The van Whatever Family

On Friday, we reached a bit of a milestone for Juliet as she went to bed for the first time without my involvement, or rather, without being fed to sleep.  At night when we put her down for sleep, we have a whole routine which ends with me breastfeeding her.  I feed her until she falls asleep and then gently (and quickly) put her in her crib.  But on Friday night, one of my mom groups was having a wine tasting night and I had to leave before Juliet’s bedtime.  Leo did our whole regular routine on his own (butterfly song, key sleep-related words, story) and then attempted to feed her with a bottle.  According to him, it went ok, but he thought she was confused by the sudden appearance of the bottle – she never gets a bottle and she kept pulling off and looking at the door as she was wondering when her real food was going to walk in.  It was pitch black in her room and Leo thought milk was getting all over her face.  After a few minutes, Leo decided to simply rock her to sleep on his shoulder and that worked well.  So, all in all, it went pretty well and we all survived the experiment!  Hopefully we can both be a little more independent now.  

Trying to teach Juliet the concept of goodbye while I was on my way out to the wine tasting party.


Juliet came down with a cold this week so we didn’t go to all of our regular activities and sort of tried to take it easy.  But her cough has been persistent and it seems to be getting worse.  We’re going to call the doctor tomorrow just to make sure it isn’t anything more serious like bronchitis.

One activity we did attend this past week was music and it was the last class of the winter session.  For the first time, Leo let her crawl freely during the class.  Usually she just sits in front of Leo during the class, but all the other kids just run around so we thought we’d see what happened if he just let her go.  She liked the freedom and crawled straight towards the instructor.  Her favourite part was when she got to sit under the rainbow-coloured parachute.  We’ve already signed up for the next session of music, so now Juliet and Leo have to learn a whole new book of songs.

Today, Juliet had an interesting day.  We recently applied for Nexus so that we can skip the line when we cross the border to the US.  We often visit the US when we go to Oma’s (she lives right near the border) and in order to use Nexus, everyone in the car has to have a Nexus card so we had to get one for Juliet as well.  Part of the process for getting Nexus is passing an interview and getting a retina scan and fingerprints taken, so I wasn’t sure what they would do with Juliet.  Turns out they didn’t try to interview her (good thing because that would have been frustrating on both ends!) and there was no retina scan but they did attempt to get her fingerprints.  Needless to say, it didn’t end up working but anyhow she ended up passing.  When we were initially waiting our turn, the border official was like, “Oh, are you guys the van whatever family?  I’ll be with you in a few minutes”.  Very professional.

After our Nexus interviews, we went to grandma’s for pizza and beer with grandma, Juliet’s great aunt Cathy and great uncle Marcelo, and friends Dave and Ralph.  Juliet didn’t have any pizza or beer but she tried cucumber for the first time (she sorta liked it).  She tried to feed it to me and I couldn't even pretend to have a bite because I of course don't eat cucumbers.  Bad example, mommy!

Juliet hangin' with dad at grandma's.

One thing I've learned since becoming a mom - NEVER leave the house without toys!