Caleb's School Christmas Concert + Caleb Plays Piano + Caleb's Swimming Progress + Christmas Shenanigans

Caleb's School Christmas Concert

On Thursday morning Evelyn and I went to Odyssee (past school of Liana, present school of Caleb, future school of Evelyn) for the annual Christmas concert. I was worried about Evelyn fussing during the show but she loved it! Dimmed lights, kids everywhere, singing and dancing. She especially loved the clapping and cheering between numbers and even took a little snooze halfway through. A weird thing though is that it wasn't ordered in the usual JK-6 sort of way but randomized and Caleb's grade 1 class was third before last. Crowning moment was one of the first songs by a whole class: a little girl in the front row refused to sing and plugged her ears looking miserable the entire song. At the end of the show we said hi to Caleb and he was really sweet and introduced Evelyn to his teacher.

Yo yo yo!

Ready to go see the Christmas show

 

This is the video of Caleb's class - he's at the bottom right in the right t-shirt - terrible video picture and sound quality

Caleb sings an excerpt since the above video was so blurry

 

Caleb Plays Piano

Caleb's been playing piano for over a year now. He didn't advance much last year because we wouldn't practice at home so he only played during his 30 minute weekly lesson. This year he practices at least four times a week at home (immediately after arriving from school) so he's making some strides. I filmed these short videos of him practicing without his knowledge because he gets nervous when put on the spot. I love listening to him practice.

 Warmup

 Bouncy Ball

 Jingle Bells (this is a new one for him!)

Caleb's Swimming Progress

Caleb loves swimming. He passed Swim 1 the first time and has been taking Swim 2 this fall. The class just finished and though he didn't pass he was close. He can now swim over 10 meters unassisted both on his tummy or his back. Pretty sure that by next summer he'll no longer need a life jacket when swimming in and diving from our pool. As a pool owner it's super important he be a confident swimmer so I'm glad he's doing well on this front.

I had planned to switch Caleb from swimming to skating for the winter but he could not be less interested in skating. He did CanSkate1/2 last winter and was tough to convince him to go every week. As much as I'd like him to take more lessons I don't want to battle with him every weekend. I'll take him skating over the winter and just register him in swimming again, which he loves.

Christmas Shenanigans

Christmas activities continue!

Santa wind chimes

Ginger Christmas tress (coincidentally vegan!)

Thingamickbob Caleb made out of recycling?

Creatology 3D train - I had a blast helping with this one

Cake pops ("mommy, they're breaking!" face)

 

Miscellaneous

I love just having the camera around to catch the every day moments.
 

New jammies!

She's been loving playing on the floor lately

I had to buy these Moose jammies - they reminded me of Mountain Grove!

Cookie monster!

This happens now

Liana's on Christmas vacation now and this is how she thinks the baby should be dressed while hanging out a home

Month 6 Milestones

Here's the sixth month milestone installment. There isn't a big list of new things Evelyn started doing this month, she's mostly just gotten more proficient at the things she had already begun doing such as playing with her toys and shrieking.

Nights have been unpredictable. She'll sleep  a max of six hours straight one night and under one the next. Sometimes when she wakes at night she wants milk and is back asleep within 15 minutes and other times it takes over two hours of feeding and walking with her to get her back to sleep. Naps have gotten rough. It's almost impossible to successfully transfer her sleeping self from our arms to anywhere else.

This last week we've introduced her to food. She's tried cereal, avocados and sweet potatoes one time each and had some Baby Mum Mum cookies. She makes funny faces at everything we've spoon fed her but she definitely likes the cookies - must be the influence of sesame street! It's interesting to see her processing what to do with food once it's in her mouth.

Liana goes braceless + Evelyn eats food + More Christmas tomfoolery

Liana goes braceless

After a year and half of braces, initially accompanied by an overnight headgear, Liana's braceless and her teeth are perfect. We go back to the dentist next week to pick up her retainer which she'll need 24/7 for one year and then overnight for another year...though according to the handout the dentist gave her retainers are FOREVER.

Soon after arriving back home

The scare tactic

Evelyn eats food

I hemmed and hawed for a few weeks on what Evelyn's first food would be. Nutritionists are moving away from recommending cereal as a first food since it's practically nutritionally void (though today I read here that cereal may be hard for babies to digest but I'm not overly concerned). We went with Healthy Times Organic Brown Rice Cereal for the first food and next up we'll be trying homemade sweet potatoes, avocados and then bananas. Guidelines recommend waiting three days between introducing new foods. I am actually super excited to make baby food again especially now that I have a Blendtec.

The pictures are an accurate play by play of what Evelyn thought about eating and cereal. It was all over in about three minutes.

More Christmas Tomfoolery

Our family advent calendar activities continue!

Kids can bake

Caleb made chocolate and candycane melts

Liana made pumpkin pie tarts with vanilla glaze

Evelyn thinks measuring bowls make a great new toy

Appetizing aren't they? :p

 

Caleb coloured this for Hartwheel

Gingerbread garland (plus, check it, we finally got a painting for the dining room!)

Windchime santas

 Miscellaneous

 

Caleb between his friends Rowan and River with the snowman we made at Beavers

Playing with grandmaman while boboa helps daddy mount the painting

Evelyn's slowly taking over the living room

She can turn from her back onto her tummy now

Christmas cards + Baked goods and activities + Evelyn meets Santa + Holiday parties + First Evelyn home video

Christmas cards

 

Christmas cards have been collated, stuffed, addressed, and are heading to Canada Post tomorrow. Don took our family photo and we went with a simple scrapbooking style of card this year.

Printed in mass quantities in various sizes

Runner up photo - we're blocking the tree and curtains look shabby

Winner! Dex even popped in

Crafts and baked goods

 

Caleb and Liana have made paper snowflakes, build a foam Christmas house, grown a Santa, baked cupcakes, etc as activities offered via our homemade advent calendar. They've also done some additional projects just because.

Caleb's loving all the empty paper rolls and boxes from online orders that are kicking around

Liana created this vegan Strawberry Chocolate muffin recipe

Caleb decorating "Santa fail" cupcakes

Foam house complete with leaning tower top

 

Evelyn meets Santa

 

While shopping with Becka at Place d'Orleans this week Evelyn got to meet Santa Clause. I recommend this Santa: looks genuine, is soft spoken and gentle with babies.

 

Holiday parties

 

Saturday was a Christmas party double feature. First, Caleb, Evelyn and I went to Dashing Through the Snow, a kids' party hosted by a local parenting group I'm a member of (Moms and Dads with Monkeys). It took place at Fallowfield Tree Farm and features a pizza dinner, crafts, wagon and horse wagon rides, and a bonfire. Then we went to Dan and Roya's annual Christmas party at which Evelyn soaked baby Ronin's change station twice over. Darcy joined us later in the night as he was busy being a top 8 winner at the Wizard Tower's M:tG fundraiser for CHEO.

Making reindeer food (oats, glitter, candy) to sprinkle outside on Christmas eve

Roasting marshmallows

Horses!

Taken from wagon ride

Caleb on the wagon

They don't look the same size in real life...

First Evelyn home video

 

Sadly this morning was the first time I took a video of Evelyn but happily the video is awesome. Darcy was playing fetch with Dexter and Evelyn thought Dex chasing a toy was hilarious. She had been giggling five minutes of so before the video was taken, too. We've watched the video several times today already.

 

Miscellaneous pictures