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June

Hey my blog, long time no post.

I haven’t had much interest in blogging this month; I’ve had ideas for posts, but between life and parenting and work there just hasn’t been any time for it. Work has been especially difficult- for the last year one or the other of the kids I look after has always been part-time, but this month they’ve both been full-time and it’s been exhausting. One of the kids is leaving for a group daycare in July and I have a new one starting who will be part-time, thank goodness! I was thinking yesterday how it didn’t seem this hard when I had more kids in care, but of course that was all pre-2012, when I only had one kid of my own who was in school all day. Having two little kids of my own + two daycare kids is a LOT more work, somehow, than four daycare kids. Anyway. I’m taking next week off work and I’m going to just hang out and relax for nine days. I hope. I hope!

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crazy eights

I should have posted this yesterday but I forgot how many days there were in May? My brain is just straight up mush these days y’all.

Nicky is eight months old! At eight months he is a busy little buddy and army crawls around the house at great speeds and sits unassisted for long periods. He eats everything I give him with his two teeth, especially enjoying broccoli stems, chicken and sliced pears. After a few weeks of having a mixed-up schedule he is back to napping twice a day and sleeping through the night, although we have been putting him down a little later in the evenings. He loves spending time outside in the Ergo, in his stroller or on a blanket on the ground, but he HATES car trips and yells through them non-stop. He doesn’t have a favourite toy at the moment (any toy he can put in his mouth will do just fine) but loves playing Round and Round the Garden and being sung to.

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it’s fair

Last year when we visited Taylor’s family over May long weekend we took Gwen to a small fair and since then she’s been obsessed. We usually go to the Fair at the PNE in the summer and go on a couple rides, but last August I was so pregnant & we were so busy we didn’t manage to do it, so Gwen has been waiting a whole year to go to a fair again. We went on Saturday and she was SO EXCITED. She’d been talking non-stop about going on a ferris wheel so I was happy to see they had one, and that she was tall enough! I took her on the ferris wheel and she went on a couple kiddie rides with her cousins and by herself and had a blast. She probably could have done more (and definitely wanted to try the bumper cars) but it was getting late so we had to leave. I’m happy that I will have someone brave enough to go on rides with me at the PNE this year though (Taylor and Sym are total chickens and literally will not go on a single ride with me).

Nicky did not go on any rides but it was incredibly hot that day so he very much enjoyed eating ice from my sno cone.

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shorty

I have been confused all week about what day it is. Gwen has speech therapy on Tuesdays and so on Tuesday I knew it was Tuesday, but I thought it was Wednesday. When we got home (from her Tuesday speech therapy appointment) Sym was here and I asked her “what are you doing here???” because on Wednesdays after school she goes to her dad’s. Then yesterday Gwen had a hair appointment and I knew it was on Wednesday because I scheduled it for Wednesday, but on our way home we stopped to get a burger for her dinner and Taylor asked if I wanted one I said no, because I thought it was Thursday and we always get poutine on Thursdays so why would I spoil that with a burger???? But it was WEDNESDAY and there was no poutine and I also missed my opportunity to have a burger. I also thought today was gonna be Friday and that I only had one more day of work left this week, how cruel.

Anyway, Gwen’s haircut. She told me she wanted to “see her neck” (I think she was very inspired by Sym’s cut a few weeks back) and after a couple talks where I explained that once it was cut if she wanted it to be long again it would take a long time to grow again, I made her an appointment. She was so well behaved at the salon and I can’t get over how cute the result is! She loves it so far as well.

(Those curls aren’t natural btw, she requested our stylist “curl her hair a lil bit,” again like Sym.)

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mother’s day

Gwen woke me up this morning before my alarm went off, to ask me if it was still my special day. I told her no, Mother’s Day was just one day, but that we could still have a nice day today. She told me “yeah, we can build your new Lego together!” (I got the Lego Disney Castle this weekend and she really likes to help me build it, which is good because with over 4,000 pieces it’s going to take me FIVE-EVER to finish it).

My Mother’s Day was very nice and relaxing, I slept in a little (what a sorry state this world is when sleep is seen as a treat, though) and then watched Guardians of the Galaxy* with Gwen while Taylor made stuffed French Toast with strawberry compote for brunch. Later, after he’d gone to bed Gwen and I started building the Lego castle, and played in the backyard with Nicky. In the evening we got a babysitter (SUCH LUXURY) and went to the movies- to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Yes, I watched three movies this weekend; two were Guardians of the Galaxy and the third was its sequel.

* With Gwen’s speech therapy, we are working of F, S at the start of a word when followed by another consonant, S at the end of a word, and two-syllable words where she drops the middle consonant. Gwen gets bored/frustrated/overwhelmed if we do too much at a time so I’ve been incorporating it into all of our games and activities, including watching this movie (which she is obsessed with). Stuff like… “That’s Drax. Drak-ssssssssss. Drax says the Sakaaran are paper people. Pay-Per. Pee-Puhl. That’s Gamora, she has purple streaks in her hair. Pur-Puhl. Sssss-treak-sssss. Groot is drinking out of the fountain. Fffffff-ountain. That boy goes by the name of Starlord. Ssssss-tarlord.”

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late easter


I ordered these dolls for Gwen & Nicky in NOVEMBER lol glad they arrived in time for something.

Because Easter weekend fell the week before we were having our floors replaced, we were able to celebrate with the kids. We had to finish packing and get out of the house on Sunday so any kind of special meal or Easter egg hunt just wasn’t happening. So instead, we did it this past weekend. I bought a bunch of Easter stuff on clearance (really to best part of the whole thing) and after brunch Taylor took the kids on a dog walk-slash-Pokemon hunt while I set up in the backyard. I laid out a blanket for Nicky to roll around on and hid candy, toys and other treats (the Easter Bunny brought Sym a giftcard to Forever 21, so modern) around the backyard. Gwen in particular had a BLAST hunting for all the candy-filled eggs hidden in the flower gardens.

Historically I haven’t done an Easter egg hunt for my kids (except for one year when we did one with a tiny Gwen at the beach), because hiding chocolate around a house full of idiot dogs is… not a great idea. Usually a basket of treats just appears in their rooms when they are sleeping. But It was so much fun I think from now on we’re going to do it every year.

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mercurial

The weather here has been so mercurial lately, it’s hard to plan our weekends because one day is all warm blue skies and the next is pouring rain. After all the weeks (and weekends) of packing, cleaning, moving, and unpacking Taylor and I really wanted to do something that would be fun for Gwen, especially since we basically had to skip Easter. On Saturday we wanted to take her to her favourite playground but as luck would have it, it started raining as soon as we let the house. Instead we went for a soggy walk and ran some errands, then treated her to a ridiculous pink & purple sparkly princess bathing suit from the Disney Store. She’s been wearing it non-stop since we brought it home so I guess it was a good value (plus it was on sale). The 5/6 fits her now so I think we’re going to have to get a 7/8 to last her through until the end of the summer, which is RIDICULOUS because she’s only 4 1/2! Sunday the weather actually was nice, so we took the little kids to the playground(s) at Second Beach. I also meant to do an Easter Egg hunt for Gwen with a bag of Shopkins eggs I got on Friday for $2 but like an idiot I forgot, so I guess we will postpone Easter yet another week. Thank goodness she has no concept of when holidays actually are yet!

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vii

Today Nicky is seven months old!

He loves rolling over and over, army crawling around the whole house and putting everything in his mouth. He got his first tooth this week, for real, and enjoys using it to chomp on all the different foods he gets to try now. He’s an early riser and usually wakes up by six am, which I’m not a fan of, but he sleeps well through the night and has two regular naps a day. He likes taking baths, especially with Gwen, and loves to kick and kick in the water and soak everyone in the splash zone. He loves both his sisters, and thinks everything they do is the funniest thing in the world, with everything Georgie does being a close second. He’s a hair-puller and a skin-scratcher and a beard-grabber, he has a halo of the softest blondest baby chicken fluff you ever saw, and he has a smile that lights up the whole room.

He’s also very fast.

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five faves

It’s taken most of the week but we are finally settled back into our apartment! Well, mostly settled back in. I figured having to pack everything up was the perfect excuse to put things back DARE I SAY mindfully? So rather than just dumping all our stuff and knick-knacks and what-have-yous out all willy-nilly I’m slowly going through it all, and making everyone else slowly go through their stuff as well. So while the large pieces of furniture are all back in place we do still have a few boxes, bins and baskets to sort out. Hopefully I can get it all finished up this weekend… and then it’ll be time to sort out our storage room. The spring cleaning this year is INTENSE.

I made yogurt this week! Our slow cooker has a yogurt setting and we had some organic milk that was about to expire, so rather than let it go to waste I figured I’d try my hand at yogurt making. This post helped me troubleshoot some problems and in the end it turned out out perfect (and delicious!).

Fairly confident I will be buying Nicky these shortalls.

Gwen is very into taking care of her baby dolls right now, and this cute toy highchair will be just right for them- plus it’s on sale right now!

The mysterious Jeff Goldblum food truck.

How adorable is this set of bamboo toddler dishes? I really like the blue & green bear but they are also available in pink & purple cat.

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slowly, slowly

We are like 80% of the way done putting our apartment back together- we’d probably be closer to being finished but I’m a masochist and decided that this weekend was the PERFECT time to start painting our bedroom (just one wall, and only because it’s impossible to do with all the furniture in there!). I think for the most part we have all the big furniture put away and a lot of the bins & boxes unpacked. I’m trying to do another mini-purge as I unpack rather than just dump a ton of stuff out and have already filled another bag for donation as well as set aside a lot of book to give away (we have a little free library in our alley and let me tell you it has been GREAT for getting rid of unwanted books, comics and movies).

Of course the real star of the show is the new floors, and can I just say that I love them? I’ve been in apartments with some combination of gross carpet and linoleum since Sym was about six months old and I am SO HAPPY to be free of them, finally! The nice new floors do make the dingy, patched walls look extra rough though, so I can’t wait to finish all the painting/repainting I have planned for this year and really make this place shine.