A busy weekend

Last weekend we hosted a young woman from China (Wuha) who, unfortunately, we didn't get to spend nearly enough time with.  She was in Ottawa as part of the International Volunteer Exchange Programme run by MCC, and we put her up in our spare bedroom.  Her sessions each day went from 8:30 a.m. until 9:00 p.m., and by the time we picked her up and got her back to our house she was tired and so were we.  (The kids don't seem to understand that you should sleep in on the weekends.)  So, we didn't really get to talk too much in the evenings.  But then, last Sunday, she and another woman from her hometown in China spent a couple of hours in my kitchen cooking.  There was a potluck meal last Sunday night for all the (59) volunteers and their host families and so they made a couple of traditional Chinese dishes.  And I paid close attention and tried to take notes as they went along.  Of course, they had brought with them a couple of the more difficult to find ingredients, but they were kind enough to leave them with me when they left, and the one who is currently doing a placement in Calgary has assured me that you can get these things in T&T (which we now have in Ottawa!)  Of course, they told me that it wasn't actually traditional Chinese food, because they couldn't get the spices they needed for that, but they recreated it using what they could find here.  Tasted amazing, though, anyhow.

They were very kind and at the same time as they made their dishes for the potluck, they made an extra dish (Twice-cooked pork) which they left in the fridge for us to eat Monday night.  It was fabulous.  The potluck and programme last Sunday night were really great too, but unfortunately A came down with something and started with a fever.  It was a flu or something, and thankfully didn't last long.  She missed school on Monday but then was pretty much over it by Tuesday. 

We've exchanged email addresses with Wuha, and hopefully we can keep in touch with her wherever she ends up going (she's in Washington state for her placement right now).  And when we go to China for a visit with the kids, I'd love to see her there.



Last weekend was also busy because the kids started swimming lessons on Saturday morning and the girls were invited to a birthday party (their first) on Saturday afternoon.  I was laying 50/50 odds that the girls would actually go into the pool, but they surprised me and both went in and said they had fun.  Not as much fun as B though, as evidenced by the fact that he screamed for about 30 minutes straight after DoT hauled him out of the pool at the end of the lesson.  It was awful.  I wonder how many people wondered if we were crazy white people abducting a little Chinese boy.  :-)  Anyhow, yesterday at their second lesson they all still loved it and we were able to bribe B out of the pool and out of the complex without a major meltdown.  

The birthday party last Saturday afternoon was crazy.  I think Shauna (the birthday girl) had invited her whole class, and most of them showed up.  I'm a firm believer of limiting the number of kids to the child's age.... i.e., if you're turning five, you get to invite five kids (of course I'm still hoping to avoid hosting birthday parties for a couple more years).  It was pretty chaotic in the house and it was the longest two hours I've lived in a long time.  So then the igrls went to school on Monday morning and came home with an invite to another kids birthday party which happened yesterday.  I was still recovering from the first one, so I made DoT take them.  :-) 

The weather in Ottawa is very mild these days.  Which makes it perfect weather to make a snowman.  A few years ago a friend of mine gave us a snowman kit, which we finally were able to use today.  Poor B napped during the whole event, but E and A had a great time creating our snowman.  Here he is...



Of course, then they declared that was 'daddy' and proceeded to make a snowman to represent all of us.  I'll let you decide who's who (hint, the little one in the middle is B) ...



I'll have to end here if there is any hope in getting this post published this weekend (believe it or not I actually wrote most of this a week ago).  I'll leave you with some random pictures taken this week.  The first one is from Friday following classroom Olympics at the girls' school.  As you can see we have a couple of athletes in the family... one silver and one gold medal (don't ask me why the colours are as they are).  Not bad.  :-)

Family Day

Hi all, DoT here. Another weekend has flown by and I have survived Family Day with the kids (the Federal Public servants don't get this day off so K was at work - knew I should have picked "heads"). Today was especially a challenge since we will have house guests starting Wednesday night and the house needed, shall we say, "a lot of tidying up". As anyone with kids knows, as soon as they sense you aren't paying 100% attention to them, they start to circle.

Things weren't too bad until just after lunch. I told B it was time for his nap and he started running away saying "no!"(hope my new team at work turns out to be a little more cooperative when I ask for things). I then carried B to his nap with him screaming and kicking. Once he was behind bars, I turned back to cleaning. The girls were able to amuse themselves for a while but then started to want to shred paper like Dad. Now you might think "what's wrong with letting the kids help out" - well I have stories about scissors that made me hesitate with giving any shredder lessons. I still think it would be wise to hide the shredder before they start improvising sometime soon.

As well, I got the usual challenges to have treats all day. I fear the day is coming soon, when they will have out-thought me at every turn and have an answer prepared in advance for every situation. Today A spotted some jelly beans Grandma had sent us from Xmas.

A: "What are those?" (sensing the set-up already - pretty sure she has seen a jellybean or two before)

Me: "Jellybeans" (missing a chance to change the course of the conversation).

A: "Are they yours or ours?" (again all finesse - my answer won't change anything)

Me: "Yours I guess". (here it comes)

A: "So...can we have some?" (no beating around the bush when the jugular is exposed).

Me: "After Supper".

A: accepts after minor grumbling sensing she has totally mastered the negotiation. By the time she asks for that convertible, I will have no chance other than to run away from her.

In the midst of all this, we have an ant problem in E's room. I didn't think ants came out in the winter but we now have proof that they do. She, it also turns out, has a fear of ants (either one of the other two kids would have loved that upgrade to their accomodations). We put down some traps, removed a kid snackbag that was likely attracting them and vacuumed everything; but apparently it will take a few weeks for the traps to take effect. In the mean time she has not been too keen to go in there or go to sleep.

So by this afternoon I am getting tired, and a bit frustrated, and the kids must have decided I needed a bit of comic relief.

After the girls playing in E's room for 20 minutes, E came out with a big pout on and said "Daddy, A has an ant and I don't". I had to think this phrase over to make sure I had heard that right.

Me: "Let me get this straight - you want an ant?"

E: "Yes"

Me: "Let's go find you an ant". For the next 15 minutes A and E both have ants crawling on their hands and arms and think it is hilarious. This goes on until E can no longer find her ant. She figures it is in her pants. She finally ends up getting totally undressed in an attempt to find her ant, and plans to stay that way. I convince her to at least put on her PJs. It is at this point that I hear A talking to her ant "where are you Ant Mimi?" She had a pretty dead looking ant and I told her finally to flush it. She told me finally that Ant Mimi had been flushed down the toilet. A half hour later, I am in tears and laughing so hard that I can barely re-tell this story to K on the phone. All in all, a good ending to a day I had ant-ticipated would be difficult (sorry couldn't resist - hope Ant Mimi won't be offended).

Here is a shot from the day.  They look so innocent don't they?

We're back

For those of you who think, based on the title of this post, that we are just returning from a fun-filled vacation in the sunny south, think again.  What we are back from is a week of sick kids, and a lost Internet connection.  But no need to dwell on that... we survived both and are back in the land of the living and the connected.  :-)

So the big news these days is that after 9.5 months of full-time French language training, DoT took his oral interaction test last week and passed!  He is now back to his regular day job, and couldn't be happier.  Yesterday was his first day back to his regular job, and then today I found out that I've been approved to go on full-time language training.  What are the odds?  Unlike DoT though, I will be leaving my post for only about 8 weeks.  And I have to clear my desk of the seventy billion projects I have on the go before I leave, so I won't be going on training until at least May.  I think I will enjoy language training in the summer months. 

Good news for those of you who like winter about as much as I do... A announced today that she couldn't see her shadow so spring is coming soon.  Never mind that she was standing outside this evening, in the dark, while looking for her shadow.  Good thing she didn't take a couple of steps backwards where the light cast from our lamp post would have hit her. :-)

DoT is away today and tomorrow at a management retreat for his work, so that makes me a single mom for a couple of days.  I don't know how people do it.  Thank goodness it's only for a couple of days. 

Well, that's it for tonight.  Happy Gound Hog Day!  Pictures next post... I promise.

K...

We are so ready for spring

Ugh.  I've had enough.  Bring on spring. 

It seems to me we always have a nice thaw during Winterlude here in Ottawa, so I'm thinking the spring-like weather will soon be on its way.  It can't arrive soon enough for me.  I have had it with winter coats, boots, hats, scarves, mitts, snow, ice, sleet, etc., etc.  I think we need to move to Victoria.  Or maybe Turks and Caicos.

In other news, we apparently now have a sixth family member ... every time E draws a picture of the family there are now the regular five of us, plus a big guy in the middle who is "Yo Gabba Gabba" (a really irritating Treehouse character).  I find it quite entertaining now to see the art work of A and E.  It seems like all of a sudden they went from just scribbling to now having real pictures.  Sure our heads may be joined directly to our legs.  But usually DoT and I are depicted wearing glasses, so we can always tell who is who.  :-)

Well, seems it is official, the girls have left their fevers behind.  Apparently it is quite unusual for siblings to have PFAPA syndrome, so their doctor at the Children's Hospital is going to write them up as a case study.  I'll let you all know when that's published because I'm sure you'll want to rush out and purchase a medical journal to read all about it. 

In unrelated medical news, we're thinking we're going to have to have B tested for whatever it is when people have problems due to low sugar.  (If I wasn't so tired, I'd Google it and find the proper name for that).  We've finally clued in to the fact that B's major meltdowns happen right before a meal.  We figured it was just that he was hungry, and therefore cranky.  But really calling him cranky when he's in the middle of these episodes is like saying a severed arm is uncomfortable.  Technically true, but a gross understatement.  The other day B worked himself into such a state he couldn't control himself.  He ended up in his crib for over a hour and we only managed to get him over his fit by shoving a raspberry into his mouth and covering his mouth with a hand until he finally swallowed.  Once he'd had a bite, he calmed down and was willing to eat, and then was his normal happy self.  So now when we get him up in the morning we greet him with a sippy cup of orange juice.  I wonder if he's just playing us... wouldn't we all like to be greeted with breakfast in bed every day?

Finally, I now have an excuse to break my New Year's resolution.  These weekly updates may prove more challenging now that I have two more people to compete with for access to the laptop.  The girls have discovered Starfall.com (thanks for the heads-up, Jan).

Happy Family Day B!

Wow, hard to believe that one year ago yesterday we met B.  Time flies...

January 12, 2009:

January 12, 2010:

A look back at 2009

Well, how do you like that... here we are four days into the new year and I haven't broken my resolution yet. :-) (See the post below if you don't know about my New Year's resolution.)

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

This is the post that never ends ...

...it just goes on and on my friends...

So I've had that song in my head now for the past couple of days. You know the song that starts with "this is the song that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends" and then continues from there without ending. I can only remember the first couple of lines, but even that is enough to go around and around in my head without ending. So I guess it truly is the song that never ends... at least for a couple of days.

I'm sure the reason for the never-ending song in my head is that I've been thinking about putting together a blog post for a couple of days now and there is so much to tell that I feel like this post could go on and on and on. Sorry. I'll try to keep it brief. And my New Year's resolution for this year is to update my blog at least once per week so hopefully future posts will be shorter, and more timely. We'll see how long that resolution lasts. (In past years my resolutions have lasted about 3 days.)

So, lets start with the girls' fevers. About a month ago ago we went back to the Children's Hospital to see the Infectious Disease team, and (drum roll please...) it looks like the fevers are gone. I was convinced the doctors were wrong and the girls did not have Marshall's Syndrome but it looks like they did. They had their tonsils out on August 20th, and since then we haven't had what I consider to be a "real" fever. A had a really low fever for a day after she had her H1N1 vaccine, so I attributed the fever to that. And E had a low fever for a few hours, a couple of weeks back, which was accompanied by a runny nose, coughing and congestion. So, it looks like it was a flu bug. In both cases the fever was just over 100 degrees, and lasted only hours. It was a far cry from the 104/105 degree fevers that last four or five days that we'd become used to.

In other health news, I took the girls to our pediatrician's office for the regular flu shot a few weeks ago. E really doesn't like needles and before going I joked with DoT, laughing that there wasn't much E could do... it's not like she could get up and leave if she decided she didn't want to go through with it. Well, yeah, nice theory that. When I was sitting on the pediatrician's table, holding A while she got her shot, E announced that she didn't want the needle, opened the door to the office and left; in spite of me hollaring at her to "get back in here!". She went to the waiting room play area and hid. Luckily there aren't really that many great hiding spots in there and I found her pretty quickly.

B has now started at the same daycare the girls go to. He loves it. I'm back to work, and I love it considerably less. :-) I had been hoping to get many of the things on my to-do list done during my time away from work, but that didn't happen. Although, I did have all my Christmas shopping and decorating done before I went back, which was nice. A couple of weeks ago we pulled out the Christmas decorations and put them up. We have a small tree that we let the kids decorate themselves. Then they "helped" us decorate the big tree. Only a few ornaments were broken. Here are a couple of pics of the event...



And here is a short video that makes me laugh, of B trying to find the perfect spot for an ornament...



The only problem with B's starting daycare is that most days he is not napping. He has always been a really light sleeper, and there is just too much fun going on at the daycare, so he refuses to sleep. Which makes supper time and the evenings really unpleasant for all of us. I know it is hard to believe since B seems to be such a fun, easy-going kid, which he is for the most part, but he can also be really terrible. For him "the terrible twos" seem appropriately named; at least during the 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. timeslot.

We have lots of snow in Ottawa, which the kids are loving. But it now takes about 15 minutes to get all the kids into snow suits, hats, mitts and boots before getting out the door in the morning. And of course none of us wants to get up 15 minutes earlier in the morning, so we're kind of pressed for time these days.

DoT and I went to a parent/teacher interview several weeks ago. The girls' teacher told us that the girls "don't have a mean bone in their bodies" (mostly true), and that she loves having them in her class, and then launched into a running commentary on everything that is wrong with their participation in school. :-) Basically, on what I'll call the academic side, the girls are doing fine. They can both print their names now, with only minor mistakes, and can count to 30 or so, and recognize the numbers 1 to 10, and most of the letters of the alphabet. But, on the social side of things (which is what much of jr. kindergarten is about), they have some work to do. The biggest issue the teacher seems to have with them is that they like to play with each other, and don't interact as much with the other kids. This is especially the case with E. I have always wanted the girls to have a strong bond with each other, and it seems I've got my wish. The teacher recommended (again), that we seperate the girls into different classes next year. If at the end of the year there is still an issue with how the girls socialize with others, then we'll consider it.

Now the only other comment the teacher had was that the girls have trouble "keeping their hands and feet to themselves". Both DoT and I thought that meant they were hitting or kicking other kids. But no; it means they are too "huggy". They "like to give their friends hugs". So on the one hand we have them not playing with other friends, and on the other hand they are hugging the other kids when they shouldn't be. I guess that means they are just randomly running up to kids and hugging them. :-)

Around Remembrance Day, the girls homework entailed finishing the sentence "Peace is...", and colouring a picture of what they said. Later the teacher put together a book of what all the kids had said, and it rotated through the homes of the kids. When we got it, I took pictures of each page as a momento. Some of the sentences by the kids said things like 'giving hugs', or sharing candy or toys. E said peace is "when you say sorry". A, on the other hand, said peace is "keeping the streets clean". Huh? Overall, a really cute project. And, to Spencer, who said "peace is being with my babysitter", I would like to say "amen to that". :-)

Okay, I'm going to end here. I know I haven't talked about Christmas, and maybe that will be a post for another day. It certainly deserves a post of its own. But for now I'll just say the kids thoroughly enjoyed Christmas this year; and loved all the gifts they got from Santa and others. It was touch-and-go right up to the very end as to whether or not Santa would leave gifts or lumps of coal, but in the end the kids all got what they asked Santa for, so I guess they were good enough this year. :-)

Happy New Year everyone!



K...