William's Hotwheels Track

Two blogs in one day? Consider this a bonus, an epilogue if you will. Some moments are meant to be shared.

Christmas Moments

Jadzia loved the underwear she got from my parents.  Sure she had toys to play with, but who needs them when you can sort and stack your big girl briefs and fill and empty a little gift bag over and over.

There's nothing quite like watching babies opening presents.  Violet's intense expression while tearing the wrapping was priceless. The presents inside the paper weren't nearly as fascinating.

William got a hotwheels track made for colour-change cars which involves a skull head with sponge brain, a little squirt gun to spray the cars, and several vats of water for the cars to fall in/ drive through.  He literally played with it all night. My Mom's table was so soaked that a small waterfall was gushing off the tablecloth onto the floor.

I should mention my Mom's Christmas log.  I look forward to this chocolately monstrousity all year and it never disappoints.  She also makes sticky toffee pudding, which is well received, but I find the caramel just gets in the way of the true meaning of Christmas: chocolate!  This year, my mom had eight Lindor bunnies to be Santa's reindeer.  Unfortunately, Jadzia snuck into the kitchen and quietly ate them all before they could decorate anything.

At 8 o'clock Christmas eve, Future Shop and Best Buy officially begin their Boxing Day sales and the whole family gathered around Dad's laptop to watch him attempt to buy an e-reader.  Eventually Jadzia convinced him to watch Elmo videos instead.  They also watched the video of Jadzia doing knock-knock jokes.

At the end of the night, William desperately wanted to have a bath to try out his new hotwheels bath toy.  He had a gigantic freak out when we told him it was too late (it was ten o'clock).   Luckily, it was Adam's turn to but him to bed.  According to Adam, William crashed immediately after his good night hug.


Jadzia's favourite toys Christmas morning were the Pez dispensers from the stockings.  Jessie for Jadzia, Buzz Lightyear for William, and Snow White for me.  Jadzia ate the two packages of Pez that came with hers and then ate half of mine.

There was a Christmas present under the tree for Adam that I did not purchase.  Proof of the existence of Santa Claus?  Anyway Adam took his giant remote control big wheel truck out in the snow with William to try it out.  They said it worked great, but the batteries didn't last long in the cold.

The whole family enjoyed playing with William's new lego set.  While Adam and I searched through the big bucket of parts to find tiny, highly specialized, pieces to build a fire truck and police station, the kids mostly enjoyed the sound of the pieces in the box.  Jadzia fished out a dozen tiny translucent coloured circles and carried them around the house.

Moments after I got Jadzia dressed to go to my in-laws, she got into Adam's Toblerone bar.  She walked up to Adam, hands covered in chocolate, her tiny little bite-marks all over the large chunk in her hand.
Adam:  "What the...."
Jadzia: "Chocolate!"
Miraculously, none got on her dress.

At my in-law's house, Jadzia loved eating her borscht, which is a delicious purple soup made from beets.  (I like it too).

William got a fairly elaborate robot track, from my in-laws.  My son is a little engineer and was able to figure out how everything works in only a few minutes (about as long as it takes me to figure it out).  The first robot kicks the car, launches it into the claw-launcher, causing the next car to speed towards the giant robot, who punches the building twice, once quickly and a second time with a slow-moving spring-loaded arm.  One car sails out of the building toward the end of the track and the other launches straight at the giant robot, breaking him in half! 

Of course it was also Jadzia's birthday, so she got a tiny icecream cake with candles to blow out.  She gets so excited at the whole Happy-Birthday-singing candle-blowing ritual, whether it's her birthday or not.

First Skate of the Season

My parents bought the kids new skates for Jadzia's birthday, so today I decided to try them out. Of course, since my daughter has never been skating before, I didn't have a proper skating helmet for her. I invited my friend Cara along, whose daughter did not have skates. So we went off on separate shopping trips before meeting at Spencer Smith Park, which has a nice free outdoor rink. I wanted to make a quick stop and get there before the thaw, so I made sure to tell the kids, "We're just going in to get a helmet. We are not looking at the toys, okay?"

William seemed to go along with this, until the route to the sporting goods section took us by a rack of hotwheels cars. He then began a tantrum which lasted through trying on helmets, a decent sized line at the cash register, and the five minute drive to the lakeshore. In the end the only helmet that I could possibly get for Jadzia was identical to the one William already has (it's 2010 and girl's hockey equipment is still scarce). William forgot all about the injustice of not adding to his hotwheels collection soon after he saw his friend Leyla. Their screams of delight shattered eardrums for miles around.

When children outnumber the adults, skating is a lot of excercise. First, I held Jadzia up and skated her along for a short distance, then she held on to the wall/sat on the wall/sat on the ice while I skated back for William. Next I skated along with William, who seemed to have forgotten ninety percent of the skating skills he learned last year. Then I repeated the process, skating with Jadzia, then William, then Jadzia, then William. Considering my children are considerably shorter than me, my back was not enjoying this process. We did one lap as a group, then Cara let me skate once around by myself.

Next we enjoyed some hot chocolate and an overly greasy lunch at the nearby cafe. The kids played in the playground until we were all exhausted. We vowed to go skating again, and often. I love winter!

Knock-Knock Jokes with Jadzia

This one had to go on video.

And here's my favourite Elmo video. I guess I just love to see him tortured.

Basically Sophisticated

I've just been informed that google can now filter results by reading level. As you know, I'm a very sophistercated writer and google will probably list me as highly advanced.

Hmmmn. Well, I'm going to go ahead and take that as a compliment.

Well, if you like writing that's accessible to the masses, you still have time (until tommorrow) to vote for me. Be warned, the Creative Burlington site is written at the intermediate level.

Our Latest Video

I am just way too lazy to blog about our amazing and busy weekend, so William helped me make a video about it.  He chose the title, which isn't all that relevant, but should get us some extra hits from the hotwheels-obsessed 4-year-old demographic.

Pictures to come (maybe).

Jadzia's Birthday Party!

Since my poor daughter chose to be born on Christmas Day, she is doomed to never have her birthday celebration on the week of her birthday like a normal person.  So instead, we had her party today. We had lots of fun.  Well I did.  There were friends and presents and cake and brie and everything.  Here are some pics and a video so you can feel like you were there:

 This Fisher Price Dog was Jadzia's first gift, from her friend Leyla who had to leave early (totally forgot to give her a loot bag).  Jadzia loved this dog since she saw one at the Fisher Price media day at Ontario Place in the summer and I've looked for it but never found it.  It's great to have friends who are good shoppers.  Actually Jadzia loved all her presents. But was a bit overwhelmed at the quantity.

 Notice how the kids look like they are sitting waiting patiently for Jadzia to open her present?  Not so! I was holding children off left and right so that Jadzia could at least be the first to touch her gifts.  At times her friends were a little too eager to "help" her unwrap, and to "share" the gifts once they were open.

I'd like to say for a record that that cake is an ice cream cake that I made myself.  I figured that since my daughter likes ice cream better than cake, I should make it special for her birthday.  Basically it's two layers of ice cream with oreo cookie crumbs and chocolate sauce in the middle, and whipped cream icing.   Jadzia ate the ice cream, leaving the layer of cookie crumbs untouched.

Now sing along to the Birthday Song:

Creative Burlington Posts More Stuff

Creative Burlington now has samples of our work linked on the bio page.  If you just want to read mine, here's a direct link.  I must warn you that the indents and line breaks are all wonky.  Honestly it looked pretty when I sent it to them.  And please, if you haven't already, VOTE FOR ME.  If facebook is a good indication, my Mom has more friends than I do and is sure to steal my prize.  I just bought a new stove and I could really use the money.

Now if anyone knows of a place that will entertain both kids and husbands this morning, please help me out with that too.

EDIT: It looks like Creative Burlington no longer requires you to put in your e-mail address to vote.  So those of you who have already voted can vote again!  (Not that I would endorse cheating, but it is for a good cause: ME!)

The kids go to the dentist

I'd like to begin by saying how proud I am of my son for being so good at the dentist.  He didn't want to go at first, but that was mostly because he was too busy surfing hotwheels videos on youtube.  Once we were there though, he played nicely in the waiting room, then opened his mouth really wide for the dentist, and even let them clean and floss his teeth.  Jadzia was good too, but slightly less enthusiastic about opening her mouth, and her teeth were only counted, not cleaned.  (Unless you count the little piece of broccoli the dentist found stuck in her teeth.  How embarrassing!)

I must admit, I'm a little jealous of their experience. My trips to the dentist involve: freezing, poking with sharp instruments, blood, and a lecture about flossing.  Their trip involved: playing with a plush horse (with creepily human teeth), having their teeth counted, brushing with grape flavoured toothpaste, and free toys.  I still got the lecture about flossing, though.  Apparently, once a day I'm actually supposed to lay William down and floss his molars.  Um....right.

Also William's teeth are very close together, which means when his adult teeth come in they'll be all crowded and he'll need braces.  And he has a "deep bite": his front teeth hide his bottom teeth when he bites down.  I don't know how this with adversely affect his life, but it is apparently undesirable.  Ka-ching!

When asked how he enjoyed the dentist, William exclaimed "It was fun!!"

I'm up for an award (again)

And this time you can help me win!  I submitted the first chapter of my book, tentatively entitled "wardroids" to Creative Arts Burlington for their first annual arts recognition awards.  Unfortunately, there's nowhere where you can actually read my submission, or look at any of the other submissions in any of the categories.  You'll just have to trust that it is as brilliant as this blog...and anything else you may have read of mine.

There are three nominees in the litery arts category:  Jennifer Filipowicz (that's me),  Bobbie Smith (some random person), and Sylvia McNicoll.  That's right, Sylvia McNicoll.  Ever since I was in her womb she's been trying to steal my thunder.  This is sure to split the family and friend vote, leaving Bobbie poised to grab my prize!

Don't let it happen!  Vote here.  You can vote online or print out a ballot to send it (although why you would go to the trouble of finding a stamp when you're already at the website is completely baffling to me).  There are also links to everyone's website, but ignore those and just trust that I'm the best. Don't bother with the other categories either, just type in your e-mail and click the little round button thing beside my name and click "vote."  Yeah, it's pretty straight forward.

Edit:  It looks like Creative Burlington has now put our bios up.  And there's links to writing samples.  Although my link just says "sample coming soon".  I'm not sure why they didn't just put everything up at the same time, but it's their first year doing this so maybe next year they'll be more on the ball. 

William Wanted to Record a Video So Here it is.