Vacation pictures

I've recently had a chance to organize all our vacation photos from our Christmas trip to the Bahamas. Here's links to the photo albums.

We stayed at the Riu Palace, Paradise Island for 10 nights.  The weather was great almost all of the time. (I, of course, wished it were just a little bit hotter).  Food and service were great, and the kids LOVED playing in the sand.  Unfortunately, the waves at the beach were too high for the kids to play by the seashore, but we did have a couple of day trips to islands, with some calmer beaches.  We went for a day to Blue Lagoon Island, and spent the day on their lagoon beach - very calm clear water to play and snorkel in - Christian even snorkeled with Hugo's help - he was very proud of himself!!  

Lots of pictures at the links below:

Bahamas trip (kids pics are in here!)

Underwater (snorkeling) photos

Atlantis Aquarium

18 months update

 

At 18 months, Jacqueline...

- knows about 35 signs, favorites being more, milk, mommy/daddy,food/eat, ice cream, pizza, cheese
- is starting to talk, although we don't understand much of what she says yet....most popular are done, bum, on (gone), muh (more), go, and recently buh-puh (apple). She's sure trying though - babbles a mile a minute at times.
- weighs 25 lbs and is about 32 inches tall. (bigger than christian was at this age - he was only 24 1/2 lbs by age 2!)
- loves music and LOVES to dance. Not sure where she got the rhythm from - certainly not mom and dad!
- Has settled in well to the toddler room at daycare, charming all the teachers with her cute ways
- has been walking for nearly two months now, being a late starter at just over 16 months
- loves to give hugs
- LOVES her big brother, who, about 95% of the time is so good to her
- favorite foods are milk, pizza, broccoli, pear, peppers.
- can feed herself with a spoon or fork (although it's debatable whether more yogurt gets IN her or ON her!)
- loves our cat, Scratchy, and out parrot Mojo
- always looking at books or asking us to read her one, she anticipates what is coming on the next page.
- sleeps through the night almost every night
- has 12 teeth, and, as of this past weekend, it appears more are on the way (if buckets of drool are anything to go by!)

It really IS better in the Bahamas!!

 

 

Starting to write!

 

this was the picture Christian drew last night. He's been asking me to spell things for a while now, and then he writes them down. For the past week or so, he's been attempting to spell words all on his own (he wrote "dog" on the bookshelf the other day - thankfully in chalk - didn't know whether to praise or scold him!!). This one says: "Christmas at Bhmus (Bahamas) wth (with) Momy and DDAey (Daddy)" I only helped him with "Christmas" and he did the rest on his own! and then he wrote: "I AM GTB5" - "I am going to be five" - I think he was getting tired of spelling/writing at this point, since he didn't even attempt to write out the whole words...either that or he was texting :)

Today at daycare, he drew a pictureof a dragon, and on the back wrote "th maji drgn" (The Magic Dragon).

I am a little stunned that he's doing this already - and also proud! I don't think that they're at this level in JK yet, as they've just started "Jolly Phonics" in November (basically learning the sounds of the letters by connecting them to songs and actions), but he's in a JK/SK split class, so perhaps he's been absorbing what the teacher is doing with them. He's got a wonderful Preschool program, and his teacher, Miss Kathy, has been doing Jolly Phonics with them since he was about 3 1/2, teaching them to write letters, numbers etc, so a lot of this he already knows. They don't do report cards on the JK kids in the fall, so I haven't really gotten a good idea of what/how he's doing in school other than what he brings home and what he tells me, but I'm looking forward to talking to his teacher in the new year.

Visiting Santa

We made Saturday a "photo day." First stop was to Sears for family photos. Got some nice ones there, but they won't be ready for a couple of weeks (we're not on the ball when it comes to getting these things done in time to send out for Xmas, so Xmas cards will have to be late this year (again)

Next stop was to The Bay on Queen St to see Santa. For the first time, Christian was all for it - last year it took some convincing before he'd go up. Jacqueline, on the other hand, would have nothing to do with it, starting to cry the instant Hugo put her on Santa's knee, hence why she's not in the photo.

Here's my shot:
 

And the "official" shot by the Santa photog.
 

Very serious...not sure what Santa is telling him here
 

Walking!!!

Here's a recent video of Jacqueline Walking
Finally, at just over 16 months. She slowly and steadily has been taking more and more steps, but last weekend, she finally just "got it" and started walking more and more. She has improved amazingly in the past week, and she's moving faster and faster. won't be long before she's running after Christian!

First School Picture

Finally received Christian's school pictures yesterday. How did he get so grown up??!!