june 2009

june 23

zoe with an experimental barette/slide in her hair to try and tame the craziness!

after several blow ups over the ice cream truck coming and [usually] nobody getting ice cream, i brought in the official ice cream policy.

you can buy ice cream from the ice cream truck if:

1. you are using your own money to buy the ice cream AND
2. i know you are leaving the house to buy ice cream AND
3. you are willing to put it in the freezer for later if it is within an hour of dinner time

since they rarely saved any of their pocket money there was usually only one or two types of ice cream they could afford. however, toby recently came into some money [$50 to be exact] and before we had been to deposit it it in the newly established bank account, the ice cream truck paid a visit. as i got to the front door i heard toby talking with the ice cream truck driver:

toby:do you have change for a fifty?
ice cream guy:yes
toby:what is the most expensive ice cream you sell?
ice cream guy:dibs
toby:ok, i'll take 2

oh the heady power which comes with riches! it should be noted that he was also buying one [of the finest ice creams canada has to offer] for his big sister. aawwww. aly, on the other hand, tried to spend some of her $50 trying to bribe her grandparents to put away her laundry! [i was SO proud]

so before summer holidays come and i'm a day-long mother of 3, i've been trying to take zoe to a few Richmond Family Place playgroups. i've been having this feeling of deja vu and it suddenly struck me, what a bizarre experience it is to be reliving me life all over again. it's not a bad thing. in fact, it's exactly what i wanted to do this time around. it's just all a bit strange at times.

so i sadly gave my ticket to coldplay to aly for their concert in vancouver last weekend. [which they both loved by the way]. it wasn't so much a babysitter issue, but more of a zoe issue. she still isn't taking milk from anything other than me very successfully and is still SO clingy. i figured it was just a bit of a push to disappear for 6 hours or so at the moment - i'm not sure who would have been more miserable - the babysitter or zoe. [judging by my mom and dad's experience when sascha and i went to the casino for an hour, it would have been the babysitter!] anyway, this week i've made some progress on her being able/willing to take a couple of ounces of formula from a sippy cup and am leaving sascha with her for a few hours this weekend while i take the other two to a mom and me scrapbooking class/science lab thing. i guess we'll see how it goes.

we have also made some progress on the sleep front recently. we decided that we really didn't want to spend a couple of hours each day bouncing zoe to sleep on an exercise ball and we decided to do the ferber sleep training method. it's basically a cry it out method but you go in at increasing periods to reassure them. she usually only crying for 10-15 minutes now as long as she's tired enough and is sleeping longer once she's asleep [perhaps because she is learning how to comfort herself? - whatever it is i'm happy!]

aly graduated brownies and is now officially a girl guide

june 14

zoe and grammy

school is starting to wrap up for the year so toby's weekly performance review book came home at the end of last week. i took a moment to look through his year of self-evaluations. classic enteries included:
exciting things we did: we ate grass
goals for next week: to not break a school window

this week saw a momentous occassion - aly and toby opening their first bank account. they were both VERY excited to be saving money, which is strange because they are usually desperate to spend any money they have as soon as humanly possible! the guy in the bank got quite a grilling - particularly from toby - about the security of the money they were handing over. after that followed an agonishing few days of checking the mailbox once or twice a day to see if the atm cards had arrived. there was a lot of excitment once they finally did. now we're just waiting for the pin numbers to arrive. we have decided to give them a pocket money rise - from $2 a week to $4 a week as long as they put at least $1 in their savings account. toby [mr sub-clause himself] wants to know exactly how long the money has to sit in the savings account before it can be considered 'saved' and can be removed again. i haven't managed to give him an answer yet!

aly and toby - the proud owners of atm cards

i don't feel i spend enough time droning on enough about just how much i love my community. hamilton is a community of about 5000 people - separated from the rest of the city of richmond by cranberry fields. this friday was the annual hamilton festival [which i was on the planning committee for this year since i am not working]. it was a great festival and made me realise just how many people i've got to know since we moved her 4 years ago. weirdly a couple of my favourite moments were sitting on the outskirts of the festival just watching groups of families and friends come and go, watching the excitment of a community absorbed by the excitement of a watermelon eating contest [did i mention - we really know how to have fun around here!] and then so many people helping to clean up at the end of the day. toby, sascha, zoe and i then rollerbladed to the park the following afternoon for a game of catch [aly was away camping with brownies] and it was amazing to see how many people were out walking, cycling, playing badminton, basketball and hockey together, the children were playing in the street, the birds were singing, the sun was shining! sigh... it was just a lovely day in a wonderful place :-)

june 7

my mum and dad have gone back to the uk which is sad - although i'm sure they're secretly glad of a bit of peace and quiet after the chaos of our house! i'm feeling particularly scrabble-deprived since my mum and i were playing at least one game a day. my dad managed to do a million and one jobs around the house, which sascha and i are very grateful for. hopefully it won't be too long before we see them again. we're also going to try and get back to the uk for a few weeks at christmas this year which will give the rest of the family a chance to meet zoe for the first time.

we has a really nice last evening with mum and dad in steveston - dinner at the charthouse restaurant then a quick visit to garry point park.

at the charthouse restaurant

at garry point

before they left, zoe was kind enough as to demonstrate a new found skill to my mum and dad - the bum shuffle. she can now shove herself backwards a few feet as long as she's in bare feet on a hard floor. she's also becoming very adept at pulling herself to standing with only a small amount of help. she's still a terrible sleeper, but fantastic eater. so far the only thing she's turned down is formula. i've now discovered via a bit of experimental baby prune/apple juice that she CAN actually drink from a sippy cup [we'd already given up on a bottle] - it's just that she refuses to drink any formula [or breastmilk from anything but me] which is cramping my social life somewhat!

hoping to catch a ride back to the uk with grammy and grandad

as for sleep, she's by far the lightest sleeper of the bunch - she usually won't nap for more than about 30 minutes [even though she definitely needs more] and then she's still waking up every 2 hours through the night to feed. time to start grabbing at random sleep solutions i think!

june 1

terra nova

it's been a very sleep deprived few day [weeks... months...] and zoe has finally fallen asleep at midnight so i'm not going to write too much but i didn't want to disappoint aunty lin, who might otherwise have nothing to look at during her elevenses on monday morning, so here are a few photos!

toby and i in terra nova natural area

grammy and zoe playing scrabble

grandad and aly at the elephant and castle

the olympic rings at yvr

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