BLOG DECEMBER 2011

Saturday December 31, 2011

So...the year is done. The kids had a fun New Years eve with their cousins. Rain, Piper, Jack and Julia insisted on staying up until midnight. So at 10:30 Uncle Scott changed all the clocks in the house...we called them in, poured them apple juice and toasted in the new year, then sent them to bed. I missed New Years because I had to crawl into bed with a cranky Squee at 11:45pm. Ah well...the lead up was great. They kids were stupidly overtired which made them wild and funny.

Christmas was another great day of fun. The girls cousins came over to sleep over. We put out snacks for Santa and his reindeer and watched "A Christmas Carol". They all went to bed (after having many many parental warnings which ended in jack and Rain being seperated to different beds)...and the parents stayed up until 2am playing Rock Band. The kids were up about 7am on Xmas morning and eager to open gifts...Nana, Opa and Jamie soon joined us and the made ripping began. Aunties Mags and Manda came out mid morning as well. Then off to Grandma's house for xmas dinner, more rippings and a couple dozen games fo twister against Aunt Heidi.

On boxing day we headed to Uncle Dougs cabim with some hiking in the woods, tree climbing, burning sticks on a bonfire and yes, even roasting chestnuts (which were not bad tasting by the way).

We got snow a couple of day after Christmas and got the gang of kids out to do some toboggoning, trying out the girls new GT Snow racers. Jack seemed to find it most fun blasting down the hill and then purposely tipping the snow racer over to go out in a puff of white snow. It was funnier when he had his sister riding as passenger. The kids had a ton of fun in the snow. Even Torren went down with Mommy a couple of times.

The week leading up to Christmas was just as busy. We played hooky from school on two of the days to go to the R.O.M and the Science Centre. The kids loved looking at the stuffed animals at the museum, running through the batcave (Piper and Julia holding hands and each takingf turns with one pretending to be scared while the other comforted them), seeing the gem room and of course just running about. At the Science Centre the kids all went to see an Omnimax show (except Rain who wasn't interested) and then blasted through most of the other exhibits, the bat cave( funny how both the ROM and the SciCentre have a cave), the tornado, , the rainforest, and the Kidspark. Just as we headed downstairs and started into one of the wings a voice came over the speakers telling us we had 15 minute to get out. We'd managed to make it until closing time. The kids, after 5 hours of playing, were not tired in the least. They kept going bonkers even after we left. It's been a fantastic holiday having the cousins around. They four of them get along wonderfully.

Torren and Jamie are a different story. It' been amusing to see the toddlers interact. Jamie, having had a bad experince with another toddler who was quite mean, is wary of Torrren. Torren is blissfully unaware of this and likes to grab Jamie, follow hin around, poke at his ears and nose, and copy anything he does. They fight over toys, Nana's lap, and getting picked up. Jamie see's Torren and has started eating his feed at a frenzy knowing that he's rather stuff it un rather than share it with his cousin.

Torren has been going in Nana's hot tub. He loves the water. He is very unafraid of it too and will just step off the seat and plunge down in over his head. He has enjoyed having all different people to over the holidays and has remained for the most part happy despite having his naps all messed up.

Lastly we got a new toy in the house...straws and connectors. A very functional name for a very creative toy. The kids have been building all kinds of crazy things with it. The girls built the ROM one day....a very square structure at the bottom with a more diamond shaped structure intersecting it at odd angles. It really did look a bit like the ROM. New Years eve they buiyt a tower from floor to ceiling. I have to admit even I have fun playing with this toy.

Happy 2011...welcome 2012

Torren (on xmas morning) eating the crumbs Santa left behind.



Torren playing on the ipad



The kids saying goodbye to Daddy.



Walking on the bird feeder trail with seeds on your hat.



Jack, Julia, Jamie, Torren, Rain and Piper at the R.O.M.



Christmas morning (just before dawn)



Playing twister with Aunt Heidi



Climbing a split tree



Building with straws and connectors

Friday December 16, 2011

So we had a fun evening of non-stop clean-up. I had all three kids in the bath. Then I took Torren out (he loves having naked time after the bath). I was folding the laundry and had to pop downstairs to get the last load when I head the smashing of glass. Torren had gone into the bathroom, rooted around in the cabinets under the sink, found medium sized hand mirror and dropped it over the edge of the bannister down the stairs. So I start cleaning up the obliterated glass all over the staircase. By the time I get it cleaned up and get upstairs, Torren has emptied out the rest of the items underneath the cabinet AND peed all over the floor. So I start cleaning up that mess, while Torren ducks out to go mess up the laundry that I had mostly folded. I was about to shoo him out of the room when I see he's crouched down and....you guessed it...pooing on the floor. I send him down the hall while I'll clean up. What I should have done is put a diaper on right then and there, but I figured he's peed already an poo'd so there was no rush. WRONG! While I was cleaning up in the one room he'd into my room and pooped again, this time on our bedroom carpet (we only have 2 carpets in the whole house so what are the chances). And yes, not to gross anyone out, it was messy. So I put back in the bath, then into a diaper on him and put him in his crib with a book to look at (probably what I should have done ten minutes earlier and avoided the whole episode) while I cleaned up the carpet.

We had a double shot of birthday parties on Saturday. Cousin Scarlett's in the morning and school friend McKenna's in the afternoon. Scarlett's was a a playgym and the girls and Torren got to round about, eat, run, play, jump, climb, and eat again. It was fun and crazy with plenty of kids. In the afternoon we went to McKenn'as house and they had a guy come in and do a percussion show with all kinds of instruments from around the world while he told them a story. He has all the kids attentions completely glued to him. It was an exellent show. They also did some crafts, had pizza and cake and then danced about with balloons. It wasanother fun busy party. Torren did great despite missing both his naps and only garbbing about 45 minutes sleep in the van between parties. He loves the other kids and the music and the action. At the playgym he was quite interested in the other kids close to his age. He seemed to like pushing them as if he wanted to make them fall over. My boy, the bull. Gotta teach hium some playdate manners.

You'd think that after that full day of action and excitment the kids would be tired but we still managed to have a dodgeball match in the bedroom with all the stuffies. At one point Piper got drilled in the eye by a stuffie thrown by her Dad. She had a brief moment of crying and then resumed the game. Dad apologized saying he hadn't intended to hit her in the eye...he was only aiming at her head.

Rain was singing me a song they learned at school. "S.A.N.T.A" (the song is basically BINGO excpet using Santa's name). I joined in "...and Santa was his name-o..", Rain stops, looks at me and says "Santa IS his name-o". He's not dead! In the bathtub the girls had their barbies and I overhead them getting ready for Kwanzaa.

Last week we were playing at cousin Liam's house and Taylor, Liam and the twins were all playing with a play kitchen when they all started thowing the play food about in a loud racket. Torren was at first shocked and then grinned, ran up to the play kitchen and grabbed it by the oven door in an attempt to haul the whole kitchen over. I stopped him before he pulled it over on top of himself.

Today we had some playtime outside after school. Torren loves little rocks, especially putting them in his mouth. He knows he's not suuposed to do that but smiles at me as he does it. Fink!

One of our peanut-mooching bluejays.



Our gray squirrel with the white ears.



Even tipped over chairs will not stop the Squee from getting on the table.



Ringing a bell without hands.



Rain loves frightening people with her fearless leaps.



Bow down before your king!



Mommy, you're sideways!



Eating yogurt with two spoons



Singing in the "Big and Little" Christmas Concert

Tuesday December 6, 2011

So items have been dissappearing only to be found later in unsual places. I found a DVD in the stink bucket and a remote control in the recyling bin. I've found all kinds of toys at various times in the toilet. Torren likes to tidy up in the own unusual way.

Torren has also figured out how to spin around in circles (something that Rain was champion at in her day), how to stick his tongue out (and I mean WAY out), how to say "hi", "up", "what's that" and "dad-dee". He surprises me with a new word each day now. He can climb up on pretty much anything and now is delighted to get fed by his sisters while sitting on the kitchen table. He now hates his highchair because of his new found climbing ability. He honing his hamminess (laughing because he knows he's funny and so you should think he's funny too) and his ability to charm with his smile. He does the one hand "Yo" when he sees the other Dads dropping kids off for school and wait for them (with his hand held up in the air) to high five with him. He is obsessed with the cats (and although he is a bit rough sometimes and earns a chomp here and there, he still persists with following them around). He loves to "arf" whenever he sees a dog.

The girls have gone into drawing and craft overdrive. I find we are either drawing and adding to our ever growing art gallery wall or doing another craft. Today Opa had given us a huge Elephant Ear leaf to take into school. The girls wanted to talk about it to the other kids so we reaserched the plants and wrote out about ten cool facts about the Elephant Ear Plant (aka Alocasia Gigantea) on cue cards for them to read out to the class. They rehearsed their lecture and were eager to give their presentation to their classmates. After school Rain brought the leaf out and went running around on the hill with it. Within about 15 minute the plant was pretty torn up....another 10 minute later and it was in shreds. Kids took home pieces, including us. Once we got home, Piper wanted to use the remaining shred we saved in some kind of craft. So we ended up ripping it into little pieces, glueing it to paper, making Christmas trees pictures out if the bits. They then used all kinds of materials as ornaments on their shredded leaf xmas tree. Pretty good idea. They looked awesome! Yesterday we made elastic string guitars...tomorrow Rain has picked out paperball snowmen.

We started off the month with the local Santa Claus parade where we met up with the cousins. The girls wrote out their letters to Santa for the postal workers to take when they passed by. Torren was unsure what was going on, when the parade first started. But he soon got into the groove and was clapping, dancing and marching. He got his little hands on some candy canes and even gave a flag a wave a couple of times. He seemed to like the marching bands and the dogs best. The girls loved it all (but I think the highlights are the number of candy canes they collect from each float that goes by)

Today Rain locked me and Piper out of the house. I went out to the garage, Piper followed, and when I tried to get back in Piper told me Rain had locked the door on us. I pounded on the door. I rang the doorbell but Rain didn't come. I was yelling through the door and endlessly ringing the doorbell ((Torren was up having a nap of course) when she came to the door smiling. She soon stopped smiling when I yelled at her to open the door. I asked her if she heard me. She said yes but she was reading and wanted to finish her book. We had some words. Then we had lunch.

Rain's letter to Santa.



Piper's letter to Santa.



Hello? Hello? You gotta talk louder...the reception on this tennis ball is pretty bad.



Alocasia Gigantea...aka a leaf from an Elephant Ear Plant.



Waiting for Santa at the parade.



Mmmmm...candy cane.



AH-CHOOOOO!



Torren's mock jeans ad.