All Moved In!

Well well well... it's been a while since I've been on here, but I think I have a few legitimate reasons to explain that away!  It's been INCREDIBLY busy the last little bit, surrounding our move to the new house.  So much packing, moving, cleaning, painting, paperwork - it's nice that we are finally into our new place and settling in.  Of course, there are a lot of boxes hiding in closets that haven't been unpacked, and I won't even mention the current state of the basement, but the main living areas are fairly organized and live-able.  Closing day for the old house is tomorrow, and we look forward to having all those loose ends tied and being done with all this real estate business!
So what should I catch you all up on... how about the boys.  Both boys transitioned very well to living in a new house, probably helped by the fact that it was familiar to them.  We've been spending a lot of time here since we got possession at the beginning of May, either cleaning or painting or unpacking boxes of this and that.  Peter is enjoying living in the "new house", and will sometimes come up with strange things... the other day he stood in the doorway and asked me, "Is this the new kitchen, Mommy?"  (yes, Peter, it is).  "Peter jump in the new kitchen, Mommy?" (sure, Peter, you can jump in here).  And he steps into the kitchen, jumps a few times, and goes back to the living room to his trucks.  Interesting.  He is also quite enthralled with the flamingos in the neighbour's garden, which he can see from his bedroom window.  We went back to the old place to pick up a few things from the garage, and although he was quite happy to be in the backyard (wondering where all his toys were), when we went into the empty house, he got quite upset.  When he saw his old bedroom, he was wondering where all the beds went...   Other than adjusting to moving, Peter is doing very well.  I started potty training him at the beginning of May, and within two weeks I was amazed that he was almost accident free.  He is dry through the night, and has had maybe 6 or 7 accidents since those first two weeks, and none in the past while.  Wow!  I love having only one kid in diapers (for the next few months anyways...).  He loves to joke around and say ridiculous things to make us laugh.
Aaron has also adjusted well to the new place, and unlike Peter, had no problems when we went to the old place the other day.  He's started walking, starting the week before we moved, and he loves his newfound freedom!  He toddles after his brother and is generally quite happy to be on his feet.  No more holes in pants!  He's had three molars pop through in the last two weeks or so, which has made him a little grumpy and under the weather, but thankfully they are not seeming to bother him any more.  He's not saying a whole lot of consistant words yet, but he definitely repeats things after us and knows things that he just doesn't say.  Things he has said include:  Daddy, Mommy, Peter, amen, garbage truck, and other random words.  He LOVES garbage truck day and big "mighty machines" just like his big brother, and when the trucks come squealing down the road, he's shrieking at the window beside Peter.  He loves to give kisses, and although he's more of a mover than he used to be, he still loves his cuddles.  The "red-headed temper" seems to have come true with him, as he has quite a mind of his own and knows how to let us know he is VERY upset when something doesn't go his way.  If he is on what he considers the wrong side of the baby gate, he gets hysterically upset!  This also means he is more able to defend himself against Peter when toys are being stolen back and forth.  The other day, I gave them both a freezie, and went inside to get something.  Peter all of a sudden got very upset, and when I went out there, I found that Aaron had finished his freezie and proceeded to steal Peter's and was finishing that one up too.  I had to laugh before I gave Peter a new one.
Well, I'm sure there's lots more I could write, but I'd like to get some pictures loaded up before the boys' naptime is over (not like Peter is napping anyways, I can hear him thumping away in his bed).  Enjoy!

Aaron and Peter playing in the sunroom

Having fun with water on the deck on a hot day

Helping Mommy pack...by staying contained in boxes, haha

 Enjoying the tricycle, although his legs still aren't quite long enough to push the pedals properly

 Starting to stand up on his own, and quite proud of his accomplishments!

What a goofball - blowing bubbles in his raisin bran

 With less than two weeks to go in this house, a foul ball went through the sunroom window.  Thankfully neither Peter or I were hurt, although we were sitting on the carpet in there and were covered in glass.  There was broken glass all the way to the kitchen... 

One last Saturday breakfast in the sunroom before the boys went to Mom and Dads while we finished up last minute packing and moved everything.  Sniff, sniff!  We have a lot of good memories from our first house, and I have to admit it was a little emotional to leave it behind

Elaine came to visit and watch the boys upstairs the last week, so that I could finish up packing some things downstairs.  Peter and Hannah had fun reading together, and Aaron officially started walking that day trying to keep up with three other busy little kids! 

 Figuring out the tape gun

Being a goof with the tape!  

Danielle came the day before M-Day to help me pack up the kitchen and other odds and ends - very much appreciated!  Thanks so much Danielle!  

 My dear sister made sure to mock my non-efficient packing skills after coming across this box in the bathroom.  

An empty house!  Looks so strange! 

 Two sisters left alone in the house on moving day, with my camera.  I couldn't resist posting one of the silly shots I found the next day.  

Good-bye, 25!  We'll remember you fondly!

We were planning to bring the living room carpet downstairs, and when we pulled it up we discovered the underpad had left quite a mess.  Some elbow grease from lots of helpers cleaned it up pretty quickly!

The next morning, I took a few pictures of the partially-settled in house.  Looks good already!

 Dining area - we are planning to put in patio doors and a deck where that window is

Living room - we kept the couches in here that came with the house, and painted so that it wasn't quite so pink.  I like how it turned out

Ummm yeah, this is the basement... it's a little bit intimidating.  We hope to eventually finish it with an extra bedroom, bathroom, and a family room but until that happens, we need some shelving to help organize the chaos.  Hopefully it won't look this messy for long!

 Going for a walk in the wagon around our new neighbourhood

Lousy, lousy, lousy Bell

I suppose I should have expected it, since it's been some time since I've had any significant problems with Bell Canada service.  A while back, after numerous significantly frustrating ordeals, I gave up on them and switched over to Rogers for a year, but after the initial offer from them was up, Bell offered me a deal on phone and internet service which was too good to pass up, plus it didn't come with any contractual obligations.  And I have to admit - for the last year or so, I haven't had any major complaints.  In fact, if I ever needed to contact them, it seems they have rearranged their customer service department so you can actually talk to a real person (not Emily) within a reasonable amount of time who usually speaks decent English and doesn't sit at a desk halfway around the world. 
After today, though, I realized that Bell has not given up on its infamously and unacceptably lousy customer service, and is in fact working hard on stacking blocks onto its monumental tower of stupidity.  I called them earlier this week to arrange the moving of our telephone and internet service to the new house, which I asked to be set up for June 21.  This call took almost an HOUR to complete, with both kids screaming in the background at various times.  Glad to have that phone call out of the way, I started working on the rest of my infinitely long to-do list.  This morning, I tried to make a phone call and it didn't seem to go through - I assumed it was a bad number and didn't think anything more of it until later in the morning when the internet stopped working.  Strange... I went downstairs to reset the modem.  On my way back upstairs, I realized with a foreboding feeling that today was May 21...exactly one month before June 21... I'll bet that Bell tried to move our phone line today instead of next month. I had received a confirmation email about the moving of service, and it was definitely set up for June 21 but you never know what kind of mistakes this company is capable of. 
Sure enough, after calling Bell on the cell phone (which we reserve for emergencies) and having a quick chat with Emily, she confirmed that our service move was in progress and she assured me service would be up and running - at the new address - by 5 pm.  I got a hold of a customer service person and explained the situation - she apologized and promised that service would be restored to our current address within two hours.  Four hours later, service still wasn't back so I called again - and I was assured it would be restored by 5:00.  Guess what - at 5:00 it still didn't work!!  I called them from ZELLERS and chewed them out (the second time I called, anyways, since the first time I called I was hung up on), demanding that someone come and give me back my phone line TONIGHT, because I do not want to have no phone over a long weekend!  He told me that the phone service was working at my house and since I was at Zellers, since my phone didn't work at home, I couldn't very well check it, could I.  I told him to have someone give me a call at 9:00 to confirm it was working.  Aaaaand once I returned home, guess what, the phone still didn't work.  Surprise.  However, there was a dial tone at the NEW house so I guess Mike will be getting a call there at 9:00 (he's doing some work there this evening).  How stupid can you get??  Yes, we might have possession of the house already but what if we didn't?  Bell would have directed all our phone calls to someone else's house.  They'd better restore my phone service VERY soon, because this is just infuriating me!! 

UPDATE:  Although the phone is still not hooked up here and we have no dial tone, for some odd reason the internet has started working again... if you have a hard time getting a hold of us this might be why...  In the meantime I still have to figure out where I should go to use the phone to chew someone out over there at Bell...

Another Garbage Truck Day

Seeing as today is garbage truck day, the kids are both quite pumped to see the regular fleet of garbage trucks pass by the house.  Because our house is situated across the street from and near the corner of a park, we are in a unique location to see each garbage truck at least three times - adding up to 9 or more trucks passing by.  How could life get any more exciting?  The unfortunate thing about this day is that the trucks tend to come by right around when the kids are eating breakfast - and stuck in their chairs.  All through the winter I've either waited to give them something to eat, or let them out of their chairs when a truck was coming.  This morning, I made a perfect compromise:  I hauled their chairs into the sunroom so they could eat in there - breakfast AND garbage trucks.  Fantastic. 

Feeding them in there also afforded me a new view of our neighbourhood.  All those times that we've heard the train whistles from the tracks at the end of the street?  When Peter tells me that he hears the train and "look Mommy, train!" I've agreed with him but never really looked all that hard.  I discovered this morning (after almost four years of living here) that you can, indeed, see the train if you are sitting in the right spot. 
I've also learned this morning that "Loads of Raisins Raisin Bran" is not the most time-efficient breakfast for my dear oldest son.  "Look, Mommy, I found a raisin!".... "Look, Mommy, I found another raisin!!".... and every raisin discovery demands a response from Mom.... I think maybe we'll stick with Cheerios, lol....

New House!

May the fourth be with you!  (two days ago)  I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about blog posts the last little while as the closing date for our new house came closer and closer - and finally arrived on Tuesday.  It was originally suggested to have May 5 as the closing date, but we changed it to the day before, to take advantage of the Star Wars reference... not that either of us are Star Wars junkies by any definition (I think I may have watched all episodes once, can't say what Mike's watched but I definitely know he isn't a die-hard fan).  Just a quirky choice of date I suppose.
So, after a couple of busy, slightly stressful weeks of getting all the proper paperwork in order, we were finally able to pick up the keys on Tuesday at noon.  We've been doing some cleaning, painting, and decision making, and although there is a lot of work yet to do before it feels like "home", we are very excited!  I haven't posted pictures of the house yet, so here are a few...enjoy!   

A Year of Growing

I try to be consistent with taking photos of the boys as they are growing, and at various stages in their lives.  It can be too easy to put the camera on a shelf and forget to capture certain moments during a busy day, but once these moments are gone, you can't get them back.  I'm sure the number of photos will decrease as the number of kids increases, but I will try my best to keep up with the picture-taking as life gets busier.  I have been working on an on-going project since Peter was born, and since I've just completed Year One for both kids, I thought I'd post my comparisons up now... kind of as a public incentive  to tie me to my responsibility to continue this project for the rest of our kids in the years to come!

0 Months!  Just Born

5 Days

6 Weeks

2 Months

3 Months

4 Months

5 Months

6 Months

7 Months

7.5 Months

8 Months

9 Months

10 Months

11 Months

11.5 Months

 12 Months!  Happy Birthday Boys!

Having Fun

I just love this picture - the boys are having a ton of fun tearing around the house

Baby #3

We had an ultrasound yesterday to check in on Baby #3.  It is an amazing thing to see this little baby wiggling around in his or her cozy little environment, and exciting to know that in a few months we will be able to hold him/her in our arms.  Baby was VERY active, and the ultrasound technician had a hard time getting the clear pictures she wanted for the exam.  Legs and arms moving all over the place, somersaults, and of course lots of thumb-sucking.  Estimated age was put at 18 weeks 4 days, 2 days further than the original ultrasound but not enough to change the official due date.  We can't wait to meet you, little one!!

 

What a Week!

And it's a Monday again, the beginning of another week.  It seems like it was just Monday, and here another one comes along!  This past week has been quite the eventful one, full of excitement and big changes.  First of all - WE BOUGHT OUR NEW HOUSE!!  It still doesn't seem entirely real, as everything went so very very fast.  We were sitting at the table, just finishing up Aaron's birthday dinner.  Mike had prayed for everything to go quickly with the whole house-finding-and-buying process, and we were about to get what we asked for... Randy, our real estate agent called us up at 6:00 and told us that he was standing in "our" house, and that he had an appointment to show it to someone else at 7:30, but if we could drop everything and get there right away, we could take a look at it beforehand.  So we packed up the kids, and made our way up to north St. Catharines, driving into a cosy, quiet, tree-lined street.  We took a look through the house, and we LOVED it.  It's a three-bedroom brick bungalow, hardwood floors throughout, and an untouched basement just waiting for us to finish it.  Everything is included in the house - appliances, couches, dressers, beds, tables.  The yard is a good size, and almost completely fenced already.  Lauren and Tom dropped everything in Hamilton and came out to St. Catharines to watch the boys while we went back to the office with Randy later in the evening to write up an offer.  The house had hit the market the day before, and we were the fourth offer to be submitted that day.  Randy called us up at 10:00 to let us know that our offer had been accepted, and we had bought a house!  Wow!  Less than four hours after seeing it, it was ours.  We can't wait to get possession (two weeks from now) and start moving over!  There are a few things we'd like to change, but everything in its own time. 
And other events of last week - of course, it was Aaron's first birthday, which I posted about earlier.  One year old already!  He's itching to figure out how to balance without holding on to anyone, and I'm looking forward to his first steps!  Last night he slept through the night, and didn't wake up until 7:00 - simply fantastic, I have to say.  I can do with more of that. 
I started potty-training Peter last week as well.  Monday and Tuesday we lived by the timer, 5 minutes on and 15 minutes off.  By Wednesday he was in underwear all day and dry through his nap, and he told me Thursday night for the first time that he needed to use the potty.  Last night, he stayed dry all night.  I'm very impressed by how he is doing!  He's had a few accidents, but far less than I expected.  He did have the messiest explosive dirty diaper of his life on Saturday, made especially notable by the fact that we were in the van at the time and I didn't have any extra clothes for him - as everything needed to be replaced, from his coat down to his socks.  Thankfully I had some extra clothes for Aaron, and they managed to fit Pete for the time being.  Yuck!  Sorry for the details but the whole episode was somewhat hilariously disgusting. 
So I suppose I need to start packing things up around here, bit by bit.  There's so much more stuff than when we moved into this house!  Plus it's a lot harder to do when you have two kids around - you can't really settle for "hey, how about you have this slice of bread for supper, and I'll eat this apple, since that's all that's left in the house".  Haha.  Thankfully we have lots of time between the closing dates of the two houses that we don't have to move in one day. 
The boys are currently playing together with a ride-on toy that Aaron got for his birthday from Tom and Lauren.  Usually it's an item which is the source of much argument, but Aaron is sitting on it and Peter is pushing him back and forth across the dining room "really fast!".  Quite entertaining to watch, as both of them are laughing and laughing.

Happy First Birthday, Aaron!

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday dear Aaron,

Happy birthday to you!

Dear Aaron,
Wow!  Can it be that a year has already passed since we first held you in our arms?  Congratulations on your first birthday!  You've changed so much in this first year, and it has been a blessing to watch you grow and develop into the inquisitive and cheerful one-year-old that sits here in front of me today.  Right from the start, you were a content and happy little (big) baby, making the transition from one to two kids easier than we expected.  You are constantly melting our hearts with your warm smile and your playful antics!  Your sleeping habits have always been a bit of a wonder - I remember you being WIDE awake in the middle of the night when you were just a wee thing, and thinking I would have to give up on sleep for the rest of the night.  However you would drift back to sleep with no problem after I put you down again with a full tummy.  Somehow you have managed to retain this wide-awake thing, but the drifting back to sleep again thing is sometimes a problem for you after 4:00 a.m. although things have been a little better lately.  I guess you just don't need as much sleep as your older brother!  (or your Mom and Dad for that matter...).  Your curiosity has us on our toes, as you are quick to make a beeline for things that grab your attention - open cupboards, open doors, open toilet lids.  That water is just too fun to splash in!  Yuck!  Your first word - "uh oh" - is an indication to us of what just might be laying in store for us in the future...  Just like your older brother, at one year of age your place in our family as the "youngest" is already on a countdown, as we will meet your little brother or sister in a few months from now.  I promise it will be a busy year, but you will have a special place as the "middle" child!  Just think - you'll be able to try out all the tricks that you're learning from your older brother these days, and you'll have someone of your own to chase after you!.    
We look forward to watching you grow in the coming year, as this will also be a year of much exciting development and growth!  May God continue to bless you with health and happiness, and we look forward to many more years with you!
Lots of love,
Mom and Dad