Welcome to the world Pearl!

My brother, Ryan, and his wife, Melissa, had a beautiful baby girl today, December 17th. We're sending them all our love, and we can't wait to meet our new niece, Pearl Clara.

Pearl was 8 lbs 4 oz and 23 or 24 inches long (Ryan sent out two numbers...both translate to looooong).

The girls are taking over!

Comparisons

Faith is doing her first communion in May, but we missed the regular service in which all the first communion kids were "presented" to the church. So, we had to attend the "makeup" presentation tonight at the 7:00 pm Tuesday service.

This would normally not be too much stress for us, but George was in Ottawa today, and our babysitter was busy, which meant I had to bring Blake and Faith. Blake normally is in bed by 7:30, and we haven't taken him to church for about 3 months because he gets a little rambunctious. So, this was essentially going to be a 30 minute trial by fire for all concerned.

Added to this was Faith's misgivings about anything involving her standing up in front of a room full of strangers, and it was all golden. As in the color of pee.

So, we get to the church chapel (which holds about 15 people) and I'm happy to see that there are four kids and their families there, including one family of four with a little baby and another two-ish-year old. Great! We wouldn't be the only ones making noise.

I couldn't be more wrong.

While Blake smiled, provided commentary, talked on my cell phone, tugged on the chair in front of us, and generally acted like the almost-two-year old boy he is, the other kids his age either slept, or were totally silent. SILENT! As in didn't open their mouths! For 30 minutes. They, in fact, fell asleep in their chairs! With my kid pointing at them and saying "Baby!" every five minutes. I even tried to get him to "pretend" to be like the baby and put his head on my shoulder. He grabbed my nose instead.

On the plus side, Faith survived her "presentation", although she informed me afterwards that there is no way that she's doing anything like that in front of the whole church. I'll leave it to her dad to explain what she actually has to do for first communion. I'm too tired.

Blake's 23rd month

Cheese!
Originally uploaded by Robin's Nest3

To Blake,

It continues to be an adventure. The last couple of months have been a little busy around here. We're finishing the basement and we spent a couple of weeks in Florida, plus getting ready for Christmas.

You are a funny little person. Lately your language skills are taking another quantum leap forward. Yesterday you learned how to say "disgusting" and "gross" (you were doing a food experiment with Faith at the time). You can also say "shoot" on a dime...any time I drop something, forget something, break something...you get the idea. I can only be thankful it's "shoot" and not "shit". (And, no, this isn't an invitation for his grampa to teach him how to say "shit" for Christmas. I will not consider this a present from Santa.)

Your favourite game for some time now is "I got ya". Whenever I need to change your clothes, your diaper, and take you to bed, you plant two feet on the ground, bend your knees slightly, grin and say "I got ya". Then you run. Fast. Usually in circles. Normally, I find this funny, but wrestling you to the ground to get your PJs on at the end of the day gets a little tiring by the end of the week.

You've also learned how to tickle people. Your little fingers dance across your sister's tummy, making all of us laugh together.

Speaking of dancing, this now officially a tradition in our house. We listen to the IPod and you do your mini-verson of the white man dance...bopping your head and arms up and down in semi-rhythm to the music. You like to "move it, move it".

Perfecting your techniques for annoying the hell out of your sister has been another recent pastime. You've advanced from hairpulling to hitting, screaming, writing on her papers, and the occasional biting. Yippee. It's hard to convince Faith that her screams are just the reaction that you're looking for. And, damn, but you've got the innocent look down pat.

So, mr. mischievious, I can't wait to see what the fun times of Christmas will bring. You've already been caught trying to open a present that was sitting under a tree. Upon being found out, you immediately tossed the gift behind your back and took off like nothing had happened. I'm sure you'll get better at hiding these things...can't wait.

Love,
Mommy

The grand prize

Every year, Faith's school has a magazine fundraiser. All the kids who sell magazines get their name in the draw for various prizes. This year, Faith won the grand prize....an IPod Touch 8GB! Holy cow!

The future

My eyes are a little buggy from watching CNN the last couple of days...they even had holograms!?! What?

I flipped on the tv this morning to get the final election results and see some snippets of the Obama acceptance speech. This was out of the normal pattern for our mornings, which usually sees Faith laying on the couch eating breakfast and watching the Family Channel (the bane of our adult existence) while I make my lunch and eat some oatmeal.

So, when Faith asked to watch yet another episode of The Suite Life, I explained that I wanted to watch the news because it was historic.

"Why?"

"Well, they elected the president of the United States." [Onscreen is Obama.]

"So." (The Suite Life trumps politics.)

"Well, he's the first black president of the United States."

Pause.

"What's black?"

This is where I had to stop and realize that, holy crap, she really didn't know what this meant. At all. Wow. I almost cried. Then, I had to figure out how to explain it. Her response afterwards?

"Well, E. has darker skin than me, and she's my friend. It doesn't make any difference."

What money can buy...

I let Blake play in the downstairs bathroom sink quite a bit. He splashes around and gets the bathroom wet, but it keeps him amused while I'm making dinner. Yes...I need two hands to cut vegetables, which he doesn't quite understand.

Today, my wet babysitting plan went a little off course though. Blake took me to the bathroom to show me the pink-striped sock (Faith's) that he had decided to throw in the toilet. Great. I grabbed a plastic bag to fish it out, but, of course, Faith had to see the excitement first. After the inspection, I was ready to grab the sock, but then had a brilliant parenting idea.

"Faith, I'll give you $2.00 to get the sock out of the toilet."

"$2 bucks? OK!"

And, just like that, she grabbed the plastic bag, and de-sockified the toilet. While smiling!

"Two dollars please!"

Best two bucks I ever spent.

Boo!

IMG_1018
Originally uploaded by Robin's Nest3

Faith has a pirate (Elizabeth Swann), and Blake was a cowboy (mostly because he wouldn't put on the pumpkin, the bee, or the lion costumes). Halloween was crazy in our neighbourhood this year. Warm evening + no rain = tonne o' kids. We ran out of candy for the first time ever. As Faith said, "My bag was overflowing!"