18 Months

The twins are 18 months old, it seems impossible!

 

 You would not believe me if I told you how hard it is to get a picture of two 1 1/2 year olds sitting on the couch, with a bear, smiling and looking at the camera. Well, maybe you would. I included outtake pictures just to help your imagination along in case. But at long last, finally this afternoon, a miracle occured and attempt number 5 at this particular photo shoot succeeded (hence the late post, I've been trying since a week ago to take the obligatory 18 month photo, to no avail).

 

We all have a cold (this will come as very unwelcome news to my parents who we are visiting next weekend, sorry Mom and Dad!). The sheer volume of... er... nasal secretion, that babies are able to produce is astounding to me. Seriously, if snot were valuable Rob and I would be millionaires! The vicious cycle I find is that the more Heidi cries, the more her nose runs. And the more you wipe her nose, the more she cries. It never, ever ends!

 

Mission Accomplished

Wow. Well, 9 hours, 7 guys and a 13 foot high load later, our new tree house arrived safely at our house. It sounds like it was an endeavour of Herculean proportions, but they pulled it off, and the playhouse that now sits in the snow in our back yard is in a surprisingly small number of pieces. We found this treehouse, roughly 10 x 10 and 8 feet up in the air, on Kijiji in Oshawa, for a song (the owner was severing the lot and needed it gone). Our guys managed to cut the top half of the house off, then slide it down into one of the trailers using a set of ramps they built on site (newfie ingenuity, Chris claims). They then cut off part of the deck and ramp and then built a different set of ramps to slide the bottom half of the house and the deck it was built into, into another trailer. The bigger portion was 13 feet high cruising down the highway and was a sight to behold as it pulled into the driveway!

Adventures in Bancroft

We are having a family adventure here in Bancroft tonight. I started coming up here for work once a day in January, but the last few weeks have been putting in very long days, so we decided to come up as a family and stay overnight at the best western here while u do two days of visits. It's been fun at times, a bit boring at times for Brendan, but will make for fun memories every time we drive through; remember that time we swam in the middle of an aqua fit class in that hotel? Remember the time Brendan got an entire large bacon pizza to himself? Remember the awful snow storm that was supposed to snow us in but didn't amount to more than 2 cm? Remember when Brendan learned to play pool in a decrepit hotel arcade room? Remember when we discovered the hotel had an equally decrepit "shop" area with old broken hot wheels cars in an ice bucket for 50 cents apiece?  Never a dull moment!

P.S. Late addition - the snow did amount to a lot more than 2 cm today (now Friday)! Talk about eating crow after scorning the lack of snow last night! We just got home after an awful ride home. Thank goodness for chauffeur husbands and Four wheel drive trucks. We did make it home safe Mom.

Heidis First Haircut

Heidi had her first hair cut last night! Just a quick bang trim, but still a momentous occasion. We had held off for as long as we could, trying to sweep her hair off to one side, but alas, it seems to want to grow straight down over her eyes. She was starting to look like a shaggy sheepdog. We just couldn't allow it any longer. So, we committed her to bangs. And they look very sweet, not at all sheepdog like!

Speaking of milestones, Harrisons vocabulary has gone through the roof. He's a tiny parrot, and repeats all sorts of things; choo choo, wapple (waffle), car, track, gogurt (yogurt), waba (water). Heidi is holding strong with her one multipurpose word; da.

Another milestone over the last month; the babies are playing more and more with wooden trains. As I write, Heidi and Harrison are both sitting on the floor of Brendans room driving trains around a tiny figure 8 track. Where is Brendan? Out at Junior Firefighters! His room really has morphed into what he calls his "playroom room". Now if I could just figure out how to KEEP all the toys in here...

Maturing

I knew my little boy would grow up some day.

Today Brendan handed me a picture he'd drawn. He said "It's a train, farting!" then dissolved into uncontrollable giggling.

Sigh.

Togetherness

First of all, apologies to my mother, who received 10 essentially identical copies of this post in her email inbox before I was able to work out the kinks and post properly. Blogger has been refusing to post photos from my phone for a week, but I seem to have it sorted out now. Sorry, though, mom.

It's actually been a lovely January, with lots of endearing together-y moments. There's also been loads of moments of babies crying and 5 year olds yelling etc. etc. etc. but we've gotten quite used to those moments, so the endearing moments stand out because they're more unique!

Rob has had a productive month around the house, fixing fans that have been broken for months and installing baby latches on cupboards we've been fighting to keep the babies out of for twice as long. There's something about the start of a new year that gets you all fired up. I'm actually doing remarkably well at my obscene list of 28 New Years resolutions. I think I've only missed 6 at last check. Either that speaks volumes for my own productivity, or volumes for my ability to set easily attainable goals (ie. Read more. That was easy. I hadn't read in months, so reading one chapter of my new Stuart McLean book easily accomplished that. Done, and done!) As I always say, if you're not happy with your life, lower your standards (:

 

Harrison is showing more and more interest in trains every day. He continues to be absolutely fixated with anything Brendan does, and will now quite happily push a train around a wooden circle track making "brooom" noises. It fills me with joy to see the circle repeat itself. The sentimentality of it all seems totally lost on Brendan who only seems happy about it because it gives him one minute of respite from having to protect his other train tracks from his little brother.  Heidi also has joined the world of vehicular play and now enjoys driving hot wheels cars around just like her brothers. This will make buying toys for the children much simpler. Mom is pleased.

 

Brendan has made a huge leap forward in his spirit of sharing this month and decided that he wants the twins in his room (well, until he wants them out... RIGHT NOW!). They are thrilled to bits and seem to love being in his room. Here they are playing playstation together. Brendan is in charge of the controller. Harrison is in charge of falling off the toy box. Heidi is in charge of crying for no conceivable reason. They all do their jobs very well.

 

Brendan is now a big boy (just ask him, he'll confirm it) and so he has graduated out of the race car bed he's been in since he was almost 2 up to the top bunk in his room. My little boy!!

 

More sweet togethery moments; we were up to Barrie a couple of weeks ago to visit Uncle Mike and Uncle Tara's new house (don't ask, I have no idea how the double Uncle gambit started, but Tara and I find it hilarious, so it's stuck). While the rest of the crew worked hard at renovations the 4 kids had a "too precious for words" time playing restaurant. For an hour Brendan made up plates of healthy wooden sandwiches from a wooden food set with baby puffs on the side and then brought them over to the babies who devoured them (the puffs, not the wooden sandwiches). I asked if I should come in and order a sandwich to which he replied "No, you're the one who cleans the store". Hmmmmm.

 

 

Is there anything better than babies in a tub?

The twins still don't have many words.

For example, Heidi's massive vocabulary includes 

Da, meaning Dad,

Da, meaning Dog

Da, meaning Done

Da, meaning Doll

Da, meaning That

Ba, meaning Bottle

Ba, meaning Book

and Ba, meaning Sheep (smelly sheep, her favourite bedtime animal).

Their comprehension astounds me however; you can say to them "would you like to go have a bath?" and they will run down the hall and beat on the bathroom door. This afternoon Rob asked Heidi to go give Harrison a bottle of water he had handed her and she left the kitchen, ran down to Brendan's room and handed it to him. Nice! Now we just have to teach them how to get their own bottles out of the fridge and we'll be all set!

Christmas Photos

At last, I'm getting a few Christmas photos posted up. Harrison and Heidi were on their best behaviour this Christmas. I was daunted by having to chase the mischevious little munchkins around not 1, not 2 but 3 unbabyproofed homes (Ripley, Port Stanley and then the condo we rented for New Years), but they really didn't seem to search out the trouble they do at home. There was minimal climbing on tables, only the occasional stroll around the dining room with the formal silver (Harrison liked carrying it around and Heidi liked putting things in the sugar bowls - this went double for both parents places) and Heidi only slapped Grandads ground level flat screen TV a few times a day. We'll just say alls well that ends well, and the only damage done seems to be a mysteriously missing nutcracker at my Mom and Dad's that is most likely in the aforementioned silver sugar bowl.

Heidi and Harrison welcome another Christmas season with Aunt Debbie's Christmas Eve potluck dinner.

Annual Lock Family Portrait

The Lock Family Christmas Tree. With a few families absent this year, you would think the usually gargantuan pile of presents under the tree would be less gargantuan. You would think...

Brendan was thrilled with everything Christmas morning, including his Incredible Hulk Foam Smash Fists.

Heidi's bed head on Christmas morning was impressive. What product does she use? 3% milk, drizzled slowly into the roots throughout the night, try it for yourself!

Annual Cole Family Portrait

Harrison's first encounter with snow was... chilly. He got the hang of just sitting in the snow and not trying to walk around after this. Good choice.

 

The kids all had a great time playing in the huge snowfall we got on Boxing Day.

 

We kept the babies cozy. And immobile.

 

Wyatt (Brendan calls him Widgee), Rowan and Brendan carving up the toboggan slope. It was a wonderful year for cousins; Brendan still idolizes Wyatt, but is becoming great buddies with Rowan lately too!

About those pictures...

Home at last, after 11 nights on the road. What a wonderful Christmas and New Year's!

My goal for the night was to upload my christmas photos for posting. I have an issue though. One of my resolutions last year was to stop taking 6 pictures instead of just taking 1. It makes the uploading, editing, sorting, rotating process significantly more time consuming. So, how did I do? Epic fail. 300 pictures for Christmas alone. This is where we come to the dilemma. One of my resolutions for this year was to go to bed earlier. If I accomplish my goal of posting pictures I'll be starting the year off already failing badly at my resolutions again. So instead, goodnight, we'll catch up soon and I hope everyone had a wonderful New Years!

On to the new year

We had a  wonderful Christmas in Ripley and Port Stanley. Brendan loved the train set Santa brought, and everyone was spoiled (no surprise there!) with piles of wonderful presents. I somehow missed taking cell phone pictures so I'll have to post up regular camera photos later. We are now finishing up a wonderful week and a half away by celebrating new years with our wonderful high school friends; a 15 year tradition! We're heading out now to toboggan in this wonderful winter wonderland. Yay for a white Christmas!

Anderson Christmas

Christmas time again, a time for so many wonderful traditions! We've arrived here in Ripley and celebrated Christmas tonight with the Anderson cousins. Our annual picture follows. That's a lot of cousins!

 

 

Just for comparison, here we all are 5 years ago!

 

A day in the life

Brendan is finally feeling better and was back to school today. We're off to his Christmas concert tonight. He says he's singing The Polar Express Train Got Lost. I have my doubts.

The babies are playing happily at my feet here, it's never a dull moment!

Sick Brendan, Helpful Babies

Poor Brendan has come down ill this weekend (acute sinusitis as far as I can tell - headache, fever and gross goopy eyes), and the babies are trying to console him any way they can - here he is trying to watch the Grinch on the couch while Heidi keeps him company. 

Meeting Santa

Our Christmas preparations are in full swing and I worry that Brendan may be totally burnt out by the time we get to the big dat if we're not careful!

So far the babies haven't reached the tree, so far...

We went to have the kids photo taken with Santa this afternoon. Deseronto has a neat place where you colour and drink hot cocoa while you wait for Santa. (It was very Christmassy, except the elf delivering cookies who reeked of cheap cigarette smoke). After talking to Santa, Brendan even got an early Christmas present out of Santas sack! It was a very cute place. The elf working the laptop connected to the camera had a picture of a Lotus on his desktop wallpaper. My favourite moment of the day was actually not Brendan sitting on Santas lap, it was when Brendan went up to the elf and asked him if he did ice racing at the North Pole! What a product of his raising!

We came home and are snuggled together on the couch watching a marathon of Christmas specials; Curious George Christmas, Prep and Landing and Robbie the Reindeer. Here's to the next generation of traditions! Hope you're all finding new and old traditions to celebrate at your place :)

O Christmas Tree

We had a wonderful festive time going to the Santa Claus parade, watching Christmas specials and putting up the tree this weekend. In a fit of extraordinary cheapness, I mean olden day nostalgia, I made the whole family trek out to the wilderness to pick out a wild tree this year. Unanticipated problems with this plan - #1 - it was raining. It's hard to sing Christmas carols convincingly in the fog and drizzle. But we tried.  #2 - Rob is very law abiding. This limited us to going to crown land, which we discovered is actually fairly limited in southern Ontario, so it was quite a drive to get there and all of the kids lost interest and fell asleep or began playing games on my cell phone. #3 - it turns out that we live in a scrubby area with only cedars and  maples. Even though the forests look like they are full of trees, they are not always. Pine trees at least. This was a rather substantial problem. I tried to convince Rob that the junipers were the right shape and colour for a Christmas tree, but he was adamant he was nor erecting a Christmas juniper in our house. Hmmm. At last, in a Christmas miracle sort if moment, we saw a lone scraggly pine tree at the edge of the road. We've decorated it up and I think it looks lovely. It's very possible that Heidi and Harrison are going to pull it clean over on top of themselves or each other so it's awfully convenient that it isn't heavy or full. I love it and it makes me smile.

Hair

Happy December 1 st! It's shave day! Rob had been growing a mustache for Movember, a prostate cancer and other men's health fundraiser along with the rest of his fire department. I am very glad it's over. He just didn't look like him...

It was a big hair week in our household. Harrison also got his first haircut, and he barely looks like himself now either. Rob and I had wanted to keep his sweet curls as long as we could, but between robs thick mustache and harrisons mullet we were looking a tad more trailer park-esque than we were comfortable with. We kept Heidis hair long, but may have invest in barrettes soon...

Darn, the haircut photo won't upload but here are current shots of everyone