sophia does her numbers

Sophia and Eleanor and I got back last night from a little trip to Victoria. We went to see my parents, my brother and my sister Caroline and her 5 kids. We had a really great time, going to the beach, the pool, the park and eating lots of ice cream. It is so much fun now that Sophia is old enough to remember her cousins. We dig vacation. Or as Wade likes to call it, Bacation, because you usually eat bacon.

I told you I would tell you later about my trip to Calgary - well, the nutshell is, I had fallen into a bit of rut in not taking super great care of myself - even little things like painting my nails... so I had a 3 day trip and I just did things like shopping, going for coffee, visiting with my friend and hanging out with my hilarious god-daughters. And I came home just more aware of how tense I'd been (not for any good reason), how much I just want to be a Mum and and to be a fun Mum and I'VE JUST BEEN MORE RELAXED. oops. caps are accidental, but I'll leave 'em. It was life-changing in the fact that my outlook is different now. And I'm so excited about summer with my girls. And I have taken to ironing my favourite shirts when the kids are in bed so they are ready to wear in the morning. Even if I don't pick one of them, I think, look at those nice ironed shirts, someone who really loves me did that for me - OH, it was ME! Way to go, me.

I was also in a space where I was able to encourage Wade to go on a little trip too, so last week he went to Seattle to eat meat, cook meat, talk about cooking and eating meat, smoke meat, talk about constructing apparatus' for cooking meat and also perhaps making beer and drinking beer. And he ate a really good pretzel and some Thai food too. And then more meat.
So for me, it takes, shopping, going for coffee, reading magazines, talking with friends, coffee & truffles, taking long baths while drinking apple cider & eating Haagen Dazs & listening to Nat King Cole, little more shopping, going for more coffee, seeing some theatre and eating some Thai food while more talking with friends - Wade, pretty much meat and alcohol. Hey, whatever works.

Today Sophia was watching kids CBC and Barenaked Ladies have a new kid's CD and they were singing a song about how 7 ate 9 ( 789, get it? Yeah Sophia explains it really well if you don't, with lots of hand gestures.) and Sophia decided she wanted to create numbers with her body. She started with 7 8 9 but then she needed Wade for the double digits. She's pretty smart, we think.

seven

eight

nine

ten

and for some reason, blogger is refusing to let me out a caption under the picture below, but i do have to point out Sophi's art direction to Wade that the number 11 was constructed of number 1's that were the type with an angle on top and feet on the bottom.

twelve, with a small 1 and 2.

and of course, number 13. we did admire Wade's "one" face.

Shileeah Cloeyzander

Sophia read for the first time today. She was pretending to have a dog named J.J., so I wrote a little story and taught her what a couple of the words were and she was able to read it.
"See J.J. run. Run J.J. run! I see J.J. run. J.J. runs. J.J. is dog. See a dog run."
What it lacks in plot was made up for by the excitement of the first read.

She still changes characters about 6 times a day, sometimes from TV and sometimes ones she made up. Today I loved the names she made up so much I wrote them down so I wouldn't forget them. She said that her name was Shileeah Cloeyzander, and that she had a little brother named Raddy and her Mom's name was Sizzler and her Dad's name was Chucky.
She apparently used to live in Australia where she would see Auntie Angee and Uncle Leigh and pet the kangaroos and koalas. When she lived there, one time Murray from the Wiggles loaned her his red guitar and she played in a concert in a stadium with them. She sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." She did also fly in Uncle Ben's plane.

Super fun.