Friday, December 5, 2014

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.


Friday, October 17, 2014

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.