That's more like it...

Although tomorrow's supposed to be pretty grossly hot and humid, the rest of the week is looking fantastic!!

May Garden Tour

Rain, rain, rain.  It's been pretty plentiful this spring!  I've been hoping to get some stuff planted in the gardens, but it's been so wet I'm afraid things will just drown out there.  Every once in a while we have a sunny day or afternoon, and it's great to be able to send the boys out there to play for a while.
 I thought I'd plant some seeds yesterday, but when I almost got slurped right into the garden, I thought better of it.  I almost lost my boots!  I guess it'll have to wait a while before I get in there, but judging by the forecast, it'll be some time before the soil has a chance to dry up a bit. 

 The rhubarb is LOVING this weather, it's definitely thriving.  I'll be out there later today to get some for a rhubarb crisp for this weekend!  There's not much for gardens at this place yet, but at least the rhubarb is happy!   

And the lilacs are blooming...mmm... smells so good out there.  We weren't living here yet at this time last year, so it's nice to have free access to as many lilac blooms as I want to take inside and enjoy.  They're a bit more purple than it looks in this picture. 

The evergreen tree in the backyard is growing too... although I don't think it'll grow too much in the bottom three feet as the kids keep picking these light-green shoots off and bringing them to me as "flowers".  Oh well, I don't know if we'll be able to keep the tree anyways, as when the deck gets built, it'll be in the way of the clothesline.

The kids are very much looking forward to this Kijiji purchase being put together into their very own backyard playground!  Mike is hoping to build it on the holiday Monday coming up.  Except...thinking on the spot here...he needs to replace some bolts and the stores will be closed.  I guess we'll have to rethink that.  Anyways, it'll be nice for them to have something else to play with in the backyard, especially as there aren't any parks within walking distance that we can use during the day (there's one close by, but it belongs to a school). 

These posts are waiting for a fence to be built on them, but for now the post holes are filled with water - what a magnet for little boys playing outside!  They've been fascinated by the deep puddles, and have stayed surprisingly dry while they tinker around with their shovels and sticks.

Snack time outside!  The rain took a little break and the sun actually came out, so we had a snack outside yesterday afternoon.  So nice to get some Vitamin D!

The sandbox is back into full swing, providing hours of entertainment.  Of course, sandbox entertainment wouldn't be complete without playing Sand-In-The-Mouth and Give-Your-Brother-Whacks-On-The-Head-With-A-Shovel, and Give-Me-Back-That-Truck-Or-I'll-Scream.  But the fun outweighs the arguing.

A baby swing came with the playset we got off Kijiji,
and I hung it temporarily on a branch of the apricot tree.
I think Nate might have liked it, what do you think? 

 Happy to have something to do outside with his brothers! 

Update

Another month has gone by since I've sat down to write something here.  Life is busy, that never changes, but there always seems to be new things to be busy with, which is nice!  This post will be written in short spurts, so it probably will take me a few days to write.  Aaron has been showing some interest in toilet-training for the last little while, but I didn't want to push it too early.  We started yesterday with some dedication, with great success for the first days.  Of course, there are accidents, but he knows what he's supposed to be doing and he's quite intrigued by the fact that he gets to wear underwear.  I can hardly hope for it to be as easy a task as it was with Peter (who hates to be dirty in any way) but he's pretty motivated by the fish stickers that he gets every time he pees on the toilet.  Of course, Peter wants in on the sticker action as well, so he's got his own milestones that he has to accomplish if he wants to get a sticker too.
Nate is eight months old now - I was going to say almost eight months but a quick look at the calendar reminds me that I'm losing track of time.  Eight months eh?  He sits quite well on his own now with only the occasional tip-over, and he's up on his hands and knees a lot of the time now, rocking back and forth and on the brink of discovering crawling.  And oh, the joy to be mobile like your brothers!  I remember the first few days when Aaron had figured out crawling, and he would stop every once in a while and just clap out of joy that he could move at will.  Nate isn't clapping yet like Aaron was at this age, but I asked him for a kiss this morning and he leaned over and gave me a nice slobbery one, one of those ones that you don't really want unless you're a parent, or at least pretty closely related to the genetics of that slobber.  I didn't mind at all!  He was really drooling for a while, and finally last week his second tooth popped through - on the bottom, right next to the first one.
I took him in to the walk-in at the doctor's last week to get him weighed.  His length is still at the top of the chart at 29.5", but I've been wondering about his weight gain.  I was hoping he'd be around 21 lbs to keep up to his previous percentile on the growth chart, and I was disappointed to see him weigh in at 19 lbs 9 oz.  This drops him from the 67th to around the 50th percentile.  For a baby who was 10 lbs 7 oz at birth - WAY off the chart - he is not gaining like I'd like to see, and he's been slowly dropping down on the chart.  I know you can't really expect siblings to be identical in their growth, but at 9 months Peter was 22 lbs 4 oz, and Aaron was around 25 lbs.  He's on solids now, but not a big eater, and he doesn't nurse for long.  I thought supplementing him with formula would be a good idea, but I've tried everything I can think of to get him to take a bottle or a sippy cup but he is so stubborn.  He won't take it from me, Mike, my parents, my sisters, or anybody.  He won't take formula, breastmilk, homo milk, water, or even full-strength fruit juice.  He won't take an Avent bottle, Nuby bottle, soft-spout or hard-spout sippy cup, and out of a regular cup is just plain torture.  We tried a day and a half without any nursing to "encourage" him to take some liquids from another source, but I gave in for fear that I was going to damage his kidneys or something.  What kid doesn't want to drink for that long??  He's never been much of a drinker - I've even had an appointment with a lactation consultant, who was very knowledgeable but hadn't come across this particular problem before, and so we couldn't come up with anything very effective to get him to drink more.  So I'm adding formula to all of his meals, encouraging him to eat as much as possible, and I'm going to look for some high-fat yoghurt or cottage cheese to try and beef him up a bit.  Thankfully he's doing well on the developmental front - he's sitting well, trying to crawl, and he's a very cheerful little guy.  Anybody got any other suggestions for me?  I realize that he is probably just has more of a "slight" build instead of the chunkiness of his brothers at this age (who inhaled their bottles and couldn't get enough!), and trying this that and the other thing might just be more frustrating for him than anything, but I want to make sure he's getting enough of the nutrients that he needs.  If only kids came with instruction manuals!  Not to mention, by the way, that I've been taking a supplement to increase my milk supply to make sure that he has enough - and then he has the nerve to refuse to nurse, which in turn leads to problems for me and in general the whole situation is wreaking havok with my milk supply and patience.  It hasn't been a whole lot of fun!  And yet with all these concerns I've had with his eating, he's finally starting to sleep through the night a little more (I shouldn't write that though, as that's bound to change again).

Weight and length charts for Nate - click to enlarge

We have been greatly enjoying the warmer weather lately.  The last few days have been a bit gloomy, and the forecast includes a fair bit of rain, but that comes with spring time and we had some gorgeous weather last week.  The boys can spend allllll day outside, playing in the sandbox, digging in the dirt, and hauling pieces of wood from here to there building "hospitals".  I cut out some grass and turned over some dirt for a garden, and Mom and Dad came one day with some compost to help me spruce up the soil a bit.  I'm looking forward to planting some seeds and tending a garden again, as last year with the move, being pregnant, and it being a thousand degrees all summer I didn't do any gardening beyond kicking at a few weeds here and there.
Anyways.  I'm sure there's more, but this toilet-training has got me a little distracted so I'm going to wrap this up.  Enjoy the pictures!

Dave and Bethany came up the Sunday after Easter weekend for a visit.  The boys enjoyed reading books with them!  Yeah, that's underwear on their heads.  Again.  It's pretty popular around here.

 Nate had to get in on the reading action, too. 

 Silliness abounds!

 We're seeing a lot of this pose lately.  He's pretty proud of his new skills! 

 Hmmm. Unsupervised snack time...what can I do with this spoon?

 How about destroy all the pears in the fruit bowl? 

 When it's not too rainy or cold, nothing beats lunch outside!

 Yeah.  They're doing what it looks like they're doing.  I snapped a picture before going out in the 8 degree weather to pull Aaron's pants back up and to grab Peter, who was running around the backyard with a bare bum.  

We had Uncle Chuck and Aunt Carol over for dinner last week, 

and no one gets to visit without reading the boys a book or two. 

 Aunt Carol reads Click Clack Moo, Cows That Type

 Spending some time outside on a beautiful spring day

 Mmmm sweetness! 

Quick Update

 It's always fun to wear Daddy's glasses

Peter giving the glasses a try

 He's getting better all the time at sitting up on his own

 They like to put their chairs upside down at the back of 

the bed and use the legs as "controls" to steer their excavators

 Pretty deep hole!  Mike has been working on fixing some leaky basement issues

 As you can well imagine, they come inside pretty dirty sometimes!

 Nate is getting more mobile - he can't go forward yet but he pushes himself 

backwards all over the place, often getting stuck in interesting places

I only took one picture during the crazy wind storm last week Thursday.  There were gusts up to 124 km/h, hundreds of trees were toppled, fences were blown down, and lots of damage was done.  We were without power for over 6 hours that day, and some people in St. Catharines did not have their hydro restored until early in the next week.  A few tiles off our patio table blew off and shattered, and part of our fence blew over (we needed to replace it anyways).  We were thankful we didn't lose any trees or sustain any more damage, especially after taking a damage assessment tour of the city after the wind had calmed down a bit later in the evening.  So many huge trees blown over!  This picture is the last we saw of our election sign that day, who knows how far it went flying! 

 I think this picture almost deserves to be posted on its own, 

I love it!  It's a weird one but it makes me laugh!!

 Nate going incognito, haha

Easter Weekend

 Over the Easter weekend, the Vander Deen side of the family came to our place for a visit and to celebrate Aaron's birthday.  Mom and Dad came in their RV and stayed Friday and Saturday nights at a campground in Niagara Falls, while Karen stayed at our place.  The rest of the family (minus Dave and Beth) came up on Saturday.  What a fun visit!  Friday was a bit dreary and cold but Saturday turned out to be a gorgeous day, and we enjoyed being able to take the boys to the park while the guys played bocce.  Lots of fun!  I'm getting the feeling that I'm not particularly articulate or literative today so perhaps I'll just stop writing and make way for the pictures.  That's all you really want anyways isn't it?  Haha.

Peter and Aaron at the campground "hunting rabbits" in the gravel

 It's never too hard to get a great smile out of this little one!

 Aaron opening his birthday gift from Aunt Karen - books about fish!

Enjoying Grandpa's toque

Grandma and Grandpa gave Aaron a beautiful quilt for his birthday.

This morning, he was trying to eat the smarties off one of the squares, haha!

Bumper cars in the driveway!

Going on parade to the park!

Hi little cousin Derek!

Digging in the gravel

Everyone had fun, haha

Blowing out his birthday candles

I had too much fun making this birthday cake.  It was almost a 

shame to ice it, it looked so pretty coming out of the oven!

Buuuut I iced it anyways.  What's a birthday cake without icing?

At the end of the day, Rub a Dub Dub, Four Boys in the Tub!