Fun day, but Odin is sick

Today started pretty fun. We headed out to Broadway (which is a lot like Hawthorne in Portland) to do some exploring and a little shopping, and we started with a hair cut for Odin. It was at this great place called Melonheads where they work with children only, and the kids get to sit in cool chairs that are race cars and air planes and motorcycles. Odin chose Thomas the Tank Engine. They even gave Freya a French braid for free...

We walked around a bit, bought some new clothes for the kids and used some of Freya's birthday money to get her a few things, then walked around some more and headed home for snacks.

When we got home, we all had a couch party to watch some movies, and we noticed that Odin felt really warm. He had a pretty high temperature. He basically crashed around 4 or so and we let him sleep until about 6. We woke him up again for a couple hours and put him to bed at 8, he's just so tired. You know Odin is sick when he sits still and is quiet.

I think he'll be fine by the middle of the day tomorrow, but he was feeling really bad tonight. Poor guy. We're all getting it though; Alyssa and I are coughing pretty bad, and we've all had runny noses.

Freya is fine, I think because she's the one who brought it home. Here's a picture of her video-chatting with Grandma:

Kerplunk!

Freya finally went #2 in the toilet! Earlier today she had to go, and she was standing in a room by herself like she always does, but she had underwear on. I convinced her (finally) that if she sat on the toilet like Odin, it wouldn't mess up her undies, so she did it. Nothing happened (Freya usually has several false alarms before she's finally ready, even stretching over a couple days), but later today she really had to go, and I caught her just as she was really pushing and put her on the toilet. She didn't like it at first, but when she got off and saw it in there, just like when Odin does it, she really thought that was cool. Then she started to go a little more and asked if she could sit back down on it, so I helped her and she finished.

She was really excited about it, and thought it was so cool to flush the toilet on her own. We're finally getin there!

Yay! Pictures

Real quick; I've uploaded the pictures I've taken so far with my new phone. There's some new ones in the old Jul - Sep '11 album, and a new Oct - Dec '11 album. Enjoy!

Oct - Dec '11

From Oct - Dec '11

From Jul - Sep '11

Happy Birthday to Freya!

Freya is 2 years old today!!!!!

Not a baby anymore. Oh man, I can't believe she's two!! I remember feeling similar when Odin turned two.... She's so big now, and she talks so much that she hasn't seemed much like a baby anyway. But she's still the baby of the family, so....

It's been a fun birthday for Freya. Grandma is in town so she got to be here for the festivities. We took the kids out for some fun in the Kitsilano neighbourhood, which feels a lot like Hawthorne in SE Portland. There's a lot of shops and eateries, tons of fun places to look in to and buy stuff. We went to a huge costume shop, a toy store, a great Thai food cafe, clothing stores, all kinds of stuff. We just spent a few hours walkin' up and down the street.

We all came home and had cake and singing, followed by presents. Zaideh and Nana phoned in to sing with us, and we had a great time.

We've given up on potty training in favour of weening (bad to do both at the same time). Freya nurses like she's 3 months old (sometimes), so we're cutting back. Today she got to in the morning, once in the afternoon, and right before bed, and she did fine. We'll see how it goes, give her more food (maybe she'll eat more of it since she's nursing less) and gradually eliminate more of the nursings until she's gone. Not sure what the night-time plan is.

We found Odin some ice skates, too. We were ad a re-sale shop and they had one pair and they were Odin's exact size! We just need to find him some gear and he can start his hockey lessons. He also got some great new sneakers that look like Star Wars Stormtroopers and they light up in the visors.

I've been taking tons of pictures, and Grandma Paula has more, so I'll be uploading a ton of them soon. I've got thousands of pictures in our albums, and I've found even more that I haven't uploaded. All the originals are stored in tons of different locations on my computer, and I want to re-upload everything because I can keep the original sizes and tag all the people in them. It's a huge project, but this weekend is Thanksgiving so we have extra time off, and I might try to tackle at least part of it....