Rohan officially started “creeping/crawling” yesterday at 8 1/2 months. It’s a funny way of getting around but I’m sure he will have the traditional crawl mastered this week. He kind of swims himself along the floor like a dolphin. Two arm pulls like butterfly and then a wriggle of the legs. It’s very odd but occasionally he moves up to his knees so I’m sure he’ll figure out an easier way soon. At least he gets where he wants to slowly.

And “Mumamummum” is the latest thing out of his mouth. He gets so much praise for it that he practises a lot! Also, to be fair to Dada I have continuously said Mama to him for the past month in the hopes that he’ll say it…so it’s not that fair really!

He mastered clapping with the actual sound this week too. He makes a clicking noise with his mouth that I think is supposed to be clap clap but he can actually make his hands make the sound. He’s SOOOO proud of himself. It’s so cute!

It’s  been busy as usual up here. Here are some pics of Edzea dressed up to go to her first theatre performance at NACC. We went with Tracey & Mackenzie. It was billed as being appropriate for young kids but it wasn’t. It was a spoof on Fairy Tales. The whole way to the theatre, Edzea kept saying, “Mommy, I don’t want the big bad wolf there.” She fixated on this. We were met at the entrance doors by Snow White which she noticed was NOT the same as the Snow White at Mabel Lake and “where were the little people????” She wanted to see the three little pigs and that was it. While we were waiting for the curtains to rise, they were blasting hard rock music and then when the curtain did rise it came on with about 30 teenagers dressed as wolves, and various other Fairy Tale characters dancing to a very loud number. She sat on my lap and held on for dear life. Then they did a version of the dating game with Prince Charming, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. They were yelling and Edzea just didn’t understand it. Then another dance number with wolves came on and we left the theatre. I wasn’t going to force her to stay and watch something she wasn’t ready for.

So, I hung out with her in the lobby with a number of other parents and toddlers who had left the show waiting for Tracey & Mackenzie to come out. Haydon and Amanda had come and I didn’t realize they were there until they came out of the theatre about 10 minutes after us. We’ve all decided that we will attempt “The Nutcracker” at Christmas time. It should be tame enough.

Edzea is busy with Christmas projects for her friends. See the sample of one of her paintings. She is quite the artist at the moment.

She signs her letter E by herself now. It’s quite amazing. I showed her how to do it one day and she’s remembered. Also, she is trying to imitate to a degree other images I show her. She now does a half circle rainbow, trees and she is trying faces, cats. If you use your imagination you can almost see a faint resemblance to these items!!!

Rohan is doing well. He’s had a cold all week but he’s always a happy little fellow so that hasn’t brought him down too much. He loves Kindermusic and loves to dance with Daddy. He is sooooo close to crawling we can’t quite believe he hasn’t figured it out yet. It will come soon.

Also, Edzea is wanting PRIVACY in the bathroom now. She slams the door in your face when you try to follow her in. She only calls you to help with the wiping now.

Tim’s at soccer tonight. We are all finally healthy at the moment, cross our fingers. The weather is still balmy max. -4 so far. It’s been a nice winter so far.

Looking forward to our trip south in December.

Edzea and I do some one on one girl time together on the weekends. We usually go to the pool together but I’m still avoiding the pool until I’m sure we all feel super healthy. So today we went grocery shopping and then we went to the fish barge to get fish for our freezer. Edzea hadn’t been there before and she was really curious about where the fish came from if it wasn’t from Mabel Lake. So I showed her Great Slave Lake and we looked at all of the boats frozen into the ice. Then, we walked over to a new little coffee shop that just opened right beside it. It has a little craft gallery in it, a spot to order soup, baked goods, drinks, coffee etc and then a small eating area. We stayed there for a while and ate cookies and chatted. Then we went into the craft gallery where they had plain white stuffed animal cats in a big treasure chest. The lady in the gallery is painting them and then selling them with $2 from every sale going to the SPCA. I asked if we could purchase one for Edzea to paint and she was so nice. She gave us two for $5. She also gave us so me neat beaded iron on beading to use as collars when we were done and told me about a neat technique for fabric painting. All in all, we had a fun afternoon.

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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.

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.

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Here are some pics from our Easter weekend from the SSI Easter Egg Hunt to our own Easter Egg Hunt for Edzea to our Easter Pot luck party at our house. Enjoy.

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O k, well, I know that Rohan smiled at me for a long time one night when he was 1 week old but since no one else saw it, some people don’t believe it counts. So he’s been smiling on and off for the past few days and I didn’t catch the best ones on film but here are a few pics of his first smiles as well as a portrait or two. One of the smiles is more like a grimace but I’ll catch better ones soon! He also giggles in his sleep. It must be nice to have such pleasant dreams!

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More baby drama on the high snowbanks of Yellowknife. I took Edzea out to a friend’s house for a kids/adults breakfast party this morning while Daddy slept in. Everything was fine until we were about to leave at 1:00 pm. I stood up to get Edzea organized and had a sharp jabbing pain on my right side. I sat back down and the pain continued any time I attempted to stand/walk/do anything other than sit. So, after waiting it out for about 30minutes, we decided to call Tim and my friend, Lynca, went to pick him up and bring him back so he could drive us home/to the hospital for a precautionary visit.

They sent us straight up to Labour & Delivery and put the contraction/heart rate monitor on the baby. I was supposed to push a button every time the baby moved…which was often and very furiously. So, the long and short of it was-the baby has dropped and is moving so much (AGAIN!) that it is causing my uterus to cramp and my ligament pains to be severe. No contractions, no pre-term labour but I’m supposed to take it easy and call/go in if it gets any worse. I’m a little nervous about the activity level of this little one!

Edzea knew why we were at the hospital. She knew we were there for the new baby although we told her it was going to be a while! We hoped. She loved being there.

Funnily enough, yesterday, I gave Tim a project for my studio room/new spare room and we were going to start on it this afternoon. Now I feel even more urgency! He’s going to build a closet into the studio room and we want it completed asap.

Anyways, all is fine. I’m relaxing on the couch for the afternoon and I’m putting Edzea into the dayhome for another day tomorrow so that I can just sit and do nothing for another day just to make sure nothing progresses too early.

Here are some pics from this morning.

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Potty training is still successful, we went out this morning in undies only and no accidents. So far, so good. Three dry days.

Also, Day 2 of sleeping in until 9am with us. Wakes up at 7am, then comes into bed with us and sleeps for another two hours. Please tell me that this is a long term trend!!!

Tim leaves for Iqualuit tomorrow for 3 days. Hopefully all goes well while he’s away.

Edzèa’s New Year’s resolution is to be potty trained by the time baby # 2 comes along. This resolution is being HEAVILY pushed by her Nana & Bumpa Ditters. We’ll see how it goes. They will be getting a phone call each time it happens!!!

We phoned them at 7:30 am this morning to tell them about her first official “poo poo” on the potty. She loves stickers and someone got her a potty book with laminated pictures for Christmas which has stickers in it. So, we sit and put stickers on the pages while we wait. I’m not sure if I will need to resort to smarties yet. We’ll see how it goes!

Comparing last year in January to this year:

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When Edzea and Mackenzie were at dance class the other day they were asked to free dance. They had just finished  another dance holding hands and Mackenzie thought they should continue together. They kept dancing and dancing and dancing like the highschool slow dance shuffle. Markham caught it on his cell phone video. Hope you can play it.

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