rocking chair

Last weekend I rearranged our living room - I finally got rid of the baby swing so there is a bit more room - which meant I got my rocking chair in front of the window again. It also meant our wooden rocking chair got moved to a more usable position. This rocking chair is special...not just because it is wooden but because it has history. It is the chair my grandmother was rocked in when she was a baby. And it is the chair my great-grandfather caned (he re-did the wicker in the back and seat).

 

And now it is the chair my middle child likes to sit in after his nap to watch a show.

capes

For Father's Day this year, I made capes. That is, I made a cape for Avery, for Lane, for their dad and an extra one for my dad when he is at our house (or whoever happens to be here that needs one). Swords are often clashing and slashing around our place so it seemed like a fantastic idea to have capes to go with it.

Except I forgot how much my boys like to run. These capes are not swashbuckling capes, nor are they superhero capes, they are running capes.

They run.

And run.

And run some more.

Because what is better than racing?

Well, maybe a bit of wrestling with your sandals as arm/hand shields.

The little girl next door likes to do whatever our boys do and so she now sports a cape as well, albeit the pink version.

Big surprise, the boys have got her racing too.

 

And if for some reason you can't picture them running in capes, check this out:

 

 

And if you are interested in making one for a little person in your life, I loosely followed this pattern.

my happy girl is back!

So this third child of mine is different. In many ways. Obviously her gender differs from the boys but there are so many other differences. Less obvious is how she teethes. After weeks of unhappiness and screaming at me in the evenings she finally cut her first tooth at 6.5 months (my boys teeth started appearing at 4 months). But now that she has two teeth through, she is a happy baby again. See:

 

Now that this girlie has figured out how to grow teeth she is moving on to standing. Although she'd really like to be moving. Should be fun!

it keeps going. and going. and going.

This truck debuted way be here. It became a favorite toy again here. And now it is back. Albeit with a few less stickers.

Maia loves to sit on it, have the music play and go for a ride. All too soon she'll be stable enough to have her brothers push her around and not long after she'll be pushing herself. Crazy. Uncle Mike, you did well. Thank you for the gift that keeps going and going. And going.

 

The best part? We haven't had to change the batteries yet.

 

PS - Can you find a cute little tooth in that big smile??

besant campground

One sunny afternoon, our family decided to go on a picnic adventure. So, a circuitous drive down the highway later, we found ourselves at Besant Campground. We found a lush picnic spot... with no playground. Although confused, disappointed and not understanding how there could be a place without a playground, the boys amused themselves by playing hide and seek:

and looking at bugs:

while the girls sat on the grass playing with toys and watching the boys.

happy, chubby baby girl

In the midst of teething, this girl could sometimes still find a smile or two.

 

Which was a good thing as it was the only thing keeping me sane.



mud. pure and simple.

After a long winter with lots of snow, the snow finally melted into the time of year we typically call spring. This year that meant water. Which, in our current yard, meant mud. Ahem. MUD. MUD. MUD!

Not that the kids care. Nope, just me. Especially when it comes to trying to keep my house somewhat clean. But I digress. It's about the kids, right? Because what is better than getting wet and dirty outside where mom can't mad at you and you can make a big mess and mom can't get mad at you? Nothing. Nothing is better than that.

Oh, wait. Maybe running through the mud puddles with your neighbour. Yep, that probably is better. See for yourself:

 

Did you hear the water sloshing in their boots??

makes me smile

My boys love being with their sister, are very protective of her and try their hardest to play with her.

They are all growing up so fast - some days it seems so incredible how big they have gotten! Maia is starting to sit, Avery is mastering talking and Lane is getting to be a little man.

 

These kiddos make me smile.

I like this kid

His expressions, syntax and vocabulary.

All Avery, every time.

biker dude

For Lane's birthday we promised him a bike. A bike with 2 wheels. That he could ride outside. And every time his response was to say that he wanted a bike helmet. It got to the point where we started to wonder if we could get away with just getting him the helmet.

Finally, after WAY too many months of snow, the mountains of snow melted, the water ran away and the sidewalk was clear enough to contemplate letting a 4 year old out with a bike. Off to the store went dad and his big boy. An hour later they came home with this:

A very happy boy.

Notice the white thing hanging down from the handle bars?
The kid couldn't wait for us to take the warranty/safety info off
the bike before he rode it...

A happy boy that tells me consistently that he loves his bike. And even kisses the silly thing. And the helmet? Well, lets just say that bike riding is just one of many uses it sees.

all pieced!

Progress continues to be made on the great birthday quilt of 2012. I have finished piecing the top and have got the back pieced as well. I'm hoping to get it sandwiched together this weekend and then it shouldn't be long after that and we can be using it!

It's a bit of a crazy quilt but I was sent a crazy collection of fabrics! For all the busyness of this quilt, it is fun to sit down and try to find all the blocks of a particular fabric. I can see the kids and I playing an "I Spy" game with this quilt at some point.

As I was snapping a picture of the quilt top yesterday, Avery found a block that featured a soccer print on it and was quite excited...I think this quilt will be an all around hit!

A big thank you to all of you who sent fabric - you have helped create a beautiful memory.

birthday quilt

With our winter dragging on and on and my desire to make progress on just about anything, my birthday quilt has come out of hibernation and I have been zealously sewing pieces together. Well, as zealously as I can when I only have about 15 minute chunks of time to work on it...Maia's mobile plays music for about that long and then I am just out of luck. Even so, it can be amazing what 15 minutes here and there adds up to.

Perhaps this?

 

It is fun to lay out the square and see how this quilt is taking shape. I have enough squares made that I can get an idea of the final size. I've come so far and yet I have so far to go. Well, more like 50 to go. This quilt will be made up of 204 four-inch squares which means I have just 50 more squares to sew together! Hmph. 50. Such a big number yet such a some portion of the final piece...

After those last pesky 50 squares are sewn the real fun begins. Do I arrange them? Do I place the squares randomly? How in the world do I sew lines of these things together and have it look good and not go insane because my kids can't keep their hands off of them. Hmmm....decisions. And can I really get all the squares sewn together before my next birthday?

The good news is that every. single. piece. of fabric I was sent has been sewn into at least one block, if not two or more and can be seen in the photos. Go ahead, try and find yours. It's there!

trains

Trains and train track building have made a comeback in our house. After getting a complaint about not having enough tracks - because the track wasn't long enough to go from one end of the living to the other and then into the kitchen - new ones were added and now the boys thoroughly enjoy, albeit sporadically, playing trains again.

 

Avery still has a skill for knocking the hills over and messing the track up but the boys are learning to fix and rebuild.

 

Of course, there is always more enjoyment when mom builds the track...

 

 Good thing mom likes the challenge!

Special thanks to Auntie Laura for picking up the tracks for us, and to Carolyn, as this ended up being the boys' Christmas gift from her.

what's your guess?

Lane is up to something. Ah, yes, he is working.

But do you know what kind of work he is doing??

He's welding, of course. See? He's protecting his eyes.

You knew that though, didn't you?

birthdays!

We had a couple of birthdays this last month. Somewhere I got the idea that I was going to make shaped cakes for them. Well, actually, a friend on Facebook did the airplane cake for her son...and it looked so easy (and fun) that I figured I should do it too. Besides, I have a son that loves airplanes. So an airplane cake it was for Avery's birthday:

Airplane. Complete with engines, cockpit window, passenger
windows and the all-important "2" on top.

The blue icing was important because it was the only colour Avery could say. That I put it together at 10 pm, not so important but definitely not the best time for me to be trying to perfect a feat. Happily, it was recognizable as an airplane so it was all good.

Avery wasn't too sure what to make of the cake.

 

 

And he wasn't too sure what to do about the candles.

 

But he sure did master the word "cake" awfully fast. I think maybe "more" was another word that was mastered around that time as well...

After watching his little brother have a birthday and being well aware of what it was all about, it was Lane's turn.

This time we didn't have someone else's birthday cake to copy, so we figured it out ourselves! An excavator, we decided, would be fun and so it was.

It took a bit of a beating after sitting overnight but it was still recognizable. There was great entertainment to be had while we made this one - we put it together at my parents' place and all the aunts and uncles had fun watching the process. Note to self: be careful around red food colouring. Two drops is one too many and will take half a bottle of yellow to recover. The things you learn!

 

 

Lane was pretty pleased with his cake - his dad was not so pleased with the final colour and everyone wondered if the birthday boy would make a comment about it - but it turned out that the important part was that the actual cake was blue.

This cake was a winner all around - blue cake, lots of icing and Oreo cookies! Once again my boys were pretty happy to eat another cake.

 

All this means we now have a four year old, a two year old and an almost four month old in the house. Crazy!