Her Cup Overfloweth

One of the things that Maeve has been working on is drinking from a cup. She's getting very good at it, but as you can see from this little video, she is too easily distracted. :-)

May Days

May has been a busy month for us. So I haven't been updating very regularly. Here are a few shots of our various activities. Unfortunately, we were late getting to brunch on Mother's Day and therefore forgot to take our camera for photos. Can you believe I have no photos from my second Mother's Day with Maeve?! That's gotta be classified as poor parenting! I'm hoping to get some photos from my sister-in-law.

Maeve has decided that she would like to drive the car. So occasionally we let her sit in the driver's seat. When I take Maeve to Canadian Tire, they have neat little shopping carts where the seat part is a race car complete with steering wheel. She LOVES that! I think we need to get a nice Maeve sized car like her Xinyu sister C has.


She's started to ham it up a bit for the camera these days. Here's a shot of her after getting to taste Baba's breakfast.

Followed by her voguing for her photog session.


She now goes once a week to a gymnastics class with Baba. At first she was afraid to try the activities; especially in front of a group of strangers. After 4 sessions, she is much more comfortable doing things. Luckily there are a range of personalities and abilities in the class. But holy cow there are some fearless kids in that class!
Crawling through the tent and tunnels.

Bouncing on the trampoline with Dad

Walking on the balance beam


PoPo and GungGung came to visit for the long weekend (often referred to here in Ontario as the May two four weekend). Maeve was thrilled to see them and wanted to cut vegetables and cook soup for them in her kitchen. She must have cut veggies for a couple of hours(not all at once).


Saturday was the only nice day of the weekend. We spent most of it outside in the garden. Here's Maeve helping PoPo with the weeding.


On our gardening break, we took a quick trip to the park. Maeve climbed the stairs and went down the slide all by herself about 20 times. I was a little nervous as there is a pretty big opening right at the top of the stairs where she could easily fall off the structure and she hasn't got the dismount from the slide figured out quite yet so I tend to catch her at the bottom. But I still managed to snap a few photos.


Maeve's vocabulary is growing, but she is pretty shy so doesn't like to try new words in front of others. She's been able to say PoPo for quite a while now, but has had trouble with GungGung. When we would go out she would say, "PoPo come" pointing to my mom and "Dis come" pointing to my dad. We all thought it was pretty cute, but I'm not sure my dad appreciated being referred to as "this". But by the end of the weekend she was ready to say GungGung out loud.

Thanks for a great visit PoPo and GungGung!

Belated Happy Mother's Day

Hi everyone!

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there. I hope you got pampered a bit yesterday.

A while ago our friend S posted a photo of a beautiful photo necklace that she had made of her precious daughter. I loved it so much that I ordered one of Maeve for myself.



Then I thought what lovely mother's day presents they would make for my mother and mother-in-law.

So I had a silver charm necklace made for my mom with Maeve and her cousin Robyn.



However, given that my mother-in-law has 10 grandchildren, a necklace might be a bit awkward for her. So I decided on this tile bracelet instead. There are 5 tiles and each tile has two grandchildren on it (one per side). The bracelet ended up being about 7.5 inches in length




I think they all turned out beautifully. I waited until after mother's day to post the photos so I wouldn't ruin the surprise.

I had an oval tile necklace of cousin Robyn made for my sister-in-law Evelyn, but I don't have a photo of it.

Hope you have a great week leading up to our first long weekend of the summer!

I want the tooth

the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth.

Poor Maeve has been under the weather lately. First she had a bit of a cold a couple of weeks ago, but that was compounded by the slow and painful emergence of her first, second-year molar. The poor darling was a drooling, feverish, clingy, whiny, sleep deprived mess. The worst seems to be over now. But the tooth hasn't actually cut through yet.

Hopefully, she doesn't have to go through this 3 more times!

Here she is at the Big Apple in Colbourne, Ontario. We stopped there on our way to Ottawa a couple of weeks ago. We had a great long weekend in Ottawa where we visited PoPo and GungGung, attended the wonderful wedding of our friends James and Fiona, and got to meet baby Henry. It was quite a jam packed weekend.

Méabh - Síog Banríona

Maeve - Fairy Queen

One of Maeve's favourite gifts from her birthday was this great fairy costume from her cousin Sarah.

I call upon the powers that be to evoke my fairy powers!
Hmmm, what shall I do with this wand today?
I know! I'll make Ellie fly!
Go n-eitlí tú Ellie!
Gee, that didn't work. I wonder what I'm doing wrong?
Check out my wings Baba!
Well, at least I can fly.

The Queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey

and playing with all her new toys at the same time!

Maeve loves her new kitchen from Po po and Gung gung. She likes to make soup and feed it to everyone including all her dolls and stuffed friends (aka guys). Strangely, she only uses the microwave to cook. I guess that isn't a very good reflection of my cooking habits! Although, in my defence I must point out that we try to keep her out of the kitchen when the oven or stove are in use.

Then she will sit down with her bowl of soup and drink it while playing the piano.

Then she will go over to her folding barn and make sure all the animals get a chance to experience the different stalls and compartments by moving them around. Oh yes and she has to make sure they all get a bit of soup.

Then it is over to the Cozy Cottage to ring the door bell and make sure the family all get a bit of soup.

We're going to have to start rotating toys into storage and taking them out after a few months. Otherwise there just won't be enough hours in a day to feed soup to the whole gang.

Cooking "doup" in the microwave "beep, beep"
What can I get for you today? Perhaps some soup?
Ah, finally a chance to relax and enjoy my cooking.

Crocodile Rock

Maeve loves dancing to our Elton John DVD. For her birthday, we gave her a toy piano in the shape of a crocodile and now she plays it while watching Elton play Crocodile Rock. Maybe she'll be a rock star when she grows up! If only the phone would stop interrupting her creative flow...