Sick days

Brendan is off school for the second day in a row today. He has a terrible cold and the same chesty cough he seems to get every winter. Steve "worked from home" yesterday morning while I taught my English class and today we're having a lovely slow day. Indoors for now until it warms up a bit. It's a wintry day today.

We've made some orange and raisin cookies.
A not-so-well Brendan eating cookies for breakfast.

They went upstairs earlier and I heard a lot of giggling and bossing going on and then they came downstairs both dressed as firemen.

We love playing games by Orchard Toys. Especially If you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream and Shopping List. They are perfect for cozy days inside when the weather is yucky.

I normally blog when the boys are asleep but thought I'd get a quick post done while they were playing happily. Tadhg, however, has reminded me that that is a silly idea by smashing a mug on the kitchen floor. That's the second shattered piece of crockery in as many days. When we head to Scotland next week I'm going to take advantage of some free babysitting and head to the charity shops to buy up any game by Orchard Toys, any wet weather gear that is roughly the right size for either boy, any next size up shoes for Brendan and maybe some kitcheny things to replace all the broken ones.

It's hard to find second hand clothes and shoes here in Belgium and I can't bring myself to buy new stuff. Shoes especially are really expensive. I bought two pairs of boots for Tadhg the other day at a brocante (car boot sale of sorts) for 3 Euros each but they came in their original shoe boxes with original prices of 89 and 103 euros. They are lovely shoes but those prices are ridiculous.

Must go and spend the day with my two lovely but boogery boys.

An evening

Pizza for supper.
Tadhg brushing his teeth- he climbed up, got his toothbrush, looked in the mirror and started chewing on his toothbrush all by himself. Only just turned 10 months- think he'll be a competent climber when he grows up :)
Story time in Brendan's room. Tadhg and I were sitting in the opposite corner listening to the story and having bedtime milk.

This was how Steve and I spent a fun hour or so after the boys were asleep. Brendan is airport and aeroplane crazy. He has played with this for hours!

Playing inside

Had some fun with the camera this afternoon. Here are a few of the many photos we took.




This is one of our favourites just now. When it comes to toys sometimes Brendan's idea of a great toy doesn't exactly match our idea of a great toy but this is one that does. He played with it for ages today, talking to himself all the time. He built various "tunnels" for vehicles and "towers" and "circles" and used them as shop counters again. Great toy.

New Kitchen

Woooohooo. Look at this!! Steve, you are amazing!

Brendan loves his new kitchen and has been playing with it, and his wooden food for hours on end for the last couple of days. Can you believe Steve made this at the weekend? He still has to put on the sink taps and build the play stand with a shelf for the kitchen pieces to sit on. But they can be moved to a table, the floor, on the shelf or even outside I suppose. He seemed to really enjoy it and has mentioned trying to make and sell them. So if anyone would like one you could try putting in an order. :)
I think this is going to be a long lasting, much loved and very special set of toys.

Brendan has just seen the above photos and said "Brendan making supper" and now wants to go and play with it again. So that's all I'll write for now. Off to fry some wooden fruit in the wok. Thanks again super awesome Daddy!

A day for staying inside

Here's our thermometer at 8am this morning. Fredericton beat a 125 year record by reaching -34.3*C today and there's a weather warning out for wind chills up to -41*C. Ok, so it's not as cold as the prairies where we have a few friends surviving much colder temperatures than here- thinking of you :)
Below is a pic of the ice on the INSIDE of our windows. You can also see Brendan's crayon artwork on the window. I'm not sure if Brendan really understood but as we held our palms on the freezing window I tried to explain why we weren't going out today!

So we stayed in and played all day. We drew, coloured and cut out some big cars for his wall, made a race track out of floor tiles which B has been pushing his buggy with doll around at full speed for what seems like hours, made a bed on the living floor and hung out for a bit, strung some wooden beads on string, read lots of books, mostly about winter, and we all had a bath and a nap. Busy day.
And I took some photos. I love this one below. It's not great quality as I took it myself on the wee camera but I wanted to get a picture of my favourite wrap at the moment. I love it when he's awake and leans back to talk to me. He started smiling at almost 4 weeks old and this week is working on talking- he puts his whole body into making little noises and gets so excited by the "conversation". There's nothing like falling in love with a new baby!
Steve will be home tomorrow- we can't wait!

off to a good start

A photo of Tadhg, just because.

Both Steve and I had been a little nervous about him going to Texas this week. My main worry was about those times in the day/week when you are absolutely knackered and that stuff called 'patience' is nowhere to be seen and you normally hand over the baby or toddler or cooking or whatever for a break. Well, that is what happens in our house anyway:). I've discovered I don't have a very high tolerance level when it comes to the sound of a baby crying. Brendan rarely cried and when he did the problem he was yelling about was usually sorted fairly pronto and the crying stopped. But Tadhg... actually he doesn't cry that much, he just has a period in the evenings when he cries on and off and I just feel so bad for him and I get upset and frustrated because I can't always make it better. So Steve and I take turns walking around with him. Anyway, despite that rant, this evening he's been pretty happy so far even though he has a cold and a slight temperature- it must be really annoying to be breathing through a stuffed up nose while trying to eat.
So today we kept busy. We...
- played with the dolls house and opened another room set for it.
- played with a new set of alphabet cards- B can say them all and recognises a few letters and can put abcde in order (I haven't tried to actively teach him this, he just picks it up- amazing to see!)
- made a calendar to cross off the days till Daddy comes home
- did painted footprints of both boys on canvas for a blank bit of wall somewhere
- made a jungle book village with houses made out of toilet roll tubes and cupcake papers, more loo rolls for the fence, a blue scarf for a river, green wooden blocks for trees and some schleich and wooden animals. He wasn't that interested to begin with but a few hours later he went back to it and started playing on his own moving the animals around and naming them all (he loves the films)
- and, of course, played with the train set, did some colouring and watched some of the jungle book and Brendan's favourite bit of Cars which he asks for like this "Mater tow truck tractor cow moooo fall dooowwwwn yep ok hehehehe" That is more or less how he speaks at the moment.

Other sentences of sorts...
"more cookie please tractor cookie?" (our cookie jar is a tractor)
"daddy plane sky airport yep flying wheeeeeee" (with arms flying)
"mummy come back two minutes Brendan bed"
"downstairs TV on, DVD, animals on please yep open gate"
And if he's angry at us about something eg. been told not to hit the baby/climb on the table/ turn on the dishwasher etc he shouts as loud as he can a variation on "TV on, ice cream cone, more cookie, TV on"

Talking of TV, on Friday I flipped out with the whole TV thing and we took the plunge. We now have no TV in the living room and it is MUCH better. Should have done it ages ago. We now have to make an effort to do other things when in here and TV watching happens only in the basement for short times. It's only been three days but we are all much calmer as a result, Brendan actually looks at us when we talk to him rather than staring at the TV (which he was starting to do even if it was off!!) Here's a photo taken before the TV was banished.Enough waffle. I might try to go to bed. I'm anticipating a long sleepless night. I think I'll need to be propped up with Tadhg on my chest if he's going to get any sleep.

Resisting the early christmas feeling...

...but not very well though. It feels as though we have far too much to do before we even think about christmas. But that didn't stop us from going to the christmas market yesterday. There were a lot of lovely handmade things- I would look at something then move along a few stalls till I was out of sight, get out my notebook and sketch whatever it was I thought I could easily make myself. Cheeky but hey, ho. I did buy a couple of things- a pair of pears (nice fabric, stuffed with a cinnamon stick sticking out the top, totally useless and unnecessary) and a beautiful beaded star ornament.

Making a car out of a box.
Steve left this morning for a week's work in Quebec City. Brendan really misses him now and it's sometimes heartbreaking when he asks for him over and over again, especially first thing in the morning and at bedtime :(