Gingerbread House

I'd say our quiet Saturday was quite productive. Jacob and I watched the Habs win this afternoon. And Kate made a Christmas gingerbread house with the kids.

Sickness, Hockey, and Hugo

We missed Chinese this morning as Jacob was up most of the night with a funny tummy, Kate has to work today, and I was too tired to contemplate driving to and from Toronto. Ah well, our mastery of the language will have to be delayed by a week. So we're having a quiet Saturday at home instead.

We took the girls to the family skating while Jacob was playing hockey last night. Zoë skated for the first time without a push-aid. And Molly is getting stronger on her feet, both on the ice and walking. She should be fully mobile just in time for her surgery and re-casting.

We also had a babysitter last night and saw Hugo in 3D. All the award nominees are yet to be released, but if there's a better movie this year it'll have to be great. We enjoyed reading the book with the kids last year, and were impressed with its format as much as anything (part graphic novel, part novel, relying on beautiful art to set the mood). The movie is magical though, and it's the first time I've seen 3D actually add to the viewing experience, not just as a gimmick. Big recommendation.

My Favourite Thing Today

Molly has been having difficulty walking or running since her casts came off, which apparently is to be expected given that she didn't use any of those muscles for a month. But we still took all the kids skating on Saturday night and Molly was moving faster on ice than on land. And she was really excited and proud of herself.

At dinner or before bed we often take turns telling each other our "favourite thing today". That night, Jacob spontaneously said "You know what my favourite thing was today? Seeing Molly skating."

That boy is my favourite thing on so many days.

Molly's Feet Again

We returned to Sick Kids again yesterday and the verdict is that the casts weren't doing enough to stretch Molly's achilles tendons. So she's scheduled for surgery on January 25th.

Bad News:
- Surgery isn't ever fun
- She'll need casts for 4-5 weeks after surgery, and they might have to be the long ones
- She'll need to wear AFO braces until she's about 6 or so. They would look something like this. They would fit inside her shoes, wouldn't prevent any activity and can be easily removed for something like swimming.

Good News:
- Her prognosis is excellent. He expects to get her ankles to 10 degrees past 90 degrees and doesn't expect that future surgeries will be necessary
- No casts from now until late January. Great for swimming in St. Lucia. Great for winter sports until then.
- Better to deal with all this stuff while she's 4 years old instead of later.
- As always, she's completely calm about all this stuff.

Visit With Santa

We had our annual visit with Santa at Mariposa this morning, complete with cookie decorating, face painting, hot chocolate and marshmallows, and looks of wonder at the arrival of the bearded guy.

Requests to Santa:

Jacob - a pirate, a castle, and a zamboni

Molly - a princess and a fairy (yes, she's still a feminist work in progress)

Zoë - a pirate and 2 zambonis (later amended to a dinosaur and snowshoes)

What Passes For Excitement Around Here

I should lead with answers to some questions I've received on recent posts.

• While Molly is undoubtedly a genius, I may have misrepresented her talents a little. She did write that "story" and came up with the words herself, but we helped with the spelling of almost every word. She knows maybe 20-30 words (and just as many Chinese symbols!), but would not have been able to make "dispatcher" a recognizable word.
• Kids passports arrived in the mail today. Why passports you asked? St. Lucia with my sister's family for the first week of January. And hopefully a visit to Tiff and Eric in upstate New York in 2012 (if I write it then hopefully I'll make it happen).

On with the exciting events of our lives:

1. Beaver attack. A decent-sized tree fell down outside our house on Halloween. Possibly aided by a beaver's gnawing. We axed it into about 4 logs and limbed it. The next two nights the beaver(s) dragged the logs away. A few nights later it(they) took down 4 saplings right outside the back door. The beavers seem to be building a lodge (surely not a dam?!) in the little waterway that separates our "island" from the mainland. None of the lost trees were favourites and our view is quite improved so no major loss (yet).

2. Sleep habits. Zoë has always had sporadic but regular difficulty getting to sleep. For the past few months this has involved temper tantrums, jumping out of bed, raging for 5-60 minutes. This was driving us crazy because there was nothing we could do to calm her down or prevent the problem or help fix it. During our recent visit to Priya and David's they suggested a reward program. Mild skepticism was vastly outweighed by helpless frustration so we gave it a shot. Every night of going to sleep with no tantrum earned her a star and a Melissa & Doug stamp. Six stars meant she earned a night sleeping in Molly and Jacob's room. She succeeded 6 out of the first 7 nights! And in the subsequent two weeks, there have only been one or two minor incidents. A set of six stamps cost $11. So now we're kicking ourselves for not doing something like this earlier! And Priya and David are our new heroes! Problem solved, until the next problem.

3. Books. We seem to have caught up on our tv shows (Downton Abbey, Justified, Mad Men, Treme, and two vampire shows that I'm probably too embarrassed to mention by name). So I've been reading more books.

• The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt. Very rare (for me at least) for a book to garner so many awards and still be a great read. This is old fashioned western. True Grit meets Lonesome Dove. With just enough literary stuff to justify a bunch of masters theses (and apparently enough to satisfy the stuffy bunch who give out awards). The brothers themselves are great, unforgettable characters.
• The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes. Julian Barnes is smarter than you. And he'll smugly remind you of this on every page. That's my usual opinion anyway. I thought his A History of the World contained 2 1/2 brilliant chapters and 8 going-through-the-motions ones. Arthur and George was too clever for its own good too. And Flaubert's Parrot got the throw-across-the-room treatment. So, I'm not a fan but he can write so well that I gave him another chance. And The Sense of An Ending has some really thought-provoking passages and messages about memory and perception and perspective. I can see why it won the Booker. But I can't really recommend it, unless you're into that kind of thing.
• Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon. Loved it. If the crime/detective genre had more books like this I'd be all over them. Great set-up. Imagine Israel lost the 1948 war and the Jews are given a 60 year lease for Sitka, Alaska. That lease is coming to an end so the community is in disarray. And our drunken, detective protagonist is working his last case. It's brilliant and funny.

And if you're looking for book recommendations, my other 2011 great reads were:

• City of Thieves, David Benioff. During the siege of Leningrad, two young men are arrested for looting and face a "choice" of death for treason or completion of an impossible mission - to find a dozen eggs for the army colonel's daughter's wedding cake. Best page-turner I've read in a long time. Just a great story.
• Hunger Games trilogy. Can't wait for the upcoming movie. This isn't just Young Adult Fiction, it's gripping, imaginative, powerful stuff. And yes I do channel my inner Katniss Everdeen every time I'm struggling on a long run.

Two New Casts

Here are a couple of photos of Molly at Sick Kids with her new casts on. Check out the stylish pastels!

Her feet/ankles seem to be responding to the casting but it's still 50-50 as to whether she'll need surgery. We go back again in two weeks. As always she's being a trooper about the whole thing - quite unfazed. It helped that the kids (and Kate) had a fun morning with Alison, Dan and the cousins, while I went to the passport office (new passports for all the kids, including Zoë's first Canadian one).