Colin recently acquired a new ninja sword, making him pull out the ninja masks we brought home from Japan. Jane had to get hers out too, but paired it with her fairy wings. I love the combination of big brother influence and girly girly-ness.

(I wrote this for the phil&teds blog and while it has not posted yet, thought I would post it here too.)

We have had many restaurant adventures with our kids, some good, some not so good. Here are a handful of things that have helped.

Above, Brian with our kids in Victoria BC's Chinatown. I love how Brian looks like he has had enough. There are definitely some days when I would rather do anything else but take our kids to a restaurant. When living on the road as a nomadic opera family we have not had other options at times (only so many meals you can eat in a hotel room).

3-At times, I feel like whatever works and keeps kids happy is worth it, even if a little gross. The above photo is from a Mexican restaurant in San Angel just outside of Mexico City. Our son was about 16 months old and kept himself busy for a long time making the above concoction. It was a water bottle layered with corn tortillas, beans, orange rind and anything else that was in front of our son. My husband and I were able to eat relatively calmly, even with this disgusting thing on our table. Our son continued to drink the water even when it was full of stuff.

4-Sometimes all your best efforts will not be enough. The above photo is our son on the floor of the famous Opera Bar in Mexico City. He was done and had started exploring and saying hello to other people trying to have their meals. Lucky for us he is cute and Mexicans loved him.

5-Bring a good bib while your child is little to keep them and yourself cleaner. I LOVE the bibs with sleeves! Ikea sells some good ones or we have had a couple of these brands, they have lasted very well too. Bring lots of wipes to clean up after yourself and tip your server well!

6-Especially in Europe, we have typically brought our own baby chair as many restaurants do not have children's chairs. We travel with a booster chair that is a little bulky but is worth it to take with us. (We have yet to get a phil&teds clip-on chair as many times we have been in apartments or hotel rooms where we could not clip on such a chair. We do have a new wriggle wrapper for baby #3. I wish we had the wriggle wrapper for #2 but we did not know about it in time!)

7-When possible, ask if it is possible to sit away from other people. We went for some great Ethiopian food in Tel Aviv (there is some amazing food in Israel!). Our son had some extra energy that night so we asked to sit on the patio. It was very nice for him to have a little space and not bother other in the restaurant.

Below is our son at the Ethiopian restaurant. You can see in his eyes he was up to no good that night!

We had a funny time in Paris when our son was just about 2 years old. We were at a restaurant that had many mustards and condiments in the middle of the table. We moved them out of our son's reach but every time the waiter came to our table, he very fastidiously re-positioned them in the center of the table. He seemed very disapproving that we would move them as I suppose our 2 year old should know not to touch them. Oh well, it was not a great restaurant and we ended up eating a lot of street crepes in Paris.

We also found you can’t believe everything you read in a guidebook. One of our books for Warsaw, Poland claimed that “Rooster” was a great family eating establishment. There was one a short walk from our apartment, so we ventured in one evening for dinner. As it turns out, “Rooster” is modeled on the American “Hooters” experience, where the waitresses do not have much to wear. After being seated, our waitress came to take our orders and our three-year-old son wanted to know why she wasn’t wearing any trousers. However they did have a baby chair, crayons for kids and popcorn on the table. Our kids had a good time and the food was pretty good (we were hungry). We did not need to go back however.

Ok, just one more story from our first day in Jerusalem. It was very hot and from a lot of walking we were starving and out of water. I saw a sign for the Cafe of All Nations , so we headed up to it. It was a very funny little place. We walked in and it did not seem like a cafe at all. They had some old ice creams and drinks, but it did not seem like there was any food. There was a glass display case that seemed like it would have food but it was empty. We asked the man if they had sandwiches as the sign had suggested and he said yes, or course, and listed off what we could have. We asked for two falafel, so he made some phone calls and seemed to have sent a fax, and a few minutes later a car drove up, handed the man a black plastic bag from which he produced our lunch. It was a very strange little place and Brian asked me if I wanted to go there because I suspected it might be strange. But the food was pretty good (Brian liked the hint of lemon on the hummus), we had a place to sit and drink cold water. The man was very sweet with Colin and had him laughing a lot with 'gimme five' and some rather alarming vocal noises.

I think I first hear about the uses of little ketchup packets for medicinal purposes from Sue Anne. I believe it was her sister-in-law Jeanette (who we later became friends with AND she is a long lost cousin of mine, anyway) she would freeze the fast food ketchup packets for little kid-sized ice packs. My kids are somehow hurting themselves all the time and they have LOVED having their own ice packs.

It is nice too because our freezer is on the bottom. Anytime there is a little bonk, the non-injured sibling loves to run to the freezer to get the ice pack. It is just enough of a distraction to make the pain of whatever happened usually go away very quickly. Jane has chewed through a couple of them to eat the ketchup, but that has not happened in a while. I guess we could go by a Taco Bell sometime to give her a little spice.

Colin was posing for me and knew to make a sad face.

Our rug not long after the Easter Bunny came.

We have shoes everywhere in our house.

Someone got a ring pop.

I think this is only the 3rd time since Brian and I have been married that we colored eggs, and the first time we did it with kids. (We have spent a lot of Easters away from home.) Ideally we would have done this sooner and let the Easter Bunny hide these eggs too but instead, we colored them after dinner. Our kids were delighted and actually do love hard boiled eggs. Very exciting.

I made them take of clothes, I already do enough laundry and did not want to deal with more stains. (Although, has anyone noticed how the liquid OxyClean foams up on grass stains? I kind of love that.)

Brian got some little q-tip things that were filled with color too.

And we ended the day with this lovely mango tart. Brian has a major disagreement with

Cook Illustrated on this one since they say that mango is too weepy for tarts. Turned out just fine.

Colin and Jane looked pretty cute in their pale greens.

Our Easter Bunny came after lunch to the delight of the kids.

It has been a crazy weekend. My brother throws a big Easter party that included a bouncy castle. Our kids were lucky and had some fun time in the castle before it was over-run with other children.

Easter basket love.

And below, exhausted kids. They have even been very worn out today on the real Easter.

The kids love to cuddle the new baby. We are half way there, but meeting the baby still seems far away. Granted, the photo exaggerates, but I cannot believe how much bigger my belly is this time around. We have our ultrasound appointment next week and we hope to find out if it is a boy or girl. We thought about keeping it a surprise since we have one of each but we would like to know. Maybe the baby will not cooperate and keep it a surprise.

Jane was having a wild afternoon. She would have fallen asleep in the car but it was warm and we had the windows down. How can you fall asleep with the excitement of the windows down?

I took Colin's preschool photos again today. I was glad to see all the other preschoolers who are funny in photos (not a phenomenon unique to Colin).

Funny Colin.

Here are a few more out-takes, but some cuter ones. I still have some work on the photos and am excited to get it all done.

Brian might not miss this scene, but the little guys who made it are pretty cute when they are not fighting. Jane just looked at the photo and said "that is a fun dumping of the Little People!" The mess has gotten even worse as now the kids are building a train track through the pre-existing mess. I was curious and playing with my Dad's old fish eye lens this morning. It is super wide and focus free. I need to play with the old lenses more.

We also had a Jane potty training breakthrough this morning. I won't be too graphic in the explaining, but it is very exciting. The process is probably not over, but things are going. Obviously this is from before Brian left. When he is home, he plays Disney songs for the kids everyday and they dance. My Mom made this skirt for the new children's exhibit at the Church History Museum downtown and Jane thinks it is hers.

Brian has been gone for almost 2 weeks and has 2 more to go. (He is home for one day in between, which I worry may be hard on the kids to have him leave again so quickly, but I will be glad to see him even briefly.) I have been not looking forward to this time away for a LONG time. The kids have been on a whole, pretty great. We started a fuzzy system to reward good behavior and it has gone very well. Colin was excited because his church group is also collecting fuzzies and Jane, although she maybe a little young for it, has gotten very excited. Colin was funny this morning. He was cleaning up some toys for fuzzies and he later told me "I thought the clean up was just going to be annoying but it was not so bad!"

I was planning on keeping the fuzzies only for positive things, but Colin brought up that if they do bad things, they could lose fuzzies.

Today since their jars were filled, they got to go pick out a couple of things at the Dollar Store. Colin knows the Dollar Store does not have quality products but he still loves it, even when new $1 toys break the same day. After we got home from the Dollar Store, most of the afternoon was spent fighting over each other's toys. If there had been fuzzies in their jars, both kids would have lost some.

Colin chose this little lantern that he loves. He has already fixed it a couple times but thankfully, it does still light up, for now.

We are watching for the new tooth but nothing yet, and nothing else seems to be wiggly.

Jane chose a hula hoop and some necklaces. The hula hoop has already broken in one place, and has been banished to outside of the house. I wish I knew where my Mardi Gras necklaces were, the kids would LOVE them. I had a lot, and from the real Mardi Gras in a different lifetime.

Jane has 2 pairs of leg warmers and she wanted to wear both today. The pair under her trousers are hidden, but she also wanted a pair to be arm warmers. In Italy I would occasionally use the kids' leg warmers on my arms if I was cold, it was very nice.

A relatively normal smile from Colin. How strange.

And from a few days ago, Jane playing in one of the toy boxes. It was just kind of cute. To the left in the photo, our pink exercise mat is visible. Jane has been so funny because of course we are eating jelly beans these days and she likes to tell me what flavors the colors taste like. She says yellow tastes like lemonade, orange like an orange, and pink tastes like the pink exercise mat. She frequently does yoga with me and has a great downward facing dog. Maybe she does know what the mat tastes like.

For extra fun this week, the herniated disk in my back that has mostly left me alone for 18 months wanted to say "hello" a few days ago. I was laying down reading a story to my kids Monday night and I could barely get up. I was very concerned since Brian is gone and I knew most of the pharmaceutical remedies were not an option to me pregnant. Thankfully within a few days I was feeling nearly normal. My Midwife had me check in with a physical therapist to make sure I am doing everything possible to ensure this does not happen again. I really liked the therapist and I am doing all the right things (minus doing abdominal exercises on an exercise ball pregnant. I thought this was safe but she said it can encourage a separating of the abdominal muscles so no more). My Mom has been very great to pick up where I cannot (literally) but I hope things are really on the mend.

AND, when standing normally, my pregnant belly no longer lets me see my feet. It is getting serious.