Amanda invited Edzèa over to make a special Halloween craft yesterday. Here is the creation in process:
Rohan very definitely signed milk to me today. He also copied me over and over again when I signed yes. We were both very excited that we understood each other. He is 7 1/2 months old now. He also loves Edzea’s kindermusic class.
I’ve been feeding him much more solid food now. At the Family Centre yesterday he ate cut up cukes, apple and whole crackers. I’ve been giving him rice cakes all week so we are well on our way to having him eat normal food. He has had pasta now too! His Daddy fed him some spaghetti bolognese at SSI the other day at lunch-Tim went AWOL without Mommy approval. Besides the fact Rohan hasn’t had a bowel movement for 3 days…he seems ok!
Sleep training has also been successful. There was one night of misery and now we have him in the crib all night and he last for about 4/5 sometimes 7 hours stretches between feeds. And as suspected, he likes to sleep in. He usually lasts until 7:30 or 8am if he isn’t awakened by his sister! who still wakes up between 5:30 and 6am. We are going to try putting her to bed later in the evening this weekend to see if that makes a difference.
It’s been a whirlwind month. Here are a variety of pics from this month.
Mom & Bruce visited for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately for them, they came to a sick household and left for Vancouver with colds. It was a challenging week with the kids as Edzea and Rohan both had the stomach flu and then I got it and then Tim and Mom picked up a nasty cold. The weather was nice though. No snow and Bruce was able to watch Tim get out and play soccer until the sickness struck. It’s amazing that we were able to pull off Thanksgiving dinner despite all of this.
Mom brought us lots of yummy baking that we are just now enjoying.
Edzea is going to be a frog for Halloween but Mom introduced her to witches while she was here so here she is in her witch outfit. She couldn’t figure out her broom to begin with. She had it backwards and then when she did get it right she said, “Mommy it doesn’t work!”
This is just brief I will try to write more when I get more time. Here are the pics:
Also, when I was away in Calgary with Rohan, Edzea learned to open doors so Daddy promptly went out and child-proofed the doors. Rohan has 3 teeth now. He cut his right eye tooth two weeks ago. He is moving around a bit on the floor now. Not crawling yet but he certainly tries to rock himself forward and around.
Rohan and I were the last ones standing but we got knocked down with a cold this week so things haven’t run as smoothly as planned. Edzea has been back to her regular self which is great because she’s a lot more fun as a “well” toddler than a sick cranky toddler.
Her teacher at Kindermusic today kept complimenting her on being a good listener and participant as she did EVERYTHING her teacher was doing. Ok, gotta run, Rohan is causing me /us grief with his sleep issues, he’s been sleeping on/off for only 2 hours and I just put him down again 15 minutes ago and he’s crying again.
For the second day in a row of Edzea’s stomach flu, I have accidentally left Rohan’s breakfast bowl unattended at the table. Today, I rushed off to help Edzea in the bathroom and hence, a repeat of yesterday’s performance (today I took pictures)…see for yourself…oatmeal prune cereal and baby:
Edzea’s down with the stomach flu which hit this morning. Tim is finally back at work after his 5 day knock-em down flu. Rohan and I are the only healthy ones although I’m fighting something and hopefully will continue to.
Rohan had his 6 mos Immunization and check-up today:
Update: Weight: 19 lbs-75th Percentile
Height: 27 1/2 inches-75th Percentile
He signs milk and eat now.
He understands many more than that-bath, up, yes, Daddy, Mommy, change, toys etc.
Here are some pics of the babies, Owen, Rohan and Madyson at a playdate at our house.
We attended Edzèa’s first official dance class today. Rohan was in the Baby Bjorn and Edzèa had her new leotard/skirt/tights and hair ribbon on. I would NEVER have been able to get her in to this outfit if it was for daily wear but she knew “her dance class” was special. It was a lot of fun but a bit short. Only 30 minutes. Kindermusic is 45min.
I know now that she would have had no problem in preschool this year. She wasn’t paying much attention to me in the class just “her teacher”. Now, that may not have been the case if I weren’t in the room but she seems to be able to follow direction fairly well now.
Here’s a pic of her and Dylan before their class began. Unfortunately the only clear one I got was with Edzèa’s fake smile.
She certainly is adorable to me in her little outfit. I wish she’d let me dress her more girlie more often!
Also, Rohan is enjoying his food! He wants to eat everything all the time. I haven’t started him on meat yet but he’s gone through a good variety of veggies and fruits.
We’re off for the first day of the Family Centre tomorrow, Edzèa is excited although we are out walking every day before the weather turns on us. We never seem to run out of things to do.
On Saturday night, some of my friends and I hosted our monthly girl night at SSI. It turned out to be a little surprise belated birthday for me. They spoiled me. Here are some pics of the cake that Stef made and some pics of a good majority of my great girlfriends up here.
I’m waiting for Tim to send me a picture of Edzèa pulling a Herc plane. He took the kids to an event that he participated in with his soccer team on Saturday morning while I went to Spin class. It turns out Edzèa got to pull the plane too and someone got a great photo of her doing it. I have yet to see it but will post it when it arrives. The event was called the “Herc pull”. Various teams from around town try to pull a Herc as far and fast as they can and the winning team gets a prize. I believe Tim’s team came second!
We’ve had a great week. Lots of fresh autumn air (I know it’s still summer but it’s fall up here). It’s warm but the leaves have all turned.
Today, we had a playdate at Prelude park. Tracey, Desiree, Maria, Noemi, Amanda, Haydon, Madyson, Edzea, Rohan and I.
We headed out at 9:30 in convoy to Prelude Lake. We went further along the trail than we did on Sunday and we found great berries! More cake to come!
Edzea actually knew the difference between the orange dull bear-berries (kinnikinnick is the aboriginal name that I know it as) and the cranberries. She won’t eat the cranberries but she’s a good picker!
We picked for an hour and a half and then moved to the playground part of the park for a picnic lunch. It was a lovely day!
It’s a little unfathomable that I’ve lived in the North for six years and never done the Holy Grail of ‘what September means to Northerners’ with anyone. Up here, it is called “Cranberry Picking”. Each year, our true-Northern friends, are out there searching for the the “perfect patch” and although I’ve had the intention of going out each September and doing just that…somehow, it’s never transpired. Until today.
Katherine ( Allan’s fiancee) called us up to check if we were still under the weather (we’ve all been sick all weekend). We were all feeling much better today so she invited us to join a group of our true-Northern friends to go cranberry picking.
Edzea was beside herself. She had NO idea what we “cranberry picking” was but she was EXCITED!!! We made ourselves makeshift buckets from yoghurt containers and string to go around our necks. We packed our bug spray and snacks to be ready in one hour. Edzea was going to miss NAP time as our friends were going at 1pm. We packed up as quickly as possible, ate some lunch and toddled off to Tim Horton’s to meet up with Glen, Heather, Natalie, Madeline, Katherine and Carolyn.
We drove a few kilometers down the Ingraham trail when Glen and Heather(who we were following) stopped to tell us that they had forgotten to fill up with gas so they would meet us there. We didn’t really know where “there” was but Katherine and Carolyn in Allan’s car said that they knew. It turns out they didn’t really either! All we knew is that they called it “Big Hill”. Not sure if that was the official name of this picking haven or not. Anyways, we eventually arrived and sure enough we had to go up a “big hill”…well, in the North anyways, to our secret picking destination.
I was looking for bushes with cranberries on them as I forgot they grow low on the ground here. Turns out they mix with the Kinnick kinnick and there were hardly any cranberries but numerous black flies. We spent about 40 minutes picking about 10 cranberries between all of us and then the group decided on another destination. The Froehler family were just tagging along. We didn’t really mind if we got cranberries or not. It was just a nice outing in the fall weather (yes, it’s fall here) with our friends. We let Edzea fill her bucket with Kinnick Kinnick berries so she was happy. She and Natalie were playing “Explorers in the jungle”.
We then moved along to Prelude Lake. There we found patch after patch of “Northern gold” or “shiny red” as the case may be here!
I was officially hooked. I started envisioning all of the lovely things I could do with my FREE wild cranberries. I ignored my children and husband and got down and dirty in the mucky buggy bogs. Picking and picking and picking. Edzea was helping me but eventually figured she would getmore attention from Daddy so off she went. I was a cranberry-finding maniac. It was hard to tear myself away when Rohan got hungry. Heather told me that she and Katherine had often had to remind each other that it was getting dark when they were out picking.
At 4:30 after a happy few hours of picking and chatting, we headed home. This weekend was the sixth year anniversary of Tim and my first date too! We planned on walking the walk at Tin Can hill with the kids to commemorate the day as we did six years ago but I am happy that we finally got to go cranberry picking as a different experience!
Katherine told me I’d be dreaming of cranberry bushes tonight and she just might be right. We’ve already talked about finding another great patch next weekend!
Here are some very limited pics that I took of our day.
We had a great Canada Day in Yellowknife despite the inclement weather. Tim had arrived on time back from Iqualuit the night before so I was relieved! The night before it took me 2 1/2 hours to get kids to bed. I was worn out! We headed down to the parade on Franklin and met all of our friends across from Javaroma. Carolyn, Glen, Connor, Heather, Glen, Natalie, Madeline, Amanda, Paul, Judy, Haydon, Madyson, Gina, Stuart, Georgia, Owen, Katherine. The annual meeting spot. Edzea loved all of the mascots-A&W Root Bear and the McDonald’s bird were chased down the road. Lots of the floats were throwing out candies so Edzea got a little box of her own smarties for the first time and a sucker for the first time.
From the parade site we moved to the new civic plaza site at the side of Frame Lake. Bug free and super fun for the kids. Rohan enjoyed himself in the Baby Bjorn with Daddy. Edzea danced to the different bands that were there. She truly loves music!
There was a bouncy castle that proved to be very popular with she and her friends too. They all went in it as a group and had a good time. Edzea went back 3 times. We waited in line!!! The first time with Haydon & Connor & Georgia, next time with Natalie and then the last time with Mathieu. We then found the Canada’s Birthday cupcakes and we all dug in! Edzea most of all. That girl LOVES cake! as you can see from the pics. We then had Katherine over to our house for dinner and a movie. All in all a great Canada Day!
