Our long weekend in photos

Griffith Sculpture Park.... exploring, wearing out the dog... enjoying the sunshine on Sunday.

Stopping for a moment to look at horses.... the white one was her favorite.

LLamas!!!!

AHHHHHHHHH..... a tired, wet and happy dog!!!

Look at the length of that tongue.... Lucy chilling out.

Mom chilling out on the chairlift... peaceful.

We seem to be in the 'pee' outside phase. An important part of childhood I think...


Climbing the chair poles.... strong daddy!

Exploring Gavin. Picking anything he can get his hands on...


Mom, Gavin and Lucy.

An inchworm... We are super into bugs- this is great for her but often not so much for the poor helpless, crushable bugs... note the DORA tattoo... yikes.

What a fantastic weekend.... the beginning of a summer full of fun, memories and trips.

Let him cry it out

It seems so obvious, right. Baby cries, parent's ignore it, baby falls asleep, never cries again.

Parent's of older kids talk about it like it's that easy. "We let little Billy cry it out." They say it with a hint of all-knowing bias that ignores the fact that they are currently not letting little Billy cry it out now.

We are.

And it blows.

The first night was Sunday. And it didn't go well. Gavin began crying at around 2:00AM (somewhat on schedule). At around 2:15AM, Rhona went in. She couldn't take it anymore. She fed him. Put him back down when he fell asleep, and we attempted to re-fall asleep. This isn't easy. We're worked up because we've spent the last half an hour listening the anguish in the little boy. We don't want him to anguish. We want to go to him, hold him, and make it all better.

But we're letting him cry it out.

Back to Sunday. 5 minutes after he seemed to be asleep, he woke up. And puked all over the place. He spent the remainder of the night in our bed.

Monday. With ear plugs in, Rhona seemed a little more prepared for the whole thing. And when he cried at around 3:00AM, we let it go for 20 minutes, then Rhona went in.

But she didn't lift him up. She rubbed his shoulders and back, and stayed near. That was enough to get him to sleep.

Which brings us to Tuesday night. This is when it's beginning to come together. Because on this night, when the cries came, we stayed strong. They only lasted about 10 minutes, and he got homself back to sleep.

This is it. We're winning.

Dear Rhona

Dear Rhona,

At the beginning of this year, you announced that this year, 2009, was to be the year of Rhona.

This meant you were going to do things for herself, like run, exercise, etc. Things that would make you feel better, look better, and be better. A part of that was listening to your voice and becoming Vegan. You never did like to think about where your meat came from, and didn't like to think that to make milk, cows had to be perpetually postpartum.

We, the family, rallied around you and threw full support.

Then, in no particular order, things started to happen. Grandma had major complications from minor surgery. Romeo had major complications. Gavin decided to spend the first 5 months of the year not sleeping, and Autumn decided to join in. We had ear infections, a dog that won't go for a walk, a friend that won't answer her calls, and kids that constantly need attention.

In other words, life.

But through it all, I think this has still been the year of Rhona. You've rallied and settled things for your mom, and continue to do the little things that make her life better (like fixing the heat yesterday). You plan road-trips with the kids, to the Zoo, even though you don't like Zoos. The family picnic you threw together was excellent and memorable. You organize play-dates, major playground visits, and still have time to do the laundry, throw together some kick-ass meals, and laugh and play with the kids.

In short, you're a great mom, and a great wife. And I just want to say how happy I am that I'm part of the year of Rhona. Because whatever life throws at you, you wrap it up in a nice little bow, and throw it back.

And you look beautiful doing it.

Thanks Babes.

love, Matt.

For Gord's Sake

At this point in time, Autumn's favorite movie is My Fair Lady. Her favorite song is "The Rain in Spain". She'll sing it over and over if you want.



And one of her favorite things to do is change the lyrics to made up silly songs.

Thus:

"The rain in Spain stays mainly on the Gabby's head".

"The rain in Spain stays mainly on the spoon".

It's actually I spy, for she'll look around the room as she sings the beginning part, with a sly grin, until she happens upon the thing that is getting rained on. It's fun make-believe, inspired by My Fair Lady.

As the title of this post alludes, another favorite song is the original Show Stopper performance of "I'm gettin' Married in the Morning".



In it, the character sings: "For Godsake get me to the Church on Time" in a pretty heavy cockney accent. So, the lyric actually sounds more like, "For Gord's Sake", when sung, in accent, by Autumn.

That leads me to ask Autumn, "Who's Gord?"

Which, as you can imagine, confuses her.

Family picnic

This is the first thing we saw when we got to the place where we planned the family picnic. A big, slow-moving, large-clawed dinosaur.

The picnic was at Buffalo's Forest Lawn Cemetery, a totally cool place with incredible amounts of history. The 13th President of the US is buried here, and as I pointed out to Rhona, with 38 dead Presidents, having one is dead cool.

But back to the cute things that aren't crusty old or dead creatures. We also saw some baby geese, called goslings. Autumn was thrilled to see the little babies. And so was Rhona. She took a bunch of pictures of the little geese.

The actual picnic was great. Rhona threw together food for us all. We dropped a blanket on the grass, and dug in. Some dug in a little more than others. Especially Gavin.


But across the board, this gave us the chance to be outside as a family. To run around, laugh, see fun things, and take great pictures. Gavin liked being outside, but Autumn loved it. Maybe because she's becoming such a little girl.