Peekaboo Daddy!

The babies had melted cheese on toast today and chopped banana for dessert. In fact, if you look closely at Colin's hand you'll see a tiny piece of toast ready for consumption! This marks the second day of non-pureed food for lunch and I think they're tolerating it quite well... although Colin apparently finds the whole chewing business too much effort to be sustained for more than a few mouthfuls. Happily, we still have the bottle for back-up so everyone goes down for their naps with a full tummy. Tomorrow we might try some well cooked pasta.

Babies In The Pool

It was a sweltering day yesterday, too hot for our daily walk in the stoller, so we bought a wading pool and spent half an hour playing in the water. It was hit, as the pictures will attest!




This week is supposed to have humidexes in the 40s, so I think the pool will come in handy again. We took them to the public wading pool the other day, and they really enjoyed that too, but this was very convenient - no swimming diapers required!

Babies Playing at 9.5 Months

We're Back!

To see the pictures in more detail, you can click on them!




After another gruelling road trip - this one spread out over two days but nowhere near less painful - and 10 days spent moving into our new home, we're back! You can see a few "Before & After" pictures of the new place in some older posts, but we worked extremely hard to get the Master Bedroom, Nursery and Playroom painted, set-up and completely ready. The den and the two upstairs bathrooms are also done, and our hired professional painter is finishing the downstairs by the end of next week so we can finally put all our furniture in its place.

We're thrilled with the results, which could not have been accomplished without the dedicated help of Ken (our realtor aka Painter Extraordinaire), Martin, Phil, Cindy and my parents. We were still putting up bedroom lamps at midnight the night before we left to pick up the babies in Shediac, but we got 'er done! There were some pretty major glitches along the way (no phone for four days, no stove for a week and a half, no electrician despite booking him in February, etc); I guess no move is without them.

In any case, we were anxious to see the babies again, although I can say the feeling wasn't mutual! They so enjoyed their time with Grammy, Aunt Pinie, Aunt Jane and a host of cottage neighbours that they cried when they saw us. Jane has some wonderful pictures of them splashing in the creek and in their Canada Day finery which she'll send to me so I can post a few here. We are so grateful for everyone's help in taking care of our brood. Although it was hard to leave them for 10 days, I knew they were in loving and capable hands. We also know the move simply could not have been done with three babies underfoot.

So, expect to see more of us again now that things are sorta back to normal. We can hardly wait to make use of our big, grassy back yard and the abundant raspberry and black currant bushes we have out there, as well as the rhubarb and strawberry patches. In fact, Edward is going to make a strawberry and rhubarb crisp for dessert tonight - my parents are bringing the main course. We get to try out our new stove, and I already used our huge new-to-us washer this afternoon. The dryer is the clothesline for the baby clothes for the moment. It's all looking up! It's good to be back.

More Pictures!

You can click on the individual pictures to "bigify" them!



Keith enjoying his bottle



Kith enjoying his blueberries courtesy of Grampy (is there a theme here? Keith loves food!)



The sea view from the cottage. We saw some wonderful sunsets from this window.

Before & After: Master Bedroom

This room took the most amount of work. We had to remove the thick, plush carpet (there was hardwood underneath), remove the wallpaper - which came off in tiny pieces of course - paint the walls and the blue trim (three coats!) and put up new curtains (thanks Martin!), a closet organizer and two wall lamps. There are also two new IKEA bookcases that I lined with paper remnants. The room is a little awkward for furniture placement because it is long and narrow, but I think we came up with a sensible layout. We're scouting for two used bed side tables/ small dressers to increase our storage space a little. The door beside the window in the second picture is our tiny but functional ensuite bathroom with a miniscule sink and a glass enclosed shower.

Before & After: Playroom

This is more of a "during" shot, as the room and trim was already painted by our realtor, Ken. As you can imagine, his help was invaluable, and he also painted a large part of the master bedroom and the nursery. I was really pleased at how well it all turned out, and we LOVE using this room already. To be able to leave toys on the floor to return to them later without tripping over each other, rocking chairs, babies and exersaucers is pretty amazing! I'm getting a few more wall coverings - I have my eye on a big Babar poster for beside the window... stay tuned.

Before & After: Nursery

In this room we: painted walls and trim, removed curtains, changed light and switch plates and set-up as close as possible to their original nursery. We were lucky to have help putting together the IKEA storage units (thanks Phil, Cindy and Martin!) - these and the ones in the playroom made 9 separate units to assemble!