Yes, the training must start at a young age :-)

There are a few things in the Smith/Barker family that are indoctrined into small children at a very young age. One, of course, is a love of fire trucks. Lauren's Mom and Dad gave Matthew this great fire truck for Christmas and as expected, Matthew loves it! Grampy's latest recruit is officially in training!

Brroom brrom..

Another must love is basketball. This really required no training as Matthew LOVES balls. For the past two weeks a ball must accompany Matthew to bed and last night it had to be his basketball. This is not staged - he is in fact cuddling his basketball! There are other "rules", such as thou shall never ever own a Ford...but it's still a little early for that one! Matthew is well on his way to being an advid hockey fan though. He and I dance to the Hockey Night in Canada music every Saturday night and I've taught him to make a fist, wave his arm, and chant "go, go, go"! He thinks it is so much fun to cheer!!

Random Happenings From This Week...

Lately when Matthew comes downstairs and sees Riley he goes right over to him and snuggles. He's also been dragging Aunt Lauren's boot around the house, which is why it is blocking Riley's head in the picture.

Two buddies have fun...well, Riley looks a little worn out!

Riley, ever so gently, taking a cinnamon shreddie out of Matthew's fingers

Matthew playing peek-a-boo around Riley's head

Could I be prouder? A budding hydrologist already!

Buddies

Here are the monthly pictures of Matthew and Riley. Some days Matthew just walks over to Riley, sits down, and puts his arm around him to snuggle - it is so cute!! When Matthew was sick he crawled over to Riley, laid on him and fell asleep - but Chad didn't get a picture - oh well, I'm sure you can picture how sweet it must have looked!

Don't Forget to Pack Matthew!

On New Year's Eve our landlord informed us that they would be selling the house in the coming months, so we decided to give our notice and find some new digs! Two days later we found our new home and have begun packing. The new place is about a 5min drive from our current house and puts me closer to the train station and no further from daycare. It's a bigger and nicer, and has a great backyard with a pool - we are really looking forward to the summer now!! The new house is currently vacant so we will be able to get the key each weekend and start moving stuff in. We already started this past weekend. As you can see, Matthew was a big help :-)

Christmas Round 2 with Uncle Paul and Aunt Lauren!

Uncle Paul and Aunt Lauren returned on December 30 from Montreal, so we had another round of gift exchanging! Here is Matty unwrapping his present...

The farm was a big hit...clearly Dad is not getting the animals to Matthew quickly enough!

Sick Days...

Just after Terry and Sharon left to go back to NB, Matthew got sick. He had a fever that just wouldn't go away so we took him to the doctor and found out that he had a bit of everything...a bit of an ear infection in his left ear, a bit of a sore throat, and he was cutting lots of teeth. So he got his first ever presciption for antibiotics and is now on the mend. It was a pretty pitiful couple of days though as you can see from the pics below (before antibiotics). He was so snuggly and just wanted to be held until the tylenol kicked in.

Bye Grammie and Grampy

Grammie and Grampy went home on Boxing Day after playing with me for a whole week! I hope I didn't make them too tired! Grampy said that we can all go camping again this summer - I can't wait!!