Fall 2012

It's Fall, and with it the business of school!  Connor started Junior Kindergarten in September. Part of the Ontario kindergarten program, the school near us offers it part-time from 8:40-11:15, 5 days a week (all schools are phased into full-time offerings). The school is just two blocks away, and I've been walking Connor to school and back each day.

Connor of course did not want to go.I made the mistake of telling Connor that I would be at home while he is at school. He cried right away and all the way to school! But after a couple of days the crying stopped. However, he does need to believe that I am waiting outside the school for him. Every day he says,"Mom, wait right outside of the school". And I tell him, yes, I will be right outside. Of course I actually do go home, but what he doesn't know means he won't cry.

After 4 weeks of school, Connor seems to be doing well. He is very vocal to the teacher and often tells the teacher about his family. There is one Chinese Mandarin-speaking boy named Andrew that lives a couple of blocks from us in an apartment building; they walk in the same direction as us to go home so we have been walking home together. His mom takes him to school, and they have a 4-month old. The boy Andrew does not speak much English, as his parents speak Mandarin at home. Andrew and Connor are friends and they play together at  school - they play 'dragon' at the playground when they have outside time at school, they do puzzles together at school, and we had a playdate with Andrew at the playground just outside Andrew's apartment. It was great to see the two little boys running around together laughing and playing!

Connor has homework every Friday. Here he is doing his very first assignment.

Liam is growing so fast! Two weeks ago he was able to pull and slither across the room pretty quickly, and now he can actually crawl. He can also pull himself up to a standing position. Liam's two top front teeth are growing in now; they are clearly visible. So everything he picks up goes into his mouth.

Ever curious, we really have to keep an eye on where he is and what he's trying to pick up. He doesn't have the fine dexterity to pick up small objects like Lego yet, but we are nervous about all the tiny little Lego pieces that Connor has, and so we have tried to ban Lego playing in the living room. I also took a refresher course on emergency response for choking infants and toddlers. Liam is still pretty easy to take care of, however we cannot leave him alone in a room anymore - once he knows he's alone, he starts crying.

I signed up for a family music class at Gymboree, so that the three of us can have a family activity together. The best thing about Gymboree is their play area, which is set with padded mats and climbing structures that are safe for little ones. Below are a couple of pics from the Gymboree play area.

That's all for now! It took me three days to finish this post! It's now the Thanksgiving long weekend, so Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Older and wiser 1 year 4 months!

Hi everyone! Hope you are well! I have been doing great. This is a photo of me from today, Mommy said "Look how much taller you are than the back of the chair now!" Yes, I have grown a little bit bigger I guess, lots of my shirts are now a wee bit too short. I have busy playing and learning things, which keeps Mommy and Daddy quite busy as well, as I always like to have them around me, especially Mommy. Yes, I am all 'take, take take' but so far I can get away with that without any problem.

I can walk really well now, and I really like to run, too! I like to take Mommy's hand and take her to where I want to play. It's great to be able to do that! I started to walk without having to hold on to anything around 14 months. My girl friend Ellie also walked at 14 months. Now that I can walk, I love being able to stroll around wherever I want, especially when we go out to the park or to the mall. Here's a picture of me from mid-October - very happy to be outside!



I have a set of flash cards with pictures of items like a cat. If they ask me "Where's the cat?" I can find the cat card for them. I can find the cat, dog, keys, baby, apple, fish, teddy bear, shoes. For some reason they find this very cool. Speaking of shoes, I love wearing shoes. I wear them in the house every day. My favourite pair is one that squeaks! If I'm not wearing them like to take my shoes and put them in my drawer.

On Saturdays Mommy and Daddy take me to a class at Gymboree, which is lots of fun. I was scared the first time and I was REALLY scared of Gymbo the clown, but I think I am finally used to seeing him and have stopped freaking out everytime the clown kisses me (Mom says to tell you it's a clown puppet). The class has a lot of physical activity play items set up, like slides and climbing gyms. Each class they set it up a little bit differently. Then there are some group activities, where all us toddlers push a big soft log, or we sit on the log, or we sit around and the lady there sings the bubble song and blows out all these bubbles. I learned how to hit the floor with both my hands when they say "Thunder", and when we call "Gymbooooo" for Gymbo to come play, I knock on the floor. Mommy and Daddy have fun there too, once Mom climbed into one of the big soft barrels and rolled around a bit.

Here's a few photos from Gymboree.


I still have swimming classes on Sundays. I am not really into swimming these days. A few weeks ago, Mommy dunked me underwater and I got really scared. And then the next week she did it AGAIN. I did NOT like that, and now I'm always scared that she will do it again. I only have fun when I get to play with the swim toys.

I still really like my Baby Einstein videos, and I like to read, too. My favourite for a while was my Old MacDonald Had a Barn Flip Book. I would make Mommy or Daddy read it over and over and over.

I am still resisting eating whatever food they try to give me. I like being a baby and drinking my milk and eating cookies and Cheerios! But I will eat honeydew, bananas, peas, cream of mushroom soup with ABC pastas, and PoPo gives me rice noodles for lunch every day and I really like that.

One of the things I'm trying to learn right now is going down a step. Anytime I can, I like to step up on an item and step off the item. The big people all pay a lot of attention to me when I do this. They keep saying I'm like a little monkey.

I am also very fascinated with the inside of the refrigerator. So many things to look at in there! I took out a bottle of hot sauce yesterday and hid it, they still have not found it. Hee hee.

Well that's all for now, I'll try not to take so long for another update!