3 and 1 already and 5 in Mexico!!

Well, Natasha celebrated her 3^rd birthday on Nov 22nd. She was super excited and kept saying “It’s MY birthday today!” and you ask her “How old are you Natasha?” she says, full of excitement “Pree!!!!” while trying to hold up 3 fingers. VERY cute!!!

Maya and I made her a cake, and Maya was a BIG help in decorating it. She came up with a design that she thought Tasha would love, and she was right!! Here is it:

Not the prettiest cake, but everyone was fighting over who got to eat the rocket!!!

We didn’t do to much, just had my family over and our friends Teresa, Corey, Sofia and Giorgia…the girls love them all!

JAIDA…my baby. Hard to believe a year has gone by so quickly. Jaida celebrated her 1^st birthday on Nov 25^th. Here is a picture of her in her Birthday Princess hat, courtesy of Anju. Very cute!!!

She really is a princess. She pretty much can get whatever she wants. If Amma or Daddy don’t do it for her, her big sisters usually do, either that or she screams until one of them do. For the most part she is full of smiles and giggles. She’s not quite walking on her own yet, though loves to walk around if you hold her fingers. She is a fast mover, not crawling, but carrying on the Seshadri Lawson tradition of scooching.

Again, a low key birthday with my family along with Jenny and Scott. The cake was a flop this time, but Jaida was too tired and cranky to even try it, so she will never really know! It looked good, but remind not to try a new cake recipe for a special occasion again!!

Maya, the lucky girl will get to celebrate her 5^th birthday in Mexico this year! We are heading this Saturday, for 2 weeks of warmth and sunshine to celebrate Jen and Scott’s wedding!!! I will fill you in on how much relaxation we get with the girls!!!

Happy Birthday Maya! What a lucky 5 year old!!

3 years to the day....

and both parents are back to work!!

I started my leave from Mitel exactly 3 years ago to the day today! Wow! How time flies!

Maya likely does not remember the time when she was with my mom and Lori, so for all she knows I or Grant has been with her since she was born, Natasha has been so fortunate to have her parents at home for her whole life, and Jaida, as well, but she is still a baby!!

I am sad today, I had always thought that the girls would grow up with me at home (or at least a parent), for their younger years at least, but the reality is, we are not quite ready to give up some of the little luxurious that the extra income brings us.

I do realize that we have been so fortunate to be able to home with the girls for this long!! But, we do leave them in very capable hands, Melissa. She is wonderful with the girls, and most importantly the girls just love her! Natasha claps her hands in excitement, knowing that Melissa is coming over!

So, as the next few weeks will be a period of adjustment. I feel better in knowing that we will be lying on the sunny beaches of Mexico in just over 4 short weeks! :)

The Best Laid Plans

I went to work today for the first time in 8 months, my first day of work since February 29th! Thinking back to February, man, did I have plans for this parental leave.

Eight months is enough time to train for a very decent marathon. At the very least I would get more biking in than I have since ’99. On January 1st, I actually started riding the rollers in the basement to prepare my legs for the ensuing punishment that all my free time would unleash upon them. Three times a week I would get up early and ride my bike in the basement before going to work. And don’t forget about the house, a more complete and finished house has ever existed!

The reality, there were times when I could barely find the time to go to the bathroom! Seriously, I remember telling Maya to make sure Natasha didn’t bother Jaida. Imagine that – telling a 4 year old to make sure a 2 year old doesn’t bother a 3 month old, just so you can go the bathroom!

Take away the indoor biking I did in January and February, and I biked less this year than last year. And there is no very decent marathon in my near future. And the house, well, part of the basement did get cleaned and some light fixtures went up, but none of that happened until October when our caregiver started working 2 or 3 mornings a week so that she and the girls could get acquainted.

So what did I do with my 8 months? Basically, I spent a lot of time with my girls.

Jaida was 3 months old when this started. Just giver her 2.5 ounces of milk every 2.5 hours and she was happy. Now she’s eating whatever the rest of us are having. She used to nap a lot and I would just carry her around in her carseat. Natasha was still wearing diapers. I just noticed last week that she can now reach and turn the coffee maker on by herself. And Maya, what can I say about her? Outgrowing her clothes every month aside, she made this parental leave relatively easy. Not just by being a great kid, but she really was a big help to me in taking care of her sisters.

So I was a little naïve in what I initially thought I could do with 8 months away from work but I have no complaints. I just hope the girls have no long-term ill effects from spending so much time with me!

Summer wrap-up....

Here is a long overdue update of what we have been up to over the past several months. Be warned, this is going to be a LONG post!!

We started off our summer with a trip to Lake Placid, where I basically shopped and Grant fit in a long bike ride along the Ironman Lake Placid route. Here we had a quality family night at our hotel, where we went for a swim, had a pizza party in our room followed by ice cream in bed watching T.V.





What a treat for the girls!!


June was spent adjusting to being a full time working mom :( Sadly my time at home had to come to a full stop. Maya's favorite Toronto couple, Ange and J.J came for a visit and spent some quality time with the girls.




In July we headed for a Lawson family vacation to the East coast, where we spent some time in Shediac. The weather was great, the girls re-aquainted with their cousins and relatives and had many family gatherings. Here is a photo of our 'little' get together at the Moncton water park, with only a few of the cousins kids!


As well, it was an opportunity to have a updated family photo with all of Grant's immediate family.




In August, we embarked on our family adventure, the MS Rona Bike Tour. Thank you to all those people who very generously donated to the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. My mom, Grant and I, along with Jaida, Natasha and Maya had a wonderful week-end biking to Kemptville and back.




It was certainly far, FAR more exhausting for me than 2 years ago, but I will certainly do it again. You can see more picture from here

Following that week-end in August,Maya completed her 2nd Kids Tri. She had been waiting for the event since last year.




Natasha bowed out for this year, but perhaps she'll want to join in next time around!

We ended the summer with a fabulous week-end get-away to a farm in the Eastern Townships.



We received an offer to stay there, from good friends of mine, who's sister was going to be away for the week-end. We needed to get away and relax and they needed someone to mind the farm, so it worked out perfectly.

It was by far, the most relaxing and peaceful week-end I have had in a long time! It was beautiful and peaceful. The girls had plenty of space to run around and make noise without fear of bothering anyone, but the cows. They won several 'gold' medals in the horse shoe competition!! Here is Maya with her 'medal' and during the singing of the national anthem!




We also embarked on a cow hunt, which ended up in the cows finding us, and running for safety into the hay fields!! You can see all the pictures here

And that brings us to September. We will write more about that in another post!

There were plenty of other happenings that I have not written about, hopefully I have not missed anything major. If you'd like to keep up to date with our photos, you can see them from our Flickr site Sign-up, send me your id, and I'll give you permission to see them

All in all, the summer went by way too quickly. I missed the girls a LOT, being at work, but they got to spend quality time with Grant. What? What? What? Chicken butt... the things only Daddy's can teach!

I'll end with a few pictures ....

9 months

Jaida is 9 months old! I'm not sure if I think it feels like she's been around for longer or shorter than that, so I guess 9 months would be about right. At her checkup today she weighed in at 16-6 lbs and 27 1/4 inches tall; not too bad considering she was only 4-13lbs at birth. No crawling yet but she is by far our most active kid by the 9 month mark. She's already got 5 teeth (3 on top and 2 on the bottom), and she loves to show them off for the camera!

"Key tax?"

I’m reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry is buying a new car. After agreeing on the price of the car, the salesman starts adding on numerous surcharges, including a key tax. When Jerry questions this, the salesman simply replies, “How are you going to start the car?”

We bought our minivan used and it came with only one key. Our salesman said any Toyota dealer could make us another key. We’ve had the van for four months now and having just the one key was never a problem until two weeks ago.

So, on a Thursday, I go to the Toyota dealership. I tell the Parts department I would like another key. “Do you know the key code?” I have to call Toyota Canada to get the code for the key. I give them the VIN and all of the information they ask for, but for security reasons they can’t just give me the code over the phone. The superiors at Toyota Canada need to review my case and if they think I have honorable intentions they will give the key code to the dealership. Everything is in order so the code is given to the dealership after only 1 day. I then have to show all sorts of id to the parts department so they will actually cut the key for me. They cut the key no problem, but lucky me, my key has a transponder in it for extra security. After tax this key costs me $48 and it’s now Friday. “You’ll need to get the Service department to program the transponder for you.” You see, a cut key gives you access to the car, but you can’t actually start the engine until the transponder is programmed. The next available appointment with Service is the next Thursday. So off I go with my $48 key that unlocks the doors lets me listen to the radio. Sure enough it won’t start the van. The radio never sounded better, though. The security built into my key is very reassuring (I remember being able to start my dad’s truck with the key for my mom’s car, and you could get a key made for $3 at the hardware store).

Next Thursday finally comes around and the Service department is able to program the transponder. The kicker: the $48 I gave the Parts department doesn’t include the cost for programming. The sad part: I wasn’t surprised. Another $33 and I have a key that will actually start the van. Eight days and $81 for this key. I should mention this is for just the key, if you want another fob that unlocks the doors remotely, that’s another $200 for the Parts department, I don’t what the Service department’s cut would be.

Let’s see, when you buy a new vehicle, you get 2 master keys with fobs, and a valet key. The valet key would have a transponder in it so you’re looking at $643 to start your car. Key tax indeed.

10 hours gone long....

We finally made it!!

Grant and the girls picked me up from work at noon on Friday, and we headed East for a family vacation. We opted for a noon-time departure hoping the girls would nap and get us through Montreal before making our first stop.

Boy, were we wrong!!! We got on the highway at 12:20 and as planned the girls fell asleep shortly after, likey around 1:00pm. Unfortunately, we had to make our first stop, after listening to Jaida scream for 15 minutes, at 1:30pm. Turns out she was NOT hungry, but just angry at having to be in her car seat! At this point, Maya and Natasha woke up from there nap, and then began the "Are we in New Brunswick yet?"

15 minutes later, it was time for a pee break!! By this point we were almost at Hudson/Oka, exit 17. We all got out for a quick pee/feed, (30 minutes) and headed off, hoping to make it incident free through Montreal.

Montreal...well, let's just say, was a LONG drive. We were stuck in stop and go traffic, for a long long time. Thankfully, Natasha and Jaida had a little nap through all the traffic.

By the time we hit the sign that said 35Km to Drummonville, we had been on the road for 4.5 hours!!! It was 5pm and time to feed Jaida, so we decided to stop for dinner and playtime. We found an Irving Big Stop with a great play structure, where the girls played while Jaida had her supper. Then we had our little picnic, more play and bathroom time, and headed out. It was about 6:15. A good long stop, for the kids to burn some energy and tire themselves out for the next leg.

Our next stop was not until Montmagney, which marks the half way point. We stopped at Tim's there for a pee break and a coffee for Grant. When we left it was 9:30pm. By this poing it had taken us just over 9 hours to make it half way!!! We were exhausted and a little frustrated.

Thankfully the girls fell asleep quickly and stayed asleep most of the rest of the drive. With only the occassional wake-up and crying from Jaida, I was able to get some sleep while Grant drove.

Anyways, we finally pulled into the driveway at 3:30am ... 14 hours later!!!

Bad News: We are exhausted, and Natasha just threw up in her bed...

Good News: We made it to the market in time for delicious smoothies, orange juice and samosas. And, I bought myself a new peice of excerisize equipment...and it's pink!!

Ahhh...the joys of vacation!!