I vant to suck yar bloooood.....

I am so very proud of my kids' dad because he helped Sebastian win a prize at school for one of the best homemade costumes. I think the makeup was pretty fine too; I love that I managed to somehow accent Seb's already extremely expressive eyebrows (and then there are Sophie's 1930s arches!). We have done well with this $5 get-up; he wore it to school yesterday and out for the big candy grab tonight. However, he managed to leave the cape at school yesterday, which wasn't open when we swung by to rescue it. So this cape is this morning's fabric store find. Thus for ballet, he switched gears and went as the nutcracker prince in his marching band jacket http://http//wedgley.blogspot.com/2007/07/photo-that-got-away.html (again dreamt up by his dad).

Sophie has been less convinced about being a pumpkin - but it's better than the other p-word she wanted to be! We have been less convinced too, as the outfit is awfully hard to get on and off which is tricky with so many trips to the loo.

The kids headed off with M to a classmate's party and from their went to a well-decorated street that boy knew. After an hour of fun there, they headed over to Kelly & Sam's to check out Harry Potter and a unicorned princess. Meanwhile, I have been reading the paper, enjoying a cup of coffee and answering the door. And just in case they didn't get enough sugar in their trick or treating bags, then there are 2 bags full of candy waiting for them here from Nana and our tenant (Have I ever mentioned that we have scored the world's best tenants two years in a row?.

Tomorrow, we go to Christie Pits park with friends for its annual jack o'lantern parade. You bring your carved pumpkin, place it on the path at dusk and then wander freely through the park enjoying the flickering faces. Around 9 pm, the city collects them all for compost.

Sophie's family portraits

In my family, there is

a mummy


a daddy

a big brother

and a me!

I am learning that some mummies and daddies don't live together, some children have two mummies, and some children don't come from their mummies' tummies. But the most important thing is that everyone loves each other.

Here's the lay of the land

Just to keep everyone who wants to be in the picture of the November-December madness that descends on our household every year in said picture:

November 6 - young man turns 6
November 7 - young man celebrates with ALL of his class and 5 of his neighbourhood friends with a Mad Science birthday party
November 8 - mother slinks off to do un-6 or 3 year old things to celebrate her birthday
November 9ish - expect paternal grandparents to fly into town
November 13-15 - family heads to Montreal to fete November birthdays with maternal grandparents
November 18 - Sophie turns 3
November 20 - Jo heads off to Myanmar for work
November 21 - Grandma's birthday and Seb's ballet "recital"
November 28 - Jo arrives back home
November 29 - perhaps hold a wee (not to be confused with "pee", though that seems to dominate discussions with an almost 3 year old and friends) party for Sophie and her buddies
December 4 - head to Geneva to celebrate the wonderful Nana Lorraine's birthday; perhaps head through the Mont Blanc tunnel to see Zia Elena in Turino for 3-4 days
December 13 - back to Toronto
December 14+ - expect to host Auntie Roberta in Toronto
Dec 25 - do the lowest keyed Christmas possible
Dec 26 - try to hold back from going to the Boxing Day sales (especially if I haven't yet been paid for my contracts- hey, at least I am honest about my foibles)
January 1 - celebrate New Year's with our annual bash
January 4 - send kids back to school and collapse in a heap.

I told you it gets crazy around here - and that doesn't count the next 48 hours of Hallowe'en hype!

So what's a mummy blogger to do?

So, I have uploaded 9 posts - nine. Full of colour and commentary and cute kids. And no one feeds back. I know we have at least 15 loyal households tuning in (perhaps not with bated breath but that's understandable). You lot have got to learn to how to use comments.

Come on Auntie Colleen, it's not that hard. Grandad, you are on the internet all the time; you can get an account sorted out in minutes. You don't even need an account for that matter.

I won't name and shame anyone else, but this is supposed to be a two-way street, folks.

Jeepers, creepers, where did you get those peepers?

my Grandma, with some of my Gramps thrown in!

So many people comment on Sophie's big, blue, show-stopping eyes, but I am partial to my son's gooey chocolate eyes, myself.

Hello, my name is Sophie and I'm 3 on my birthday

Just some random shots of our happy, young lass in the last two weeks.

Our 2nd annual Night of Dread

We have a wonderful crowd of friends in Toronto and delight in hosting them. So we threw open the invitation to our 2nd annual Night of Dread party (http://http//wedgley.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-wonderful-weekend.html), which tied in with a community event in the park, only to have virtually everyone (including 5 of our new neighbours) say they would attend. That meant 35+ people in our semi-detached house - at once - eating and playing and doing crafts and talking and chasing toddlers...

While we actually started prepping the food the previous day, on the day of it all I was out with a bad headache until 60 minutes before the party started and thus my fella had to pull double loads - and did so without losing his cool.

The menu was:
pigs in a blanket/hot apple cider/ wine / crack-yer-own walnuts - while carving pumpkins (outside as the rain thankfully held off!), painting faces (thanks Auntie Jeet), making a paperbag puppet or decorating a mask (oh, the sparkles are everywhere today!!!!).
----followed by -------
pumpkin soup / roasted tomato and blue cheese soup (a smash hit from last year) / smoky black bean dip (never used liquid smoke before - what is it?) / hummous/ baby carrots / baguette and pita / cheese platter / green salad - while competing for a seat (14 seats divided between 29 people drinking soup, you get the picture).
--------followed by -------
apple crisp (got to use up those apples) / spice cookies
-----followed by ----------
hot chocolate as we headed to Dufferin Grove for the Clay & Paper spectacle. http://www.clayandpapertheatre.org/

Despite being a superhero, Emily felt much better about going out into the dark when she was clutching a Sesame Street colouring book.


Most of the gang (there were 2 other children, plus 2 toddlers and a baby)



Seb asks the very resourceful John to make him look like a ghoul

Kelly feeds her skin and bones Xin

Jo and Priya (the original stripey tights woman)

A leopard?

Check out Rowan's sparkly mask and those plump cheeks!

The pumpkin pin-up, Celeste!

It was a wonderful party, and Sebastian and Sophie hosted with great finesse. As for me, much to my sweet's eternal patience, I had found that I felt much better when I got out of bed and got bossy...

This just gets us warmed up for Sebastian's birthday party for 22 children on the 7th but that will be at the community centre!

October 24th - BREAKING NEWS - Sebastian's declaration

And the winner is ...... a vampire. Yup, Seb has decided on being a vampire for Hallowe'en 2009.

Fortunately, we have the black cape and fake blood/red face paint necessary for the attire. A trip to Value Village is in the works to get the incisors and a suitable (warm and vampire-like) top. It just so happens that our Geneva-based cousins were at Dracula's castle in Romania last week, so we will have to call them to get some tips.

Until the 31st, you will have to make do with this shot from last weekend of Seb as a red devil.

As for Sophie, let's just say that her choice has put her parents' feminist values to the test. Let's hope that she falls in love with a construction worker's costume at Value Village!

Thanksgiving turkeys

It would be a cryin' shame for these turkeys not to get some face time (or is that feather time) on the blog. Made by our neighbour, She Takes the Cake, they were handsdown winners at our Thanksgiving meal 10 days ago.

Read me a story

When we all need to let some air out of the proverbial balloon, we turn on a book on cd. The kids love them and mellow right out. We have a number from Seb's earlier years and get at least one out of the library every week.

We are once again technologically challenged and our car CD player is not working, so we only listen to books in the house. There, the kids for some reason love to sit on the floor and huddle around the portable stereo as if it was a 1930s radio on a cold winter's night.

Nor can I upload video to the blog, so you will have to imagine them discussing who turns the page and "Please move your hand Sophie because I can't see the words (and I am bigger than you and this is important)."

Yipppppeeeeeeeeeee, A Birthday Party!!!!!!!!!!!

We love birthday parties with balloons and cardboard crowns and mini cupcakes.

All the colours of the rainbow

On Thanksgiving Sunday, we went apple-picking with Nuan and Xin's family. And we were by far the most colourful crew in the orchard

(well, at least the kids were).

We didn't buy a pumpkin but brought home 4 HUGE bags of apples. Apple crumble/crisp, anyone? How about muffins? cake? cookies? sauce? OK, we will make some juice.

It's never too early ...

to get ready for winter. Here, the young master is modelling his new duvet jacket, matching hat & scarf, orange boots and nifty fingerless gloves-come-mitts. The credit card bill has yet to arrive. Fortunately, Sophie only needs new boots and we inherited some good snowpants this year.

While the mama bear works...

the little squirrels nibble on their snacks and hide the leftovers in High Park for a wintry day.

Puzzle? What puzzle?

In anticipation of the Thanksgiving long weekend - which had M working the actual holiday and thus me solo parenting when most friends are away and public buildings closed - I laid in a 300 piece puzzle. The idea was to clear off the breakfast bar (an achievement in and of itself) and for Sebastian and his parents to add to it over the course of the three days.

But Seb got the bug and together we polished it off on the Friday night before his (delayed) Dad even made it in the door from work!

Blink

Where did that week go? I don't have time right now to put up all the photos of Thanksgiving and the week that followed, but here is what Seb has been up to today. First, a trip to the National Ballet of Canada - as part of the Kids Corps programme; then off to a screening of the movie - Where the Wild Things Are. "Not too scary", I was told. Both done with a buddy along to share the fun.

And the best part of both - he was really, sincerely appreciative of what Mum & Dad had done for him.

Sophie just loves loves loves to read

Pictures are worth a thousand words - especially at this stage of learning to read. Our current favourite is anything by Sarah Garland (who - small world - went to one of my high schools well-before me). Fortunately, she has written/illustrated 40+ books (A Seaside Christmas Tree is seen in the 2nd snap). http://www.amazon.ca/gp/reader/184507727X/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-page






But it does tire her out. (There's the Dictionnaire visuel again; I swear if it's not been in one child's bed, it's been in the others for virtually every night of this year. What do other families do without it?)

Rainy day play

It's a rainy day here in Toronto. The last time it rained all day, the children got out the vintage remote-controlled cars; we seemed to have spent half the time testing batteries but I get a sense that Seb really enjoys that part at the moment.

Note the still unfinished build-in under the stairs - 9 1/2 months and counting.... It has been so long that yesterday, the carpenter had to come to refresh his memory about the stain...

Silver is a good colour

Sophie loves to spot things that match. "Same" she'll exclaim pointing to two black cars or children with ponytails. So she was eager to know the colour of dad's shoe buckle because it matched a thin line of yarn in her turtleneck.


Sophie was so busy fielding phone calls on Tuesday that she had barely any time to actually do the arts & crafts activity that we had signed up for. The class came right on the heels of her first foray into Japanese cusine, as we celebrated our friend Lucas' 3rd birthday with his mom over a binto box.


Kind of like her dad this week who has fielded dozens of work calls, it seems. This morning started with his phone waking us - only for it to be a "wrong button pressed" by the other party.

News in the 'hood: Sophie got invited to our new young neighbour's (Bruno) 3rd birthday party on Sunday. I see a block buddyship blooming. On Sunday, we are invited to a neighbour's party to celebrate his new diploma. Last night - the kids in their pjs and dressing gowns - we dropped by our new opposite neighbours to welcome them with cookies in the shape of "28" - their house #. That won us the tour of the home (which really really needs to be gutted) and who knows what parties to come. We invited them to our 2nd annual Night of Dread on the 24th.

We have a cutie-patootie on our hands

Grandparents round the world rejoice

I am sure that there are millions upon millions of grandparents around the world who are celebrating the awarding of the Nobel Physics Prize today. It honours - amongst others - a modest Canadian man named Willard Boyle (love that name). He did some nifty thing with lasers and voila, "invented" pixels. You know, what makes digital photography possible - i.e. the raison d'etre of this blog and what made my dad say that he feels like he lives down the street from his grandchildren. (I guess, blogspot and twitter and all them folks are partying too).

Ode to our garden in the autumn

The little vegetable garden that could is still coming through for us in late September/early October!

We are still harvesting cherry tomatoes even if they have been on the vine a bit too long, but stewed up on burgers, they taste oh so sweet for September.

And the peppers! We did it! Well, they did it for us! I went out on Wednesday and there it was, a red orb hanging off the plant. Sophie meanwhile grabbed at the yellow paper and plucked it - and the green one that really really was about to turn yellow if given another 48 hours. But it was the red one that rendered me speechless. Our little garden had produced this beauty - for us.

But wonders never cease. The trio of peppers sat as the kitchen table centrepiece for 2 days. Then Sebastian came roaring up the stairs one morning with a yellowy-green capsicum in his hands. Our green one knew we prefered yellow and was changing hues off the plant. It seems so brutal to chop them up and consume them; so I am hoping we can honour them through a true harvest meal in the next day or 2.

The photos were taken last Wednesday and the weather has turned chilly since then. But we peek out every day to see if the tomatoes are struggling onward or the last sunflower has toppled or our 1 pumpkin is starting to look anything remotely like an orange-coloured carver.

Her favourite spot in the house

Sophie silently steals away to the "powda room", where she can pull up the stool and turn on the light and the faucet. She quietly splashes away for ages, playing with the plug, asking Froggy for a "high-5", using her potty's liner bowl as a scoop (!), and getting thoroughly wet. She loves it.

Could be worse, could be the toilet itself.

Gramps is here, Gramps is here!

There is great excitement in the house. George and Seb headed off to Science Centre this morning - where Seb immediately marched into the shop and started to name off things for his birthday wish list (I had told him he could as it is early October). It will be interesting to see if Gramps was able to resist a small gift "just because"; like Nana and her "sales clothes".