Merry Christmas!

Much to our surprise, Violet decided, at the last minute (not to mention when she was wearing a mismatched outfit and hadn't had a bath) that she LOVED Santa and wanted nothing more than to hug him, sit on his lap and get a photo. Until this fateful evening at the mall, she screamed in terror at the sight of any Santa, real or fake. Go figure. When she said, "I want to see Santa" we took off her plaid dress (which she insisted on wearing over another complete outfit which thankfully matched) , ran fingers through her hair which was slightly tangled due to all the food that had collected in it and gave her a spit wash on her face - and look at the result! Our gorgeous kid :) She waled right up to Santa and gave him a hug and they had a big chat. I think it helped that she had spoken to Santa (Jon really) on the phone recently.

We had a wonderful Christmas. We had a Christmas Eve dinner with our friends Mike and Diana and their daughter Annika as well as Kym, our friend who lives across the street and her son Jeremy. It was very laid back and a lot of fun - the kids were really having a great time and we even captured Violet on video playing a christmas song for everyone.

Christmas Day and the following three were quiet and restful (as much as they can be with an almost 3 year old). We watched movies and read books and went for walks. We also cooked and ate a LOT. We splurged on a free-range turkey this year and it was the best we have ever had - wow it was good!

Violet had a wonderful christmas day - she was so spoiled by everyone and with the exception of about 20 minutes of demon child time when she realized just how many presents she might get to open, she was an angel and had a really fun time. The highlight of Violet's Christmas, other than eating chocolate for breakfast, was getting her own scissors! She actually got two pairs, one from Santa (Grandma and Grandpa) in her stocking and another from Santa (Mom and Dad) in her new craft box which was filled with all kinds of new things to make a mess with! She is having a great time creating.

She has also had great joy out of trying on all the new clothes, shoes and dress up clothes she received and playing with all her new toys.

We have lots of photos and video which I will upload soon. Promise... :)

A couple of notes about our big girl. She has officially given up napping, though she still has a quiet time and does sometimes fall asleep during it or in the car/stroller but we avoid this like the plague as she is so hard to get to bed if she snoozes. V is also fully potty trained now, we felt that she would have been trained sooner had the house not been full of construction activity but once all of that quieted down, she was home more and within a couple of days was fully trained. She is even making it through the night or getting up to pee in the night if she has to. Finally, we had high hopes of getting rid of her soosie (pacifer) by giving it to Santa so he could then give it to the babies who really need soosies, however at the last minute, Violet decided that Santa could have them all but one... We are still working on that one :)

Happy New Year with love from the Gleeds

Halloween

This was really Violet's first proper Halloween, even though its the third one she has been around for. We were out of town on the last two halloween's and V was just to young to care - not this year! Wow she had a lot of fun! She wanted to be an orange cat but decided last minute that she actually wanted to be a butterfly - that worked for us as finding an orange cat costume was not really panning out and there was NO WAY possible that one of us was going to try and make one :) We ended up with a Thumbelina costume as that was the one that was closest to her majesty's wishes. She has no idea who Thumbelina is but when she saw it she was thrilled and decided she was a butterfly princess which is why she added her tiara to the emsemble.

We visited the pumpkin patch with our friends Mike and Diana and their baby girl Annicka. We brought home four pumpkins and of course Jon had fun trying to come up with something that would wow the kids trick or treating (those who complimented the pumpkins got a lot of candy I noticed :).

Violet went trick or treating with her buddy Jeremy from across the street and she figured out how great trick or treating was pretty quickly! We went to about 10 houses on our street then handed out candy for a while - Violet the princess butterfly tried to scare the kids by saying boo at the door - she got a lot of laughs instead... Just after 8 we headed to the neighbouthood bonfire - it was great but we didn't stay too long as Ms. V was over tired and having a sugar crash so we packed her up in the stroller and let her fall asleep as her parents enjoyed a Halloween stroll on as it was a beautiful evening .

Here are more pics and videos from this month - be sure to check out Violet's solo rendition of itsy bitsy spider on ukulele (thank you Mike :) and the tap dancing (thank you Nanny :).

You may also notice some pics of Jon and Christine and other random shots from Violet's world - she loves taking pictures these days - her is one of her best shots - yes Mom Violet takes better photos than you :) - sorry had to do it!

Grandma and Grandpa are coming here next week for a visit - Violet is very excited. We are looking forward to the visit and madly trying to get the house in order with the reno still ongoing - as long as we can move our bed out of the living room we will be quite happy :) We are actually almost there and things are looking great!

Love to all!

Summer 09 and some of the Fall...

Once again, we've been away from the blog for so long....

It's been and interesting, busy and wonderful few months with renovations, vacations, lots of work and a lot of fun watching Violet blossom into a little girl.


To catch you up, here are photos and videos from July, August and September with a special album for our PEI trip.


We have been under renovations since the end of May and the end is in sight. We now have a new bedroom, bathroom, office, laundry, deck, storage area and improved guest accommodations with a proper room and bathroom - no more raised throne for those of you who have stayed with us before! The finishing process has started so we are very excited and hope to move in soon! Jon has been working closely with our friend and contractor, Mike, to make most of the decisions and come up with solutions to things along the way. We are very much looking forward to having our living room back (currently its our bedroom...) and doing a REALLY thorough clean of the house when it all comes back together.


Violet and I spent about a week and a half in PEI. It was wonderful to have some family time with everyone but we really missed Grampy. A lot of people went out of their way to spend time with us and we really appreciated getting to have some great visits at the cottage. Baby Haylee is one of Violet's favourite people she fed her a bottle on a couple of occasions which was incredibly cute, especially when Haylee started grabbing her nose. Now every time she sees a baby she asks me if she can feed it.



We also spent a week in Vancouver after going to our friends Lisa and Mark's wedding. We had a lot of beach time and walked many many miles exploring the city.

Its hard to describe the number of changes that Violet has made over the past couple of months. Here are the ones that really stand out to us:

- potty training - we are getting there! We have not pushed the issues, though we have been VERY tempted, and happily Violet decided that she is ready and uses the potty every day now. She is still in pull ups but once this reno is behind us we are going to try and take the next step and go big girl pants most of the time! What we find truly incredible is that when she uses the potty, she now wipes her own bum, pulls up her own pants, pours the pee into the toilet, washes and dries her own hands and of course makes an announcement to anyone and everyone available of her accomplishments.
- language - she just wants to use every word possible. V's sentences (I mean paragraphs- the girl is a little long-winded :) have become complex, inflected and almost always end in a question or a simple -why? She has uttered the odd swear word unfortunately. The strange thing is that she seems to get that they are bad words and only asks..."why did you say f--- mommy?" but make no mistake, she wants a good answer to that question. We don't think of ourselves as potty mouths but let's just say we have learned out lesson, I think!
- play - she is pretending and using her imagination so much. Its often embellishing adventures that she has read or watched on shows like Dora (oh yeah and she has watched sooooo much tv due to the reno - we are currently deprogramming her with great success :)
- girlyness - ok its nature. There is no question in my mind! Violet looks at things and calls them boys or girls depending on what colour they are. Good luck getting a blue item of clothing on her these days )unless of course its a girly blue - that's ok) When they didn't have the fleece sweater we wanted to buy her in in her size in pink, we eventually decided on 'chocolate' colour instead. It's still a battle everytime we want her to wear it. A pink vest helps. Oh yeah and there's the shoe thing - she is an addict. Her current favourites are sparkly gold mary janes ( I thought they would be just for dress up...)
- general independence - we are building more time into the day for Violet to do thing by herself. She likes to choose her own clothes (wow we've had some interesting combos!) but will usually settle for choosing one of 2 things that mommy or daddy offer her. She dresses and undresses herself, usually without mishap. She also wants to try things like buttering her own bread, making a sandwich and pouring her drink.
- favourite things - dancing (more than ever), playing with other kids, all things princess, chocolate (I don't want that treat daddy - I want chocolate!), babies (real and play), books, swimming, cooking and the beach.

Its a rainy saturday morning in Victoria. We had had a spectacular summer and fall and it appears we now have to pay our dues for the rainy season - we're ok with it I guess. This weekend we are getting Violet an orange cat costume, visiting the pumpkin patch and getting her some new rubber boots (her feet have bloomed to size 9!) and getting the house in order - sort of.

We've moved the blog in hopes of making it faster and easier to do updates... wish us luck :)

Happy Canada Day!

We had a 'birthday party' for Canada today at Matt and Liz's house. Our hosts indulged Violet's current fixation (yes its serious - first thing she wants in the morning and last thing at night) on birthday parties by getting everyone to sing happy birthday to Canada when the Canada Flag cake was served.

Violet is awfully hard to keep up with these days - she is counting (to somewhere around 16 - those teens mess with her head), learning her letters and numbers (early days with these), 'reading', running, jumping and using her little imagination in ways that surprise us all the time.

She is really starting to pretend a lot and role play real life - LOTS of time is spent going shopping, having tea (and of course birthday) parties, reenacting or making up Dora episodes. We do feel that her love of Dora (a little less lately) may make her a little bit of a drama queen - no laughing out there! She often comes out with things like 'oh no mommy/daddy the baby can't find his mommy, what are we gonna do? We have to help him" This is of course followed by a lot of excited gibberish that we try to stay out of until the baby is rescued/finds his mommy/gets foods etc.

Our little gal turns 2 and a half next week - incredible how fast its happening.

Oh yeah and she NEVER stops talking! Her two favourite words are "I want":)

Pics from Saltspring visit...

This video is called 'You'll never find your sandcastle now" another Dora reference to Swiper the sneaky fox who is always swiping Dora's stuff.... this is at Mount Doug beach which is one of Violet's favourite places to get naked and play in the dirt. See the photo below for the full monty visual...

Tough Day tough girl

Poor Violet had a rough day today. Not only does she have a cold (still) which has her face covered in green goo most of the time. She also got her finger caught in a heavy door hinge - pretty traumatic- she was helped along by smarties and now has a very purple finger that will definitely lose its nail. ouch!

Oh yes and then she capped it all off with a tumble down the stairs ending in a face plant (that will probably leave her with a shiner) at the bottom... double ouch

Of course she's fine, I think her parents are a little worse for wear though.

Chatterbox

We had a great little getaway for my 34th birthday to a cabin on the beach about an hour from Victoria. The weather ranged from amazing warm and sunny to full on rain storm which just made it all the more fun :)





Guess who can stay in the cold water longest?








Here is a video of Violet at the dinner table having some polite conversation for my birthday dinner - a bit long but pretty cute (her parents think anyway).

We have entered the princess stage of Violet's life - not sure how but all of a sudden she wants to wear only dresses (called princess dresses) and loves anything pink. Today I took her for a little treat to a specialty bakery and told her she could have any treat she wanted. She picked the girliest thing in the place - a raspberry truffle meringue - bright pink and very pretty - lucky for me it was only 75 cents.

Though she loves everything girly and in addition to the clothes also requires jewellery with her outfitts as well as just the right colour ponytail holder or clip - she loves nothing more than throwing on a pair of rubber boots with that outfit and getting it good and dirty.

We are starting our renovation on June 1st - but apparently there is some initial demolition about to begin on tuesday - wish us luck!

Nanny's visit

Delinquent once again - here are some photos and videos from Nanny's visit last month. We had mom here for almost 2 weeks. Needless to say Violet was spoiled a LOT - Mom's excuse is that she now has to spoil Violet for herself and my dad :) At this point, Violet says 'Nanny buy it for me" in reference to basically anything she owns - particularly clothes but even things like her pull ups.

We have had a tough week with our girl - she is so moody! Let's hope this is not what 2 is going to be going forward. She is so Jekyl and Hyde that we are a little scared of her right now...

Jon is off on a boyz camping weekend - hope they stay warm. I'm sure the beer will help (and the cord of wood they have loaded into Mike's van!)

These are pics from a recent 'nature walk' - one of our favourite things to do on a weekend.