A little bit of Tom and Alice

Tom's top ten - f'real

2011-06-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I didn't think of this before but here's what I got when I asked,

"What are your ten most favourite things Tom?"

1. bat costume

2. spiderman costume

3. Alice

4. ice cream

5. skiing

6. playing outside

7. swimming

8. riding on horses

9. presents from birthdays

10. going to school

Top Tens

2011-05-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

The Top Tens

...in no particular order

Tom

1. Calvin and Hobbes.

2. Movies - Fantastic Mr. Fox (was prepared to be up in arms at the sacrilege of messing with the gospel according to Dahl. But no, Wes Anderson = genius).

3. Carter.

4. Swimming.

5. Tamago. Belly-button pasta.

6. Riding his bike.

7. Unpacking the SPUD boxes.

8. Milk. Lots of it. Suddenly.

9. Going to his buddies houses.

10.Reading in bed with Dad.

Alice

1. Movies - Castle in the Sky, Fantastic Mr. Fox, the cat sequences in Whisper of the Heart... everything tom watches, basically... all totally inappropriate... sigh...

2. Dancing with shakers.

3. Cheese.

4. Ponytails.

5. Tantrums and the word NO!

6. Drawing lines and squiggles.

7. Saying 'Choc-lat peas'.

8. Ming, then Miso, then all cats in the world.

9. Putting her dollies to bed with a blanket and pats.

10. Umbrellas, necklaces, bags, roly suitcases... preferably all at once as she leaves for daycare.

(Photo: Tom as a fairy Darth Vader and Alice in her necklaces and bags)

So what's new?

2011-04-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

No. Time. No time...
Blogging has gone by the by rather in the midst of this working and being a parent thing.

Funnily enough, I still compose blog posts in my head when I'm walking around, but somehow I never get them typed up.

BUT today I'm having this strange stop-start day with lulls between moments of horrendous panic. It is the NSERC Strategics deadline day and people are going bananas. A proposal just got returned because there was an m instead of an M. Yeah, I wouldn't trust those people to run a grant using $500,000 of tax payer's money either. Oh sigh, I guess it was my job to spot that m.

Anyway, as I said, there are these lovely lulls when I'm waiting for someone to send me a file and I'm too tired and edgy to pick up other work and suddenly I thought... oooh, I'll check out people's blogs. And then I remembered being chided last summer by Ant of Ant and Sarah for being a 'facebook stalker' i.e. someone who looks at people's facebook stuff, even pushes 'like' every now and then, but doesn't put up a status. So, yikes, I guess I am a blog stalker too... but not if I blog. Hence me here now. Blogging.

And there is just so much going on with A and T that I should be blogging every five minutes.

Alice is 19 months now. And Tom had his 4 1/2 birthday last weekend.

Alice is taaaalllllkkkkiiiinnnnng! She chatters away to herself, to her toys, to Tom, to us. She is linking a couple of words together like "More dat" and "Help me!" and her vocabulary is expanding like crazy - she seems to get words instantly. Just so thrilling. She's finally learned "yes" ("No" was pretty much her first word) and it is so cute to be able to have little conversations with her "Would you like to go downstairs?" "Yessss!" "Shall we have some toast?" "Yay!!!" She is very enthusiastic and seems to be relishing the whole communication thang. I like that she has invented her own words for certain things. Music is "ic", Ponyo is "Bubble", for some reason the other one or the other side (with reference to the boob) is "mon". This morning was funny. She came running in to the bedroom sobbing and climbed up on the bed. "What happened?" asked concerned Daddy. "Tom!" she squeezed out, between sobs. Her first of no doubt a million more dobbings in of Tom.

Last night was a milestone: she sort of almost slept through the night! She woke once just after midnight but R got her back to sleep and then she slept until 6am! The sleep training feels different somehow this time around - she and I are both ready for it I think. Back when we tried before in October and again after Christmas she just had the screaming heebie jeebies every time R went in to soothe her. And she'd show no sign of going to sleep after a good half hour or more. So I'd go back to getting up in the night and feeding her. We had the routine down: I'd get up, feed her for a few minutes and then say 'Pat? Happy?' - code for 'do you want to go to bed and I pat your back and sing happy birthday (this has become her bedtime song!!) - and she'd nod vigorously. But that was happening... EVERY... TWO... HOURS! Some days I was death personified with tiredness. So we decided to give it a go again and... don't want to jinx it... after four nights she seems to be getting it. We've also put some music in her room... she currently listens to the Largo from Vivaldi's Concerto Viola d'Amore and Lute in D. Very la-de-da!

Tom, ah Tom. He and I are having a challenging week together but he too is changing in amazing ways. He suddenly seems so tall - skinny ankles sticking out the bottom of grown-out-of-pants. His outlook on life can be basically summed up this way: if you don't do what I want I won't play with you ever again. By the end of the day my head is spinning from the complex contract negotiations. But then he'll suddenly snap out of it and be this charming boy who is fascinated and delighted by the natural world "Mum, the sky looks flat and grey today, I think it is going to snow!" and by how things work "this is a picture of a chocolate factory. It starts out runny here and goes round and around until it gets into the middle here where it freezes". "Billy bonkers head" is his favourite expression, applied liberally and unspecifically. He actually brought home a picture of a billy bonkers head from school the other day - I'll scan it sometime - the defining feature was a huge grin that swept up from eyebrow to eyebrow in these wonderful curlicues. At school (daycare) he has taken to cutting out pictures from magazines to bring home - his favourite being a picture of a boy on a sofa watching TV with a HUGE bowl of chips in front of him. Nirvana, obviously. Yeah, the telly watching has escalated this last little while. I used to have a no TV in the week. And by TV I mean watching DVDs or stuff on Apple TV or youtube since we don't have cable. But then, I dunno, I just wanted to be able to get home and get dinner ready without any hub-bub. So I discovered that half an episode of Magic School bus worked perfectly. But it feels like a slippery slope... even though the bus' with the Frizz is da bomb!

So there. I've blogged. Actually, what could be more fun than to think about those little critters?Maybe this is the start of a new phase of blogging!

2011-02-24T20:46:00.001-08:00

Moup is going to be Alice's 'pite'. I wonder if I'll understand what on earth I'm going on about in twenty years time.

Skiing with Tom

2011-02-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

Tom has been going to ski class every Saturday since New Year up at Mount Seymour. Gotta love this about Vancouver: just forty minutes drive and Hey Presto! We're skiing!! Tom's classes finished two weeks ago and instead of signing him up for more we decided to spend the money on a 5-pass for me to take him up. We've been twice now and this last time was just spectacular! Glorious day, fresh snow, and a super-speedy skiing Tom!

It was tempting to rise to the challenge posed by Tom in the vid above. I so regretted not being a crazy hot dogger in my past (sheesh, am probably showing my age - is the term hot dogging even used anymore?!) and able to stun Tom with my radical tricks. I found myself thinking, "I mean, how hard could it be?" when sense prevailed... and images of broken bones and smirking teenagers. Tom also seemed to have second thoughts and carefully inspected each feature, watched the kids doing their stuff, and decided he would wait until he was six to try.

Tom figured out the fastest way back to the car was on one leg!

(Well, make that on one leg plus porter (moi) bringing up the rear carrying the rest of his gear.)

Advent - Day 21

2010-12-23T23:23:00.000-08:00

Advent - Day 17

2010-12-17T21:12:00.001-08:00

Advent - Day 16

2010-12-16T21:13:00.000-08:00

Advent- Day 13

2010-12-13T20:36:00.000-08:00

Advent - Day 12

2010-12-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

Seriously beautiful

Adent - Day 11

2010-12-11T21:10:00.000-08:00

We did lots of Christmassy things today.

Mr and Mrs Gingerbread

Helping Susanna and Seb decorate their tree

Please help Tom and Alice get a playground for their school!

2010-12-10T15:26:00.000-08:00

Today a request: Please vote for idea #5998 at the Aviva Community Fund competition

- your vote could be the one that gets our idea to the finals! We're in the last few days of voting and currently just out of the top ten ideas that through to the finals. If you can take a moment to register and vote - you get one vote per day until voting ends on December 15th - that would be WONDERFUL!

Just a few minutes walk from our home, the University Highlands Elementary School is where Tom and Alice will go to school from age 5 until they are in Grade 7 - which is age 12 or so I think?! Must get up to speed with all this north-America school jargon.

Over the last year or so, an old SFU building has been transformed into a gleaming, green-design building to house the new school. The first kids started classes this September. But for some reason the $7 million provincial and federal funding is not allowed to cover playground equipment. We literally have a hole in the ground with a couple of strategically placed boulders and some very nice park benches. But no climbing frame, slides, swings... just gravel and right now a HUGE puddle since the hole doesn't appear to have any drainage.

When we were in the UK this summer I was so impressed by all the school playgrounds - the latest trend is for these sort of adventure-playground equipped school yards. Alex's school in Brighton (Middle Street) is a brilliant example of how you can pack a huge amount into a tiny space

I really wish we'd had something like that when I was a kid - we had a metal climbing frames over concrete! One is so used to saying "In my day... (e.g. we had nothing but a lump of coal and a nobbly stick to play with, you kids don't know you're born etc. etc.)" But with this hole in the ground it seems like time has reversed.

October 2009

January 2010

March 2010

July 2010 (courtesy of the school website)

I don't have a recent picture - but will take one and post it ASAP!

Thanks for voting!!

Advent - Day 9

2010-12-09T15:24:00.000-08:00

Advent - Day 8

2010-12-08T15:22:00.000-08:00

Sun in Alice's room

Advent - Day 7

2010-12-07T15:16:00.000-08:00

Love Canada Post's write to Santa program. It was especially fun to go to the post office and say, "We'd like to sent this to the North Pole please!"

Advent - Day 6

2010-12-06T21:19:00.000-08:00

Alice's "kiss me quick" face

Advent - Day 5

2010-12-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

Advent - Day 4

2010-12-04T21:49:00.001-08:00

Mr Willy Wonka

New bag from Algeria

Advent - Day 3

2010-12-03T21:33:00.001-08:00

big and little

Advent Day 2

2010-12-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Sonya!

Ok. So it is clearly going to be impossible for me to choose just one photo. Here's today's selection.

Alice started the day super early for some reason. Here she is playing at 6am.

She then conked out on my lap.

And then grudgingly woke up again.

Today, Tom and I made Mr. Willy Wonka's strawberry-flavoured chocolate-coated fudge!

(as in "That pipe, it just so happens to lead directly to the room where I make the most delicious kind of strawberry-flavoured chocolate-coated fudge"

(And did a webby with the birthday girl)

Advent Photo Calendar - Day 1

2010-12-01T21:30:00.000-08:00

Just saw a nice idea on Mila's Daydreams - she is putting up a photo every day until Christmas. I'm going to *try* and do the same... ha ha. Anyway, as a bonus for day 1 here are three photos!

Jingle Bells

Trying to jump

Ear socks and Tom's new fake smile (he practises it in the mirror!)

Tobogganing at Mount Seymour

2010-11-29T21:10:00.000-08:00

Alice's first time tobogganing (ha ha - I've clicked the label 'milestone' but 'first toboggan run' isn't one the baby books talk about that much!) Incidentally, apart from just being really fun to say, toboggan really is the right word to use in this part of the world!

First snow!

2010-11-27T15:24:00.001-08:00

We've had our first snowfall up here on the mountain. Last week I was driving back up the mountain from gymnastics with Tom and the rain started to look sleety... then flake-y... yup! It was snowing! Snowed overnight and when we woke up "all the plants are under a white blanket," as Tom put it. Naturally we had to get dressed up and go out and make a snowman before breakfast!

The temperature dropped so the snow stuck around. That weekend we got some tobogganing in - Tom has christened the pyramid in the centre of the AQ at SFU "Toboggan Mountain".

Alice is not entirely convinced about it all. She finds Tom's excitement for anything completely infectious so she really wants to like it. But since she won't keep gloves on and kept doing nose-dives into the snow she ended up with super cold hands and pretty darn unhappy about it. I've got her a super-duper (very pink!) LLBean snow suit and gloves so hopefully she'll warm up to snow fun. Tom said, "She has to like snow, she is Alice in winter wonderland!"

The tao of tea and Tracy

2010-11-12T20:35:00.000-08:00

This isn't about Tom or Alice but just felt like writing about it in a sort of more 'open' forum than in a journal or email...

A strange but lovely thing happened earlier this week. I was getting ready for a meeting and had put the office kettle on and left my tea cup ready to fill, gone back to my desk for a sec to get my notebook, check email, yada yada... suddenly it was time for the meeting so I had to go in... kettle not yet boiling, no tea. A few minutes in to the meeting Tracy, our lovely Research Secretary, came in with my tea cup steaming, full of my favourite tea. It was just a simple, kind thing to do but for some reason I just keep going back to it and feeling so... smiley happy. Really, it isn't Tracy's job to bring me tea but that made it even nicer I think. Gave me a little insight into what life must be like if you are some sort of high-flying executive with a super-duper personal assistant. I certainly don't have a hard life - I'm pretty lucky in my husband who helps with the kids and clearing up and all that... but getting that cup of tea... someone bringing me something... no, no it was somehow more than that: it was just exactly what I wanted when I wanted it, but completely unasked for and unexpected. A rare thing. Ok, ok, I'm getting carried away here I know... Anyway, thank you Tracy.

A Happy Halloween!

2010-11-01T22:01:00.000-07:00

By far my favourite of all North-American holidays is Halloween. It is just plain fun, but also somehow encapsulates everything I love about this continent - a gung-ho lack of cynicism and immense enthusiasm. People really go for it on Halloween and put a lot of thought into their costumes, decorating their houses, carving pumpkins. So impressive! I guess the same happens with Christmas but I find Halloween just so much less... stressful!

This year with Halloween being on Sunday we had a three-day festival. We started on Friday with the kids dressing up to go to daycare. Tom was Spiderman, minus the mask (his daycare had a long list of rules for costumes including "no cumbersome tails"); Alice was a little witch. I'd been feeling guilty all week for not making their costumes (ok, so there is some stress involved!) but got to do a little bit of sewing putting a ribbon on to keep A's hat on. It took me about 20 minutes to find a needle - and then when I finally found one it was in my travel kit. It is hard to believe but we haven't really unpacked yet and I just can't find anything! Life just sort of got going and we have a ton of boxes stacked up in our bedroom full of I don't know what!

Mid morning I walked over to go trick-or-treating with Alice. As I got there I saw Tom's class crocodile-ing its way into the Business School. Spiderman was holding hands with Princess Leia and looked super happy.

Alice was super sleepy and dozed for the first half of our trip. But then she suddenly perked up in the Linguistics department and stomped up to get her share of the treats. It was so fun to see all the crazy costumes around campus. A giant blue alien (all the kids thought it was the cookie monster!), the Business School reception turned into a space ship, peeping into offices in the Maggie Benston building and seeing a clown, Charlie Chaplin, a burns victim, and a mummie holding a meeting. The kids were a huge hit drawing crowds of oogling staff wherever we went.

Later that day we went to Tom's gymnastics place - Kerrigan Gymnastics - for a Halloween drop-in. Much fun.

Saturday was pumpkin patch day. We started to go to our old favourite Laity Pumpkin Patch but got stuck in grid-lock in Coquitlam. So instead we headed out towards Langley - my friend Jenn has mentioned that she'd been to a good patch out there and had sort of told me where it was but when we got to where I thought it should be... no sign of any pumpkin patch! Eventually we stopped at a Ukranian Sausage shop where the super-kind sausage-makers googled for local pumpkin patches and came up with Aldor Acres. It was great! A barn full of baby animals, llamas, friendly farm folk, the biggest cows I've ever seen (technically oxen I guess), a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch... pumpkin heaven. Alice was in a super-mimicking talking mood and would repeat any animal name or sound that we made. "Llama" is officially her fourth word after "me" "bye-bye" and "done". We had to down-size from Tom's plan to get fifteen pumpkins and came home with ("just") three lovely ones.

Sunday was Grandma's birthday - a birthday on Halloween? Tom could hardly believe that anyone could be so lucky. That night was trick-or-treating in the neighbourhood and it was the best yet! There are soooo many kids up here now and loads of people in the Serenity and Verdant complexes were out in full costume and had decorated their houses. Richard stayed home on candy-duty and I hit the 'hood with the kids: Alice as a little witch again but Tom as Darth Vadar. Richard made the control panel after he and Tom studied pictures of Darth intently; the cloak is R's old Oxford gown. Star Wars was by far the largest contingent this year!

At first Alice just wanted to be carried but then she decided she was missing the action and tottered up to each door with her little bag. Tom's only complaint of the evening was that his bucket got too heavy to carry! My black wig confused everyone and it was kind of fun being incognito, saying hi to friends who would nervously walk past.

Later, we got out sparklers with Sus and Seb (and yummy soup and bread - thanks guys!) and Ian and Beth let off some incredibly loud fireworks in the alley - fireworks are a Canadian addition to Halloween that I think is pure genius. Might come from the British Guy Fawkes night being so close?

Every now and then I'd think how weird it all was to be trooping around to neighbours' houses getting our kids to demand candy that we didn't really want them to eat... and there were a few heart-stopping moments where I couldn't find Tom in the throng (but the glowing light saber came in handy there!)... but it was so much fun, so many people out being so jolly, the streets had a real carnival feel. Yay!

Tom turned 4

2010-10-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

So, the long awaited birthday came around. From right at the start of our UK trip Tom would tell us that "when we get back to Canada it will be my birthday!" After five months of waiting I think he really couldn't believe that October 9th had actually arrived. Such a cliche, but I really can't believe four years have gone by since that little orange-haired miracle baby that was maybe two hand-lengths long was born.

Then

and now

Lately I've been having a hard time dealing with the very boy-ness of him - all his poopy talk, the fighting games, he even proudly came home from pre-school with a drawing that was Darth Vader on one side and a 'gun blaster' on the other. Yikes! I find myself clinging to the aspects of his personality that are still sweet - he loves to smell things and going for a walk with him is so fun since the smells of the fall undergrowth or someone cooking or the lavender on our patio are all as important to him as what he can see or hear; he adores books and when he wakes up now I hear him turn on his light and then just sit on his bed flicking through stories; he still loves to snuggle and give big smoochy nose and eyelid kisses; he makes up long, crazy, funny stories about these characters he has invented - all summer it was the exploits of Yanky Doodle, who has now been joined by 'these guys Super Underpants and Super Eyeball who live next door'.

But I know that I have to take the whole Tom on board however mind-boggling and at times downright dispiriting the testosterone-fueled stuff is for me. The funny thing is that when I was a kid I was desperate to play Star Wars with someone. My Grannie would tell this story about how her neighbours' kids were constantly at war and were armed to the teeth with various sticks and twigs acting as bazookas and machine guns. One day she saw the little six year old girl come out into the yard, freeze, and with horror pat herself down as she realized she was unarmed. She then tried to make a break back to safety inside. Too late! Her brothers descended and she gamely succumbed to her terrible fate. I remember thinking, age nine or so, that this was way cool and tried to initiate such games with my friends, who all thought I was bonkers. Now here is Tom desperate to play any kind of 'battle' game with Rich, me, or Alice and I find it horrifying. Somewhere along the way I got peace and love, man. So I'm trying to find that fine line between letting him express himself and trying to get across the idea that guns and fighting are, ya know, not great. The nine year old me really would think that was bonkers.

So here he is, this four-year old rascal who can simultaneously drive me crazy with frustration, get me giggling, and make me go all gushy and wondrous at the-amazing-ness-of-life.

And yes, he got a skateboard for his birthday. So far, amazingly, no broken bones.

Alice and Tom do the British Museum

2010-09-19T04:25:00.001-07:00

We're back in Canada but I have this whole backlog of posts about our time in the UK in my head that I want to get down before the memories fade. Seeing these photos reminded me of the fun day we had at the British Museum with Grannie and Grandad. Recently the olds have been taking courses on the Ancient Egyptians and going on trips round Egypt so it seemed like a good opportunity to visit the BM's egyptian rooms with the experts. Over the summer Tom developed a passion for mummies and is pretty expert on the whole mummification process - particularly the part about pulling brains out through the nose and taking out the organs and putting them in jars!

The 'new' (I think it was done for the millenium) roof over the courtyard and reading room is amazing.

Tom's excitement at seeing an unwrapped mummy!

Alice's experience was (unsurprisingly!) all about what the museum looked like from 2ft high and for a fuddy-duddy old place it was pretty fun on the 2ft level! As she rolled around on the floor, talked to 3000 year old cats, kissed marble columns etc. it was pretty funny to see the reactions of the different tourists. Anyone mediterranean was charmed. The North Americans not so much.

And a little bit of BC to remind us of home.

The little bean is 1

2010-09-02T16:00:00.001-07:00

What's next?

2010-07-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I've just finished packing up our flat here in Brighton. It is strange to see our life all packed and zipped up in a couple of duffel bags and suitcases and think, so, that is all we really need, huh? It doesn't amount to much. Actually, when I say need and give the impression we're travelling lightly I should clarify that 'need' includes, amongst other frivolities, three Buzz Lightyears (all different sizes), twenty-two t-shirts for Tom (we'd never really counted them and just kept getting more), and my half-done knitting that I've brought here all the way from Canada and haven't knitted a stitch since we've been here (what was I thinking?! Quiet evenings by the fire knitting...??!)

So what is next? After much discussion our plans for the next six weeks got simpler and simpler. Gone are our fantasies about doing a grand camping tour of southern Europe. Out is the next more modest idea to just fly somewhere again, hot and with a beach. We suddenly realized that what we really wanted to do was see the people we don't get to see very much. So now we're going to split the time up staying with our parents and seeing some of the sights around Cambridge and London. Oh, and take a little mini-break in Copenhagen before Richard goes to a conference in Odense.

But first we go for a week's holiday here in Dorset. Tom and Alice will get together with four generations of Richard's side of the family - their cousins, Aunt and Uncle, Grandma, and Great-Grandparents!

All good things must come to an end

2010-07-27T12:20:00.001-07:00

I've got that panicky feeling I get when something is coming to an end: we only have three more days in Brighton!

In the time we've been here (since mid-April) we've seen a seagull go from being sat on as an egg, to being a little waddly ball of fluff, to a bigger ball of fluff, to a browny-grey fledgling, to taking its first flight a couple of days ago. We've changed season from a cold and dark April to a heat-wave May and June, to a grey and windy July. Alice got her first tooth here, has taken her first steps (yesterday!!). Tom has gone from being a shy soul in the playground to going up to kids and saying 'Hi, my name is Tom and I am a Canadian. Wanna play dinosaur birds with me?' And best of all, Tom and Alice have got to know their cousin Alex and their Aunt and Uncle.

We've walked many miles around this town and it has been a little disorientating to revisit the places I knew as a student with two kids in tow. Around every corner there are memories of those times when I lived with Ayesha in Rock Grove, met Richard (I thought his name was Ben for the first 24 hours) and wound up living with him and Seth in Sillwood Road, drove around in a little blue mini (one time famously with SEVEN people inside!), learned to play folk fiddle, learned about galaxy clusters, got my Flipper tattoo, got my heart broken and re-made and re-broken and re-made again...

Anyway, that is all rather self-indulgent looking back. Now there is a new stack of Brighton memories to leaf through.

Alex and Tom went to Crete and Alice went too

2010-07-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

My mother wrote a lovely story about the Crete holiday for Alex, Tom and Alice and I thought I'd put it up here since it is a fun read. She is going to make it into a picture book with photos for bedtime reads.

In the middle of the night we met at the airport. Alex and his Mummy and
Daddy came in a taxi while Tom came with his Mummy and Daddy in a taxi with
Alice too. There was hugging and cheering when Grannie and Granddad were
found because we had all arrived in lots of time to catch the aeroplane.

The plane landed on the tarmac and we climbed down stairs that had been
pushed up to the plane into the bright hot sunshine of Crete. All of our
bags arrived and Tom and Alex put their bags on the carousel to whizz round
and round.

In the bus Alex and Tom sat at the front of the bus and we bounded along
with the Aegean Sea on one side –very blue. At last we arrived at the Louis
Creta Princess Beach hotel. Tom was fast asleep but Alex and Alice were
still wide -awake in spite of being up all night. We were tagged: adults red
and children green. The grandparents felt an ominous twinge, shades of the
concentration camps, the more jolly young thought they were going to a pop
festival and they kids thought they belonged to a club.

The coloured bands meant that we could eat as much as we could, beer was on
tap and ice cream, chocolate, strawberry and vanilla could be had all day.
For breakfast Grannie had cake and spumanti. There was sweet watermelon at
every meal. Alice had whatever she could lay her hands on but her mummy was
very careful. Alex always sat next to Alice and gave her offerings. Iestyn
got the award for being the best eater of the party. This was paradise!

Another part of paradise was the deep blue pool heated to a perfect
temperature so that it was better to stay in the water than to come out into
the air. Towards the beach there was a pirate ship and then a pebble beach
and the sea, a perfect temperature with little waves.
Tom and Alex had armbands, rings, and a flotation jacket. Alice had a yellow
ring in which she could sit. She loved to swim especially with her Mummy.

She also liked to walk holding hands along the side of the pool. Around the
pool there were great big green sinister crocodiles. Some sat on the
loungers, others sat at the edge of the pool looking moodily at the people
in the pool. The second day Grannie acquired a crocodile. The first one was

too big so he was taken back and swapped for a smaller one. It took some
time getting used to owning a crocodile. At first he accompanied us round
the pool. But, sometimes Alex lay on top or rode him like a horse. Grannie
liked to hold onto the croc’s tail with her feet and Tom pulled the croc and
his Grannie through the water.

Granddad spent most of his time on a lounger reading books. He sat on the
beach and would occasionally go into the sea and swim. Alex liked to throw
stones into the sea and after a few days he could hurl huge rocks into the
sea. Tom liked to dam up the little stream that flowed down the beach. Alice
liked the beach a lot and always tried to eat a stone or two. She had to be
watched! Then after awhile she would get thirsty and her Mummy would give
her some boobie and she would fall asleep and be put in her stroller to
sleep under a tree.

On Granddad’s birthday we took the bus to Chania for a day out. The first
place we inspected was the market under a high roof. There were hundreds of
little stalls selling honey, cheese, key rings, huge puffer fish, herbs,

Minoan helmets, flip-flops, Ben10 shirts, Ben10 towels, dried fruits and

olives. Mainly we photographed each other taking photos. Then we went to the

harbour via the tiny alleys. We had lunch in a café a long way from the
tourist cafes and Granddad had a chicken salad. Tom and Alex went on a
seesaw that was very exciting for them. The harbour is very small with an
ancient outer wall and classical lighthouse on the end. Did the builders
long ago build it to look picturesque for us? Or does the most economical
building design look picturesque to us because it has always been there?

There were white horse-drawn carriages with sunshades lined up along the
waterfront. We all piled into one and off we went round the town. When the
street was cobbled the horse went slowly but when it was smooth the horse
trotted along in a very jolly way.

On Sunday Alex’s Mummy and Daddy and Tom’s Daddy went for a long walk though
a deep gorge. As we had had two sleeps Tom, Alex, Julia, Granddad and
Grannie and Alice went to Chania again. This time we went on the real bus
and the conductor was very fierce and even would not let us touch the
windows. We went straight to the harbour and went on the red glass bottom
boat. Alex and Tom got very good seats where they could hang their legs over
the glass bottom of the boat. Alice was asleep in her stroller. It was
lashed to the deck. We chugged out to a little island and the diver jumped
overboard and summoned the fish from the lava tunnels. In the end he had
about 50 black fish following him. He swam under the glass bottom and the
fish swarmed round him. On the way back to the bus station Grannie and Julia
bought Alice a beautiful cerise Greek party dress.

Every evening we had dinner on the terrace. We all got dressed up in bright
and pretty clothes. Granddad even wore his Hawaiian shirt. Sometimes we were
too late for a table altogether but mostly we were able to be a party. Alex
and Tom could serve themselves spaghetti or pasta from a special place and
the adults had wine and water in metal beakers. After we had had miles of
ice cream and chocolate cakes we went and sat on the grass to watch the
games. It was very frustrating because the adults had no money. So Tom and
Alex persuaded a beautiful blond girl about two or three years older than
them to climb into the cage where the black balls were trapped. She then
threw the balls out to the boys and everyone had a jolly time. Eventually,
her father caught up with her and she was taken away. The next night Tom
found his own Euro. He spent it on banging the heads of the animals that
popped up at random. Alex had a go as well. Luckily on the last night the
adults found some money and Alex and Tom had a very exciting evening on the

tables. They played air hockey and snooker. Such fun! Alice wore her new

dress and stood up alone for the first time. She was not excited but we
were.

One the way home in the aeroplane Alex and Tom studied the card about the
plane. Alex was ready to assume the crash position at any moment. Tom was
very brave and Alice slept in her Mummy’s arms.

Crete

2010-07-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

While contemplating Alex's globe beach ball I realized that Hawaii is almost 180 degrees in longitude from Crete. So jet-set Tom and Alice have now semi-cirumnavigated the world this year! Jeez,Hawaii and Crete for holidays. Someone should just biff me whenever I complain about anything.

Crete was sublime. The memories that stick in my mind are... (and this is disorganized stream of consciousness stuff... sorry)...

...the sound of the cicadas at night, perhaps one of my most favourite sounds in the world; the shimmering silver-green of the olive groves; swimming in the incredibly salty mediterranean, the salt making it really easy to swim, so floaty; our lunch in a 'real' greek taverna in Chania surrounded by locals drinking iced coffees and clickity-clackity playing backgammon; towering mountains way off in the distance; seeing Tom teach himself to dive and do somersaults into the water; seeing Alex go from starting the week in armbands, life vest and inflatable crocodile just to put a toe in the water to ending of the week where he happily frolicked in the waves flotation-device free;

Alice in her stripy sunsuit doing her three-legged crawl round the edge of the pool and looking like Queen Victoria as I pushed her around the pool in her swim-ring;the yogurt, the honey, the olives, the figs... yum yum; our meals together, the boys faces usually covered in something orange, Alice feeding herself whatever she could get her hands on, everyone coming back with more and more outrageous plates of desert, our tablecloth looking like WWIII had hit by the time we got up to leave while all the other European families seemed to be able to eat and leave these spotlessly clean, white tables;

Alex and Tom's fiery relationship - one minute comrades up to scrapes, obsessively trying to get money out of the arcade games or holding long conversations about the merits of Buzz vs. Woody, the next minute "you aren't my cousin anymore";

getting lost in Chania's higgeldy-piggeldy narrow streets, ancient miniature greek ladies standing in doorways yelling at us, cats sleeping in the shadows; us all reading and talking about the breath-taking book 'Address Unknown'; Tom playing with/hero-worshipping a ten year old Swedish boy on the pirate ship climbing frame - Ryan (sp.?) only spoke 'a little English' i.e. he was fluent; taking a boat out to a volcanic island and then round the Venetian harbour of Chania, if you go to the Med you have to go on a boat at some point;

our room seemed snug at first but then turned out to be just perfect, for really, what do you need in a hot climate anyway; walking up and down next to our rooms trying to get Alice to nap, watching the little patch of blue mediterranean sparkling at the end of the road, the cicada day-time chorus absolutely deafening; Alice standing up by herself for the first time and looking as though she'd been doing it forever; sitting on the beach, Alice having the best sleep ever lying across my tummy listening to the waves roll in and out...

2010-07-19T05:19:00.001-07:00

I mean, seriously, Alice?! You don't eat the food when it is on your tray but you pounce on it is on the floor?!

Just to Jupiter

2010-07-05T04:59:00.001-07:00

Further probing revealed that 'the Fonk' on Jupiter has 'all the colours of a parrot'!?!

Woking weekend

2010-07-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

BIG party! Most of the Benson clan congregated at Uncle Tim and Auntie Chris' for a BBQ last Saturday. They are an impressive lot when they all get together. On the left: the original five. Below: the spawn.

Alice ate almost a whole watermelon and then felt a bit funny.

Tom fell in love with some gnomes and a guy named Phil. Phil thought he'd come down south for a mellow weekend with his girlfriend (if you can call meeting about two hundred of her closest relatives mellow) but found himself engaged in playing ball for five hours with a three-and-a-half-year-old while his parents pretended not to notice!

Tom has met a kindred spirit in Great-Uncle Pete.

Jo has made Tricia a beautiful new garden. Here are Grandma and the kids hiding in the rockery.

Alice and Tom look so similar in this picture.

Hanging with Aunt Sonya

2010-07-04T15:10:00.000-07:00

My sister lives in Brighton and one of the big attractions for me when Richard talked about coming here for part of his sabbatical was that I'd spend some time with her and Alex and Iestyn.

We've fallen into a nice rhythm of meeting Alex at his school on Mondays and Wednesdays and playing until suppertime. And we see Sonya quite a bit during the week (she is a ballet teacher and teaches most days from 4ish to 9ish). But, strangely, in the two months we've been here we've only been to her house once!! I think it was something about us not having a car and Sonya being in town most days so it was easy just to meet up in a park or at the beach. But then last friday she took Tom swimming in the morning and then back up to her place. Alice and I ambled up there on the bus after nap-time. We had such a lovely time and have vowed for this to be our new Friday routine.

The sun blazed down on us as we picnicked in her back-garden - it got so hot we had to rig up a sheet for shade! Then we raided Alex's bedroom and Tom and Alice had a great time with all the toys. Her place has changed quite a bit in the two years since I last stayed there. Two years ago it was all minimal and orderly - lovely hidden cupboards that housed neat half-full tubs of things. Now she has taken up running (and Iestyn has too recently) and she says they just never have time to do a really good clear out so stuff has just amassed. My OCD side was desperate to go through the bathroom and get rid of all the half-tried bottles of shampoo that now cover every surface, but my lazy side won out and I just lay around watching Son have fun with the kiddos.

Anyway, we had a great time. Tom baked cupcakes and did painting. Alice turned the pushing thing into a scooter and was immensely pleased!

Nine months old

2010-06-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

She has been out as long as she was in. Alice for longer than she was Bin-ban. What is emerging is a little wriggly giggly girl who is just so happy with the world.

Favourite things at nine months:

Crawling, cruising, wriggling, dancing (she bobs up and down and claps to music), climbing stairs (MAJOR obsession at the moment, totally nerve-wracking), walking holding our hands, climbing around playgrounds, walking pushing anything with wheels, crawling round chasing after Tom.

Eating - she loves pears (whole!), pasta, meat, salmon, bikkies, sweet potatoes, yogurts. She has this funny grab when you pass her something - her little hand shoots out and back again as though she is afraid of missing out. She has just started using her spoon to try and get yogurt out of the pot, but mostly likes banging her spoon, bowl, food, whatever, on the table and then dropping it on the floor.

She loves birds and cats and dogs - tries to scoot after them, laughing as she goes.

Flipping through books and chewing the corners is a favourite thing, plus she has figured out that books are slidey and she can spend ages scooting around pushing a book along on the floor.

Tom - just loves him and thinks he is hilarious. He is pretty keen on her too and will bring her toys when she gets upset. He is rather over-fascinated with putting things on her head and also with licking her nose but so far they seem to get on rather well.

Smiling - she has this ultra-smile where her nose, cheeks, her whole face really crinkles up. Love it.

What is also emerging is that she is someone who knows her own mind and definitely lets you know when things don't go the way she wants! For example, she doesn't like lying on her back for pretty much any reason (makes diaper changes interesting), nor sitting down in the bath, or getting out of the bath if it is chilly. And she's not so keen on the concept of going to sleep some nights but it is hard to be mad when she gets all smiley because I've given up with bedtime and let her play some more (but somehow I do still manage to get mad! Working on that...)

Happy nine months sweetie-pie xx

Park life

2010-05-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

What do we do in Brighton? Parks!

We are ten minutes from a lovely park called St. Anne's Well that has a little kiddie playground, a bigger kids park, a fish pond AND a cafe. AND really amazing loos - there is this special kid's seat that flips down, one of those baby-holding chair things, and, get this - there are actually liners for thechanging table in the linerholder! Radical. Don't think I've ever seen that. Even without the loo extravaganza, this might be my most favourite park in the whole world! When we arrived the trees we just getting buds; now all the trees are covered in blossom and leaves. There are so few trees around the rest of Brighton that this park feels so gorgeously verdant.

My favourite kind of day is a two-park day. We hit St. Anne's Well's in the morning and have a picnic or lunch in the cafe. Tom has developed a taste for their bacon butties. Then go home for Alice to have a good feed and sleep. Then hit another park in the afternoon.

Brunswick Square is even closer - a beautiful Regency square around a public garden.

The paddling pool park is right on the beach with a great sandbox and yet another wonderful cafe - so civilized all this combined park-ing and dining!

And finally the beach is the biggest and most chilled out park of all. Tom and Alex can spend hours throwing stones. Alice, unfortunately, sees the stones as ideal teethers so it is a bit nerve-wracking, but the sound of the waves washing in and the rattle of thestones as the water draws back after each wave is like one of those 'tranquility' tapes people play during savasna, so I stay pretty mellow. In fact for some reason I'm feeling very mellow and this has been a really good week.

Here are some vids from our two-park days.

Whamoo!

2010-05-24T12:59:00.001-07:00

So, it seems that Tom has inherited the very best of our traits. Not only does he have an incredible memory for song lyrics (thank you Daddy) but he can name the tv show/film based on just a few milli-seconds of viewing (thank you Mummy). Way to go genes (clearly all our success in life has been based on these abilities alone so our boy will go far). He puts these invaluable skills to the test with his daily dose of morning children's TV: CBeebies - the BBC kid's show - and Milkshake - don't even know which channel that is other than that we have do to a quick hop over to catch Peppa Pig before dashing back to CBeebies for Timmy Time, Waybulus and In the Night Garden. Or maybe it is the other way round. Anyway, this is where his skills come in handy since as I channel-flip distractedly, baby invariably wriggling or yelling or about to eat a small choke-able object, phone ringing, computer beeping, the usual morning bedlam, he spots exactly what he wants as it whizzes by and can name the show, the main characters and sing the theme song by the time I've hit the select button.

His absolute favourite is Lazy Town - a rather bizarre show written, directed and starring Magnus something or other (Magnusson?!) from Iceland (everyone on the show seems to be called Magnus) who was the aerobics world champion. My minimal understanding of the show from what Tom has told me is that the main character is Sportacus who lives in a rocket and runs everywhere helping people and kittens get out of trees when his 'shiner' shines. He also seems to spend a lot of time standing with his hands on his hips - this is now Tom's usual stance while saying "There is a hero inside of you" with a slightly strange (Icelandic?) accent. His deadly rival is Robbie Rotten who laughs a lot and rubs his hands and wants everyone to eat really big pieces of cake. We play Lazy Town a LOT since Ayesha lent us a Sporticus dress-up outfit. I get to be Stephanie "except that your hair is not pink, Mumma".

Here is how Tom has looked for the last week:

For reference here is the 'real' Sportacus. Apparently " LazyTown is a lifestyle brand dedicated to kids' health." and "Sportacus inspires us to be the best that we can be"

"Whamoo," incidentally, is from the first line of one of Sportacus' songs "Whamoo! I'm feeling alright" and has become the new Vaughan-household catchphrase as in "Whamoo! I think I'll go to bed now".

TV was something I was very anti - one of those 'I can't believe I'd ever resort to this' things. But I just could not do without it at the moment. I assuage the guilt by enjoying Tom's fun and games.

When will she walk?

2010-05-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

As I think I've said before - it is ALL about standing with Alice. She will pull herself up using whatever is within reach. Gets rather explicit when I'm wearing these new trousers that have a rather loose waist meaning as she pulls to come up, they come down! Is also a monumental pain when I'm trying to change a poopy diaper. I've had to embrace the 'what does it really matter anyway' philosophy of clean, tough for me but I'm working on it.

She also loves to walk around holding our hands. Last night she combined the two and quickly figured out how to walk around pushing this wheely-thingy.

She is such a fast crawler I thought that might satisfy her need-for-speed for a while, but now I'm wondering. So - the question on everyone's lips: when will she walk? Bets are placed. And a definition of walking has been drawn up: more than four steps unaided.

Dad/John - June 7

Sonya - June 10

Mum/Rose - June 20

Julia and Richard - August 1st

What do you think?

Clapping

2010-05-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

Quick note that Alice has started clapping and really does seem to do it when something makes her happy. Mondo cute.

(Super cute new hat to combat the brilliant Brighton sunshine!)

Settling in

2010-05-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

Here is our front door to our flat in sunny seaside Brighton.

And inside - ahhh Ikea. Toys courtesy of Sonya and Jo - thanks sisters!

Note the drying rack. I had a bit of a breakdown at first trying to figure out how to survive with no drying machine and no outdoor space and mountains of dirty kid's clothing. But there is a laundrette just a minute away (basically there is EVERYTHING downstairs - we live right in the thick of things!) but the cost of service washes has gone up rather since I last lived in the UK (eight quid!) so I've resigned myself to always having washing around the place drying. Ha - is this really the most important thing I want to write about? Well, for the first few days I was a bit obsessed with it and there was lots of effing and blinding about barbarian jolly olde England...

Check out our view, says Tom:

The ad for the place said "sea view" but we thought that probably meant standing on tippy-toe looking out the bathroom window. BUT as it turns out we have a spectacular panoramic sea view across the chimney pots of Brighton and Hove. So very urban - quite a change from our mountain view of countless trees.

So that is where we are going to be living for the next four months. So far it is working out really well. Living in a small place with pretty minimal stuff (NO bookcases?!?) is a good exercise in keeping it simple. Tom likes watching the seagulls and Alice loves scooting around on the hardwood floors and has started pulling herself up to standing on the sofa, toy box, bath... basically everything - it is ALL about standing right now!

The location is awesome. We are just minutes from the beach and three really lovely parks. Our door opens onto a lovely little pedestrian street with a friendly black and white cat. The street opens onto Western Road, a typical bustling British highstreet full of convenience stores, supermarkets, whacky speciality shops (like my favourite - the door-nob shop - I'll get a picture), cafes, and many, many Italian restaurants. Imagine all the Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Korean restaurants in Vancouver were Italian and you get the picture.

What is surprising is how quiet it is in our place - Saturday night rages down on the streets as I write but all I can hear is the occasional cry of a seagull and, at this time every night, someone washing up somewhere close by in a very business-like manner.

The quiet is especially special tonight because it is the third night trying Alice in her crib. So far so good tonight - she's been there almost two hours without a peep! I'm a little sad since it was lovely to sleep next to her. But in her new crawling/standing mode it had got a little dangerous. She would wake up and just start crawling towards the door. I tried all sorts of pillow barricades, but after she crawled out and went bump on the floor three times I was convinced we better try the crib at least for the first part of the night while I was still up. Still, if she takes to it I will really miss the sound of her little sighs and fluttery breaths, her little hands searching for me in the night, and that lovely first nose-crinkly smile right next to me when she wakes up in the morning.

World Travellers

2010-04-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

On April 12 we upped at moved to the UK for five months. We're returning to Brighton for most of the time - the town where Richard and I met!

Tom is by now a very seasoned traveller - I've lost count of the number of flights he's done but it was 10 before he was one. Alice has already got Hawaii under her belt. So I felt pretty optimistic that we would get through the 9 hours to London. It was a challenge but we made it! Here they are at the lovely YVR

My favourite moment was looking over just after we sat down to see Tom 'with all my stuff on' - he insisted on wearing his cape to the airport and once on the plane had opened the packet on his seat and added the blanket, headphones, and eye mask. Wish I'd been able to grab the camera. He slept for the first two hours and then spent the next seven becoming an expert on British children's TV (mostly the hyper-violent 'Ben Ten' and 'the show about turtles with masks on'). Then he fell fast asleep as the wheels touched down.

Alice was very smiley but not very interested in sleeping. We spent a lot of time walking around the plane and then she did snooze for a few hours. She is right at that age (I think our memorable Montreal flight with Tom was around now) where all she wants to do is crawl and put random stuff in her mouth i.e. the two things she can't do on a plane. Fortunately she made friends with the lady on one side - who luckily seemed to be a baby whisperer and got her to sleep by merely stroking her hand. Ha ha!!

Terminal 5 at Heathrow has this groovy fountain outside International Arrivals. Tom had fun here two years ago - he seemed big then but seeing him here again made me realize how much he has grown up.

Little did we know that just two days later all UK airports would be closed due to a plume of volcanic ash drifting down from Iceland!

Jetlag has been unusually bad this time around - all of us waking up at midnight super awake for a few hours, crashing out as dawn approaches and then waking up groggy with morning molasses brains.

She crawls!

2010-04-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

She's been rocking on hands and knees for a while. Then she started scooting backwards. Great cries of frustration as an object of desire would get further from her reach. Then earlier this week she started doing these fabulous, exaggerated motions with her arms, almost like swimming, and managing to crawl forwards a couple of feet before flopping onto her tummy. Bizarrely, the next day she seemed to forget all about this and was on the backwards scoot kick again. Then suddenly yesterday she just started crawling around with this very self-satisfied look.

2010-04-09T23:05:00.000-07:00

New rule: no milk product snacks allowed in the car. God, if I could I would make it no snacks in the car ever but that is unrealistic. Just spent an hour cleaning Tom's car seat ready to pass on to Alice. Pretty disgusting. Let's see... he's been eating snacks in it since he was about one, say he goes for a ride about three times a week, two snacks per ride, for two and a half years... I just cleaned up the debris from at least 780 snacks! Not a pretty sight under the cover. Still some unidentifiable blue gloopy stuff stuck to one of the belts that I just can't shift.

Amazing really to think that Alice is moving out of the Peg Perego infant seat. Feels quite momentous and I'm really going to miss that car seat. I guess it was the first piece of baby equipment that we bought, I remember it sitting in what was to be Tom's room in those last few weeks of pregnancy, the sight of it making the arrival of a baby all seem very real. And it is just a lovely thing - really well made, yay Italian design!

Well, cleaning helped me work out my guilt for just losing it tonight. We'd had a really good day and I'd even been verging on feeling super-mommy-ish. Then things started to unravel. Putting the ortho-shoes back on after Alice's bath is something of an ordeal. I don't think she is screaming because it is painful, more that she hates getting out of the bath anyway, is ready just to eat and sleep, and it is just one more annoying thing I'm trying to do to her. But her screams make it seem like I am causing pain, which is heart-rending. And it just takes so long so it was around 8pm when I started to feed her. Too late. The sweet spot where she just eats and then sleeps seems to be 7.30pm. Anyway, I got her to sleep and then as I disengaged, she seemingly sound asleep, she woke up yelling and I just broke. Urghh. Oh well.

Then Richard had to go back to work, his parting words being that Tom seemed to be asleep. But mid-carseat-scrub I heard a strange noise and walked through to the living room to find Tom slithering down the stairs wrapped in his duvet!?! He was half asleep so went back to bed pretty easily. He listens to tapes now to fall asleep after Richard has read him a few stories. I'm glad R still reads to him, but it still feels like a bit of a cop-out.

But I should remember the good parts of the day when we were out walking in the strange sunny-then-snowing day, Tom in his Batman cape, Alice in her jolly red leg warmers. And Tom falling asleep snuggled up with me on the sofa. And Alice waking up during her nap and then actually going back to sleep by herself!

Casts off, boots on and Easter fun

2010-04-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

So, Alice's casts are off and now she has these little white 'reverse-last' boots. It basically looks like her shoes are on the wrong feet - and it will be interesting to see how many times I hear that over the summer. In fact, hey blog friends, any ideas for witty responses to "hey lady you baby's shoes are on the wrong feet"? Her reaction to having her feet back, at least momentarily, was very cute - she grabbed each big toe in turn and gave it a mighty suck! She also got to have her first bath in two weeks this evening - much splashing and laughing at Tom. Her laugh is so funny right now. I have to check her face to see if she is smiling or crying because it is hard to tell from the sound. She sort of goes 'yuck ack yuck ack'. Mainly she laughs at Tom when he makes very loud noises or jumps around - i.e. he doesn't really have to try very hard to make her laugh. I've set it as a goal to make her laugh once a day but I have to go to the extremes of exaggerated, fake sneezing or zerbutting her tummy to get a little giggle.

She really doesn't seem bothered by loud noises. So different from Tom at this age. I remember when we were in the UK for the first time when Tom was six months how he got so upset the first time he encountered the barrage of all my family together! Over the six weeks we were there he got accustomed to the noise. But Alice is just going to love it! The louder the better!!

Easter was fun. Our neighbourhood easter bunny aka Susanna left this lovely basket on our doorstep. Alice loved the woollen eggs.

We then went for Easter brunch with the Walkers. This was Tom's choice of attire:

(to the uninitiated that is black Spiderman)

In a mad packing-procrastination maneuver I'd sent out an invitation to an Easter Egg hunt to all the kids I knew. Most people had plans but that still left 12 kids coming! Had a sleepless night as I went through the logistics of planning an easter egg hunt for 12 kids. My problem was that I've never actually taken part in one and every scenario I went through in my mind ended up with kids running around our little patch of forest in tears! Then I did a bunch of research online (ha ha!! more packing procrastination) and thank goodness people have taken the time to write up how to have the perfect Easter egg hunt. We had a little one last year that was great but it was for only four kids and each one had their own colour of egg to find. So that was my model and my sleepless night was me thinking of ways I could come up with 12 different hues of eggs! Then sanity prevailed, and the blessed internet provided details and in the end it was a really lovely afternoon. I guess I should write down my top tips for organizing an environmentally bad, unhealthy easter egg hunt for 3-4 year olds. Next year I'm going to save the planet and the kid's teeth.

1) Aim for about 10 eggs per kid and buy an assortment of plastic eggs.
2) Put one or two bits of candy in each egg. For 116 eggs I used 1 bag of jelly eggs, 1bag of strawberry laces from Ikea, two 100g bags of Green and Black butterscotch mini eggs (a BIG hit with the parents who were seen to sureptisciously steal these from the kids baskets), and some rice sticks (a big hit with the parents of the little little kids; the big kids pronounced them 'eeewie'.)
3) Don't panic about the egg filling. It literally took 20 minutes and was fun in a mindless, packing-procrastination kind of way! The website said to put little dots on the eggs to keep them closed - not necessary!
4) We hid the eggs in our little patch of forest next to the park - perfect since it is full of little nooks and crannies and was big enough for the kids to spread out and search in lots of different places at once.
5) Each kid brought their own basket.
6) There were a couple of older kids and I was worried they would get all the eggs, but parent supervision worked just fine. I told everyone that there were about 10 eggs per kid and people kept an eye on the baskets. But really, I found that the 3-4 year olds didn't seem to care about how many they were getting - each egg find seemed to bring them joy!
7) We had thought that we might pool all the eggs at the end and then divide them equally, but in the end we didn't do this. The kids really didn't seem to be comparing egg-hordes but did seem pretty possesive about the eggs they had collected.

One of the cutest parts of the afternoon was when the kids were playing in the forest afterwards and they would occasionally find an egg - great whoops of joy and they would all pass around the egg and stare at it in wonder as though it were some rare jewel. One of the four-year-olds (Edan-boy) then found a calculator (I guess this is a university, so our trash is... calculators!) and pronounced it to be a GPS "that beeps when it gets near an easter egg". So they all took off again on a GPS-guided egg hunt!

Artistic afternoon

2010-03-31T00:16:00.000-07:00

Susanna gave me a cool link with ideas for some Easter arts and crafts so while Alice was sleeping one afternoon I got out our paintbox and we had a go. The eggs turned out rather well! Tom started out asking me to do it all but then he started to enjoy mixing the paints and scratching out shapes. After making our eggs Tom got the idea of painting on the window and me being the wild and crazy parent that I am said sure, let's do it. It was really fun and turned out to be rather beautiful. The kitchen now gets bathed in a magenta hue when the sun comes out.

Tom had a very set idea that each 'egg' that I drew on the window should have two horns, eyes, nose, a couple of mouths and then somewhere between two and five legs.

Hello toes

2010-03-30T23:56:00.000-07:00

Another set of casts on Alice's feet this week. They are much improved and her doctor was very pleased. Alice enjoyed re-discovering her feet in the half hour between casts. Just one more week needed then she gets some special shoes. Dr. Pirani is an amazing man - somehow keeps a level of infectious calm despite kids running all over the show, babies crying, cramped quarters, phones ringing. This week we were the guinea pigs for a study looking at how breastfeeding helps keep babies calm. I was somewhat sceptical when Dr. Pirani asked if we could try the breastfeeding since Alice gets distracted by so much as a pin dropping. But she performed amazingly - there were eight people in the room and she just fed away and then smiled benevolently at her audience. Here she is admiring her casts.

Happy feet

2010-03-23T22:15:00.000-07:00

So little Alice has a soft cast on each foot. She doesn't seem to notice the difference at all. We keep them on a week and go in for follow-up and a change of cast on Monday.

2010-03-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

Went to an AWESOME play today with Susanna (THANK YOU BUDDY!) - Paradise Garden at the Stanley by Lucia Frangione. All about that limbo you can wind up in when trying to live up to expectations, culture clash, gender roles and reversal, the west-coast vibe, what it means to be Canadian, how one moment can change your life for good or bad, and lots of romance and humour and sorrow. It has been a loooong time since I went to a play. I loved the thrill of being just metres from the action and being able to just observe, nothing being asked of me but to suspend belief. I think it is how I would really like to go through real life! I also loved the mixture of naturalistic listic acting with totally artificial theatrical devices - like the two main characters narrating about themselves in the third person or the letter scene where three characters read their letters 'at' each other in stark spot-lit circles. Hmm I realize that was paralleled by the realism of some of the props - a step breaks and is torn out and replaced, the actors creating a wonderful pause in the dialogue as they saw a two-by-six on stage, and then sweep up the sawdust - versus the trees and garden created wholly in gesture.

It was definitely strange to be away from Alice for a while but now that she is eating solids I didn't feel as anxious as I did on my last excursion to see Avatar. And she was fine of course. Only now she won't sleep, the little bugaboo. I've tried since 8pm and needed a break so have brought her down here and she is intently doing her shooting backwards crawling around the living room. She is trying so desperately hard the little love.

We had fun last week seeing the Paralympic stuff downtown. Pictures here

Ok squiggly baby, time for bed take two.

Home Alone (with) 2

2010-03-15T21:48:00.000-07:00

[I started writing this back at the start of February when this new adventure started... but ha ha, being home alone with 2 meant I never seemed to have computer time anymore... so I'm just going to post this even though I think I wanted to add more photos and writing...]

Day 1
The first day started well enough with a 'nature walk' down the steps and through the bush (dinosaur food!). Fun times drawing airplanes and Ts in the gravel with sticks. Things started to go awry on the way home when Tom suddenly needed to go poop. I took him as far off the path as I could - he was fascinated by the fact that it was 'smoking'. But then what to do with it? I have been vociferous in my complaints about dog owners who don't clean up after their dogs! Now I had to cover it up as best I could and slink away. And vow to return with a baggie... and always carry baggies. The things we never think we are going to have to do...!

Lunch and nap were disastrous and I started to wonder what on earth had been in our heads when we thought I would have fun home alone with two kids. I seem to have zero patience when Tom gets naughty and Alice is much too intrigued by all the goings on to do anything sensible like sleep or eat.

But then Sharilyn called up and we went round to her place. Tom played delightfully - he studiously made me a bead necklace - and as we went for a walk in the gloaming Alice giggled and gurgled as she watched the kids run around.

So day one down, everyone survived.

Day 2

Today was rather action packed but again, survival was the goal and was achieved! We had music class this morning and after not napping yesterday at all Alice fell into a deep sleep this morning and 9am and was still asleep at 11am when we had to leave for the class. Dilemma! I hummed and hawed for fifteen minutes then tried to transfer her to the stroller. Didn't work natch but she had a jolly time at the music class so I didn't feel too bad. Tom was initially stunned to see Kera and a music class going on in the Community Room but then he jumped in and sang along - something he was only just starting to do last summer when I was going with him before.

After music we went for Indian buffet with Sharilyn and Adelaide and Theresa and Mary and Ella. It went surprisingly well!

But time was ticking on and we had to get to the Doctor... I think the definition of going slowly insane is trying to walk with a toddler to get somewhere by a certain time.

Dr. Haines was amazing as usual. As Tom put it "Will you be happy if you go to the Doctor?"

Day 3
Only life threatening moment today was when I let go of the stroller for a second and turned around to find Alice slowly gliding away. Thoughts of that Australian youtube video of the baby in a stroller going under the train (but remaining unscathed) as the mother pulled up her pants. Lupin wanted to know what brand of stroller. Apparently our Urban Mountain Buggies are famous for saving a baby when a building collapsed on it during an earthquake!

Lupin, Tavish and Willow were our saviours today. Lupin is a very calming person to be with and has lots of advice about how to keep life simple with two. While initially wary, Tom suddenly remembered that Tavish is his bestest friend ever! So sweet to think that Tom and Tavish and Willow and Alice will be in the same years at school.

Later I tried to be the 'perfect mum' and bake cookies with Tom.
The making part was fun.

The baking part went a bit awry!

Day 4
Picnic in the sun. Gymnastics. Gals over in the evening - wild kids!

A good-ish day!

Day 5
Another mental health day: Dr. Haines and I went to a counselor for the first time - interesting. Got some strategies and ideas.

Lesson of the day: Part Two

2010-03-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

Three-year old happily playing with play-doh. Across the table is 6-month old playing happily with wooden spoon. Great, think I, I will just cook supper.

Turn around a little later to find that the three-year old has been happily feeding play-doh to 6-month old. Learned this because 6-month old's drool was pink!

Turns out play-doh sticks to the roof of a 6-month old's mouth the way peanut butter does when you try and eat a whole tablespoon at once.

Lesson of the day

2010-03-11T18:34:00.000-08:00

There is only one Play-Doh. Accept no substitutes. The fakey brands somehow get super wet and sticky after sitting in the pots for a while.

Also - only buy colours that are going to look just fine and dandy when mixed together:
black and green - not good
blue and red - lovely.

A handful of salad

2010-01-31T22:39:00.000-08:00

Alice finally got her hands on some food tonight! She has been watching wistfully for a couple of weeks whenever we eat - it is quite unnerving to have these beady little eyes tracking every forkful from plate to mouth. She has also been trying to get hold of mugs, spoons, whatever is in range. This evening we were at Pho Hoa and she was sitting on Richard's knee - next thing she'd grabbed a handful of grated carrot and lettuce from his Bun Cha Gio. Oh! The look of triumph! And then despair when we took it away.

The plan is to wait until 6 months and then start on rice cereal. I can see it is going to be hard to wait and somehow I think that when we do serve up that first spoonful of rice cereal she is going to be a wee bit disappointed!

Two more hats

2010-01-28T21:58:00.000-08:00

The famous red hat that we've all worn (me, Sonya, Alex, Tom and now Alice) and a hat on loan from Adriana.

A good day

2010-01-21T22:02:00.000-08:00

Today was one of my favourite kind of days with Alice. Which is good because I woke up feeling pretty blue because it is one year ago today that Grannie died.

I remember sitting in my office at work a year ago, it was about one or two in the afternoon. Mum and Dad were with her at the home and Mum put the phone near her. I could hear her laboured breathing. I told her that I was pregnant and that I hoped it was a girl and that I hoped she would get to meet her. She died a couple of hours later. We were out that evening so when I came home there were lots of messages from Mum and I knew it meant Grannie had died. Since I was only six or so weeks pregnant I didn't fly back for the funeral, I even tried to keep myself from getting too upset but that was hard. I wish she had known that I had a little girl, and that her middle name was Marie.

So, I was looking at Alice when I woke up and feeling very low and sad inside and then I just thought, this is crazy, I only have a finite number of days to spend with my little girl, she will be this way for such a short time, I need to really really enjoy every second. So I canceled my plans to drive across town to a book sale - would have been fun but yet more exhaustion - and planned for simplicity and rest.

After Tom and Richard left for school, Alice and I went back to bed for a feed and nap. She slept and I dozed and read until 10.30. Then I had a shower and actually washed my hair while she chilled out on the bed chatting away to herself and chewing on the dollie from Grandma Tricia. Then we had a nice ichat with Grannie and Grandad where she managed to inch forward a bit on her tummy by pushing on my hands with her feet. Great cheers from England.

She started looking sleepy again around 12.30. It was a nice day (not raining!) so I put her in the stroller and we walked to the photocopy shop, new store, and post office. She snoozed for most of the time but woke up after about 40 minutes. I'm not sure why she doesn't nap for a long time in the middle of the day. she certainly looks and seems tired. I grabbed a wrap from the Donnair place and we walked home. We hung out on the carpet for a while, I watched an episode of Brothers and Sisters (man, that show has really gone downhill this season - too many plotlines) and got supper cooking (fish and potato wedges) and turned the chicken we had the other day into stock. Then another boob and bed session around 3.30 and she slept until just before 5pm. Sonya phoned and talked a bit about Grannie and did a super-quick ichat, then I got Alice into the Bjorn and we charged across campus to pick up Tom.

Tom was in fine form and chatted away as we walked home. The kids in the centre next to his have made a poster with pictures of the different planets and he likes to point to a planet and ask its name. He told me a great story about Mars - must be from some book or other - "Robots go to Mars and pick up soil and then the spacemen check the soil for animals." When we walk past Terry Fox he yells "Terry is a fox, that is why his name is Terry Fox." And he was very fascinated by the new moon tonight so when we got home I got out my binoculars to see if he could see any craters. At first he would look and get distracted by other things "I can see a window!" then he caught sight of the moon and gasped and said "I can see the barnacles on the moon!"

And he actually ate some of his supper and didn't flip out which makes a nice change. He made me laugh a lot (though I had to hide it) because he was asking for something in his whiny voice and Richard said "Ask in your normal voice please" and he said "Oh, come on" in the exact same tone and phrasing that I use when I am frustrated with him. Susanna and Seb came over for quick visit after supper and Tom went over to their house to play for a bit all by himself!

Alice had fun in her bath again - she has discovered that kicking is fun and that splashing me makes me laugh. She doesn't like to come out though, I guess she gets cold. Lots of crying until she is all dressed up and cuddled. Her hair doesn't go quite so curly now when it is wet, but it goes jet black just like when she was born.

At bedtime Tom got Richard to make him a bird's nest out of his bedclothes and pillows, very cute. He is still up now though, keeps needing to go pee or coming out because 'Dad, I need to tell you something'. Alice is sleeping through his high jinks. Funny how she sleeps so much better when she has had a restful day.

Alice's hats

2010-01-17T21:53:00.000-08:00

Alice has a very impressive collection of hats. Below is just a selection - I am trying to get photos of them all!

Here is her first ever hat, donned moments after being born.

Her second hat, from Grannie Rose.

A lovely frilly number for the last days of summer from Aunt Sonya.

Neighbour Susanna (who has a lovely blog here) knitted this one and it has become the staple for the winter.

A hat for Christmas Day.

And a very stylish hat made out of recycled wool by friend Leah

(who is doing my job while I'm on Mat leave)

And, erm, Mama is still working on a hat for Alice... I really must finish knitting it before winter ends!

Nesters opens

2010-01-14T21:21:00.000-08:00

Big day here on the mountain: Nesters - our new supermarket - opened! Alice and I zipped over in the driving rain for the opening. And then we went back for a second visit with Tom after picking him up from daycare. Never have I seen a store overflowing with such euphoria - everyone was all smiles, all the staff had big grins... lots of free samples, prizes, balloons, a BBQ...

It is a really really lovely store.

And so jolly to walk around and bump into neighbours. In fact, that is going to be the problem - shopping will take extra long with all the chatting in the aisles!

(I hate this picture but the others look good.)

On the Alice front, she has been doing these mini sit-ups when I change her diaper. She lifts her head and feet up a few centimeters. She is such a little yoga baby. I should get together some photos of all her yoga moves. Anyway, it turns out all that core-strength building activity paid off because she now can sit up if propped up by cushions! Last week she was flopping forward in the same position. Here she is on the sofa:

Tom's verdict: "Now she can sit up she can watch telly!"

More of some

2010-01-11T21:23:00.000-08:00

Yay! Alice discovered the joys of kicking and splashing in the bath tonight. Slight smiles and Mama's wet face. She is slowly getting used to the idea that I'm going to dunk her in water every now and then. She really didn't like baths at first. Now I bath her every other night and it isn't too much of an ordeal any more.

Had a nice morning-that-extended-into-a-late-lunch hanging out with our friends Shari and Addie (lovelydesign). As Shari said, you know when you have a good friend when you can just hang out, not talk, and even totally ignore each other for a while!

I forgot to report on Alice's 4-month Doctor's appointment. All went well and she is now 14lbs 11oz (6662g) and an amazing 25.75 inches long (65cm). Long and lean as Doc Haines said. Her right foot is still pretty wonky so we go back in mid-February to decide whether to go back to the pediatric orthopedic guy and get a cast before we go to the UK... the timing makes it all a bit nerve-wracking but hopefully it will all work out.

I realized over this last week that Tom doesn't ask for 'more of some' anymore, even though I still say and think it. In fact, he has got pretty precise in terms of quantifying what he wants. Yesterday on the way back from Ella's bowling birthday party (bedlam but fun!) he said, "I would like the candies in my pirate bag, and don't give me just a few, give me all of them," which shows he knows me well since when he started asking for them I thought, well... maybe I'll give him just a few. Ho ho. Favourite Tom-ism of the day "Don't worry Mum, you will soon grow up big and tall like Daddy."

Floating underwater

2010-01-09T22:06:00.000-08:00

Today, a random woman at the swimming pool asked me if Tom and Alice had the same father!

Tom's swim class was fun to watch. He is pretty naughty and spends every moment the teacher is not working with him intent on splashing the little girls in his class. But he is really coming along and can now float on his back all by himself (he floats for a count of five and then slowly sinks, but doesn't seem to mind!), seems to like ducking his head under (he'll dissappear under water rather disconcertingly, and then pop up and yell "Mum, I was floating underwater!" and is a whiz with all the various types of equipment - the "noodles" being a favourite.

Today the new toys were kickboards and I clearly heard his little voice across the noisy pool asking "What is this for?" of the teacher. After a quick experiment to see if it was useful at all for splashing people, he watched for a second and then was off. I'm so glad he loves the water. Just another couple of months and I can take Alice swimming!

Happy New Year!

2010-01-07T23:02:00.000-08:00

A big week for Alice, aged 4 months now - she rolled over for the first time from her back to her front on Monday. By the end of the week, she's a pro and just loves doing it! She rocks her legs back and forth and then does the roll and flips her head up with a flourish. Here is a picture of her just-rolled - see the look of satisfaction!

A big week for Mama too in that I finally have kicked the TV habit. New Year's resolution: no TV during the day. So far it is working. And Alice has been having naps by herself, in bed. A miracle! The funny thing is that I miss snuggling with her on the sofa, even though I am now actually managing to sort of get things done during the day. Actually, I don't think my TV days were bad. She got a lot of boob, a lot of rest, a lot of cuddle time, as did I. It just got over the top when I would go to bed and have House-style diagnostic dreams!

Tom is having a bit of a strange week. He has become very difficult about supper time. His first reaction to anything is "I don't like it!" Such a shock for us after his champion eating habits for the last two years. Tonight he merrily sang all the way home about the turkey pie we were going, but when served he spied some green beans in the pie and completely freaked out. But green beans have been one of the things he has actually liked recently! It is just impossible to keep up. Some nights it just needs patience and Richard sits with him for 45 minutes while I put Bin ban to sleep and Tom finally eats up all the things he allegedly doesn't like.

He is still saying the most wonderfully funny things. The other day he said "Dad, is someone going to come to our house to clean it?" We shamefacedly had to say.. er, yes! And when we were making an angel for the Christmas tree out of play-doh he asked "Can you make it have little boobies?" He is also becoming a bit of an anatomical expert since getting this great magnetic skeleton toy from his Grandma. He cut his finger and pronounced he could see his 'skel' (his nickname for skeletons). He has also noticed that he and Dad have 'wee-wobs' but that Alice and I do not.

He is being so very sweet to Bin ban. He heard her crying last night and came running upstairs with her 'cuddly'. He also made her laugh for the first time this week - I got a great video, which I will post when I work out how to put such stuff up here.