Cookies and Crayons

Happy Half Birthday to Connie!

It’s so hard to believe that 6 months have gone by already. She has changed so much and yet it seems like it was just yesterday she was born.

We started solids with Dougie when he was 5 months old. We decided to wait a bit longer with Connie. Now that she’s 6 months though, it’s time.

She looks ready, don’t you think?

We don’t really have what we need here to make our own foods, so we decided to buy food this time. I let Dougie pick which food we’d try first, he selected sweet potatoes.

Why yes, that is a shot glass of sweet potatoes (I did tell you we didn’t have everything we needed for this – I was lucky to have remembered the right spoons)

WHAT did you just put in my mouth?

Hmm, not sure what I think of this…

Okay, maybe this isn’t so bad

Sweet potatoes are a success and we’re off to a good start with this food stuff. Hopefully, this trend will continue.

We are back in Dallas for Connie’s six month check-up. Actually, she’s a week shy of 6 months but Scott had a golf tournament so we opted to come in a week early. The doctor went through all the usual questions to see how she is doing developmentally and she is right on target.

Her latest stats:

Connie did so well with her shot! She made a brief cry, realized it was over and then stopped.

We’re all back in Calgary now! Unfortunately, it’ll be a while before we get back to Dallas but we had a fun time while we were there. Until then, we’re just hangin’ out and enjoying our time in Calgary.

Editors Note: Pardon some back logs, we’ve missed several posts over the last while and are getting caught up.

I’ve often heard that when you’re a parent, your children’s happinesses are your happinesses. If that’s true, this would be the happiest day ever.

Today, we went to see Thomas. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Thomas, he is a stream train and Dougie loves him.

We had a ride on the first train out in the morning. We thought to grab a few pictures with Thomas while Scott and Connie held our place in line. Since I didn’t have anyone helping me with him, the engineer sat with Dougie.

After we did the “formal” pictures, the engineer took Dougie over to see Thomas better.

The train ride did three laps of the park. It only took about 20 minutes. From there, we got to enjoy the park and the various Thomas areas they had configured. Dougie found the train tables pretty quickly and started to play with those (you’d think we didn’t already have one at home).

After a while, Sir Topham Hatt arrived to take pictures. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Thomas, Sir Topham Hatt is the controller of the railway.

After listening to a story, watching a video and spending a bit of time walking around the park we headed out. Dougie had the time of his life!

It was Mummy’s time after our fun morning. We all piled into the car and drove to Canmore to do some geocaching along the river. It was a bit of a mixed day, sunny, snowing, warm, cold – we had a fabulous time and a nice walk with a great view.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mother’s in our lives. We hope you had a magical day as well.

Scott is another year older. We had a wonderful day celebrating with him. He took the day off work and spent the day with the family.

My mother was in town this morning so we all had breakfast together and then stopped over to see my sister, Laurie, and her family. After a nice visit, we packed up the kids and headed to the mountains.

We managed to get there shortly after lunch and headed over to Lake Minnewanka for a family hike. Connie wasn’t quite up for hiking so I carried her but Dougie walked for most of the trek.

Connie loved the entire trip. She was constantly looking around, watching the scenery and her brother.

It was a fabulous day. I think it was over 70 degrees but there was still snow on the mountain and most of the lake was still quite frozen.

Since it was Monday, there weren’t a lot of people on the trail but we did find one who tried to take a family picture for us.

The kids both really enjoyed having a special day with their dad.

Tomorrow we go back to normal, but were so happy to be able to share a very special day celebrating Scott.

Connie has a dream.

It consists of a world where she doesn’t need to roll to get somewhere – she can just pull herself forward.

She can manage to get an inch or two, so she isn’t really there yet, but she sure tries.

We don’t think crawling is too far away now.

Today, we took the kids to the model train show. It was a huge hit with Dougie – Connie was not as enthralled but she couldn’t see much from where she was.

Though I’m sure the model train enthusiast wish we were there for them, we were in fact there for one guy – Thomas.

We started off in the back of the show because that’s where the stroller entrance was. Almost right off the bat, Dougie got to try driving a model train.

He didn’t totally “get” what he was doing or why. He mostly wanted to pick up the various cars, trains and other things on the table. After a short discussion about what we could and couldn’t touch, we made our way to the Lego table. It was amazing! Unfortunately, our pictures just did not turn out, so we continued on to the Lego/Thomas play area. Dougie got right into it.

It took a bit of convincing but we did manage to get Dougie away from the trains and onto some of the other areas of the show. There were some very impressive displays! One really caught Dougie’s eye though.

The guy running it was so friendly and good with the kids. He asked Dougie which character he’d like to see and then he loaded him up and put him on the track for him. Dougie could have stayed there all day.

(Notice Dougie is holding his own Thomas)

All in all, a fabulous morning. Of course, Dougie is even more interested in Thomas now than he was previously.

Dougie thinks special time with his sister is important. He gets very into their time and has to make it just right.

There, we can just hangout here, like this

Sadly, this particular “family moment” was quickly ended by mum as I felt the pillow may smother Connie – but it was so nice that he wanted to share a special moment with her.

What can make Connie laugh like this?

Her brother.

He loves trying to make her laugh

We even managed to get the act on video.

Practicing sitting can be fun.

It’s all about balance.

Getting back up when you fall down.

And loving every minute of it.