Christmas

Esmé, Tyne, and I spent an early Christmas in Alberta with my parents.  The girls had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa.

Baking with Grandma

Playing lots of games

Reading bedtime stories... with all three household pets, including the "big gog" (dog) that Tyne was a little afraid of.

Opening Christmas presents with their cousins.

And of course, playing in Alberta snow.

Meanwhile....

Kyle spent a couple weeks in Santa Monica at the American Film Market (AFM) landing a great sales company for their film...

... meeting with film folk, watching movie screenings...

...and generally just looking cool.

But he did get home in time to take part in lots family Christmas fun!

Vandusen Festival of Lights (terrible picture, but it was fun!)

Roasting Marshmallows quickly before the fire on the terrible wood we bought died out.  (That's basically just a firestarter that's burning.)

Esmé had the chance to see the Nutcracker ballet twice! (Once with her school and once with Grandma.) This led to a slight obsession with nutcrackers.

So of course she had to write a letter to ask Santa for a nutcracker.

Which we mailed to the North Pole.

And on Christmas morning... surprise! Santa (and Canadian Tire) totally came through.  Nutcracker went everywhere with Esmé for about 3 weeks (including Kindergarten show and tell) until she began to realize that nutcrackers are a little boring when they don't magically come to life and prance around on tiptoe and save you from giant mice.

This was the first that Tyne understood Christmas and of course she developed a keen interest in presents.

We hope you all had a magical marvellous holiday!

Happy Birthday Tyne!

Tyne turned two a little over a month ago and has become a little fireball full of giggles and tantrums and opinions and cuddles and personality.  Her favourite thing to do is make us laugh.  She also loves to sing and has a better pitch than the rest of our family combined.  She has a loud voice that she uses often, yet is very sensitive and gets upset easily over the smallest things (leading her to use her loud voice again.)  She's still quite clingy to me, especially around strangers, yet is so chatty at home and uses her large vocabulary to make herself heard.  She continues to hate most necessities in life, like clothes, teeth brushing, shampoo, seat belts, etc. and protests passionately.  But she loves her big sister to bits and is always following and copying Esmé.  Tyne's learned a few of her colours and letters (especially "T for Tyne!") and is counting to 20.  I really don't know where she learned to count since I haven't taught her that!  She's such an auditory learner that she picks up the things she hears around her so quickly.  It's really amazing how much she's learned in just one year.

For her birthday we went to Maplewood Farm to visit the animals.  

 The rabbits were pretty scary, sitting there half asleep in their cuddly white fur.  It took Tyne a bit of encouragement to finally touch them.  But she did.  Once.  For half a second.

The goats got some nice petting from Esmé, while Tyne kept her distance and told them firmly to not eat her coat.  But Tyne did enjoy seeing all the animals and was especially fascinated by the baby cow who was "eating it's mama's bum".  (We did explain that the baby cow was actually drinking it's mama's milk.)

After the farm we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Auntie Elaine's house.

Happy Birthday Esmé

Esmé has a slight obsession with undersea life and the cartoon Octonauts.  She will spout out random sea creature facts and is fascinated by the most obscure animals such as sea pigs and leafy sea dragons.  Her favourite animal is not the cute dolphin or colourful clownfish... it's the colossal squid.  I love this funny gal of mine.

So of course it was only fitting that she have an undersea Octonauts birthday party!

Octonauts cake by Auntie Gillian

Undersea picnic set up

The Kelp Forest

Fish bubbles

Sea foam cupcakes

Goodie bags

 Sea star piñata 

(held by a brave Papa whose main focus was to not to get hit in the you-know-what)

 The little guppies

Opening presents with the blue whale

Cake cutting with Grandma Mary

_____________________________________________________________________

For Halloween Esmé designed and created her own robot costume, but not just any robot, an Octobot!

Her inspiration:

I should mention that the reason there are no Halloween pictures of Tyne is because she refused to put on a costume.  She is so particular about clothes that we have to devise daily strategies to get her into pants, let alone a weird costume.

Long Time No Post

Dear Blog,
I'd like to apologize for not spending more time with you.  I've thought about you a lot but just haven't had the time to sit down with you.  Since my last post, my days have been packed with things like attending births as a doula, going on family summer outings, full time parenting while Kyle worked many hours at Bard on the Beach and went on several trips to LA, Toronto, and New York to meet with film folk, then in September increasing my work hours as a paramedic, shuttling Esme to piano and soccer practice, half-homeschooling Esme's first year of kindergarten, meeting the demands of my strong-willed yet highly sensitive toddler, and generally keeping the members of our household alive and semi-well fed.

And now go get yourself a snack and pull up a chair, here comes the epic photo and video dump...

In February Tyne learned to walk!

And dance.

Then grew longer hair...

 ... which means lots of bedhead.

We spent Mother's Day at the great-grandparent's house.

And celebrated Esmé's preschool graduation.

(Are you proud Auntie Gillian?)

Esmé learned how to bowl... kind of.

And we played Kiddie Pool Baseball in our front yard.

Along with some other front yard fun.

We also spent many summer days on the beach.

And went to the fair.

 (And Esmé lost her first tooth!!)

(Teacups!)

Esmé tried her hand at busking.

(Bach Minuet at Stanley Park)

And Tyne worked on her mud pies.

On rainy days we rehearsed "Frozen" scenes.

And caught up on our reading.

Then Esmé had her first day of Kindergarten.

 (And lost another tooth!)

And we started our home learning activities.

(Making geometric shapes with grapes and toothpicks.  

But Tyne ate a bunch of the grapes so we had to resort to kidney beans.)

Esmé started soccer.

And Tyne got potty trained and learned to insists on dressing herself.

(Potty training while discovering clothes means a new interest in underwear.)

(Tyne getting increasingly frustrated that she can't fit more than 3 coats on at one time.  

Toddler life is a roller coaster of emotions.)

Esmé became cultured and attended her first Shakespeare show at Bard on the Beach.  Of course it was A Midsummer Night's Dream starring her papa as Puck.

(She was totally enthralled and loved every minute of it.)

And the best part of it all has been watching these two lovelies become best friends.

(Brushing each other's teeth)

 (Esmé likes to read books to Tyne)

 (Tyne feeding Esmé an entire bowl of chilli while Esmé carries on as if it's normal.)

Okay, Blog, we are almost caught up.  I hope you feel loved again.  I have a birthday post coming in a few days so stay tuned.