Lara's Skating Club Gala

Yesterday Lara performed at her skating club's annual Gala, her group were skating to a Jamaican theme. Here is her performance.. It might be hard to follow her, but at the start of the dance she's in the centre of the front row, and on one end of their pinwheel as it spins around near the end, and she even turns a little stumble into a flourishing finish..

Dan enjoyed clapping along to start with, then decided it was more fun to walk about and add his own commentary:

   

Then Lara came out again with all the skaters to perform in the Grand Finale; she might have been a bit overawed by this point, and it was the second time she'd had to do it today (there were two performances) but she did really well and we're so proud of her!

 

Happy 2nd Birthday, Danil!

Everyone got up early today so Danny could open his presents from Grandma and Aunty Catherine, Uncle Nick, William & Elizabeth before he went to nursery, with Catherine then Grandma attending the grand opening by skype - the wonders of modern technology.
Then it was business as usual for the rest of the day, Lara off to school, then skating practise, before picking Dan up from nursery, where the kids had made him a huge birthday card, decorated with their handprints.
Olga had prepared the house for a party, and the kids played pin the tail on the donkey - Dan was allowed to play without a blindfold - before Dan opened his other presents, then it was time for tea, followed by the cake that Olga and Lara made for him. He definitely has his Grandpa's sweet tooth!

Thanks everyone for making the effort to send cards and presents all the way here, Dan loved opening them and playing with them (and so did Lara!!)

"I'm hot!" reports Dan

Dan has been off nursery this week with a high temperature, from a cold given to him by Lara. He woke us up at 4am on Tuesday morning, crying, and when I went into his room, he told me - quite clearly - "I'm hot! I'm hot!". This seems to be a big step in his development, being able to get this message across. So far we've been able to translate his speech into meaningful English; he's very polite, his "please", "thank you" and "sorry, Lara" are understandable, if not perfect. That last one is very sweet, usually after causing Lara to burst into tears, and is often followed by a hug that soon turns into a wrestling match.
He's not been eating quite as much as usual, but his variety is still good. Even today, when under the weather, he's still polished off cheerios, toast, pasta bolognese, an apple, a banana, more cheerios, cheese, bread, cucumber, a fruit smoothie and ice cream. He's got his Grandpa's sweet tooth and loves cake and ice cream. We understand when he's asking for Ice cream, it sounds like "eye dream" and he stands next to the freezer door.
Other than when he's ill, his sleeping is good. It takes longer to get him off to sleep now, we can't just get him ready for bed, give him warm milk, deposit him in bed and leave now (we had that luxury for months) as he likes us to stay with him till he drops off, sometimes that's 10 minutes, other times it's an hour. Once he's asleep though, that's it. He very, very rarely wakes in the night, and normally we have to wake him at 6.15am to get him up for nursery. It seems a little cruel, but one of us has to be online for work by 7.30am, and the other is getting Lara ready for school, so Dan has to go to nursery early. He gets breakfast there, and he seems to enjoy it, it's rare to have a hissy fit with tears and him holding on to us. If we leave him to his own devices he'll wake between 7 and 7.30. We try to keep him up a little later on Friday nights, past 8pm, in the hope that he'll have a lie-in on Saturday morning - the only morning at the moment when we're not getting up early. Lara puts a DVD on in her room and sometimes we get to lie in until 8.30 or even 9am.
Here he is tonight, on his way to bed; we found Mickey the Monkey earlier this week, he's survived the move. He's survived many moves actually, since being made by my Nana well over 30 years ago!
I've been typing this on my phone in his room while he drops off. I was expecting a long stay, as he'd had a long afternoon nap today, but he fell asleep within 10 minutes of me putting him down, so I'll creep out now.
Maybe I'll try to make this my usual blogging time, rather than playing Deer Hunter or Stick Cricket on my phone like I normally do!

Updating the kids' measurements

We thought it was time we recorded the kids' weight and height, as we haven't done that for ages.

Lara is 23.5kg and 1.22m (4 feet exactly!)
Dan is 13.7kg and 87cm.

We're still here!! 6 months in....

Yes, we are still alive and well over here. Life is very busy, between work and shuttling Lara to and from skiing, skating and swimming lessons, it doesn't leave a lot of time or energy left to keep this blog up to date.
However, the 7th February marks our 6 month anniversary since we moved to Canada, and it seemed right to check in.
We're up late tonight watching the Winter Olympics, it's snowboard slopestyle at the moment. Lara has been watching the coverage in the mornings while getting ready for school, and it'll be interesting to see if she wants to take on a few jumps on Sunday at her final day of ski lessons. Here she is in the lilac suit:

Hopefully I'll start posting again on here soon to get ourselves up to date, but suffice it to say for now that everything is going really well, the kids are thriving, Dan is running about everywhere, and has started talking a little, enough to get his message across. He's very polite, we hear his version of "thank you", "please" and "sorry" quite a lot!