October

Days spent on the lake in the boat with warm weather seem so far behind us now. We closed the trailer and boat up at the beginning of October for the year.

Toward the end of October we lost my mother-in-law to Alzheimers. She was only 64 and it progressed quickly. I knew her a few years before the disease really took hold and was fortunate to have had that time. Unfortunately, the boys didn't really have a chance to get to know her well. I hope we will find opportunities to be able to talk to them more about her as time goes on. This year was their first real exposure to death. They lost a great-grandfather and a grandmother. B&N sat quietly and were very respectful during the service. I was a proud mama. Quiet and respectful aren't often words I use to describe them but it is nice to know they understand when it is important that they try to be on their best behaviour.

Consequently, I was solo parenting a lot in October. Weekends were spent - apple picking (there happened to be pumpkins there too!), having backyard adventures, and making many trips to the playground. We also had a couple of special outings with just the big boys. I took them skating one afternoon and the four of us went to a local hockey game another evening. For the latter, we had a girl in our neighbourhood baby sit for the first time while Noah was sleeping. It is something we plan on doing more often now that the boys are getting older.

Halloween was a hit this year, we had an Iron Man, Batman, and Dragon. Two of which were hand-me-down costumes from previous years.  Noah even learned to say trick-or-treat, visited a couple of houses, and helped me hand out candy in his dragon costume. He was the sweetest little dragon there ever was.

My camera on my iPhone is getting so terrible. It may be time for a new one soon... 

Happy Fall (& 7 Month Update)

Halloween was a giant low maintenance success this year. The 3 year old wanted to be a Ninja Turtle (same as last year) and the 6 year old didn't have any requests or complaints about going as Batman again so we reused last year's costumes and the baby, of course, went as Tigger just as his brothers did for their first Halloweens. 

In baby news. Noah just might be the sweetest baby boy ever (I'm sure I said that a million times over with his big brothers too). Some highlights from 7 months:

- Sitting on a blanket or mat playing with toys. His favourite thing to do.

- Eating! Oatmeal cereal, acorn squash, butternut squash, carrots, sweet potato, green beans, apple sauce (mixed with oatmeal). He isn't a huge fan of the green beans so we mix them with the sweet potato or squash with a 2 to 1 ratio and he gobbles it right up. I've been making 2 batches per week of pureed veggies and freezing them in ice cube trays. He usually eats about 3 cubes per serving.

- Teething! His two bottom teeth are coming any day now. I keep checking each day but they haven't yet broken through.

- Enjoying outings. On occasion my sister will take the two little guys to the park in the morning so Noah has gotten used to riding in the swing and sitting in the sand. On Remembrance Day, they took the bus to our local ceremony and parade.

- Starting to vocalize. Slowly but surely, we've got a developing chatterbox on our hands. Lots of  giggles, "ahhhh", "Gah" and putting his lips together and going "pffft".

- Still nursing but mostly at night, in the morning and in the evening. He doesn't actually nurse much when I come home at lunch from work any more. He seems either not overly hungry then or too interested in everything else going on. I still end up feeding him a little and pumping a couple of ounces so it still feels worth coming home for to me but I definitely see an end to the lunchtime nursing sessions coming soon. We supplement about half of his daytime feedings with formula. On the weekends he nurses much more frequently and only one or two formula feedings per day.

Toe sucker

Winter seems to have come early this year. We got our first snow fall and the big boys couldn't have been happier! Hard to believe Christmas is right around the corner.

First snow fall of 2014

Intrigued

With Thanks.

Yesterday we arrived home from Thanksgiving weekend at my in-laws cottage up north. B and I both brought home colds while N sported a fat lip from falling into a chair and puncturing it with his tooth and R was sore from building a new dock. Though the weather was chilly for the most part and even dipped down to -1(!), it didn't feel so cold in the midst of the warmth of campfires, family, and laughter.

This year I am thankful for:

- My two beautiful and busy little boys
- A husband that would move mountains for me
- Having a great job that I actually enjoy going to every day
- Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for grad school
- Health - after a long time, I'm finally starting to feel like "me" again

Onto Halloween I suppose.. my awesome sister took it upon herself to help me out this year. N will be a green dragon ($10 off Kijiji...tags still on) and B will be a blue ninja. This year I had little energy to think about putting together a costume for him with work and school and everything else going on. We got out the Party City catalogue and he chose the ninja costume. He tried it on this morning and was pretty impressed. He looked so cute..almost worth the $25...

My little gnome

It was just B's luck that he came down with a nasty cough and ear infection on Halloween. N was in bed at 6pm so we didn't even bother dressing him up.

Here is a short re-cap of B's previous costumes:

2008 - Tigger (we were busy renovating our house and last minute costume selections were sparse for a 6 month old a.k.a. pooh, piglet or tigger). A bonus.. I think I only paid about $15 since it was on clearance. 

2009 - Skeleton - we bought a pair of skeleton pjs for $8 and a skeleton hat from the dollar store. Needless to say he got much use out of this costume for under $10

2010 - Construction man - we already had a play construction hat and jean overalls. We got him a set of play tools for $2, borrowed a small tool belt off a neighbour which we doubled around him, and I smudged some charcoal eyeshadow on his cheeks for good measure.

This year, after changing his mind several times from robot to scarecrow to clown, he finally settled on being a gnome Halloween morning after watching one of the latest favourite movies, Gnomeo and Juliet (love the Elton John soundtrack to this movie!). Lucky enough, I stumbled across this tutorial online. I ran out to the store and grabbed some faux fur for the beard which was 50% off so cost me $3.50. For the hat, I cut up one of DH's old red work t-shirts, hand stitched it into a hat, and stuffed the top with some tissue paper I had lying around the house. I safety pinned the beard to the hat and he wore his yellow rain boots. Voila! Year 3 of not spending over $10 for a costume.

B was almost too sick to make it out but after seeing the first few kids come to our door, magically felt well enough to get dressed up and hit a few houses on our street. He got lots of compliments on his costume!

Maybe I do have a crafty side!

May I present.. MY VERY FIRST COMPLETED BLANKET! (ignore my 70's recliner) I've always loved doing artsy/crafty things. However... most of the things I have attempted have not turned out so nice, I've gotten bored or I've quit after experiencing slight difficulty aka. knitting, crochet, even cross stitch but this... this blanket was foolproof! You'd never know it wasn't quite rectangular or the fringe isn't evenly spaced. This was a project I started in the summer for Ryan's cousin's daughter who is 8 months younger than Brendan. We got one for Brendan last winter from a family friend and absolutely loved it. The one I made has a pink fleece side with hippos on it and a flat purple side. I was complaining to Ryan tonight while I was finishing it off about how I hate measuring and I couldn't get anything even and never to let me start crafty projects again because I always end up not liking them or failing horribly. WELL let me tell you, when I finished doing all the knots I was so proud I decided I will just have to make more. You can get the directions for yourself here. These would make AWESOME christmas gifts as you can choose a million different patterns and colours of fleece.

Now for the Halloween pictures of my little skeleton. We just layered him underneath and put his coat on and left it open. He can be a skeleton every night now because his costume was a pair of $10 glow in the dark pyjamas! His hat was $1 from the Dollarama and his bucket also $1. Can you tell mom doesn't like to spend a lot on costumes and loves to repurpose yet still be unique. Believe it or not I had a ton of people ask me where I got his costume.. and my slightly embarassing response in my head was "they are actually $10 pyjamas because I'm too cheap to spend $40 on a one time use kids costume". Actual response - "from Walmart" 

Halloween Weekend

Friday was our first Halloween with Brendan and at our new house. I originally wanted to make Brendan a costume (specifically a pumpkin) but that never ended up happening as I've been so busy with everything else so I broke down and got him a costume. I couldn't believe that the only reasonably priced baby costumes were Winnie the Pooh characters. So Brendan was a "Tigger" for Halloween.



We thought it would be cute to sit him in the candy bowl.. he loved it.


He really can't wait for next year when he can maybe actually eat some candy and go out trick-or-treating

Saturday we spent all day drywalling what will be Brendan's room.

Sunday we went downtown to MEC to get some gear for our upcoming trip. Afterwards I talked Ryan into walking to my favourite vegetarian restaurant Fresh only to find out when we got there that we could've gone to the one that was only 1km away from where we parked, not 5! Anyway, we both enjoyed our meals. I had the green goddess bowl with sweet potato fries and a wheatgrass shake and Ryan had the spicy black bean wrap, fries and a Steam Whistle. mmmmmm. Brendan also thoroughly enjoyed the restaurant and let everyone know by letting out high pitched squeals the whole time and trying to grab everything in sight.

A side note.. I bought a pair of Lululemon pants while we were downtown and it is true, they are so so comfortable and figure flattering.

(It also didn't occur to me that mention of Jake has been lacking from the blog. Here is the wonderdog! Small but mighty.)