Our house was too big anyway

P.S. I think I have mentioned that we are using our super enormous house as a 2 bedroom, 2 playroom, 1 living room, eat-in kitchen lay-out. Well, for the past 2 days we have only 1 playroom, as Seb managed to lock the door to the downstairs playroom... None of our tools will jimmy it open, so we are hoping that Matt our friendly contractor (with a 5 year old himself) will have a solution. We can look in and admire the toys through the French doors but no playing happens. In fact, every door in the house has a lock on it; obviously the renovator wasn't thinking of a family with kids.

Another one pushes through

Sophie has produced another molar - at least part of it. She was up in the night with such a pain-filled wail, that it came as no surprise to find a bit of white poking through this evening.

This morning I took Seb to the semi-weekly kids drop-in gym at the community centre. It was great - complete with a trampoline - and it's free! I think we'll go with Sophie next week, as there were lots of little ones. Seb also went to the ROM today with uncle Coyen - that would be Colin to most. He was desperate to see the dinosaurs (Seb, not Colin), and managed to convince Colin to buy him a stuffed toy dino and a hot chocolate. Mike and I were off to register for Ontario medical coverage. I then pushed Sophie all the way home down Queen W and Dundas - a long long walk but it allowed us some time to get to know order of streets and key buildings, as well as identify local businesses. We've found a new organic store run by a young couple with a new baby (strapped to proud dad's chest as he restocks the shelves) and a tiny one-woman bakery. There's a Portugese fish and grocer round the corner that we have yet to try. Yesterday we stopped in at our local DVD rental shop; it looks pretty good with a wide array of dvds even for kids (tho I had to tell Seb that there will be no Dora the explorer or Diego in our house - foot down).

Tomorrow is our interview with the French school to see if we speak the language well enough and are appropriately committed to "the cause" or something. Wish us "bonne chance". It will also be an opportunity to find out if we like the school. At least Seb has been allocated a French immersion space at a local school where chum Xin is going.

Tomorrow is also the start of the plumbing reno. Should be 2 weeks. I'm leaning toward painting the new "powder" /laundry room berry berry or blackberry delight or some such (foolish) thing. Mike has opted us in for some high tech (high end!) washer and dryer with huge front-load windows which look made for an aquarium.

Speaking of fish, "red and blue" made it to ON but seems to be quite sluggish. Might be that we are so busy we have forgotten to feed him on occasion...

I'd best be off to bed as the big interview is at 9 tomorrow morning.

Arrived safely but barely installed

We landed in TO on Monday only to find that the electrical renos were not so advanced as we had hoped - especially the clean-up bit. Not a single room was liveable (check out the dust in some photos), so we had to camp out in a hotel for two nights. A nice hotel fortunately; we were right over the tracks leading into Union station, so both kids were fascinated by the trains.

On Tuesday, the city inspector visited our street and fined us (and several of our neighbours) $125 for failing to clear our sidewalk of snow. We showed him the moving boxes and he said we should get off on appeal. Hey, that will be a great way to spend a day with 2 small kids! But M turned it into a story by calling the news into his assignment editor and the next day it was the LEAD item on the morning local news. Not us, but the street getting fined without the usual warning. The feeling is that the city is desperate for ways to recoup money that it has overspent on its cleanup of near record snowfalls. Only problem is that they seem to have failed to plow our tiny street.

Then, we got dinged with a $3000 overrun on the electrical work. Needless to say, it was not the smoothest of arrivals.

But we are in and well - even though I have yet to sleep well here (might be the lack of curtains and getting re-used to a city sky that never fades to black). Sophie has a new tooth. George even made it here in our decrepit car and has been a "brick" according to my mum. Seb has started his Y membership and gone skating - proudly sporting a helmet. We have shopped at the tiny but lovely organic market at Dufferin Grove park, plus the inevitable visits to Ikea and Home depot (whoever knew that toilets came in so many styles..).

Seb went up the CN tower today (which we could see straight up from the hotel pool window!) with Gramps. And had an ice cream, hot chocolate, candy and taxi ride... He was so genuinely happy to be reunited with toys; he treated them like old friends. He seems really happy here, and is so eager to get to the ROM to see the new dinosaur exhibit. Ever nervous, we are waiting with bated breath to see if the proverbial penny will drop after Gramps leave tomorrow.

We are assembling our new pantry tomorrow and getting the kitchen organised (plus going to Kensington Market). The electrical work is pretty much over; as you can imagine Sebby loved the workers and filled their ears (while wearing his exact replica mini-tool belt). The plumbing starts on Wednesday. It's a race against time to get completed before our contractor's baby makes his arrival in early April. We live in hope.

Saying goodbye to our market

Saturday is the busiest day of the week at the city market. Last weekend various merchants asked Sebastian to be sure to come back and say farewell tomorrow, so that's where we will be. We'll be well-fed, well-amused and get to ring the bell again (maybe even I will try!).

Here's the link to what might become our "new" market. Give us a month or two and then Seb will no doubt know all the vendors and be able to take you on a tour.

http://dufferinpark.ca/market/wiki/wiki.php#about

Always forgetting

Our days are full. I often catch myself thinking "oh, got to get this lovely moment summed up for the blog, share it with family and friends". But somehow it slips away and I am left late in the evening with no memory of that perfect moment I wanted to share.

Seb has been told the "big news" and seems really excited about it. Yesterday, he told everyone we met that we are moving to Toronto but was stymied by the question "for how long?" It really warmed my heart that people in the market and library gave him parting tokens of affection, their e-mail addresses, etc. One clerk (who has changed employers a couple of times in the past 2 years) was recalling how small Seb was in 2005/06. He has really made his mark uptown!

At 15 months, we made a list of words that Seb understood, so we have done the same for Sophie. It's an impressive list - headed by "nursing", "coughing" (don't ask), "Seb", and other close relatives. It was a fun activity for the whole proud family; Sebastian in particular would double-check that we had all the words written on his sister's list. The paternal grandparents aren't too scientific about the whole thing; George kept adding extra words that I question (like does she really understand "car"? or just that it means going outside the house?).

Good news is that we seem to have rented out our maison de village for 3 weeks in May; that will pay the annual taxes. Bad news is that our home exchange for an Ontario cottage in August seems to be fizzling.

Sophie's first homonym

For a couple of months now, Sophie has been doing an endearing shrug gesture when asked "where" something is. Today, she shrugged when I announced that she would "wear" a particular set of clothes. Maybe not linguistic development, perhaps she was just questioning my sense of style.

I am back to blogging. Any details on M's illness can be gathered direct from the horse's mouth. We don't yet have new move dates but M's off till the 24th and then might get an extra moving week too.

Finally, some photos of the last few days

I swear there's a photo of a beer-swilling toddler in almost every Canadian house. This is Sophie's take, though often she two-hands it. BTW, it's my favourite local brew.

Love the shot of "smiley girl" which she is so much of the time (beer or no beer).

The snap of her asleep in the highchair is from Tuesday. (No, she hadn't had a beer to knock her out). We weren't running late but she must have been eager for her nap. I fed her lunch and then went upstairs for 3 minutes to wrangle Seb down to the table. We came clumping down quite noisely, rounded the corner and lo and behold a snoring princess!

Then, there is Seb trying on Sophie's "toaster" snowsuit, which admittedly is wide.

Big push today/tonight on the report (which is shaping up despite my worst efforts) and then boxing and moving to Baxters Corner tomorrow for 18 sleeps.

Good news: the head of the excellent children's drama classes that Seb attends has offered to make him a munchkin costume for the June production of the Wiz. If we come back the week before the show, he can attend a run-through and go on stage at the Imperial Theatre! I promised that we would get 10 bums in seats if we take them up on it. So kind!

The blessing of running water

Sophie counts her blessings that she was born into the western world where drinking water flows from a tap. She just loves to find the stool, hoist herself up against the bathroom sink (banging her head in the process) and try to reach the taps. When she is held up, she proceeds to slap away at the pooled water, bat at the dribble, and capably use the taps. She would spend ages at it but my back usually starts to rebel.

She also loves to move collections of things from point A to point B. Upstairs in the apartment, it is invariably diapers (clean ones thankfully). At M's office one night, she managed to swipe all the whiteboard/dry erase markers. He searched in vain for them, until just before they left when he spotted all of them in an open desk drawer.

Notice that I don't seem to spend my days running around with the camera at the moment. We will get back into photo-groove, promise.

2007 chickenpox, 2008 scarlet fever?

We were invited to a lovely party last night - ostensibly to welcome in Japanese/Chinese New Year. Seb took the invitation very seriously and in order to be in best party form, he napped for 2 hours. Unfortunately, it was from 5.30-7.30. So we didn't roll up till close to 8.30 and soon after, most kids started to leave.

Our hosts' 4 year old was quarantined in his room with a high fever. But of course that didn't deter Sebastian who had brought him a gift (New Year/get better sort of thing) and a highly-stickered card.

Unbeknownst to us all, Kai actually had scarlet fever... And so we enter our moving week and my last week on this education report with some anxiety. Supposedly under 2s are less likely to get it - though of course that didn't happen with the chickenpox. Fingers crossed!!!

Girlfriend loves grapes

Sophie so adores sweet green grapes that she will rocket up the stairs to get them with no distractions, no looking down. I guess I should grow a vine right at the top of the stairs. She'll love the new place b/c we do have a trellis of vines over the outdoor eating area. I'll try to remember to snap and post the patio/backspace when we get there. Good thing M had some experience laying paving stones in France, b/c we'll be tackling a bigger area this time...

Soph also is very sweetly wandering around the playroom clutching "dolly". She likes to peer at the creature's eyes (as they close) and give her wet kisses and crushing hugs (she must get that from her bro). Only thing is that it belongs to the apartment and we are moving out next Friday. I hope I can slip her the one that has been boxed this past year...