Little Photographer

To say that is is a common situation to see would be an understatement

The girls each purchased their own cameras in January and this meant the “kids camera” (an old hand-me-down from my dad that the kids have been using) has now become “Matthew’s camera”.    A four year old with his own camera … hmmmm.  Matthew most definitely has Johannes (that’s my dad) blood in him and we are adjusting to the life of living under the paparazzi … or at least that’s what it feels like at times with the constant flash appearing out of nowhere and everywhere.

 

A selection of Matthew’s photos will show you that his world has been small in the last few months … but not to worry as we now have pictures of most of his toys and every corner of the house and lots of ones that we rather not share

It’s not uncommon to be busy working and suddenly out of nowhere a flash be in our face or back or side

These are by far the most common pictures we find on the camera

   

We get pictures of food

 

Pictures of pictures

Pictures of animals … oh I mean people

         

And a large selection of pictures of toys.

You can tell that he watches his mom and sister and see what we do with the camera as he attempts to imitate us from time to time.  But most of the time he just walks around with the camera at his chest and fires the button killing us with his flash.  We’re working on the look and aim and make sure you have a decent picture lined up before you shot.  Good thing Santa brought him his own SD card so that he has tons of room to store his wide selection of masterpieces.

Disney on Ice 2012

Well I sort of got a little disorganized in my posts.  This one actually belongs a bit back, during the March Break.  On Thursday, March 15th after we went to the Gage Park Tropical Greenhouse we headed over to Copps Coliseum to see Disney on Ice.  Last year we went to see Disney on Ice, but it was not the most successful trip for Matthew as he was scared most of the time and was not feeling well.  So we thought we’d give it a try again this year.  He right away knew what we were talking about when we said we were going to Disney on Ice and was excited to go … no leftover fear from last year.  He has also outgrown his extreme fear during videos/movies so that helped as well.  He was super excited that we were going with Aiden again. 

This year even Rob was going to attend.  After just completing several major papers we decided it would be good for him to have an afternoon off.  But that was not to happen.  Instead he took the whole day off … to stay in bed and try recuperate from the fevers, chills, headache, and cough that he had.   He ended up being in bed for several more days, until Monday he finally ended up on antibiotics for pneumonia and/or bronchitis (they didn’t do x-rays to see which it was since the treatment is the same).

Waiting for the show to begin

The show begins

Intently watching

Various pictures from the show

   

Grand Finale. 

This show was better then last years. The kids enjoyed it. I think this will be our last time attending. They are all somewhat similar and they’ve seen it now.

After the show we went out for supper at King’s Buffet.    My mom and sister Val met us there.

The kids watching the fish

 

Since it just so happened to be Val’s birthday we had the staff come out and sing to her (and bring her a free mug)

Naoh trying to take in the clapping and singing and candle

Matthew was quite upset that we were not going to MacDonald’s for supper.  He wanted to go to a “play place”.  We insisted he would enjoy eating here but he was not convinced.  He has been to King's Buffet before so he was not all that interested in the food options and just wanted to go somewhere to play with Aiden.  Well for someone who didn’t want to go here for supper he sure had a grand ole time.  We gave Matthew free reigns to eat what he wanted.  “I’m allowed to be bad” was what we heard repeatedly.  Previously we would be selective in what he can have, allow certain things in the diet to be relaxed but limited how much he could inhale of various things and trying to steer him in the right direction.  The only restriction he had for this night was no rice, but since he didn’t ask for anything rice it was pretty much free reign for him.  He stated right away “I want wheat”.  I’m not so sure he really realizes what that means, but he knows he can’t have wheat and it effects a lot of what he eats.  So he chose pizza (which also has milk) and quite enjoyed it, along with various chicken balls and shrimp and meats and fries.  He had quite the plate full and ate most of it before he headed off for the dessert section and enjoyed several plates of fruit and 3 cupcakes … he was just thrilled over the cupcakes.  Inwardly I cringed at the thought of what kind of kid I would deal with the next day but to see the delight on his face was quite lovely. 

We were surprised the next day when we did not have any major emotional/attitude symptoms.  We did see the effects of the meal over the next few days in his stools, but even that was not too major.   It’s nice to be able to allow those occasional “treats”. For the next week he would proudly tell people about how he went to Disney on Ice and then “I was bad” … a little explaining was necessary for that one.  I don’t usually let me kids go around bragging about how bad they were :)  With time we hope that we can open Matthew’s world up a bit more … but overall he has a pretty good variety of food and since everything is GF at home it’s usually only an issue when we go out that he’s restricted because of wheat.  Previously we allowed this to slip when we went out, but we have come to realize that this caused problems when done too often.  So we keep a tight reign on it and this was the first time in a long time that Matthew had wheat.  We have slowly been introducing milk into his diet, small amounts in recipes and so far so good.  A rice trial some time ago showed us that rice is still an issue for him … no rice and no wheat makes pasta a hard option in our house and potatoes a common food (one he does not like)  But overall the diet has a good amount of variety and he has learned that there are times in life you just have to eat things even though you don’t really enjoy them.

Braid Wrapped Bun

Done in the same way as the ribcage braid, and like the ribcage braid this braid was easy and fun to do.  For this hairstyle as well as the ribcage braid I do the braid the night before so that in the morning I just have to pin it into place.  I think she even managed to sleep on this one a day or two before she took it out.  I love the elegant look that leaves people perplexed as to how you managed to do that.
 
Not to worry, as usual I leave you with a tutorial which you can find here

Sewn Braid

Marietta requested this hairdo.  I’m not huge on the ribbon hairdo’s, although some of them do look quite nice.  The big mistake I made when doing this hairdo is that I forgot to mousse down Marietta hair to keep it from getting fuzzy with lots of fly-aways.  This picture was taken at the end of the next day, so not the best looking example of the hairdo since she’s got fuzzy hair all over and her messy bun is no longer in.  The tutorial pictures are much nicer looking … of course!  You can find them here.

Basket Weave

This was another neat hair-do we tried recently.  With a bit of practice I might get a bit neater at it.  It went better then I expected and turned out pretty good.  Next time I think I would put some ringlets in the bottom hair.  The only thing with this type of hairdo is the fact that it doesn’t stay in long as it’s gets fuzzy quickly … I always like the long lasting hairdos the best.

 

You can find pictures and a video tutorial here

Again

Even better then yesterdays temperatures.  And I like how they bumped up tomorrow temperature by a couple degrees and got rid of those clouds that were there.  Now if Friday can keep rising in temperature and lessening in chance of rain we’d be all set.

Wow, if only summer could be like this, no humidity just lovely warm weather!

 

Yup, we did it again … no problem creating another record breaker today, only 12 degrees above the last record.

Now we all just have to get healthy around here so we can better enjoy it.  Although maybe being unhealthy has allowed us to enjoy it more.  We are all suffering from a lovely virus of fevers, headaches, muscle aches, cough which turns into stuffy/runny nose.  Fevers last for about 3 days, but thankfully a good combination of acetaminophen and ibuprofen seems to get the fevers under control most of the time, allowing for bouts of feeling normal, or closer to normal.  It seems to also held the kids headaches but for Rob and I even the medication does not seem to ease the pressure in our head. 

Rob actually was the one who introduced this virus to our family last week.  He started on Wednesday and was sick for several days, unable to function or do any work.  He couldn’t read or look at his computer screen because his head hurt so bad.  He was often in bed exhausted or fighting off the fever chills.  Then stubbornly he would get back out of bed and attempted to keep going at his work … the deadlines still loomed over his head (probably creating an even bigger headache) and the work had to be done.  But in vain for this just sent him back to bed.  Since we knew this virus was going around and that it took some days we thought he just had a good dose of it and waited for it to play itself out.  But by Sunday we realized he needed to see a doctor and so Monday morning he went in.  There was some crackling in his chest.  They did not bother to take x-rays but said it’s either pneumonia and/or bronchitis.  Both have the same treatment plan, they gave him antibiotics and he’s been getting back on his feet, finally returning to school today.

So far the rest of us have been fortunate to just stick to the basic virus.  Marietta is better, I’m part there, fevers gone but headache and sniffles/cough still pretty strong.  Matthew and Rebecca just started today, but have still been able to sit outside and enjoy the weather.

Another day of this and then it looks like we slowly slide back down to closer to normal temperatures. 

Elastic Bun

I found this neat hairdo at Girly Do Hairstyles and so I attempted to recreate it.

Unfortunately it didn’t turn out as I expected.  In the end it did not look much different then when I do the entire head in elastics.  With this hairstyle the majority of the hair is in a ponytail and the elastics sit on top of that.   I don’t know how to do those nice tucked in buns and gave up after a few attempts and just went with a messy bun, but for those who want to give it a try you can find the tutorial here.