Veni, Vidi.

We're home!

I think it was Ceasar who said "I came, I saw, I conquered". Well, we are home and I am happy to report that we came and we saw. We'll have to leave conquering for next time!

Our 9 days in Disney World were an absolute blur, as I'm starting to go through the pictures I keep saying "oh yeah, I forgot about that!"

Our flight down was miraculously unaffected by Superstorm Sandy, but the last half of our trip overlapped with a week of holidays in the Jersey school system so we ended up running into lots of people who had been. We were lucky enough to have sunshine our entire trip. We'd made sure of that by rush ordering a rain cover for the double stroller which arrived the day before we left and schlepping it around every day.

I should resist the urge to start into a day by day account if I want to get to bed tonight but it was a lovely resort (we stayed on Disney at the New Orleans themed Port Orleans resort), great food (in massive quantities, thanks to our free dining plan promotion), and lots of memorable moments. I had expected Brendan to be a little overwhelmed by the all the sights and sounds of Disneyworld, I had not, however expected that he would instead be totally indifferent to the whole experience. The first night, coming home on the bus Brendan turned to me unprompted and said "Mom, I thought you said Disney would be fun". !!! His mood seemed to improve once we started letting him take breaks from the rides and shows to play his cars on a park bench. Sigh.

I will get to the task of going through some more photos and let them do the talking...

As we turned the corner onto Main Street in the Magic Kingdom and Cinderella Castle came into view Brendan said "Mom, Mom, look!"
"What do you see Brendan?!"
"Balloons!"
I pointed out to him after that behind the man holding the balloons was the big castle.

Family ride on the Magic Kingdom Steam Train

We were all universally exhausted every night, especially Mickey

Tinkerbell and Peter Pan

Ok, I finally got a picture of the twins in their Hallowe'en costumes! They never stop moving, so I still haven't gotten the perfect picture of them together yet, maybe in Disney World...

Disney, here we come

I have been reviewing my copious notes for our trip to Disney World have written a a series of tips for myself that I call The Commandments of Disney. I think it will be important for me to remember to slow down and smell the roses on this trip and let it be about the magic of the place for Brendan, rather than about getting all the rides done in one day. Cause we won't. Not a chance. I need to lower my standards, like maybe to one ride a day. That's accomplishable. All joking aside I really have very little faith in my ability to predict what the vacation to Disney will be like. Will we tour the parks all day long? Will we spend all day in the hotel room, pleading with our twins to sleep? Who knows? If I can remember my commandments hopefully we will enjoy whatever version does happen. We will be gone for 10 days so that there is no time pressure to get things done efficiently, and are staying at the Port Orleans resort, right at DisneyWorld, so hopefully that will make things easier. We have a pass that allows us to wander freely in and out of whichever parks we want, whenever we want so that bailing with crying twins won't feel like a loss. We also have the (mostly) all inclusive dining plan so we're not counting pennies while we're there. And most importantly, Bob and Gail are coming. Yes, that's right. I don't know why they would agree to spend 10 days straight days with the whole crazy family, but they did, and they can't get out now!

So without further ado, The Commandments, and a brief glimpse of what our next 10 days could look like...

Commandments of the Magic Kingdom
1. Thou shalt be guided by Brendan. If he can experience any amount of wonder and rapture your job is done. He should not feel like he is being taken from place to place, at this park especially
2. Thou shalt be flexible and willing to skip lunch at the Harbour House if it's not convenient so that Bob and Gail understand you are not a nazi who needs to be accomodated.
3. Thou shalt let Brendan ride the train first, since we can't ride any of the high priority attractions anyway.
4. Thou shalt advocate for yourself and make time to ride Space Mountain on the second day
5. Thou shalt resist the urge to keep pushing through attractions until Brendan or the twins are completely worn out. There is no doubting that Brendan will be able to tour all day. Once. But the next day, possibly days, will be a write off and it's not worth it. If you see too much the first day there won't be enough for the second day, anyways.
6. Thou shalt not horde snack credits for Epcot. Spending $3 on a cupcake out of pocket on the last day because you're out of credits is fine. It's a $3000 trip. Enjoy it.
7. Even though they will make fun of you, thou shalt give Bob and Gail a rough itinerary of what is happening each day because they will enjoy knowing what is going on without having to ask. That being said, don't be bothered when nobody else reads it

Commandments for the Animal Kingdom
- Thou shalt not feign excitement over getting all the passport stamps for the Discovery Club stations because Brendan probably doesn't care about completing the book.
- Thou shalt not try to figure out how to switch off and allow everyone to ride the three thrill rides, because frankly I don't want to ride Dinosaur and Kali River Rapids. Rob will want to ride Expedition Everest (I wouldn't mind), and he can do that while Brendan plays at the Boneyard playground easily or if Bob and Gail want to take the kids back to the hotel early. Bob and Gail really should see It's Tough To Be A Bug.
- Thou shalt ride the train to the Conservation Station as many times as Brendan wants to.
- Thou shalt try to watch Finding Nemo before we go, partially to familiarize Brendan with the story, partially to prepare him that his mother gets eaten.
- Thou shalt remember to bring something to help him sit through the whole Nemo show - a diversion or a reward (it's 40 minutes long)
- Thou shalt let him play in the Boneyard playground and I will let him come back as often as wants. I will be a smart parent however, and not go into Dinoland until I'm prepared to let him stop and play for a while.

Commandments for Epcot
-Thou shalt remember that it's more important for Brendan to have fun exploring in the World Showcase then to get to gift shop every store, since you're probably not buying anything anyways.
-Thou shalt give Brendan interesting things to find in the World Showcase instead of assuming he'll find the architecture fascinating
-Thou shalt prep Brendan. Most of the rides at Epcot are movie based and a few are dark rides. Watching them before we leave home is key. As are the next two comandments.
-Thou shalt not force Brendan to see anything he doesn't want to, you'll just miss the whole ride fighting/calming him
-Thou shalt not force Brendan to sit through a whole movie if he wants to leave, but this might be a great time for cell phone games with earphones etc. and some time to rest.
-Thou shalt take the time to sit and watch the live entertainment.
-Thou shalt have a plan in case Heidi does not tolerate a single movie (like gift shopping with her in the stroller or bjorn (so Harrison can stay in the stroller and you don't have to drive the double stroller in stores)
-Thou shalt remember that you've seen all of this before, so it doesn't really matter if you miss something

and finally,

Commandments for Hollywood Studios
-Thou shalt be realistic about what the twins are likely to sit through based on the previous days of touring, not hope for a miracle and then be surprised that they don't sit happily through everything
-Thou shalt lie to Brendan about the height restrictions on Star Tours and Tower of Terror even if he thinks he wants to ride because we will all pay the price if we cave in and let him
-Thou shalt not get annoyed by all of Brendan's questions because this really is a fascinating but confusing place to a 5 year old mind

Boy, oh boy! It's gonna be fun!

Tinkerbell

We picked up Heidis tinkerbell costume for Halloween, it's pretty amazing. It was made by the coworker of our good friend Kim. Heidi was fine with it until we put the wings on. The second photo is a little " we are not amused " and a lot of " the exorcism - Disney style" .

Just 8 sleeps until our family trip to Disneyworld, excitement is at a fever pitch in this house! We will be spending Halloween at Disney, so to match Heidis tinkerbell, Harrison is dressing up as peter pan! You'll have to stay tuned for that photo, since his costume is still in pieces on top of my sewing machine...

I am trapped

I am home alone, literally trapped in this chair with a sleeping baby on my lap whom I dare not move. Perfect time for a blog update! Harrison stirred a few minutes and I thought "oh no, how on earth is this gonna work" but he fell back asleep. Thank the sweet lord.

Life is beginning to feel a little more manageable the last few weeks but Heidi and Harrison seem determined to avoid any sort of nap routine. Morning naps? Maybe, maybe not. Afternoon naps? Maybe, maybe not. No nap at all, but instead fairly constant fussing from 5 until 9 pm? Apparently that was tonight's plan. Go the #!@$ to sleep sweet princess.

Ah, relief... Rob has come and is delivering Heidi to bed... Oh no, there she goes again... No, no, it's ok, she fell back asleep. Oi veh!

Still here

...lest you worry that we'd driven off the edge of the earth, we are still here. I had thought I might post less often, I hadn't necessarily thought weeks at a time would go by without a post. Life is still... hectic. I am now working everyday and we've been galavanting all over the province to visit family most weekends. Were packing up tonight for a Cole family thanksgiving at a cottage were renting up in muskoka, and then we're planning to come home for a rest.

The babies are remarkably similar to the wat they were three weeks ago. Still walking around all over, still getting into EVERYTHING, still eating great, no new teeth. They got a cold which has held on a long time, so sleeping through the night us on a temporary hiatus, but I have a deep abiding faith it will return. It must. That's non negotiable.

So life at the zoo has fallen into a rather predictable, although never boring routine.

Oh yeah, and the babies learned to high five, that was exciting!

And a happy, happy christening to our dear niece Ellie!

Take care, Nancy

Zombie Mom

Well, we're back at work, and school, and we are all surviving, albeit barely.

Rob and I both feel very rusty at all the procedural type parts of the job back here at home care, so we do feel as though things take an awful lot longer than they did a year and a half ago. We will likely get back into the swing of things quickly though. We'd better. We're also finding it significantly different trying to run a business from home with three kids underfoot. Heidi tries to help out in the office, as you'll see from the photos, and has already found a favourite new place to sit, and favourite new power cords to unplug.

Brendan seems very happy back at school with the same bus driver, teacher and friends. He does seem so much older than he did a year ago. He came home from school today with a whole new version of duck, duck goose that he had imagined called tornado, tornado, explosion. Boys. Sigh. The rules were quote complicated and I will admit to being secretly relieved when it was time to make dinner.

Harrison is walking almost all the time now and Heidi at least half the time. They are babbling and talking more and more. Harrison learned to say Ta Ta ( for when you want something ) today and signs "more" and "all done" (pictured in the high chair) pretty consistently now. Heidi signs with great joy and excitement, but rarely at any sort of  appropriate time. She did however make up her own sign for "bottle". I think she's going to be our free spirit!

Home From Vegas

I have arrived home from Vegas and am happy to report that all 3 children survived my absence, and perhaps more amazingly, so did Rob. It sounds like things went very well indeed, with the twins napping and eating decently and Brendan behaving adequately. Rob was a super dad, taking everyone out for trips to the toystore or the park every day and the neighbours said they never heard any crying from the house. Rob says that's because he went downstairs where the windows weren't open to cry...

A few days before I left, Harrison sprouted another tooth (his fifth) on top. This morning, it's pair has pushed through on the other side, so that makes six. Heidi is holding strong at four teeth, but has a very toothy grin nonetheless.

I was so worried before I left that I would miss Heidi's first steps. Mostly I was worried she would ask someday "Do you remember my first steps, mommy" and I would have to say "no honey, mommy was out partying in Vegas". The downside of that is that if she hadn't started walking last week there was a pretty good chance I would miss her first steps while I was back to work this week, but at least that sounds a little bit less neglectful when recounted back to her than the Vegas scenario. I was thrilled to bits therefore when she took her first steps yesterday morning (my first day home). It was just an hour after I woke up, and I felt like she'd been saving them for me! She can really only manage two or three at a time, but has done it many times.

Harrison seems keen to try and stay ahead in the milestone competition between him and Heidi and has begun to jump! Yes, jump. Like two foot jump. He's a prodigy. This is typically a 20-24 month old milestone but our little not-quite 13 monther is doing it already! He generally likes to squat down as low as he can to build up tension like a spring and then jumps up and fast as he can and lands again with a gigantic smile.

I really have to learn how to post videos with all these moving and shaking that the twins are doing, but it involves posting a video to facebook and then imbedding a link and that is usually where my eyes glaze over a little and I lose focus. I should redouble my efforts.

My trip to Vegas was a very fun week. There was a fair bit of debauchery, as long as you consider bad karaoke debauchery. Otherwise, all I have to offer you is staying up too late and excessive gigglng in a wide, wide variety of public places. We had a great time. I drank beer ice cream floats (delicious), toured every hotel/casino on the strip except 2, hung out by the pool, played roulette, drank $1 margaritas, watched an elvis impersonator, played craps, danced on top of the bar at Coyote Ugly, shopped the Gap at 11:30 at night (Vegas is a strange place), won at the sports book, watched the Bellagio fountains, drank out of a bucket (it was a good deal!), took in a magic show and stayed up dancing until last call more nights than not. I also slept through the night 6 nights in a row. That was heaven.

Rob also managed to sleep relatively well. Our plan was to start sleep training (fancy parenting talk for let them cry it out) the twins when I got home. Rob however is a fairly heavy sleeper, and I had suspiscions about whether he would hear them when they woke up in the middle of the night, since he rarely stirs in the night when I'm home. He felt he would subsconsciously know that he was on duty and hear them. Well, miraculously, he reports the twins slept quite well, sometimes only waking once in the night, sometimes both sleeping through the night. Whether THEY only woke once, or whether HE only woke once is a question we will never know the answer to, but one way or another they are both sleeping very well now, and I only woke up once last night to deal with them, so I'm not complaining!

Brendan starts school on Wednesday and seems quite excited to see his friends and teacher again. It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since his first day of junior kindergarten when he looked so little getting on the bus.

Rob and I are due at the office at 9 am Wednesday to pickup our caseload and be oriented back to the world of work at Home Care. A neighbour is going to look after the twins for us for the morning while we are in town, which is sort of a milestone in and of itself. They are certainly becoming a little more self sufficient and Rob and I are looking forward to getting to a stage where we feel we can leave them with our regular high school aged babysitter easily. Oh, and they are working on more words, I came home from Vegas to babies who can now both say Uh-oh and Ball! Goodness the milestones never cease!

My First Drink In Vegas - A tall ice water - not very wild and crazy yet

Posing outside our hotel/casino - Harrah's

Touring the Venetian

Oh bother, the photos have ceased to upload... I've attempted 3 times, and have got to go to bed. Well, I suppose what happened in Vegas will have to stay in Vegas (:

Harrison Takes His First Steps!!

Harrison took his first steps on Friday morning, and is sooo proud! I don't think I've ever seen him grin quite as wide as he does when he's walking. He took his first single step for me on Thursday night, and I felt awful that Rob was at firefighting and didn't see it. In a show of beautiful symmetry however, he took his first series of steps the next morning for Rob while I was upstairs sleeping. He's repeated the performance several times, and manages about 5 or 6 steps each time. Heidi, previously totally uninterested in any sort of walking activity is now trying as hard as she can to replicate her twin brother and will likely take her steps any day now. She is trying to walk on tip toe though, so that could be a little more challenging. Her obsession is sitting. She moves around the house going from one seat to another. When she arrives she sits for a moment, looks around, smiles, and then pushes on to the next seat. Her favourite seat these days is a Tow Mater push car that Harrison likes to hold on to and walk. When he's done, she crawls over, climbs up onto the seat side saddle and swings her feet happily.

It's been a week/3 days full of milestones! Moments before I sat down to write this Harrison said his first word! No. Same as Brendan's first word, apparently I raise instictively oppositional children. He's been repeating it (in very situationally appropriate ways) as I attempt to write this blog entry. I told Rob just now when he came in and Rob said "oh yeah, he's been saying that a lot lately". In a similar anticlimactic presentation, I suppose this is a good time to declare Heidi's first word; Dadadad. She has been saying it for about a month now in a wide variety of situations; when Rob comes home, when she sees Blaze, when she's playing with her Cheerios, so we'd been reluctant to call it a clear first word. However, she has begun to become a little more specific lately, and Rob always gets Dadad, and Blaze always gets Dad, which sounds an awful lot like Dog when she says it to Blaze. The Cheerios still get Dadad too, but lets not be too picky!

On Friday, the twins also had their 1 year checkup. Heidi is 18 pounds, 11 ounces and Harrison is a whopping 22 pounds 8 ounces. Despite eating better than her brother at every meal, Heidi continues to skip along at the 6th percentile for weight. She's only just barely on the growth charts but absolutely consistant. As the doctor so eloquently put it "I think she's just going to be small". Wee Heidi. Her head, however, continues to be above average. For the third checkup in a row, her noggin is at the 75th percentile for size. She must be brilliant. If Heidi's head is big Harrsions's is massive. At his last checkup his cranium was tipping the scales at levels the put him just over the 95th percentile. That's the top of the graph! This time it's even farther above the curve leading this proud mama to declare he has the largest head, of any child, ever. And that's supported with statistics. For reference Brendan's head was also freakishly large - 90th percentile. Since he was 10 months old, Brendan's baseball cap has fit me. Snugly, but fit me. So I guess that means my genetic code for males selects for both giant heads and stubborn personalities. Harrison's length is right at the 50th percentile, and his weight is right around the 40th, so he's not extreme in all ways! Just because I'm on a role comparing numbers, Brendan was 19 pounds 3 ounces at his first birthday - right between the two twins. Interesting!

It's felt like a big week; we hosted the twins first birthday party yesterday with friends and neighbours. It was a fairly low key event - the standard Lock backyard pool party we do regularly with extra helium balloons and extravagant murals by Brendan on the windows. We did have a bouncy castle and some "TwinOlympic" events and lots of kids running around. How life has changed! 5 years ago Brendan was the only baby around and yesterday we had baby neighbours Micheal, Jeff, Sean, and little friends Reid, Colton, Callum, Owen and Will. Forget physiotherapy, Rob and I need to open a day care!

Another huge change this week is going to seem very anticlimactic to everyone but me. After hours of research (not an exageration) I discovered that it is possible to fit 3 car seats across in a Corolla. I thought I had exhausted this topic before the babies were born, and again when Brendan grew big enough for a backless booster (about 6 months ago), but after buying 3 different boosters and having to return them because they didn't fit I gave up. Well, if at first you don't succeed... I spare you, mercifully, the full details, but long story short we can now stuff all three kids stuffed into the Corolla when we need to. I'm thrilled to not have to bring the gigantic truck everywhere we go. Rob not so much. Blaze also not so much, since he hasn't a snowballs chance in... uh, Arizona, of fitting in the backseat with the rest of the brood. We also could never fit a weekends worth of stuff for all of us in the trunk, especially now that we've gotten used to the luxury of entire truck bed worth of gear. But at least we now have a choice of vehicles when we drive into town for errands or Kingston for appointments and I'm not stranded at home if Rob has taken the truck to a fire call.

We had a wonderful neighbourhood birthday party for Rob last weekend. Our crazy neighbour Roslyn had planned a Hillbilly Marathon, complete with costumes and Mr. Clean lemon punch in a wash bucket. Everyone dutifully attempted to run the 5 kilometer loop around Lonsdale. Attempted is the operative word however, as it was a very hot day, and there are several obscenely large hills on the route. Several of the neighbours took it quite seriously however, stopping only once for beer and a swim at our place and were quite demoralized to be beat by an 11 year old who joined us on a whim for the run. Aging sucks.

The fun continues this week; we're off for two nights camping with my brother and his family; Brendan is over the moon - he absolutely adores "Widgee" and Rowan. We'll be at Silent Lake, near Bancroft, a new park for us, so we're excited. That marks the beginning of the end however, as it's the last camping trip we have planned for the year. We're home on Wednesday, and then on Saturday I leave for a vacation to Las Vegas. Almost 7 days of childless time (I'm going with 3 other neighbourhood girls), I may do nothing but sleep. Rob is totally unfazed by his week of non-stop parenting though - I don't know how he does it - father of the year. After that, the party is over; Brendan starts school the Wednesday following and Rob and I start work the same day. The end of an era. It may also be the end of the blog, I can't imagine how we're going to have time to do anything; we'll see though. In the meantime, enjoy the sunshine and wish Rob luck next week!!!

Testing, testing...

I have finally gotten a new fancy phone in honour of starting work in a few weeks so this is a test post of the new onboard camera and of the blogger app. We bought a new collapsible high chair in my ongoing quest to regain floor space, it's the red one!

Home At Last

Well, it is true. Sane people should probably not try to camp for 10 days with 1 year old twins (and a 5 year old and a rather large dog). People who have long ago (say a year...) lost their sanity should go ahead and do it, since they have nothing to lose! It was wonderfully exciting to hit the road and see new terrain these last 10 days, and it was a very special trip of firsts for Brendan. Among the highlights were the sort of memories that great nostalgic movies are made out of like learning to ride your bike without the training wheels (he's a very quick learner!), first rescue pet (Brendan found an injured dragon fly and "nursed it back to health" - it "flew away" on the third day after Brendan found it) and those first tastes of freedom (there was a swing set within sight of our first campsite that we let him go to if he returned at a specified time on his watch - he did beautifully, very law abiding, this kid). We roasted marshmallows on the fire, and weiners, played on the beach for hours (we were lucky enough to have been able to reserve campsites 100 feet from the beach at both campgrounds), read bedtime stories beside the campfire and stayed up late. Doesn't it sound so idyllic?!

Our only real downer of the trip was the constantly impending rain. For essentially the entire trip the weather was in a state of "will it or wont it". As a result we were constantly setting up outside for lunch; high chairs, cooler, food, water and then deciding two hours later that it was about to start raining so we'd put it all away again. After repetition number 100, that got old, but it was very, er, cramped in the trailer so trying to all cram in there was hardly a better option. We found some creative solutions to our space issue; instead of the bulky double stroller, we turned our side by side bike trailer into a multipurpose stroller, bike trailer, place to lie down and have a bottle, luggage carrier combo. We tried a variety of sleeping arrangements and eventually slept with Blaze tucked under the main bed (the folded down sofa), Brendan in the upper bunk, one baby in a playpen and one baby under the kitchen table with a gate across the two benches to enclose that area. Trying to attend to that crying baby in the middle of the night required some fairly advanced gymnastics, but believe it or not it was preferable to the gymnastics required to squeeze around the second playpen when it was set up. It also meant you could open the door to the bathroom. Yay for portapotties! Outside we set up two tents; one for Brendan to play in with his toys and another for the babies to play in. The baby tent essentially worked as a giant mosquito proof playpen and worked amazingly. We did occasionally let the babies out to explore on their own, but they got so filthy so quickly, and ingested so many pine cones that it hardly seemed worth it.

Harrison grew his first top tooth a few days into the trip and finally had the second top tooth poke through this morning. That makes four teeth for each of them now! Heidi is sporting quite a gap, which just adds to her not-so intellectual look. (:

The twins had some not bad nights of sleep and a some fairly horrible nights, thanks I think in large part to those teeth (Heidi is working on the upper tooth, left of the middle pair). Naps were rough too... but enough complaining!

We left at 4 am, in a desperate attempt to find a way to make driving to Northern Ontario more manageable. We stopped once for an hour to feed the babies breakfast in the camper around 7 am near Port Perry and then didn`t have to stop again until we arrived at Marten River Provincial Park (45 minutes north of North Bay) about 11:30. Northern Ontario before noon! We may leave at 4 am everywhere we go! Martin River is on the southern border of the Temagami area; very pretty, with lots of Eastern White Pine, and very reminiscent of Algonquin or Killarney. We did a great hike on our third day here through the forest to a 300 year old pine. I had bought a new camera (yeah for Shoppers Optimum Points) with a fancy panorama feature that I made good use of with all these tall, tall trees, and wide forest vistas. We stayed here for 4 nights and then headed onto Ivanhoe Lake Provincial Park for another 4 nights. This was a full days drive north through Timmins through all sorts of places I've always heard of like New Liskeard, Kirkland Lake (where Rob's grandfather lived for a while) and Matheson (where my grandfather worked for a while) so that was very cool. The scenery was nothing like what we expected. Around New Liskeard it was positively prarie-like, and the pictureasque Canadian Shield abruptly ended north of Temagami and didn't start again until we were driving home. All the areas north were full of white Silver Birch forests, and Ivanhoe Lake itself was full of sand dunes, moss and lichen. So, we've had to adjust our mental picture of Northern Ontario... isn't that what travel is all about! Sadly, we weren't able to connect with our cousins in Timmins, they had a wedding to attend, but we kept ourselves busy with bike rides, hikes and more trips to the beach. We even did made bannock on the fire (see picture) in a ranger led program. Finally, it was time to head home. We'd had some hope that we might be able to cover the distance in one day, but realized that was both unrealistic and inhumane to the poor kids in the backseat (especially Blaze), so we stopped at an awesome KOA in Parry Sound, that as you can judge from the previous post almost had us excited to stay on the road an extra day. Sadly, amusement parks are less amusing in the rain, so we drove over to Huntsville to ride their Steam Train instead for the twins birthday, and then hit the highway for home. I have to say, it was a wonderful trip, but by the home stretch I don't think a single one of the 6 of us wanted to be in that truck one minute more.

Fianlly about 10 oclock last night we made it Home Sweet Home. Hallelujah.

Change of plans

Change of plans- rough night and heavy rain threatening, I think we'll make it home tonight. This #&%$ rain has been a defining feature of this trip. The new plan is to take the babies on their first steam train ride for their birthday.

Happy birthday!

Very quick update - we're not home yet... We made it to Parry Sound tonight on our way home from Timmins and are settled in at a very nice KOA (with free wifi no less! ). However, instead of making the twins sit in the truck for 5 hours to celebrate their birthday we've decided to stay another day and take them to Santa's Village tomorrow. Brendan may also enjoy himself. (: Rob says he always wanted to go and I feel guilty that we didn't buy the twins any presents, so we'll be home soon (we think) and again (its midnight now ) Happy Birthday to my Happy Babies!

Happy Olympics!

In honour of the 30th Olympiad, the twins went to bed last night dressed in their most appropriate Olympic PJs (thanks Aunti Ali, we hope you're surviving the traffic over there!). They were clearly inspirational. Heidi started the Olympics off with a bang, sprouting her top two teeth yesterday! How's that for higher, faster, stronger?!

Home, for a little while...

We made it home from our week following Alison around on Sunday night. Sadly, she was supposed to fly home late, but her flight was cancelled and rerouted through Glasgow. We got a message from her on Monday morning saying she was hoping to get on a flight to London soon. Argh, the joys of air travel. Speaking of air travel; we've booked our first family vacation; we'll be going to DisneyWorld in Florida in late October/early November. I've been in planning heaven for months now, and will be up until the moment we leave I'm sure. It's just the kind of place that lends itself to that! I couldn't help myself (I'm a bit of a Disney geek) yesterday morning; Brendan was looking quizically at my Figment hologram cup in the bathroom and finally asked "how does it keep changing?". I'm usually a little obsessive with giving him factual, scientific answers, but this time I said "It's from DisneyWorld; it's magic".

The twins and Brendan all seemed happy enough to be home. Small changes have happened since we were home last though. Harrison is tall enough now to be able to reach almost everything on our black coffee table and the couch. This has created quite a problem for Brendan, as this was the final refuge for his toys in the living room. We've now had to put up a baby gate across the end of the hall so he can play with his toys in the hall outside the bedrooms while the babies wander around in the living room. The only problem with this set up is that he needs a stool on either side to step over. Heidi keeps stealing the stool on the living room side and wandering off with it (she pushes it along the hardwood like a walker), thus stranding Brendan in the hall. Poor guy. He really has been very patient with these little siblings of his.

Heidi and Harrison are holding strong at two teeth each, although they are each literally leaving a trail of drool wherever they go, so they may sprout the top ones soon. Harrison has switched from commando crawling to crawling on all fours, and is much quicker now. I didn't think "quicker" was possible with these two, and yet, they keep surprising me!

We tried to have a lovely family moment in the backyard yesterday. I felt gearing up all the kids to drive to the playground was too much work, so I set up our littlesplash pool in the back yard instead. This was not as quick a task as I had imagined. Instead of just running the hose for a few minutes there were a few obstacles; the pool had to be cleaned out of the sand that had been deposited in it (blame the 5 year old whos sand box is beside it (: ), splash had to be played with the water obsessed Border Collie, 3 buckets of warm water had to be brought out once I remembered the daughter is sensitive to cold water etc. Then we were ready. We changed 3 children into bathing suits, lathered 3 children in sunblock, carried Heidi and Harrison outside, placed them in the pool with a pile of toys, cracked a cold beer and commenced relaxing... Within 3 minutes Harrison was splashing so much that both Brendan and Heidi had had enough and bailed. A rearrangement of twins (so that Harrison's feet were facing away from Heidi) solved the problem for a full 6 minutes. It was a lovely 6 minutes. Then Heidi and Harrison both turned and crawled out of the pool (I didn't know they could do that?!). In opposite directions. Heidi headed straight for the garage. While I was retrieving her, Harrison headed for the sand box and ate a leaf. While I was attempting to extract it, Heidi succeeded in making it into the garage and we called the whole thing off.

I had an epiphany though. I had begun to feel crazy for camping/cottaging/visiting so much. What I realized though, is that life on the road is chaos, yes, but it's the same chaos as it is at home, only with prettier scenery. (:

On that note, we head off next Tuesday for a 10 day camping trip to Temagami and Timmins (Northern Ontario). Should be fun!! Hahaha. We'll be arriving home on the twins first birthday (the 9th) and I should have some stories to fill out their first year!