Wednesday July 2, 2008

We hope everyone had a Happy Canada Day. We certainly enjoyed our time. First here is a photo of Robbie at 7 months, incase you are curious, his shirt is perfect for the weekend. It says "The World needs more Canadians" :-)

Robbie at 7 months is a one man wrecking crew. I have had 2 boys and 1 girl and in my unprofessional opinion I will say that boys are unquestionably different than girls. Both have their charm, but one thing boys have over girls is BUSY, BUSY, BUSY and anyone who's met Charlotte knows she is no slouch either. Robbie can now crawl all the way down the hall, and if I put anything with wheels or even better wheels and a siren he is off. He'll pass 100 books to get to the one car or fire truck. Today he was having a very fussy moment, nothing I did could calm him down. However as soon as he spotted a lawn mower outside that was it... he would even crank his neck completely sideways to see it disappear around the corner.

Now onto our Canada Day weekend. If you haven't figured it out, we live on a very special street. Somedays it feels like we have time travelled back 50 or so years to a time when neighbours were your best friends. Well our street not only lives, and socializes together - - they also vacation together, a good portion of our street have cottages in a place called Bridgewater. This year Charlotte, Robbie and I all set up camp in one of the bedrooms at the Bowers. Thank goodness, because I couldn't imagine trying to tent with two babies. During the weekend I was wondering if it all seemed strange to a 2 year old when we would walk from cottage to cottage seeing the same faces that we see on the street. The funniest thing for me is that our netorious Billy is always found in or near his garage drinking beer, well lets say Bridgewater is no different. Just look for the garage and you'll find Billy, beer in hand.

It is very hard to explain the togetherness that occurs in Bridgewater during the Canada weekend. Everyone invites their family and friends and after years of this it seems everyone knows everyone, and we have a wonderful time. The weekend is always packed with things to do including a childrens parade, a horse ride, lip sync, fire works and of course celebratory drinks that last well into the evening. Here are some photos of our weekend.

Hmmm, suddenly the little potty I dreaded has become a very good friend. We had to pull off the road for a potty break.

Jumping in the lake... what a difference from last year.
Yes the potty seems to come everywhere these days.
Emma and Charlotte all dressed up for the parade.
Us, with Janelle about to get on the wagon ride.

Friday June 27th, 2008

As promised here is some video of Robbie learning to crawl. It is a pretty short video of him, but you get the idea.

I do have a cute story about Charlotte. Today we were on the hike that starts at the end of the street. It is a great hike, long enough that the dog can burn of some steam and short enough that Charlotte can walk the entire way. Since I carry Robbie on my back, Charlotte has to carry her beloved bunny in her back pack. Well today she stopped half way through the walk, took the bunny out of the back pack. She started bouncing and saying "Shhhh, Shhhh, Shhhh" then she suddenly sat down, lifted her shirt and started breast feeding the bunny. It was so cute, and of course my camera was at home.

Here are some photo's from our hike last week

Wednesday June 25, 2008

We have just finished having guests with us. My friend Heidi travelled here from Ontario with her two daughters, Adelaide and Marley. It has been a year since our last visit, and it was so fabulous to see them all. But was it ever crazy, two 2 year olds and 2 babies can sure keep us hopping. Between the potty training, the breast feeding, the snacks, the meals, the hair pulling (Charlotte to Adelaide of course, and perhaps me to myself) I am amazed we could even get loaded into the car. But we did! We visited the zoo, there were no monkeys however as the pictures will show we brought the monkeys too the zoo. We had a marshmellow roast, played in the back yard and even managed to get to Queensland beach. Not bad since they only arrived on Sunday and left today.

So here are the photos from the zoo... hmmm no pictures of animals you say? Well Charlotte and Addie were impressed by the bear, and the wolves, they also thought watching the rabbits eat carrots was neat, and did enjoy feeding the ducks... but then I made a very innocent comment "Charlotte, Go through a rock in that puddle".

It all started so innocently...

Now a little SPLASHING... so what, we'll wash their pants.
Oh, okay MARCHING now...
Oh and JUMPING...

Here there should be a picture of Adelaid actually LAYING in the puddle but I was laughing so hard I couldn't even hold my camera.

The after shot...

Later that evening, after Heidi and I were able to recover from the drive home with 4 over tired, hungry and muddy children, we had a fire and a marshmellow roast.



Adelaide loves the water, so we went down to Queensland beach so the kids could play in the water. Like I said Addie loves the water and couldn't get enough of the waves... Charlotte is a bit more standoffish of the water. I try introduce her to these things but hey I'm a prairie girl who's scared of the ocean, and I suspect some of my fear rubs off on her. She still had fun, just a different sort of fun that's all.
The wave was chasing her...
Come on mom, lets run...
About to be swallowed by a wave...
Friends...
Making sure Honey Bunny was warm and dry...

There were two other babies with us over these last few days... Robbie and Marley. The poor little ones... they were dragged here and there, and were really just spectators to all the action. However Robbie has learned to army crawl very well and can get anywhere he wants to. He was a little rascal at the beach eating seaweed and sand like crazy.

Hope you enjoyed all the photos. There is no rest for the weary, as soon as we got home from the airport we spent all afternoon in the calm and controled water of the backyard sprinkler.

Kids are in bed, now I am going to get some sleep, then tomorrow I will tackle the house work. We've not seen much of Mike, he was home from Montreal, but has left again for Newfoundland. He should be back after the long weekend.

Thursday June 19, 2008

Lordy Lordy Where do I start??? What a crazy couple of days!!!

As I've mentioned in the blog before, potty training hasn't really started. Sure Charlotte has shown some signs of readiness AND has also shown some big resistance to the whole idea. Then came Sunday and Charlotte proudly showed Mike her diaper, which she took off all on her own. Thank goodness it was only wet...

The the best advice I've ever recieved was while I was pregnant with James, a mom of 6 kids (3 of whom I used to coach) told me not to worry about anything UNTIL it gets quiet. On Monday as Mike and I were sucking back gallons of coffee (kids are still waking at 5:30) I realized that Charlotte not in the room and was being very quite. The Sherlock Holmes in me went to investigate. And sure enough Charlotte was under her bed attempting to remove her diaper... which was NOT just wet!!! WHOA!!! Sound the alarm, we need to address this and NOW!!! So I promptly cancelled our plans and Mike simply smiled on his way to work as he left me to tackle this on my own. Oh shall I re-phrase, not on my own, I have a 6 month old who is learning to crawl, and is very curious in things like... lets say THE POTTY!!!

On our previous attempts at potty training, my heart was not in it. I can be honest and I don't mind changing diapers. But now we were on a mission. Ideally I wanted to get Charlotte to go straight into the big potty. I'm not a fan of the whole idea of cleaning the little potty BUT the big potty hadn't worked yet, so we needed a new method. I had heard to put them on the potty infront of the TV, or to use something like Smarties as insentive a.k.a bribes. I pumped Charlotte full of liquid, and sat her infront of the TV on the dreaded little potty. At this point I should mention, that I would have preferred to move the TV into the bathroom, instead of the bathroom into the TV room. Anyway, we started off with a BANG, and only had one accident all day. Charlotte thought all the attention and Smarties were fabulous, and was trying so hard to put every last thing she could muster into the potty. Mike came home that day to the "Poo Poo Parade" heading down he hallway. He said he was thankful to be heading to Montreal the next day.

We don't need to go into all the fine details of the following days, but Charlotte is doing really well. We continue to have accidents, but they are rare. I must also mention that potty training has tested my patience like nothing else ever has. Not only must you stay optimistic, but you need to be enthusiastic at the result, no matter how small, or if it was the 100th false alarm. Plus at this point if Robbie needs food, or nap, at the same time Charlotte needs to use the potty, well the potty gets priority, so it has been hard on him as well. A mistake I already know I've made, is the Smarties. Not only is potty training stressful for everyone, but now I have a 2 yearold strung out on sugar who needs to sit still. Yeah right! Where we have gone right, is that Mike is away. It sounds mean, and of course this puts more on my plate, but this way we know everything she is hearing is consistent, not to mention Mike does a pathetic Poo Poo Parade. LOL.

Watching Little Mermaid


Early morning pee... nope potty is still not allowed in the bathroom.

The potty goes where ever we do. By the way, it is not me who thinks Charlotte should be naked to use the potty. We compromised on the hat, and sun screen.

Now onto the other HUGE news in the Hudson house. Robbie is crawling. Yes that is right, poor Robbie only gets 2nd page coverage on one of the biggest milestones of his first year. He is shaky and wobbly but he did it this afternoon. I promise to get some video. I do think that Charlotte's potty training helped him learn to crawl. Never has he had so much freedom on the floor. He can rock and roll without the threat of being pummelled by Charlotte (oh that reminds me I've not posted about the attempted drowning we had last week... I'll have to write that one out later). But it wasn't all roses, having Charlotte sitting on the potty usually meant I was with her, and not there to catch Robbie as he did face plant after face plant, and some of them must have really hurt. But he perservered and will soon be going 100 miles and hour. Watch out world, here comes Robbie!
Not only did Robbie learn to crawl today, but he also pushed himself up from laying into a sit. Like I said it really has been quite the week.
Just hanging with Colonel while Charlotte takes a nap.

Sunday June 15, 2008

Happy Father's Day... and for the first time that I can remember Mike actually got to spend fathers day with his family. Normally he works weekends so we tend to mark days like Father's day, Mother's day, etc on different days. To make it even more unusual, Mike was home ALL weekend. This made Saturday a bit more like fathers day as we let daddy sleep in (the kids are getting up at 5:30am lately). Charlotte also gave daddy a present (gardening things) and a home-made card. She was excited to give it to him, and couldn't understand why we needed to wait... so we didn't wait! In the afternoon we went to Greek Fest, we sang, we danced and we ate, we also had a couple trips through the bouncey castle (what fun that was!!). On our way home I asked Charlotte what her favorite part was... she said the Ice Cream, of course!

Today we made a brunch for daddy, and went on a hike. Charlotte is getting very good at our hike, and Robbie doesn't seem to mind the backpack so hopefully we can do some more hiking this summer. And just so everyone knows, we almost had no pictures of Father's Day as Mike was teasing me about taking too many photos and told me to leave the camera at home. Ahhh, but addictions can not be broken that easily and I got these photos as we were all at Billy's before supper.

Oh, this daughter of ours is so independent! not to mention strong!
Hanging out at Billy's
This was not Mike's present, although I'm sure he wishes it was. This is Billy's tractor.


Over the last couple of days I've been doing some painting in Robbie's room, here is what I've done.

All for now, I'd like to just mention quickly a big congrats to our friends the Prime's and their new baby daughter Agenais.

Friday June 13, 2008

I've added 3 videos to our web library. One is of Charlotte dancing, another is Robbie in his Jolly Jumper, and a third is Robbie trying to figure out how crawling works. It won't take him much longer now to firure it out.

Just double click the icon. You can either choose the last 3 videos or choose slide show to see them all again...

Videos

Monday June 9th, 2008

Yes this is a continuation of the post below. I thought I would share our day with you, as I thought it was pretty funny... and a bit barbaric. One of Mike's players is a Lobster fisherman. As a thank you to Mike he gave us 2 of the biggest Lobsters I have ever seen. They were HUGE! Hmmm my only question was if this was a joke, giving a prairie girl and an englishman live lobster. So our morning started with the question... what do we do with these things. Mike of course wanted to let them loose in the ocean and I wanted someone to magically provide me a delicious bowl of lobster chowder. But first we needed to show Charlotte the lobster. This was a unique experience she was quite intrigued but wouldn't get too close. At one point as I was holding one of them, it started slapping it's tail. Well I thought Mike was going to jump out of his skin, Charlotte was also shocked by this, and my reaction was natural... I threw the lobster! Thankfully it landed in the sink... whew! Eventually we had a pot of boiling water and the task was up to me to become a crustacaen killer! Oh yeah... just throw it into the pot! Easier said than done... I am about to kill something and my children are going to witness it! After gettng my self psyched up (this took longer than you would think) and having Mike take the kids into the other room we were cooking the lobster. That was easy, now how do we get the meat. Again, is this a joke? Did this man know that we would not have the proper tools to eat lobster! Anyway it was messy, ungracefull, and Charlotte loved it... we now have a pile of lobster meat. Tomorrow I will make chowder!

Here is the best photo I could get of Charlotte and the lobster. The lobster is in the bottom left hand corner.

Here are pictures of our hike today.

Monday June 9th, 2008

Summer has definitly arrived. The sun has been shining, and there have been days (like today) when it is HOT! This means that the Hudson's get to do what they like to do best... be outside. It is a bit trickier than last year as we need to respect Robbie's morning nap, but as soon as he is awake we head outdoors. Here are some photos of what we've been up to.

Robbie is getting better at sitting each and every day.
Although it looks liek a choke hold, Charlotte is trying to be nice...
A goalie in the making??
Playing in the sand box... this was short lived as Robbie kept trying to eat the sand.
Our new (2nd hand) boat swing... Row Row Row

Oh my son's favorite place... apart from the 24 hour milk buffet.
Charlotte reading one of my child hood favorites, The Mud Puddle by Robert Munsch. Oh and showing off her new bangs.
Robbie in the baby swing at the park.
Swinging together.

We have also been crazy busy with play dates. Infact Sunday was one of our first days without a playdate. At first I welcomed the 'quiet' day at home, but by supper hour things were in a tizzy. For some strange reason our children have been waking at 5am, and neither of them will go back to bed no matter how hard we try. On Sunday morning I was feeling pretty crappy, the early mornings are killing me and compound that with the fact that Robbie is still waking 1 or 2 times a night. Needless to say I was dying for a nap, so I decided to try and put Robbie down for his afternoon at the same time a Charlotte. It worked like a charm, Charlotte was napping, Robbie was napping and I got a welcomed 45 minute snooze! But then Robbie woke up, without getting enough sleep and was very grumbly. He is normally so pleasant that I was thrown off. This then woke Charlotte up, and we now have two sleep deprived, and quite fragile kids... but I was rested I could handle it - Right? After playing a very delicate balancing act and trying to keep things calm in the house, 4:30 came, this meant I had to get supper started (no Pizza Hut in Prospect Bay). At one point I had to put Robbie down and he was hysterical, but Charlotte was quite happily playing. That was until she slipped and stubbed her toe - HARD. The scream occured at the exact same time that I was trying to drain grease off of the beef, and Whoala! a grease fire, which of course set off the smoke detector. If you would have walked in at that moment you would have thought I lost complete control... Fire, Smoke, Alarm, Two babies crying and one with a bleedng toe! Ooooh why is there no Pizza Hut in Prospect Bay?!?!? Anyway it all calmed down as quickly as it started. But if I were a smoker, I probably would have needed one at that moment.

So despite the 5 minutes of chaos that I just shared life has been ticking along nicely. Each day Robbie is sitting better, and he is really wanting to crawl. Charlotte is being as cute as ever, she loves to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep. Her play group is now over for the summer, which is too bad, but I am thinking it might be nice to get her in swimming lessons at the lake near by... but we will see about that, summer is such a busy time for Mike. Mike will be travelling lots, but as for me, Charlotte and Robbie, we have no big plans until the end of the month, when Heidi comes for a visit.

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