Happy Halloween!

(We had internet connectivity problems today, so I wasn't able to get these up earlier...)


Big Sister decided she'd like to be a Princess for Halloween -- no big surprise there :)



while Emma was a beautiful butterfly:



She wasn't sure about it at first (and found some of our neighbour's animated decorations a bit scary), but she soon got the hang of this Trick or Treating business...



She also had her first ever Smartie:



and let's just say that the crash after the sugar rush was not pretty :)

More to come...

...when they stop moving for a few minutes.

A Day at the Orchard

We've been enjoying some wonderfully sunny, warm autumn weather here lately, and we took advantage of a particularly lovely recent afternoon to head out to a local orchard.



We missed the pick-your-own-apples by several weeks, but we were able to enjoy the Spooky Wagon ride through the not-so-scary (in the middle of the day) forest:





The girls had a great time running around the farm and playing in the Hallowe'en displays:





and we came home with a basket of apples, an armful of pumpkins, and a camera full of memories in the making:

Thanksgiving Art: A two-year retrospective

Longtime readers may remember that back in October 2005 while Emma was still in the NICU, she "created" a lovely Thanksgiving Turkey (with the help of some wonderful NICU nurses):



Emma has continued her creative ways.

Without further ado, Emma's Thanksgiving Turkey - 2007 edition:



I particularly enjoy her dramatic use of colour and unique placement of the tail feathers :)

We're still here.....

I've been remiss in my blogging lately, but we've been busy. After being on extended leave for more than two years, I returned to work last week. While the transition has gone better than I had anticipated -- Emma seems to adore her nanny (we're actually nanny-sharing with friends who have a daughter who is a couple of months younger than Emma) and Big Sister is really loving her school daycare -- it means that already-busy days are now just this side of crazy....




Following the (unsuccessful) swallow study of a couple of weeks ago, Emma has had a few other appointments. She had another hearing test at CHEO's audiology clinic, mostly to make certain that an undetected hearing problem wasn't contributing to her speech delay. Happily, Emma's hearing was fine. She has also started speech therapy (we're still waiting for her SLP evaluation at CHEO, so we're seeing a therapist in private practice) and it seems to be going well. Emma has a repetoire of about 30 words, but doesn't say them all very clearly, and hasn't yet put 2 words together (well, except for "all done" which we hear pretty regularly). Emma's therapist does not feel that there is a major delay, but we're working on a few different things and are trying some new strategies to enhance Emma's speech. (*edited to add: I started this update last week, and in the in the past 7 days or so, Emma has added several new 2-word combinations including: 'cuse me/'cuse you, thank you, and Hey Dude!)




Finally, we spent a few days visiting Eric's family to celebrate his dad's 70th birthday. Eric's grandmother arrived from Germany and Emma was finally able to meet her Oma for the first time.

Let's just say it was love at first sight: