calli

i watched my friend's daughter this morning as she took her 6 week old (?) to the doctor.

calli is such a sweetie. 

at one point in the morning both noah and jude were reaching for the basket full of crafts.

i was not feeling so great so i told them that it was not craft time, just play time.

both greatly disliked this answer (as you can well imagine).

and then calli went over to the basket and started reaching for it, looking at me.

i said, "no calli. we're not going to do crafts right now."

she said, "okay." and walked away.

i thought in my head how absolutely delightful that exchange was.

i'm not sure if it's her age or her gender or probably the fact that she's got some great parents but yeah - i miss those days of happy obedience.

oh well.

confessions

i know there are others out there.
other moms out there.
other moms who have strong-willed children.
i'm not just talking about having a tantrum on the occasion or exerting their independence every now and then.
i'm talking about children who are characterized by people who barely know them as well as those who know them well as strong-willed (is that just the nice phrase we use for stubborn? defiant? i don't even know anymore).

i'm talking about my noah.

and part of me knows that it's a lot about the age he's at. the phase he's in. the developmental stage he's going through.
he's three. three is rough letmetellYOU. and it's such a ridiculous pendulum swing - for everyone because we just have no idea when the switch is going to flick and he's going to be sweet, adorable, agreeable noah instead of defiant, insolent, disobedient, out of control raging noah.
i mean, three is
"i wanna cuddle with you, mama", punching and kicking me, "i love you so much, mama", screaming and melting down anytime, anywhere he feels like it (today it was church and not wanting to go into his classroom that he's been going to for at least 6 months now and having a 10 minute tantrum that was not limited to pounding his 3 year old fists on the door), saying NO to me about something so simple it should not even be an issue, exasperating his brother, inciting his brother, being excited about reading Bible stories, making up hilarious songs, spitting at everyone, holding up his fists to people and giving them a grinchy face, putting away his toys, NOT putting away his toys, refusing to put on his own boots, INSISTING on putting on his own boots.

three is confusing. and if it's confusing for me, it's gotta be confusing for noah.
so there's grace.
but there's also a need for teaching and correction and it's my job to both teach and correct him. because if i don't, who is supposed to? is it not unrealistic for me to just expect him to learn it on his own?

someone once told me about the idea of a family's "rallying cry" which is something or someone the entire family (or at the very least the husband/wife team) can rally around and focus on for a determined amount of time or until a specific goal is met.
i think jamie and i need to rally around and behind noah. to focus in on teaching him and correcting him as he navigates the waters of being three years old. to pray for him. and pray for wisdom for us to know how to teach and correct this precious gem and blessing we've been given.

in part i've been meeting him head-on like two battling rams. i know exactly where noah gets his strong will and i can match him every step of the way. and in some situations i know and thank god that he's given me this iron will to be consistent and teach my child that i mean what i say. but i know that this isn't always the best way to address every situation. and to be honest, it's tiring. and children can sense weakness like bees can sense fear. it's wicked crazy and it is not to be messed with. for reals.

one specific step i will be taking (and blogging more about in the coming weeks) is that i've made a list of things i want to pray about/towards as part of my lent experience this year. one of these is noah. 40 days of specific, concerted prayer for my first born and how i am supposed to parent him through this season of all our lives.

so to all you mom's of strong-willed children, i know your child is different from mine and i am different from you, but have you any encouragement? advice? suggestions? anecdotes?

*you may now go back to watching the Oscars (we have no cable and streaming was so chopping it really wasn't worth it).

adorbs

yesterday my lovely friend beth tweeted saying that she had picked up a small gift for me, "just because". 

i love "just because" gifts. those tend to be the most thoughtful, special gifts.

anyway, she dropped it off today and i almost died from the cuteness.

it's a little owl.

and it's heavy! it's made out of iron or something. it feels wonderful in my hand.

this little guy is coming to uganda with us for sure.

i think i might name him hedwig.

saturday

today was a weird day. 

i stayed in my pajamas until 2:30pm.

everyone napped (except for me) for 2 hours. 

it was a lazy day.

dinner was rejected by both boys.

i have no idea why. it was burritos.

i can't pretend to understand the eating habits of children.

especially my children.

and now i'm off to clean up the messy kitchen you see in the background.

bon nuit!

here's hoping

We have never given Noah permission to leave his room after we've put him down for a nap/bedtime.
He knows that he's to call for us to come get him and to wait on his bed.

But tonight.

In an effort to help him keep his diaper/pull-up dry in the morning (it seems he likes to poop and pee in it and then call for us in the morning) I've told him that he can get up in the morning to do his bidness on the toilet instead of calling for us. I've told him this before, but tonight I really went at it saying that if he felt he needed to poo or pee he can just get up by himself and go to the bathroom without calling for us.
Not 5 minutes after tucking him into his bed I hear the patter of feet and the door open

*yelled whisper* MOM! I have to pee!

Me: *sigh* Okay. Go! Go!

I go upstairs to oversee said "pee" and further explain that he just needs to go back to bed once he's gone pee/poo. So I watch him run back to his bed, blow him a kiss and shut the door.
and hope I haven't created a monster.

or that tomorrow's wake up time is no earlier than usual.

*please*

*edited the next day:
Last night before bed I went in to check on Noah and Jude in their room and I saw this:

Aw, my little man asleep on the floor. I'm not sure when he got out of bed or why, but I have seen him half falling out of his bed in his sleep, so who really knows how this happened. I motioned to Jamie to come and look at where Noah was and we had to stifle our laughter because it was so cute! I ran downstairs to get my camera so we could snap a pic. Afterward I moved him back into his bed where he resumed exactly the same  position.

sprinkles

it seems like we have an unofficial tradition of doing something special on fridays.

tonight we treated the boys to a whole donut (usually we just let them have a timbit or two).

noah scarfed his down faster than i did.

jude didn't eat any of his except the sprinkles.

happy friday and enjoy your weekend!

Dear Elderly Couple,

My heart was warmed and my face smiled (yep, my whole face did) when I saw you both walking out of Zehrs with pink balloons and flowers for perhaps your daughter or son who just had a baby girl.

I wanted to say "Congratulations" to you, but I didn't.

So now I am.

Congratulations! You're grandparents! Enjoy!

Mazel Tov!

Vanessa

finger painting

today i ventured into the scary world of...finger painting.

i bought a pack of finger paints the other day and thought i would try it out with both the boys.

it went well.

noah loved it. he got right in there squishing his hands and feet into the paint.

jude took a little while to warm up to the idea and then once he was okay with it, he was bored quite quickly and i had to barricade him into the kitchen.

but all in all, they created some lovely artwork and had a blast as well.

also, they both had baths before naps and are still currently sleeping. (is this the secret to great naps?)

next time i might just do it all outside or in the bathroom. 

share the love

I can't remember if it was last year or the year before (can you blame me? the last 3 years have been a bit of a blur - heck I can't even keep the Harry Potter books/movies straight.) but I bought these amazing shoes for Noah on a whim at Old Navy. They were on sale and they were ridiculously cute. Or maybe they weren't on sale but they were still ridiculously cute.
They looked like chucks but they were made out of corduroy, had elastic laces and a zipper on the side thus eliminating me sitting there like a fool tying up a 2.5 yr old's shoes when he wanted to be outside running around. All we have to do is slip his foot in and zzzip! his shoe is on. Brilliant. Except Old Navy isn't making them like that anymore. Sure they have the zipper on the side but instead of elastic laces, they have real laces! What's the point in that?
Anyway, luckily I bought them slightly big for Noah at the time so they'll still fit him for at least part of this summer.

Every now and then I get into Etsy all over again. I mean, I love Etsy but I try not to go on too much or else all I start to do is covet and want, want, want things. And right now when I'm trying to get rid of things the last thing I need to do is accumulate more!
But the other day I came across this amazing little Etsy shop and I love everything in this shop. A woman named Liz Hutnick runs it and the description is Boho Chic Romantic Gothic Flower & Bird Theme Jewelry. Um, does it get any better than that? 
Anyway, so Jamie agreed to let me purchase 2 things from her shop and I'm so excited to get them!

aqua mini mum earrings. love.

this bicycle  necklace had me at hello. it's on a long chain and I'm in love.

A month or so ago the input broke in our car that allows us to hook up our iPods to the car stereo so I've taken to making mix CDs of my favourite music at the time - or even just albums that I've recently downloaded but haven't got a chance to listen to yet.

Some favourites have included:

The Black Keys - Howlin' For You (Noah loves this song - especially singing along to the "dah dah dah" part)

Kings of Leon - their entire new album (Radioactive, Birthday, Pyro, etc.)

I bought this bluegrass sampler album by Shane Barnard and Shane Everett and I am totally loving it! If you like bluegrass and hymns this is the album for you. (And if anyone knows where I can find similar music to this...share the love!)

Also, this is not a new song, but I can't get enough of it these days:

And I'm sure a lot of you know about this blog, but I love The Nester. Lately she's been blogging about spending your money wisely and not just buying something at a thrift store because it's cheap and cute. There's so much more to it, but I'm truly loving her blog as well as her design ideas (plus did you know she rents her house?!).  Her motto is "It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful." and really? SO TRUE.

So that's all I've got for today.

I'm hoping to get the boys' passport pictures done today and go for a decent run (5 miles) at some point today so wish me luck!

I said good day!

lately

There's been a lot going on lately.
This post may bore you as I'm writing mainly for my future self to remember some of these smaller details that are quite easily forgotten.

We're moving out of this house as of May 1st. We'll be living with my parents until August when we move to Uganda. So now our landlords have started showing the house. Have you ever tried to get a house presentable to be shown when you've got 2 young kids? Yeah. That. But hopefully they've found some people interested in renting once we move out.
We've been selling loads of our things - some on Kijiji (oh wonderful, wonderful Kijiji) and some to friends and people we know. The two big things I want to conquer next are the garage *shudder* and the boys toys.
The garage has just gotten progressively worse as the winter has gone on. It's a disaster. I will divide and conquer.
The boys toys are another issue - which toys do we keep and store? Which toys do we sell? Which toys do we bring? I'd like to bring as few toys as possible as kids can really make toys out of anything and I really only want to keep/store the ones that are timeless (like metal cars, trains, some puzzles, wooden play food) and sell/chuck the rest.

Yesterday we went into Toronto to the travel clinic for our travel consultation and first set of vaccines. The boys were a bit stir crazy, but we managed. And they did relatively well with their two needles (each). I felt bad about not warning Noah - he really freaked out. It's so hard to know with him - do I warn him and possibly make him even more reactive or do I just let it happen and deal with the freak out then? He has a super quick recovery time for the most part so we did alright this time. He has one more needle to get before we go.
Jude, on the other hand was not as quick to recover and didn't even want his chocolate "prize". (So I ate it.)
He wailed and wailed and wailed and was pretty angry about the needles. He started wailing just from the swab being rubbed on his arm before the needle. This kid, man. D-R-A-M-A.
And $600+ later for vaccines we walked out with 2 bouncy balls, 6 sore arms, 1 kid hyped up on gummies and chocolate and some knowledge about malaria pills and family planning (among many other things) that will be tucked away for future reference (on my part).
As we were walking back to the car (we parked a short walk away so as to avoid paying the parking toll) I mused in my head that a part of me wishes we were living downtown Toronto with no car and taking the public transit everywhere. Perhaps one day. I absolutely adore the country side and even living in Guelph is wonderful, but there is a City Girl that owns a part of my heart.

Then last night I got picked up by my brother Keven who took me out on a date as my Christmas present (this year my family drew names and he picked mine and his gift to me was a date with him, all expenses paid by him). While I'm pretty sure that he ultimately left it to the last minute (perhaps not, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if it was) I'm so glad he didn't just go out and buy me a gift card or give me cash. He gave me the gift of time and relationship and I honestly can't remember the last time he and I talked one-on-one for a longer period of time.
We went downtown to Wayne Gretzky's restaurant where I had some pretty amazing baby back ribs and then we went next door to The Second City for my first ever (and Keven's, too!) comedy show.
I found myself laughing pretty hard at some of the social commentary that was weaved into their sketches. Too funny. (You know it's funny stuff when you laugh to yourself the next day just thinking about it and then ruin it by trying to reenact it for a friend who wasn't there. Oh well.)
Plus I got to talk and catch up with Keven for the whole drive back to Guelph. I had a really great night and got to get to know my brother a little better - and he's a pretty great guy. Also, he got pulled up onto the stage at the Second City which pretty much made the night a complete winner in my opinion.

Anyway, so there's lots going on these days. My goal this week was to renew Noah's passport and get one for Jude but tomorrow is Thursday and I haven't even started. So, we'll see how that one goes. Perhaps tomorrow should be passport picture day. Or something.

And I'm keeping at my half marathon training although it's only going so-so.

And my eating habits are total crap, but I'm just doing what I'm doing and trying to make healthy choices when I can. I've also decided to give up sugar for lent but there's a whole blog post coming on that one (for reals. It's currently a draft right now.).

If you made it this far, well...bravo. Thanks for hanging in there, friend.
Bon nuit!

puzzle

noah got a few really cool puzzles for christmas.

this one is a "map" of the world and then it has pictures of animals around the areas that they live in (ie. the brown bear in canada and the clown fish near the galapagos islands, etc.) but it also has slots to put in more animals in their appropriate regions.

i like the illustrations and colours.

noah thought it looked like an obstacle course for a car to drive through.

boys.

Dear man at the YMCA,

You are by far, the strangest person I have ever seen at the Y.

You were walking on the treadmill.

Wearing an outdoor fall-type jacket and jeans.

With your hands in your pockets. 

Um, I'm pretty sure that's not even safe to do while walking outside, much less on a treadmill.

Still really curious (and mildly concerned),

Vanessa

*this idea was taken from my friend Beth who devotes an entire blog to letters to strangers. You should check it out.

imagination

there's something special about the beauty of pretend play.

*vowing to keep the television off as much as possible and engage the boys in more play involving imagination. for all our sakes.

family day

today was family day. 

jamie got the boys up and i got to sleep an extra hour and a half this morning.

it was glorious.

the boys watched old looney toon cartoons that we borrowed from the library this morning and then our friend eric called us and suggested a humphrey/strickland hang out today.

done and done!

went met for a winter walk and turned back a little too late as jude melted down for the last third of it.

{i used my beco for the first third!}

we went out for lunch at montana's cookhouse and the kids did relatively well {did i mention that the boys went to bed 2.5 hours after their usual bedtime last night?} and then we went back to the humphrey's house and hung out until just before dinner.

the kids played well together {and we got a foretaste of the boys being able to play better together in about a years time - their two kids are exactly one year old than each of ours} and we {the adults} got some time to talk and hang out and catch up.

we came home for dinner and watched some more looney toons while we ate {a treat to watch tv and eat dinner!} and now the boys are in bed and i'm pretty tired.

jamie and i will likely watch the first episodes of this season's survivor and the amazing race.

and then to bed.

all in all, a lovely family day was had.

silhouette art tutorial

This year my Mom sent out an email to the fam saying that she didn't want any presents, just chocolate and flowers. Well that's all fine and dandy but being in the crafty phase I'm in, I couldn't just settle with "chocolate and flowers". So I started thinking and browsing online for some ideas.
And I came up with one that I thought would be simple, easy and yet very classy. Oh and it didn't cost too much, either (that always helps).
I'm not sure how it all came together but I had this memory flashback of my Mom giving framed silhouettes of all us kids to my Geda (it's what we called my Mom's Dad) when I was maybe 11 or 12 for his birthday (which was February 14th, incidentally).
And then I found some really adorable silhouette crafts/gift ideas.
And then I came up with my own project;
the family silhouette.
supplies needed:
digital camera
printer
scissors
black paper (I used scrapbook paper that I had from my scrapbooking days which is acid free)
a frame (I purchased a relatively inexpensive frame meant for posters from Walmart - 16x20 I think)
a pen
adhesive (I used scrapbooking acid-free double sided tape)
white paper (I bought white poster board since my frame was larger than any paper I had at home)

So while back in the day, my Mom taped a piece of paper to the wall, made me stand in front it and shone a light on me while she traced the shadow of my silhouette onto the paper, I just made my family stand in front of me and face sideways so I could snap a picture of their profile with my handy dandy digital camera. I got Jamie to take mine.
Now you don't need to be standing in a back lit situation (as all of us are except for Jude because I realized later that he was looking slightly down and didn't get a good angle of his chin so I re-took one a couple days later) but I found it helpful (especially compared to getting a clear profile of Jude).

Once you've got your pictures, you can print them out. All of the pictures were fine in relation to one another except Jude's which I had to scale down a bit so he wasn't larger than Noah. It took several tries, but I eventually got it the way I wanted it to look.
Then cut out the silhouettes.

Make sure to include as many details as possible like hair sticking up, mustache hair (only for men, please), certain nose details as this really defines the silhouette of that particular person.
If you turn them over so you see the non-picture side you'll get a better idea of if the silhouette looks fine/accurate/etc.
Once you you're satisfied with the silhouette, trace the outline of it onto your black paper, including any and all details from the picture.
Cut out all silhouettes from the black paper.
Now make sure your white paper is the correct size for your frame and make any adjustments that you might need to.
Position your silhouettes on your white paper and then use your adhesive to fasten them securely to the white paper in whatever position you'd like. You could even use several frames with one silhouette per frame. (I'd like to do this above my bed one day.)

Now you may have noticed that my pictures are all facing one way, but the silhouettes are all facing the other way. Well, that's because I just flipped over the black paper so that you wouldn't be able to see any pen marks left over from when I was tracing the pictures. I know, pretty tricky right?

Now put the white paper into the frame, secure, turn it over and you're done!

Stand back and admire your classy handiwork.

This is a very easy, but also personal gift or piece of art you can hang in your house (I kinda wanted to keep mine!) or give as a gift.