Happy Birthday Uncle Chris!

Today is Uncle Chris' birthday! Happy, happy day, Uncle Chris!

Aunty Anny and Uncle Chris.
From left to right, Uncle Reudi, Uncle Chris, Dad (the grumpy looking one!!) and Aunty Anny.

At my parents' wedding...I think that's Grossmeuti (my dad's grandma), Uncle Chris, Mum, Dad, my Grossi, Nadine and Grosspapa. Didn't my mum have the most awesome dress on? And sweet knee high boots. and I loved her hair. My parents were so stylish...

And here's Reudi and Chris biking. Uncle Chris used to compete as a bike racer (and cross country skiier?) He still bikes like crazy and one of these days he's going to do a bike tour of France to coincide with the Tour de France. Maybe if I haul out my new bike and get practicing he'll let me tag along.

Hope you had a great day Uncle Chris! We love you.

Tinky Got A Tooth!

She must have thought it was toothday because sometime last night Tinky sprang her very first chomper!

The clues have been there for us, but even second time parents have a hard time telling if it's a cold, or teething or just all round orneriness that makes their kid wake up a thousand times a night. Luckily we gave her the benefit of the doubt and tried to help her feel better.

The tooth isn't far enough out to see very well so no pictures, but you can definitely feel it. Bottom right. YAaaaaAY Tinkie!

Davey's new favorite expression is, "no, no. Are you kidding?!" which he likes to insert for comic effect after such things as, "I love you Davey."

Apparently Tuesdays are Play Group Days at the Beach!

Today was so beautiful out that I just knew I had to steal the car and make for the beach. Seems every other parent/grandparent/caretaker/preschool had the same idea. Everyone at the beach today had toddlers/babies with them. Wow. So we decided to travel incognito...

Shortly after arriving at the beach proper, I of course made the children pose for pictures.

(See...this is why we had to be at the beach today. Those are snowcapped mountains in the background. nice.)
We ended up making friends with two other families. First a little boy and his mum who were collecting stones and shells. Davey and Riley had great fun chasing each other all over the beach and throwing rocks in the water. I was a bit worried that since Davey hasn't really played with another child on the beach since summer that he might get carried away and throw rocks at Riley, but he was good. PHEW!


I had actually intended to do quite a walk at the beach to get some exercise in. But with all these chatty parents we mostly walked until we got stopped by the next group who wanted to hang out. But that's okay too. I can be friendly when I have to ;oP

Our next little friend was Jack and his dad. Jack was 18 months old and doesn't get to play with other boys and girls. He was adorable. In that stage where he's walking pretty well, but still almost as round as he is tall and had the most gorgeous eyes. Davey didn't understand why he didn't want to run off like Riley had done.


This is how I feel on days like today too:

I'm glad my children share my love of the beach. Now we can all look forward to coming here every single day from April to October...


Davey...snacking on a vitamin c.

The girls, playing while I fed tinkie.


Lately Tink's been getting a lot of bottles (since she doesn't want to nurse as much). She tends to drool some of the milk out and we dab at her chin with a kleenex. She doesn't much like getting her face dabbed, and she doesn't understand why she can't eat the kleenexes. But she almost always tries to make a grab for them and munch. Today I was tickling her face with the kleenex and she loved that. Then later I grabbed a fresh one to dab her chin and she managed to grab it off me. She gave me the cutest look, then quickly ticklydabbed her own chin then looked at me again, proud as punch, "check it out mamma, I can clean my own chin now. hee hee!"

Last week Davey got a copy of the Disney Pixar movie "Cars".

We had "seen" it once when Jade brought it over. I don't think any of us were impressed. Too loud. Too obnoxious.

And then we watched this gifted copy. We were all hooked. Davey in particular. He asks and would be happy to watch it 24/7. And Davey has never been much interested in TV or movies.

But this past week it got so bad my dreams are populated by cartoon cars.

If you haven't seen it yet, it's gooooood. I just have to hear certain songs from it and I start crying.

It's been a busy, busy time in our household. Sunday we met our friends Julius and Elsa who are here from Hong Kong. I had my camera with me, but they were the only ones who did any picture taking. Hopefully I'll get some copies of those pictures once they're home again.

It was really nice to see them again, and I'm looking forward to them coming out again this summer and getting to see them then too.

Elisabeth has rediscovered the joy of her jumperoo. She goes like mad in this thing, which is great because it usually tires her out for a nice long sleep :)

My dad is down in the area on his way to Mexico. We got to spend most of yesterday with him and play at one of the parks near our house. The kids loved seeing Grosspapa and he seemed to love being a big 'ol kid:






This is a massive puddle about halfway between our house and the park. The kids insisted on being pulled through it at breakneck speeds again and again and again.
And Grosspapa was happy to oblige. I wonder if he was at all sore from all that exercise? Dad??


It tired him out in any case. And my two kids seemed to enjoy crashing on him too.

Busy, busy, busy

Andrew took Thursday - Monday off work, and it has been a very busy weekend so far. But since there are still two days left in this weekend, I think I'll only write about today.

So...guess what we did today?!

We decided to get season's passes to the zoo. It's so close to our house, and Davey is free till October (and tink obviously is free for another 2.5 years) so it's worth it. Just for the free train rides!

I caught this shot while we were waiting for Andrew to finish paying. Don't you love Tinky's expression? She sure loves her big brother!

Riding the giant turtle...
WHOA! That is one big snake! Davey didn't like him much, but only because there was a big pool of water in his mouth. Funny kid!


Riding the giant pig. No comments please ;oP

Then tonight the kids wanted to play outside. Tink LOVES her new to her car!

And she loved being pushed around by her big brother even more.

We are the most photogenic couple I know.

Me and Davey in the tree house. Oh you can't see me. Ah well.

Back in the Dating Game

Andrew found us a babysitter, a really nice girl who lives close to us and who has lots of experience babysitting 6 month old babies. So last night she came over and went to Best Buy to try to return some things (they wouldn't let us) and then to Starbucks because we couldn't think what else to do. Just as well since Tinkie cried mostly uncontrollably the whole time we were gone.


As I mentioned, Kayla is an experience babysitter of 6 month olds and suggested she come over for a few playdates so the kids can get to know her. I like that idea. Tinkie obviously liked her, she just doesn't like me leaving her without warning. Well...who can blame her?

Today

We got an unexpected gift today - sunshine! So while Andrew finished cleaning up most of the damage from the storm this winter (well, our neighbor is actually taking all the branches to the dump for us, but Andrew cleaned it all up, cut the limbs and loaded his truck) I took the kids outside. As you can see, Elisabeth is loving the swing!

Davey is just aching to play in his sandbox, but unfortunately it's still more of a pool.

So, we went and played in the tree instead.


After Andrew was done in the yard, we decided to go for a walk downtown. I have a weekly thing I go to down there, so we strolled around the block, then meandered through a used bookstore (where I found two more PD James books and SIX MR/MISS books!!) before finally stopping for refreshment at one of the local coffee shops for tea. Since I don't seem to be able to drink or eat caffeine anymore (it seems like even chocolate has the strange throat closing effect on me!) I just had water. It was so nice to walk around in the sun though. Then I headed down to my meeting on foot. I was about fifteen minutes early so I headed over to a kid's consignment store I've always wanted to check out and had a good root through. Lots of cute clothes, but nothing I needed. Still, good to know it's there.

Elisabeth is weaning herself. Or at least, she prefers solid food or bottles to nursing. I've been trying to keep nursing her anyway because mommy milk is supposed to be best, but she's getting angrier and angrier. Looks like the only good nurse she'll have these days is in the morning first thing. I'm a bit disappointed, but I do recognize that bottle fed babies thrive too (Jade would only take the bottle after six months too and she's definitely thriving!)


Andrew has taken today until Monday off work to do some odd jobs around the house. I am unwilling to give up our weekends of fun so we decided to use some precious holiday days to get the chores done. Our house is over fifty years old, so there are lots of things to be done around here. Luckily staff conference is in Whistler again this summer, so we can count that as a holiday. I'll just have to cajole him into skipping one session or so in order to do something fun!

I've been getting desperate for time with just Andrew lately. Spending a lot of time remembering what it was like when we could meander around Chapters, just chatting. Not soothing or chasing or feeding. And so tomorrow we are going to attempt to leave our kids with a sitter for an hour or two while we go on a date. I'm nervous and excited all at the same time. They should be okay since Davey will be in bed already when she gets here and Elisabeth isn't as shy as he is. But we'll see how it goes.

And to end the post a picture of Tink - definitely waving at me. Spontaneous and so cute!

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