highlights

it's been awhile, so here are some highlights from the last few days:

1) my mom, a.k.a. "uma", is here! we are loving the company and help.

2) we found a wading pool at the parc la fontaine. definitely a hit with a certain someone...


3) i made a friend! her name is julia, and she speaks russian as her first language, french as her second, and english as her third. despite this, we still had the majority of our conversation in english. slightly embarrassing, but whatever. she has a little boy named sasha who is a year younger than wes and has about the best hair ever. wish i had a pic, but i forgot my camera...promise they are not just figments of my imagination! anyways, we met at the park and hit it off the way moms tend to do...she tied wes' shoe for me when my hands were full with the gwads, and one thing led to another. picnic lunch, walking home together, etc. kind of like an awkward first play date times 10 with the language barrier. picture wes hitting sasha and apologizing in enlgish with sasha staring blankly back (since he only speaks russian and french and isn't even 2 yet, poor limited soul). needless to say, the boys and moms hit it off despite the communication difficulites, and wes keeps asking to play with him. cute.

4) mom babysat last night, so bob and i walked up to the montreal jazz festival, which is the largest in the world. jazz connoisseurs and large-crowd enjoyers we are not, but we still had a great time people-watching and pretending to be music critics. bob learned that an untucked shirt and a phone clipped to your belt is not a good look...in fact, is a phone on your belt ever a good look?


5) uma took wes on a tram tour of the pier. wes refused to get off said tram. what is it with boys and modes of transportation???

6) sunday morning wes slept until 9:30 and georgia until 8:30. i have no idea what posessed them both to sleep a good 4 hours longer than normal, but i will not question it. truly it was the Lord's day. needless to say, we are back to 5am around here now.

7) more fireworks! we love that we can see them from the condo.



8) an arts festival is happening around the corner from us in the gay district. we happened upon it on our way to the previously- blogged- about favorite french bakery (we did purchase a small painting). i am trying to resist getting my hair cut at the salon next to the bakery that advertises "lesbian haircuts." what???

dad, a.k.a. "bump" comes in tomorrow to get crazy in quebec!

In Honor of Jean-Baptiste...

Jean-Baptiste...the patron saint of French-Canada. I wonder if Texas has a patron saint? Oh well, didn't mean to get this post off to a slow start. To me, three day weekends are like s'mores... they're so good you wonder why you don't have them more often. I, for one, would like to re-vote on the whole 5- work -days to 2- days- off issue. I'm sure there were some hanging chads on more than a few ballots.
Well, we started our first day with wheels driving out to the children's museum. Anxious to beat the crowds, we arrived 5 minutes after opening and we had the whole museum to ourselves. Absent of the usual screaming voices one expects to find in a children's museum, the French version of the Lion King in the background began to sound like crickets chirping, and we were glad when some other visitors finally arrived. At least hakuna matata is still a wonderful phrase in French as well. Wes had a great time... very cool museum if you ever are passing through on your way to Greenland.
As we have alluded to in previous posts, our lives have been somewhat centered around Wes' entertainment. It's hard to believe that kids used to be amused by sticks and dirt. Wes has watched a little more TV here than he is used to at home, and I swear that our Blues Clues DVD runs at least ten minutes shorter per episode since we arrived in Canada. I think its due to the time change (or maybe Canadian taxes), but Amy doesn't believe me.

Sunday we visited Mont Royale, which, (legend has it) is where Mont-real gets its name. The park is really beautiful and the weather was good to us. Basically, Mont Royale is a small mountain/large hill composed of hiking trails, art sculptures, and a lake which is located in the center of town. No, we didn't make it to the summit.
Our new favorite dinner option is to pick up Vietnamese food in Chinatown, which is about a 10 minute walk from the condo. No offense to China, but we are big fans of the Vietnamese spring roll...

Georgia smiles in the end...

(ignore the creepy backgroud voice...)

Whining and dining?

georgia on my mind

happy 2 months to the littlest anderson (click ray charles for effect)! georgia is already falling into the roll of second child...successfully getting the shaft. poor georgia. so this post is in honor of her. check out how smiley she is now! wes has gotten into the habit of commenting, "georgia suprised?" i think you can see his point.


she is a trooper as we experience all things canadian. gwads is proving to fit right in, although she doesn't seem to enjoy sleep as much as her parents and brother do. our resident insomniac, we might say. i am considering creating a sound machine that plays noises from a cocktail party, as the only time she has slept well while we've been out was at the pittman's going-away party. she just likes to be part of the action, i suppose. she IS, however, sleeping well at night...7-5 last night, to be exact. loving that.

its been a bit like a circus act getting around downtown montreal. lots of stares at the massive double stroller. people wondering why in the world we're traveling with a 2-month old who looks quite a bit younger. thanks to the lady at the airport who informed me she was too young to travel...really appreciate the unsolicited opinion from a stranger. but whatever. we are used to it now and just PRAY everytime we go to a restaurant that all will go well. so far, so good.


not much else to say about georgia, i don't think. i could talk about how often she eats and how much she does (and really doesn't) poop, but then i would be living up to my greatest blog fear...trying valiently to make my humdrum stay-at-home mom life sound overwhelmingly interesting to the reader. so i will leave you waiting with bated breath, lying awake tonight wanting to know more.

happy jean-baptiste day to us, as bob is off on monday!

Montreal montage

Computer savvy we are not, but we did finally manage to upload some pics (albeit postage stamp sized).

Seventy-five...that was the temperature today as we walked to Parc Lafontaine. Highlights at the park included Wes wading in the lake, while the low point was the old man sunbathing in a G-string. We did take a picture of course (for the sake of the blog, but the pic didn't make the cut). Over the weekend we made it to the Montreal Biodome (Wasn't that the title of an 80's movie starring Pauley Shore?). Anyways, we ventured into three different climates including the arctic, a rain forest, and a north american forest. When the day was done Wes' favorite part was seeing the polar bears (despite the small fact that we didn't see any polar bears). Our Canadian workout included carrying a double stroller and two children down the stairs of the subway (see pic above and note the broken people mover). Apparently, Montreal prefers its public transportation to be located below the earth's crust.

We are renting a car this weekend which we will have for the rest of our time here. This should greatly increase the radius of our lives. As I write this post, I can see fireworks exploding over the St. Laurent River. They have a fireworks festival this time of year that lasts for two weeks. Things we are looking forward to include the Montreal jazz festival which starts in a week.

Thanks for all the comments, we love hearing from everyone. We are taking photo requests as well as long as the don't involve speedos!

an army marches on it's stomach...

...as my dad would say. come to think of it, i have no idea where that phrase comes from. but i figured it would be props to him on father's day (one day late). i will have to ask him about it when he and my mom come NEXT WEEK! we are just a little excited, to say the least.

so this post is dedicated to food, since the anderson army does indeed march on it's stomach.

the food situation started out a bit dire. the first place we discovered to shop was basically a 7-11...or a "depanneur." milk, oj, peanut butter, wine...you know, the necessities. we kept thinking that we felt like we were camping a bit. bring on the s'mores.

then we discovered a french bakery, and the situation improved drastically. who knew that a certain 2-year-old would chow down on brie and french bread?

the supermarket is around two miles round trip, so we only go there for the things unattainable elsewhere...i.e. diapers. which, by the way, are practically impossible to find in newborn sizes for our especially petite 8-week old. canadians must either have 15-pound babies or potty train really, really early.

we managed to orchestrate the perfect family dinner out last night... besides the fact that it was at 6pm, which, as many of you know, is not really bob's and my style. we're more 8pm people. but i digress. we walked into vieux-montreal (old montreal for you non-natives) and then sat outside overlooking the place jacques-cartier. the food was good (paninis and a very american grilled cheese, toddler style), and wes was entertained by clowns, flame-throwers, and music all along the road that is closed off, sort of covent garden-style. then we got ice cream and ate it as we walked home. beautiful, cool-ish weather after rain a lot of the day. happy kids, happy parents.

wish i had a video of bob ordering a pizza on our first night here. somehow communicating "supreme pizza" to a chinese man who spoke french as his second language (english as a distant third) was lost in translation. instead we got a cheese pizza with a big pepper in the middle.

tortellini with vodka sauce for dinner tonight, maybe we'll progress to lobster and baked alaska before we leave...

Canadian Health

As most of you know, the purpose for our coming to Montreal with one-and-a-half kids was to further my training in a procedure called EUS (endoscopic ultrasound). Yes, feel free to take a nap now or continue your internet surfing if that topic just made you yawn.

So far, my experience at L'hopital St Luc has been phenomenal and well worth the trip. As a result of the Canadian healthcare system (which is government-run), the EUS center at St Luc is the busiest in the world with two of the most highly trained endosonographers around. Between the hours of 8:30 to 3:30 with a one hour lunch break (yes, socialized medicine isn't all that bad), we are able to perform between 10-12 cases a day. To put this in perspective, the busiest centers in Texas do about 60-80 cases a month compared with 200+ at St Luc.

The waiting time to see a gastroenterologist for non-urgent problems is around a year. Screening colonoscopy is not really an option due to the lack of man- power. No private rooms here...you can count on having 2 roommates if you have to stay overnight. Also, the government decides where you can work. If a physician group is desperate to hire another MD, they have to first get government approval. As expected, this has more to do with politics than the needs of a hospital. Most of the time, a younger physician needs to wait for an older one to retire before being hired. In general, the medical care I've witnessed is good. Little is wasted and top-notch therapy is available to those who can afford to wait...and wait. But hey, its free right?

Ahhhh....this ends the medical talk. Gotta go, Canadian Idol is about to start and I can't wait to see who they'll vote off next. Heh..heh...Canadian Idol, that cracks me up.

Wes' thoughts

Well, I have to say that Canada rocks! Taxis, planes, and my first ride on the metro...pretty much the coolest thing EVER. Stay tuned for pics of that. Anyways, I have been a little cranky today because I woke up at 3:30 a.m. Mommy and daddy kept coming in and telling me that it was still nighttime and to go back to sleep, but I know they were just kidding because it was SO light outside! Anyways, for some reason daddy (whom mommy keeps calling "MacGuyver") has rigged a dark sheet on my window now. We'll see how long it takes me to figure out how to get that down.


Mommy has done lots of asking around about things to do with me. She's pretty bold and actually thinks she can communicate with the folks here by using a mixture of gestures and funny words. Anyways, she's found 2 parks for us to go to. One has a big sand pit! And mommy also found sand toys at a church garage sale here (she's so resourceful), so it is fun to go dig! I keep asking to go with my Dallas buddies, but mommy keeps saying we can't...we'll have to make new friends here in Canada. What she doesn't realize is that the prospective "friends" all talk really funny. My mommy has taught me how to say "Je m'appelle Wes" (my name is Wes), but again, I think that's one of her jokes. Crazy mommy. The other kids at the park all wear bibs. Mommy says it's to distinguish them as belonging to a specific school...I think it's because they're all babies. Anyways, whatever. Today we also saw some old men laying around the park across the street in their underwear (mommy calls them speedos) trying to get tan or something. Mommy doesn't think it's so funny for me to point and yell "naked man," however.


The best part of all about this whole Canada thing is that daddy is around a lot more! Now if I could just get him to go tan in his underwear, too....THAT would be funny.


A quick shout-out to my friend Alex in Georgia...he's a new big brother! Welcome to the club, buddy. Congratulations to Kristin and Paul on the birth of baby Blake!

half the fun is getting there

enrollment will begin shortly for our class "how to travel internationally with a newborn and toddler." sign up early to secure your spot.

totally flawless. well, almost.

we saw the looks. our co-travelers' pained expressions as they saw us board and then sit in their immediate vicinity. by the end we were hearing, "are they always this good?" why yes, of course.

ha. TOTAL FLUKE.

both kiddos were nighty-night by 30 minutes into the flight. bob and i, feeling confident, began watching a movie on the laptop. and then, an hour later, the power died. this was NOT part of the well-laid plan. especially since the aforementioned toddler was more excited to watch his first feature-length presentation ("Cars") than practically anything else about the trip. uh-oh,

but no worries! news of the broken movie was handled most deftly by the toddler upon his awakening! mommy, however, hardly had any other diversions on board, and with 2 1/2 hours left of the flight, this was not good news. you know when the hand sanitizer comes out to entertain an almost 3-year-old, you're in trouble. but he did great. no whining, just happy wes.

assisted by gingerale, m&ms, fruit snacks, and generally more sugar than allowable by law.

so we made it. four of us, 1 double stroller, 2 car seats, 2 suitcases, and 1 duffle bag. and our condo is 2 stories up. maybe this blog should be titled, "getting skinny in quebec" by the time we're done hauling all that around.

First thoughts...

Well, what can I say...we finally made it! Yes, the Anderson family is now in Canadian territory. We are all healthy and somewhat cozy in our new canadian condo. The condo is very nice in an Ikea sort of way. The sun rises at 4 am which makes the curtains made of Kleenex a very, very bad idea. We are staying in "vieux-Montreal" which is the old, more historic part of the city. Fully aware of my American egocentricity, I am still suprised by the distinctly French-Canadian culture found here. Amy and I have already had difficulty communicating with various people. Diaper shopping was especially challenging for Amy until her charades finally prompted another customer to shout, " Ahh! For sh**?" Responding with a resounding, "Oui!" she was promptly escorted to the diaper aisle. OK, well its time for bed, we only have a few more hours of darkness and I don't plan to waste them.

---Arrivederci