Kidding around at the Children's Museum

A couple of weeks ago, Gabrielle and I went with Angie and Logan to the Children's Museum at the Museum of Civilization in Hull. We haven't been there since she mastered walking, so the experience was much better than previous visits. First of all - I didn't have to carry her! So that right there made it exponentially more enjoyable. Also, she is now more fun to play with - as you see above, she is now quite adept at chess (waving my king in my face!)...

...backgammon (she liked keeping her pieces in this "ancient" brass bowl)....

... and even parcheesi....

.... although she kept stealing the dice. I suppose that's one way to ensure victory.

Madeline turns 2

Gabrielle seems to get invited to an inordinate number of birthday parties for a 15 month old. As a result, she needs an inordinate amount of party clothing (can't be seen in the same outfit twice, dontcha know). Happily, her cousin Amelia's gift of this groovy silver top arrived the day before the birthday party. Worn with short jeans and funky pink boots from my mother, she was all set to party it up, Barrhaven-style. 

The must-have accessory for spring - a pointy hat.

The birthday girl and the bilingual birthday cake: Happy Fête Maddie. 

Priceless moment: Maddie leaned in to give Gabrielle a kiss to thank her for the gift...

...but Gabrielle pushes her away. Way to make friends and influence people, G.

Chow, baby

As my mom likes to say, Gabrielle is a Jewish mother's dream. Not only will she eat just about anything, she seems to really enjoy the process of eating, and is really interested in/demanding that she eat "grown-up" food in a "grown-up" way. Above, she fed herself an entire bowl of oatmeal with a spoon. 

Thrilled that daddy gave her a tuna sandwich without cutting it into tiny pieces (but he still cut the crusts off!! - grrr....).

Hanging with the girls at the Brig in the Market, sipping out of what I truly hope was just Erin's water...

No clever caption

Just a beautiful picture of our little girl.

More bad parenting and assorted sauces

I tried to take Gabrielle out for a walk on Sunday. It was a beautiful spring-like day, and I thought how fun it would be to go out and just go for a walk. Two steps out and *blam* she's face down on the asphalt. She didn't cry much, but the scrape under her eye is painful to look at, and people look at us like we beat her. Thank goodness it's Meaghan who is out with her most of the time - I can't bear the judgmental looks from strangers...  ;-)

On an unrelated note, G has figured out how to open the big cupboards in our kitchen and has taken to removing whatever she can get her hands on. She's big on Bovril and vanilla extract right now. And tonight, I found the steak spice in our office desk drawer. Things are getting fun around here...

Warming up to Curly

My dad came for a quick visit last week, and Gabrielle showed definite signs of reduced stranger anxiety. She still took awhile to warm up, but it came. First she pointed at him: "whazzat?"

Next, she got physically closer, but seemed concerned that he might want a bite of her fig newton.

Finally, smiles and she even allowed my dad to rub her head a bit. 

Out on the town with Meaghan and Gabrielle

So this is what they're up to while we're at work all day...

Ladies who lunch.

Meaghan is from a huge family - 6 brothers and sisters at last count - and they all seem to be involved with Gabrielle in some way. Her brother Lucas, above, is apparently one of G's favourites. I think it's because he's got baby-like features, or at least the top of his head bears some resemblance...

Meaghan's sister, Erin, is also in on the action, having done some babysitting for us one night.

Meaghan's teaching G lots of valuable life skills, not the least of which is how to rudely chat on a cellphone when you're out for lunch with your friends.

And most importantly, accessorizing, or as I like to call it, Successorizing!

Early training for med school

Crappy moments in parenting

Note giant bruise on Gabrielle's forehead. Baby head meets sharp edge of bed in horrible ways.

The long wait for mummy at the Winterlude tri

A couple of weeks ago, I competed for the first time in the Winterlude Triathlon. I really underestimated how difficult the race would be to complete: "a little skating, a little skiing, and a little running, how hard could it be?"

Poor Gabrielle had to wait for her mother to drag her sorry butt across the finish line.

Me "sprinting" at the end in order to come in seconds under 2 hours. I still ended up near the bottom of the competitors' list. Next year, I train!

The kids these days and their newfangled hairstyles

Can you tell she has a 22 year old nanny?  ;-)

Mama, dada, duck-a-duck

[Meaghan wrote:] Monkey see, monkey do. Her walking and talking continues to amaze me. 

Swimming

[Meaghan wrote:] Yesterday Gabrielle had her first swim class and let me just say, she was a pro!

Not frightened of the water whatsoever. She took part in playing water games, blowing bubbles and small attempts to get her face in the water! She loved it and will continue to amaze me!

Pals

[Meaghan wrote:] What can I say. We love taking pictures!!

We try to take a new one everyday for Mark

& Belinda while they are at work :)

neat photobooth setting on the Mac 

Stupid parent tricks

The things we do to hear our child laugh...

Skiing!

On Manon and Madeline's suggestion, Mark and I ventured out to Gatineau Park this past weekend with Gabrielle in a rented babyglider. As you can see from the photo, I opted to skate ski, while Manon and Mark both classicked. I soon realized that skate skiing is hard enough without a 30 lb. weight dragging you down. I pulled for about 2 kms and then dumped the sleigh on Mark.

Here I am! This picture was actually taken right before we started skiing. Gabrielle wasn't thrilled to be zipped into this contraption, but she soon settled down and fell asleep. She was a bit cold by the time we got back to the chalet, despite the awesomeness of her snowsuit. I think that if we try this again, we'll only do so on a warmish winter day.

The apres-ski: a sippy cup of milk and a salami and cheese sandwich. 

Friends

Gabrielle's been doing her fair share of socializing lately - above, here she is at Pascale and Elijah's home. I originally met Pascale at the Tuesday afternoon playgroup we would both attend. Then when Mark went on leave, he became friends with her at the same playgroup. When I first met her, Elijah was only four weeks old or so, and Gabrielle was around four or five months. Elijah's caught up quickly - he's running around on his own and he's about the same size. Note Gabrielle is checking out the liner notes in the CD. Mark taught her that.

They have a rabid dog that took big honkin' bites out of my arm and Gabrielle's leg, and Mark's shoes and....

Happily, Gabrielle wasn't scared of the dog, just incredibly annoyed everytime he'd come by and lick her. It's even worse than being wiped down with a washcloth!

Gabrielle has also rekindled her relationship with her babyhood friend Madeline, and her mother Manon. They look quite similar, both being hairless types, but Maddy is 9 months older and 5 pounds lighter!

Fast forward 18 years and turn Gabrielle's sippy cup into a gin and tonic and Maddy's juice box into a Corona.

I guess sometimes no means yes

Gabrielle loves shaking her head back and forth - too bad she has no idea what it means.

Saturday mornings with mama

Most Saturday mornings, I take Gabrielle out of our bedroom as early as I can drag myself out of bed and give Mark the chance to sleep in a little. We head over to the living room, where I immediately turn on the cartoons. I hate getting up early, but I love Saturday morning cartoons. I'm trying to get Gabrielle into watching them, but so far she's not terribly interested. Mostly, we just wrestle around on the couch, reading books and playing with her toys.

Of all *her* toys, her favourite thing to play with is *our* camera and cordless phones. There's alot of unh! unh! from her whenever she sees something that we don't want her to touch.

Here she is actually watching the television for a moment. Look how she's making herself at home, leaning back onto my face.

Monkey see, monkey do. Here I am making myself at home, leaning back onto our baby.

Life lessons: good grooming

[Meaghan wrote:] Gabrielle. Interesting little girl. Every day after her morning nap, we have had a tradition of changing her diaper and getting her dressed and ready for the day. Last week she discovered what to do with a comb, as she has little hair obviously adult brushes and combs are too big for her. Belinda went out and grabbed her some cute little kiddy sized things. Now every morning I sit her on the sink and let her do her thing.
She is developing great grooming skills!! She now brushes her hair every chance she gets. It's the most adorable thing!!



This particular picture was in the afternoon one day, she pointed at her hair and I handed her, her brush. She is brilliant!! She knows exactly what to do!!
I have high hops for potty training one day ;)

Dawning of a new era

Sorry for the long delay since my last posting, but Mark and I have both been overwhelmed by the transition to leaving Gabrielle with our nanny, Meaghan. The first week went terribly - Gabrielle cried lots and was very clingy and whiny. We cut short her first week with Meaghan and took care of her ourselves on Friday. The weekend was not great either - Gabrielle had several tantrums (isn't she too young for tantrums?), one of which lasted two hours. We finally gave up trying to console her and put her in her crib and let her fall asleep. She kept sobbing in her sleep - it was really heartbreaking. Her eating was off, she refused to be consoled, she screamed bloody murder at bedtime, and awoke several times during the night. We had guessed that the transition to Meaghan was upsetting Gabrielle to her very core and all her systems were reacting. Needless to say, we weren't looking forward to Monday and starting the nightmare all over again. 

I'm not a religious person, but I can say that a miracle happened on Monday. We left in the morning and Gabrielle started to cry. I phoned Meaghan once I got to work and she told me that Gabrielle stopped crying soon after we left and had been perfectly cheerful all day. She was eating, wasn't crying, and was in a genuinely good mood. That night, Gabrielle went to sleep without a fuss and slept most of the night. She woke up in a great mood, unlike the moods she had been treating us to for the past week. All day Tuesday was happy happy, as was Wednesday. 

I guess we can attribute all this to a couple of things. First, Meaghan is fantastic and Gabrielle obviously likes her. She's never upset to see Meaghan in the morning, she just doesn't like when we leave her. When I come home in the afternoon, she's very happy to see me, but she's very smiley and friendly with Meaghan too. Second, Gabrielle had a giant molar come in last week. I'm pretty sure it broke through the gum sometime on the weekend. That, more than anything, might have been the reason for her sudden personality change from adorable demon child to hateful demon child and back. Just kidding. Sorta.

Anyways, all is good for now. Mark and I are very grateful that Meaghan has been so patient with Gabrielle - it seems to have paid off. Stay tuned.

First year stats

I took Gabrielle for her first year check-up and vaccinations. Here are her numbers to round out her first year:

weight: 11.35 kg or just over 25 lbs.

height: 79.5 cm or 31.3 in.

As her birthweight was just under 9 lbs, she barely fell short of tripling her birthweight.

Her birth height was 54 cm, in case anyone's interested.

She's still in the 95th percentile for both height and weight. 

Lots of baby to love...

Ta-DAH!!

The day before her first birthday, Gabrielle took her first solo steps. Here she is a few days later. She is quite happy to perform on cue, and will take up to ten steps or so before wanting some support, and always looks quite proud of herself when she's done. Here's our toddler:

Gigi's first Chrismukkah. Part three: Birthday

Although Gabrielle's birthday isn't *technically* part of Chrismukkah, it will no doubt be subsumed by it, as likely happens with all late December babies. Mark's family was incredibly generous, trotting out a whole bunch of fresh gifts, even though we had opened Christmas presents just the day before. We are now well-supplied in very noisy toys. Gabrielle is pleased.

Here's the GAK (Great Aunt Kitty) giving Gabrielle a big stuffed bear for her birthday. Gabrielle's like, that's for me?

Maggie and Gabrielle modelling their semi-matching sweaters. Maggie's clearly thinking about how Gabrielle is ruining the photo with her crying, and won't she please just grow up?

We went out for a walk in downtown London. Guess who loves riding on daddy's big shoulders? Guess whose neck was killing all the next day?

Gigi's first Chrismukkah. Part two: Christmas

We left Montreal for the long drive to London, Ontario, to spend Christmas with Mark's family. It's about an 8 hour drive, so we took a number of long breaks to give Gabrielle some stretch time. One of those breaks was lunch at Swiss Chalet in Kingston. This was our first time ever ordering Gabrielle her own meal, and off the kiddy menu no less. Chicken fingers, veggies, all you can drink milk, and a bag of M&Ms (those went to her parents). It made us feel like she was very grown up.

"Hey, I wonder what's in this big red bag with my name on it?"

This was Gabrielle's first experience with the big red Christmas "stockings." They're actually bags as big as a laundry bag, and Gabrielle's was filled to overflowing. For a novice, she took to the spirit of Christmas immediately, and quickly figured out what to do with the pretty packages in her bag.

She worked hard all morning, tearing into her gifts. Behind her on the couch is her cousin Maggie, who had an equally enormous bag to tackle.

What was cool was that after she opened each gift, she'd stop and appreciate it or play with it. Here she is enjoying a shiny gold coin. No, it's not chocolate, Gigi.

She worked up such a sweat opening gifts, we had to take her dress off. Here she is surrounded by the aftermath of the unwrapping.

Nana sneaks in for a photo behind Gabrielle. Gabrielle's stranger anxiety makes it so hard to get photos of people with her, so we do what we can.

Here she is during the traditional crudités before the main meal, with Grandad and Kitty. It's also when the cocktails start flowing. Hey, it's noon - let's drink!

Unfortunately, Katharine was sick for a good part of our visit, so she spent almost no time with Gabrielle. This is the only photo I have of her, but it's an important one, because it shows her putting the finishing touches on the log and the trifle. I also have no photos of her husband, Ray, who was industriously working around the house during much of our visit. Next time we have to get a picture for sure Ray, OK??