A woman’s work…

It feels as though this week I have mainly been washing clothes, between Casper and his attempts at potty training and Theo and his insistence on smothering every single meal he has over his entire body they get through more outfits than Katy Perry at an awards do.  I have now taken to feeding Theo dressed in just his undies, though sitting there in his stained vest he looks far more Jim Royle than the cute babies in the Jojo Maman Bebe catalogue – I’m sure I ordered one of those rather than the two little urchins I ended up with.  Casper’s favourite pastime at the moment is trying to make himself burp and Theo really enjoys putting the potty on his head and his hands in the loo.  There was a bit of a break in the domestic drudgery this week though, a real life house fire over the road.  Apparently it’s the most exciting thing that has happened on the street in years – five fire “trucks”, an ambulance and a glamourously scary police woman on a massive motorbike all turned up.  Casper couldn’t contain his excitement, it was better than Christmas.  The street was cordened off and there was water running down the hill from the hoses.  Everyone was out having an ogle so I met the new neighbours, I wished I’d put make-up on and wiped the shreddies off my top.  We don’t know what caused the fire but the general consensus seems to be that it may not be entirely unrelated to Vancouver’s relaxed attitude to Marijuana laws.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts the inevitable has happened.  I took the boys to playgroup this week and Casper was singing merrily along during “circle time” to a song about a pizza and pronounced Tomato “Tom-ay-to”, I nearly disowned him.  I’ll have to keep him inside and force him to watch Richard Curtis films until the transatlantic twang is knocked out of him.  Though the films (yes films definitely not “movies”) will have to be bought on DVD.  I’ve told Casper that the internet is broken.  He’s obsessed with watching Thomas the Tank Engine on You Tube, which in itself whilst boring isn’t a disaster, it’s just that he’s not hugely interested in the actual episodes.  No, he prefers to sit and watch low quality videos of either other children playing with their trains or more worryingly 40 year old men sitting in their attics filming insufferably long reviews of individual Thomas toys, saying things like “note the slight variation in Gordon’s colour on this version compared to the 2010 version” and “contact me to tell me if you prefer this face on Diesel 10 or the 2009 face”.  One thing’s for sure I definitely don’t want Casper contacting them whether he prefers the 2009 face or not.

In other news I have also seen someone taking their cat for a walk. Make of that what you will.

I ordered one of these….

This is what I got…

Titchy Panda

Hi all, so I’m back after a brief break due to a visit from the in-laws and my baby turning the grand old age of one.  Other than a slight mishap when my mother in law mistook Wasabi for some nice gentle avocado spread the trip went well.  It was really lovely to see them and I enjoyed being the tour guide rather than the new girl.  I also very much appreciated the two and a half weeks of on tap babysitters.  On one occasion Neil and I grabbed the offer of an opportunity to get some skiing/boarding in so we all trooped up the mountain in our ski gear with the Grandparents fully tooled up with nappies, drinks, games, toys and enough snacks to feed a hungry rugby team.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, a perfect day to go skiing.  There was also a world class snowboarding competition taking place so we spent a fair amount of time queuing for the lifts listening to long haired men in precariously baggy trousers shouting “woah check out that gnarly underflip man, awesome,” or something like that, whatever they were saying it made me feel very old and uncool (though on closer inspection – I had time in the queue – I have the sneaking suspicion that a few of them might have been looking at thirty from the wrong direction, long hair and ski goggles can only hide so much).

We also visited the picturesque Lynn Canyon where I learned two important things:

Firstly, Casper doesn’t share my unbearable fear of heights.  I had to pluck up all my courage to stumble across the suspension bridge (that has been standing for nearly 100 years and is so tethered down it would take a hurricane to shake it), I got to the end feeling jelly-legged, dizzy and faintly sick only to turn round to see Casper running full speed up and down it as if he was on nice safe firm land rather than 50 metres above a water filled creek.

Secondly, and most importantly, I learned the heights of my family compared to wild animals.  Apparently, according to the chart in the ecology centre, Neil is slightly taller than a baby giraffe, Casper is nearly as tall as a wolf, Theo is the same size as an average salmon and I am the same height as a panda.  I will sleep better knowing this information.

I am beginning to get a little concerned that when they grow into teenagers we are going to have to win the lottery to afford to feed Casper and Theo.  The other day Casper discovered the Canadian breakfast favourite, waffles, he ate two full adult sized ones in one sitting, with bacon, melon, pineapple, strawberries and yoghurt, he’d already had a bowl of cereal, piece of toast and apple for breakfast and went on to have half a baguette (on the way home from the supermarket because he was too starving to wait), some grapes, a bowl of chicken and rice, some smarties, some crackers and half my smoked fish and potato soup.  His current eating prowess seems to have been inherited from his father and grandfather, we went to a fabulous buffet brunch at the Pan Pacific hotel overlooking the bay, though they didn’t have time to stop and look at the view, between the pair of them I think they ate five starters, four main courses and five puddings apparently thinking all you can eat was a challenge.  I hope Casper has inherited their fast metabolism or Jerry Springer will be airlifting him from our house by the time he’s twelve.  I’m not sure even he’d go for this cereal though…