A night at the movies

Thanks to my good friend Sara, every once in a while Joel and I get to indulge ourselves in a dinner sans kids. Tonight we had the pleasure of not only dining without whining, but we also got to partake in a movie (trust me it's an infrequent occurance) and decided to see Juno. I was initially a little worried that Joel would think it an uncool "chick flick", but no worries.

If you live on Neptune and aren't familiar with the premise of Juno, I'll not spoil it for you but to say that it has undertones that relate to adoption - which are of course right up my alley. In essence, if you ever want to know exactly how neurotic we were (I mean - I was) as a result of feeling so out of control in the whole adoption process - watch this movie. It's right "on the money" and well worth it too!

It's not often that I find a movie that lives up to it's hype but this one did - even for Joel who gave it two thumbs up.


P.S. Thanks Sara!

Naomi's Heart

Kids say the darndest things. Yesterday afternoon the girls were scrapping and Myles had just gotten up from a nap when I made the announcement that we were going outside to blow off some steam. That didn't go over well considering that it was pretty cold out - but mom's win most of the time so out we went (literally kicking and screaming albeit).

The kids decided to clean all the snow off the trampoline so they had a fun time throwing snow around with their shovels, which lead to a snowball fight -- kids against mom. Which lead to Naomi (accidentally) getting a fistful of soft snow right in the face. Let's just say that I wasn't very popular at that moment.

A couple of hours later, I repeated the kicking and screaming to drag them inside for dinner. Immediately, the girls started scrapping again. Admittedly I had little patience left over from a long day and my voice was "slightly elevated" when I went to deal with them. A few minutes after I returned to the kitchen to make dinner, Naomi came downstairs.

"Mom, my heart is breaking."
"Oh Naomi, why is your heart breaking?", I said.
"Well mom, I just don't feel loved."
"I'm sorry that you feel that way Naomi, because I love you so much."
"Well mom, face it . . . my heart is breaking."
"Naomi, what does a person do to make you feel loved?"
"Gives me hugs and kisses, doesn't get mad at me and gives me money to go to Dollarama."

So I gave her a huge hug and kiss, apologized for my anger and asked her, "Do you feel loved now?".
"Well I think my heart is slowly healing, but if you gave me some money and helped me find my missing cheetahs it would be all better."

The emotional trials and tribulations of a five year old! Can't wait till those teen years!

Sigh.

Wow 2 months!

I can't believe that two months has passed since I last updated the blog, but the weeks leading up to Christmas were incredibly busy and filled with lots of visiting, parties and fun.

Santa was good to all of us, but most especially to the kids. This is the first year that Naomi "got it" and watching her anticipation was fun to say the least. We were most proud of her when she decided to write a story for Christmas about her teacher, Santa and her dinosaurs. The story was full of imagination, and she did 95% of the writing herself aside from a bit of help sounding out a few words. Naomi's most proud to now be an author, and we are just plain proud!

Myles is now talking in 3 word sentences, so the holidays brought on a whole new set of "whas dat mommy?", "who dat mommy?" and "wowie".

A week before Christmas, Lilah got her adenoids out. She has increasingly had a difficult time breathing through her nose. Eating was a marathon, sleeping was noisy and a lisp was beginning to develop. Anyhow, this kid is a real trouper. As a day surgery, she was admitted to the hospital at 7am and discharged at 10am. Since she had a general anesthetic, I anticipated that she would be sleepy (or at least quiet), for the rest of the day. Much to my suprise (and chagrin), the kid kicked it into high gear and didn't miss a beat! I'm not even exaggerating when I tell you that she was more energetic than she had been in weeks.

The end of December brought about Naomi's fifth birthday - which she celebrated with seven of her friends at a Dinosaur themed "Almost Sleepover" party. For almost 364 days, she has been eager to turn five and the waiting is finally over.

So . . . here are some photos of our most recent session with Gerri and a bit later I'll post some other pictures from the past few months. Enjoy!

Trick or Treat

Our all Hallows eve has become a tradition of heading down to Cobourg's Ball Street neighbourhood with our friends, having a little party and then Trick or Treating together. The families who participate are all the moms and kids who we hung out with on an almost daily basis when our kids were smaller. Since school and our jobs now prevent us from getting together as often as we used to (or would like), it's nice to have a tradition that we can still maintain and really enjoy!

This year, it all began with a party at Doc Woodland's bone crunching office (he's the chiropractor dad of our friends TY and TJ, and he really gets into this holiday). After some pizza and the "Blonde Baker's Cupcakes", the Klassen cheetah, butterfly, tiger and their friends headed out for some T & T action.

The girls had fun, but it was Myles who cleaned up. He developed a new technique - which resulted in his gaining tons of loot. First, Myles would cheerfully climb the stairs of the house. Once he got the homeowner's attention, he would smile and turn around, climbing down the stairs sans candy. Of course this would elicit an "OH isn't he THE cutest" from the unsuspecting homeowner, who would then try to pile the candy into his bucket! So . . . for the last two weeks, Joel and I have been scarfing back the chocolate. After all, a 19 month old can't have THAT much candy! Thankfully, we're almost done. :)

Reminiscing!

Isn't it funny how you can forget a moment, then see a photo and be suddenly reminded of such fun. I was preparing to upload the pictures from last month from my camera to my laptop, when I came across some really great times!

A few weeks ago we went to the Quemby's house to catch frogs. Naomi has been crazy over all things furry or with reptile skin this summer - so our friends were kind enough to invite us over for a frog catching morning. What ensued was a lot of mud, a few frightened frogs and lots of fun. Suprisingly enough, it wasn't the photos of the frogs that scared me the most, it was the picture of the girls on the back of the little four-wheeler with their friend Simon driving. Yeah -- immediately I got a glimpse of life 10 years from now. SCAREY!

Naomi was also thrilled to see that Ben, Caleb and Kate have some terrific monkey bars on their fort. Guess what our $200 Home Depot windfall will probably go towards! Hopefully Adam can come over to help with the building.

Joel would probably say that even more scarey is the shoe fettish that Myles has lately. No kidding, the kid cannot go anywhere without shoes on. If you take them off, he just goes and finds another pair to wear. Most of the time, they aren't even his shoes. Since he and Lilah share the same sized foot, you can imagine Joel's dismay at coming home and seeing his son VERY PROUDLY wearing black patent leather with polka dots! Only more scarey was the day that he got out the barrettes!

We also headed to the Chinese Lantern Festival again this year and I've included some shots of that trip. The kids have been wanting to take a train for a while now, so we decided to catch the GO train in Oshawa. The train ride was a ton of fun - even when Myles decided to investigate the emergency bars that are conveniently located at toddler height and the conductor came screaming back to our car to make sure everything was OK on the way in. On the way home, Naomi's highlight was when the conductor asked her to make the announcment for our stop. "Next stop OSHAWA!"

The Lantern Festival was fun again this year. In fact I think that the kids enjoyed it even more this year. The shows were spectacular and we had to drag them away so that we could check out the lanterns. Would have been a more difficult thing except that Naomi spotted Baskin Robbins and we got sucked in. Last year we stopped in front of the panda lanterns and took a photo of the girls. When we got to the Panda's again, we decided to make it an annual thing and we lined them up. The resulting photo was hilarious - and typically serious, until the girls could no longer hold their serious looks and burst into giggles. I posted both pictures for your enjoyment. :)

So . . . that was fun and the memories were even better! Enjoy the pictures - I know that I did.

Cheers,
Karen