The Liquor Store

A few weeks ago Caitlin was playing with a Scooby Doo stuffy.

Me: Where's Scooby going?
Caitlin: He goin' to da liquor store!

Say what?!

A few days later Caitlin's playing dress-up. She puts on a dress, shoes, puts her 'baby' in the stroller, grabs her purse, and announces: I goin' to da liquor store!

God help me. People are going to start to wonder!

The Big Playground

I am SO not ready for this.

I just got an email from Ben's teacher (she mass emails the monthly calendar, news letter, etc. to all the parents); it states on the calendar that the senior kindergarteners will start going to the big playground on May 25th (instead of playing in the fenced kindergarten area). This is a in preparation for grade 1 next year.

Grade 1?

It just hit me like a tonne of bricks.

I want my baby to stop growing up!

Ben's FIVE!

And has been since December! Ugh, I've been horrible at keeping this blog updated. In my defense I held off on Ben's birthday post until after his party which was held in January after he and his friends returned to school.

I look back at pictures and just can't believe that my boy is getting so big, thoughtful, and grown up. His mind is always going. He always has a question that needs answering or a unique perspective that I've never considered. He's incredibly helpful, empathetic, sweet, and funny. And he takes such wonderful care of his little sister; he plays with her, helps her get drinks and snacks, helps her get out of her boots and coat, and shares with her. Of course, he yells at her sometimes when she wrecks whatever project he's been working on and teases her sometimes, but he wouldn't be normal if he didn't. ;)

Like a true boy he's crazy about Hotwheels, Playmobile (especially the knights), and video games. He's quite good at solving puzzle games and his favourite has been Ilomilo, and more recently The World of Keflings and any sort of racing game. He loves reading Captain Underpants and Ricky Ricotta, and he really enjoys Roald Dahl (especially Fantastic Mr. Fox).

School's still going well for Ben this year. He definitely prefers more hands-on activities like building over printing and circle time, but who can blame him? Having been in his classroom a bit he seems a bit bored at times, but his focus is improving with age. His printing and spelling has come such a long way and his reading is coming along slowly, but surely.

For his fifth birthday we had a little family party with Granny and Grandad. Ben chose his own special dessert (he didn't want a cake), so this is what we ended up with:

pudding, whipped cream, topped with strawberries and marshmallows



Then, as I mentioned earlier, we threw Ben his first real 'friends' birthday party. We hired an entertainer through Mad Science to come in and do science tricks for the kids. Ben LOVED it and really enjoyed being the helper and having the spotlight for an afternoon. The kids had a lot of fun. Well worth the effort. :) (We had chocolate cupcakes because I couldn't bear the thought of 12 children running around my house with bowls of pudding.)

Happy 2nd birthday, my beautiful girl!

Today Caitlin turns two. I say this all the time, but it's hard to believe how quickly these two years have passed. I was looking at photos taken just before and after she was born and can hardly believe how much has changed in these two years.

Honestly, I don't even know how to put into words just how much we love our little girl. She really is a shining star who brings smiles to everyone around her. She's so pleasant, funny, determined, and clever. (I'm sure I'll have to remind myself of the 'pleasant' bit when she becomes a stroppy teenager.)

Caitlin loves singing, music, dancing, reading, and mimicking Ben. She loves to sing The Wheels On the Bus with me and she's absolutely adorable when she does. She's really good at colour and shape sorting, number recognition, and she's learning to count (we got to five last night). She's a really quick study, this one.

As much as Caitlin loves playing with Ben's cars, Lego, and will happily play rough and tumble, she also has a real girly side to her. She loves jewelry and has her own little stash. She often asks to wear a 'pitty neckie' (pretty necklace). She's also crazy about 'pretty shoes' and having 'pretty hair' and 'pretty toes'.

Our sweet little Caitlin has brought so much to our little family. We love her dearly and we look forward to seeing her develop into her own little person in the years to come.

Here are a few pictures from the past couple of years.

Newborn Caitlin:


Caitlin on her 1st birthday:


Caitlin on her 2nd birthday:


Lots of hugs and kisses, my sweet!

And as you say... Cake!!! ;)

Ben made a new friend at school

A little girl named Emma.

At the end of the school day today Ben invited Emma to our house. I chatted with her mum a bit to make arrangements for another day to get the kids together during which time I noticed Ben reach out and hold Emma's hand. (So cute!) And as we were leaving Ben blew Emma a kiss, then yelled 'Did you get it??', to which Emma replied 'Yep!' holding up her little fist. (Adorable!!)

Caitlin's obsession

Ben's stuff. She loves Ben's stuff. And I'm not talking about whatever toy he's playing with, but the oddest things.

Example A: I give her and Ben a bowl of cereal for breakfast in the morning. Ben finishes first and leaves the table. Caitlin pushes her bowl away, slides Ben's bowl over and eats the scraps instead of eating her own, usually still half-full, bowl.

Example B: We come home from being out somewhere. We all take our shoes off. Caitlin puts Ben's shoes on and continues around the house. She's wearing them right now and has a fit if they come off.

Example C: She likes to wear Ben's underwear. The other night she went to sleep wearing a pair of his underwear over her jammies. So, this morning when she went to help herself to a pair of his underwear I thought I'd surprise her with her own underwear. I brought her a bag with packs of girlie underwear, opened a pack, and she totally shunned them, put them all back in the bag, handed the bag to me, and went back to Ben's room for his HotWheels underwear which she then wore for nap.

Halloween '10

At Ben's suggestion the kids went as Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.

I made the costumes. It was totally simple. Red pants, red shirts, 'dark shirt' iron on transfers, blue fleece (for single seam hats, as hair), and basic image editing to create the shirt logos. I got the hat for hair idea from a youtube video.

Here are my little Halloweenies this year!



(If you click the image you can see it in full size.)

So incredibly proud of Ben!

This is what my boy - the one who finds reading and spelling 'boring' - did at school last week!


I'm so, so incredibly proud of Ben. I burst into tears when his teacher showed me what he'd done (she invited me in at the end of the day to see). He worked so hard on it and was so proud of himself. What a kid.

Caitlin's one busy girl!

It's been awhile since I last posted an update on Caitlin. She's learned so much stuff since the last full update.

First, she recognizes many shapes and can sort them: beside the standard shapes, she also recognizes diamond, heart, oval, rectangle. And she picked it up so quickly. I brought out one of Ben's old puzzles and she had it all figured out in about five minutes!

Caitlin is also incredibly curious about what's going on in the kitchen and if Nic or I attempt to do anything at the counter (make a sandwich, coffee, whatever) she's dragging a chair over from the table and climbing up so she can keep her eye on everything. She, however, also pulls a chair over when she's unattended and can get into everything so we've become very knife cautious, especially since the day I found her holding up a large carving knife. Ack.

Caitlin has many, many words. More than I could possibly count. She'll attempt to say just about anything and will mimick anything you say, so if you teach her a word she'll bank it pretty quickly. Her latest (and cutest) is 'grasshopper' which she pronounces 'gobohboh'. It is the. sweetest. thing!

She's also learning numbers and seemingly quickly. We've been reading a few counting books and much to my surprise she recognises and names most of the numbers from 1-9.

I've just started taking a swim lesson with her to get her more comfortable in swimming pools. She's perfectly happy as long as she's in my arms, but the minute she's in a floatation device or someone else's arms she's very unhappy and makes it known. The funny thing though is that her favourite part of the lesson is being dunked under water. She comes up laughing and asking for more every single time.

And finally, at bedtime she's started insisting on a kiss on the lips. I often give her forehead kisses because she has her soother in her mouth, but now she pulls it out and puckers up. So cute! And then she'll stick her feet in the air so we can give each foot a kiss on the bottom. Adorable.

I'm sure there's lots more, but I'm out of time for now.

The Fox

Ben told me this morning that he wanted to give all the money in his piggy bank to "the fox that runs on one leg". He means Canadian legend, Terry Fox. He'll be participating in The Terry Fox Run at school at the end of the month.