Merry Christmas

Calgary

Last weekend we had an early Christmas in Calgary with Jeff's siblings and their families. Here are a few photos:

Frontal lobe dysfunction

Maren has been the definition of a toddler the past few days: disinhibited, stubborn, and unable to think things through. I am so tired that I am having trouble thinking of words. 

Yesterday she wouldn't pee in the toilet simply because we were asking her to tell us when she needed to pee, and she preferred to pee in her pants rather than do what we asked. Today we were at an art gallery Christmas party geared toward families, and even though everything was kid-friendly, somehow it was extremely hard to keep her adequately reined in. 

Jeff's attempt at a photo:

And Maren mischievously plotting her next move:

Jeff says her frontal lobes have suddenly stopped working. I agree that her executive functioning seems to be impaired, but she is a two-year-old so this might be normal :-)

Big kid

Maren is starting to seem like such a big kid. This morning we went out to breakfast for the first time in a very long time. We haven't been out to eat with her partly because we have been so worried for so long about her eating. She would never eat as much when we were at a restaurant or at someone else's house, and because she wasn't gaining weight for so long we just ate at home all the time. But yesterday Jeff suggested that we go out to breakfast today, and we did, and Maren ate fabulously. She has been off the appetite stimulant for a while, and has been eating really well, and seems to be growing and gaining weight just fine. It is a huge relief, and so nice to know that we can go out to eat and enjoy it again.

As predicted, potty training is going well except for the poop part. We have hardly had any pee accidents, but so far have had zero poops in the toilet. Not sure exactly what to do about that, but she is done with diapers, so we will just figure it out over time I'm sure.

Tonight is Maren's first night sleeping in a toddler bed – her crib with one side removed so she can get in and out on her own. We were at a birthday party yesterday for a friend who was turning two, and he was sleeping in a toddler bed, so we decided to ask Maren if she wanted to. She was super excited about it. 

Our little baby seems so grown-up, and I have to remind myself that she's only two and will seem so much more grown-up as time goes on.

Train to the spaceship

Today was a busy day filled with sledding, photos at the library, and putting together a new exercise bike (our old one stopped working). So my blog post will be short. 

Yesterday Maren was playing with some styrofoam from the exercise bike box. She lined up the foam pieces with her rocking horse and chair, and put a stuffed lemur and stuffed gibbon in separate pieces. 

She said they were taking the train to the spaceship. And then a little while later they were taking the spaceship to the science center. Jeff and I were just watching from a short distance away laughing. We can't think about it without laughing again :-)

Toilet time

Maren is toilet training. We were scared off of early potty training by the bad experience of some friends, but Maren was insisting that she wanted to pee in the potty, so we had to comply. I read a book, we got everything ready, and this is a long weekend for us, so we have three days. 

This photo is from a little over a week ago, but I think illustrates Maren's strong desire for potty training:

She was showing interest so we bought her a potty months ago, and she has had a lot of diaper free time at home. In the past couple of weeks she has peed in the potty a few times at home and at daycare. So we had no excuse for waiting, other than that in many ways it would be more convenient for us to wait. Maren has given us evidence that she is ready, has told us that she wants to pee and poop in the toilet, and has been distressed by her diapers for a while. So we decided to just go for it. We are using a three-day method, mostly following the prescribed protocol. This mostly just involves never leaving Maren alone, noticing signs of needing to pee or poop, and reminders to tell us when she needs to use the toilet. 

Based on how things are going in the first two days, I think that Maren will not have too much trouble with peeing in the toilet, but we have yet to have a successful poop. I think that part might take a while. In the meantime I guess we keep her in underwear even if there are poop accidents. It feels kind of strange, but in many ways it's not that different from diapers I suppose. Fingers crossed that this doesn't turn into a disaster!

Something fierce

First, everything is fine. I know I have been pretty good about posting at least every other week, so missing two Sundays in a row has worried some people. Fortunately, the worst that is going on around here is that I am completely losing track of time due to busyness. I keep telling Jeff that I'm going to be less busy "next week," and unfortunately next week never seems to arrive even though it's been a few weeks. But I swear that starting on Wednesday I'm going to be less busy. Unless a bunch of unexpected stuff comes up like has been happening at work the last few weeks :-)

We had an amazing Halloween with tons of decorations, so many trick-or-treaters we couldn't keep count (probably around 200 according to one estimate, based on the amount of candy that we purchased and ran out of). It was Maren's first Halloween as a trick-or-treater. She absolutely loved it. And it turns out she also loves chocolate, which we have been avoiding giving her but the jig is up.

Sadly, I don't have many pictures from Halloween. Jeff tried to take a few but I don't have those. This is kind of the best I have:

I don't know why it is coming up sideways, and I don't know how to fix it, so there it is. Maren is not wearing a shirt in this photo because she peed on it. I feel like only parents who have had toddlers can understand how she managed to pee on her shirt but not her pants (hint: it has to do with spending a lot of time wearing no pants).

Maren is absolutely hilarious lately. She has started using phrases that she hears other people use, and repeating things that other people have said. Jeff sent me a text yesterday after Maren told him that another child at daycare "Was crying something fierce." I am 100% certain that neither Jeff nor I has ever used that phrase. It is hard not to laugh.

So in the last two weeks we went from fall to winter. About a week and a half ago Jeff was raking leaves, and then yesterday and the day before Jeff and Maren went sledding. It was a very abrupt transition, but at least there was no wishy-washy time when we were unable to say whether it was fall or winter. On October 31 it was fall, then it snowed overnight and on November 1 it was winter. Life in Saskatchewan.

Breathing easy

Our house smells normal. It is such a relief to have the sewer fixed, and to know that the problem has been identified and solved. Sometimes these problems involve a lot of trial and error, fixing many smaller issues with plumbing until something finally works. But fortunately for us, we have a pretty knowledgeable plumber who figured it out fairly quickly. And it is nice to appreciate good smelling air, which we would not have thought about if we had not had this problem.

We also had new blinds installed in our bedrooms yesterday. We were using cardboard in the windows to block the light in Maren's room, but no more. It feels like such a luxury (and really, it is in many ways) to just close the blinds instead of doing a complicated cardboard/blanket-stuffing maneuver every night. Slowly but surely, the house is shaping into our home.

Maren has been loving Halloween. Parts of her temperament definitely come from Jeff - she is totally unfazed by things that would have scared me to pieces when I was little. She has been playing a ton with a severed hand, and the other day she spent about 10 minutes straight running back and forth past a motion-activated demon.

She is most definitely her father's daughter :)

Sewer

We have a likely culprit and likely fix for our sewer smell problem, and unfortunately it is not great news. We most likely have a crack in a six foot section of sewer pipe that was not updated when the rest of the sewer system was replaced, probably in the 80s. 

This section of pipe will require jackhammering of basement concrete to remove and replace. We have the work scheduled for Thursday, but until then, the smell is getting worse. 

The smell is coming up from the basement through the furnaces. We have two - one that heats the upstairs, and one that heats the downstairs. This is very common here, with our bitter cold winters. We had only been smelling the smell upstairs, so assumed it was somehow related to plumbing upstairs. But the source of the leak is right next to the upstairs furnace, so sewer gas was getting sucked right into it and coming out through the heat vents. At one point I was sure the smell was getting worse when we had the windows open, and it turned out I was right. 

So the build up of sewer gas in the basement has gotten worse, and yesterday morning we started smelling it from the downstairs heat vents. We decided to stop using the furnaces to heat the house, despite low temperatures of around 15F/-11C. We are using space heaters, and have had a fire going in the fireplace all weekend. 

We have absolutely no sewer smell with this arrangement, but we are not sure how to manage the three weekdays between now and Thursday. We can't very well keep a fire going when we aren't here during the day. Fortunately there is warmer weather in the forecast (high tomorrow 60F/16C, Tuesday 70F/21C), so hopefully we can manage all right until Thursday!

Thanksgiving

This past weekend, including today, is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada. We were fortunate to have Jeff's sister, her partner, and their four-year-old daughter visiting us for the long weekend.

With a two-year-old and a four-year-old in the house, there are many lessons to be learned about sharing. But aside from sharing-related meltdowns, Maren loved having her cousin around. They played together, coloured pictures together, and listened to stories together.

This morning we even discovered that they have matching hoodies.

We were sad to see them leave this morning, but happy to have had the visit. We are looking forward to going to Calgary in early/mid December for the three cousins on Jeff's side (ages two, three, and four) to all meet up for an early Christmas. 

It is getting to be quite crisp and cold, in the mornings especially. Today we had our first fire in our fireplace. It was lovely, and although there are many things about winter that I am not looking forward to, regular fires in the fireplace will be wonderful. 

There are some not so glorious things about living in an old house.  For example a pervasive sewer gas smell over the past week+ that we can't seem to get rid of, despite having had a plumber come and fix a likely culprit – I will write more about that once we find and fix the cause. But having a home with old house charms, like a beautiful fireplace to warm up to in the cold weather, is worth the trouble. 

Two!

Maren turned two years old! I don't really know where to start. Two years has flown by. We still call her our baby all the time, but she is absolutely a toddler now. Of course you can say something like "she'll always be our little baby," but really, truly, I often have a hard time thinking of her as being as old as she is.

At the same time, I sometimes forget how little she is. She is so verbal, talking in full sentences, that it can be hard to remember that there is an awful lot she doesn't understand because she is only two.
She knows whole songs, can recite whole poems/rhymes, and knows when we have misread something in a book, even if it is a library book that she has only heard us read a handful of times. She corrects us when we say something like "playing tag at school" when the book actually says "playing tag at the park" and the next page says "jumping rope at school." Her memory is sometimes scary.
Sometimes she rewrites song lyrics in her mind though, maybe because she prefers her version (Amy Grant, Baby, Baby):

She knows many dinosaurs, the names of just about everyone she has ever met, a few facts about space and planets, and countless other things that amaze me. I may be biased, but I really do think this kid is amazing :-)

Fall

It's possible that this past week was the last week of summer here. The past couple of days have been cold - high temperatures that require jackets. The semester started after Labour Day, and Jeff has a class that goes until 5:15 PM. So on Tuesdays and Thursdays I pick Maren up from daycare and we get a little bit of mommy-Maren time. This past Tuesday we spent some time digging in the dirt in the backyard.

The awesome hairdo is courtesy of daycare – she won't sit long enough for me to do a braid or anything like that. Looking at these photos I can see lots of leaves have already fallen off of our trees. So I guess it is getting to be fall!

I really...Lo-ove! You!

Maren and Jeff spent some time this week rehearsing their rendition of K-Ci & JoJo All My Life:

Just that part :)

End of summer

 The end of summer has been quite busy for us.  I feel like I always say something like that.  Last weekend we went to Grasslands National Park.  We stayed in a structure that is a cross between a tent and a cabin, and didn't have to bring a whole lot in the way of camping supplies – we had  beds with mattresses, and a propane barbeque to cook on.  We saw bison, prairie dogs, open prairie, and more stars than I have seen in a very long time.  It was unfortunately quite hot, so we didn't enjoy our afternoons as much as we otherwise would have, since open prairie means no trees and no shade.  But we otherwise had a very good time. The prairie dog colonies are  pretty amazing – I tried to take a video, but it doesn't do the actual experience justice.  The video makes it look like we are really far away, but actually we were able to get very close to some of the prairie dogs.

 Maren is doing a lot with language these days.  She has been using the wrong pronouns as long as she has been talking,  but yesterday she had a bit of a breakthrough with the phrase "I want."  She has been trying it out ever since, and I captured one of the more hilarious uses of the phrase on video: 

 Last night Jeff and I went on our first date where we had a babysitter put Maren to bed. It went totally fine last night – as smooth as we could have hoped. But unfortunately she woke up around 4 AM and stayed up for the day.  We are all a bit tired and at least Maren is cranky today. Unsure whether the early wake up is related to going to bed with a babysitter, but maybe. I don't think it will deter us from having future dates though, as it was pretty amazing to  have dinner and a movie alone with Jeff :-) 

Summer fun

Today Maren got a new hat and new socks. We had a little meltdown after dinner, and the only thing that saved us was letting her wear her new clothes and only her new clothes for a little while. I wanted to capture how silly and cute she looked, but as soon as I started taking pictures she wanted to see. So this is my action shot as Maren was running to look at the pictures I was taking: 

Last weekend we had a visit from Jeff's brother and his family, and Jeff's dad. 

We had an awesome time with them, visiting the museum and the science center, going to the park, and going out for ice cream. Everything is more fun with kids around – even when a meltdown ends the fun a bit early, or when you have to drag them kicking and screaming from the swings. Life with a toddler can be trying, but I also think it's a lot more fun :-)

We sold the house!

 I'm not sure whether I mentioned this before, but we moved before selling our old house. It  ended up being way more stressful than I thought it would be trying to move into this house while  also maintaining the old house and trying to sell it. We picked a terrible time. Home sales in Regina are down, there are more houses on the market than there have been in 10 years, and overall the prices  of homes is down about 10% since peaking, which happened very shortly after we bought our old house. 

 we also had problems that we did not anticipate. The basement was in worse shape than we thought, and we ended up needing to get some work done on the floor as well as getting bracing done.  The first estimate we got for getting the work done on the floor was $30,000.  There was no way we could afford that. The next estimate we got was  $2,000,  which although expensive, seemed far more reasonable than the first estimate. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and we ended up having all kinds of problems, including concrete dust  all over the house from grinding down the basement floor, and concrete in the sump pump pit.  Jeff spent so many hours cleaning and dealing with the aftermath of getting the floor fixed. It was kind of awful.

Then came the bracing on one wall.   Many homes in Regina end up getting bracing done on one or more basement walls, because the soil is volatile and  the weather is extreme.  This tends not to be good for basements and foundations of houses. We did not expect to have to get the work done, but the house was not selling and we figured that getting the work done might help the sale. We went with a reputable company, and they did  good work, but left a mess. One of the worst things they did was take a hose out of the water softener and not put it back. What ended up happening  was that water got all over the basement floor. So more cleaning for Jeff to do. It turned out that one of the guys involved in doing the work on our basement ended up getting fired because we were not the only ones to complain. They took a couple hundred dollars off, but it was a serious pain. 

 We started to worry that the house might not sell this summer, and around here it is really really hard to sell a house in the winter.   We dropped the price, twice. Then, last week: 

It was such a relief. Possession is not until the end of August,  and we sold the house for about 6% less than we bought it for. But that's fine. We wanted to move, and although it was expensive to do to so, I think it  was worth it for improved quality of life. Selling the old house is a huge weight off our shoulders, and a huge weight off financially as well.  Once possession is final, we will be able to afford  a few  things for this house that we have been holding off on but that will significantly improve  how settled we are  – a couch for the room that has no furniture for sitting on, blinds  that actually block light  for the bedrooms.  And then maybe I will actually post some photos of the new house :-)

Renegotiating sleep

Maren has been having some ups and downs. She is going through the typical toddler stuff of being upset when things don't go her way, but also not really being able to communicate exactly what she wants and/or not being able to understand why what she wants is impossible or unreasonable. Some photos of lunch yesterday - I can't remember what was upsetting, but I do recall that our attempts to console her were rejected, at least at first. 

We are also suddenly dealing with a change related to sleep. Basically, it has come down to needing someone to lay on the floor of her room, both during naps and while she is falling asleep for the night. Naps have always been inconsistent and challenging, but for a long time now nights have mostly been easy. And they still mostly are - Maren still sleeps 11-12 hours straight at night, without waking us up. 

But Friday night we had a babysitter who was to stay with Maren after bedtime so we could go out on a date - we haven't gone out for a nighttime date in almost two years. This was the second time we had this babysitter, and expected bedtime to be like normal - routine and easy. But it wasn't - 45 minutes of trying everything, Maren screaming, and then finally she went to sleep in her crib with Jeff in the room (she wouldn't even try to go to sleep in my lap, despite being obviously beyond tired). Then last night she fell asleep three times with Jeff laying on her floor, but the first two times woke up as he was sneaking out. 

We have heard that toddler sleep can be a nightmare, and are afraid of what we might be headed into, even though things are not so bad yet. Things that have worked for us in the past are not working now. I hope that this change is temporary, but I guess we will see!

Nooooooo!

 Maren suddenly has a new way of saying no. Not a new word, just a new intonation. She sounds much more grown-up and defiant when she uses this tone. She has also been having a bit of a rough time, with bad naps, inconsolable crying and tantruming, etc.  So our household has been a little bit tense as we try to figure this out, and try to help her through whatever is difficult right now. We know for sure that teething is a contributor, as she is getting  her canine teeth.  We can't be sure what else it is, other than the fact that being a toddler is terribly hard sometimes.

 As difficult as it can be on all of us, there is a lot that is still going well. Her nighttime sleep is back on track and she is regularly sleeping from 7 PM to 7 AM without interruption. This is fabulous.  And for all the hard times she has, she also has many good moments. We are lucky to have a child with a generally positive temperament. She tends to always interpret pictures of people/animals/monsters in books as smiling or laughing even when they are definitely not. There is a picture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex  about to eat a  triceratops in one of her books, and because the T Rex has its mouth wide open she thinks it is laughing.  I don't know when this will change, but for now I love it :-)

And of course a short video from this week that I captured candidly:

Pretend play

One of the most fun part of Maren at this age is the emergence of pretend play. She is verbal enough that we get to hear about what she is pretending.

Yesterday we were out in the backyard for a while and she kept pretending that she was caught in a net like Peter Rabbit when he was in Mr. McGregor's garden. This went on for maybe 10 minutes or more of doing mostly the same thing, but over time the story evolved a little bit. Here are videos that I took at the beginning, near the middle, and near the end of this particular play session:

Fun at the park

This past weekend was Canada day weekend, which means that today was a day off. Maren and I took a trip to the park this morning. She had lots of fun climbing up the steps and going down the slide by herself.

Today was my first time trying out putting Maren in a harness and detachable leash. Many people object to this practice generally, as they don't like the idea of a child being harnessed and leashed. But for me, it is becoming necessary if I want to go out with Maren alone. 

She is becoming more physically capable, and can now easily run away very quickly, and I can't chase after her. No matter what I do or how hard I try, I am not physically capable of keeping up with her. And since at her age no matter how much she wants to she is just not capable of doing what I ask of her or controlling her behaviour all the time, it seemed that the harness and leash option was the only option. I got one that extends to 16 feet, but that can be stopped/held at any point so that I can keep her closer to me if need be (for example on a sidewalk or close to a road). The harness is made specifically for toddlers, but the leash is a dog leash.

Trying it out today, I learned some things. First, I have to figure out exactly when to attach the detachable leash. She definitely can't do things like slide down the slide attached to a leash, but she can run away so quickly that I have to find the exact right moment to attach it. Second, she is actually really good at listening and controlling her behaviour when it's just me and her. But as soon as another family showed up at the park it was like I wasn't even there. She ran away from me so quickly that another child's grandmother had to run after her and bring her back to me. It actually terrified me how quickly she could get away, but it was also kind of reassuring that without distraction she listened really well. So I have hope that in the future things will get easier in that respect :-)

The last thing I learned is that I need to figure out how to conserve energy if I'm going to take her out alone. Even if I have her attached to me and I am not afraid of her running off, it is still exhausting to be out with her. I know that having a toddler is exhausting for anyone, but since I get physically tired out so much faster than most people it is especially difficult for me. So this I will have to figure out.

All in all not a bad experiment, and hopefully will get better with time!

Robot resurrection

 Maren is not afraid of much lately.  She is not afraid of snakes, other reptiles, monsters (including really gruesome ones in a book Jeff has), strangers,  or many other things that toddlers  are sometimes afraid of.  But there are a few things she has been terrified by. The first was static on the TV.  The second is men in the locker room who don't look at her or interact with her ( Jeff was taking her to swimming lessons). And the third is our robot vacuum.

 A couple of years ago my brother got us a Neato brand  refurbished robot vacuum.  In our old house we mainly used it to vacuum the basement, which basically we would never have done otherwise. In our new house we have a tried to  incorporate regular cleaning of the main floor, but we have had some hiccups.  First  it got stuck very near where it started,  so instead of being finished and back at its base when we got home, it  had just barely started. So we set it to go while we were home, and Maren pretty well freaked out.

 So we decided we would never do that again, I blocked off the area where it got stuck, and set it to go when we were going to be away for many hours and it would have plenty of time to finish the job. But it got stuck in a different place, and when Jeff and Maren  got home  it was stuck and making a horrible sound and Maren  freaked out again.

 Then all of a sudden it just died. We did all of the things that were suggested in the manual, we called customer service and did everything they suggested, and it simply would not turn on. We figured that it was toast,  and that Maren had lucked out  because she would never have to see it again.

 Then today, out of the blue, it turned on again.  We have no explanation, but are happy that it seems to have resurrected itself. We decided to run it while Maren  is sleeping,  so we can discover where it gets stuck  and prevent future freak out sessions. So far so good.

Happy Fathers Day

Yesterday day we celebrated with a bike ride and a picnic, then after nap time we went to our favourite ice cream shop and Maren had her first ever ice cream cone.

Thank you Jeff, for being the incredible dad, husband, and person that you are ❤️

I tried to post this last night but had some technical troubles, so I have an incredible quote from Maren from this morning. She was pushing buttons on my stair chair, and Jeff said "Maren, you can't operate the stair chair." So Maren ran over to her rocking horse and said "Mommy operate the stair chair. Maren operate the rocking horse." It was simultaneously surprising and hilarious to hear her learn the word operate so quickly and so well :-)

Summertime

We have been very much enjoying our summer time so far. The weather has been great, and there are no mosquitoes yet, so being outside is wonderful. We have been taking bike rides, walks/trike rides, scooter rides, and spending lots of time at the playgrounds and in the backyard.

My mom came to visit at the very end of May into the beginning of June, and Maren absolutely loved having her here. Yesterday she said her longest sentence ever: "Grandma push you on the swings at the turtle park." Grandma did indeed spend an amazingly long time pushing Maren on the swings at a couple of different parks, including one that has a turtle statue to play on. We all very much appreciated the visit.

Maren has not quite mastered I/me/my. Which is to say, she never says them unless we tell her to. There was one day last week when we thought she might be starting to get it, but it hasn't really sunk in. It is one of those adorable things that toddlers do – so every time she talks about herself she says you/your.

Yesterday she made up a new word: "yesternight." When you hear it, of course it makes sense – why say yesterday when you're talking about last night? I totally love hearing her say new things, and think things through, coming to a conclusion that makes sense even if it isn't quite right :-)

And of course here is a video from last week. I made popsicles by blending up a banana with some cocoa and a little bit of milk. Maren is a big fan.

Dancing Fool

Maren is super into music and dancing these days. This past week there was an arts festival in our neighborhood that involved multiple different opportunities for seeing live music outdoors. Maren absolutely loved it. On Monday she got to ride in a bike trailer behind Jeff for the first time as we went the six or eight blocks to the park where music was happening that day. She refused to take off her bike helmet, and just kept dancing in her toddler way helmet and all.

Another video from the same day:

On Saturday we spent some time in the morning at a street fair that was just a few blocks up from our house, and Maren saw bagpipes and drums for the first time. She was totally enthralled. Later in the afternoon we went to a kids stage, and she heard fiddle music for the first time. She basically did not stop dancing for their entire set :-)

Still unpacking

We have now been living in our new house for a month. We continue to be more and more settled, but it still seems like every extra minute is spent unpacking. There are just a few boxes left to unpack, but all our pictures are still packed up, and deciding where to put things on the walls is going to be a huge job.

The weather has been nice, and we have been enjoying our new neighbourhood. We have been out for "walks," which include me taking my trike or my mobility scooter, and we have been to three different playgrounds in walking distance so far. We are loving living here, even if we haven't really gotten to relax yet since moving.

The bad news is that our old house hasn't sold yet. But it will eventually. It is a little bit stressful, but I am sure things will come together.

Maren continues to do well. She must be having a growth spurt, because she is sleeping a ton. At night she sleeps 12-13 hours straight, and naps for about an hour to an hour and a half. Although toddler life can be hard, she is in many ways about as easy as they come. And it is hilarious hearing her talk and even make jokes these days. For example today she said "Hickory dickory... Daddy! Hickory dickory... Mommy!," etc. We love life with our little kiddo :)

Hippopopamus

 We are continuing to slowly make progress on getting settled.  Earlier this week, for the first time since we moved, the kitchen counter was clear (if only briefly). We have finally installed a baby gate at the top of the stairs, which has proved to be more difficult than it should have been.  It seems like  things are always more complicated and always take more time than we plan for.  But it is definitely feeling more like home here, and most of what is left is low priority from a functional standpoint and will get done eventually :-)

 The weather here has been exceptionally nice. Yesterday and the day before it got up to about 30°C/85°F.   Yesterday and today we barbecued -  yesterday with three other families  that we are friends with, and today for the first time in our own backyard.  It is supposed to cool off but still be quite nice. Summer has finally begun :-)

And no blog post would be complete without a video of Maren:

Stair chair

We are settling into the new house, but are not really settled. The kitchen is fairly functional, and  really our day-to-day stuff is fairly functional, but there are still many boxes to unpack. The most exciting development for me this week was the installation of the stair chair lift.  I can now move freely from upstairs to downstairs and back again without completely tiring myself out.  Maren loves the stair chair, and wants to ride it up and down the stairs often (sitting on my lap of course). Here  is a video of the chair in action: 

 And because I can't help it, a video of Maren :-) 

New house

 We moved!  Things are in a bit of disarray, but fortunately Maren has been very happy. She loves the new house, so much that when I said yesterday that we were going home after a shopping trip she said "No! No home!  New house!"  I had to explain to her that the new house is home.  Just before we moved all of our furniture she spent some time exploring at the new house, and was totally delighted. Here is proof:

 Of course there is some adjusting to do – she has had a little bit of trouble falling asleep in her new room, and has been super tired. But I think overall things are going really well :-) 

Peel that banana

We are moving on Friday, and I have been sick for the past week or more. I now have a sinus infection, and have been feeling pretty terrible. So things are busy and stressful - since we are trying to sell our current house while still living in it, we are constantly cleaning. We have to do our best to make it look like no one lives here when we obviously still do. I guess that is my excuse for not blogging last week, but I have too much fun Maren material to ignore, so in spite of stress and busyness and sickness here are some fun videos and pictures :-)

Possession

On Friday we took possession of our new house. Today we dealt with the details of putting our current house on the market. The time in between has been a lot of hurrying and scurrying around to get things in motion for the new house to be ready for us when we move, and to get this house ready to sell. There has been a lot of moving stuff from the old house to the new house just to get it out of the way, and make it look like we are minimalist. We are not.

It is a busy time, but also exciting. We move in less than three weeks, and I am so happy about the new house - the extra space, the location, and how many kids around Maren's age there will be in our neighbourhood. I didn't take a single photo this week, but I will post a couple of pictures of the new house (from the real estate listing):

Now that the snow is melted everything looks a little different, and I will post more (including the inside) when we actually have our own things there!

Dancing

Just a quick  video for you tonight. Maren is a huge fan of 80s music, especially  Michael Jackson. She likes a little bit of Whitney Houston too. This is what dancing generally looks like from our physically cautious little toddler :)

Toddler life

 Sometimes life with a toddler can be challenging.  Maren has been throwing more tantrums. Sometimes she wants  to be held by daddy and daddy only for a prolonged period of time, and if Jeff sets her down she screams, but just thinking that he will set her down will start her screaming so sometimes she is screaming loudly in his face.  She is smart, and she has clear wants and desires, but sometimes she doesn't realize that her particular desire is physically impossible.

Maren wants to do more and more by herself, but she is not really capable of doing a lot of the things that she wants to do.  It can be hard watching her struggle, but it is much worse if we try to help when she doesn't want it.

Fortunately, her language is getting better and better, so she is more and more able to tell us what she wants, including when she wants help and when she doesn't.  At the same time, sometimes she asks for something and we can't or won't provide it immediately, which can lead to a tantrum. And if we do provide what she wanted  but we are maybe 20 seconds too late providing it, it is completely ruined and she doesn't want it anymore.

 It is incredible watching how much she is learning every single day, but it is hard seeing how difficult life is for her much of the time.  Being a toddler seems awfully hard.   She knows about so many things, like using the toilet, that she can't do. With teething, constantly falling down, being in a wet diaper all the time,   having tons of colds but being unable to blow her nose, etc.,  she is physically  uncomfortable a lot of the time. She wants to communicate and does her best, but sometimes we have no idea what she is trying to say. It must be terribly frustrating.

 I would say that most of the time things are pretty great though. If not most of the time, then enough of the time :-) Here are a couple of videos of recent fun times:

House

The last few weeks have been a bit challenging, partly because everyone was sick, but also because we have been working on trying to buy a house. This has been a ton of work, and has distracted me from most other things.

We like our current house, but it isn't really perfect as a long-term home. It is fairly small, close to a road that is essentially a highway (meaning we hear traffic noise), and close enough to the airport to occasionally smell jet fuel. It is open and bright, but that means that there is essentially only one space - it can feel messy unless the whole house is clean and uncluttered. At the same time, this house is very livable, and we have not had any interest in moving into a home that isn't quite what we want.

I have been obsessively checking real estate listings for the past year, and very few promising houses have come up. Then about a month ago, one was listed that almost seemed too good to be true. It is in a perfect location, right in the middle of my favourite neighbourhood - four blocks from the creek/path/park system in one direction, four blocks from groceries/shops/restaurants in the other direction, on a very quiet street, directly across from a playground and about one block from a K-8 school. It is much larger than our current house, and has much more character (built in 1919), but is structurally in better condition than any house we have seen in this city (aside from new construction). Also, it is within our price range.

We made an offer right away after seeing it, and the house passed all inspections. The one catch is that it is a two-story house, and I can't physically manage stairs multiple times per day. So after multiple construction company estimates regarding installing a home elevator and some back and forth with the bank, we had to consider other options. Putting in an elevator wasn't going to work.

But all was not lost. We looked into installing a stair chair lift, and it will work - and will be a fraction of the cost, and easily affordable. We signed papers with the bank on Friday. So we are moving!

I will post more about the house after we move, which we are planning for late April. I am so relieved to have made this work - I don't know when another house like this would have come on the market.

I can't help posting another Maren video - she is continuing to learn at a rapid pace, and amazes me almost daily. Here is her newest trick:

Fake spring

We are all feeling better compared with last weekend, although not 100% yet. It seems that Jeff was actually hit hardest with this cold, and it is the worst cold any of us have had in recent memory. Jeff and Maren both had fevers, and while Maren and I are both still coughing a little, Jeff has some nasty lung issues remaining. But we are all improving.

We are about halfway through winter semester, and winter lasts all semester long here. It won't really be until the end of April that winter is completely over and we are sure it is spring. That said, we have had a couple of "fake springs" this winter, where the highs are above freezing for several days in a row, and lots of the snow melts. We went out for a walk/trike ride today and it definitely felt like spring. We didn't even need to wear hats. But it is supposed to get much colder again soon, and probably will stay below freezing for a couple of weeks before we see any more melting.

The only picture of Maren on my phone from this week: