Christmas and Other Stuff

Another few months have simply flown by in our home but I’ve finally gotten around to posting pictures from Christmas until now.

We had a busy December trying to get ready for the holidays. We managed to get our decorations up pretty early in the month and Alex enjoyed decorating cookies with me and putting ornaments on the tree. Soon after we were ready for the holiday season, Chris flew out for a week in Holland on business. He really enjoyed the trip but it was hard having him away for a big part of the pre-Christmas time.

Once he was home, we had about a week to relax and enjoy ourselves before things got really busy. We hosted Chris’ family for a holiday dinner at our home (festive pasta lol) and then left the next morning to make our way to Montebello in Quebec. We spent Christmas there last year and were lucky enough to go back again this year to spend a few days with my family. Chris also surprised Alex and I with a train trip from Toronto to Kingston as Alex is incredibly enamoured with trains of all shapes and sizes, but he’s never been on a real train that goes fast on a longer trip, so Chris dropped us off in Toronto and Alex and I enjoyed a nice comfortable trip to Kingston and then met Chris at my parents’ home there. We stayed over that night and then left early the next morning to drive to Montebello.

The weather was wonderful and Alex loved the ferry ride across the Ottawa River. We spent a wonderful Christmas in Montebello and really enjoyed ourselves. The hotel had tons of activities for kids, including a visit from Santa on Christmas Day, ice sculptures, a pyjama breakfast party and contest that Alex and his dog, Copper, won (they had matching PJs). Alex loved the Jacuzzi bathtub in our hotel room, especially because you could get A LOT of bubbles during a bath.

Before Christmas, we’d taken Alex to see Santa Claus and the thing he asked for the most was a ‘Polar Express’ train. Santa did bring him another train he’d asked for, but he also told Alex’s Aunt Jenny and Grandma about the Polar Express, so they gave it to him on Christmas Eve as his special gift. He was beyond thrilled with it and it was the hit of the holidays for him. Even when he woke up Christmas morning and I showed him the stocking that Santa had left for him, he looked at it for a moment and then said, “I don’t need that… I have the Polar Express!”

We came home on the 27th and spent a few days relaxing at home and just hanging out. We’d brought home some of the presents in a big box, and Alex quickly absconded with the box and said it was his fort and for two days, he actually slept in it for naps.

Alex went to a friend’s daughter’s second birthday party and he really had a great time. It was simply amazing to me that there could be six kids age 2 and 3 there and they were all busy quietly painting their piggy banks as a special treat. The party was wonderful and it was great to see Alex playing with some of the other kids, even though he still tends to be a bit shy in some situations.

Perhaps our biggest news so far this year is that Alex is now 100% potty trained. We started eons ago with the potty training and he learned to pee without any real difficulty at all, but the other ‘task’ we use potties for was something he just wasn’t keen on. We were told by many people not to fret about it and that he would learn it when he was ready, but it just seemed to take forever. He never had any messes… he’d announce to us when he needed to go #2 and he’d then go put on a pull up, would go and then asked to be cleaned… but try as we might, he just totally was not into sitting on the potty or the toilet. We tried bribery, we tried coaxing, we tried begging but it just didn’t seem to work with him.

Then lo and behold, one day at daycare he finally managed to use the toilet and the teacher was thrilled (nor surprising, eh?). We had no idea if it was a one-time thing, but the very next day he was playing downstairs with Chris while I was out doing some shopping and he went upstairs on his own to go pee and then Chris heard him calling out, “Yahoo! Come look what I did!” *chuckles*

I have no idea what switch inside him got flicked, but since then, he’s been wearing underwear 100% of the time when he’s not sleeping and we haven’t had any trouble. While it’s exciting to us that he’s reached another milestone, it’s one of the last few ‘baby’ things he’s grown out of so it’s also a bit sad.

Despite the bittersweet aspect of this hurdle, we celebrated this in style with a “Poo-Day” cake and lots of positive reinforcement.

During January, Chris was away at a couple of meetings in Toronto and he came home to a huge amount of snow to shovel before he could even get his van into the driveway. I had Alex all dressed for going outside and the two of them spent an hour shovelling the walkway and driveway and playing outside before coming in for cookies and hot chocolate.

As Chris had been away most of that week, we decided to do something fun that weekend and we went to a local butterfly conservatory to check out the butterflies, birds and other bugs. Alex simply loved it and said he wants to go back again very soon.

Well, that’s it for now. We have Chris’ birthday coming up this weekend, so we’ll be celebrating as a family and then Chris is off to Montreal for another business trip.

We hope that the New Year is going well for all of you and I hope you enjoy the pictures in the new album.

Catching Up on Things

Wow - I can’t believe I haven’t updated this site since July! It’s been a busy four months, plus we’ve been hit with a few bugs that seem to keep coming back, and I just haven’t been able to get around to uploading pictures here and writing an update.

I know that many of you who check out this site like to see the pictures, so I’ll start with those. I’ve created three new albums for things to be a bit more organized. The first are pictures from the end of the summer (called End of Summer), the second album is full of a bunch of pictures from Disney (the album is called Disney) and the most recent album has pictures from this Fall, Thanksgiving and Halloween (the album is called Fall and Halloween Fun). All three albums can be reached by the links at the bottom of this page or by clicking on “My Family Albums” on the left. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Let’s see - how can I condense four months of family info into a relatively brief journal entry? I guess I’ll start with some of the big stuff.

In late August, we went to Disney with my side of the family. We spent seven days in Disney with my parents, Jenny, Kathy, Steve, Kian, Jennifer and Sarah. We had a great time touring the parks, eating at some fabulous restaurants and swimming in the world’s most amazing pool at our hotel. On our fifth day there, our sister, Mary, and her son, Raymond, his wife, Joy and their three daughters came to stay and tour with us for the weekend. We hadn’t seen Raymond since he was a young kid, and we’d never met his family so it was simply incredible to get to spend time with the entire family.

Alex had a truly spectacular time. We kept waiting for him to have a major meltdown. It was hot, we were waking him up early, keeping him up late and eating on the run a lot of the time, so we wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d lost it the way so many kids (and a few adults) do when visiting Disney. Thankfully it never really happened. He skipped, danced, jumped and ran through all of the parks, enjoyed all of the rides he went on and had fun meeting some of the characters (even though he was a bit shy at times). Probably his favourite ride (and one of ours too) was the Kali River Rapids in the Animal Kingdom. It’s one of the few “grown up” rides that someone his size can go on safely as it has a special seat for smaller kids, so we all piled into the raft and got soaked. I didn’t get a lot of good pictures of him on the ride, but I did post one of Jennifer screaming as she got soaked, and Alex is also in the picture laughing his toes off.

It was truly a trip of a lifetime - and we loved everything about it (except for the August heat). We managed to see fireworks, meet a bunch of the characters, so on some fun rides and see some great shows. Because of my mildly obsessive Disney planning approach, we also got to enjoy some great restaurants during our stay, including our first night’s dinner in Epcot at the Moroccan pavilion (although Alex fell asleep during that dinner - poor guy had been up and excited since 5:00 a.m., so it’s not surprising he fell asleep in his salad). We also went out for a special dinner with my parents at an African restaurant called Boma and enjoyed a birthday dinner at the Coral Reef, which is a lovely restaurant built around a huge aquarium in the living seas, so while we enjoyed a nice dinner, we had sharks, mantas, fish and scuba divers swimming by (to which Alex would repeatedly cry out, “SHARK!” or “DIVER!” much to our amusement.

It was my mother’s 75th birthday, so I’d arranged with the restaurant for us to have custom menus with my mother’s picture on the front, as well as a diver holding up a happy birthday sign (although for some reason the sign said, “happy brithday” *laughs*). It was our last night in Disney and was a great way to celebrate with the entire family.

Earlier in the summer, we’d had lots of fun with Alex and taking him to a local water park and also doing a special “Day Out with Thomas” where Alex got to ride on a train that was pulled by Thomas the Tank Engine and also had fun doing some other things. We also took a trip to Montreal as Chris had to go there on business, so we added on an extra day or two and made a family trip out of it. It was amazing to see some old friends like Harold and Maureen and Mike and their two adorable kids. Alex had a great time, and we loved being back in Montreal, even if it was for such a short visit.

Once we were back from Disney, we got busy doing some of the normal Fall things. We went to a very fun Apple Festival in a small town near us, and Alex had a great time doing pony rides, getting his face painted and trying lots of sweet apples.

We also spent a great Thanksgiving in Kingston and celebrated my father’s birthday while we were there. The kids all had fun together, and we all enjoyed some great dinners and the nice weather.

As Halloween approached, we decided to have some friends over for a pumpkin carving party, so we cleared out the living room, put down some cheap tablecloths and had fun gutting and carving our pumpkins. Alex wanted his pumpkin to have a ‘scary’ face, so he showed me what it should look like and then we both demonstrated the scary faces for Chris (see picture in the album lol).

For Halloween, Alex wanted to be Buzz Lightyear, so his Aunt Jenny bought him the most amazing costume. Not only did it have boots, gloves and a helmet, but it also had wings that lit up and it fit him perfectly. He loved being Buzz Lightyear for the night and loved the fun of going trick or treating for some candy and chips. Jennifer was a pumpkin, Sarah was a ‘dead princess’ and Kian was an absolutely adorable Tigger.

In other news, Chris is still working hard at his job. His company was bought out back in March and the sale was just finalized last week. We don’t know what impact this will have on his job or territory, but we don’t think his job is at risk as he’s doing very well, plus he’s involved in a number of other projects for the company. He’ll be going to Holland for six days in mid-December for one of those projects, so he’s very excited to see Amsterdam and Boxmeer and also meet some of his colleagues from other countries.

Our plans for Christmas are to go to Montebello again, so we’re very excited about that. We hope to get the house decorations all up this weekend and I’ll be trying to get the Christmas shopping done before the 24th!

I do apologize for the long delay in updating this site, and I’ll be sure to post Christmas pictures as soon as we’re home.

Our best to all of you for a great holiday season and I hope you enjoy the pictures.

We've Entered the "Why" Zone!!!

This past month has been a busy one, but lots of fun. After celebrating Alex’s birthday on June 11, we then celebrated our niece, Sarah M’s birthday a few weeks early in London at a pool party. Alex had a great time with Amanda and Sarah and also loved swimming with his Aunt Karen and then playing with Uncle Lew.

We spent the Canada Day weekend in Kingston with Kathy, Steve, Jennifer, Sarah, Jenny, Kian and the grandparents and it was a great time. We were able to go to a local craft fair to wander around and pick up a few fun things, and get Alex a little arm painting (he didn’t want his face painted, nor was I keen on the idea of him looking like a butterfly or other animal). At first he was quite shy with the girl doing the painting, but his curiosity soon go the better of him and he watched her closely as she drew a spider and web on his arm (his pick for design - he asked for Spider Man but she said she couldn’t do that but could draw a spider).

After the trip to the fair, Chris and I took Alex to a local farm to pick some strawberries. The berries were so juicy and ripe and Alex loved picking them as well as sampling a few from time to time. He also loved getting to ride on a trailer pulled by a tractor and walking through the fields.

After going back to Lilac Cottage to rest, we then took Alex out for his first fishing trip. It was a bit chilly and was starting to rain, but the fish were biting like crazy. I was too squeamish to get overly involved in the whole process, but Sarah was the first to catch a fish and Jennifer caught one soon after that. Alex was quite fascinated by the whole process and kept asking, “why” throughout the fishing trip, but his zeal was tested a bit once he actually caught a fish for himself. As we pulled the fish out of the water, he told us he wanted to see it, but if it got within two feet of him, he’d scream, and then would ask to see it again. We let him look for a few seconds before releasing the fish back into the water.

Kathy, Steve and the girls had to head back early in the weekend to go to an event in Toronto, but the rest of us hung out in Kingston and went to the fireworks by the Fort. This was Alex’s first taste of “real” fireworks but as we were pretty far away, I don’t think he realized how big they truly were. We’d done some fireworks in our own backyard last Canada Day and Steve and Jennifer had done a fireworks show on the lawn of Lilac Cottage the night before they left, so Alex was used to the small shows (which he found incredibly exciting!), but the big one also got him all wound up. Everytime a coloured firework went off, he’d sing the chorus from a Thomas the Train song that lists all of the colours, so I’m sure the people near us were quite sick of hearing “red and green and brown and blue” being repeated every 30 seconds for about half an hour.

The weekend after our trip to Kingston, we went camping near Peterborough with friends of ours. We each had our own site and we’d rented a tent trailer for the weekend to try it out (our friends own their own), so we camped in semi-luxury for the whole weekend. Alex loved the whole experience, and was incredibly excited once the tent trailer started getting put up once we arrived at the provincial park. He was great the entire weekend, and had fun with our friends’ two girls, and it was a lot of fun to be able to share the experience (and cooking chores) with another couple. We roasted marshmallows, hot dogs, made s’mores, went to the beach and played at the playground. If we ever go camping again, I’d love to rent a tent trailer again as it really made the whole sleeping arrangement more comfortable, and it was quite easy to get Alex to go to sleep as it felt like a little house for him, and we were able to set up Chris’ iPod and let Alex watch a bit of a movie before bedtime as a way to wind down.

We have a busy summer still planned, with trips in the works for Montreal, plus our big family trip to Walt Disney World at the end of August for the entire family. We also have a Day Out with Thomas planned for Alex in the coming weeks, so there’s lots going on.

Alex is still going to daycare two days a week and is enjoying it. He’s talking more and more and is starting to tell us jokes (not all of them make sense), and he’s really getting into lots of imagination-type play.

The other big development with Alex is that we’ve now entered the “Why” stage. He’ll ask “why” over and over again, until we run out of answers, or distract him or until one of our heads explode. A typical conversations runs like this:

Me: Don’t sit there.
Alex: Why?
Me: Because the cat is asleep there.
Alex: Why?
Me: Because that’s where she fell asleep.
Alex: Why?
Me: Because it’s a comfy place and is warm and she likes to sleep there.
Alex: Why?
Me: Because all cats like to sleep during the day and they prefer warm soft places.
Alex: Why?
*my head explodes*

Please tell me this “Why” stage doesn’t last too long.

I’ve put some new pictures into a new Canada Day album - hope you enjoy them.

Take care.

Alex Turns 3!

Well it’s finally happened. Our little baby is no longer a baby at all - he’s now three.

We had Alex’s 3rd birthday party on Sunday and it was a lot of fun. More on that in a bit.

It’s also been a busy time in our household, as the nice weather has allowed us to get outdoors more than we did in the Spring. Alex and I have gone on a few playdates, plus he went to his first “real” birthday party where he was invited, and he understood what was going on and wanted to go celebrate with his friend, Ty (who turned 3 two weeks before Alex). That birthday party was a riot and Alex had an incredible time - they held the party at a great indoor play area near here, so the kids all burned of a bunch of energy playing on the slides, climbing up the gym and finding their way down again.

We’d taken Alex there before, but he’d always wanted one of us to go with him to help him, and he’d always been a bit scared to go up too high without one of us coaxing him along.

Not at the party! Not sure if it’s because he’s getting older, more independent and more physically able to do some things, or if he saw the older kids going up alone and just wanted to be part of things, but for the first time ever, he played on this playset on his own, without Chris having to climb through all the stuff with him (I’ve put some pics from the party in the newest family album). While we loved watching him having such a great time, it was also a little sad to see yet another change in him that makes us realize how quickly time is passing for us.

With Alex’s newfound joy in climbing and sliding, Chris and I began looking into outdoor playsets for our backyard. We’d looked into them last summer, but just felt that Alex was too young at that point, plus I wanted to research them to be sure I got a good deal as well as one that was safe and sturdy.

After dragging Chris around to tons of places to look at various options, we decided on one set and somehow managed to get it home. Chris then spent that weekend, and every evening that week putting the thing together (with help from Alex and I, of course). I acted as chief engineer, organizer, project manager and Chris did the heavy lifting. It was fun to see the set come together, and Alex (and our next-door neighbour, McKenzie) could barely wait for it to be finished (I’ve put some pics in the newest album). Now that the set is done, Alex has been playing on it just about everyday.

We had a bunch of friends and family over for a lunch BBQ on Sunday for Alex’s birthday party and they all had a good time. It’s great seeing everyone, and people came from London, Mississauga, Brampton, Kingston, Oakville, Toronto (and around here) to join us. That evening, we had a bunch of aunts, uncles and cousins who live in this area over for a dinner BBQ, so it was a busy day but it was so great to see all of them too. While we live so close to one another, we don’t see each other nearly often enough so it’s nice when we can all get together and hang out.

Alex’s actual birthday was on the Monday, so because it was his regular daycare day, he brought a little treat to share with his friends at daycare. He was quite pleased to bring some ice cream and sprinkles to share with the group, and after daycare, we had a nice quiet dinner in the backyard for just the three of us. We had planned on going out for a Korean dinner, but we knew Alex was tired from a busy couple of days, so we just decided to hang out at home and eat some leftovers.

The summer now looms before us and it should be a busy one. We’re going to London this weekend for our niece’s birthday party, then to Kingston for the Canada Day weekend, then away camping with friends in the middle of July. August should be quieter, but at the end of the summer, we’re going with my side of the family to Walt Disney World for six nights - so that will be an amazing trip for all of us.

Hope you like the pictures in the newest album.

Easter Bunnies and Other Stuff

WOW - am I ever behind in updating this site. I had no idea that I hadn't updated it since Christmas, so I quickly uploaded some pictures of the first part of the year up to Easter.

Things have been busy here, as usual. Alex is growing up so quickly and talking up a storm. When we're out with him, he tends to be pretty shy and reserved, but at home, or in the car with us, it's non-stop chatter. At times it's like a running monologue of everything he's doing, and at other times, he'll get excited about something and that's ALL he'll talk about for what feels like hours and days on end.

He's still a pretty good natured little guy, but we are seeing signs of some typical two/three-year-old behaviours, but thankfully usually only when he's tired, hungry or sick with a bug.

There are days when we feel like we're living with CONFLICTO - THE WONDER CHILD! No matter what you say, he wants to do something different, and he can't even seem to make up his own mind, so we sometimes get a lot of "yes... want to go downstairs, no... want to go outside, no... want to stay inside, yes... want to go outside, no... don't like that" etc. We know it's a normal stage of his development and we're enjoying the fact that he's learning to express himself and his emotions... but it can also be exhausting as I'm sure anyone with a young child can attest.

The biggest news in our family lately is the addition to our family of a brand new nephew (for Chris and I, and a cousin for Alex). My sister, Jenny, had her baby on April 4 and he's simply adorable. He's named Kian and he's a very calm and alert baby. Alex is curious, but not overly so, but our nieces Sarah and Jennifer have been helping out lots and love having a new baby to take care of.

Kian came home on Easter Sunday, so the Easter Egg hunt was exciting, even though Kian slept or ate through most of it.

I've uploaded some pictures of Alex into the newest Family Album and I promise not to let another four months go by before I put in more new photos.

Winter and Holiday Fun

First off, let me start by wishing everyone who reads this site a very Merry Christmas and a Joyous New Year. We hope that the holidays were filled with fun, family and lots of good times and that the New Year brings you much happiness.

It continues to be a busy place in our household. I haven’t been able to update this site for almost two months (yet again), so I’ll try to summarize all of the important stuff going on with Alex and our family.

I’ve put a ton of new pictures into the “Winter Fun” family photo album, including pictures from November right through the holidays – hope you like them.

Probably the two biggest things going on with Alex over the past two months is that we moved him out of his crib and into a ‘big boy’ bed and he also moved out of the toddler room at daycare into the Rainbow Room (for kids 2.5-3.5 years of age). Both changes went through without any big issues from Alex, thank goodness, but the bed issue was a bit of a shock for us. We’d talked about moving him, but he was always so content in his crib that we never felt pressured to do so. One day when Chris was away on a business trip, Alex woke up around 4:00 a.m. and so I brought him into bed with me (in the hopes of getting a few more hours sleep) and for the first time ever, he actually fell asleep in our bed (instead of bouncing around and wiggling like crazy). I mentioned to him that he could soon be in his own bed instead of a crib, so when Chris got home from his trip, we put the new mattress down beside the crib to get Alex used to the idea, but he wanted to sleep on it that day, so we tried it and he did it without any fuss!

Within a couple of days, we took down the crib permanently (that was really a bittersweet moment) and set up his new bed, which he seemed to love. The only funny thing was that he quickly realized he could get himself out of bed and roam around his room, taking toys off his shelves, clothes out of the drawers/cupboard, etc. The funny thing was that he’d often just nod off where he’d been playing, so we kept going to check on him to find him asleep on the floor, in the doorway to his room, on his rocking chair, etc. He now stays in his bed and has hopefully stopped completely destroying his room before he falls asleep.

The other big change was the move to the next level in daycare, with a new teacher and new kids/routines. The centre arranged for him to visit the new group over the course of a few weeks, and so the transition went really smoothly and he seems to love the new room and teacher.

One other exciting bit of news was that a picture of Alex was chosen for a fundraising campaign for the Kingston General Hospital. The picture is one from when Alex was 8 months old, and they felt it really tied in with their “Light up my Life” slogan, so Alex’s picture ended up being on posters all over Kingston, on flyers and on banners at the hospital and in the Kingston Santa Claus Parade (on one of the floats). It was so cool to see our son’s picture all over the place and I’m sure Grandma and Grandpa enjoyed being able to point out their cute grandson to their friends.

We’ve had lots of fun preparing for the holidays and taking Alex shopping, decorating cookies and making a gingerbread train and taking him to visit Santa at the mall. I don’t think he completely understands the concept of Christmas and Santa and everything that goes along with it, but he did grasp the need to tell Santa that he wanted “Mighty Mac” and “Chinese Dragon” trains (part of the Thomas the Train set of trains that he is obsessed with).

For the holidays, we went with my side of the family to Chateau Montebello in Quebec for the holidays. We all had a wonderful time and got a bit of time to relax and hang out with the family. Our niece, Jennifer, got sick on Christmas Eve and was still feeling rotten on Christmas morning, so she missed a lot of the stuff, but she was so mature and grown up about it all and we were just so impressed with how well she handled missing out on so many things.

One of the most exciting parts of the visit to Montebello was that Santa made a special trip to visit the kids at the hotel on Christmas Day. He arrived on a horse (there was no snow for the reindeer or a sleigh) and waved to the crowd and then went out of sight before appearing magically on top of the hotel’s roof and then came down the chimney to hand out presents to all of the kids in the hotel. It was a lot of fun and the hotel did such a great job of organizing it.

We got home from Quebec on the 27th (we stayed overnight in Kingston as the drive is too long for Alex), and then hosted Chris’ family at our place for a brunch today. Our two nieces, Amanda and Sarah, are growing up so quick and are becoming such wonderful young ladies. They’re so good with Alex and it was great to see them and Chris’ sister, her boyfriend and Chris’ cousin and his wife and son.

We have no big plans for New Year’s, but we’re hoping to get Alex fully potty trained sometime soon and also get a bunch of stuff organized around here. We have a lot of resolutions that hopefully we’ll stick to, so I’m sure 2007 will be a great year.

Once again, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from us to you.

Catching Up Time

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve updated this website. It’s been a pretty tiring, busy and stressful few months, so I’ll try to summarize it all into a relatively short entry.

August is a bit of a blur for me. For some reason, my back went out without any warning or any injury, and within a couple of days, I was almost totally laid up. It was a tiring month, and frustrating as we didn’t know what was going on, but things started to ease up towards the end of the month and then Alex came down with a bit of a cold, and then Chris caught it and then I had it... and unfortunately, I’m prone to bronchial infections, so both Chris and Alex ended up feeling better after a few days, and I ended up in emergency. Oh well, such is life.

Onto more interesting things. Since I haven’t updated the site since early August, I’ve put a bunch of pictures into a new folder so you can see what we’ve been up to in August, September and October.

Alex continues to grow up too quickly for our liking. He’s doing very well in daycare two days a week, and is talking up a storm. He’s getting more chatty with other people as well and loves flirting with people and saying hi whenever he knows someone’s paying attention to him.

We had him signed up for swim lessons, but decided after the first one that it wasn’t for us. He loves the water, and loves swimming with us and is fearless, but the swimming lessons made us nervous as the teacher had a lot to deal with and it was hard to keep track of where the kids were, and with two-year-olds, we just didn’t think it was safe enough for us to go back a second time.

We were able to go see my parent’s in Kingston for Thanksgiving. It was a quiet weekend as Kathy wasn’t able to make it with the girls, and Jenny was busy working, so it was just the five of us. Alex had such a wonderful time with his grandparents and we took advantage of the lovely weather and went to the Farmer’s Market and did some other walking around. It was also Bob’s birthday, so we celebrated that with a cake that Alex was all excited about.

Alex and I also went to Mississauga to see a friend of ours and have Alex’s first real playdate. We visit with a lot of friends who have kids, but this was the first time another Mom and I had planned a specific date for the boys to get together. It was so fun watching them interact – if one did something, the other often tried to do the same thing. Both boys are just now getting to the age where they like playing together and interacting, so hopefully we’ll be able to have more playdates.

Alex continues to be totally enamoured with trains, especially the ones from the Thomas the Tank Engine series. He’s now got quite a few of them, and he’ll spend tons of time playing with them, organizing them, making long trains out of them, etc. He knows all their names, tells us all the stuff from the stories we read and the videos we watch, etc.

A couple of weeks ago we had Chris’ sister, her boyfriend, Lew and our nieces Sarah and Amanda over for dinner and a visit. We loved having them come by and treated Karen to a belated birthday present and cake.

Halloween was lots of fun, with going out to pick out a suitable pumpkin, carving it and then getting Alex all excited about the whole trick-or-treating idea. He was dressed as a lion and we went into Toronto so we could also see our nieces who we hadn’t seen since a wedding in September. Everyone had tons of fun, and Alex caught on pretty quickly. At the first house, he got a chocolate bar, which he wanted to stop and eat right away. We convinced him to go to the next house as he’d get something else, and by the third house he just walked up, knocked on the door and loudly proclaimed, “MORE CHOCOLATE, PLEASE” much to the delight of the woman handing out candy. He had tons of fun, and thankfully we were able to get rid of most of the candy so he just had a few small things to enjoy for a few days of treats.

The only other big news with Alex is that we’ve started the potty training, and he’s now also sleeping in his ‘big boy’ bed. For now, it’s still just a mattress on the floor, but we’ll hopefully get him moved into the full bed once he’s comfortable with being out of his crib.

Well, that’s probably enough for now... I’m sure I’m missing lots of stuff but it’s hard to condense three months of info into a relatively short entry.

Hope you like the new pics.