Family Christmas in Brandon

Every year, Kristine's extended family gathers to celebrate Christmas.  If you got us all together, there would be about 50 of us. That rarely happens, though, because a whole bunch live on the west coast.  With just the Manitoba crew, there is still about 35 and so we are much too large a group for someone's house. For the last couple of years, we have been meeting at a hotel in Brandon for the weekend and it is a nice way to celebrate the season, have some fun and stay in touch with everyone.  Here are some pictures of some of our activities...

We had a sleigh ride on Saturday. It was a pretty cold wind, but fun.

Matthew enjoyed his first sleigh ride. Rachel slept through it.

Matthew's 2nd birthday also fell on this weekend so we got him a cake to celebrate.

He did pretty good blowing out his own candles, with only a little help from Dad.

He had no problem eating it all by himself!

Rachel hanging out with another Auntie Trisha!

Swimming in the hotel pool. Always a good time.

Father-Son Bonding Time

For his birthday, Matthew got a Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar from Grandma Gerhard.  Because he is too little yet for the tiny pieces, it was also a gift for Daddy. The two of them have been diligently opening a little door every night and building the Lego together. Matthew looks forward to it. During the day, he will periodically point to the box sitting on the piano and tell me "wait Daddy".

You can tell they are working hard...see the tongue sticking out?

teamwork

 

The finished product.

Night-Night Rider

Matthew loves cars.  He has many of them and they all have names...red car, blue car, brown car, white car, yellow car, yellow van etc. He also has favourites. Blue car is one and so is this one, black car. We told him that this one was actually the Knight Rider car, also known as KITT.  Now he calls it Night-Night Rider car.  So funny.

Big Girl

Look at our little girl, getting so big.  She can hold her head up and so she is ready for sitting in her bumbo chair and the circle of neglect...

Next comes the Jolly Jumper!

Halloween

On Halloween this year, kids everywhere were very excited about both dressing up in their costumes and getting lots and lots of candy. But not our kids. Nope. Rachel didn't really know she was even wearing a costume, which was the case for Matthew last year. This year, he knew he was wearing something strange and he didn't like it.  We did manage to get him into it, but not without some tears.  And as for the candy, well, neither one of them could have cared less.

So we started out the day by going for a Halloween visit to Daddy's office.  One woman there was dressed up as a witch, complete with a green face and wart on her nose, and Matthew really wasn't too sure of that.  He looked like a tiger, but really he was much more akin to a kitten, so he held on tight to Daddy when she was around.

A tiger and his cars.

In his cage.

He eventually warmed up to the whole costume thing.  Briefly.

Instead of going from house to house that evening, doing the trick or treating thing, we headed over to the new house to hand out some candy, let Matthew see what this Halloween thing is all about and maybe get to meet some of our new neighbours.  We handed out the candy and Matthew thought it was quite exciting that we had so many people coming to our door, but wasn't so sure about their attire.  And we met a few neighbours over some hot chocolate.  Then we headed out to Auntie Lu's and Uncle D's for a quick Halloween visit and a photo:

Rachel the pea pod and Matthew the tiger.

Monthly Photos

We have been taking monthly pictures of Matthew since the beginning, and the same goes for Rachel. However it isn't until you look back (which you can thanks to this handy blog) or compare the two that you really realize how big Matthew has gotten in his almost 2 years and how small Rachel still is! Here are their 2 and 22 month shots respectively.

Rachel 2 Months

Matthew 22 Months

box

Still the best toy ever invented.

I Love You

Matthew has become very good at signing. Even though he is increasing his verbal vocabulary all the time, we continue to teach him signs for various words and phrases. Mostly because it is just so darn cute to watch him sign with his little hands  So our most recent sign we have been working on is the sign for "I love you". There are two ways to sign this. You can sign each word individually or you can put it all together in one sign by folding down your ring and middle finger with your palm facing out, which is what we do.  This requires a bit of dexterity and is hard for a little person who is still developing those fine motor skills and so the best Matthew can do is fold down his index finger. Being a new sign, we usually sign it first and then he copies us. It has become part of our bedtime routine with him and not so much part of our other daily activities.

So the other day, I left Rachel on a blanket on the floor to kick and wiggle while Matthew played around her.  I went into the kitchen for just a moment and when I came back, Matthew was quietly sitting on the blanket beside her, folding down his index finger in his version of the I love you sign.  It was really the sweetest thing to see.

Of course, I couldn't get him to repeat it for me so I could take a picture, so these ones will have to do so you can see that he loves his little sister.

"Hi Rachel!"

*kiss*

100 and counting

We were having a stroll last night with our yuppie-mobile (the chariot) and were enjoying Matthew and his stream on conversation about cars, the various colours of cars, the ownership of said cars etc. That got us to thinking: just how many words does he know anyway? I said that it must be a hundred and Kristine said it was closer to 50. So we started to count. It was pretty fast at first, but then it slowed down around 40, but we steadily climbed past the 50 mark, past 70 and on to 80. We were both pretty amazed at 80, but the words kept coming. We aren't sure if he knew what we were doing, but Matthew started to chime in with obscure words that he doesn't use often, but certainly knows. By the time we got home we were at a solid 96. We executed the bedtime protocol and as I was brushing his teeth I got the last four to push us to 100. Wow. And sure enough, the next day we added more. I think we are at 107 now and still counting. Pretty incredible. Apparently 20 words by 18 months is pretty normal and 50 by 2 years, so clearly language is not going to be an issue for Matthew, or to be clear the lack of language won't be the issue. He is starting to put things together too. He has quite a few 3 word phrases and is getting up into 4 words as well. Of course all this is great except as I write this the little turkey is chatting away in his crib, as he has been doing for the last hour of his "nap".

That's a Great Hat!

Isn't it though? We've had friends, family and even strangers (many strangers) tell us how great it is. Some of those strangers even called from across the street to say so. And why not? He is pretty cute in that hat.

Evelia really likes it too.

We've been everywhere man

Matthew and I have been on some pretty grand adventures during my paternity leave in August. Bike has been our preferred mode of transportation (as Matthew puts it "bie! daddy bie! big bie! bie! bie! reh Bie! bie! BIE! bie!"). We have been through Fort Whyte Alive, out to St. Vital Park, down the Sturgeon creek trail, and checked out the mint. In total we traveled over 200km in August, not bad. Here is a map and some of the pictures of our adventures.

Reading whilst traveling. Standard protocol.

"Gookie!" (which, don't tell him, is actually a rice cracker)

Boardwalk in Assiniboine Forest.

Proof that I was along for the ride too.

BDI Bridge

Out by the Mint.

Over the esplanade Riel

At Fort Gibraltar

cross-reference

Matthew is big into reading these days. Well reading may be a bit of an overstatement; he is big into looking at books these days. We have a number of books that are just pictures of things, and he is thrilled by them. He points out things, names things, describes things, assigns ownership to things, changes ownership of things, comments on the cleanliness of the things, the relative size of the thing and sometimes the colour. Of course all this is within the confines of his ever expanding, yet still quite limited vocabulary. A standard discussion will go like this: we'll take a car as an example.
"Cah!"
[Aside: He has, for some reason, picked up a bit of a boston accent. I am not sure where this comes from, and it doesn't apply to everything, but some some cars in particular are defiantly Boston cars, as in "Coah" instead of the regular "cah". For this illustration we will assume a non-boston car.]
"Cah! Cah! Ye-yo Cah! Daddy Cah! Big Cah! Mommy Cah! Dirdy Cah!"
Most things will go through a similar evolution, like Boat:
"Bo! Big Bo! Daddy Bo! Mommy Bo! MommyDaddy Bo! Ye-yo Bo"

The colour thing is new and developing. He has 2 currently, so things are all pretty much black and white, or in this case, blue and yellow. He gets a bit confused when we tell him that the colour is wrong and will earnestly either switch to the other colour or reiterate the colour that he has chosen. Like-a so:
M: "Bu Cah"
A: "Matthew, that car is green, Green Car.""
M: "ye-yo Cah"
A: "No Matthew, Green. Green Car, this one is yellow, this one is blue, but this one is green"
M: "ye-yo Cah"
Still, colour is cool.

So, back to his books of things. He has many, some that are abstract, some cartoonie, and some with actual pictures. We were reading one the other night and he pointed out Kite, or "Kye". Then he stopped and grabbed for one of his other books and started frantically flipping pages. I had no idea what he was doing since he usually comments on pretty much every page. He flipped through several pages until he finally stopped and pointed triumphantly at picture on the page: "Kye!, Kye!". Sure enough it was another picture of a kite. He wiped that book away and pointed back at the original: "Kye!", then back and the new book: "Kye!". Yep that's my little boy: making daddy proud by cross-referencing is picture books.

Welcoming Rachel

We had made the calls the night before so the various grandparents had time to make their way into the city, so everyone was there to welcome Rachel. Here are some great pictures of the first visits when Rachel was hours old.

Birth Story

The full birth story will be published in Rachel's book (this of course means we need to make that book). However, here are some of the highlights:Kristine's water broke just as we were putting the final touches on Rachel's room. Specifically we were putting up the light in the room. Kristine came and sat down and said "I think my water just broke". We had that hanging moment of a thousand thoughts, then things started happening. We paged the midwife and she came over to check out how things were going. Nothing was moving yet, so we decided to try to get some sleep. It was only about 10pm. If things weren't moving by morning then we would make a plan from there. However, as we would shortly find out, things were moving just fine. Since Kristine had never experienced actual labour before, just the chemically induced kind, we weren't all that sure what normal was. About 11:30 or so we started timing what we though were contractions. They were all in the 5 minute range so we eventually decided to page again. The midwife came over and sure enough, we were fully into active labour - who knew! We activated Luanne, who was to care for Matthew while we went to the Hospital. She came over and Kristine's labour continued to progress. We were quite far along when Luanne got to us. We passed in the door and basically said "he's asleep, we'll call later, good luck". It was about 2:45am. The midwife followed us to the hospital in her car. We found out after that she called ahead to warn emergency that we may need them, and to get the room ready in delivery. We arrived, after a number of minor traffic infractions, and a lot of swearing, with as of yet no baby - so that is good. It was 3am. We did the classic Hollywood flight through the hospital - Kristine in a wheelchair, me pushing and Kristine breathing hard. We had a bit of a barrier at admissions- they wanted all the paperwork filled out, but the baby didn't really care. The midwife arrived and basically took Kristine to the room for delivery and I stayed signing things that I didn't read or even really care about. I ran to the room where they were flagging me down. 17 minutes later Rachel was here. Those 17 minutes (less for me) were pretty blurry, but Kristine was in fine form and the birth was generally without incident. Rachel was perfect, is perfect. The cleanup afterward took far longer, but I guess that is normal. At about 6am we had a little nap and at 8am we had breakfast and started calling people to tell them the exciting news!

Rachel Diane Arrives!

Who knew that the previous post would be so timely! Rachel Diane Hagyard Gerhard was born at 3:17am on Sunday July 24th at St. Boniface Hospital. She was 8 pounds 8 ounces, 52cm long. 

Full birth stories will be posted soon, but here are some of the pics to get things started.

Soon...

More Language

Matthew's language has continued to explode. It seems that every day he picks up another new word. It is getting difficult to keep track of how many words he has in his vocabulary. Not all of his words sound like the actual word, but he uses them consistently for the object he is talking about and we know what he is saying. Here is an update what he is saying these days.

Matthew has started to name his people, but had so far only accomplished naming us, Auntie Luanne (ann-dee) and his cats (doey). When we were at the lake at the end of June, the grandparents (all of them) started thinking that this was something that should change. So they began working on it. Uncle Derek, however, was successful first during a 'babysitting opportunity' (as we like to call them) and now Matthew has a name for him.

"uhn-go" - uncle

"mama" - Grandma/Grandpa. He has some trouble articulating the difference between the m and p sounds so they have only one name at the moment.

"nuh-nuh" - thunder. He picked this one up during a thunderstorm at the lake. He hasn't used it much since, but then we haven't had any thunder.

"bah" - ball.

"coo-gie" - for cookie. Along with this word, he knows where they are stored as well.

"cah-ker" - for cracker. These are kept right beside the cookies and both of them are very exciting. Whenever he gets one, he shows it to everyone he can and exclaims over and over "cah-ker!", cah-ker!"

"ap-oh" - for apple. He loves these at the moment.

"tae-toe" - for potato. He learned this word because he was confusing them with apples. They do look very similar.

"keeto" - for mosquito. He saw me swat at a mosquito with my hands and picked that one up right away. Of course, it is usually accompanied by a hand clap as if he was swatting at one too.

"moo" - for moon. Usually this refers to his most favourite book Goodnight Moon, but he identifies moons that he sees in any book.

"poo-pee" - for, well, you can figure it out. He has, on a few of occasions, even accurately used it to let us know that he was, in fact, poopy and needed a change. Getting ready for some potty training...

"yuck-ee" - yup, yucky.

"gickie" - sticky. His hands are usually gickie when he eats.

"gee" - for stick. There are many, many of these to be found outside and he inspects them all.

"toe" - for stone. Also many of these and a remarkable number of them end up in his hands.

"wee-wee" - windy. He learned this one at the lake too on a windy day. It is also 'wee-wee' in front of the 'wah'.

"wah" - for fan. There are many fans in the world (who knew?) and he sees them all. We hear this word a lot. They are so important to him that they even get a special 'good night' along with the cats. "bye-bye Doey, bye-bye wah."

"bye-bye" - used for both bye-bye and good night. Just depends on context.

"hi" - hi.

And finally, the vehicles. He loves anything with wheels.

"dah-do" - for tractor.

"kah" - for car.

"bee-ba" - for school bus, but actually it can refer to any bus.

"bow" - for boat.

"bi-ee" - for bike.

and strangely, for we don't know how or why he knows this one...

"ummer" - for hummer.

This little video will showcase a good many of his words for you. He is enjoying reading his First 100 Machines book with Daddy, which he usually does at the end of the day when Daddy gets home from work. You will also see "airplane" in sign language. He uses quite a bit of sign language too, but we'll save that for another blog.

Matthew meets Fred Penner's Dog.

We went for a walk tonight - Matthew and I - and by walk I mean more of a meander, or perhaps a dawdle. It is great if you don't really need to accomplish any particular distance in any specified time. Often the walks involve traversing the sidewalk in front of the three houses between us and the end of the block and then carrying him back. This is regularly a solid 45 minutes. Why? Well because everything is fascinating - which is also fun. Every vehicle (moving and otherwise) requires commentary; every plane passing overhead requires exclamation; every animal requires noting; and every twig, stick, branch, and now pebble and rock requires intimate investigation, consideration and ultimately retrieval should the item in question somehow surpass in some way the items already held tightly in his tiny fists, at which point the new item will be exchanged for the current item with great excitement and fanfare. God help us when he figures out pockets.

Tonight I decided that we would get into new territory. I carried him to the end of the block and we started there instead. Very exciting. Tonight we also discovered that we could hold more than one item  in our hands. It started out innocently enough. We found a stick that we simply had to add to our collection, but the stick and rock that we had were so good that we couldn't bear giving them up. So we simply picked up both sticks and the rock. Well, this breakthrough caused a bit of a run on carried items. In about 5 minutes Matthew had 3 sticks, two rocks and a leaf held firmly in his grip, and he was considering another fascinating stick and how he might shuffle his loot to pick that up too. Luckily a "bu-bee!" (puppy) was spotted coming along the sidewalk taking its owner for a walk. As the puppy and its owner approached it turned out to be none other than Fred Penner. He lives in the neighbourhood and we have run into him before - he has even helped me push my dead car into our garage once. Anyway, he talked with Mathew and introduced his dog, which Matthew then started calling "Doey" of course. Matthew sat right down and pet the dog. It was quite fun. Fred had a bit of a conversation with Matthew and then we talked a bit. It came out that we were expecting number 2 right soon-like, so Fred offered, in a very humble way, some advice for when number 2 arrives. He said (and he didn't claim this wisdom as his own) that we should get Matthew a present from the new baby so that Matthew will feel special and start the relationship between Matthew and the new one off right.  Now Matthew may be a bit young to figure that out, but thinking about how to make sure Matthew is special as baby number two takes up residence firmly in the centre of the universe is going to be an important part of this next month.

Eventually Matthew and the dog were done with each other, so Matthew said "bye-bye bu-bee" and we carried on. Fred and the dog on their walk and Matthew, me, and our various and sundry sticks, rocks and leaves on our meander.

Jump

Matthew has learned how to jump.

Cottage

We had a fine week adventure at the cottage. We got a railing built in the bunkie, Matthew learned some new words, and we got some great relaxing time with family. Here are some shots:

Mom and Matthew in the water

Playing ball (or "BA!") with Grandpa

We call this one "reflective pondering with tractor"

Grandma playing, Matthew watching

Ready for Canada Day

Captain Adorable

Sharing some sand with Grandpa

Golf. Matthew is home sleeping (theoretically).