october, 2003

october 26

just a quick note to say i've added some new halloween pages to the site: 'where the wild things are' at the richmond nature park, the steveston pumpkin patch [where we went last weekend] and the carving of the pumpkin from the pumpkin patch.
aly at the pumpkin patch


toby spent sunday morning christmas shopping from a toy catalogue [he sat for 45 minutes like this!]

october 25

ok, i've been busy scanning all my scrapbook pages from the past year [including my heritage album] so they are finally online in the scrapbook section. i haven't really added much of the journaling yet but i'm sure i'll get round to it at some point. i didn't want all you californians to think i'd been sitting around doing no thing since i left.

i've been at a charity pumpkin carving session at the richmond family place today which was a lot of fun. when they dropped me off it was a little difficult to explain to aly why i got to go play at the family place and she didn't. we're going to the nature park tonight for a 'once upon a pumpkin' thing - all the boardwalks through the park are decorated and lit by pumpkins apparently. aly has a halloween party at school this coming week and we're also going to something at the local community centre on halloween itself. neither child has a costume yet - aly has been alternating between wanting to be ariel the mermaid, a princess or a nurse until sascha took her to the mall to try on some costumes today and she said she wanted to 'go as myself'. sascha and i are voting for her being a nurse since she already owns that costume.

we've started properly potty training toby this week and the first couple of days went miraculously well but since then, as usual, everything has gone horribly downhill. oh well. you'd think after spending 18 months+ trying to potty train aly that i would have happily come to the conclusion that they'll be ready when they're ready.

the days of getting a couple of hours to myself during naptime have suddenly come to halt for the most part. it is now very rare that both will sleep and sometimes neither will, so i'm having to adjust myself [mentally] to deal with this! fortunately this does mean that they are going to bed earlier so we get more time to ourselves in the evening.

toby's knowledge is still vastly expanding second by second. he now knows all the basic shapes and colours. although he calls stars 'twinkle stars' and circles 'golf balls' [of course!]. the letter 'm' is known by both children as 'm for mcdonalds'.

aly came up with her first imaginary friend this week. she wouldn't get into the car because she wanted to play in the rain with 'nemo'. eventually i managed to talk her into the car by saying nemo could come to playgroup with her. quite handily he fitted nicely into her car seat next to her 'so he can be safe'. i haven't heard much about him since though. she's also been coming up with very imaginative stories and dreams lately which i've been trying to get her to dictate to me so i can write them down in a story book then she draws pictures to go with the stories. when i get a chance, i'll scan the stories in and put them on the site.

october 15

ok, only a minor delay due to having to read my birthday books from cover to cover before communicating with my family again, let alone updating the site. thoroughly enjoyed both books - the latest harry potter and michael j fox's biography. i'm a horrible horrible reader. books and i have a love/hate relationship. i love them a little too much which results in everyone else hating me!

anyway, i started getting complaints about the lack of new photos [not naming any names] on the site from kellie so they are now linked from the 'latest' page.

october 10

my mum and dad's trip was great [as was kellie's long weekend here]. we went to see a fantastic play called tony 'n' tina's wedding as my birthday treat. you join the cast for the wedding in a church and then [after pausing for photographs outside the church], walk next door to the hotel for a 4 course meal at the reception. we also went up the observation tower in vancouver, went to a crop and a creative memories unit meeting with my mum, took a trip to grouse mountain, went to the science centre, took a birthday trip to ikea etc. etc [photos to follow]. it was great to see them and they're much happier now they can picture us properly when we talk to them on the phone. kellie did really well - only resorting to her crutches or a wheelchair occasionally. i think we were all very relieved to see her in the flesh.

happy birthday helga. sascha has gone to victoria to be with his mum on her birthday so i've had a whole, car-less, day with the children. it got off to a wonderful start with toby waking me up at 9.15am [!!] my mum and dad left yesterday after their 2 week visit and i think all that dashing about doing touristy stuff had worn us all out more than i thought! as usual it was very sad to see them go. to keep aly's spirits up [she always gets a little down when her soul mate, grammy, leaves] i've decided my tactic this time will be to lavish so much love and attention on her that she won't notice she's gone. previous tactics have included pretending they were never here, being sad along with her and brushing emotions aside [since the last visit, whenever she wanted to get her own way she would say in a snivelly voice 'i miss my grammy and grandad' which is how the latter tactic got instigated]. anyway, this was the perfect day for love and attention. they were both well behaved all day and we had lots of things to do. aly's attention and willingness to listen to instructions is atrocious at the moment and in order to try and improve things, i've decided to drastically reduce the amount of tv watched which gave us time to read lots of books, play with some new phonics tiles from grandad, draw, thread beads, scrapbook, make marbled paper, practice writing letters, play dress-up and simon says. in fact, a whole week's worth of activities. [maybe the rest of the week will be really boring to make up for it].

toby's increasing vocabulary never ceases to amaze me. 'hiding' and 'basket' are 2 of the 5-10 words he has used today which i didn't know he knew. being the most vocal [ie. loud] child i've ever met i'm not really surprised. he basically hasn't stopped chattering since the moment he was born. although the continuing 'wall of noise' wears everyone around him down at times, all the practice has certainly paid off. he's learning alphabet letters almost as fast as aly at the moment and is also a wonderful imitator. a couple of days ago he was playing with a door and i couldn't tell which squeaks were from him and which were from the door. it's also scary how similar he sounds to aly at times.

i got a new miniature digital camera from sascha for my birthday which is wonderful so hopefully a stream of up to date photos will follow as soon as i get to grips with it...

october 1

happy birthday me. well, it's official, i'm in my 30s. i even found the beginning of some wrinkles under my eyes 2 weeks ago. it's the beginning of the end. :-) seriously though, i'm remaining mental stable about the whole thing. i think it helps that in the last few years i've generally had friends who have been older than me. i also feel i've had a very fulfilling life up to this point. i'm not really one for setting specific goals - i just like to aim high ;-p anyway i have more than i could ever have hoped for. aahhh :-)

btw since i'm still getting ID'd in canada where the drinking age is only 19, i don't think i'll let the wrinkles worry me too much. ok, enough about me...

children are very very strange creatures at times. well, all the time really. a couple of weeks ago i gave them both sandwiches for lunch and 10 minutes later when i went to take their plates, they had both left their crusts. not too strange for a 2 and 3 year old you might think but the really weird thing is that this was the first time either of them had ever left a crust - they might leave a whole sandwich or half a sandwich but never just the crusts. they were sitting at opposite sides of the room and couldn't even really see what the other was doing. it's obviously a silent conspiracy [it has to be silent really since toby can't really converse properly yet]. they haven't eaten a crust since.

there's also a very funny story about chris carline's children and a saniflow toilet on his site at http://chris.carline.org/

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