picapalooza

Ok so here goes in point form.

#1 Stephen holds Madigan and does a great job!
#2 Madigan (our son) holds and eats a hammer
#3 Gorgeous Natalie teaches Maeve ballet
#4 The debut of our gorgeous Goldilocks
#5 Whole family dinner @ Auntie Lisa's

More pictures you greedy biznatches

Pictures!

Santa wuz here

Well Christmas at the Mussellam house what an exciting event! Auntie Erin and Gramma Susie were up at 7am and the very patiently waited for us lazy bums to get up at 9:30! I got to wake Maeve up and tell her that Santa came here while she slept! Now, she doestn' exactly have the concept of christmas down but boy can she remember presents! Everyone gave the girls LOVELY gifts. Maeve loved all of them. This is the gift that Santa brought for Maeve. She loves it! Daddy and Mommy exchanged words while putting it up but dang don't it look fine!! Auntie Erin is hanging out with Maeve, Gramma Susie is getting ready while Daddy and Madigan chill out. I am going to go get ready too because tonight we are all heading over to West Vancouver (said with a snooty tone) to Great Auntie Lisa's house! Hopefully Maeve's second cousin Natalie will help Maeve play the piano again! The girls will get to spend some time with Great Gramma Mimi, the afore mentioned Great Auntie Lisa and Natalie, Great Uncle Peter and her second boy cousins Stephen and Braedon. Hopefully we'll squeeze a nap in before we head out on this great adventure! Merry Christmas everyone!!!

F'n SmitherGees

Check out all the pics from our early xmas holiday at


http://www.poopeople.com/xmas/

If you are going to laught AT me politely do it under your breath!!!

Xmas early

Holy stockings batman! Count them out! 29 or some obscene number like that! Xmas with my family is officially over now there are the 2 celebrations with Michael's side. It was great, Uncle Jaycie and Auntie Barbie hosted another fantastic christmas celebration! As usual they are the bravest nuts in our family that actually invite us back holiday after holiday! Ha suckers! OOps I mean, aren't they great?
The girls got to spend some good times with Gramma & Crappa, Auntie Caca & Emilee, Auntie Robin Siobhan and Sean, Auntie Lindsay Uncle Bro and Makadoodlenut, Uncle Todder Auntie Rowena and Lanny Mel and her two children Coral and Nikkaio. The food was GREAT, the company was great and the gift exchange was alot of fun even tho I'm a moron and I chose the gift that Michael put in! The roaster coasters I made were "THE" item for xmas this year! I had terrible pictures of everyone in the family that I mounted onto marble tiles with terribly witty burns on each one so I called them the roaster coasters. It was really funny. The coaster with me on it looked awesome of course!
We are home now and we all have colds with drippy noses so thats awesome! Maeve is wearing her sleeping beauty dress with the requisite pink heels while Madigan is catching some snooze. I am in my pjs and have so much to do but can't figure out what to do first! Generally all my days start like this until I pull my head out of my butt and actually get moving!
I think we are all done xmas shopping because I don't think Michael would stay married to me if I dragged him to the mall again! I'll probably hit it tonight as I haven't done anything re: stockings! Only 5 more days until christmas!!!

Pink + Blue = ADORABLE

Here is our beautiful pink one with little boy blue! Today we went to Theo and Milo's place. We had a great lunch and some good times! Ange took this picture while I was out getting lunch with Maeve! Steamrollers rules and its such a nice treat. Ange says that the turkey/tater steamroller is the best. There is currently a countdown calendar at the place telling how many days left before you can get said steamroller. I think they might really be burritos or wraps but I call them steamrollers! Theo and Milo gave Maeve a Dora backpack with all sorts of hair accessories! How "Maeve" is that! She is sitting on the couch brushing her hair that is already in pony tales! OUch! The gang got Madigan and I a gift too.. Madigans is the cutest pink sleeper and mine is M&Ms! So you see, not only do I love my M&M's but I also love to eat m&ms.. you with me? Well I best run while my little M is sleeping so I can get my big M some yoghurt!! ps thanks Ange!!

grouchy

Ok, overlook the fact that she is pissed at someone. Apparently self defense starts at 2+ months! Madigan can pull herself up to a sitting position.. Goood lord am I in trouble!


GOtta run

xo
v

Whole fam

The very kind McEwen clan actually managed to capture all of us in a p hoto! So, here we all are enjoying the bright lights in stanley park!

Xmas Train

Wooot wooot! All aboard! Today we hit Stanley park with our friends Craig, Roan and Hilary. After a lovely chicken dinner we got the kids all primed for the bright lights train ride around stanley park. OOps, we got them primed a little early. There was a lot of waiting because one of the 4 trains was out of commission leaving 3 trains holding 50, 75, 75 passengers each time for 5600 people! It wasn't a bad wait and the children did really good. Madigan even got a turn facing out in the baby bjorn! Maeve seemed to have had a blast, up on Daddy's shoulders then up on Craig's shoulders. Granted the view from Daddy's was much higher! ha ha burn Craig!! The lights in the park were gorgeous as were the fire fighters who accepted donations! Oh what a night! All in all not a bad night. Saturday am we went to home depot, got some lights for the house and a tree that we'll trim later today. At 1ish I ditched the fam and went to go pick up Lisa and we headed down to Yaletown to get our nails did. I"m not sure if you can see it in this picture but dayum do they look good! I can't stop staring at them! My girlfriends gave me the "Glamour Girl" package for a shower gift and boy do I love it! I'm going to ask for one treatment for each special occasion! I'll be all spa-ed out before you know it! Well I have to run I'm off to make pancakes!!

xo
v

xmas party

Well we had so much fun at the Radical xmas party that this is the ONLY pic we managed to take. Maeve wouldn't go in this bouncey castle by herself and I'm pretty sure Michael and I are a bit big to go in. Emily, holding Maeve, jumped right in with an, "I'll take her in". Now as most of you know I don't generally share my Maeve very well so you'll all be surprised to hear me say, "sure!". Maeve was in there for a good 15mins. Poor Emily must have lost a full pound sweating herself up a storm as Maeve would only jump if she held her! Too funny. I don't know what it is but when you have a second child you certainly let up and let others help a bit more! I still would have liked to have been the one in there but I don't want to damage her psyche by being the mom in the bouncey castle that popped it!!!!!

Just Maeve

Hi my name is Maeve. I eat some ponies! I am not under bed. This is my bed. My pillow is on my head. My bed is a me ss .


Ok now it is Maeves' turn to type!

zij88

Extreme closeup

Hi gang! Here is our littlest big girl! She is growing like a weed. Auntie Sara has some outgrown pink coming her way if she likes it or not! This morning we are chilling at home because this afternoon is the Radical children's Christmas party! I'm so excited. Maeve wasn't terribly keen on it last time so hopefully being a little older and wiser will help her enjoy it more!
Bye!

Tuesday December something

Hello to everyone! I had hoped that today would be joyful tuesday after being crappy monday but nope. It seems to be poopy tuesday! Big Big progress with Maeve tho. She has told me twice BEFORE peeing on the floor that she had to pee! My big girl is growing up but being the gemini that I am its not fast enough and too fast at times! Madigan has a horrible cough and it is hurting me alot more than her. I can't stand to hear a baby so young coughing. Poor honey. Well today is hangout and cleanup day. I have managed to clean up the bedroom dresser and Madigan's change table. Madigan is having a snooze and after playing "Mommy & baby" my little pony, Maeve is watching Blues clues! This afternoon we are going to hit science world with Milo, Theo and Angela. That should be fun. AFter science world I am hoping to scoop up Michael since they are a block from each other then come home for dinner! Tomorrow night Auntie and I are going shopping! Wahoo no kids! Have a great tuesday y'all! Now if you all were on the pic of the day list last year you can go through 'em and see if you have a match with an old pic of Maeve. Every day I see more of Maeve in Madigan!

Two parties in one week. How grownup do I feel? Ha ha! We had a great time at Tomo & Tricia's xmas party. We got a chance to see some good friends that we haven't seen in ages! It was great to see Rhod. He is just such a sweetie! Tomo and Tricia have a gorgeous home. I really liked their place. We haven't seen Mashi in AGES and he looks really good. Andre Weaver was there with a bunch of doods I don't know. Adam Sera looks all growed up and adorable with his beard. His girlfriend Rhiannon I think was just lovely. Really a nice girl. Good ole Steven Yu was there with his pretty lil lady and Walter Hsieh escaped the girls for the night to come celebrate! Walter is the proud new Daddy of Audrey who is three weeks old. He also has a 2 year old Ava and they are adorable. What a good Daddy who carries around recent pics of BOTH his kids! There were tonnes of others there and we had a really good time. Too bad Madigan didn't. My mom has been stuck with her for 3 nights now and she has fussed/cried and was generally miserable for all of them! I say 3 because Michael and I snuck out to go to a movie last night too! Hey.. don't hate, just make sure you use your sitter wisely! Make sure when Gramma comes over you can spread the joy of her over a few days or a week! So far since Madigan we've been able to hit 2 movies! Ahh this is the good life!

Mommy gets out

Thank goodness for Grandmas! My mom has come over from Nanaimo yet again to watch the girls so Michael and I can go out. This time we got to go out to Radical's staff Xmas party. What fun! It was a casino night! Michael and I were up 18,000! We cried a little seeing as it was radical money and not real money. We probably wouldn't have been up so much if it had been real. We definately gambled a lot harder since we wouldn't really have lost any real money! As you can see I got my hair did. Just for the record bangs are back in at the Mussellam household! Expect them to be around for a while since it is such a pain trying to grow them out again! Madigan is sporting an awesome old man pant action. She really is cute I guess she just doesn't photograph well! This weekend we've forced my Mom to stay over so we could hit Tomo's first annual xmas party. It should be fun! I haven't hung out with non pooped/puked on adults for a while and I get to twice in one week! Today we had to bring our poor baby girl in for her first round of shots. NOt only did it totally suck for her but our Dr gave Michael and I flu shots too. How rude! We weren't expecting that at all! I'm really looking forward to the sore arm pain that is scheduled to arrive in roughly 6 more hours! Needles suck!

Sisters

Ok, I hope and pray and pray and hope some more that Maeve and Madigan are the best of friends. I know there will be times when they can't stand each other but hopefully they each got a healthy dosage of Michael's temperment and not all mine! Madigan is a happy little gurgler today. She went to bed at 10 and didn't wake up until 7. I don't know what I did to deserve this child who sleeps but when I find out what it is I will do it more to keep her sleeping! Maeve is growing believe it or not. She was up til late last night telling me her feet hurt. Ok, for those of you that watched Nanny 911 she wasn't saying her feet her so I cuddled her.. they really hurt! So, Maeve got a nice fully body keri lotion massage. I'm still waiting for my own personal masseusse to arrive. Today we are off to school! Yay its arts and crafts at Riley park! Then it is lunch with the crazy old one. Gramma Gracie. Ok she isn't crazy she sure does grow on me! This evening Erin and I are going to hit the mall to find some sort of magical fabric to cover my 9 week post partum canvas. That should be fun! Ta for now kids!

Monkey see Monkey doo

Well look who is sitting on the potty! When we heard that Mhari Rhiverson could poop on the potty we jumped on the copycat train. Okay, so who "just" hopped. Turns out we've been ripping them off for years! So far we've followed Ken to San Fran. We've copied his car selection. We totally ripped off their birth announcement and now to top it all off we are copying their method of toileting their new baby! Ok ok, I totally jest you. We admire the Rhiversons for going the diaper free route but its not for us at this point! Good lord, I'd spend almost every waking moment hanging Madigan and Maeve's little buns over the potty not to mention my own! I'll wait until Madigan is a bit.. ok alot older before I brave the diaper free life!
On a side note here is our darling daughter "Madeline". When we went to Nanaimo for the week my mom had a bunch of dress up stuff. Isn't it cute to see your daughter with creepy red hair? We had a FANTASTIC visit with my mom. She loved the girls silly and they loved her back even more. Not to mention they have a kitten for Maeve to "love". Maeve was thrilled to give their dog Andy a treat every time he sat. Good lord that dog is going to be depressed without Maeve around! Ok, I must go bathe the little one take care all!

Splish Splash

Splish splash we were taking a bath! Here are my girls.. oh and for you pervys a little bit of me! Look at the big bruise on Maeve's forehead.. jeesh, sure hope that heals up before xmas! Madigan really enjoyed the bath with her big sis! Well, until big sis poured the water on her head!
Tomorrow after school we are going to my mom's over on the island. Should be fun. I feel rather frightened about travelling with the girls by myself with no car! How on earth will I get the big one to nap? Dilemmas dilemmas! *(If I didn't spell that right bite me)

xo
vashti

Weekend

Aren't they cute and pink? Yes, my big girl sure loves my little girl! So much so that it sometimes makes the littles M cry! All I can say to her is, "ya, sorry about that but its not going to end soon!" Maeve loves to hug and hold Madigan whether she likes it or not! We had a big weekend. Saturday we said bye bye to good ole Ryan Wutherich. He is going across canada for 9 months. The timeline sounds fishy, I think he may be hiding a pregnancy from his family but who am I to blow the whistle. The girls got to see all sorts of greats. Great Auntie Barbara, Great Grampa Gordie... Great cousin Kersten etc. Sunday found us wandering aimlessly downtown trying to get a good pole position for the Santa Claus parade. We snuck into Chapters and watched from the warmth of the 3 floor! We are so clever! No pictures from the parade tho, sorry kids! After the parade the masses descended on pacific center. No place to eat and Mommy and Daddy had some seriously short fuses! Names were called, fingers were pointed but we managed to get our girls fed and concussed all within an hour! Ok ok, the concussion was clearly Auntie Erin's fault and hopefully the bruising goes away before xmas pictures! Hopefully you all know I tease and that we didn't lose it in the holiday madness and Auntie Erin wasn't responsible for the concussion. After a wonderful lunch for the adults around3pm at whitespot, we concluded our short and possibly last trip into the downtown core! I'll be doing my shopping at the much more sane and sound Metropolis! Hahahahaha see who I can roshambo in the elevators!

Weekend

I know I'm late with the blogging. Get off my case I just had a baby! You will all be happy to know that Madigan has now been added to our answering machine message. I had to do it to get everyone off my back! Jeez, can't anyone give poor ole vashti a break??
Anyhoo, this weekend we spent the day in Halfmoon Bay celebrating Deb and Kev's girls Abby and Emma. They turned a whopping 3! There was a great spread, as you can see a Dora pinata and not one, not two but three cakes. Llucky us Maeve had no idea what to do with the candy. She figured it out really quick tho. At one point she had a sucker in each hand. She eats suckers like her Daddy drinks beer!
We got to meet Deb and Kev's newest addition Maggie who is 2 weeks older than Madigan. She is adorable. Not to mention fashionable! We go to the midwives tomorrow morning so I'll update you on which baby is bigger. Maggie or Madigan! Poor Auntie Erin can't keep up with all the M names!
Well, I have to get to bed early tonight as I'm certain my littlest one isn't going to let me sleep for long! Hope you enjoyed the pics!

Friday

Hello Gang, sorry I've missed a few days in here. I'm quite busy you know! Ha! More like i'm being quickly driven crazy! The girls are great. We hung out with Milo, Theo and Angela yesterday. That was lots of fun! Theo is giant adorable baby! We had steam roller wraps for lunch. They were fantastic FYI! No nap Maeve struck again yesterday until I put her in the car and we all went for a drive. We went to Roan& Hilary's house and hung out with them before picking up Daddy at work! Phew... what a day. Today Auntie Erin is coming over and we are going to go shopping for some birthday presents! Then its girls night out for dinner. I so will be having a margarita! Have a great weekend!

2, 2, 2 pictures for the price of one

Ok so I can't get the both of them in one pic so I doubled up and sent you two pics! We are well. Maeve is praying while she sleeps and Madigan is standing up to have her bath! Good lord my girls are growing fast! Hope you are all doing well. Sorry this edition is so cheap! At least you got two pics!!

ZZzzzzzZZ

There were three in the bed and the little one said, "roll over, I'm crowded!" So they all rolled over and Daddy was kicked out! So this weekend was rather uneventful! We had a bunch of stuff that we could have and should have done but didn't! We tried a new restaurant with Auntie Erin and it was yummy! The waitress gave Maeve a GIANT chocolate dipped rice crispie square! Yum! Oh ya, we let her have a bit. Mostly it went to Mommy tho! Oh how mean we are to our children! Today we went to the dentist. Michael got a wisdom tooth out and one filling while I got one filling as well. The girls were great. Madigan slept the whole time and Maeve forced Michael to read the cat in the hat to her over and over! We hit Riley park on the way home and now we've put both our girls down for a nap. ahh, if this works i'm going to reward myself with something great... i don't know what but it'll be great!

hangover

Ok, well sorry it is a little dark but I'm certain Michael preferred it that way! You see, Michael went out to celebrate that damned Earl Fast's birthday. I'm just going to go out for a couple hours he says to me. Ya right! Don't worry, I managed to get the girls off to bed by my little old self. I even managed to watch Sin Cities! Michael phoned around 10 and said he'd be about an hour longer since the hockey game just let out and there is no way to wedge oneself on the skytrain with all those people! Sooo.. I went to bed. At 2:50 some drunk bum comes bumbling his way in the door. Good lord how time flies when you are Karaoking your whiteness off! Michael's went with his work friends to a karaoke bar and proceeded to drink many rounds of rye coke! I wonder at what point Michael realized he hasn't "tied one on" like that since Cousin Palooza last year? Well, today we shall punish the wicked... yes yes, we will take awful pictures and make him hold our crying/whining children. Yes.. we will encourage Maeve to ask for many horsey rides and hope and pray Madigan poops up a storm.. Yes.. then perhaps I'll be less jealous that he can go out and drink and party and I can't! I had to relight the pictures so you could see better. Sorry for the double pic post. They are exactly the same one is just more visible! If I were more savvy I'd figure out how to remove the dark one.. but suck it up kids.. I'm not!

bonus

you lucky buggers! here is Miss Madigan!!!!!!!

Jazz hands

Today was Maeve's first day at "School". She informed Michael and I the other day that she would like to go to school. This "school" is actually our Riley Park community center music drop in class for 0-5 kids! There were a bunch of girls there that I assumed were much younger than Maeve but turned out they were all within a week or two! Yay, that means Maeve is no longer a shrimp! Must be all those giant boys we play withthat make me feel like Maeve is tiny! Anyway, I digress. Maeve LOVED school. For the first part of the class the kids could choose any musical instrument. Maeve seemed to like the egg shakers the best. Must be because she is allergic! Maeve also liked the drums and the beat 'em sticks. I call them that because generally thats what the kids did with them! We escaped major injury and the class went on! I tried to get Maeve to nap on the way home from class but she was having NONE of it! Bugger. Michael is going out after work to a party so I'm on my own. Sure wish this child would nap! Oh well, perhaps we'll hit another park and I'll just get her good and tired! Wish me luck!

Heads Up!

Well, it looks like our little stunner will be advancing faster than we thought! Just like her big sister, Madigan has been forced to hold her own head up early on! Poor honey!
Yesterday Michael came home from work sick. Having children sure robs a guy of his sick time. Last week he was home a day because I was sick. Hilary mentioned that she and fam were all going to go get the flu shot. I'm more than a little leary of it. For some reason the flu shot scares me more than the flu itself! I'll just have to make sure we wash hands more often, get more sleep and eat well!
Yesterday we also picked Madigan up a bouncy seat. I priced out 6 of the stupid things and it worked out that the cheapest one was at the first frigging place I checked. Arrrgh! She seems to like the chair. It has a vibrating base and some dangling toys to look at. Really, its just a safe haven from Maeve! Maeve seems to love her sister more and more everyday and tries to "help" me with Madigan. So now I put Madigan up on the table in her bouncy chair while Maeve "helps" me with dishes or dinner. This way both my girls are safe! Right now Maeve is watching Dora and Madigan is snoozing.
Speaking of torrential downpours.. ok we haven't been but holy hell is it raining. We wont be going outside today! Unless it is just to the car and then we can go pick up Daddy. It'll be a treat for him not to walk several blocks in this crap! I just need to think up something to cook for dinner that can sit and wait for us to run errands! Thank goodness Auntie Erin lent us her crock pot! Happy Thursday everyone!

Thanksaweenie

Hi everyone! Boy what a weekend! It was "Thanksaweenie" at my brother's Jason and his wife Barb's house in Victoria. Since it is so difficult to get all the family together at the same time in the same place, we sometimes have to combine holidays. We had a fantastic 3 day eat fest let me tell you. I'm not going anywhere near my scale until Madigan is at least 6 weeks when I can start going to the gym!! My family was wonderful as always. We played an awesome game of Cranium. I'd love to say Michael and I were the winners but sadly we tied for last place! Maeve got to play with her Cousins Makenna Dawn and Siobhan. Oh the things she learned this weekend! Maeve learned how to be spooky and coincidentally spooked. The girls taught her how to run like hell when one of them holds up a spooky skeleton mask! Maeve did manage to take a little time out and give some love to Rascal the Finnerty bird slayer. We got to see Emily poo poo and Auntie Caca who keeps getting better looking. How rude, what is it that I'm doing wrong? Oh yea, having kids ruins ya! Gramma and Crappa were great. My Mom did very well sharing Madigan. Infact, I think we can officially retire calling her "baby hogger" until we see how she does with the next one. Next time we play Cranium I want Big Robin on my team and Sean if we have to do alot of spelling backwards!!! Little Robin made an awesome hallowe'en treat spread. Martha Stewart look out! I want to go out this week and make caramel apples but I know that wont end well!! As you can see by the photo we carved an obscene amout of pumpkins. Ok, you can only see three but trust me there were many pumpkins carved that day! I did the ghost one, Michael did the Dora one for the girls and then the cute punkin face one with Maeve. We missed Tig and Rowena at this one but hopefully they will be back soon! I had a really good time and I'm glad we made it over for this ostentious holiday! Go to this link www.poopeople.com/hallowgiving/ to see more of the fam's pics. Figure out who is who, Danica, Brodie, Jason, Barb, Robin, Sean, Makenna, Siobhan and Crappa