I miss having a cat: a warm, furry little loafer who sleeps on all the furniture and eats our food. I think Finn and Rosemary are a little wee for a pet, so we'll wait. In the meantime, I am hoping we have a solution for my cat cravings.
Meet Stevie. He lives across the street. For a few months now, Finn, Rosemary, and I have been making pals with him.

I think we're finally becoming friendly. My ultimate goal is him sleeping on our couch and eating our food like a furry little neighbour ought to. We're almost there. Often in the morning, Finn comes running into the kitchen -- I am always in the kitchen. Why is that? -- yelling, "Stevie! Stevie!" We rush out with the toys and the milk.
After his customary Tupperware full of milk, he stays to play with a ball and get a pet or two.
He's even playing with Finn lately. Well, he's a little uncertain of Finn and his quick movements, but they have managed a bit of fun. Stevie is only six-months old and is as playful as his two-year-old neighbour.
I think he's just about ready to come into the house.

Note to self: Add tuna to grocery list.

A father-daughter moment.
The cutest is killing me.

Rosemary's favorite occupation #1: Looking out the window. That's right. She's keeping an eye on the neighbourhood making sure those squirrels keep in line and the dogs next door haven't escaped. Speaking of the next-door dogs, there are four -- FOUR -- Golden Retrievers living there. Here I thought my house was noisy.
She's a curious little cutie.
Favorite occupation #2: Pulling herself to standing on whatever is handy: the couch, the Elmo chair, her crib, my head.
There have been a few tentative movements that I would almost call cruising.
This is all developing at what seems to be an alarming pace.
It's almost like she has an agenda or something."That's right, Mama! Get your running shoes on. I'm coming for you."

Saturday mornings are for watching Elmo videos.

We don't have cable at the Leite household, but we don't let that hold us back from brain-rotting fun. I do my best to keep us all from turning into mouse potatoes, but meh, it's the weekend! Let the mindless surfing begin.

Sesame Street gets the most action. I really don't like Yo Gabba Gabba, but I admit the site gets some hits from our IP address. This game is responsible for Finn's impressive mouse-clicking skills. We've recently discovered a really great ABC game, and honestly, Finn's recognition of letters has exploded. So, you know, it's not all stupor inducing.

We just have to watch out for that Adam Sandler. He's a prick, him and his catchy songs.

I was chatting with a friend about sleep. Sleep is a major preoccupation around here. Anyway, she was worried about her baby waking up her two-year-old son at night and asked about Finn and Rosemary. While I was worried about Finn being woken up by her cries at night initially, he never has been. Either Finn hears her and knows it's just Rose and goes back to sleep, or he is really that deep a sleeper. I don't think much wakes him up. Actually, I know not much wakes him up.

I explained Finn's tendency is to slide his schedule to later in the day, which seems great when he's sleeping in till 8:30 a.m., but is crappy when he won't go to bed till 9 p.m.

Mommy likes adult time, or as it is known around here recently, Battlestar Galectica time.

Anyway, I never let him sleep past 7:30 a.m., and sometimes it's really, really hard to wake him. It's so difficult Rosemary squealing in his bed and grabbing his face won't wake him up. This, I know, he gets from me. This is all what I told my friend.Then I started thinking about it. Maybe Finn does get that from me. I decided to see how much Finn's sleep really does resemble mine. The researcher in me needed to know just how much.

At 3:30 p.m., it was time for Finn's nap to end, and I decided to put my theory to the test. I opened his door. I turned on his light. I opened the curtains and the window. I pulled off his blanket. I called his name.

Nothing. He did not move a muscle. Finn kept sleeping.

Interesting.

Next, I started vacuuming in the hallway outside his room. Loudly. Bang, brrrrrrm, bang.

No results. I proceeded to vacuum inside his room. At this point, Finn is still asleep.

Still. Asleep. I am VACUUMING in his room, and still he sleeps.

I have no choice but to conclude Finn has inherited my superpowers. He has the power of sleep. understand his sleeping patterns completely. The issue is neither a schedule slippage nor a preference for late mornings. He just sleeps really, really deeply.

Once in my early 20s, when I was still living with my parents, I came downstairs for breakfast. My brother and father sat at the table, and honestly, their mouths were hanging open staring at me in disbelief. I am not sure a second head would have garnered such looks.

"What?"

"You've been in bed sleeping this whole time?" my father asked.

I looked at the clock. "Whatever. It's only 11:30." (Man, those days are so OVER, I could weep.)

My brother shook his head at me.

"Look outside the window, Jennifer."

I looked.

Our neighbour's house had been replaced by a pile of rubble and a wreaking ball.

I had slept through our neighbour's house being demolished. It was then I was told about the crashing and the banging and the house falling down and our house shaking, the windows rattling, and blah, blah, blah. Didn't bother me one bit.

I will have to explain to Finn, in the future, that with this great power comes great responsibility. This is his gift, his curse, but until then, I will no longer be forcing everyone to be quiet during his nap.

The blog has been quiet of late. Why? Well, that would be because this little charmer has been getting up at 5. That's right. Up at 5 a.m. At this awful, terrible, no-good hour, Rosemary has been up, ready-to-take-to-on-the-world up, "Hey! Why isn't Finn up yet?" up.

Ugh.

I can get up happily at 6 a.m. Six-thirty is even better, and 7 o'clock is great. But 5 in the freaking morning? I have absolutely nothing to say at 5 a.m.

NOTHING.
Today, Rosemary slept till 7 a.m. My brain is functional again. I have enough brain power to wish this picture had sound.

Oh, I suppose that's called a video.

Well, anyway, she really likes this dolly, and my ears suffer the squealing proof.

Dylan's not featured here much, but here he is. Without him, none of this wonderfulness would be possible.

I believe if we stare into his eyes in this picture, block out everything around us, and concentrate very hard, we'll actually be able to hear his thoughts.

I am tuning into them right now:"Ahhh, doughnuts. What can't they do?"


I think I am getting Finn's thoughts here too:
"I think it's ironic that for once Dad's butt prevented the release of toxic gas."

"I am the Lizard Queen!"

All quotes provided by The Simpsons!

There is a new kid in town.
And his name is Ernie! I can't claim he has ousted Elmo, but Finn is now carting around two Sesame Street pals.
Ernie entered our life on the weekend. We were at the local toy store checking out the train tables, which Santa may or not may not be delivering to our house. I'll never tell!

Anyway, I brought over Ernie and Bert dolls for Finn to see. When we were ready to leave, Dylan asked Finn if he wanted to put Ernie away.

Finn replied, "Home." Dylan was all, "Yep, Finn, we are going home."

Next thing we knew, Finn was running as fast he could out the toy-store door with Ernie in tow. Running really, really fast. Faster than I have ever possibly seen him.

Oh.

He wanted Ernie to come home. It made me laugh. Really, really laugh, not harder than I ever, ever have, but it was a good one. I've never seen Finn do anything like that before, and although that is probably not the best basis for a purchase, we did the questionable parenting thing and bought Finn the Ernie.

I'd like to say this was a one-off and that he hasn't learned some horrible lesson about how to get what he wants, but I would probably be wrong.

Well, maybe now we can stop watching this clip; warning, though, it is an earworm.

We are sitting! Rosemary suddenly can sit unassisted. She's a bit wobbly, and her head has become good -- well, I wouldn't say they're good friends, but definitely, the floor and her head are acquaintances now. Let's just say they've met on more than one occasion.

This sitting business is just one more step advancing her evil plot to overthrow the earth.

"What do you want to do today, Rosemary?"
"Same thing we do every day, Finn. Try to take over the world."

Today is a junk day. A very bad, no-good day. Why?

This morning, Dylan got up with Finn while I lounged in bed with Rosemary. I heard Dylan coming up the stairs and expected a nice, warm, very strong cup of coffee. He's nice like that.

"Um, Jenn, I have bad news. The coffeemaker is broken."

The next sound heard was my head exploding.

"GASP. NO! NO! NO! What happened? Wait, a minute. Yesterday, the coffeemaker made a very strange sound, and then it smelt like burning plastic. I guess that was a bad thing."
"Yes, Jenn, that would have been a pretty good indicator of a bad thing."

Shit.

Junk day. Now we have to try and return our stupid coffeemaker to Costco. It's only two-years old. WTF? Don't people have coffeemakers for years?

I am broken without coffee.

Post-immunization, we are doing fine. The City of Ottawa has managed the mass immunization, as far as I could tell, well. Things went smoothly, and the whole process took two hours: one in the morning while Dylan waited for wristbands to secure a time slot, and one in the afternoon for our slotted vaccinations. Yah! Take that swine flu!

These are pictures of Finn and Rosemary at approximately the same age and in the same costume. I did change it for Rosemary a bit. She didn't really want to be a red devil.

Halloween night was a success. This was fun. At one point, when I was handing out candy, I peeked out onto the street and saw little groups of happy children running around the neighbourhood in the dark. They had taken over the street, and it was brilliant.
Finn was a great Elmo, and Rosemary, well, she loved being a ladybug.
It didn't take Finn long to figure out the system. Knock on the door, open the big Elmo bag, and get candy. "More! More!"
Along for the ride and loving it. She was a pretty good co-trick-or-treater. People assumed Finn was collecting for both him and his sister. Score!

Elmo did manage to get dressed as Finn. Finn didn't like it, but I got a picture in quickly.
Oooh, checking out the candy haul! Nice work, Finn.

What on earth are we going to do with all this candy?