Music Man

All I Really Need

"all I really need is a song in my heart, food in my belly, and love in my family..." - Raffi

It is so awesome that God made us to be part of a family. As our family grows, I have come to appreciate this more and more.

Thanks Jack and Audrey for taking care of Jude while we adjusted to River's arrival, not to mention all your help leading up to the big day taking us to appointments and all over town, and letting us have some date nights before we were parents of a newborn again.







Thanks Mom & Dad and Naomi for trekking all the way to Barrie and back to visit our newest addition. Mom, thanks for taking my worried late night phone calls. Dad, thanks for taking such great pictures. Naomi, thanks for taking such a great interest in your sweet little nephews.






Thanks to the oodles of Uncles and their visits, phone calls, and soup!

Thanks to my wonderful son and husband who go outside to play so I can have a rest.

Family of Four

My baby brother is finally here!!!

He was born on Jan 16 at 1:35 am and his name is River James. He weighs 9 lbs and 1 oz (smaller than I was heh heh) and he is 22" long. Mom (and dad) are healthy, happy and home again.

Dad says that anyone who wants to come see us is welcome but they should probably bring beer.

Lazy Parenting

So, with my due date fast approaching and my belly ever expanding I have developed some very lazy parenting techniques. Lately it has been to let Jude get into things and make messes when otherwise I would intervene. This morning I let him play 52 pickup with a card game just because it kept him quiet and occupied while I ate my breakfast. The other day I let him place, one by one, his snack of puffs into his toy drum kit. That same day I let him unpile the stacks of diapers ready to go for our new little one int he nursery. I also let him go crazy with the newspaper, although he is learning to "make a pile". Unfortunately this lazy technique coincides with Judes interest in crawling into spaces, shelves, baskets, benches, etc which usually need to be emptied first. Ah well...messes can always be cleaned up later, right?

Snowsuit Sound

Finally got a snowsuit for Jude. Immediately Kurt took him outside and began tossing him into snowbanks. Jude was thrilled and loved sliding down the snowbank slides, wriggling his little bottom until he slid down on his own. Then he would lift his arms to be lifted up so he could do it all over again. Joy!

Music Man

Obviously I have deep down hopes that Jude will be a music man. He loves listening to me play guitar, loves playing his keyboard and loves all his percussion instruments (that people have so kindly given us). He also perks up at certain songs when they start to play and often will stop what he is doing and "dance" to the song by flapping his arms or sit-dancing. I have been curious about how much he actually notices in a song - I am pretty sure that a good bass beat is most important to him however he also responds well to trumpets. This morning we were listening to CBC radio and 4-3-2-1 by K-OS began to play. The song has an excellent beat and Jude began to pay attention and dance like he usually does. Nicole was holding him at this point. The cool thing about this particular song is it has a pretty kickin bass lick followed by an abrupt pause before resuming the lick. While the lick was being played Jude suddnely stopped dancing and looked at us with an excited anticipative look. As soon as the pause hit he burst in laughter! It was amazing that he could antipate the song and got so much joy from the pause that I am sure K-OS hisself enjoys. maybe we have a music man after all...
Posted by Kurt

Be Careful Little Hands What You Do...

So, Jude has entered the copying phase of his life. I caught him "talking" on the phone while crawling around the house in circles. Guess I must walk and talk a lot. In fact, many items are used as a phone by Jude - any toy nearby or even his hand. All you have to do is say "hello" and he whips his hand to his ear and cocks his head to the side like he is talking. Now all I have to do is keep the phones with the batteries in them away so he doesn't make any accidental phone calls (he already made one call to Grafton by mistake).