new logo

trying to work out the ins and outs of getting my stationary right on the new website:
www.albernidoula.com so I'm trying to shrink the logo.. thus placing it here. thanks.

Happy Summer!

This is probably my worst time-lapse-between-posts yet! No, I won't waste the time checking!
Summer updates: We're enjoying a low-key summer.. full of park play-dates and BBQs.
Des is NOT teaching summer school, but has put all the extra (!) time into his podcast and tonight uploads his 100th epidsode of Dread Media!!!

Cade misses all his pals at daycare, but we see most of them out and about anyways! He continues to be into all things super hero, and enjoys watching Super Why, now that he's on holidays. This show features 4 characters that have various "reading/decifering" powers which has translated into an immense fascination with all things spelling/reading related. He asks us "what does _ _ _ _ _ spell?" on every car trip and likes to try spelling his own words. Sometimes he even spells English ones!

Davin continues to be our little happy boy. He loves to play in the water and the muck! His big accomplishment was learning how to slide down the firepole at the playground, unaided. He has amazing upper body strength, and indeed, monkey-like abilities (and attributes!)

I have decided to really "go for" the doula thing and start up my own business. I'm not sure how it's all quite going to gel with the new job in September (teaching grade 1/2 french immersion full time.. eek!) but I'm looking at it from a long-term perspective.. this is what I want to do for a long time, here in Port Alberni. In the short term, however, I've been busy plastering the town with my posters, advertising my new business and the website! (click here to check it out!!)

PS: this is a lovely picture taken by my son!
We've enjoyed getting together with our extended family quite a bit this summer. My mom and dad have been over a few times, once taking Cade for a wee holiday for 2 nights! My brother and his gf are moving to the island on Saturday, so we're hoping we'll see more of them, too. Here, Dad celebrates his birthday with his "candle helpers".

Des' parents have settled into their place in Nanaimo, and they're right above a beautiful beach. We love being able to drop the boys and go on dates, or just have supper cooked and served to us!! Here, Cade and Nana play in the surf.

In house news... there is none! We're still trying to sell our townhouse and in attempt to lure in some more buyers, we spent 3 days painting the yellow walls white with our realtor and Des' parents. The end result is quite different and really... bland. But I guess that's what we're going for, right? We have had a number of nibbles, even some bites, but in the end don't have any ca$h offers to show for it. sigh. the saga continues.

What's ahead? This week we're starting our second set of swimming lessons at the pool. The boys showed real improvement going every day for two weeks at the beginning of the summer. It's also a reason to "get up and get going" in the mornings.

We're looking forward to going to the "vacation house" with Granny in Naramata at the end of August. For now, however, I'm looking forward to going to sleep.. tomorrow's another busy day!

So tired

I'm so tired. "So go to bed" yes, that would be the RIGHT thing to do. The problem is every night I hit the hay around 10:30 and JUST as I'm falling asleep, like I'm drifting between dreamland and reality, reality rears it's whiney, whinging, pathetic cry of a toddler. Inevitably one of the boys wakes up. Then I have to deal with it. This involves getting out of the warm bed and finding the boy who needs comfort, swiftly enough so that the other boy doesn't wake up. Comforting means either crawling in with the awake boy or bringing the awake boy back to bed. Option 1 means that I'm stuck in a small bed, but option 2 often means that I'm stuck in a large bed with 2 sleeping males who snore. loudly. The worst of it is, I have a REALLY hard time getting back to sleep. Lately, I've been transferring the boy to the big bed, then leave him smooshed up to his dad, to return to the boy's bed so that I can sleep by myself.
So I'm trying to avoid the initial "wake-back-up" so that I'll be so wasted-exhausted that I'll fall into a deep sleep the second after I make the mid-night transfer.

So I COULD do some of the pile of marking I brought home to while the time away, OR I could post some cutie pics of my kids! Today before bed we were playing with the photobooth option:




Ok that's it, I'm exhausted beyond belief. G'Night!

welcome to doula-dom

you may notice firstly that there will be no capitals in this post. i am typing one handed while holding davi's hand so that he'll go to sleep. this is what i do. i multi-task.
anyways, on to today's exciting news.. [btw, it's looking like i'm turning the whole 'non-blogger' thing around, eh]
today i got to be the doula for my friends shannon and shaun. it was amazing. the day was filled with excitement and awe, and a lot of hard work.. yes, mostly on shannon's part, but i was exhausted too. the result, however, was worth it. beautiful baby SEJAL was born this afternoon. she's about 7 minutes old in this shot-

amazing.
i'm now on a birth-high. i want to attend another one. sign me up.. [cue announcer: if you or any one you know is currently experience labour pains, call me.]

Now, because I can't have a post without a picture of my darlings, here's one from Friday afternoon. (Yes, Dav's asleep now.)

Dav fell asleep watching Batman with his brother. Cade kept lifting up one closed eyelid, saying "Dav, wake up! Batman's on!"
heheh!

Pictoral Update of the last few weeks.

Pictoral.. is that a word? "graphic" would be more appropriate, but may give the wrong impression! Anywho...

"Wacky" Day at daycare got Cade all in a tizzy. He wanted to have "blue dinosaur hair, like Damian" (Damian sported a wicked purple fauxhawk at the last birthday party we attended. Mom is a young esthetician who has no qualms about styling her 4 year old!) So I said that was fine. I'm a young-ish hip mom, too, man! He also wanted to wear his t-shirt inside out and his shorts backwards. Fine. Personally, the whole look was ADORABLE!!




Cade has a strong genetic history of back-packing.. he begins his journey across the Georgia Straight.


And just so that Davin's not totally left out of the post:

Our neighbour made this rocking horse for him. He's in his *new* big-boy bedroom that has his new bed, his clothes and some toys! We decided to not wait until we move to do this until we moved because WHO THE HELL KNOWS WHEN THAT WILL BE! Ahem. Am back in control of myself.

Anywho.. enjoy May long! I'm on doula/labour watch, so I'm sticking close to home!

Happy Mother's Day?

It's the end of an era over at Team Reddick. Davin and Mummy weaned this mother's day weekend. A bit of a sad affair for both parties. I explained that "Mummies make milk for their babies, and you're a big boy now, not a baby, and Mummy's body does not make milk any more.
Just look at him (yes, that's a purple faux hawk):

I'm a little sad that this is the last time the "girls" will look this nice.. soon I'm sure they'll be reduced to, as my friend eloquently puts it, "a ten pound sack of sugar with only 2 pounds in it!" so, I had to get a last picture!

What's this? a new post?

I know I've been utterly neglectful of dear old Team Reddick blog, but I just don't have the time for you, old girl! It's been 6 weeks since my last post, and since then, we've celebrated 3 birthdays (GG, moi, Des) and a major school holiday (Spring Break) and a major Christian holiday (Easter). Here are the photographic highlights since the last post.

Spring Break was filled with family activities, often with the Doucette family. Here, Des and I were feeling brave and took the four kids to Coombs. We got an amazing amount of pitied looks!

We also took the kids to Victoria where we swung in Beaconhill park and..

..saw seals up close and personal!

We're excited that Des' parents are moving to the island in a few weeks. They came mid-March to look (and buy & inspect) a home in Nanaimo. Here, Gramps is in the middle of a serious "super-hero" board meeting, where they are discussing methods of capturing the "bad guys".

We were fortunate to have my maternal grandma, "GG" come and visit on HER birthday. The boys are being dorks in every single picture I ave of the three of them, so this is the best I could come up with! GG looks amused by the whole scenario!

"Happy Birthday to Me"

The community holds and annual "Easter Bunny Express" at the old drill hall. There was a plethora of "hands-on" activities for them to do (it's really geared for the under-six crowd.) Poor Davi only lasted about 20 minutes, then he'd had it. Cade enjoyed trying out a variety of stations. (Note the lack of glasses, here, I just ordered pairs #5 & 6. They came in a week later).



Who IS this "Easter Bunny" you speak of, Mother?

Davin enjoys the Easter service at church, from an unusual perspective.

Happy Birthday, Daddy! His actual birthday was on Easter, and we celebrated with the Wise family. The night before, Des and I enjoyed a quiet sans-children meal with our friends the Doucettes at the local sushi restaurant.


As a special Easter activity, a bunch of our friends got together for an outdoor Easter egg hunt. The dads went out early and hid the eggs, then the moms brought the kids up and we all had a ball searching for them! This si sure to become an annual tradition.

You have NO idea how stressful it was trying to take this picture. As it was, I think we're missing another 1/2 dsozen kids!

And they're off! Thank goodness for our logging-friend's tree falling tape, otherwise the boundaries would have been endless!

Cade counts how many he's found so far. Note the day-care-made floppy ears!

This one was particularly well camouflaged.

To the finders go the spoils. The parents also particularly enjoyed this hunt!

This particular Easter hunt at Nana's was a little more involved, transportation-wise!

Superhero worship continues to abound chez Reddick, much to Des' delight!


Hope everyone out there in blog-land is finally starting to see some sun. I'm loving the Spring flowers that are emerging in our wee garden. Until next time!