Ouch

I slammed Jacob's finger in our back door today. The fingernail turned purple right away, there was blood everywhere and the "pad" on the tip of his finger was a flap. He screamed for about 15 minutes until Kate came home and got some Advil into him. Then we went to the hospital, where one of our good friends was the doctor who examined him and he got patched up. Jacob didn't so much as wince the whole time we were at the hospital. He came home, had a bottle, a two-hour nap and woke up completely cheerful, and not a bit vengeful toward me. We went to Scott and Julia's for dinner and when J asked him what had happened, he said, with a brave smile, "baba slammed the door and hurted my finger". You try not tearing up when your little boy says that.

A more enjoyable story. Yesterday we were looking at the globe together:
Molly: Where's China?
Me: Here.
Jacob: Where's Great Wall of China (this seems to have captured his imagination)?
Me: It goes from about here to here.
Molly: What's this?
Me: That's India
Molly: What's this?
Me: That's Mali
Jacob: Mali?
Me: Yes, Mali
Jacob: Where's Jacob?
Me: Sorry, there's no country named Jacob.
Jacob: (Look of devastating disappointment and injustice)

My Tiger Woods Joke

What do Jacob and Tiger have in common?

Neither likes to go anywhere without his cheap, dollar-store ho(e).

C'mon, that's funny.

I'm the Gitch Eddybuddy

The twins experienced their first movie this week. The Grinch. Now every day is filled with make-believe play with Jacob, Molly and Zoe cast as the Gitch, Cindy-Lou Who and Max the Dog/Reindeer. What's as "eddybuddy" - why "everybody" of course. As in, "Come on eddybuddy, come play with me" or "eddybuddy, let's make a train" or "look out eddybuddy, I'm a scary monster". Jacob does not lack for enthusiasm. And I love that our family is big enough, that he needs a word like eddybuddy to rally the troops behind his latest scheme.

Zoë had her doctor check-up this week. She put on about 2 1/2 lbs in the first 5 weeks with us, and in the process has gone from being seriously off the growth charts, to now being around the 10th percentile. Several people came up to me this week and said, "she seems so big for ten months", which I can only surmise is due to the enormity of her fantastic cheeks.

Eddybuddy in the family seems to have the sniffles and Zoë has a funny tummy so we're still all a bit sleep-challenged, but daytime is mostly filled with toboggans, shoveling, books, puzzles, hilarity and hijinks. I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

Last night Jacob woke up around 10pm with a sore throat and quite beside himself. So I brought him down to the couch for half an hour or so of Habs hockey. When I brought him back to bed, he snuggled in with his stuffed animal and said, "Dog, I watched hockey with baba". That's the good stuff.

Some photos and a Zoë video
- practising on skates again

- Zoë starting to work on standing

- snacktime by the fireplace

- A little video footage of Zoë working on her standing

Twas The Night Before Christmas

Here's Molly reading Twas The Night...

Another Santa Sighting

Here's a video of our encounter with Santa this morning at the coffeeshop. Listen for the twins' Christmas wishes - I guess we can cancel the trip to Toys R Us.

- the traditional chocolate yule log for breakfast

- Zoë's bathtime



- Kate has decided that we don't have enough on our plate this winter, so we're going to build a little backyard rink (assuming winter eventually arrives). So yesterday, we got the kids some skates and we practised walking around in the living room. It's always good to have some early footage that we can share with Ron Maclean when he's doing an Olympic feature on one of the kids in 2026.

- Thankfully there's no photo evidence, but I ran the first of our local Snowflake Series of road races today. A bit of a misnomer as there was no chance of flurries. I took advantage of the good weather to improve my time over last year by more than a minute and a half. Kate looked after the brood so she didn't run this time.

Christmas Season

When you have two year-olds, the cynical "I can't believe how early the Christmas decorations are out this year" stuff just doesn't fly. On Friday night we took the kids on the candlelight parade to light the Christmas lights in the middle of town.

The lights are lit by Father Christmas, not by a Coca-Cola-esque Santa Claus. So, I tried to explain to the twins why he wasn't dressed in red or saying ho-ho-ho and why he was carrying a staff.

Jacob was excited by the whole event. He loved the candles, the hot chocolate, the parade, the crowd, the lights, Father Christmas, and especially the brass band playing carols. He and I stayed behind because he just couldn't leave. When the crowd had dispersed and the band stopped playing, he burst into tears and wailed that he wanted "more songs". The boy does have his enthusiasms.

Actual conversation between Jacob and I:

Jacob: Christmas not today
Me: That's right.
Jacob: Christmas tomorrow.
Me: Well, it's not for awhile, but this parade is the start of the season.
Jacob: Where the snowman go?
Me: Umm, which snowman.
Jacob: (giving me the "are you really that dumb?" look) Snowman
Me: (Looking around)
Jacob: Snowman right there (pointing at Father Christmas)
Me: Right, there he is. Snowman.
Jacob: I like Snowman (looking up at me, nodding seriously).

Twins Talking

Lest anyone think that Zoë has a monopoly on fantasticnesses lately, here are some of the twins' recent bon mots:

- We've been reading Stuart Little to the twins. But Jacob calls it "Too Big Little".

- Molly refers to our new vehicle (yes, I'm driving around in a soccer-mom-mobile) as the "mini-man". Not sure if this is intended as a derisive dig at me.

- In time for the Grinch season, Jacob has created a new word - "who-body". As in, "who-body else is coming for dinner?"

- Here's Jacob trying out the exer-saucer, and Molly giving the "you mess with my brother, you mess with the whole family" look