And again about Lost, even if I am only talking to myself

I liked last night's episode. It got away from Dogan and mythology and Jacob and back to the hardcore mysteries of the show: what does Widmore want? Who are all these mercenaries working for? And Desmond is back. All is well.

Earlier this week I checked out Lost Spoilers at the ODI and they have details about everything up until and including (I believe) the finale. I clicked through a jump and found some commentary from people who have seen the rest of the series. I read the first line and then closed the window. I just couldn't do it. I want to watch it and be shocked by it and enjoy seeing it all unfold. And I still have faith that it will.

I think this goes down in history as being the first time I have ever knowingly avoided a spoiler. I am so proud of myself. :)

Puppy

It's funny to think about the phases your kids go through sometimes. For months and months, Mallory was obsessed with imaginary blueberries. Specifically, hunting for them. "I need to find some blueberries!" she would say, then scrounge around and pick some invisible berries up. "Here are my blueberries!" She doesn't even like blueberries, so I'm not sure what the appeal was. Now that I think about it, I can't even remember when she stopped doing this. It's been a while.Her latest gig is being a puppy. When she is being Puppy, she starts panting to signal the transformation, and we indulge her by scratching her behind the ears and petting her head and asking what colour of fur she has that day. Usually, she is a big pink poodle. She's taken this one step further lately by asking us to play fetch with her. She uses her Sophie squeaky toy that she had as a baby, which, come to think of it, is a dead ringer for a real dog toy.Thankfully, there are still some days when she is not a puppy. She's just a little girl, sporting her princess mouse ears and using her magic wand to exercise some control over the world. And I like those days, too.

Ready to replace Ebert and Roeper

On the weekend we took the kids to see How to Train Your Dragon. Kind of a spur of the moment thing; it's not like we'd been watching previews for months and awaiting its release with bated breath.

The kids had been to the theatre once before, over the Christmas break. I took them to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, which is every bit as bad as you would imagine (although Mallory really enjoyed the sequence with the girl chipmunks singing "Single Ladies"). The problem was that for months, Disney had been pushing The Princess and the Frog as its big Christmas release, and you know how Mallory takes to anything involving princesses. So I had been promising for months to take them to see it. We have a theatre in town with 6 screens, and I never imagined that the big new Disney movie would not make it to my hometown theatre (which is of course what then happened). Alvin was the only G-rated movie in town. When you are dealing with a 2 year old and a 4 year old, it doesn't make sense to put them in the car for an hour before the show to take them to another theatre. I thought I was pushing my luck to have them sit through a 90-minute film as it was. Anyway, they did make it through Alvin and the Chipmunks (with popcorn and juice boxes as bribery) and that was under bad circumstances (we got there late and it was packed).So we knew they could last through How to Train Your Dragon. We got there early to get good seats (though in the end, the show was not nearly as full as the first one had been). I noticed that the movie had a PG rating and I looked into it before we went. The rating was on account of some action scenes. There is a lot of dragon-fighting in this movie, which did not faze Mallory in the least. I caught Liam looking away from the screen at one point when the biggest, scariest dragon came out (the rest of them turned out to be friendly). After the show, Chad commented on the animation, saying how realistic the characters were to the extent that the vikings all had (extensive) body hair that was unusual for a cartoon character, but very believeable. So you can bet that the dragons seemed real to the kids.

We can't have scarred them too badly by taking them to see it, because the next day Gramma and Grampa took them for a Happy Meal and the big promotion on now is How to Train Your Dragon toys. Mallory has been sleeping with hers for the past few nights and while Liam isn't one to cuddle up to anything in bed, it's been seeing some daytime action. So there can't be too many bad memories associated.

(For what it's worth, we did finally pick up a copy of The Princess and the Frog last week when it was released on DVD, and Mallory has had it on constant repeat since then.)

Birthday season

It's that time of year again, when all of us Cooks get a little bit older. We kick things off with Chad's birthday on Saturday, then Mallory turns 3 on April 9th and Liam turns 5 on April 13th.

We decided to do a joint party again this year... because we can. Until they each want to do their own thing, it just makes sense. Rather than doing one joint theme though, we have a specific girl theme and a specific boy theme that 'go together'. We'll have similar but slightly different activities for the girls and boys (and a few for the whole group to do together). Pirate balloons at one end of the table and meraid balloons at the other. Separate cakes but the same meal (fish sticks, anyone?)

Even though some of the girls are Liam's friends, and some of the boys are Mallory's friends, we split things down gender lines to keep it easy. Maybe not very PC of us, but it was just easier that way. And I like the fact that everyone was invited to either Liam's party or Mallory's party but not both, because last year we invited ten kids over and most brought a gift for both Mallory and Liam. It was a lot; I wouldn't have let either Liam or Mallory have 10 kids over if the party had been for them alone. I think this way is better.

Unfortunately, last week we got our first 'no' RSVP, from Nicholas and Sophie. They will be on vacation while we have our party and Mallory cried when she heard that Nicholas can't come. If it makes her feel any better, I heard that Nicholas wants to stay home from Mexico now so that he can go to her party. Those two really crack me up. I also heard that Nicholas has a birthday party in the near future, and we will do what we can to make sure Mallory can go!(This was just a draft version of Liam's invitation. The final one was slightly different, but I can't find it anywhere right now.)

Happy Sunday

Merging my all-time favourite show with Chad's. Priceless!

Jumping the gun

This week, we ran out of diapers. And I have had just about enough of diapers. Mallory is only wearing them at bedtime, but she wakes up dry approximately half of the time so I thought it might be time to ditch them completely. We made a big production over how ready she is to be done with diapers because she is almost three and three year olds are big enough to wear underpants to bed.

The first night, she slept through, and woke up damp. She had obviously peed but it wasn't a lot and wasn't enough to wake her in the middle of the night. (Unfortunately, it *was* enough to get on her duvet, which now needs to be dry cleaned. Argh. I suppose I should do that before putting it away for the summer anyway... but still...)

The second night, she woke up dry. Yay Mal! Much cheering ensued.

The third night was last night. I was woken up (the whole house was, really) at 1:30 a.m. by a bellowing, belligerent, wet and cold little girl. I thought that I had limited what she drank before bed, but there was a veritable flood. Her pajamas and sheets were sopping wet. There I am, madly trying to wrangle her out of her wet things as she is crying pitifully, and then it occurs to me that we have an Epic Fail in the design of her mattress cover. It's rubber on the bottom, but it's kind of soft and fuzzy on top. So I stripped off the wet sheet but then was left with a still-wet mattress cover. I didn't want to put a clean sheet on top of the wet mattress cover, but I also didn't want to take the mattress cover off altogether, because it wasn't even 2 a.m. and what if she peed again before morning? Finally I ran down the hall to the laundry room, grabbed a beach towel from the linen closet, doubled it up and put it on top of the wet spot on the mattress cover. Sheets and blankets and new pajama pants back on Mallory, who was still sobbing. Poor thing.

She was up again half an hour later. I exepected the worst - another flood - but when I got to her room, I found her sleeping (or not) on the floor beside the door. Good thing I spent all that time in the middle of the night re-making her bed for her, right? Thankfully, she stayed in her bed the rest of the night.

I am going to pick up another pack of diapers on my lunch hour. I think we jumped the gun.(After a yummy batch of spring-themed sugar cookies last weekend, I picked up a few new cookie cutters and some different colours of sprinkles this week. We may have another batch up our sleeves this weekend.)

Our very own little Vancouver

Last night was Liam's final skating lesson of the year. You know it's time to stop skating when it's still light out when the lesson ends; when you have to put on warmer clothes to get on the ice than you wear on the trips to and from the rink; and when you've been going for 26 consecutive weeks and think that you will scream if you have to lace up the skates one more time. To celebrate the end of skating, they had a mini-Olympics. This made the lesson an hour long rather than a half hour, and seemed to consist only of the kids being timed on a stopwatch as they manouvered through the pylons. Maybe there was more to it than that but if so - I missed it. The whole family came out to watch - maybe we were all expecting a little bit more.

At the end of the night Liam got his skating report card, and he had all the skills checked off for Stage 1. I had to take his report card over to the desk to ask about it. Does this mean he passed the first level? I asked. To which they asked right back, did he get a badge? I checked in with Liam. No badge. But he deserved a badge. They sent a lady on a badge hunt, and she confirmed with his instructor that he deserved a badge. Finally they tracked one down.

I was so proud. My little man got his very first skating badge. Badges were the only reason I stuck with Girl Guides as long as I did, so for me, this was a Very Big Deal. On the way home, Chad stopped and let Liam pick out a treat for his efforts. He chose some gumdrops. Why he picked that when a full aisle of Easter candy was in front of him is beyond me - but I digress.

We have not yet discussed what to do next fall, but I imagine the decision will have to be made between sending Liam back for more skating lessons and enrolling him in hockey - where he will still learn how to skate, but without badges and with protective gear. We'll have to see what he feels like doing. Whether he winds up back at CanSkate or not, I am sure I will be back, because Mallory is almost 3 and she is raring to go.

Fresh air and sunshine

Lost chitchat

It's no secret that I have been less-than-thrilled with this season of Lost, though I still believe redemption is possible. (Hey, isn't that the recurring theme of the whole darn show these days?) If you are a Lostie and you haven't noticed... I've linked a cool new site I found, "Lost Spoilers at the ODI", in the sidebar. I haven't found anything shocking there, but there are some fun things, like a list of episode titles for the season (only the finale's title is missing), a few set photos and screen shots of some upcoming episodes, etc. In any other show this might be considered spoiler-ish, because for example, if you see Ben in a screen shot for episode 10 then you know that he lives at least that long. But seeing as that this is Lost, and there is a Locke walking around the island who isn't really Locke, I don't think that applies, and I am not too concerned about finding out something I don't want to know. At any rate, their bigger spoilers are hidden behind jumps so you don't accidentally discover anything.

One cool thing I found was this list of both episode titles and a scorecard of how the episodes ranked among people who have had sneak peeks. Unfortunately... there are some high marks around the third-to-last episode, but the finale didn't score well. Maybe that third-to-last episode is the Desmond-centric episode that everyone is waiting for??

Link directly to this scorecard post is below.

http://lostspoilers-odi.blogspot.com/2010/03/spoiler-sources-episode-scorecard-610.html

Heard from Mallory's room after lights out last night:

"Moooooommy!" (No response.)
"Mooooooooooooooooommy!" (No response.)
"Mooooooooom, I'm thirsty!" (No response. Had already given her a drink.)
"Mooooooooom, I'm hungry!" (No response. No way could she be hungry, given how big the cookie she ate after dinner was.)
"Mooooooooooooooooommy!" (No response.)
"Caaaaaaaaaaaaarrie!" (OK... I give in... big time response. I was laughing my head off.)

Larger than life

I finally ordered my first big canvas. They are pricey, but there are a few good sales each year, and this time I was ready with an image when the sale came along. I adore this photo of Mallory and the canvas is just stunning. The next time I have one done I will need to get one of Liam.

The canvas company accidentally shipped me another person's canvas, too, and they don't want it back - I guess it would cost less for them to print a new one than to have me return-ship it to them. So I have a giant canvas of someone else's baby on my dining room table right now. I feel bad just throwing it out. I think I am going to keep the frame... I understand there are some places that sell unmounted canvas, so I might try ordering one of those (much less expensive!) and doing a homemade mount job.

Either that, or I have some firewood available, free for the asking.

Fruit is almost as good as Lucky Charms. Right? Riiiiight?

We managed to squeeze in End of the Rainbow Parfaits right before bed on St. Patrick's Day. It wasn't green beer... it wasn't Lucky Charms... but it was something. I even used the vanilla pudding I had on hand rather than vanilla yogurt as an extra treat (though I think I prefer the yogurt; the 'cloud at the end of the rainbow' is a truer white that way.)Mallory ate 3 of the 5 layers of fruit. These days, that is a raging success. I will take my victories when I can!Speaking of Mallory, this is her ten minutes after Gramma and Grampa left after their 3rd straight day of babysitting. I'm sure she wears them out, but they wear her out, too. She was too excited to have a sleep while they were around, and I don't blame her one bit.

If Target shipped to Canada...

How cute is this!

Girls' day out

I took last Friday off work. Cindy was en route to Jamaica and we don't trust Mal enough to leave her home alone. Liam had a school day, so after we dropped him off... it was just us girls.
We went to the library, and picked out some new books and movies. Then we went looking for some birthday party supplies. Ariel, of course. (As much as I am trying to make it 'generic mermaid' instead of 'Ariel specific'... there just is not much else out there.) Then we stopped at the grocery store for a couple of things, and we treated ourselves to lunch before heading home. McDonald's, of course, where Mallory surprised and delighted me by ordering the apple slices instead of the french fries. After that, we headed home, settled in with our new books and movies, and spent a lazy afternoon together before we swung by the school again to pick Liam up.

I don't often get to spend some alone time with my girl, which is a shame. There is really almost no better way to spend a day.

Top o the morning to you, and the rest of the day to yourself

I dropped the ball a bit here. March 17 snuck up on me. Which is kind of a surprise, really, because the kids have been bringing home paper leprechauns and top hats and shamrock-splattered crowns for weeks and weeks, now. And yet somehow, St. Patrick's Day is upon us, and I didn't have green outfits ready for the kids to wear (even though Mallory has a brand new adorable little green springtime outfit; though I also want her to wear it for birthday pictures, and I'm a bit hesitant to let her have at it until then, lest she muck it up). I didn't have a box of Lucky Charms on hand for breakfast or make green shamrock-shaped pancakes. We have never (nor has anyone we know) done the whole 'visiting leprechaun' thing with green toilet water and chocolate coins being left for the kids... I'm guessing it's a regional thing. Still, I feel like I am a bit behind.Even though we've just come off a long weekend, and we're heading into a long weekend, things have felt chaotic at work and at home. Whether it's real or all in my head, I don't know. Liam has his second-to-last skating lesson tonight and while Chad takes him to that, I plan to swing by the grocery store with Mallory to grab a few last-minute items. I have most of what I need on hand to make our annual End of the Rainbow Parfaits. I can't let the day end without at least putting those together.

(There are no Shamrock Shakes anywhere in Ontario this year. Sniff, sniff.)

Out of town

Yesterday, with the kids on March Break, both Chad and I took the day off work and we headed to the Children's Museum in London. (It was not as crowded as you'd think. I think going on the first day of March Break (and a Monday at that, when the museum is normally closed) was the right thing to do.) Chad and I were emailing back and forth at work one day last week, talking about making the trip, when I got an email from Jenn in my inbox, asking if we wanted to meet up at the museum. Great minds think alike! There was lots for even baby Ethan to do, from playing in the sand to taking his first trip into space.
Chad and I were both a little disappointed with the museum this time around. The exhibits were much the same as last time we were there, but a lot of the play components were missing from each one. The McDonald's counter was missing most of the food, as was the grocery store. (Last time around, there were racks of food to buy, shopping carts to put it in, grocery bags to load the paid food into. This time around... not so much.) There was a sign up saying the plasma cars had been taken away in anticipation of March Break crowds, and that made sense, but did they need to take away all the other stuff, too? Or has it just been slowly getting lost/broken/stolen over the past year?

I don't think the kids noticed the missing bits and pieces as much as we did. They still loved digging in the sand, and Mallory cracked me up in the arctic exhibit by fishing at the ice fishing game and then taking her fish across the room to the polar bear and leaving them for him to eat. She's got quite the imagination on her.And as you can see from yesterday's post... the lack of plasma cars was not a big deal, because after the museum, we headed over to Chapters and rode on the cars there for a bit while we waited for Uncle Darin to finish work so we could go for lunch. Like I said... they have a wonderful kids' section there now (and photogenic to boot - darn me for not bringing my portrait lens! Another time, definitely.) You could spend hours there... we would have, if all the running around didn't leave us starving for lunch!Jenn was right - the Beijing Beef Salad at Jack Astor's was awesome. We finished the day up with some party-store hopping to find supplies for the upcoming Cook Family Birthday Bash. Before we knew it, the day was over. Then it was home for laundry and getting ready for another (mercifully short) work week after a lovely 4-day weekend. Only 3 days of work to plow through this week, but lots to get done at the office during that time.

Location scouting

More about our (extra-long!) weekend to come, but for now, a preview of our trip to the Masonville Chapters in London and its newly-refurbished children's area. I am dying to go back and stage a full-scale photo shoot now - with candids this good, can you imagine what some forethought could accomplish?

I enjoy having a girl

Tonight I went to pick Mallory up from Cindy's house, and as I pulled away with her in the back seat, she leaned forward and pointed to my hand on the steering wheel and said, "I really like your bracelet, mom." It's an old bracelet that I still love and don't wear as often as I should. But now that I have a little fashionista-in-training who appreciates the effort... it might just make it into heavier rotation.

Superheros

Late last year, these guys went to a superhero-themed birthday party. They came home bearing capes and masks that are still in our bin of dress-up clothes and still get used quite often.

Liam's latest thing is to hang out at the bottom of the stairs on the weekend day that Chad gets to sleep in. As soon as he hears the upstairs toilet flush, he gets into position at the bottom of the stairs, and jumps out and tries to spook Chad. I actually took a video of this a few weeks ago that I forgot about until just now - I will have to post it when I get the chance.

For her part, Mallory follows along. She likes imitating Liam and sometimes, when she is not busy watching cartoons, she will also try to spook Chad. But mostly, she just watches cartoons.

The necklace war

A short time ago, I decided that I wanted a string of vintage white lucite beads, and in short order I'd found one at a local thrift store. They are probably from the 50s or 60s and were strung on thread that was starting to rot. Plus, they had some pink spacer beads, which were (a) too fussy for my taste, (b) starting to flake and (c) pushed the necklace to a dowdy length. Luckily, I have a pair of crimping pliers and some beading thread in my stash, so restringing the necklace was an easy DIY.

I undertook this job one day on the weekend while Mallory slept, and Liam helped me with it. I would pull the bead off the old string and pass it to Liam, who strung it on the new cord. We made sure we did this slowly and deliberately so that all the graduated sizes of beads wound up back where they belonged. It didn't take long to finish, and now it looks just how I wanted it to look and the length of it is perfect.

We were being silly, so I let Liam wear the necklace around for a bit. He was very proud of himself for his repair job. And when Mallory woke up from her nap, she wanted to wear it, too. I figured there is no harm really (it is a plastic necklace, after all), so we passed it along to her for the rest of the day. That's her painting in it on the left. It did wind up with quite a bit of paint on it... but like I said... it's plastic. The paint came off.

Since that time there have been a few bitter battles over the necklace. Mallory likes to wear it. She likes to wear it a lot. But Liam thinks that it is his necklace (even if he is 'over' the idea of wearing it now himself) because he had a hand in putting it back together.Today, I'm wearing the necklace. I'm hoping to send a message that while they can both play with it/wear it... it belongs to me. I quite like it; it goes with almost everything, and I think I am going to get a lot of use out of it this spring and summer.

DIY weekend

This weekend was filled with the normal weekend types of activities - swimming lessons and grocery shopping and long-overdue haircuts - but it was also filled with 4 gallons of primer and 2 gallons of ceiling paint that Chad and I put up in the basement, and if I ever see a paintbrush again, it will be too soon. I never realized just how much one's eyes could cross until I tried applying white ceiling paint over top of white primer in a basement at 11 p.m. It's completely understandable that we missed a few spots on the first go-round.

Of course, all that we have now is a white basement. We still need to paint the walls. While I think the worst of it is behind us (the primer that soaks into drywall like nobody's business, the splatters and paint in the hair and shoulder strain from painting overhead, the constant moving of furniture and shifting of drop cloths to protect all the junk we keep in the basement), we still have a lot of work ahead of us that we are trying to finish up before the kids' birthday party, which is just a little over a month away. This isn't limited to painting the walls; we also have to paint a bunch of shelves, do the baseboards and trim, find and hang light fixtures, figure out how to arrange the furniture and where to hang things on the walls, etc.

Wish us luck.

(Mallory starts swimming lessons at the end of the month - wish us luck with that, too!)

Another cool OK Go video that's gone viral

Remember the treadmill video? This one tops it. Man, these guys put a lot of time into these things.

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes...

Just a few hours of playing outside over the past week have brought Liam's freckles back to the surface. I can't wait to see how many more spring up this summer.

The last five minutes of Tuesday night's episode of Lost was easily the most exciting so far this season.

So says the headline on CNN. What do we think?

Personally - I think the show has jumped the shark. Maybe ending after season 5 (Juliet detonates the bomb - fade to black - The End) was the way to go. Last week was way better old-school Lost than this week. And last week wasn't great, just better than the other episodes so far this season.

I will stick around for ten more episodes to see how it all plays out. But my faith is really shaken right now.

Bad influence

Liam is normally a wonderful, sweet, funny, docile little guy. He rarely gives anyone trouble of any kind. Except... I have a feeling the tide may be turning a bit. Over the past few weeks, I have noticed him tossing out a few little barbs that have surprised me. Nothing big and nothing prolonged - his next sentence is usually sweet as pie, and I forget about it pretty quickly. But I'm thinking now (after listening to a coworker complain of how lippy HER 4 year old is)... piecing the bits together... and realizing that we're heading down that road (to a lesser extent, I hope - fingers crossed) ourselves.

These barbs, as I call them, are insignificant enough that I can't even recall one word for word. A typical scenario would be that I ask Liam to do XX or else YY will happen. And he'll say, "You can't make me." And let me qualify this by saying that he isn't belligerent when he says this, he isn't shouting or stomping about. He will murmur this out of the corner of his mouth as he goes to start doing XX. He is very carefully testing the waters to see how I will react. Baby steps.

Mostly, I ignore him. Well, not really. You know what I mean. I say, "Thanks for doing XX" without reacting to his comment with a comment of my own. I figure this stuff is probably coming home from school. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

I'm sure this will escalate. He'll be a screaming, fit-throwing teenager one day. But knowing Liam, it won't progress far. Or fast. He is still my number one little guy, and (so far, at least) he would bend over backward for me. Even when he's testing out these new words, deep down, I know he doesn't mean it; he's just figuring out this big world, and his own place in it.

Little mermaid

Gramma and Grampa made it safely home from Disney on the weekend. (The other Gramma and Grampa are still in Hawaii, where they are no longer on tsunami watch, thank goodness.) The first Gramma and Grampa came back bearing the gift of an Ariel shirt for Mallory. Probably because she told them she needed an Ariel shirt before they left. Nothing like being direct in order to get what you want!

At several of the last few birthday parties the kids have attended, dressing up has been a part of the festivities. They dressed up as superheros in December and then Mallory had her princess party in January. Now she thinks that she is going to dress up as a mermaid for her own birthday, for which we are planning a joint party with the theme "pirates and mermaids" (yup, we're going to go for the joint birthday party for at least one more year). I do not have, nor do I intend to make (at least until October), a mermaid costume for her, so perhaps she is thinking the Ariel shirt is the next best thing.

(I should probably not be so surprised by her jumping to this dressing-up conclusion. After all, the boys at the party will probably wind up with some combination of eye patches/swords/pirate hats or hair kerchiefs. So why shouldn't the girls dress up as mermaids? Well, because I am not about to supply bra tops and fish scales for a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds... that's why. Still, we will try to search out seashell-shaped hair combs or some such thing for the girls, so they aren't left out.)

Mallory has also been talking about having an Ariel cake for quite some time. You may notice that I am trying to steer her away from 'Ariel' in particular and toward 'mermaids' in general, but I am meeting a lot of resistance. Anyway, a few weeks ago she wanted me to show her pictures of Ariel cakes online, and while we were Googling we found images of Ariel cupcake toppers, and she decided she wants Ariel cupcakes instead. Last week I was at the Bulk Barn and I broke down and spent $20 on a half dozen Ariel cupcake toppers, Ariel cupcake papers, and an Ariel candle for the top of Mallory's own cupcake. $20 spent to date, and not even a crumb of cake to show for it yet.

Owning the podium, Cook family style

How was your weekend? I spent mine washing the underpants of children who did not make it to the bathroom on time and debating the merits of throwing sheets in the wash prior to scraping up big chunks of vomit, versus having to pick the ones too large to go down the drain out of the machine afterwards.

I guess Liam was right when he said he was sick, after all. Poor little kids had a rough weekend. We actually wound up going to a skating party on Friday night (more on that later) because Liam seemed up for it and wanted to go. The vomiting and diarrhea didn't start til later.

By Saturday, none of us felt well. After breakfast I didn't eat another bite til 6 p.m. because I sensed some nausea coming on. In retrospect that may just have been due to the fact that I was cleaning up vomit. It has that effect on me. (Of course, it may also be because for breakfast, we baked up the last of our cinnamon buns, and one bun was probably all the calories I needed for the day!)So on Saturday and in fact for Sunday as well, we laid low. We skipped swimming. We played many, many, many rounds of Uno, which has replaced Candy Land as our new favourite. We watched all manner of bobsleigh and speed skating and, of course, hockey. And we conducted our own medal ceremonies, rewarding our Uno champions with our own versions of gold, silver and bronze (a.k.a. medals swiped from some of Chad's running events). Yes, that is Mallory in her pajamas AND her Cinderella dress, AND sporting an Olympic bronze medal. When you are only two, you can get away with such excess.