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Leah started and finished one of her masterpieces this morning while hanging out in her booster seat.

She carefully choose between her two colour options (I need to buy some more food colouring) and intently applied the paint to the side of the paper that corresponded with which hand she was using at that moment to hold her paintbrush.

Voila! Another great piece to adorn our fridge until the newest creation is released.

Life with a toddler definitely keeps you on your toes. Leah can communicate somewhat but I don’t always understand exactly what she wants all the time. Throughout the process, when I understand, I have been trying to give her what she wants when it is appropriate and saying no when appropriate as well. Sometimes it is a direct clash of will while other times redirection and distraction work wonderfully. I don’t want Leah to get whatever she wants because of our fear of an impending, loud, passionate temper tantrum. I don’t want to get in the habit of saying no just because of my selfishness either. So we are trying to walk the balance.

As I was trying to get some chores done downstairs, I took Leah with me and she noticed her stroller in our laundry room. She rarely rides in the stroller anymore but still seems to have a fondness for it. She walked over to it and starting doing her ‘I want it’ murmurs along with her ‘I want it’ dance.

I thought through the pros and cons as I don’t want to say to no to everything without thinking it through. Slightly inconvenient but I can surely give ten seconds of my time for a moment of happiness. In the end it worked out wonderfully. I vacuumed the downstairs, moving the stroller to make sure I got all the floor. She still didn’t want to get out so I pushed her into our master bedroom so she could watch me clean the bathroom. I thought she would be extremely bored with no toys to play with but she was more than content and I got the time I wanted to do laundry, clean the bathroom, vacuum and tidy up our bedroom.

Now what will it be next week to keep her occupied happily while I get my cleaning done. It could be anybodies guess but the most unlikely will probably prevail. And that’s okay.

Whenever we go outside, there always seems to be something new that catches Leah’s eye. Some days she loves to go around with her watering can and water the plants and rocks around the yard. Other days it is her toy trucks or playing with the wind chimes or banging on the fire pit cover or being chased by me. Sometimes she is a ball of energy and other times she seems so much more laid back.

Her latest discovery is walking back and forth over the pathway in our backyard. She can’t step from concrete step to concrete step yet but I think she likes the bumpiness of it all.

Usually I am outside with a few kiddies but on this particular afternoon it was just Leah and me which gave me a chance to have a closer look at the yard as well as snap a few pictures. I was surprised at how green this particular garden looks. Not the prettiest looking garden ever but green none the less.

In contrast, here is a picture from the island in the middle of our yard which is mostly brown but still has variety.

We purchased a new camera a little while ago as our old one died. Nothing too fancy but has more options than our other one. Though I haven’t taken the time to play with it a lot and haven’t read all the instructions, I enjoy seeing what I can figure out on my own. Reading and browsing through other’s blogs and looking at their pictures has given me ideas to try take a few decent pictures of my own. Even if they don’t turn out, not much is lost in this digital age.

All that to say, I have some funky flowers in my garden that look cool in the dead of winter after they lost their colour and life as well and I’m glad I was able to capture that in the picture above. Hope you enjoyed it too.

We have been given a playground for Leah that my parents brought over during the holidays. Leah loves to play with her friends going in and out, playing ‘peek and boo’ and throwing balls in and out of the openings. Though the slide is missing at the moment, they are blissfully unaware.

Here’s Leah configuring her next move.

Here I am.

What fun!

Imagine her reaction when it is all complete.

During this past Christmas week, we have had a lot of fun celebrating in many ways. It was great to spend time with friends, family and sometimes with just our own little family experiencing the Christmas season.

We went to Stanley Park to see all of their magnificent lights and displays as well as ride on their Christmas train. There were lights everywhere. Leah enjoyed seeing all the displays and lights, especially those that moved and twinkled.

We bought tickets for the earliest train we could which was 9:30 pm. We had lots to time to kill so we checked out the petting zoo and found entertainment for Leah wherever we could. Here she is ‘driving’ an antique tractor before checking out the animals.

There were also some animals that weren’t in the petting zoo that Leah enjoyed looking at as well. It was a little scary how not afraid of people these raccoons were.

Though we had to wait a long time, the train was worth it. My favourite part is the lights that reflect almost perfectly onto the pond.

We went with some friends to see the nativity scenes set up with narration at the local Anglican church. They have nine scenes with narration set up in the back property of their church. After hearing the story of Jesus’ birth and life, they treat you to cookies and hot chocolates with live music. They are always so friendly and help bring the first Christmas to the forefront of my mind. Though I didn’t get any great shots of the displays, here is a cute one of Leah while walking to the next display.

Christmas eve we spent with my family at my parent’s house. My sister in law along with her mom visiting from Denmark made us a wonderful, traditional, Danish, Christmas meal. We had pork roast, red cabbage and caramel potatoes with a rice pudding with warm cherries on top for dessert.

In the pudding there is chopped almonds with one whole almond. Whoever finds the whole almond in their pudding gets a marzipan pig. It is so simple but brought many laughs around the dessert table.

Here is Grandpa teaching Leah how to ride her new, red tricycle. It is just like the one I remember having as a kid. She will need a bit of practise before she learns how to make it go on her own but I’m sure it will bring many hours of enjoyment.

This is Leah’s classic move when asked to say hooray. Both hands optional.

The highlights from Grandma and Grandad’s were watching the train go around the track, listening and watching the musical boxes and wearing her fun, new sunglasses for three seconds before taking them off.

I took the girls on their first field trip to Krause Farms with a couple of other moms and their kids. We had lots of fun browsing, singing and eating together enjoying the festivities of Christmas. They had a gigantic teddy bear that all the kids loved. He received many hugs and pats along with eye and nose pokes that day.

My mom helped me out a lot that day. I think Leah and her friends were also happy to see a grandma around as they got special treats before lunch. Her is some of the leftover icing from Leah’s gingerbread man.

We put the kids all over the place (on top of an old farm wagon, on a deck of a tiny, cute house) and tried to take some pictures before they got upset, ran away or put themselves in danger. Here is one of Leah and Gabby hanging out with the greenery. I have one of Leah in the same spot last year. Maybe this will have to be a new tradition.

Gingerbread families don’t mind if their houses get a little drafty do they? At least it isn’t made with any preservatives or funky ingredients which I’m sure makes for a safer house, especially for those gingerbread babes.

At least Morgan’s step nephews didn’t seem to mind. I don’t think they even noticed as they were too busy supporting caramel chimneys with m&ms and figuring out how much candy they could fit on a roof.

Nice job boys.

Sometimes I have an idea what I want to do with Leah and her friends on any given day but most of the time we make it up as we go. Today I was up for a challenge and found these stockings already precut from my daycare days. Colouring and decorating these stockings was now on the agenda. I’m happy to report it worked out very well.

Leah didn’t want the stockings on the mantel for reasons I’m still not sure of so they didn’t stay there for long. She didn’t want to stay around for long either.

This is our second experience with glue and went remarkably better than the first. The first time I let Leah and Gabby use glue, they were annoyed when I showed them how one piece of paper could stick to another. After placing some paper on the glue, they would tear it off and wanted nothing to do with it. This time they left their creations in tack. Leah still ran her finger across the glue stick and then rubbed it onto her cheek but all in all it was a success.

…at least she is cute so she can get away with it. Right?

I have an amazing ‘mommy group’ of friends who I first met when all of our babes were only six weeks old. Though most of the moms have gone back to work, we still try get together as a big group once a month to visit. For our Christmas get together, we decided to invite the dads as well as do a secret Santa with gifts for the kids.

I got Leah all dressed up, wrapped up a gift, packed some goodies and off we went. That last sentence made it sound excessively easy. The real story involved trying to entertain a kid in a store full of toys and then trying to get her away from said toys, a mad dash in the morning to find tights and shoes at the local mall, staying up late to finish her dress and bringing food that was pulled out of the oven merely minutes before departure. Did I mention the event started at 10 am? And that is was my great idea to start at ten so my darling daughter could happily survive a couple of hours with her friends before lunch and nap time meltdowns occur?

It was all so worth it as we all had a great time. I tried to get some pics in front of the tree which I counted successful as we have some active toddlers. There are both in the shot and you can see their faces.

Each of the kids got a special gingerbread man cookie with their name on it. Very cool Mrs. Laura! Leah really enjoyed her sweets that morning.

Leah received a funky yellow and pink school bus that makes noise. She absolutely loves it as did the other kids that morning. I’m also very thankful the noise is a quiet, tolerable noise as well.

Leah understands presents more this year and is thrilled after opening one. She sees no need for another which I think is a great thought she should hold for many years to come.

We also enjoyed the great time with daddy. Morgan was teaching her how to play t-ball and you can see her excitement.

Christmas is special for so many reasons but I think it is accentuated so much when you have a child. The joy they bring is amazing and to share it with friends is gold.

A few weeks ago, I woke up to this sight out of my back window. What a great way to start the day.

When Leah wakes up, she loves to hang out with her buddies and check out our Christmas tree. She is pretty good about not taking the decorations off the tree and ignores most of the presents. I’m not sure why, but the present for her Uncle Mike is her favourite to tote around the living room. It is not breakable so I let her play with it as she loves to pull the tissue paper in and out.

I had a lot of fun decorating this year for Christmas as we now have lots of space. On top of our mantel I put some greens from our back yard along with some leftover greens from wreath making.

I made up some pretty vases for my kitchen window along with one to grace my bathroom counter.

We found this nativity set at the flea market a few weeks ago. They are supposed to be tree ornaments but I like to use them in a nativity scene instead. I cut up some butcher paper in small strips and adding some greens and, voila, some hay and a shepherd’s field.

In our apartment, we had a little tree that we used a large vase for instead of a tree stand. This year we decided to go big as we now have the room.

Merry Christmas!