Annual photo

A couple of weeks ago we went to Santa's workshop at one of the local malls. There were gingerbread houses and balloon animals. It was a good time. It was also the arrival of Santa. So along with all the other fun, we had an early chance to see the big guy in red.

As long as he will be willing, I hope to get an annual picture of the jellybean and Santa. Can you believe this is his fourth Christmas?!? This fourth one was good. The Santa was awesome. The jellybean looks a little unsure, but he was really excited to see Santa. I wasn't really prepared for the fact that I was going to be a part of the picture, but hey. What ever works.

Photo happy

Well I don't know if you know, but Marty bought me a beautiful camera for getting my PMP, our anniversary and my birthday for the next 50 years. I still have a whole lot to learn, but here are some of my favorites. And I have a pretty good subject too!

We went camping a few weekends back. I didn't get any good shots. This one isn't great but I like the fact that he is kissing me even though he was screaming that he didn't want to get his picture taken.

Last weekend we went apple picking. Well, there weren't any apples on the trees, but we still had lots of fun with some friends. It was a great afternoon and had lots of awesome photo opportunities. The last shot is of our friends daughter stretching her little fingers to try and grab an apple out the giant bins.

This was Kevin and Sabrina's little guys birthday party. The best, most gorgeous day of the whole summer. In September.

Well, you don't really need to know much about this shot, do you?

These are two of my favorite shots. We were playing with the giant bubble wand in the back yard and I fluked into these two pictures. Now if I can only figure out how to accomplish this more frequently instead of one in every thousand!

A Summer Day

Take a beautiful summer day, add good friends, a cottage in the 1000 Islands and a two hours trip on the boat. What do you get? Two very crispy people (me and the hubby) and a three year old that is so exhausted today he can't seem to handle anything.

But I digress. Here are some pics of one of the best days this summer so far. We can't thank J. and M. enough for inviting us. If only we could do this for weeks at a time.

So this was the view for the day.


The jellybean got to play with some of the boys' giant water blasters. This one was actually too heavy for him if filled completely.


The jellybean and I took a tour on the tube. I got to go on by myself too. Way fun.

Sabs and the fam were there too. We were having fun taking pictures. I love this colour feature on our rinky dink camera.


And I love this picture. It really reminds me on the pictures my parents took of basically nothing more than a moment in time. Most of the pictures of my childhood look a lot like this.


Just as we were going to head back to the main land, a huge storm blew in. Sucks when you are forced to stay longer with friends you only get to see once in a while! The sun broke through again and we were able to get onto the boat for one last ride. The jellybean had a great day, and our water baby found out another way to enjoy the water. On top of it at high speed.


I really hope this turns out to be a yearly visit.

Ya Deutschland!

3 Years Old

Dear jellybean,

A month has already gone by since you blew out the candles on your awesome Spiderman birthday cake. Time just seems to slip past us. The past three years attest to that. There is so much to say, and I have no idea where to start.

You've recently had a growth spurt of sorts and are now more than half taller than me. Soon it will be too difficult to pick you up. I don't look forward to that day. You still are a great eater, but dinner time can be a painful test of patience as it can take up 45 minutes for you to finish your plate. You finish it, which is great. But it would be nice if we could leave the table a little earlier.

You have become a mommy's boy. Much to the chagrin of Daddy. You tend to want me to do everything for you. I am trying very hard to encourage you to do things by yourself, and let you let Daddy do stuff too. It's a work in progress.

Potty training is still in the works. You will go a week with no accidents and then have three in one day. But only with pee. You are a pooping in the potty expert, for which we are very grateful!

You still aren't a very physical guy. You tend to stumble and trip over your feet every once in a while. You are hesitant to try new things like the scooter or tricycle. I know you would love them if you just tried, but I am trying not to force you into anything you don't want to do. Like swimming. We'll try that again in a few months.

You love to play with your friends but have learned to do independent play. Considering you are an only child, this is great. But you often come up and say "Will you play with me Mommy?" Which just melts my heart. How can I say no? You are a super hero fanatic. If it were up to you, you would watch anything to do with super heroes all day and play anything to do with super heroes all night. Your favorites at the moment are Superman, Buzz Lightyear and Ironman. Red is your favorite colour. I don't know why, but I love the fact that you have a favorite colour.

Your language skills are still way ahead of the curve. Now you like to sing your own little songs. Most of them have to do with you butt, farting and booger-nuggets. You are a boy.

At the moment you choose whining as your form of communication. We are not a fan of this and are trying to figure out how to get you back to using your words. And if you aren't whining you seem to be crying. Put both together and you have a set of parents with very little patience sometimes. We try to remind ourselves that it is only a phase and we all have to work together to get through it.

You have a daily job to help out with the household: you feed Stinky. You give her a big scoop first thing in the morning and at supper time. I like giving you a responsibility and sense of being a contributing part of the household.

So there you have it. Three years old. Mommy and Daddy love you more than would seem possible. You our are lives and we wouldn't have it any other way.

I love you jellybean.

Mommy

March and April

I know I know. I have been ignoring this blog. It's terrible really. But here is a whole whack of photos from the past couple of months. From stuff around the house to going to the sugar shack to Easter at the sister's. It's all jellybean, all the time!

First up: one of the fun nights we spent at Winterlude festivities. Jellybean had a grand ol' time and so did we!

Super Jellybean!

Playing in the rain.

Best friends.


On the hay ride going tot he sugar shack with his new best girlfriend.


Checking out the horse.


Feeding the goats.


Painting Easter eggs.


Morning Easter egg hunt.


Blowing bubbled with Daddy.

There you have it. The past couple of months in pictures. Hope you all had just as much fun!

The engineer

Our little engineer.

Happy Birthday Nanna, Take One

A visit with Santa

Friday I picked the jellybean up early and we went on an adventure. We were going to see Santa. This year, we decided to visit a different Santa. Last year, was a bit of a disaster, if you remember. The Santa at Bayshore Center came highly recommended. So we braved Friday afternoon traffic and drove across the city. We were also meeting my friend D. and her daughter Q.

At first he was excited, and then he got scared. He flip flopped back and forth. I thought maybe if Q. went first he might see that it was all OK. Well, he was a little nervous. No way was he going to sit on Santa's lap. Santa shifted over and asked if the jellybean wanted to sit on Mommy's lap next to him. He was good with that. And then Jiggles, one of Santa's awesome helpers (seriously, Jingles and Peppermint were top notch) asked if the jellybean would sit on her lap next to Santa. He said yes! Ladies man already.

So here you have the Christmas 2009 picture. It seems to help when you have a really nice Santa and some great elves.



And yesterday morning the jellybean helped me put up the Christmas lights outside. The Christmas season has officially begun in our household. A full two weeks before it usually does. I think I am in need of a little Christmas cheer.

Family portrait

This is the first family portrait done by the jellybean. I'll keep it forever.

Potty Training Update

Well yesterday was a complete write off but today we have had two successful pees in the potty! The jellybean was so excited I could help but laugh. The little dance he does is ridiculously cute. We will definitely have to get that on video.

Bonus, the jellybean insists that I get a Smartie candy when he does. Sweet!

Potty Training

It would seem that we are potty training.

We've tried a few times, making the jellybean sit on the potty, but we weren't trying very hard. Considering that he doesn't tell you when he has pooped his pants and just flat out refuses to sit on the potty most of the time, I figured he just wasn't ready.

Then I picked up the jellybean at daycare on Monday to find out that his little friend B. is now in underwear. I thought that maybe they could do this together. Then on Tuesday I find out that his little girlfriend G. is starting to use the potty as well. And finally yesterday the hubby comes home to tell me that the jellybean got a Smartie. A Smartie for having peed on the potty. So it looks like we are potty training.

I have no idea what I am doing. I am completely relying on Delia's expertise and direction on this. I hadn't read anything about it, just assuming that we had a while before getting the process going. So off to WalMart to buy some underwear. How is it that you go into WalMart to buy some underwear and come out with two giant bags of stuff? But I digress.

Now we have underwear, we have Smarties and we have a potty. Delia is going to start in earnest tomorrow and I will continue on the weekend. Well, Saturday morning it isn't going to happen because friends will be babysitting while I am on the picket line, but the rest of the weekend we will stay at home and I will try and potty train. It will be all me since the hubby is off to Toronto for a stag. I am not getting my hopes up too high. I think it will be a long drawn out process, not entirely convinced that he is ready for it. But I guess we had to start at some point, right?

Interpretive Dance

Not having been home for several weekends in a row, we were really happy to have a long weekend at home with nothing planned. It ended up being really busy, worth several posts actually. But we will start with the one thing that the jellybean is still talking about.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a sign at our local mall advertising that Toopy and Binoo were going to be at the mall. For those that don't know, Toopy and Binoo are cartoon characters from a show of the same name. Toopy is a rat (or is it mouse?) with a stuffed friend called Binoo who is a cat (I think) and they go on imaginary adventures that last about 5 minutes. The jellybean loves them. LOVES. THEM. So when I saw the sign, I thought "Gold! I'll be the best Mommy ever."

I told the jellybean's girlfriend Dimples' mom about it and we all decided that this should be a family affair.

Here they are in anticipation.


This is when they finally saw them.


Here are the stars on stage.


And here are the real stars of the show. Toopy and Binoo were rocking it on stage, but the jellybean and Dimples were totally rocking out in the crowd. They were truly the stars of the day.

Buttons

Mom had a tin of buttons when I was a kid. She was a big sewer and kept every button that fell of a piece of clothing or that she found. It was a pretty big tin, well at least to a five year old. I have some really fond memories of playing with those buttons. I can vividly remember what some of them looked like, even the feel of them. I spent hours and hours running my fingers through the tin, sorting the buttons into size, or colour, or shape, or which ones I liked best.

Today the jellybean found my pitiful little Mason jar of buttons. There are maybe a couple of dozen buttons in it, nothing special, no gems. But he wanted to play with them. So I took the jar to the front steps, where we seem to spend most of our before dinner time these days. At first he stuck his little hand in the jar and pulled out one button and a time, turning it over in his hand and showing it to me. "Look at this one!"



Then he dumped them all onto my lap. We were out there for a good hour playing with the buttons, lining them up or making button towers. It was a fight to get him in for supper, only won by promising more button play after supper. I figured he would forget but as soon as the last bite was chewed, he asked for the buttons again. So back out on the front porch for another hour before bath time. He even had to bring some in the bath.




I love that he seems so taken with playing with buttons. It's a silly little thing, but it's something that I loved as a kid and I am glad to have this to share with him.

From the mouth of babes

For a while now I've wanted to post the funny things that the jellybean says on a regular basis. The words that he wraps his little tongue around with difficulty, and the new words he creates to mean something, which we have to continuously guess at. I've been wanting to do this for months, thinking all the time of all the cute and funny little things he says. Now I find myself with a little time on my hands to do it, and I can't think of any of the things I wanted to write down for prosperity.

Maybe if I start writing they will come to me.

• Biddy/Blanky: He used to call his special blanket Biddy. It is now Blanky. I liked Biddy better.
• Popcorn-corn-on-cob: corn
• Pop-key-cewl: popsicle
• Beyey: Belly
• Garietta: Gabriella
• I yah yew: I love you (my personal favorite)
• Diosaur: Dinosaur
• Tiger Movie: Madagascar (The first one. The second has guns.)
• Peas: Please
• Sca-wee: Scarry

I know there are tonnes more. I'll try and write them as I remember them.