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.

Growing up so fast

at the petting zoo

Violet on the front steps

We are never without excitement and surprise these days with the things coming out of Violet's mouth. She is so funny and knows it! She has really become so much more content since her language skills have blossomed (I shouldn't have said that should I!?). Don't get me wrong, there are lots of tantrums, mostly they can be ended with a distraction (tonight it was an LED flashlight and all was forgotten), but she generally is less frustrated by everything because she can tell us what she is thinking and more importantly - what she wants!

She has started to tell us things in story form, there are lots of words in her stories that are either made up or we don't understand but she is loving having the ability to tell us about things that happened in her day. It's really fun at the end of a day to come home and ask her about her day only to get a happy earful about dance class, swimming and reading books - usually with a lot of animated hand talking included!

Catching Up...again

We have a lot to catch up on! Since Christmas, we have been busy with lots of things, sad and happy.

As you can see from these pics, Violet still loves to be in the kitchen - she 'cooks' something everyday. We had a system going for a while where she had her spices that she played with and that seemed to keep her happy but now it seems to take every messy ingredient in the kitchen to make her 'cooking' a success. She has started to wash all the vegetables for dinner - she will spend a good half an hour at the sink washing anything she can get her hands on.

Here is a picture from her first day at dance class - she LOVES it.



We celebrated the New Year with friends and Violet was the perfect party animal - stayed up past her bedtime eating junk food and dancing and collapsed in bed without any fuss when she was totally partied out. We were able to stay out past our bedtime too as she slept away in Matt and Liz's spare room until the pots and pans started banging at midnight (a west coast thing I think - everybody goes outside at midnight to bang on pots and pans and scream and shout!!??) when we bundled her up to take her home to her own bed.

Two of my pals from university came to Victoria for a visit in early January - Alicia was on one of her west coast adventures from Toronto and Renee, Jarod and Sam came to visit on their way back to White Rock from Tofino. It was a short but fun visit - the boys kindly went on a little pub crawl one night to give us girls some time on our own. Aren't they sweet :) Violet is a few months older than Sam - they are very cute together and have a lot of fun playing. She asked for baby Sam for a week after they left.



We had a lot of worry in the early days of the new year trying to get an understanding of dad's diagnosis and what it really meant. We thought we were just getting our heads around it when he was taken from us so suddenly. Everyone is doing ok I think. We miss dad terribly and worry about each other a lot. I don't think it is really real for anyone yet. Mom is coming for a visit next month which we are really looking forward to.

We had a pared down birthday for Violet this year, we were thinking of having a party for all her little friends at a rec centre but with all that we had on the go, we decided on a smaller gathering with a few people who spend the most time with Violet and would want to celebrate the day with her. Even though it was a pared down event, Violet had a fantastic time - a few friends, helium balloons and a cake totally make a party for a two year old!

Here is a link to some photos and videos from her birthday. Violets Birthday Album

Note the Elmo cake which was baked by her mother and decorated by her father - we are very proud and are already planning the cake for birthday #3... that plan involves ordering a cake from a bakery!

Here is Violet's big girl bed which she has been in for a couple of weeks now. She LOVES her bed and loves the freedom of getting up when she is ready too. We have had a lot of early mornings that started with a toddler staring us in the face - delighted to be waking us up in person.



This is Violet and her buddies TJ and Taite going for a ride in the wagon around the neighbourhood. They chatter away with each other - its very cute. This trip also included their favourite babies.


A little diddy that Violet put together for you all... You wouldn't know it from this video but her language skills have just exploded over the past weeks. Its really fun to see her experimenting with bigger, more challenging words and longer phrases. Some of her favourite things to say at the moment are... no (obviously - she is 2) but her no is usually in a phrase like 'no mommy I do it self' or 'no doggy no doggy'

A recent favourite of Jon's is 'I go upstairs wake up mommy now' (evil grin included)
A few other favs that she uses all the time are - 'no way dad', 'dink a waya (drink of water) pease', 'I done now' and of course "I wan watch (insert favourite show of the day - Elmo, A Aygo (Diego) or gabba gabba) now pease" - this one is often repeasted at increasing volume and pitch until her parents find a distraction or give in. Happily she has also started saying 'yes' instead of grunting 'em'....



Still writing... The last quick updates - we have had plans drawn up to add an extension to our house for a master suite - just finally deciding if we have to gumption to build it! Jon is doing lots of painting and really doing some beautiful work. Work is good for me - like most businesses, we have had some setbacks due to the economic times but are rallying and planning to be busy in 2009.

Love to all! (If there is still anyone out there... :)

Dearest Grampy

I've been trying to find the words to write about my dad. Every time I try I just can't seem to get further than a few sentences. I've decided today is the day and I am going to post whatever I can manage to get down and hope it does justice to the wonderful man that he was.

After a short battle with cancer, he died on January 11th. Dad was diagnosed just after Christmas and was only in the hospital for 2 weeks. He was so strong and positive about everything and he was so grateful for the good care that he received. I don't know how he found the strength to be so amazing as he was poked and prodded and on the receiving end of bad news on so many days. But he was and I was so incredibly proud of him for that.

I wish I could have been there while he was in hospital, to help take care of him. I would have been there if any of us had known that he would be taken so quickly. I am forever grateful to my brothers who were on the front lines of everything from receiving devastating news to taking care of any need Dad had to taking all the phone calls from concerned friends and family and making the final arrangements. And of course for being there now with Mom.

It still does not seem real and we are so heartbroken to have lost him at such a young age. He was only 60.

Violet's grampy is gone but will never be forgotten. The short time that Violet and grampy had together had a lasting impact and I truly hope we can help her remember him. He died exactly 2 years after Violet was born and now Grampy and Violet have a special date to share when we can celebrate both of them each year.

If you didn't know my dad you truly missed out. He was a special person who spent his life giving of himself to other people and because of that he had many, many friends. He was king of the pranks, he loved his family so much and was incredibly proud of his 3 grandchildren, he was my mom's love and friend for more than 35 years and he was a kid at heart.

Violet, Jon and I spent about a week in PEI with my family and have some wonderful memories of the time we all had together even though saying goodbye to my dad was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I know he is looking out for us now and he would have been amazed and proud to see the incredible turnout of 1300 people at his wake. He would have laughed and been delighted at seeing 3 of his pallbearers wearing their RCMP red serge and at the police escort for his funeral procession that stopped traffic.

There is so much more to say and I eventually hope to find the words to say it. We all miss you so much Dad.