Car Seat Dancing

Tovina was given a CD by one of her Toronto cousins this past spring. The first time we listened to it Michael and I were thrilled. Tovina? ... somewhat less so.
But this weekend it came on again on our way to a hike through the woods.
Tovina's reaction?... Loved it!


Thank you Zohar!



or you can see a different clip here.

Weeee

Another Chuck-E-Cheese pic

High Style

T has taken a fancy to wearing 2 different shoes. Given how much she wants the rest of her clothes to match, this baffles me.
If you were very astute you might also notice that the purple shoe is buckled on the inside of her foot rather than the outside as intended.

Pear picking

It turns out that we have 2 pear trees in our yard. Last year one of them grew some pears. By some, I mean CRAZY AMOUNTS.  We did a little research and learned that we had to prune back the number of pears on the tree taking off 1 or 2 of every 3 or the weight of the pears would tear the branches off.

How did such a tree ever survive?

We did okay at ridding ourselves of the offending fruit but we never did get to receive the fruit of our labors because the pears we left behind mysteriously disappeared a few weeks later. We suspect squirrels, birds, and raccoons but the cops demand proof - darn it!

This year we haven't seen much if any fruit on the first tree but the other tree is producing like mad.  It almost seemed to be a pear per inch. Luckily Michael remembered that we need to make some un-natural selection happen and so we did!

T was very excited about all the pear-shaped-apples we knocked down for her to play with.

Just lying around the house

Its kind of funny what you can find in the back of a closet. The other week I found an old Chinese silk shirt and pants outfit that I had bought for T in China when she was just a few months old. It was sort of big then. (You can see T in just the shirt of the outfit with the sleeves all rolled up here.) Now, it is almost too small. But when Tovina saw it hanging up in the closet, she just had to wear it. Then we went over to the cousins' house and she found a white play dress that matched it shocking well and combined the two.
Here is her creation. (There may have been some older cousin assistance.)

The crown (which is actually a necklace) and beads were graciously lent for this photo shoot by Aunt Elissa.

Roller Coaster

Tovina tried her first roller coaster this past weekend...
... sort of
As you may have guessed this was actually another ride at Chuck-E-Cheese. I think T would have stayed on it the whole time. She rode it 9?10? 13? times in a row with ever changing partners until it was clear that some other kids wanted to get on.
Seamus (sitting next to T) also enjoyed the rides though he was slightly less demonstrative.

Taking the new car for a test drive

Today we had our first family experience at Chuck-E-Cheese. For T and myself this was the first time we had ever been there. Michael had been there once before, but as it was about 20 years ago I figure it has been long enough to count like his first time.
Tovina's 2 favorite rides were both vehicularly related. Today I present you with....
the Car!


Tovina was an excellent driver


You can see her carefully navigating her way home here

Clowns in Toronto

Backing up a little (to before the cool new camera, which Tovina called Daddy's pretty camera today) I bring you photos of Toronto's Festival of Arts and Creativity, Luminato. These photos were from one night in the Distillery District between performances. See the clowns? They are the ones who led us to the building. We all got big red squishy noses out of the deal.

New Camera

Michael got a new camera today. Tovina was somehow convinced to do a little bit of posing.

Here are some bulbs we found in the ground. We're not sure what they are so we replanted them in a pot and Tovina is going to try to water them every day.

Found a flower

Clearly posing is hard for T.