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.

Bye bye Woyen

And so the time has come... Lauren spent an amazing year with us - she made our lives tolerable - enjoyable even. The kids loved her and even just today Gabrielle said to me: "Lauren is my babysitter but she belongs with our family, right?" Now what do you say to that? Thank you Lauren!

Breakfast portraits

Hiking at a toddler's pace

Drapereses gone wild!

How quickly annual traditions take hold - last year's camping trip having been relatively successful, we booked another camping trip this year with a large group of our friends and their children. I pride myself on being the type of person who makes every mistake ... once. I had believed (erroneously) that the hardest part of camping was the packing. And everyone knows (no, they don't, in fact) that packing for two nights of camping is essentially the same as packing for a week of camping, so why not go for a whole week?

It started out as usual - with Mark trying to fit everything into the limited square footage we had available, including a roof bag. Clearly, we were optimistic about the capacity of our station wagon - the pool noodles were on our priority "must have" list.

Below, our home for 6 nights. It was lovely, actually, right on a little dead river. All covered in algae but filled with frogs and watery creatures.

And below, Isaac's home for 6 days. He loved playing in the car, turning switches, and possibly also just avoiding mosquitoes. He spent, no joke, an hour a day in the car. By himself. Just sitting in there, turning switches. When we'd turn on the car, the heater would turn on full-blast, the sunroof open, radio blasting.

We managed to keep things interesting by renting a canoe one day, a kayak another, heading to the beach most days.

And we saw wildlife! Turtles!!

Ahhh.... bread with cream cheese and jam tastes sooooo much better in the great outdoors.

After a few days on our own, our friends started to arrive, and at one point there were approximately 14 kids (who could get them to sit still long enough to count them?) in our campground area, all of our sites reserved side-by-side. It was kind of fun letting G just wander from campsite to campsite - she really got into the independence by the end of it.

Here are Jim and his oldest, Liam, along with Isaac, doing his best Donny Osmond impression. Like seriously, where did all those teeth come from?

Just to get a sense of the general mayhem, there were kids and glowsticks everywhere.

Gabrielle, all paddled up.

It was great news when Dan and Amanda showed up with their kids, because G was a bit outnumbered by all the little boys running around, torturing frogs and anything else they could get their hands on. She and Naya immediately held hands and were best buds for the following 48 hours. Sisterhood, right on!

Just some of the kids at the jamboree.

So in conclusion, I can definitely state that the hardest part of camping is NOT packing, it's camping. Work work work...

Dancing, with interference

Day trip in Montreal

Amos, Carolyn, and the kids were going to be in Montreal for a few days, so we decided to take a day trip to see them. Our guys are getting better in the car, although Isaac needs alot of trains waved under his nose when he starts complaining.

We spent most of the visit in my mom's pool. G has suddenly become quite a fish, enjoying being in water as deep as she can get without actually having it touch her face. Once the inevitable splashing happens, she wrinkles up her nose and whines a bit.

Carolyn took a couple of spins with her in the water, as did Amos (sorry Am, no pics - again!).

Isaac has not yet developed a love of the watery stuff. Mark's gentle invitation to join him in the pool turned into cajoling which turned into grabbing him and forcing him in.

Awesome sweetness below.

The Robot Test

You could say he passed with flying colours (nyuck nyuck)...

And then there was Thomas...

Thank you Uncle Jimmy Jam for giving us this humongous tub of Thomas the Tank Engine stuff. We would likely never have bought it ourselves for the extortionist price the stores charge for it and our kids are now busy busy busy building tracks and making ever and ever longer trains. There are so many train cars and pieces of tracks that our kids can actually play together without resort to "sharing," which, let's face it, no one really likes to do anyways.

Monkey behind the wheel

Isaac is officially obsessed with vehicles. This isn't ours but he walked right up to it and let himself in on the driver's side, and started making "vroom vroom" sounds. At what point of his gestation inside me did this become one of his interests??

He's also become quite the character - very playful, making jokes, always laughing (when he's not screeching).

This is a true story

Here are my kids, colouring, side-by-side, on a beautiful summer afternoon. There is photographic proof thereof, so I'm not making it up. It's almost too perfect.

But wait - there's yet another picture below, taken all of 30 seconds later and they're *still* happy, not fighting, not shredding paper, not tearing at each other's hair, not throwing markers, no, none of that kind of childish behaviour. Just colouring. Happily.

And that's where this happy story ends. I stopped taking pictures moments before the robots hit the ground and the marker tug-of-war began.

Shopping

Always looking for a free ride...

Graduation day and the passing of a friend

Well, after a year of hard work slaving over puzzles and making crafts with macaroni and flower petals, Gabrielle can proudly declare herself a graduate of the Westboro Nursery School, the three morning a week school she has been attending since last September. It's been good for her, I think, as they actually have an interesting curriculum, covering everything from planets to bears to rainbows.

The graduation began with a small concert of songs they performed, accompanied by their music teacher, Shannon. It was funny to watch some of the kids' attention spans start to drift, particularly with so many strangers in the room. Most of the kids just stopped singing altogether, G included. No worries - Mark and I kept singing - those music classes we used to take with the kids have made us into real suckers for children's music.

After the concert was a snack reception. Strawberries and melons for the adults, popsicles for the kids. G is right in the middle of the table, sucking a lime green popsicle.

Then came the handing out of the "diplomas." Here are my adorable twins, waiting for G's name to be read out.

And finally the big moment. The teacher read out a few facts about each child, presumably based on some questions she'd asked them ahead of time. The final fact was: When Gabrielle grows up, she wants to be a .... (get ready for this).... (you're not going to believe this)......... ROCK STAR!! Wow - I couldn't believe it. All the other kids had said stuff like circus clown or astronaut. Our daughter wants to be a rock star?? We were never prouder parents...

The graduation also marked the death knell for our camera. During the ceremony, it stopped auto-focussing and the front and sides fell off. Our Canon has taken almost 10,000 photos and videos for us over the last 4 years - farewell old friend...

Elton John and Lady Gaga

Smile!

Photo taken by Susie Ward

While I was away...

It's about time I do a posting about my week in the U.K. on a business trip. Or I should say, what happened at home while I was in the U.K. for a week on a business trip. By all accounts, Mark had a great time bonding with his kids and his father, who came up to help him get a project done, namely re-roofing the garage (or something). I'm not exactly sure what it is they did but it sure looks great, involved tar and rocks, and was a lot of hard work so thanks boys!

I'd like to caption the photo below with something like here is Mark in his outdoor work gear but let's face it, these are his regular clothes that he wears to work every day, with the addition of steel-toed work boots. I knew they'd come in handy one day.



The kids love Moe's down the street and so do we. What's not to like about a pizza restaurant that is obsessed with Elvis?



Grandad got along great with the kids. Notice how Isaac is mimicking his every move.



Thanks again for the help, Pat.

Sure signs of summer

Is anything better than relaxing in your pool after a hard day?



...or kicking back in a luxurious backyard chaise?