Our Decision...

Thank you for the messages and emails about your stories and suggestions. I could not decide what I wanted to do, so I had the ultrasound technician put the gender in a sealed envelope and then I hid it when I got home! We have yet to open it up, but Alan has been in China since just after the ultrasound. I think we may have a nice date night at home and open it up together. I do like the idea of a surprise, but Alan very much wants to know the gender, and I think it is a nice compromise finding out together in our home.

So I will let you know when we decide the time is right to find out. But, more importantly, everything is looking great and the baby is growing just as expected. The baby is also very active!!! Over the past two weeks, the baby has been moving so much that it is actually turning my stomach and has brought back the nausea. Has anyone else had experience with this? I am only in my 22nd week, so I can only imagine this is going to get significantly worse as the baby gets bigger!

Other than the ultrasound news not much has been going on. Alan has been in China, so Ewan and I have had oh so much quality time together - for better or for worse. These two year old mood swings are going to be the end of me! Now that Alan is back I think we need some alone time! Also, with Alan away I have had no one to wake me up when I put Ewan to bed, so I have been falling asleep around 8pm most nights. What an exciting life!

One exciting new change with Ewan is his ability to play for longer by himself without me needing to be right by him. Several times he has asked to go into the yard with Sidekick and the two of them just run around for a good 30 minutes - just enough time for me to get dinner and lunches made for the next day. At this moment him and Sidekick are running around the living room and kitchen playing fetch. I wanted him to grow up with a pet and it is so wonderful seeing him develop this bond with his puppy.

Well time to get back outside and enjoy the last bits of summer. I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!

The big debate!

So Tuesday afternoon I have my next ultrasound booked to find out what the gender of the baby is...if we end up going. I booked this ultrasound in July, tentatively, because Alan and I were not in agreement about finding out the gender of the baby and I thought two months would be plenty of time to debate. Well, we kind of forgot about debating and now the ultrasound is this Tuesday!

Alan is all for finding out the gender and I would kind of like the experience of the big surprise. And to be honest, I just don't feel the urgency this time around. The pregnancy is flying by, I in week 20 - the half way point already, and have barely given thought to this baby! We have everything we need this time around, unless a girl - I guess we will need more clothes, a few girly cloth diapers and new bedding. But we really have all the essentials that we will need. But I have such little time off - do I want to spend it picking things up that I could have done in advance. Other bonus is naming the baby - we already have a girl name picked out - since my first pregnancy, but another boy name would be an almost impossible task - that could really take my whole 9 weeks off post baby to decide on a name! The other pro of finding out would be to better prepare Ewan of a brother or sister.

Even with these points I am not quite convinced. So, as much advice over the next few days would be very much appreciated!! Please help us with this decision and let me know what you chose and why.

First day of school already!

So once again it has been a little while since posting, but I have filled the past 2 weeks with enjoying every last moment of holiday time with my family and relishing in not having a schedule for either myself or Ewan! We also had a wonderful last day of summer celebration dinner out at the Keg - always phenomenal food. As a side note, it was also the first time we brought Ewan and I was blown away with what a great 'family' restaurant it is. For $9.97 Ewan had a drink, a plate of strawberries, carrots, celery and dip as a starter, followed by a full chicken breast and mashed potatoes (actual real food for children is always a bonus as opposed to pizza or grilled cheese), and ice cream for dessert! Anyway, it was a great end to a wonderful summer.

I have also been taking some time to prep for Nursery School and Music and Gym classes - which I am always very excited to bring in new ideas each year, hosting a 'Meet the Teacher Night' and knocking some things off my 'to-do' list at A Gym Tale. The Meet the Teacher night was wonderful and we had such a fantastic turn out, it is really nice to see so many families so excited for their little ones and so ready to get involved in their learning!

And today we had the first day of school (for some children - we are doing 3 first days of school so that all the children start with only about 10 children in the class as opposed to 24). And I have to say it was one of our most successful first days! We did not have any children come in crying and only 2 moments of slight teariness when children realized half way through that mom had left. Now at this age it is many of the children's first time leaving mom and dad and so some adjustment and tears are expected - it is a big transition for both children AND parents. Myself, Miss Linds and Miss Megan are prepared to ease the children in as gently as possible and usually once we get them in they are distracted by the many activities, the ball pit or the trampoline. But we all had to admit what a nice 'first day back' it was for us with no tears! We are all very much looking forward to meeting all the other students this Friday and on Monday.

Well it is 9:55pm and I am falling asleep at the computer - going from no routine to waking up at 5:30am  is going to do me in. I will be lucky if I make it to Saturday. It is shocking how quickly my bedtime has changed from midnight and 1am to 10pm!!! Now if only Ewan would sleep in past 5:30am - the child has a sixth sense and wakes up within five minutes of me being awake! Any advice would be appreciated!

Some news to share!

Alan and I feel that it is probably time to share our big news with everyone - especially since it really is no longer possible to keep private without many questioning looks. We are excited to share that we are expecting our second baby as of February 2nd, 2012! I am now four months pregnant, back into the stretchy pants (which I despise) and I am happy to say that the 24 hour a day nausea is starting to subside - finally! Ewan is also very excited with the idea of a baby, kisses my belly each morning and also thinks that he has a baby in his belly too!

Now after the congratulations, I know that the first question on many of your minds is 'who will be teaching my child?' Well I do have a plan in place as well as a wonderful team of experienced staff that I am confident will continue to run A Gym Tale seamlessly and will win all of your children over as they have over the past three years. And as always I can always be contacted directly by email.

With regards to the Gym & Music classes, I do plan on working straight through my pregnancy until the very end of January. I will be running the first 6 weeks of the winter Gym & Music play classes - I make no guarantees that I will actually be able to get up from circle time, but I will be there! And then one of the girls will finish the session for me continuing on with all of my class plans. I will then be returning to teach all of the Spring session classes, most likely with the baby in a sling (yay, no need for a doll for the baby class!)

As for the Nursery School program, I will start to step back in January as Chrissy, a teacher who has been with us for the past three years, is returning from her maternity leave. Come the Spring I will be back part time in a 'supervisory' position.

We are very excited to share this news with everyone and I look forward to sharing stories of the pregnancy with all of you as well as hearing about all of your transitions from a one child family to two.

An enjoyable Sunday at home

After spending the morning at the dog park with both Ewan and Sidekick running around for a solid hour we made our way back home with the dog and the boy fast asleep. I was then free to take some time to go through the veggie garden which has been very good to us this summer with an abundance of carrots, yellow beans, broccoli, snow peas, spinach, onions, zucchini and now tomotoes galore. I spent the afternoon taking on the challenge of making homemade tomato sauce in order to freeze for the craziness of going back to work in the Fall - which as much as I have missed everyone, I have also really enjoyed my time off! Making the sauce was a surprisingly easy task - peeling the tomatoes were no problem, I decided to skip seeding them - next time I will try this. But then I just added all sorts of fresh veggies and herbs (carrots, onions, oregano, basil) that we had growing - making sure to puree it all so Alan will never find out vegetables were used! Dinner will be served in about an hour and the house smells amazing and I probably have enough sauce for 4-5 cans just from this batch.


I have really started getting inspired to cook and make more creative meals. The past week I have also started reading up on bento boxes and the hundreds of creative lunch ideas for kids and Ewan is loving them all. One mom from nursery school this year inspired me with all of her creative snack ideas. The idea is to make everything is small portion sizes and in creative designs and shapes. I have ordered my bento boxes so that I am ready for Fall lunch making (I have to find some way to make this task 'exciting'!). For lots of ideas just google bento.

Hiring Time!

The past week has been busy with interviews - meeting with 17 new potential members of A Gym Tale! We had some really great candidates and it was a difficult choice to narrow it down to 4 new party hostesses and a new nursery school and after school teacher - which is always a good thing to have lots of great people applying. Now this week I am undertaking the challenge of meeting with everyone for orientations and beginning training. Don't worry - the quality of parties and camps will not diminish at the least - no one will ever have a party host who is not trained to our standards. Quite the opposite actually, for the month of August and some of September, parties and campers will get to enjoy all their 'old' favourite hostesses as well as get to meet a new member of the team who will be mentoring with our senior staff.

It is an exciting time of year as we bring on new staff, but also a difficult one as we say goodbye to some very loyal and dedicated members of our team who are going on to school outside of Ottawa or their careers of choice post graduation. Alan and I are very proud to have the opportunity to work with so many wonderful members of the team for usually one full year and most often several years. It is also great to see how much pride and ownership our staff take in A Gym Tale and how serious they all take their 'mentoring' roles in training the new staff. It is a great relief as a business owner to know and see that your staff do actually care about your business and that they take their jobs as entertainers and teachers very 'seriously' and it is their own goal to create the very best birthday party or the greatest camp day ever!

So we welcome our new team members and we wish our current staff members leaving us the very best of luck and great success!


One last note - the only area that I am struggling to fill is our Princess character visits - so if you know of any potential princess's (especially a sleeping beauty), please send them my way!

Family Photo Session!

A few months ago Alan and I decided that we wanted to have another family photo session. The only one that we have ever had was when Ewan was 4 weeks old, it was a great experience and I absolutely love the pictures that the photographer had captured.

This time we wanted to have the picture done at our home in our back yard. We wanted them to have a more personal touch and we wanted Ewan to be comfortable in his environment for the session. We decided to have Elizabeth Fulton photography do our photo session. She has a wonderful website (http://elizabethfultonphotography.com/) highlighting lots of newborn, family even wedding sessions. On top of great pictures, Elizabeth also gives you a cd copy of your pictures so that you can print them where ever you would like and always have a back up on the cd. Elizabeth was relaxed and patient - even when Ewan decided to be a monster that morning! We had some great posed shots as well as lots of candid pictures of Ewan. And the the cd was ready within a week of the session!

Here are a few of my favourites - 

I hope everyone enjoys their week!