J&M got Maui'd!

Elsy has a strange sense of cuteness. Sure, she'll look at a stuffed animal and say that it's so cute. But she also looks at a severed fish head and say that it's so cute as well. Yes, severed fish head. She insisted that she get a close up look of the head of the fish we were eating. She got up close to it and started marveling as to the cuteness of the head. I have a video to prove it!

I forgot to post earlier, but our renovations have really started progressing quickly of late. Deconstruction started a few weeks ago, but things were stalled due to this or that. In any case, after all the delays, we're finally seeing some major progress. The original deadline was Christmas, which will not be possible because of the structural changes, but we should get most of the work by this year. All of the modifications we were making and asking for seems to keep pushing the price up and up. In the end, as long as we're happy with the final product and we haven't broken the bank, I think that would be worth all the effort. I don't want to regret the decisions we make.

We took Elsy out trick or treating last night in our new neighborhood. We knew that the area around my parents was a candy dessert, so we decided to scope out the houses in our new neck of the woods. It was definitely a good call. There were quite a number of kids wandering about even after seven when we started our run, and we hit up a lot more houses than I expected to during our short trip up and down the street. We'll need to stock up on candies next year, and probably invite my parents to do the job of handing out the candy when we take Elsy out. The weather this year was pretty good. It was not too wet or windy or cold and everybody we met was extremely friendly. Elsy took a while to warm up to the idea of knocking on a stranger's house and asking for treats. "Trick or treating!" she would say. We did remove most of her loot from her stash, but she still doesn't find candies too interesting except for the ones my parents give her. Next year I am sure s

So we finished moving our furniture to the new house. The renovations have not even started yet so we had to make do and fill the basement with most of our stuff. The move itself went fairly well. We hired a company to do the move, although we had already transported a good chunk of our stuff over to save on time and money for the big move (although I spent many days carting around tubs and boxes over so it was not really an overall time saver). One of the movers when he saw the house said that he remembered moving a piano out from the house not too long ago. He described the location of the piano and what it looked like, which matched the pictures of the piano when we first noticed the house. (The piano had been moved out by the time we actually stepped foot in the house.) In any case, we're nearly out of the condo now. Just a few more boxes left to pack and it will be good bye to downtown life..

The folks who did the renovations in the basement did an excellent job. While they were making the changes downstairs, they found an army helmet in one of the ducts. The posted a picture on Facebook so I was able to link it here. An old army helmet. I found that curious but filed that away. When we got the house, someone had left a card to call them once we moved in. I gave the person a call and he explained that he had lived at that house when he was a child and was curious if we were planning on remodeling the kitchen if the stained glass window was to be removed. If so, if they could have it. A nice stained glass window. It was made by his dad before he passed so I think it would be nice to give it back to the original family if we decide to take it down. In addition, I passed along the information about the army helmet and he's now looking into the whereabouts of his dad's old WWII helmet..

So we've been really busy the past month. We finally closed on our house last week and had quite the scare when we were told that the bank was down and no closings could be done that day. That day being a Friday which would have pushed everything back a few days. I did get the call late in the afternoon telling me that everything would be good to go by 1630, which was a lot later than I had originally expected. (I took the whole day off.) Still it is better than not closing, so I'll take not bad news over bad news. This past weekend was spent checking out the house, and cleaning up the yard a bit. This past wind storm did a number to some of our flora and two smaller bushes seem to have died. We cut one down, but the other is a little out of the way. We'll figure out something before the snows come. Inside, I was able to get the internet up and running. We finally got the energy auditor in and got the asbestos out. The fireplace works again, and we'll be replacing

Although we have told Elsy that we were moving, she does not understand the concept of moving. Our condo is "home" and she is very comfortable here. We have our routines, and our familiar haunts, and our usual nightly jaunts into the city. Moving out into the suburbs will be a big shift for her, despite having stayed at my parents' place many times. Will she get used to not seeing the night lights, the people, the daily noises that permeate our apartment and environment? She will not see as many people as she did when she was an infant. I do like living downtown if only to expose my children to the myriad types of people, places, things that this city can offer. This would also include the many transients and less fortunate people who are ever present in our part of the city. They are not people to be feared, or ignored, or even pitied. They need to be given the respect and dignity that any human being should be given despite their current circumstances. Moving out in

I got woken up after midnight by Maggie who told me to help her with Elsy who had a nose bleed. I figured it was another one of those "clean up the sheets" sort of deals but when I saw her, it looked like a scene out of "Carrie". Her face and hands were covered with blood and her sleeves were soaked as well. The sheet had pools of blood the size of her head and Maggie quickly warned me, Don't react! Uh huh.. Hi kid.. uh.. how are you doing? The warning was well timed as I was just about to react. I honestly did not expect this much red from such a small creature, but there we have it. We decided to take her to the hospital, just in case. It was really close, and it was better to be safe than sorry. Long story short, she had a nose bleed and apparently losing this much blood is not out of the ordinary and likely is caused by trauma. We just need to make sure that we pinch her nose if this happens to promote clotting. We will also need to make sure that she

Elsy has been watching me drive for a while now and has started to comment on my driving style. Well in particular, she has been pointing out times when I only have one hand on the wheel. This happens a lot when you drive stick, but I guess she is not impressed when I rest my hand on the gear shift or anywhere else for more time than necessary. This not only applies to driving the car. She also pointed out my one handed style when pushing her stroller. I do not know how she can tell that I am only using one hand, but she would turn around and tell me, "Two hands daddy! Two hands!" Right, two hands.

We, well I, got up early to get ready and pack any remaining stuff before heading out. We said our last goodbyes to the Kims before they left for work/school and made our way to the airport. It was fairly uneventful and this time we gave ourselves ample time to get through to the gate. After filling up on gas and dropping off the car, we were able to make it too the airport in under three hours, which was still an hour longer than I had expected. Getting through security was a chore, but because we had a toddler with us, we were able to join the priority line and get past the main group of travelers. We even had time to grab a bite before boarding the plane. Oh, and this time we were able to board first because we had a child under five. We definitely were able to take advantage of our advantages this time. The flight back was late, but fairly uneventful, until the last hour when Elsy started to get a bit stir crazy and did not want to stay in her car seat. She started kicking the

The Disneyland Magic Morning only takes place on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. As we had the option of one Magic Morning with our ticket and this was the only day we would be at Disney in the morning for one of those days, we decided to take advantage of it today. (We were watching Fantasmic! last Thursday so thought that a Magic Morning that day would be too much for Elsy - and us for that matter.) Also, forcing ourselves to get up early in the morning was good training to get us accustomed to Eastern Time again. Elsy on King Arthur Carrousel. In any case, it was harder getting Elsy up on time and after picking up breakfast for Maggie, we actually arrived after the Magic Morning was already finished. We were, however, still able to catch all of the rides we missed out in the past two visits to Disneyland: Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Peter Pan's Flight, and after lunch at the River Belle Terrace, a cruise on the Mark Twain Riverboat. Els

For our third day at Disneyland we decided to check out Disney California Adventure. This side was newer than the Disneyland side and had some of the newer Disney products like most of the Pixar and all of the Marvel stuff. As we were planning on watching the Disney Paint the Night parade that night, we decided to head to the park after lunch and went to visit Maggie's aunt one more time in the morning. We ended up staying there for lunch, with her aunt cooking us a nice vegetarian meal. We arrived at the park at a good time as they were loading cars into the remaining covered stalls on the parking garage. We explored parts of Disney California Adventure side where Elsy could enjoy the rides, including all of the rides in "a bug's land". I wanted to check out the Guardians of the Galaxy dance off but a technical glitch cut the show short. I thought seeing the actors run off was part of the show until we were told that they would come back at five for another showi

We did not have any predefined plan on what we were going to do while we were in San Diego. Since there was a triathlon scheduled to use the road in front of the hotel in the morning (until 0930), we decided to sleep in. We still slept in a little later than that. Our check out time was 1100 and we got pretty close. Having brunch at Solunto Restaurant & Bakery. We drove down to Little Italy to find something to eat for brunch. After walking around a bit, we stopped at Solunto Restaurant & Bakery where we had some of their yummy breakfast fare and pastries. We then walked down to the Waterfront Park where the kids ran wild on the playground. The sun was out so it had warmed up quite a bit since the morning (and previous day) so I tried to hide in the shade as much as possible. The playground was not too busy, but there was some sort of yoga event taking place on the other side of the pond so we wandered through marveling at the number of people and their yoga mats that wer

We got up early to leave by 0700 to reach Legoland and beat the crowds. Amazingly enough, we actually left the house ten minutes before the hour, which is quite impressive when you have three young children to get ready and load into the car. We watched most of Despicable Me 3 on the way to Legoland so I did not really pay much attention to the scenery unfortunately. The kids were awake and ready for a trip! The day turned out to be overcast a lot colder than anticipated and I was actually cold in my shorts and T-shirt. As such, the park itself was not very busy and the water park was less than half fill. Apparently this never happens on a weekend so it was the opportune time to take advantage of all of the water rides, but it was definitely too cold for me to take advantage of (I also didn't bring my swimming trunks due to a miscommunication). The Setos at Legoland California. Elsy really enjoyed the playground but was a little small for most of the rides. We had lunch

Today was another "off" day where we were able to sleep in a little bit. These sleep ins are useful as each day has been packed with so much adventure that we barely have time to rest! The plan was to take part in a Hollywood Behind-the-Scenes Tour by Red Line Tours at noon. However, we had a rude awakening when we found out that our rental car had a flat tire. (The front tire on the driver's side.) Fortunately Bonnie had noticed this as they were leaving and gave us the heads up as well as a tire pump we could use to fill the tire. I was able to get out early, find a tire repair shop nearby, and got the tire fixed for a very reasonable price of $10. I was also able to get the tank filled but had no luck finding any post cards. As such, I did not really get to sleep in, and we were worried that we would be late for the tour so Maggie rescheduled it. In the end, with the help of the GPS and HOV lanes, we were actually able to make our original scheduled tour time of no

Maggie had already reserved a dinner and show for Fantasmic! a week ago at the Hungry Bear so we decided to try to sleep in a little this morning and head to Disneyland after lunch. We went out to pick up some healthy food but there was some sort of event and the whole street was shut down for pedestrian traffic. We ended up picking up food from Jack In The Box instead. The food was pretty good, and we ended up eating it in the Disneyland parking lot before heading into the park. After our experience the first time we were at Disneyland on Monday, we decided to check out a few of the rides we didn't go on, like the Casey Jr. Circus Train, or the Storybook Land Canal Boats. Our timing at the boat ride was serendipitous as we were able to watch the Pixar Parade while we were waiting in line for the ride. Something to consider for the next visit at Disneyland. We also were able to catch a show of Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple, although I realized later that the show was mo

Today was our first "easy" day. Easy because we were not rushing around in an amusement park trying to maximize our hard earned dollars. That being said, we still wanted to maximize our use of the GO Los Angeles Card we had purchased earlier. To that end, we wanted to take advantage of any of the tickets that we could use while at Santa Monica. This included stuff like the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium or the Malibu Celebrity Homes Tour, but we figured that the ones that we could use were the Hop-On Hop-Off Los Angeles Bus Tour - Yellow Route and the Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier tickets. It was recommended that we park at Santa Monica Place near the pier rather than at the pier as the lot would be very busy and expensive. This worked out well for us as the mall lot was pretty empty, covered, and had a really nice family restroom which we were able to take advantage of a couple of times to change Elsy. If we had to go to the restroom at the pier, we'd have to wait

Maggie had told me about Universal Studios Hollywood while we were at Universal Studios Orlando and mentioned how the Hollywood studio tour was much better in LA than it was in Orlando. As such, I wanted to check out this place for a while now. We decided to make a whole day of it and went early in the morning. However, getting up early was rather difficult despite being jet lagged to wake up three hours early. Keep on sleeping. Keep on sleeping. It took us two hours to drive over from the house. Traffic was not great and we could have taken advantage of the HOV lanes if I had a better idea where they were and which ones we could use (we had three people in the car so they should be free for us). The signage for the HOV lanes was a bit of a hit and miss. I am sure if we had stayed a month I would have been much better at using them. The first thing we checked out when we arrived was Kung Fu Panda at the DreamWorks theatre. As we could not carry Elsy on one of the shaking chair

We had planned to visit Disneyland with Henry and Lily today long before we bought tickets. Costco had a great deal called the Southern California CityPASS that allowed for a three day park hopper ticket Disneyland, one day at LEGOLAND, and one day at Seaworld Adventure Park at San Diego. At $410 CAD, it was a really good deal. There was one problem. When I went to purchase the card a couple of days before our flight out, I read the fine print and noticed that it was not an electronic ticket like the Go Los Angeles Card. They had to ship the card to you, and it would take 3-7 days to arrive. What the.. All of the other pass cards offered by Costco were electronic, only this one happened to be a physical one. We were both stunned, and realized that we had to purchase Disneyland tickets some other way. That is why we ended up purchasing the four day pass the day before which was an acceptable compromise. Elsy asleep in front of Cinderella's castle. Both Henry and Lily had annua

There were no real plans for today. We wanted to spend some time planning for the rest of the trip as we had purchased a four day Go Los Angeles Card and also wanted to visit Disneyland and there were not that many open days to take advantage of. Disneyland is quite expensive. One can lower the price per day by purchasing multi-day passes so instead of paying $117 USD for one day (or $135 USD on a peak day), one can spend $320 USD for a five day pass. There was no way we could spend five days at Disneyland, we just did not have enough time. But even the three day pass was $280 USD, so there was no real savings until you hit the four day mark, so we bit the bullet and went for the four day passes. Fortunately Elsy was free otherwise my wallet would be crying even more. My reasoning for going for the four day pass instead of just getting a single day to save on money was two-fold. It was cheaper per day, and we would not have to rush around at the park. The park is open from 0900 to mi

The main purpose of the trip was to go to visit Maggie's namesake aunt, and that is what we did today. Before we headed to her house, we had brunch at the Golden Corral buffet. William wanted to take us there after they had lunch at the Dragon Legend buffet while they were visiting. They primarily served American comfort food, and was pretty good for the price. Elsy enjoyed the all you can eat chocolate. Elsy likes chocolate. After our meal, we drove down to Maggie's aunt's house. We spent quite some time there, and the kids would play on the computer, while Elsy was checking out some of the toys at the house. We checked out the lemon tree in the back yard since Maggie had mentioned it a number of times before. They had hats at In-N-Out. William asked us what kind of food we wanted to eat, and Maggie and I had agreed to try out well known restaurants in their area that were not available from home. For dinner, we decided to check out In-N-Out burger. The food

As our flight out was not until 1800, I had initially planned on dropping Elsy off at daycare, figuring out my company's year end, grabbing my paycheque, and picking up Elsy after her nap before heading to the airport on the UP express. After figuring out that that schedule would be a little too tight, we decided to keep Elsy at home, and I picked up my cheque the day before so I only had one errand to run, which took a lot longer than anticipated due to traffic. We decided to drive to the airport instead of taking the train because of all the stuff we were bringing. It was unfortunate because the train is a lot faster and cheaper than driving and parking. I am the first to admit though that even with only one luggage to check in, taking a car seat, stroller, diaper bag, and two other carry-ons is a lot to lug around on public transit, especially when there are no elevators (or down escalators) at our subway station. The extra time we gained from cutting out some of the event

Elsy has been complaining about monsters for a couple of weeks now. She would indicate that there is a monster outside, or somewhere out of sight, and I would tell her that there are no monsters there. She has also started expressing fear a bit more, saying that she's "scared". I guess this is natural to start getting these feelings of fear as she starts developing an understanding of the world and expanding her imagination. On a not completely off topic segue, we were walking around in Yonge-Dundas square and a lady commented to her companion as to how Elsy looks so much like Boo from Monsters Inc.  I found that statement quite humorous as we got the same comparison when we were in Ottawa a couple of months ago. Is that why the daycare keeps tying up her hair in pig tails?

So our weather here has been very "spring like". Loosely translated means: "unpredictable". We had an ice storm last weekend, and relatively nice weather this weekend. Our health, on the other hand, has been fairly predictable. Sick, sick, sick. Maggie has been sick for all of April, and it was only a matter of time before Elsy and I succumbed to something. Both of us ended up with runny noses and coughs. I was more in the mood to sleep this past weekend than doing anything outside in the nice weather, but.. well, sunlight is good for you? To top it off, the warm weather highlighted a difficulty with living in some of these older buildings. The central HVAC is currently set to heating mode and as our unit faces west, the afternoons get uncomfortably warm. Opening the tiny windows we have helps a little, as do keeping our fans blowing at full blast. Sleeping has not been very comfortable at all for me, going from cold, to hot, to cold, to hot. (Being sick in this s

Elsy finally slept through the night without a high fever in the morning. It has been a long week and a half, but I think we are finally through the worse of it. My parents were so worried on Saturday that Maggie took Elsy to Sick Kid's Hospital to see what was up with her and her constant high fevers and her potentially infected blister on her thumb. I cut my evening activities off early to go down and ended up waiting until midnight before we were able to get a diagnosis of the flu. So, we recalled that we had wanted to give Elsy the flu shot, but when we brought her in last year, the vaccine was not ready for her. Since then we have been sick, sick, sick or busy, busy, busy. In any case, at least we have a diagnosis and Elsy seems to have finally gotten over the illness.

So Elsy has been sick for a number of days now. She started off with a mild fever which has become a moderate one (>40 C) which we have been trying to keep in check with medication. Apart from the loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, runny nose, constant coughing, and occasional vomiting, she has been doing okay. She did go and see the doctor on Monday, but the recommendation was to just keep giving her drugs until it goes away. Well, hopefully we all recover soon from this recent round of illness. It sucks to be sick. Oh yeah, Maggie hasn't been feeling well either, although I do feel like I am on the up and up, so.. that is a good thing?

Elsy's second birthday was a couple of days ago. She had a blast playing with some of her cousins. She's at that age where she can definitely participate in group play of some sort and enjoys interacting with other (older) kids. She definitely charmed the Kwongs this weekend, and had a blast chasing after Zoe the cat, calling out "Kitty Cat!" repeatedly while she unsuccessfully tried to keep up with the frisky feline. She did get in a number of pats though, once Zoe got a bit more accustomed to her, but the cat still fled after contact. Gentle Elsy, gentle!

For Maggie's birthday I booked us a couples massage and float at H2O Float spa and then dinner at Le Montmartre. After convincing my parents to watch Elsy of course. When we arrived at the spa, we discovered that the building (and block) had no power, which meant that the water and room was not going to be warm enough for the float which meant that we had to cancel the float. The massage was still doable though, so we decided to go ahead with the massage. Luckily enough for us, in the middle of the massage, the power came back, and it was early enough that our float session could continue. I've always wanted to try something similar to this for a while now. The idea of just being able to float and not feel anything seems like a novel idea to me. In any case, we got into the pool and the temperature of the room and water was such that (apart from my arms) I stopped noticing the temperature difference between the air and water. The water was dense enough that floating was

I've noticed that Elsy has been crossing her middle and index fingers quite often recently. I'm not sure what prompted it, but I have seen her sitting and watching on my iPad with fingers crossed in one or both hands. Maybe it is easier for her to manipulate the device with her fingers crossed that way? Normally when she tries to use her fingers either her middle or index finger gets in the way so crossing them allows her more control. Hopefully this doesn't become a habit..

Elsy has been counting for a while now. Her counting has not been consistent though. At first she would just go straight to seven. Then she would completely skip five to seven. Recently she has just been counting powers of two: one, two, four, eight. I am pretty sure this is not on purpose, but it was still pretty cool.

RM asked me that at work. My response was: "Elsy is short for her age."

So the bruise, abrasion and scab that I got near my elbow from hockey several weeks back has finally healed. Well, for the most part. The area doesn't feel as flexible as it did before, and the skin is still a little discolored, but Elsy is no longer pointing to my elbow and saying "ouch" everytime I changed her last month. She is now pointing and saying "elbow". I would classify that as an improvement.