Slow week

It seems to have been a slow week on the writing front here - not really sure why. I guess not a whole lot has happened this week.

Yesterday Ginny was eating a gummy worm and bit the head off. She proudly said, "Daddy, I bit his head off." Oh yeah, that's nice. Then she asked what would happen if someones head got bit off. "Like a person's head?" I responded. Yes, she said. Now I'm all for an inquisitive mind, but I was starting to wonder if I should be worried. I replied that the person would be dead. "Oh," she said quite nonchalantly. Yes, I guess I should be worried.

The girls have been playing school a lot lately, and Jorja is always the teacher. She calls herself her Kindergarten teacher's name, Mrs. B., we'll say. And Ginny follows her around, "Mrs. B., should we do this...Mrs. B., should we do that?" They were walking up the stairs, Ginny hot on Jorja's heels, when Jorja stumbled and bumped her shin on the stairs. Without missing a beat, Ginny piped up, "Are you all right Mrs. B.?" When she gets into character, she really sticks with it.

Today at school, Jorja's class went on a 'Fall walk.' From what I can tell, this constituted walking around with a sandwich bag and filling it up with leaves. It seemed like she really had a good time though. So much so, that she and Ginny had to have their own fall walk in the backyard when she got home. Then she thought she should bring all her treasures into the house. That's exactly what we need. I ended up finding her a box to house her new leaf collection, which she was thrilled with. She then proceeded to tell me that she was recycling the box. I thought that was pretty impressive.

The weather this week has been great here. I was able to get quite a bit of stuff done in the yard. I dug up three shrubs that we didn't really like (two spades and one yellow-jacket hive later), and got the whole area along with the garden rototilled. I also had to shovel a bunch of rock and rip up some landscape fabric that wasn't really doing a whole lot. It looks pretty good now - it sure makes the yard look bigger anyway. I guess that's it for now. Later.

Freedom

This weekend we had a first since CeCe came - six hours totally kid-free. A good friend of ours offered to take our kids (all three!) for the afternoon. What a blessing. It was nice to just relax and go out for once as a couple again. We went and looked for new cell phones, got some new shoes and went for supper. It was strange not having to worry about any kids during supper. Then last night we had a sitter for the older two while we went to our small group meeting with friends from church. Such freedom.

I'm not sure if it's the transition of Jorja in Kindergarten, the impending return of me to work, or just her age, but Ginny has started acting out some of those terrible twos tantrums on a more regular basis. It's funny, because she seems older than two most of the time (with the exception of diapers). And we sort of thought she went through the terrible two stage when she was one. Not so lucky I guess. Oh well, there's plenty more changes coming to rock her little world yet in the coming months, so I'm sure it will get worse before it gets better. Let's hope there's still a bit of hair on my head by then.

Jorja is doing good at school - most days she comes home bubbling. You can tell on the days when something upsetting happened. Last week one day, three boys were getting in trouble and it seemed to bother her. Then today, another little girl was throwing sand at her on the playground at recess. And so it begins. I think she seemed to handle it fairly well. She said she asked the girl to stop, and when she wouldn't, she tried going and playing somewhere else. Maybe she'll get a bit of a tougher skin yet.

CeCe's first tooth finally broke through today. It has taken forever and given her constant grief. She actually napped well today for the first time in a while. I guess it's a little early to comment on the night yet, but here's hoping. Later.

Cantaloupe

This afternoon we dropped Jorja off at school and the rest of us went to Walmart. We needed a few groceries and it was a toss up between that and Superstore. Walmart has Dairyland yogurt, so we went there. We picked up some fruit too, including a cantaloupe. The clerk got to the cantaloupe and then proceeded to look up the code for that. They have this sort of roller at eye level with all their codes on it. I'm going to go off on a bit of a tangent here...They need to look up the code for a cantaloupe? When my sister was going to university, she worked as a cashier at Superstore. After she was hired, she came home with a big binder of produce codes that she had to memorize. She could recognize and tell me the code for vegetables that I didn't even know existed at that time - bok choy, leeks, okra - you name it, she knew the code. And she was fast. At Superstore, you were expected to ring through so many groceries per minute. I don't think Walmart has ever heard of this concept. Not only are there never enough tills open at Walmart, they are all slow. At least at Superstore, there are almost always enough tills open and the cashiers are fast. Anyway, enough of my rant. Back to today. I'm watching the cashier look up the code for cantaloupe, and she's not even looking under the C. What does she think this is? Then she rings it through as a honeydew melon. So I corrected her - cantaloupes were 50 cents cheaper (I'm still Mennonite). But this brings me to another question. Who in their 40's doesn't know what a cantaloupe is? It's not like this woman was a teenager. Oh well, we got the cantaloupe at the cantaloupe price, and all was well. Later.

True story

We're sitting at the breakfast table this morning and Jorja proceeds to tell a story about what happened in Kindergarten yesterday. Let me set the stage: every Wednesday, they have music class with another teacher in another room. They also have their own bathroom in the Kindergarten room. So yesterday Jorja had to go to the bathroom during music class. "I told Mrs. P. that I had to go to the bathroom, so she would know. Then I went back to the Kindergarten room to go pee and walked back to the music room... True story." Yes, she finished by saying true story. It's like she was telling the story of some crazy adventure that seemed unbelievable. Maybe in her mind it was, I don't know.

The weather is finally starting to get a little nicer. Yesterday afternoon I got out the hedge trimmer and carved down the cedars out front. I'd like to get rid of them completely, but we're not in a spot to do anything else with the area yet. The first two years we lived here, we kind of let them get out of control, but now they are all shorter than the house again. I had my trusty helper Ginny out there with me. She really wanted to climb the ladder with me - I could tell it was killing her. So between that and keeping her off the street, it kept me on my toes.

Jorja came home yesterday and said that fall was starting tonight at 9:00. I guess they're learning something.

The reality of the end of my parental leave is starting to set in. I've only got a bit over a month left now, and the end seems to be coming quickly. There have been days when I have been ready to go back, but now that it's happening, it's sad. This has been such a great experience and I am going to miss it. Later.

Quiet

Do you hear that? Quiet...ahh, it's a great sound. CeCe is napping and the two future Canadian Olympic Women's hockey stars are practising in the basement. They've been down there for a while now, and there hasn't been any tears, blood, screaming or fighting. Perhaps I shouldn't jinx myself.

Yesterday was Teddybear Olympics at Kindergarten. I guess the main focus in Kindergarten is fun - every teddybear came home with a gold medal.

I think the time of child-proofing the floor is upon us. CeCe likes to sit on the floor, and then after a few minutes she falls over and then rolls everywhere rather quickly. At least she's not crawling yet. Soon the gates will be back out.

Oh, I spoke too soon. There seems to be the need for a referee. Later.

Sunday school

Today was the first day of Sunday School for the year. It was also Ginny's first time ever. We had her pretty psyched up about the whole thing - she knew her teacher's name before she went in and was all excited. She did really well too - dropping her off was no issue - no tears, no nothing. It must have been stressing her a little more than she had been letting on, though. After church we went to Fuddrucker's for lunch. The girls both wanted booster seats to sit in, so we went to get some. I tried to hold Ginny's hand and all of a sudden she just freaked out. I'm talking laying down on the floor, screaming. Where did that come from? I tried to pick her up and she did the whole going limp thing - I don't know where they learn that, but it works well. I finally got her to the booster seats, and she picked one up, carried it, and screamed the whole way back to the table. The strange thing is that I wasn't even really embarrassed by it. It's funny what I person gets used to - a couple of years ago I would have been mortified, now it was like 'eh, whatever.'

Julie's parents are down for the weekend. Originally just Julie's Mom was going to come (she has tickets to the Johnny Reid concert tonight) but with the weather being as crappy as it has been and no combining going on, her Dad came too. Last night we went out for supper to Chili's. This was our free meal for the last time we were there. It was much better this time - the food was good, the service was great. When it came time for dessert, Jorja decide she was going to share with Nanny and Poppa. Well, you would swear she hadn't eaten any supper the way she dove into that chocolate cake and ice cream. Now there is one thing you should know - Nanny loves chocolate - you don't mess with her chocolate. Up until this time, I didn't really think the grandkids could do much wrong in her eyes, but Jorja crossed the line. She's laughing about it today, but last night Jorja was getting the look normally reserved for Poppa when he comes home from an auction sale. That is not a good look.

In the girls dress up clothes, they have some pompoms. On Friday before the Rider game, Jorja was pretending to be a cheerleader. I asked her if she was cheering for the riders. She replied that yes she was, and then she picked up a magic wand and said, "And if they start to lose, I'll just use this to help them win." Where was she at last year's Grey Cup game?

While Jorja was in school on Friday, Ginny and I went out by ourselves. Canadian Tire had a car seat on sale, and we are going to need a new one pretty soon. I had also told Ginny she could have a treat, so she found some gummy worms. The clerk put them in a little bag for her, and she thought she was pretty hot stuff after that. There was no getting that bag out of her hand after that. I asked her if she wanted one in the car, and she said no, she was just going to hold the bag. I had to stop at M&M after that, so when we were getting out of the car, I asked her if she wanted to leave her bag in the car. Again, the answer was no. The bag was coming in with us. After I had bought some chicken, and the clerk put it in a bag, Ginny piped up (loudly), "Look Dad! Now we both have bags!" That was the first time I heard that. Later.

Goodbye 8 minutes

Jorja went back to the eye doctor yesterday and everything was good. No internal damage, the scratch is healed, it wasn't deep enough to scar - all good.

It appears that Jorja has discovered her clock is slow. This morning she was going back and forth between her room and ours looking at the clocks. "Look Dad, yours is faster. I wish my clock was fast like yours. Can we trade?" She hasn't quite figured out that you can set a clock yet, but she knows when it's off. I guess those extra 8 minutes in the morning are gone now. Good bye to waking up at 7:08, I guess it will be 7:00 now.

We had to go to the mall this morning for a bit, and Julie let the girls walk through Ardene. They were in heaven. "Look at this necklace. Look at these earrings. I like this one. Which one do you like? Yeah, I like that one too." I knew eventually my life would come to this, I just didn't think it would be this soon. I'm really going to have to look at getting the garage insulated and heated in the not so distant future. Later.