blog.coredump.ca

I just got home from catering. N is sleeping on his right side (unusual- it’s always his left); he has his front-end loader and dump truck beside him, and his new remote control car on the floor in his room.

Highlights:

-he weighs about 35lbs- he can’t wait for a booster seat!
-words he says incorrectly but we don’t have the heart to correct: hexcadons, patteren (Alice says “patteren” too), poofed (as in “I’m pooped), poka-spots instead of poka dots.

- he spells his name: NTM- I believe this to be his artist’s signature. No way will I ever be the one to tell him this is NOT his name, as he believes it to be true; I leave this up to the poor kindergarten teacher…

- he has never wet the bed, even once, since being fully potty trained. I attribute this to waiting until he was fully ready for this.

-he loves to play on daddy’s epad, and our android phones. He knows how to work my phone better than I do.

-his 4th birthday party last Sunday he had 3 pre-school friends- Linkin, Jacob and Mason; plus Kieren from Fun Flex attend. Cousins Cassie and Remi of course, Auntie Chrissy, Nana Barb and Papa Doug. Nana made him a rocket birthday cake. His favorites presents were a Saturn 5 rocket from Nana, in which the stages of the rocket come apart. (He sleeps with this, and we often find the pieces all over the house, as the rocket launchres into it’s various orbits throughout the day; mommy is not an expert at re-assembling it). His other favorite gift is the nano hex-bug. He now has a whole track and several bugs. A true highlight.

He also got many craft gifts, which he loves.

He loves coloring on his easel, mostly drawing volcanoes violently erupting…

He goes to Bright Stars preschool, and will be going to Sam in the fall with his sister. He’s doing quite well there, but still not stimulated enough, he’s more than ready for kindergarten. He loves doing crafts at school, and when they come home, it’s always, “look what I made for you Mommy!”- well, sometimes these crafts are for daddy and/or Alice too. His teachers once commented to me that he is very proficient at craft-type activities and using scissors, etc. I said this is because he has an older sister whom also loves crafts. That and I let him do kind of what ever he feels like. One day we had the idea to get one of my cafeteria trays (that I use for Personal Thyme) and put some flour on it, and he can drive his trucks in it. He played all morning, made a huge mess but I just wiped him off and sent him to school. The teachers called me one of those “cool moms” who let their kids experiement like that. Well why not, I say! Especially  if it’s a Ruby day…

He also loves riding his tricycle. Even in winter, except when there is too much snow he rides it when we pick Alice up from the bus!

A few weeks ago I was so tired I forgot to put a diaper on him at bed time. We had not been thinking he was ready to go without yet at this point, since normally he’d wake up in the morning with a 5 lb wet diaper. Anyhow, he had gotten up in the night, as the lights were on in the morning, assuming he went to the bathroom. And he was dry! the next couple of nights he had also gotten up in the night to go pee, but now he typically sleeps through till morning. and, here’s the really wonderful part, he doesn’t wet the bed at all, so through this process there has been no laundry to do in the middle of the night and crying, etc. because he wet the bed. He just did it and was ready. That’s our boy!

2 days after the last post, Alice lost her 2nd tooth. Then it was photo day. 2 days after that she lost her 3rd tooth! On Tuesday she lost her 4th tooth, so now all the teeth that were capped are gone. Our little girl is growing up!!

She’s had the top 2 teeth loose for quite some time, months in fact. The bottom front just became loose weeks ago, and this morning she could bend it all the way down. I gave her a baggie to bring to school as I knew the tooth wouldn’t make it until lunch. Sure enough it came out before snack time at school, and she was told to go to the office and they gave her a little tooth holder with a string to make a sort of necklace. How cool is that? I told Alice that’s the best birthday present I could get. It’s under her pillow waiting for the tooth fairy as we speak!

Friday May 20th we packed our bags and headed to Banff. We stayed at the Douglas Fir Resort, specifically because it has 3 pools and 2 hot tubs, and a play zone. Once we got to Banff, we went on a1 hour carriage ride around the town, the horse’s name was Dan. The kids really enjoyed it!  On Saturday Alice and I went on a 1 hour trail ride in Banff. It was the first time Alice has been on a horse, and I must say she did better than most the folks on the trail. Every time her horse would stop to eat, she would yank on the reins and the horse would obey– this is something most others failed to accomplish. The guide in the middle of the pack said “atta girl!”, and I replied “that’s my girl!”, and he was suprised that she’d never riden before. Alice’s horse was named Clay, mine was Dallas. We enjoyed the scenery around the trail along the Bow river, and I sure liked being back in a saddle!

On Sunday we drove from Banff South on highway 93, the icefield parkway to the Columbia Ice Fields. We boarded a Brewster bus crossing the highway up to the glacier, then boarded the Brewster ice explorer to get up onto the glacier. I haven’t been since 1976, and don’t really have any memory of it. Though I can say that the glacier has receeded significantly since then… We all really enjoyed the 18 degree incline on the moraine based road up to the Athabasca glacier, very cool. The Columbia glacier is actually composed of 8 glaciers, the Athabasca is the one which sports all of the tours. We only spent about 25 min. on the glacier itself, which I suppose was enough as the kids just thought it was a big pile of snow and ice. We did drink some of the glacier water, which was clear blue, ice cold and fantastic!

Once we were done visiting the ice fields we drove on to Jasper, about 1 hour travel. We saw a small black bear on the road, which Alice thought was very awesome as she just finished studying “ours” in school. In Jasper we stayed at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, home to the most wicked outdoor pool any of us have ever been in! It was heated, quite warm, and a beautiful blue color. To swim in luxury and bask in the sun with a mountain view is one of the most wonderful things I have ever done! Our suite was a fair distance from the main lodge, so we would usually try to get a shuttle back and forth; it was usually just a golf cart, which the kids thought was fun. They have a golf course on site, plus lots of horses for trail riding as well (next time I think we’d do the trail ride there instead of Banff). We at at Cavell’s at the Resort, kids under 5 eat free (we claimed Alice was 5)– then the could get anything off the kids menu, including the $19 beef tenderloin entree. Sweet. Though $15 for a cocktail more than makes up for free kids meals. On Monday we went on a 1 hour raft ride down the Athabasca river (which is fed from the Athabasca and Columbia glaciers) with Jasper Rafting Tours. Now, this was supposed to be only a float trip, since Nathaniel is only 3, this is the only ride we could all go on together. However, this was not entirely the case. The guide said the river had risen 4 inches since the day before; lots of melting snow and glacier. So we managed to encounter several sets of class 2 rapids. Fun for me, Alice didn’t like it so much…we didn’t expect to get wet! I got soaked, wearing sweat pants, not so much! But it was fun, and at least the kids got to go in a boat, on a river. Next time I will plan a raft trip for Mommy, the crazy wild rapids kind.

For wildlife, we saw tons of elk, and one calf, some deer, one black bear, loons, harlequin birds, big horn sheep.

Nathaniel’s party was on January 30th. I know this post is clearly late, but, better late than never. Jack, Connor, Ryan, Sam, Cassie and Remi, plus Kobey and his little brother Jack. We figured that was a good party size. Nana made a wonderful McQueen cake, and it was a fun party. His favorite toy from his birthday is a Scribble n’learn from leapster, he likes to trace the letters. He’s big into his alphabet and numbers lately.

Yesterday Nathaniel and I watched the “coming home” video on You Tube. I thought he’d like it since it has rockets in it, and of course he did. I had to sing it to him last night before he’d go to sleep. How cute is that. (no, I’m not pushing the 80′s on my kids, well, at least not any more than my mother made us kids listen to ABBA!)

Nathaniel started using a potty 2 weeks ago; for 2 days I sat with him almost constantly, while he learned how to use his new potty. He had  a couple of accidents, but that’s all it took for him to realize he didn’t like pee running down his leg! He’s still having trouble with poo; he’s not quite making it in time. We’re very proud of our little guy for learning so fast, he’s not even using pull-ups. He insists on wearing gonchies even for his naps, though does wear a diaper still at night. 9/10 times he doesn’t have any accidents.

“I want to come out of the bath, but don’t put a diaper on, but get me dry first cuz I’m all wet.”