Author: Heather

The rest of the week

Got some good news this week.  First our speech pathologist told us that if we brought Elspeth in today she would not be picked up.  Yes, she would be classified as normal!! From 12-18 month delayed to on target in 5 1/2 months.  Way to go Elspeth.  They will call us around her third birthday to double check her articulation and sound production but unless something shows up there we are d-o-n-e! I have enjoyed the playgroup but welcome having another free day.

This morning our new Early Interventionist came to the house and did a brief developmental survey on Elspeth.  In January she was borderlined delayed.  Well, not anymore.  Not in any area.  In fine motor and problem solving she ranked near the higher end of things too.  In two weeks she will be back to complete a sensory profile to make sure that we have not missed any sensory processing disorders.  I am hoping that we will have more good news and some of miss E’s quirks will be the result of lack of exposure as opposed to sensory issues.  😮

And now for some photos that show despite being woken up at between 5:30 and 6:00 each day this week (likely will disappear now that Glenn is back from his conference), we have managed to squeeze in some fun.

Hanging around while my sister skates.
The pony house is back and today Elspeth was introduced to it. This year it has a bath tub.
Crazy growing garden...with the exception of the beets and radishes that is.

 

Rainy Tuesday

We have a very happy garden again today.  I am looking forward to great things from it.  Particularly roasted potatoes with butter and chives.

Because of the rain, the girls insisted that they needed their umbrellas to walk to the bus.  It worked fine in the morning as it was a light mist.  Our trip post nap was not met with such enthusiasm by Elspeth once the rain began to pick up – didn’t even try to splash in the puddles.  Poor baby.  I think that some more walking in the rain is in order to help desensitize her.

This morning was Elspeth’s last play group.  She has really enjoyed them, as have I.  I can’t say that she has made any actual friends there but she is sharing and more aware that there are other kids around.  She has also learned to turn to stand up for herself a bit by turning to me for help when another kid does something she doesn’t like.  In honour of the last day, there was a sundae party at the end of class.  We are on a break now until the fall.

Of course Katrine had an extra curricular today (free time…who needs it?) in the form of a dance class in Markham.  Each time we go we drive past a restaurant advertising that they sell only noodles.  Ever since noticing it, Katrine has been bothering me to stop at “her restaurant”.  Boy does she love her noodles.  Today I decided to surprise them by stopping.  Even I got to eat.  Someone was thinking when they opened the place.  They carry rice noodles and clearly advertise in their menu that they can accomodate gluten free requests.  A nice and unexpected surprise (I was planning on eating when we got home).

Elspeth had some apple juice with her dinner (another treat).  I think that was the highlight of the meal for her.  I should have known better.  We get home, chat with Baba and then go upstairs to get ready for bed.  Standing in the middle of the bathroom she pees all over the floor. So in exchange for my dinner of pasta and lack of dishes to be washed coupled with my ill advised choice to allow Elspeth to have juice, I had to wash the floor and do a load of laundry.  Sigh.  I really should have known not to give her juice. 😆

 

Monday Fun

Yeah for less homework.  I am liking June.  Since Katrine didn’t have much homework we cracked open the science kit that she got for her birthday and she began excavating her dinosaur.  Think that might take a while.  As Katrine chiselled away, Elspeth started to colour in a bag that her Grammy brought her.  Me?  I continued to stitch away at Katrine’s next skating outfit.

After a quick dinner (love the new bbq) it was off to Katrine’s dance class and the park for Elspeth.  On the way back from the park, Elspeth decided that she needed to jump.  Guess all of the work at her gymnastics class is starting to pay off because she got some air.

Garden?  Well it is loving all of the sun and rain.  Everything is up with the exception of our sunflowers and beets.  We had a few radishes but I think that the local wild life has been nibbling.  Even some of my roses are out so I have been teaching Elspeth about the importance of avoiding thorns.

Down on the farm

Decided that today was the perfect day an outing to the farm. It was awesome!

We started out at the upick section in the midst of a strawberry patch.  I was expecting to be nagging the girls to pick and not eat the berries but that was not the case.  Instead, each of the girls was totally in to picking.  Katrine actually filled one of our baskets all by herself.  She walked up and down the rows searching for “the biggest, juicest berries for my lunches”.  Elspeth tried to pick a few of the berries.  They were big but most were more of a white colour than red so she got put on hide and seek duty.  “Okay sweetie can you find the big, red berry?  It has to be hiding in this plant.”  Who knew that her new found interest in hide and seek could come in handy in the middle of a field?  We have a few small berry plants in our garden and the berries are small but pretty darn sweet.  However, they are sour in comparison to how sweet and juicy the ones we picked this morning are.  Delicious.

The farm that we were at had a stay and play section as well so once we had our fill of berry picking we headed there.  What a play yard!  They had this bounce pillow.  I had never seen one before today but it was awesome. (It alone might warrant the drive back to Mount Albert sometime this summer)  It is like a roof less and side less bouncy castle whose base is buried in the ground.  You scamper up and then jump.  It was funny being able to climb on and jump right along with the girls.  Katrine got some serious air while Elspeth was happy to hold my hand and run from one end to the other until someone bounced her off her feet.

Then there were the animals to visit and haystacks to jump from.  Crazy horse swings that moved in every direction.  I know because I literally spun Katrine around in a circle.  😀   We also had to visit the playhouse, slides and spray zone before taking a ride on their train (actually a converted tractor).  The ride started out well enough but I thought that it was only going to be a quick spin but it turned out to be an actual tour of their farm.  Sounds interesting right?  Not when you can feel your youngest begin to break down halfway through the ride.  As we got off the train, I carried the screaming kicking toddler directly to the cool farm market for a slushy.  Between the slushy, some fries and a sing-song show of animatronic chickens a la Muppets, peace was restored to her world.  Elspeth’s ability to over heat is pretty amazing considering the daily temperatures that we encountered in Jiangxi last summer.  She must take after me. 😆

We capped the day off by heading to our local splashpad to cool off.  Katrine ran right in and was happily soaked in seconds.  Elspeth is still puzzling the attraction of jets shooting water into the air while buckets dump it on the ground.  I did manage to talk her into splashing in a puddle for about 5 minutes before she, miss “the water in my bath, while only tepid, is tooooo hot! Please add more cold.”, declared it cold.  What a girl.  She also refused a cooling wrap (that is the thing that looks like a balloon wrapped around my head – heavenly).  She did seem to appreciate my huge hat whether it was because of the shade it offered or the fact that she could hide underneath it I don’t know. Fun.

 

Can you believe it was a year ago?

(Well, a year ago yesterday to be exact.)

One year ago we saw our Elspeth’s face for the first time.  Her little bald head and mischevious eyes.  Our girl.  Look at her now, a year later after 10 months as an Attwood.  She has hair!!!!!!!

Oddly enough our “Stork”, the Purolateur guy who delivered the referral package last June, came to our door yesterday to drop off parts to fix our barbeque.  He remembered us which is not surprising.  I mean, how many people ask to take photos of you holding an envelope while dancing around with tears in their eyes?

Katrine’s Fun Fair

 

Do anyone of you remember school fun fairs from your public school days?  I remember running up and down the halls of the school while my parents helped to set up various activities in the gym for the next day.  Bean bag toss, ring toss, haunted house.  That kind of thing.

Each year, Katrine’s school has a Fun Fair for the kids in May.  Have I mentioned that I love the Parent Council at her school?  They rock.  Their fun fair was a bit more high tech than that of my youth.  Instead of the simple games there were jumping castles, hockey games and a DJ dance party.  There was however still the piles of junk food which the girls consumed in large quantities – popcorn, bake sale, cotton candy….MMMMMM!  The fact that it was a perfect day, being neither too hot nor too cold while still being cheerfully sunny, made it all the more fun.  Both girls fell asleep very quickly tonight inspite of all of the sugar.

Katrine’s favourite part was socializing with all of her friends and the giant dance party.

Elspeth however, loved the visiting fire truck the most which is not surprising as she has currently been putting on the dress up firehat and carting around her Fis*er Price firetruck.  She also eventually got in to the dancing.  Looks like she is break dancing doesn’t she?

Oh, our garden?  Started to grow!! Very excited.

 

Adventures in Potty Training: Part 2

I have a few sites that I follow and on one of them, the author was discussing preparing to toilet train their daughter.  She mentioned a book which talked about toilet training your child in three days and mentioned a few of the points.  No, I did not rush out and buy the book (although if we ever adopt a third who is not trained I just might do it).  Anyways, one of the highlights was to let your child run around the house without pants.  If they didn’t listen to their bodies cues then they would be covered in pee which you then had them help clean up.

SO, we entered a new phase of training – the pantless phase.  One accident inside the house and she was good when inside because there were no bottoms to contend with.  Outside was a bit harder for her because there is no way that we were letting her run around the neighbourhood, or even our backyard, without pants.  She would do things like announce that she had to pee and then take the long route to the house or, more commonly, just stand and pee then go on playing.

Needing a solution, a potty was carried everywhere we went when outside for a week.  Yes, to the park, the yard, down the street to the neighbour’s a pink, plastic kiddie toilet was carried along with a bottle of water for rinsing.  Felt a bit like an idiot at times but it seems to have paid off.  We are so proud of her that we gave her an award (she has been eyeing Katrine’s awards and fingering them lovingly so we figured that it would kill two birds with one stone – celebrate and divert attention).

Apparently I don't rinse well enough because Elspeth was constantly redoing my job. At least this phase seems to be over and I am not carrying the pinkness around anymore.

 

 

Long Weekend

And what a long weekend it was!

We had a wonderful time at Katrine’s China family reunion and then finished it off by working on the garden.  Throw in the great weather and who could ask for more….well, maybe a working bbq (but that is another post).

I love reunion weekend almost as much as Katrine.  She says that it is one of her favourite holidays.  Who can blame her?  A weekend with your China sisters and brothers (we missed a few this year. 😥   ) Throw in candy, games, a ton of swimming, giggles, teasing and even loot bags and what kid wouldn’t like it.  For us adults it is about reconnecting and seeing how everyone is doing.  These are some amazing kids I have to tell you.  Even Elspeth had a great time.  She tried hard to keep up with the big kids (who were really good with her) and was quite the ham around the adults.  Can’t wait for our next reunion with Elspeth’s China family in July!

Our garden is looking good.  Glenn and I have been talking about digging in a border for years and this year he did it.  It looks great and might even help to keep the grass at bay.  This year we are growing, well trying to, sunflowers (hoping to dry the seeds this year…unlike last year), pumpkins, white patipan squash, banana potatoes, shallots, beets, radishes, cucumbers and two types of heirloom tomatoes (too bad that I am still reacting to tomatoes or else I could make a killer salsa).  Katrine also brought home a strawberry plant last year and then we bought a few more.  They all survived the winter and a few even have some berries starting to grow.

As you know, Katrine is a big fan of gardening.  She enjoys it so much that she was thrilled when the Easter bunny brought her gardening gloves to replace her Dora pair.  This was Elspeth’s first experience in gardening.  She seemed pretty interested and helped to throw the seed potatoes into the holes, dig random holes and then move all of our row markers about.  And she did it all with a smile.  Next spring will certainly be easier when it comes to planting but nothing beats that first time spent introducing her to a new experience.

Let me finish with a request that anyone with suggestions on how to dry sunflower seeds or grow large pumpkins post them.  Those are two things that Katrine is hoping will happen with our garden this year are both are currently beyond our area of expertise.

We also have ducklings at the marsh near our house!

 

Dance exams a success!

Katrine did what might be her last set of Highland Dance exams on Friday.  She managed to pass both her Nationals and Highland exams with the highest possible award.  Very proud of her.  Now if she can apply the same amount of focus to practicing for her competitions this summer it should be interesting.