Grandma will forgive us - in about 6 weeks

Summer is flying by!  While life with Tom's broken leg hasn't been easy, it wasn't as hard as I anticipated.  I took the kids biking - Tom rode in the trailer (behind him in the photo) attached to the back of one bike; Will rode in the baby seat on the back of my bike (which he has outgrown, but he still sort of fits.)

Tom also got used to playing on the periphery - the edge of the tub when Will had a bath, the edge of the sandbox.  My mom made Tom a foot cover to try to keep his cast dry (dew in the grass would make us keep him on the deck!) and to try to keep sand out.  We determined that sand in the cast would be just about the worst thing we could imagine!

Will, needing attention, would dress up and dance for me.  He's a funny little kid.  But really, this picture is a "before" picture of Tom's room - his bed was built into the room at normal bed level.  You'll see in a later picture that we've sunk the bed into the wall at about eye level.  It's pretty cool!

Hmmm, maybe Will WAS looking for attention...

Here's the first night on the new bed!  Later pictures will show you we aren't totally irresponsible parents: we added some edge trim and a guard (and stairs - now we don't have to use a chair, the desk, and the wall to get onto the bed!)

So eventually Tom's cast came off, and that was a good thing because we had a vacation planned.  We went with some friends to Montreal on the Train!  The kids LOVED the train (as you probably expected) and we had such a great time in Montreal just wandering the streets and visiting tourist attractions.  Here's a picture of Will, looking rather mischievous, on the train.

And here's will in the park across from our Hotel.

Tom, in the same park, motoring around a monument in an intense game of tag.  Tom still has his walking cast - it slows him down a little bit, but certainly offers more mobility than the fiberglass cast!  He goes to see the ortho specialist next week to find out if we can ditch the walking cast and go back to normal again.

Here's Will in our Hotel room, looking rather cute.  This was unusual - we had three little boys (aged 3, 4, and 5) so they were typically racing around the rooms or headed to the pool or on their way outside!

This was our first vacation where we made the kids sleep together (usually dad gets one, mom gets the other.  But we got sick of waking up multiple times in the night to feet in our necks, so we decided to try something new.)  The kids would wake up at about 5am yelling at each other for being on the other's side, but in the dead of night I found them like this:

Here are the boys on a park sculpture.

We went to the science centre in Montreal - one cool thing they had was the giant bubble blower.  Here's Will:

and here's Tom:

And here's us, in what is probably the best family picture we've ever had!

Tom and his friend Christopher on the train ride home.  They each had a Leapster to play, which gave us parents a few minutes of peace every now and again on the trip!

Here's Will and I on the train ride home.

Fast forward to this week.  Tom's dad said "Hey Tom, do you want to go for a motorcycle ride?"  Any time in the past this was met with vehement refusal, but for some reason this time Tom said "Um, well, ok."  We dropped everything and got him set up!  We had to ditch the walking cast (seemed safer somehow) and we quickly got him into gear.  They only went down the sideroad (and Tom wouldn't allow speeds higher than 40 km/h) so we didn't worry about full boots and jackets and stuff.

This is Will, being his usual charming self, as we waited for Tom and Dad to come back from their ride.

There they go!

Here are our new white cone flowers (again, while waiting.)

So now the thing you've been waiting for: why won't Grandma forgive us?  What have we done?  Well, let me tell you.  I cut the boys' hair.  I'm really not too bad at it, all things considered, but with the cast and with vacations and work is crazy - well, I just haven't caught up, so when it came time to cut their hair (they were such ragamuffins) we decided to buzz them.  It'll grow back!  We really have nothing much going on until mid August, so why not?  Here's Will giving a classic Will look, right before his turn (I thought about only doing Tom's, but Will liked it so much he wanted to match!)

And here are my boys sporting their matching haircuts.  And mean faces.

And silly faces (note the guard on the bed - we're good parents!)

And surprised faces/fish lips.

And kissing Tom.  Ok, I'll stop now.  Will says his hair is "pointy, just like Dad's and Tom's!"  He likes how it feels.  So do I.  They're pretty cute little kids.