Random pictures from the first half of the holidays...

The night before Christmas

The Uno elfs

Heading towards Mount Royal on a sledding expedition

My two cuties

We went to Clara's Spectacle de Nöel yesterday afternoon. I wish the lighting had been better for all us proud parents who wanted to photograph and record our kids. I took several pictures that are mostly black but with the help of Picasa's I'm feeling lucky button you get an idea of what we got see.

The show was entirely planned by the kids and each performance was multi-aged. Clara chose acro-gym and she practiced very hard for several weeks. We were treated to scarf juggling, skipping, and a human pyramid of three first graders. It was fantastic, you could tell the kids were pumped up by their moment in the spotlight. When Clara skipped back to her seat after the performance her head was high and her shoulders were back - she was feeling very good about herself.

Clara is in the middle juggling scarves

Near the end of the show all the students in first and second grade trouped up on stage and sang Fa La La La La (Deck the Halls in French). Clara found herself a spot right up front and belted out all the lyrics. Seriously, she loves to perform!!

"fa la la la la..."

The spectacle was followed by a cookie exchange, we ate cookies and came home with a dozen different home made cookies handpicked by Clara B herself. I think she made many of her choices based on size, we've got a few monster sized gingerbread men in our tin!

Taken after the show on the stage, the smile tells the whole story.

I've been asked to share Clara and Leo's current interests and sizes in order to help some generous family members spoil my kids this Christmas. I realized that this would make an excellent blog post, a moment captured in time if you will. So here goes...

Clara is 6.5 years old. She is a tall girl and wears size 7 or 8 clothes (mostly 7 unless it is made petite, then she'd be an 8). She loves crafty things, she desperately want to be able to knit by herself, and she likes Polly Pockets and Littlest Petshop stuff (though, she really does not play with them that much!). She is reading in French and a bit in English. She loves to look pretty and I think she's starting to like clothes. She'd love a party outfit; something that fits AND matches. She plays with Leo all the time, they mostly make up stories and use cars or animals to act out some very long and complicated story lines. She likes movie and plays and wants to go to a "concert", she adores Star Wars and talks about the characters a lot. Oh yes, and Clara loves to eat at restaurants. We are mean parents because we don't take her to restaurants nearly often enough. She especially likes sit down places with waiters and waitresses.

Leo is 4 years old. He wears size 4 pants and size 5 tops and is very picky about how they feel. He needs elastic waists in order to make it to the bathroom on time and he needs soft T-Shirt style shirts against his skin. She loves character clothes; superheros, robots, etc. He loves watching Marc play video games, being read to, playing with cars and things that he can pretend are "shooters" (currently a small drill shoots lasers at our house). He's started playing with lego but needs help building things. Once he's got a construction he can play with it and the figurines for ages. He likes bakugans (some new trendy thing, I can't tell you much more than that), and wants to shovel snow with me this winter. Leo is perhaps the biggest Star Wars fan in the house. He will talk your ear off about episodes 4-6 and would probably just about die if he got any Star Wars paraphernalia for Christmas (he won't be getting any from us this year).

Both kids are looking forward to trying skiing this winter, and hopefully they will get into swimming lessons next session. We are also looking for a martial arts class for Leo to attend (and maybe Clara too).

This is the face that we were greeted with on Monday morning. It is the face that sent my mommy panic in motion. Children's eyes are not supposed to become flaming red and swollen shut, this is something I know for a fact. Clara's right eye however, did not get the memo.

Off we went to the CLSC, so much for our playdate with Chloe and Zaco. Of course this adventure happens on one of the only ped. days we share. It seems Clara only gets sick on her days off, she really must love school as much as she says she does.

We saw the doctor pretty quickly - I think haveing such an obvious and pronounced problem gets you though the system quite a bit faster. Our doctor said she had an "aggressive" eye infection and prescribed two types of antibiotics. She also said if Clara gets any worse, we have to go directly to the Children's Hospital. This is NOT something that made me feel better, in fact it downright frightened me.

Thankfully, Cathy still came over to bake gingerbread-molasses cookies with us in the afternoon. We had a really nice time making dough, rolling it out, and using every cookie cutter Cathy brought from home! By the time we were done we had happy kids, several tins of cookies, and an eye that refused to go back to its normal size despite being attacked by antibiotics.

On Tuesday things were still not getting better, I spent a good chunk of the morning assessing the eye, Clara had already taken three doses of medicine and I'd expected it to work much faster. My previous experience with antiotics is that after 1 or 2 doses you are better. This was not the case and the thought of going in to the Children's kept creeping into my head. Finally, at about mid-morning, I saw creases in Clara's eyelid - yay! It meant the swelling was going down and the infection was NOT winning. Thanks goodness, no trip to the hospital for us.

What I was reminded by this entire experience is how much I HATE not knowing what to do. I can handle colds, I can handle gastros, I can even handle bloody noses and other scrapes and bumps but when I don't know what to do in a situation that involves my kid's health I feel the most awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I second guess every reasonable thought I have. Darn, that feeling of helplessness and fear takes over so very fast when your child is sick and you don't know what is the "right" thing to do. I guess these are the times that the mommy gut comes in, we all have it we jut have to listen. Mine told me to give her a little more time before taking her in to be seen again. I'm glad I listened. Thankfully I usually do when I really need to.