Ladies and Gentlemen and Boys and Girls: Toopy and Binoo!!!

Toopy and Binoo has been Gabrielle's favourite cartoon since she could say the words Toopy and Binoo. When I heard they were coming to the National Arts Centre, it was clear we would have to go.

The sign below speaks the truth - apparently these TV show live tours are really about pushing expensive merchandise on captive parents and children. Luckily, I managed to convince Gabrielle that I would buy her a better Toopy and Binoo when I was in Montreal (which I did - it wasn't better, but it was cheaper).

Here we are in the balcony, waiting for the big event to start. Gabrielle was so excited before it started, she seemed to emit a type of humming sound.

Here's the view from the cheap seats:

And here's what we saw. A terrible, terrible show. Even she thought so. Four thumbs down. But we're not holding it against the TV show - it's still a squeal-worthy event when it comes on.

Whatchoo lookin' at?

Isaac comes home from daycare with some pretty skillfully-created crafts. I'm not even allowed to convince myself he made them because as soon as I pick him up from daycare clutching his new craft, he yells "Anna do it!" Anna is, of course, one of his daycare providers.

Happy Thanksgiving, nonetheless.

Dancing [and waving like the] queen

At Gabrielle's insistence, we signed her up for dance classes this fall. It was going to be Sportball (a class where they teach the kids the basic elements of 7 different sports) but when she heard this, she looked so dejected and wailed "but I wanted to dance!!" Well what parent can say no to that? Incidentally, Isaac is in Sportball and loving it. Tennis day was apparently very successful (are you listening, Grampa Shalom?)

Here she is warming up, horizontally, before class.

She just can't stop waving at me during class, and it's that perfect big smile and wave from the wrist up that makes it all so very cheesy and hilarious.

Yes Gabrielle, I see you...

Started waving at me right after this jump...

Day One

With some trepidation and a certain amount of excitement, the kids went off to their first day at Churchill-Carling Daycare. Mark spent a couple of hours there with Isaac, while Gabrielle happily ran off to join her new classmates. This was the beginning of a couple of very tough weeks but we've come through it, almost unscathed. Isaac now goes off to "school" pretty happily and Gabrielle gets dropped at the same time, but almost immediately gets on a school bus that takes her to Broadview public school for junior kindergarten. After 2 and a half hours of book learnin', she gets back on the bus and returns to daycare, where she stays until one of us picks them both up.

It's been quite a transition going from a full-time nanny to care outside the home, and we're now one of those families I see on instant breakfast commercials on TV - you know the dad running around looking for his tie which his wife locates in the coffee tin while she's brushing her teeth and looking for her nylons while trying to feed the kids breakfast while the kids are torturing each other and sticking their fingers into electrical outlets just for fun? Yah, that's us.

But aren't they adorable?

Bounty!

Gardening this summer has been alot of fun, mostly for me, as I would go outside and check on my "babies" first thing in the morning and at the end of the day. Sometimes I would just go over to the veggie patch and stare, looking for any discernible differences from day to day. My neighbour caught me staring one day. We had an awkward moment where he said something like "uh, you're really into your garden, I guess?"

By the end of summer, we had picked a half dozen cucumbers, a couple dozen peas (one or two a day), three multi-coloured baby carrots, and a few dozen tomatoes. Lessons learned: more carrots, fewer tomatoes.