Edzea’s latest creation from art class. She keeps telling me that Jupiter is an angry planet because it has had storms and bad weather for THREE HUNDRED YEARS Mommy! Also, she’s singing Frere Jacques perfectly but in true Edzea form…asks me…who is Frere Jacques? Does he have a sister? Is his sister older or younger? Is he alive? Where exactly is he from, where does he sleep? Who sang him his lullaby? Is he an older brother or a little brother…I finally told her to ask her teacher…silence from the back of the car…”Which teacher? Mrs. Cardy or Madame Bond?” It NEVER ends with her! I told her to ask Madame Bond. That at least stopped her in her tracks for a change. I know I should be thankful she is so inquisitive but sometimes it’s just plain TIRING!

Neve went into the pool for the first time today. Was a bit cold but mostly liked it BUT DID not like Mommy’s cap and goggles so I had to take them off. She cried every time she looked at me so I got rid of them. All three kids were in with me for Family swim because Amanda couldn’t look after them today.

6 1/2 months and Neve is crawling. She just about pulled a tablecloth over on herself at Rohan’s cooking class today. Maria and I both ran for her at the same time. I didn’t really think she was moving but she definitely is now. Time to babyproof more vigilantly!

Day trip to Gatineau park with Froehler grandparents. Beautiful day.

Edzea is learning the colours in french. So now she knows “jaune, bleu, and rouge”. We played a game today at lunch to pick out everything “jaune” that we could see. Rohan picked it up after Edzea said it once. He said “bananas are jaune”. Wow. Oh and she added “brun and violet” to what she remembered before bed tonight.

Rohan had preschool this morning. All went well. Amanda said that six kids screamed, cried for the entire two hours. Rohan, Madison and another friend’s child , Liam, were the happiest. Thank goodness because Mommy likes preschool too!

I think I’m going to quit daycare for the kids. I have some nice downtime with Edzea at school now and I don’t like the sickness they bring home. I’m going to talk to Tim about it. If I do get sick or I need time, Amanda and I can do a trade like Tracey and I used to or if worse came to worst, Tim could stay home for a day if I was really sick.

Edzea had a fantastic swimming lesson yesterday. She improved greatly after hertime at the lake. Amazing. She actually propels forward really well with her big arm front swim now and did a back swim with arms yesterday for the first time. I’m so impressed with her at 4. She’s the youngest in her class as usual. It looks like she is going to be a great swimmer after all! We just need to get Rohan in now. There is a family swim after her lesson on Monday so I’m going to attempt to take all three into the water next Monday. I don’t have to worry about Edzea on her own anymore so I can focus on Rohan and Neve.

Also…Edzea told us that she knows who’s going to be her “Daddy” aka “husband” when she gets bigger…Superman. She believes that she saw him at the pool the other day! Tim says he likes her aspirations!

Wow, so much has happened/changed in the past 6 months but really it’s flown by. I can’t actually believes she’s 1/2 a year old already!!! and so alert and full of smiles and interested in everything. She’s been eating solids for a week or so now. So far so good. Loves to sit in her high chair with the kids at lunch and dinner and be a part of the family. She also mimics everything you ask her too right now so comprehension is high as per the other two!! She sits on her own now. That was about two days ago…but not a sign of one tooth yet. Kind of strange. Rohan and Edzea had their first at 5 months and kept going from there.

Here are a few pics of Edzea’s latest artistic creations. One from a workshop on Paul Klee’s cats this weekend with her art teacher and a drawing of ghosts at night under a red sky-a Halloween pic she told me.

Then, three kids in the bath. Neve LOVED it. Kept splashing and giggling.

Tired now…tomorrow I start swimming again in the morning, both kids have school and Tim is out working all night.

Bonjour mes amis, bonjour mes amis…and on and on and on. That is what Edzea is singing today. She says it’s her french teachers “hello” song. We all visited her school last night for the book fair and then went for dinner at Papa Sam’s.

She has a new “crush”. The ten year old boy who gets on the bus with her in the morning. Thank goodness because she did not want to go to school today and he is her new motivation. She likes to see him and he leads the JK’ers off the bus to their class each morning. He’s a nice kid in the neighbourhood although poor little guy, his Mom died 3 or 4 years ago.

She didn’t want to go to school after learning that Rohan attended a cooking class with Mommy at Brown’s and made cake yesterday. She doesn’t want to miss that! so we are downplaying what goes on while she’s at school now! Poor Rohan, he finally gets Mommy to himself and she can’t stand it!

Went to Rohan’s first day of preschool on Tuesday. It all went well until they asked me to leave. He wailed for 10 minutes before they called me back in. He now says he doesn’t like school. Luckily, Amanda, is the duty parent on Tuesday and me next Thursday so hopefully he’ll get more used to being there and get used to the new teachers.

Edzèa had her first day of Junior Kindergarten today. I will post the pics when Tim helps me with my computer memory problem sometime this weekend. I wanted to post about her first day before I forgot.

She was extremely excited and had a hard time getting to sleep last night. I think she finally fell asleep at 9:30 and then was up at 6:30 this morning.

This was her first time on the school bus. It picks her up next door to us. We met our neighbour and his son Carter (gr.3) and another boy, Mitchell who were waiting for the bus too. Nana was with Neve in the van waiting as we were going to follow the bus to Edzea’s school. Rohan waited at the bus stop with us. She was a little hesitant to get on the bus even though she’d been saying she was excited about it.

I finally had to give her a little push up the stairs and luckily there were 3 other little girls from Senior Kindergarten in the other front seats. We followed the bus to school and I got out to meet her coming out of the bus. She was happy to see me but happier to see her teacher and follow her teacher into the classroom.

We had them bring her back home today instead of daycare as it was her first day. Nana and I and Neve were waiting for her at home. She told us she had a “good day”. She played in the playground before going into school. Her inside shoes that we bought her “don’t really feel very good Mommy”. Her teacher sang, played guitar and piano for them to clean up. No she didn’t have a french lesson today but a guest came in to class and she couldn’t understand a word that she said. She later told us that the guest spoke french but her teacher doesn’t.

The were all told to draw for a little while and then their storytime was to talk about their pictures. ” No one else drew a house or people Mommy. They all kind of scribbled” eye roll. “Actually none of their drawings were very pretty, just scribbled. I didn’t like their drawing. Serious, they just scribbled. They are all young.” We then told her that it was like Rohan and to tell them that you liked their colours or lines.

” I know Mommy. I’m just saying. I’m just telling you. I will be nice.”

Loves her teacher, Mrs. Cardy. We love her too. She’s musical. Interested in having more art history projects in the classroom which I am going to volunteer to help with/teach.

Liked her snack. Wants to help with snack in future. Great day overall.

Rohan is at daycare. We couldn’t find Edzea’s shoes when we needed to meet the school bus…they weren’t where she left them. I asked Rohan where he put them. He pretended to ignore us and after a few more requests to find them. He told us that he put them in the basement. I looked down the stairs and they were thrown down the stairs. It was his way of rebelling. He was NOT happy that Edzea was going to school and he had to go to daycare today. He screamed and clung to me when we got to daycare.

I’m going to pick him up on his own today and Nana will look after Edzea and Neve. I’ll have something special for him.

Oh, when we met her teacher on Wednesday…first things out her mouth when she was touring the classroom were “I recognize two of the books here. We have them at home. “Tiptoe into kindergarten” and “The Kissing Hand.” The teacher raised her eyebrows.

Just a quick post for me!! They had my results wrong (which I knew!) for the 3km open water swim I did last weekend in the Ottawa river. I was 78th out of 500 people. And 5th in my category by a 40 sec. margin from 1st -5th. So, not so bad for an old geezer. And the female National Elite 17year old that I’m swimming with in my lane this summer was 2nd overall in the swim and I can actually keep up with her in workout by some miracle!!! Hoping to do better next year! And I had a race pace of 1:34 per 100. Not too bad post pregnancy! Plus out of the females in the swim I was 27th out of all ages/wet suit/non wetsuits 244 women who participated.

My computer photos aren’t working again. Lack of memory as usual. Anyways, here is one pic of Edzea and her friend, Charlotte, who just turned 5. Ariel, the Mermaid Princess, attended and was very popular! Edzea was very sleep deprived so had a good time but did NOT want to stay in her costume and did NOT want to have her picture taken! Her jewellery was accidentally forgotten at home so the costume wasn’t quite complete. I made her mermaid tail (with no sewing!) and her seaweed hair and crown. I’ll upload more pics as my computer allows!

Neve rolls from back to front and front to back. Has been doing back to front for about a week. Keep forgetting to add this. Also, she sits in between the nursing pillow and leans forward to get toys and back to sitting. She’s also fallen forward on to her tummy a few times from there. She is also our squealer. She squeals constantly when she is happy. It’s pretty cute but she’s pretty noisy!

Last weekend when I was sick, we started Edzea on a little reading program. Didn’t get to another day until today during our thunder and lightning. She can read two little books in the BOB book series. Simple little reading program using phonics and sight words to teach. It has mini-lessons with it. Her chalkboard is coming in handy so we do max. 15 min lesson which she likes. Rohan participates in his own way! We are going over the letters/spelling of his name with him. He surprised me the first day by knowing all but the N. He draws all over the chalkboard while I’m trying to teach. He draws H’s and he draws ladders. He has a fascination with ladders. He also matched the letter C from a matching game we were doing on the floor with what I had written on the board. In his own way, he wants to “play” the “reading game” with us but I just let him freewheel around us. I’m trying to make it fun, short with no pressure and treats at the end!

I give a chocolate chip at the end of a lesson for good work! even if Rohan has completely annihilated the lesson. Edzea is a bit mortified that he gets anything AFTER she reads a WHOLE book by herself!!! She has now read the first two books in the program. They are VERY simple VERY simple 6-8page books.

Ex. Page 1-Mat.

Page 2. Mat sat.

Page 3. Sam

Pg. 4 Sam sat.

Pg. 5 Mat sat. Sam sat.

Pg. 6 Mat sat on Sam etc. etc.

Edzea has two weeks straight of swimming lessons before we leave for holidays. She is doing really well now. We’ve spent a lot of time in the water in the past little while letting her play and explore her newfound skills. She now likes to dive under the water and pretend to play mermaid. She is super eager with her teacher and always wants to be the first one to do EVERYTHING! She’s the smallest in her group but the most enthusiastic. She’s a slow swimmer, her kick needs work, but she tries to do it all PERFECTLY! I will take some video and upload it soon.