Kitty snuggles: Cookie face. He sure can make a huge, pastey mess with 1 Farley's Biscuit!!

Playing together on the froggy mat that Amy made for Patrick almost 6 years ago!!

I love how much they look alike in this photo:

I love my daddy:
He makes me laugh!!

Silly girl in Daddy's boots: And just a bit of a drama queen!

Sadly, I just noticed I have not updated since Shaun's birthday and also that I haven't taken ANY pictures since then either.

Life has been a bit crazy around here. William was working on tooth #2 (its thru now!) but went on a nursing strike as a result. It was awful! He went from nursing 3-4x a night to refusing to nurse at all. The night it happened (of course it was at night! who needs sleep?) Shaun and I were up most of the night. W would act like he wanted to nurse but as soon as I got him in position he'd scream and roll away from me. I ended up pumping once in the middle of the night and once in the morning. He was fine taking it from a bottle which only added to my feelings of personal rejection. We did some blurry-eyed early morning research on the internet, decided it was a nursing strike and I went back to bed to rest. Hoenstly? I thought it was the end of nursing. I can, and have pumped, but my pump isn't as effective as William is. I knew I'd never retain my supply on pumping alone. I was upset because I wasn't ready to be done nursing.

Turns out, W wasn't either. When I got up later that morning (8ish) he nursed without issue and continued to nurse fine during the day. But he permanantly gave up those night-time nursings! It ended up being a very nice thing... especially after my body adjusted. Now he's typically only up once and just needs to be settled. Sometimes he has an early morning nursing session (4-5am) and goes back to sleep. However, his new up-for-the-day time is between 5 and 6 which isn't so nice. Hopefully it will lengthen over time.

Life in our house continues to progress. Patrick and Kathryn are both well. Kathryn has taken a real interest in letters and now recognizes most of them. She can also recognize, spell and write her first name as well as most numbers.

Patrick has become quite the artist, a tallent he definetly gets from his Daddy. I am amazed by what he can draw. I should take pictures of his work and post them.

The other exciting news is that we bought a truck! Shaun's Aveo was a lease which we thought was up in March 2012, when infact it is done March 2011!! Shaun had already begun to research vehicles so he knew what he wanted. We took a trip to Paisley this past weekend and finalized everything. We pick it up on Wednesday afternoon. Shaun is VERY excited. I'm excited but I'm not going to be driving it much. However, Kathryn is super excited!!! She can't wait to ride in it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHAUN!!

We celebrated Shaun's birthday very low-key on the actual day. After supper, Shaun's parents came over for presents and cake.

William snuggling with Grandma:

Patrick and Kathryn snuggling with Grampy:
Helping Daddy blow out the candles:

Shaun continued the celebration on his birthday weekend with a visit from his 3 best buds. As part of my present, I took all 3 kids to Orangeville so they could enjoy.

William is becoming more adventerous with food. He would just love to dive into what we're eating! I'm starting to give him big chunks of regular food to chew on. Here he is with apple: And here with cellery:

Both were a big hit! He's really eager to 'do it himself' so I'm going to take advantage of that as much as possible.

Today we celebrated Kathryns birthday with a friend party! As you can imagine, it had a disney Princess theme.

We invited 3 little girls and their mommies to join us for 2 hours. We put out all of K's new party dresses to be worn so everyone would have princess attire.
The pinata was hung (from the jolly jumper hook!) and filled with LOTS of treats. Balloons were decorated with stickers.

Cupcakes were iced and decorated.

After the girls and their moms arrived, we had a great time decorating foam crowns, playing some games and playing with Kathryn's princess castle set. We had snack - the above pictured cupcakes, chips and veggies. The girls also decorated their own loot bags with stickers before we opened the pinata. I had thought it would take more than one pull to open it (this particular type of pinata had ribbons attached to a trap door - pulling the right ribbon opened the pinata) but it opened on the first pull! The girls (and Patrick) had fun picking up treats to put in their bags:

After that we opened gifts. Kathryn recieved some lovely things: a princess kitchen, a magic-rise oven and a princess tea party set which P&K had a blast playing with last night. I have pictures of the princess with her gifts that I will post below.

We had a lovely time with the mommies and their sweet little girls!

The princess and her presents. She recieved such lovely things! Patrick and Kathryn are both enjoying playing with the new sets.

Princess tea party set:

Princess magic-rise oven (really neat - the cake and cupcake actually 'rise' up in the oven after you've rolled the air out)

Princess Kitchen: the stove makes cooking noises and talks to you about various princesses.

HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY KATHRYN!!!

Today we celebrated with friends in the morning. Tuesday is the morning I get together with a bunch of Mommies and their kids. Our group has grown so large that we are now meeting in a rented space. I signed up to bring snack, and I took mini cupcakes with pink icing, cheese and veggies. We sang to Kathryn and had a nice morning together.

In the afternoon, my parents arrived and after work Shaun's parents came over. We celebrated Kathryn's birthday with a Subway Sandwich supper, a cake and presents.

Here is Kathryn with her cake. She choose the princesses to go on top. The cupcakes were made from the same mix and pink icing.
Blowing out the candles:

Such a sweet smile!

Opening presents. Kathryn got lots of nice things: Fancy Nancy Books, Tinkerbell PJs, Ariel read-along-books, clothing and hair accessories.

Here she is opening the gift from us:

We got her an italian charm bracelet with 4 charms on it as well as a set of 7 princesses dress-up dresses! The set included 2 ariel dresses (one for her mermaid form, one for her land form), cinderella, sleeping beauty, snow white, rapunzel and belle. They were a big hit and she tried all of them on. (If you're ever interested in getting pretend play dresses, I highly recommend the ebay company "mydressuptrunk". The dresses weren't overly expensive but they are good quailty).

More Birthday Pictures:
Kathryn reading with Grandma and Grampy before supper:


Grandpa & Grandma hanging with Patrick:

William watching the present opening with Grandma:

We had another quiet New Years Eve this year. Shauns parents came over with supper - home made lazange and garlic toast. We played some Wii fit and watched Shrek 4 together.

After the kids were in bed we played a few hands of Euchre and we were in bed by 10!

Goodbye 2010 and welcome 2011!

Adventures in Parenting: A commentary on soothers.

Before we had our first baby, I decided I was never going to give him a soother. I'm not exactly sure why I started my adventures in parenting as anti-soother but I did.

Less than a day after Patrick was born, I wanted him to have a soother. He was born with a huge need to suck, and having a soother made him a happier kid. At first we let him have the soother all the time, whenever he wanted it. Slowly, rules were set that the soother (which we called a buppy - Shauns family called soothers buppies) was only to be in his mouth when he was in bed/nap, in the van for long trips, or when he was really sick.

It became aparent as he aged that giving up the buppy was going to be a battle. So, we decided it would be his choice. We did lots of talking about giving it up, etc, and eventually set the ultimatum at loosing his first tooth when it would have to be gone as we didn't want any damage to his permanant teeth.

It was a long battle, but shortly after he turned 5 we finally convinced him to give them to the 'buppy fairy' who would take them to babies and leave him a gift for being so generous in sharing. Although he was happy with this idea, and loved his gift, it was quite a few weeks before he stopped asking for his buppy before bed.

With Kathryn, I wanted her to have a soother. We decided to call hers a NUK because we were hoping to get rid of Patrick's before she was too old (HA!). Kathryn didn't want a soother at first. I was her soother. Eventually we convinced her to take one. In retrospect I can't remember why we really wanted her to have one, but probably because she was so attached to nursing and I really needed some space. The same rules emerged and she still has hers for bedtime with the knowledge that she will have to give it up when she has her first loose tooth... that is when the NUK fairy will visit and give her a gift as well.

I fully expected William to be a soother baby. I even bought him soothers before he was born and took them, clean and sterilized, to the hospital with me. At first it appeared he wanted to be a soother baby, but couldn't keep the darn thing in his mouth. After much searching we found "gumdrop soothers" which he took to very quickly and they did help him to get to sleep.

For the past few weeks I have known these soothers were now too small. Each day he was seeming to have more and more difficulty keeping it in his mouth. When he was trying to fall asleep, he'd suck a bit, then try to make 'happy baby noises' and it would fall out and he would be very sad. Or he'd happily be sucking on it, and then rub his face (he seems to need to rub his face before he falls asleep) and he'd knock it out and be histerical. We were spending more and more time hanging over the crib holding the soother in and re-pluging it over and over before he would fall asleep for his nap. It was getting frustrating.

I decided we could try bigger soothers and yesterday I bought some regular orthotic 6-18M soothers. At first he was really into it. And then, he was not. He did not want this new soother, and the old soother was just too small for him to keep in his mouth (it was 0-3M).

So today, I decided we would have to give it up cold turkey.

This is a day I thought I would never experience. I honestly thought he would follow the same path as the first two. However, naptimes became a crazy battle of wanting the soother in his mouth but being unable to keep it there.... it was time.

I am amazed with him though. The first nap we had to let him cry a bit... maybe 10 minutes, probably less. I didn't actually time it but time does seem to go so very slowly when the baby is sad. He wasn't histerical, just not used to falling asleep without something in his mouth. But he did fall asleep on his own and actually had a really long nap (we are used to 20 to 40 minute naps) and woke up so very very happy! He was then up for a very long time (we are used to him being up only 1-1.5 hours at a time).

When it was time for his next nap (he was doing his usual "i'm sleepy" routine), I put him down in the usual mannor, without the soother. He was upset and confused and cried, for about 5 minutes, and then was able to fall asleep on his own and is having another really good nap!!

I've done more reading than usual about sleep for William than I did for the other two. He seemed stuck at the '45 minute nap' which is where a lot of babies get stuck. Apparently around 40 minutes, they enter a state of lighter sleep and are unable to get back to deep sleep and wake up. This is, in retrospect, probably because of the soother. I am very hopeful now that we may actually be able to get him onto a 2-3 nap day. Although the flexibility of a 5-6 nap day was nice (we didn't mind him napping-in-the-go while we ran errands or were at other people's houses), I know that a predictible and routine schedule really is better for everyone.

Using the new snow tube on Boxing Day:

Just added more photos and a video to Dec 18th as well as a video and pictures for Dec 24th. Scroll down to see. Enjoy!

My Dad and P on the tube!

Merry Christmas!!!!
William was up very, very, very early. He got a crack at his stocking before the other kids were even up! Here he is opening his very first gift with Daddy:
Patrick was next up and so excited that Santa had been. He had only asked for 1 thing - the Play Doh Cake Machine and here he is opening it.

After the chaos of gifts, we cleaned up the living room and then went outside to play while the turkey cooked.

It was a lovely mild day.
Back inside we played the new favourite game: Guess Who!

Hope you had a lovely Christmas spending time with those most important to you!! Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Hope you are enjoying a wonderful day with your families!

These are our Professional photos, taken at Patrick's school as a fundraiser. They turned out nicely.

William Laughing!

December 24 - Christmas Eve.

Shaun and I were very lucky this year. We had both sets of parents with us on Christmas Eve. We all went to the Children's service together where Shaun's parents were singing on the worship team. After that, we all came back to our house for snacky stuff and socialization. It was such a nice time!!

My Dad looking out the window with Isis. Do they see Santa?? Our parents exchanged gifts. Patrick is helping to open:

Here Kathryn is helping Shaun's mom open the gift from my Sister's family:

My Dad is opening the gift from Shaun's parents:

Kathryn helping my Mom with the card:

Our Parents!!!

Chilly was such a happy guy in his favourite place - the exersaucer!

Merry Christmas!