First Christmas

Fooey at Albus's school Christmas concert.

CJ at same. He was highly entertained by a two-year-old "sitting" next to us, and the candy wrapper that the child dropped became CJ's favourite toy for about 45 minutes. The concert ran a little longer than expected.

Santa visited our hotel in Toronto this past weekend. All three children made requests. Sadly, none asked for world peace. Jack Layton (not pictured) also happened by and got his picture taken with Santa (or vice versa). We weren't close enough to hear his wish list.

Wow! Both big kids are suddenly reading real chapter books! Bedtime at the hotel was shockingly peaceful as a result.

Supper out on our last night in Toronto.

Albus had green tea ice cream.

Aunt Fiona, Paul, and Grandma Alice brave the snow in downtown Toronto.

What We Did This Morning

As soon as we'd gotten the kids off to school, Fooey demanded we go outside to play in the snow. The very first thing she did outside was flop down and make a snow angel.

CJ loved being pulled around in the sled. Plus it kept his fingers and toes from getting too wet and cold.

Then we came inside for hot chocolate and baked up a batch of Christmas cookies. Fooey was a big helper.

Cut it.

Pop it on the tray.

Frost it (pink and orange).

Eat.

Play

I haven't made a habit of letting the kids read the blog, but last night Albus had a go at reading the text around the photo blog. So this is a picture of Albus looking at a picture of Albus. It's got "meta" all over it. He got a kick out of the pretend names.


Fooey hosts a regular Tuesday morning playdate ("guest" and "host" are two concepts we continue to work on, with some burgeoning success). These two three-year-olds were too darling for words this morning, so nothing but a photo would do. Here, they are "camping," and it's bedtime. Fooey appears to be reading her friend a bedtime story. (This is the kind of thing they do often--on their last playdate, they were playing that they were "friends who read books together." My melting heart!).

And here is something else they've taken to doing: playing with Playmobil people and animals and a bit of furniture on the two chairs before the big windows in the living-room. They each set up house on a chair, so as to prevent a crawling and nosy certain little brother from demolishing the fun. Here, Fooey mugs for the camera while CJ sees his chance to sneak in for some loot.

Something We All Love

Here is something we all love to do: read. Apple-Apple this morning at the kitchen counter. I could hardly drag her away to eat breakfast and get dressed.


And again tonight, after supper. Home reading.

While she was doing that, Albus was doing this, also in the kitchen, by the back door. From his favourite series of Oxford books featuring characters called Biff, Kipper, and Chip. No glasses. They got stepped on at recess and, though wearable, need to be fixed.

Fooey, so pleased to have her picture taken, as I came upstairs to get a shot of CJ in his bath.

This was CJ last night. He was so ready for bedtime. We love him in pink.

This was CJ mere moments ago in his bubble bath. And, yup, I'm getting a kick out of taking these pictures.

First

Here's what I worked on today: trying to take better photos! I tried a variety of settings on our camera, with limited success (and much confusion and pressing of wrong buttons). Then the kids and I fooled around with fun effects applied to the photos afterward. Below, see our/their best results. Best should be in quotation marks. It's all relative.

Before.




After. By Apple-Apple.



Before.

After. By Albus. (He thought it looked like art.)

Before.

After. By Mama. Honestly, is it better? I'd publish more from this impressive series if I had more patience and hadn't already wasted the better part of my evening on this questionable project ...