Go Canada Go!

Canada has just beat the US for the gold medal in Olympic men’s hockey so we’re feeling pretty patriotic here tonight! We didn’t get to watch the game (we don’t have cable TV), but I followed the action with a combination of Twitter, Facebook and good, old-fashioned CBC radio. Charlie was very excited to hear that we’d won another gold, and was doing a little victory dance for the Canadian team. She did a school project on “Patinage artistique” (ie Figure Skating) and has watched a few videos of Olympic events on Youtube, and she’s a big fan of Team Canada.

We had a very short visit from my dad last week, who flew in from Las Vegas at 9pm, then out to Toronto at 9am the following morning… still, he got to have a nice breakfast with us before the kids went off to school/daycare, and everyone was thrilled to see Poppa. Here’s Charlie sitting with him, right after she woke up (hence the extra-messy hair):

Charlotte’s on March Break this week, so she’ll be attending a “camp” at our local Y. She’ll get to swim, snowshoe, play, go sledding, cook, sing songs… hopefully it’ll be a fun, relaxing week for her. She’s caught a nasty cough from her brothers, but she seems to be over the worst of it and should have plenty of energy to burn at the Y. I’ve only got one more week of work until my school has March Break (which is two weeks long for us), and I must admit I’m looking forward to the holiday. I’ve completed 2 weeks of full-time teaching, and I am feeling fine, so hopefully this virus is entirely vanquished and behind me. I did manage to pull a muscle in my back this weekend, so I’m hobbling around like a little old woman, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re chasing three kids around!

As for “the brothers” (Charlie’s name for Elijah and William, since she still can’t tell them apart), I can officially declare them potty-trained. They wear underwear all day long, and very rarely have accidents anymore, although we still travel with an extra pair of pants, just in case. My husband has taken the extra step of teaching the boys to pee standing up, which is fine, except that their aiming skills are still developing… As I’m sure you can imagine, neither Eli nor Will is achieving 100% accuracy, and the area behind, around and in front of our toilet is receiving regular sprinklings of pee from our enthusiastic (but easily distracted) little boys.

Here’s a picture we snapped this evening: William’s adapted their step stool (which my father made for my brother when he was potty-training) into a potty-side table, so he can read his magazine more comfortably while he has a poop:

Finally, here’s a video of the three kids painting with watercolours. You can see that Elijah holds his paintbrush with his left hand – we think he’s a lefty!

Returning to Normal

Our poor kiddos have been hit by a fever this week; William was home on Monday, Charlotte missed school on Thursday, and now Elijah’s suffering through the same bug. He had to miss his swimming lesson this morning, but already seemed better by dinnertime, after a 3-hour-nap this afternoon.

I went back to work this week, which is a huge step towards getting all our lives back on track. I was only part-time this week, but things went well, so I’ll be full-time starting Monday.  I’ve got no real “closure” on this illness; never getting a diagnosis means it’s hard to believe I’m healthy again, and I’m feeling a lot of stress and anxiety these days. Still, I’ve been feeling better and better, with only minor recurrences of some little symptoms.  I’ve promised my doctor to take things easy and keep my activities moderate while I re-adjust to my normal life. Last week, I was cooking and baking and cleaning up a storm, so now I’m just going to redirect that energy to my job. I’m taking it slow & easy – bedtime at 8:30pm, lots of “self-care”, as my husband puts it.

Ok, enough news, time for pictures. Here’s Charlotte with her  baby doll in her child-sized sling – she and William are really into taking care of their “babies” these days:

The past few weeks, we’ve developed a routine of taking the kids out to a fast-food restaurant on Sunday mornings so they can burn off some energy in an indoor “playplace”. We typically order a couple of coffees and get some water for the kids, so for less than $3, the children get 1-2 hours of indoor exercise.  Here’s Elijah sitting with his Daddy at “Old McDonald’s”, as he calls the restaurant (check out those pink cheeks & sweaty hair!)

Here are both boys, behaving like crazy monkeys on the little slide:

Will in blue, as always!

William the handyman: because you never know when you’ll need four different hammers to fix something:

Elijah attempting to pick up our large, long-suffering cat, Toby:

Charlotte having a tea party with her brothers:

The boys always get their baths together, surrounded by various random plastic toys. Here, William is saying “cheese”, but looking a little overly-serious about having his picture taken:

Elijah on the left, Will on the right

One advantage to being home sick on Monday was that William got to play with his trains without anyone (ie Eli) destroying the tracks. This is a fairly typical level of mess for their bedroom, unfortunately:

Finally, here’s Charlotte listening to music, snuggled up on the couch: