Family Life – Page 36 – a hippie with a minivan

today…

I know… awful title eh?

We had a long day today… Got up this morning with Simon at 6am… he actually got up an hour late this morning… I was debating on whether to go to the Montreal Homelearners group meeting today and finally decided that I should… Last night I salted some cabbage to wilt it a bit and this morning I made rice paper wraps with that and crumbled Thai peanut burger and spicy peanut sauce that was last night’s supper… omg they turned out amazing!!

We finally got out at 9:15 and headed to get some breakfast and then headed toward Montreal…
The group was small and we had fun but I am not sure if I am going to be going back that often… the parking in that area is horrendous and is just going to get worse with snow on the way… and the group is looking to get more structured whereas I would rather be more about the kids just getting together with other kids and the parents talking… If I am willing to drive to Montreal I think that I would rather use that driving time to visit other friends that will fulfill my need of just getting together…

After that was done, we ran to the car in the rain and then I drove around a bit and then met Simon near his work and then headed for the mall to pick up a few things that we needed and get some supper…

I feel funny that each time I go get Sushi at the mall I am met by our old landlady (where my mom and I lived until I moved out) who works there… and she gives me 50% discount… Sushi is expensive… but I did save 15$…

Anyway that was our day… It feels so good to be sitting down finally..

eta… a great thing that came out of today was to get a mama to try my wrap instead of her snugli…. she loved it! I always love to share the comfortable babywearing love…

So what is new…

Well… first… I have signed up for NanBloPoMo so I have the challenge of writing a blog post per day for the whole month… So expect a lot of posts in the next 30 days…

what I realized though is that I haven’t given an update in a while…

The boys are on a video game kick at the moment… Lego Batman, Lego Starwars and Lego Indiana Jones are big hits along with Spore… Colin is more into the Lego games while Xavier is having SO much fun creating creatures and spaceships in spore and having his creatures live and evolve.. and I have to admit that I am enjoying that game also…

Colin has also been having fun on Starfall… not long ago he did not catch how to use a mouse nor did he have much interest in the computer… not like Xavier who was great with the mouse at 2… but when he caught on, he caught on quickly and frequently asks to play the “letter game”… and well he is good at it also… I have a feeling that he will be reading sooner than later…and the funny thing I find is that as much as Xavier wants to hide that he knows more than we think… he corrects Colin and reads things for him when he thinks we are not listening…

As I have said before though… he doesn’t like to show off what he knows if he doesn’t think that he can do it according to his own standards… So I have a feeling that he will not admit that he can read, or sit down with a book until he is certain that he can… yes… I am admitting that Xavier rarely, or almost never looks at books… but as I have been learning myself… books are not the only places where words exist and they have plenty of time to fall in love with books…

Another thing is that Xavier and Colin are fighting a lot less… they play together a lot more often, and make up scenarios, plan things and talk about things… they are not just brothers but they are also friends…

And Khéna… well he is growing and changing and becoming such a little man… I am realizing everyday that we no longer have a “baby” in the house… he follows his brothers everywhere, wants to have everything like them…but he also plays by himself a lot and has been doing a lot of pretend play… he loves to take care of his “bibi” (baby) and walks her around the house in a stroller and brings her to me to nurse… it is so cute! he is starting to talk a lot more and using more words to communicate everyday… he is such a little sponge…

halloween candy…

So I have been asked by a few people what we do for halloween and the candy…

well.. what we did this year… and will most likely do every year is that we went Trick or Treating quite early after supper and went around the neighbourhood to the little places that we like to see…

Then, when the boys were getting a bit tired we got home and quickly went through it…

All of the candy that they can’t eat went into a big bowl… In exchange I got some treats that they could have…and then we opened our lights and gave away all of the candy (along with some glow sticks/bracelets that I bought) to the ToT’ers that came to our home…

The boys had a blast opening the door and giving the candy and the glow sticks away…

They still get treats and sugar rushes that they don’t get often without eating anything that I don’t want them to eat, or that they are allergic to…

Halloween pics…

I love halloween…

The crisp air, the kids all dressed up, the sound of the leaves and actually seeing the people that live in your neighborhood… Some of the homes have amazing decorations and some are quite simple but inviting…

Simon took the day off and after I ran a few errands we sat down to carve the pumpkin… Xavier couldn’t handle the texture but he did try…

Simon finished the rest while Xavier drew the face he wanted us to carve….

I carved it out and he was really happy with the result…it looked quite like the pic he drew…

So… Xavier was young Indiana Jones

Colin was Spiderman

and Khéna was supposed to be Buzz Lightyear but did not appreciate having a costume on…

So Simon found an alternative… a ‘Hulk” PJ shirt that the boys have…

and once he saw his brothers go up to the doors… he wanted to go too and had a blast!!!

Here are two of my favourite houses to visit…

questions, questions, questions…

The older the kids get the more questions come out… and the older the get the more patience they have to listen to the answer and the more understanding they have get the answer…

Today in the car Xavier asked about where power comes from then learned the meaning and differences of solar power, wind power, nuclear power and hydro power. When I “quizzed” him after to see if he was listening/understood… he had retained all of them…

Then at supper at the table Simon and I were talking about those stupid HFCS commercials… Simon said “4 sylables… prop-a-gan-da” then Xavier asked what a sylable was and we explained with a few examples and he understood right away…

It is just amazing how much kids can learn so quickly… especially when they are interested…

The cutest question today though was

“Mama… how do you know all of this?”

to which I answered… “well you learn something new everyday… so the older you get the more you know”…

so he answered… “wow… you must be really old”