28 degrees at the Springridge Spring Festival....

Catching up....

I might as well get caught up on the blog in one post.

1. After Jen and James left, we set up the sandbox and filled it with sand. We have had a few nice days since then and have been able to test it out. She was a bit hesitant at first to allow the sand to go on her feet, but it wasn't long before there was sand in her hair and on the lawn. Paige and Amy really went crazy with the sand flinging action.

2. Paige continued to amaze me this week at gymnastics. In my opinion, she did an amazing job on the balance beam. I can see her translating her gymnastics skills into her daily activities as well. Today as we walked down the street after a rainstorm, she walked in a straight line on the edge of the curb as if she were up on the beam.

3. I notice her acting more and more like a toddler. For instance, instead of calmly holding my hand as we walk through the recreation center, she now runs everywhere. And if we walk by the trees in the center of the building she has to run and make sure she runs across all 4 of the grates at the bottom of the trees.

4. We went to Belle's 1st birthday party on the weekend. Here is a picture of Paige with her 2 friends Belle, and Ella. Unfortunately the birthday girl is giving the shifty eye.

5. On the walk we just went on that I mentioned above, Paige did 2 faceplants when she diverted her attention from her balance beam walking. (the curbs go down and then up at driveways) I said she was good on the beam, but only on even horizontal ones! She scraped the palms of her hands and got her coat and pants all dirty. They went straight into the wash at home!

6. Paige is saying bye to everything! On the walk... "bye worm", at the shoe store "bye blue box, bye orange box", at home when we go downstairs "bye ball, bye toys, bye....." until she can't see anything to say goodbye to anymore.

7. As she improves her language skills she has begun to stutter more. She is trying so hard to talk about everything in her world and as a result ends up saying "ya" hundreds of times a day.... "ya ya ya ya slide ya ya ya ya big slide Amy Katharine" (I went to the big slide with Amy and Katharine). That sort of thing. She uses "ya" as a filler to create a complete more complex thought. She does it a lot when she is trying to explain something or ask for something tricky. All you can do is sit and wait till she is finished and then try to say it back in a normal sentence!

Interesting.....

Easter weekend...

Jen and James came to visit over the Easter weekend. The visits are never long enough, but we had tons of fun and they were able to see how much Paige has grown. Although the weather was sunny, it was tainted with a bitter cold wind all week. We managed to do a couple of outdoor activities such as the Bronte Creek farm, which is literally a 3 minute drive from our house. Surprisingly, we have never been there before. Now we can't wait to go there in the summer for a picnic.


Here's a picture of my cousins Jack and Tyler with Paige at Easter Sunday dinner. (Hair styled by Mike!):


You can see Paige's prized Dora Easter basket in the picture. She carried that thing around all night long. It had chocolates, hair elastics and plastic eggs in it. By this point she had smeared chocolate cake all over her dress, specifically the crisp white ribbon.

The day after Easter was Jen's 26th birthday. For the day we went to Niagara Falls and stopped at Rainforest cafe for lunch. We then went to the arcade where Paige had her first ever carousel ride. She also went on a spiderman car ride.

As part of Jen's birthday present we all (minus Paige of course) went to dinner in Toronto and then went to see Sound of Music. I would highly highly recommend it. The singing was phenomenal and the entire production was unbelievable. While we were out, Paige stayed with her grandparents for a sleepover.

Paige seems to understand that they had to go home to see Abby. She says she misses them and that they are at Abby's house. Awww :( We all miss having them here.

Pre-Easter photo shoot....

Woops...miscommunication...

No time for blogging...too many shows to catch up on, and cleaning to start before Jen and James arrive on Thursday!

But time for a quick story. So Paige and I were leaving the grocery store and had just returned the cart and were walking to the car. "Drive?"Paige says. "Ya, mommy is going to drive", I say. "Paige drive?", she says. "Hahah, ya, Paige can drive", I say. I go to put her in her carseat. "DRIVE DRIVE! waahhhhhhh!" starts to cry. I then realize I have just told her she can drive, but she means she wants to sit in the kids shopping cart with the steering wheel. She has sat in it once before, but since there are only 2 of them, we often don't see it in the store. When she saw it outside she was obviously excited.

Ok...so weird....

As I was changing Paige's diaper yesterday morning Paige says "Max and Ruby". I know there is a kids show called Max and Ruby so I assumed that she had watched it with my dad as he babysat her the night before. Then as we came upstairs from breakfast she said, "mommy? max and ruby?" so I put the show on for her. As she was watching it I emailed my dad to tell him that I could see they must have watched the show because now she is talking about something she has never talked about before. No, he says, they only watched Dora. I then asked Mike, did you watch max and ruby last night? No, he says, but as they were wandering around Rogers video last weekend and she was looking at the kids videos he pointed it out.

What is up with that!!?? How on earth would she think to ask for that?

Gymnastics....

Gymnastics turned out to be a hit! It was at a real gym club with all of the big kid equipment as well as little kid stuff like a ball pit, train tunnel, and treehouse. When we got there Paige obviously assumed that the stuff she recognized as fun would be what we would be doing. So she made a beeline for the little kid equipment. When we found our class and I told her we had a class with an instructor she was fine to stay with the group. I think that swimming lessons has helped her to understand this concept. After doing a "warm up" we started to follow a circuit that was laid out involving climbing up inclines, across balance beams, jumping on little trampolines and through tunnels. She did a "handstand" and swung on the parallel bars. There was also a super long trampoline, maybe 10 meters or so, and very narrow. The objective was to do jump steps all the way across it. I haven't been on a trampoline in so long and I tell ya, I wanted to go nuts! But I held Paige's hand and she kind of galloped across and then let go of my hand and ran yelling across it until she fell. I think what helped keep the class in line, was that in the middle of the class they got a chance to play with the little kid equipment for 5 minutes or so to get that out of their system before starting up with the next circuit. At the end of the class we chased hula hoops around and did a warm down song. I think it was fun, and I hope she continues to cooperate in the class. The only thing I can see happening is her remembering certain things she didn't like doing the first time, and refusing to do them the second class. She went along with the parallel bars swing at first since she didn't know what it was, but then she didn't like it.

On Demand....

Paige has been asking to watch a "Dora eggs" episode. She has a Dora easter egg book and has gotten confused thinking she can watch it on TV I think. Anyway, she has asked for it a couple of times before and I have had to tell her, no that is only a book! But now that it is a new month the Dora episodes have changed on the On Demand channel, and there is now an Easter egg hunt episode! This morning she asked for Dora eggs, and as she asked, I found it in the listing. Too funny. This just adds to Paige's perspective of the world, thinking more and more that you can get anything you want on demand. (like at the store when she sees something she wants..."ya cart, ya home").

What they remember....

Isn't it odd what toddlers remember? I guess I'd remember more too if I was having daily naps and sleeping for 10 hours every night. Anyway, Paige said these 4 things yesterday:

1. "Mike is Daddy's friend" (just blurted this out as we were driving in the car. She met Mike's friend Mike about 3 weeks ago or so and talks about him every so often, even this morning in her highchair)

2. While we were at the pool we ran into some people from our Thursday playgroup. When they left I told her to say bye to the little girl. At home during lunch she says randomly, "Bye Ruby!"

3. As we were in the pool Paige suddenly points to the instructor, "Jo!". The instructor told us her name a week and a half ago, and I briefly mentioned to Paige in the morning that we would be seeing her at the pool. She obviously completely understood me and remembered.

4. I asked Paige who would be coming to visit in 9 days. "James....and Booze (Jen). Ya...Booze plane".

She's also starting to understand sequences of events. Yesterday she wanted me to put a diaper on her baby, but I was trying to get her to come downstairs for breakfast. I told her first breakfast, then diaper. As soon as we came back upstairs she went straight to the diaper.

In addition to remembering all of these things, Paige talked non-stop all day long, right through when she was supposed to be napping until she finally crashed in her stroller on our walk. I have never heard her chatting away so much. While we were at the grocery store she suddenly squealed with delight when she saw a display of "Bear Paw" cookies while we were waiting in line. She wasn't excited about the actual food, but rather the different colours of the boxes. As we waited in line she recited the colours of the boxes: "Yellow, mm HMM, blue, mmHMM, ya red, mmHMM. purple mmHMM. She tends to tack a lot of "ya"s in front of her words, and often an "mmHMM" after.