New name/old name

Those eagle-eyed blog readers will notice a small but significant change in the heading of the blog, specifically Isaac's THIRD name has been legally changed from Zion to Ziv, in honour of my cousin who died a number of years ago in a bicycle accident. In fact, we had always planned to give him the name Ziv, but somehow in the postpartum time period, between being lost in a maze of names and being sleep-deprived, Ziv got changed to Zion. Something about there not being enough syllables in all of Isaac's names being the reason for the last-minute change. I dunno - it sounds ridiculous now, but that's my best recollection of how it happened.

After being unhappy with his third name for the last 2 years, we (I) finally decided to have it legally changed. Happily, only his birth certificate carries his full name, so the paperwork has been minimal. And it's nice that he carries the name of a deceased family member, in the grand third name tradition started way back with Gabrielle's third name of Maxwell.

Facing the inevitable

En route to London, Ontario for Draper family Christmas, we decided a good stopping point would be Kingston, for dinner. I remembered there was a Playland at the Kingston McDonald's and thought, hell, why not introduce our kids to the cult that is the Happy Meal? It's bound to happen eventually, and at least if we're there, we can (somewhat) control their intake of crappy food. As well, we hoped they'd get to run around a bit and burn off some steam before getting back in the car for five more hours.

It turns out McDonald's didn't have the magical effect on the kids that we'd hoped/feared. Neither one of them was terribly enthralled by the food, nor in climbing in the big play structure, and this life-size statue of Ronald was positively terrifying to them. Isaac agreed to touch it after several minutes of cajoling and being told he was "safe."

Here's Gabrielle trying to escape the play structure. That's Mark inside the structure, trying to hold her in.

Mark decided he wasn't going to let our scaredy-cat kids ruin his fun.

Bad precedent

So lucky G - she has her birthday during the craziest time of the year and, as a result, gets multiple birthday celebrations. This year, coincidentally, she had four distinct birthday parties in the year she turned four. (There was a fifth at her daycare but I'm not going to refer to it here because I don't have pictures and it sort of ruins the theme of this posting.)

So in chronological order we have:

BIRTHDAY #1: Nun's Island, QC, my mother's house. Happily, Amos, Carolyn, Ben and his friend were there as well so it was a family celebration. Fancy french cakes were served.

BIRTHDAY #2: London, ON, Katharine and Ray's house. Another family celebration, this time post-Christmas with all the Drapers (and a Quinn or three). Last-minute Loblaws cake served.

BIRTHDAY #3: Ottawa, ON, our house. This was the celebration on the actual day. Just the four of us there, which was just fine, given that I didn't want to share the lemon pound cake with buttercream frosting from a local fine baker. The cake inscription was a text message version of "Happy 4th Birthday Gabrielle."

BIRTHDAY #4: Ottawa, ON, McKellar Park field house. This was the birthday party with all of Gabrielle's little friends in attendance. The theme was Princesses and Pirates, but who cares - it was all about the cupcakes. Do you suppose she's thinking: oh god, more cake...? (no)

This one's for Amelia

Seeing Gabrielle in this get-up reminded me of her soon-to-be world-travelling cousin. Apparently, G's got the bohemian spirit as well: wild hair, big backpack, hippie-chic boiled wool purse, face paint - she's ready to pick fruit in South America. Take her with you, won't you please???

Magically, suddenly, toilet trained

The week after Isaac turned 2, way waaaaaay back in November, Isaac's daycare announced to us that he was going to be toilet trained. Oh really, we thought (cynically), doesn't seem like he's ready. I mean, he's taken no interest in the potty, has never sat on one, doesn't talk much about poop or pee (although he did tend to announce to us when he had a poop in his diaper). But the daycare thought he was ready and they were doing a big group at once so we thought we may as well try and not seem like bad parents in the eyes of the daycare workers (our prime motivating force for doing anything).

And so for the first 3 days of the grand experiment, we carried home big bags of wet clothes from the daycare, and he refused to pee on the potty at home, but would immediately pee on the floor the moment he stood up. Discouraged, we soldiered on. Day 4 brought a breakthrough at the daycare - only 1 accident all day! Day 2 - no accidents! Hooray! But wait, now it's the weekend and it's OUR turn to do the hard work.

That first weekend was, predictably, a grand disaster. Not a single pee or poop in the potty - he was back in diapers by Saturday afternoon. Hanging our heads in shame, we returned to daycare the following Monday and confessed that we hadn't been very good about keeping him in underwear during the weekend. When we went to pick him up Monday afternoon, we found he had been dry all day - no accidents! Reinvigorated, we returned home and - miracle of miracles - he peed on the potty. Then he pooped on the potty. And then, no joke, he was basically toilet-trained. He has had maybe 5 accidents in the last 3 months, and none in the last month. He is now napping in underwear and only wears a diaper at night time. We don't have to remind him to go to the bathroom - he always just announces when he has to go.

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

Practising what we preach

I guess our kids took our family motto - safety first - literally: