) and after I finished she started going “Sami, Sami”, my step mom Sarah (Sami) was the first to introduce Patti Cake to her over the holidays, then she starts listing off everyone else she saw out west and when she got to Poppy she squealed and started shouting POPPY POPPY!!! Oh she has also figured our that we also go by something other than mom and dad, she cracked out “Jeff’ the other day and she has called me “Leesha” on occasion. She is still big on her faux food and pots and pans and likes to bring us pots full of the faux food and tell us “Dinner ready”…

Twinkle Twinkle and so forth…

Well we have started the slow recovery from the holidays, Amelia is back on a normal sleep schedule with the exception of a few coughing fits in the middle of the night that keep her from getting a real quality sleep. I guess we were all pretty bagged after our travels and then heading right back into our weekly schedules so Saturday morning at 8am when Denise and John came to pick Amelia up to take her to her first swimming lesson, we were all still in bed, needless to say there were some clothes flying and bathing suits searched for but we made it with plenty of time. I helped get Amelia ready for her swim then once she was happy in the pool with Pake, I ran home, it worked out well Amelia got her swim, John got some play time in the pool with Amelia and I got some exercise. After hearing John’s swimming report it sounds like Amelia is really improved in her “swimming” she can blow bubbles now without drinking half the pool and she will actually lay on her back without fighting it.

 

After swimming Amelia had some playtime and went grocery shopping with Jeff while I started doing the big post-xmas clean out to make room for all the Christmas spoilage. Our house is bursting at the seams these days so there was a big need for some clean out, I think Part 2 of the clean out will happen this weekend. Amelia came home form her grocery adventures with Jeff and was pretty beat (swimming does that to her) she ended up having a 3hr nap in the afternoon, give us lots of time to tidy and cook etc.

 

Saturday night we had our friends Sean and Sylvia over for dinner.  We hadn’t seen them in so long so it was nice to catch up.  Seeing as we are used to having 7 or 8 people for dinner when we have our families over, I amazed at how easy it is now to entertain only one other couple.  Amelia hit Sylvia up for some French story time and kept giving Sean high fives.

 

Sunday we went to the gym in the morning (trying to get back into a gym routine again) and then headed home, washed up and I went and did abit of shopping with my friend Andrea. I was on a mission to find a new little table for our printer that is currently on the floor and Amelia likes to try to sit on, ugh not so good for the scanner on top me thinks. After shopping and then some relaxation we headed over to Julie’s for a yummy Sunday night dinner and catch up with the family.

 

Mondays don’t usually make my blog cause really what good things happen on a Monday, but this past one is an exception, our friends John and Jen had a new baby girl, Claire. I am sure their girls, Emma and Leah, will enjoy playing dress up with their new doll.

 

Amelia has been fighting abit of a cough, she is totally fine during the day and doesn’t cough at all then in the middle of the night we will hear her hacking away, it is heart breaking. Jeff and I lay in bed feeling horrible but unable to do anything cause we don’t want to actually wake her up to give her something. In happier news, Amelia is adding to her repertoire of songs she can now sing happy birthday to me and to Jeff, and she even says birthday now as apposed to kind of mumbling through that part.  Her favourite song the last few days is “twinkle, twinkle”, we took her for a run the other day in her running rocket and she serenaded Jeff the whole time with it. Her final eye tooth is coming in right now and you can see her little white gum, yesterday we picked her up from Heather’s and she had the big rosy cheeks, poor Bee. She seems to be developing quite the memory and I can now ask her about her day at Heather’s and I can get some “details” of the day. This morning a touque Julie borrowed and wore a couple days ago was sitting on the table and Amelia pointed to it and start going “JuJu, hat, JuJu”. Not sure what else to say, with the exception of having a larger vocabulary Amelia is her usual kinda goofy, cheerful self. The other day Amelia was eating dinner while Jeff and I were both making our dinner, she finished and we gave her a cup of applesauce (which she is a big fan of requesting these days).  We both had our backs to her for a minute and I turned around and there she was with the biggest silly grin on her face with apple sauce coating ever inch of her face and part of her hair and hands, she was extremely please with herself, I had a have hard time not laughing, I wish I had a picture! (I should note that these days Amelia is very good with a spoon and can even make it through meals without having to be wiped down after, this applesauce moment was all play).

 The weekend is almost here again, we have almost no plans! Yippee!!! I need some relaxation and I think our cats are feeling very neglected and in need of attention that doesn’t involve them getting mauled or “kissed” by Amelia.

Ah Holidays

Oh now where to begin, I have been slacking lately with all the holiday busyness. Just before Christmas Jeff turned 30, his actual day wasn’t celebrated with much fan fare but as you avid readers know we did it up pretty big the weekend before and then as a surprise the day after Jeff’s birthday I took him out for a very nice dinner at Perigee Restaurant in the Distillery District. To add to the surprise our families joined us and Jeff’s friend Damon, who couldn’t make it to the previous weekends booze fest. Dinner was incredible, at the start they asked us how many course we wanted and what our likes and dislikes were from there they created a menu for us. I must say it was fantastic each course was a surprise. We had everything from frio gras, to boar to bison. While we were out indulging ourselves, Amelia stayed home and was watched by Danielle and Rory, I was shocked and thrilled she didn’t even seem to care we were gone.

Just before the holidays we had an early surprise, Amelia had her first requested poop in the toilet.  I am have teased my parents for the past few years about talking about their dogs feces at the dinner table but I must admit I quickly broke my feces ban with this news J We have been pulling out Amelia little potty lid a lot recently cause she had a killer diaper rash and I have let her run “free” abit with the promise that she tell me if she ahs to go. Well one night at the end of a “free” range diner she announced “PEE PEE”, I totally thought she was just trying to get out of her chair but I obliged but maybe not as quick as I could and I was carrying her up the stair and low and be hold she peed all over me, my first lesson in potty training the 1 in a million time you don’t actually rush the kid the toilet you get peed on. Well the next night she was not free range but she told Jeff she had to go poopoo, he rushed her off, she requested her reading material and sure enough she actually went (the reading material is KEY).  This is all rather exciting cause, well, changing diapers really isn’t that fun and neither is the cost. Anyways I have decided that Amelia’s New Years resolution is to be potty trained by 2008 (I am leaving a big window).

Now on to much less poopy matters, we had a quiet per-Christmas weekend. Sat Jeff and I went to see James Bond while Amelia sorted bows and Grandmaman and Pakes.  I loved this James and Daniel Craig is GREAT!!!! That night after the movie we headed over to my mom’s for Turkey burgers. We finally did what we have always threatened, skip the turkey dinner altogether and went right for the burgers, I think they were the best batch ever…

We hosted Christmas Eve and Jeff and John prepared a traditional French Canadian Christmas Eve dinner, it was YUMM…We had lots of fun and laughs.  Christmas as usual we did our round from on house to the other and also as usual we were spoiled rotten. Amelia was much more into Christmas this year than last but still after ripping opened a few presents I think it all became abit overwhelming and she need some quiet time. She sent most of Christmas walking around in her new red slipper and new candy cane stripped pants and no shirt cause she was “HOT”.  She has a big thing for being nude these days.

Christmas dinner was at my parents and Daryl cooked his most amazing standing rib roast, which is to die for!!! The whole meal was amazing and we were all so full we unanimously decided to pass on dessert. After dinner we played balderdash, fun fun fun, seeing as I am writing this post I will have to say that John and I won by a landslide (but because I am writing this post I won’t mention the earlier nights Pictionary and our less than favourable result). Much alcohol was consumed that night although not by Jeff or I as we had to deal with Amelia on the plane the next day for 5 hrs, not a good call being hungover for that task. 

The flight out to Vancouver actually didn’t go that badly, Amelia didn’t sleep that much but she was pretty happy reading with us or goofing around. We were lucky that Rich was with us too so it divided her between one more lap. We arrived in Vancouver to cloudy skies but a very excited Poppy, so excited he didn’t even recognise me when I walked around the corner and was waving away at home, I guess my hair is abit more of a change than I thought… Amelia was thrilled to see Dad and let out a massive squeal when she saw him and proceeded to try to wriggle out of the stroller. Once we let her loose she played chase me with Poppy all around the baggage carrousels while we waited for the bags.

Okay this post is getting very long and I am getting tired fingers so now for the abridged version. Once we arrive we had another mini Christmas and visit with Dad, Sarah, Adam and Laura.  Then my aunt and uncle and cousin, JC stopped in for a visit too. The next day, the rest of the crew headed over to Salt Spring while Jeff, Meals and I headed south to visit my other Aunt and Uncle and Cousin Bri (aka Joan of the Pearls and Speedo). Ann and Bob just moved to Anacortas after retiring in the spring, this is the first time I have seen their new place and it is beautiful!!! It was so nice to see them all.

The next morning we were up bright and early and off on the ferry over to Salt Spring. Amelia adjusted very well to the ferry, it was luxury for her after the car and the plane, she could run around and she took full advantage. She had her first experience with a water fountain that she thought was pretty amazing (I thought it was pretty messy). We arrive on island and the boys went to “work” (aka play with the chain saws and tractor).  For X-mas Sami and Poppy got Amelia some “Holmes on Homes” style coveralls to match Poppy and Manny Rich’s, the three of them looked pretty cute together.  Amelia enjoyed trotting around although her favourite task was re-locating the pebbles on the driveway. Kath and Ahren arrived that night to and we had a full house. The rest of our Salt Spring days were much of the same, “working”, eating, relaxing. The first couple days were abit frustrating for Jeff and I cause everyone was quite eager to take Amelia off our hands and play with her but she just wanted us, finally by the second night she cheered up and turned into her normal crazy goofy outgoing self and Jeff and I both breathed a sign of relief. Towards the end of out visit Amelia developed an attachment to Adam, and poor Adam was not left alone, if he was downstairs Amelia would stand at the top going “AaaaDUM”. With New Years approaching Laura, Rich and Clark (Laura’s boyfriend) headed back to Vancouver and the drinking replacement arrived in the form of Debbie and John.

Oh I forgot while we were away Amelia slept in our room in a playpen, in the mornings Jeff and I would lie very still and we would get to hear all sorts of things, one morning she sung her ABCs up to Hish (when we ask her to sing them she rarely gets to D) and one morning she stood up looking at us going “Mommy Daddy, Move Please, No DoeDoe”, I thought it was funny.

New Years was very nice, we went for a hike up the ridge, which a rather pregnant managed with ease (I was impressed) then came back relaxed and had a wonderful dinner that brought us right into New Year. I was in my pjs pre-midnight and off to bed but 12:15, I never full adjusted to the time change. It was an excellent New Years all snugly in one of our favourite places in the world with family and wonderful friends, we even got a somewhat slurred called from the parents out east who seemed to be have a very good night of their own all together.

I can’t believe how quickly this year has passed and how much Amelia has changed in that time, I can’t even imagine the mischief that she will be up to next year…

The next day we headed back to the mainland and then the following morning back to reality… Amelia was okay on the plane back, she threw a couple trantums that was very grating in such a small space.  She was not very happy sitting on our laps for the whole flight and when I went to the bathroom she claimed my seat when I got back and she was relegated by to my lap she instantly started pushing Jeff’s leg going “Move Please, Move Please”. John and Denise picked us up from the airport and took us home where mom and Julie had dinner waiting for us all, we wolfed down our meals had a quick catch up with everyone then they cleaned up for us while we started unpacking.

It was a GREAT Christmas Break but somewhat exhausting, thank goodness it is almost the weekend…

Lots of pics below and a ton more on Flickr…

Christmas Merriment and Vancouver Fun

No time to write right now but here are some pics.

Meals Queen of the Ferry

Brian, Jeff and I in Anacortas, Washington on the Father and Son Wirrly Gig Tour

Meals new “Holmes on Homes” style coveralls from Poppy and Sami

Meals and the boys!!!

Surveying the property with Poppy

Christmas Night

Christmas Morning – Amelia was “Hot”

New Jacket for Melie!!

Sorting Bows for Grandmaman and Pake

Jeff’s 30th Birthday at Perigee