More May Mishmash

A few more random photos from mid-May. This first one was taken on May 13, the same day as Lucas's first video on the swing. I just think it's a cute picture of him sitting out on the front porch of our townhouse. Try to ignore my wretched lawn; I have more of a black thumb than a green one.


The next day, Marilu moved some stuff around in our cabinets. While one of the doors was open, Lucas decided to move in.


The face of innocence. "If you didn't want me to pull all your towels out, you wouldn't have put them in the bottom drawer, right?"

Francesca's 3rd Birthday Party

Highlights from the 1st of 3 birthday parties we went to this month, taken on May 10th. This party was for Francesca, the older daughter of Marilu's good friend, Heidi.

I think it's probably going to be a few more years before you get that right, buddy. Of course, I'm 37 and still can't hula-hoop, so don't feel bad.


A dad, a boy, and his beer.


Lucas panhandles for food from Marilu and Christine, eventually scoring a used corn on the cob.



A shot of the birthday girl and her cake. The cake was pretty clever. She's a big fan of Curious George, and the cake is a yellow hat. For those of you who live under a rock, one of the supporting characters in the series of books is George's "owner," the Man in the Yellow Hat. There's also a Curious George doll on the front side of the cake.


The next video up is Lucas on a slide. Come to think of it, this is the first and (so far) only video we have of him sliding. I'll have to get a better one since this is a little too close to the action.



Successfully traversing the treacherous slide, our intrepid adventurer poses in all his glory at the base of the summit.


Sticking with that theme, our hero rides off into the sunset on his valiant steed, Blue Rocking Horse!


And finally, he retires to the lodge for a fine afternoon of coloring. Huzzah!


Later on, at home, Lucas has his first hamburger and first ketchup. Mind you, it's all bite-size pieces, but you get the idea.

Comments?

Just a quick note for anyone leaving comments. Due to a fairly high amount of spam comments (yes, I'm VERY interested in the Philippine lottery), I've enabled word verification when leaving a comment. All it means is that you'll have to enter a word that is showing up in a little graphic next to the text box. That way it verifies to the system that a real person is entering the comment, not some program. Let me know if you have any problems with it!

Mishmash from May

Another series of random photos, this time from early May.

May 4

If there's one thing that Lucas likes to do, it's tear things apart. And what could be better than tearing apart this laundry basket full of clothes?


I'll tell ya what's better. Riding in that same basket...and in only a diaper!


Presumably, we are to be impressed by his pancake eating skills.


Lucas hangs out in this amusing (but cute) outfit while we (mostly his mom) figured out how to install his new car seat.


Testing out the new seat. Hope you like it, Lucas, since you'll be in it for quite a while.


May 8

This one's for Lucas's godfather, who bought him the rocket car below. He still can't stand and ride on it all that well, but it and the other cars make for pretty good makeshift walkers as you can see here.


Coming up in the next few posts...birthday parties galore, a return trip to the Tulip Festival, and our first visit to the Museum of Civilization.

Breaking news

For the first time ever, we have Lucas standing on video. He holds the pose for several seconds while playing with the magnets on the fridge. I know we'll look back on this in a month or two and be amused that it's such a big deal, but for now, enjoy.



By the way, I have a crapload of pictures from the past week and a half that I need to start uploading. Between those and the ones from earlier in May, there should be a deluge of photos over the next week or so.

For your amusement

First, a video from this past weekend. We were lounging around the living room and Lucas was a bit wound up. He was scampering all over the place so I turned the video on him and we tried to get him to show us his dance moves. We were only partially successful, but most of this video is pretty funny nonetheless. If you watch around the 29 second mark, he has a little lunge move that he's been doing a LOT lately. The head shaking is a riot too.



As for pictures, all hail, Captain Butterhead!

Playing catch up...again

Since I completely forgot to upload some of the April pictures that fell between the cracks, I'm going to spend the next entry or two playing catch up.

From April 7, the couch potato and little hash brown watch TV together.


Hmm, that appears to be it. I went through the rest of the April photos and all of the highlights have been posted. On a related note, while doing that, I also uploaded the rest of the April photos to the online albums. Besides general photos, these include shots from the tail end of the Labrador City trip, our California trip, and Jonathan and Chantal's visit to Ottawa. You can either click on the link somewhere to the right or, because I'm so generous, simply click here.

Running

For the second straight week, we went to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa, this time with my dad. However, last week we went to Major something or another park down by the Market, whereas this week we went to another location for it, Dow's Lake. I'll post pictures of it eventually, but for now, check out the video of my dad pushing Lucas in the stroller. Suffice to say Lucas enjoys speed.

Anatomy of a meltdown

Before I forget, Marilu wanted me to announce that Lucas finally has his first teeth. Well, at least one tooth though she thinks another is coming in from the top. I hadn't mentioned it since she noticed it a few days ago since all you can do is feel it (when you are able to convince him to let you run your finger along his gum). So it's not really visible yet, were he to give you a grin, but it's basically there.

I look upon the occasion with both happiness and surprisingly, a little sadness. Happy since it's always good to see another milestone reached, but on the other hand, there was something so cute about those huge gum-filled smiles that Lucas was more than happy to give. It just makes me a little sad knowing that soon I'll never see them again. As much as I like seeing the little guy grow up, there's a part of me that wants to lock up this stage of his life and just keep it forever. Yeah, I'm sure he'll do other things that are cute and make him adorable as all get-out in the future, but this aspect of his life will forever be just a memory.

Guess I'll just have to get Marilu pregnant again so we can see it with his sister Raya. :)

Anyway, on to the topic of this post. Earlier tonight, I let Lucas play around with the digital camera for the first time. He was entranced by it for several minutes, looking at it from all side, and particularly interested when I turned it on and he could see pictures on the screen. As with all good things, this had to end when he started trying to chew on the camera. I took the camera away from him and this sent him into an instant meltdown. A pictorial journey of said meltdown, in both videos and photos, follows.














I tell ya, what a horrible life that kid leads, not being allowed to indiscriminately chew on digital cameras, huh?

Growing boy

As promised, pictures from Lucas's 11 month old day!

Reading Curious George.


Trying out some Canadian beer after dinner.


And finally, a couple of poses before bedtime.



I'll be getting back to this in a future post, but today we went to the 1 year birthday party for Brody, another of Lucas's friends. We took lots of pictures, but the one in particular I wanted to post right now was Lucas, Marilu, and Gramps (ie, my dad). Gramps is in town all week, and my brother wanted to see a picture of Lucas with him so here you go. Enjoy, Jared!

Getting old!

Just a quick entry to point out that Lucas is eleven months old today (Friday). At times, it seems like just yesterday since he was born, and at others, it feels like he started crawling months and months ago (it was only about 2). We took some pictures of the big guy today that I'll post as soon as I upload them tomorrow. Have a great weekend!

At the playground

Here's the video associated with Lucas's swinging at the playground a couple of posts back. Now you can see AND hear the fun he's having.

Video success!

I tested out the video editor earlier and it converted a 106 MB AVI video to a 9 MB WMV video. The quality difference is nearly imperceptible, especially for the types of video I'm taking so hopefully this will resolve any video issues in the future. It also means I can take longer videos so that's cool.

Below is the video I converted. I referenced it the other day as being a good video since it had Lucas both moving around a bit and "talking." I've noticed in YouTube there are some small black bars on the left and right side of the video, but I think that's because the aspect ratio of the video changed slightly during the conversion. Other than that, it's as good as the original and only a tenth of the size. Enjoy!



EDIT: After posting this, I realized embedded videos get trimmed a bit automatically so the black bars I referenced shouldn't be an issue at all on this blog.

Swing Time

On Jon's advice, I went out and bought a program that will allow me to edit and hopefully convert videos so that they will be easier to upload online, whether it is to YouTube or Blogger itself. I'll probably spend more time on that tomorrow and see what I can figure out.

I keep meaning to catch up on some of the older photos we have of Lucas (ie, last 3-4 weeks, not months ago), but we keep getting REALLY good current ones. For instance, take a look at this shot from yesterday during his second trip to the playground. Is that kid having fun or what?

Pots and pans

One last post for the day! That makes 3, some kinda record lately, huh?

Earlier tonight, Marilu decided to let Lucas into the pots and pans. As expected, he made a racket with them. How much of one? See for yourself below.

One other thing

Almost forgot to mention this...today, we took Lucas to the playground in our housing area, and he went on the swing for the first time. He's been on the Tiny Tikes playset swings before, but this was his first "real" swing ride. Obviously, he was on the infant swings that they sit in and are prevented from falling forward or backward, but a first is a first! He was a little tentative in the beginning, and it was hard to tell if he wanted to laugh or cry, but by the end, he was having a good laugh, especially when Marilu would pretend he kicked her in the head. Little savage. :)

Tulip Festival 2008

First off, Happy Mother's Day to all of you to which that applies. Hope you had a great day and was spoiled by your kids, significant other, etc. I think I did pretty well with Marilu. I was up at quarter after 6 this morning to watch Lucas after he woke up (note that I usually don't get up until after 8 even on weekdays), made her both breakfast and dinner, and bought her a bunch of nifty gifts, including this.

This was the second weekend of the annual Tulip Festival here in Ottawa so we decided to drive down and have a walk through it. As the name implies, it's pretty much just a bunch of people looking a tulips and assorted activities so not much to say. However, here's a couple of pictures taken while we were there.

This is taken from a small hill overlooking a section of the festival just to give you an idea of what the tulips looked like from a distance. For the record, this is just a small percentage of the tulips that are actually there.


A friendly passer-by was nice enough to offer to take the following picture of us. If I knew it would come out so well, I'd have more random people taking pictures of us.


Here, Lucas poses in front of just a few of the hundreds of tulip "statues" that can be found around the festival.


So that's it from the Tulip Festival this year. I'm way behind on pictures so I should have no lack of photos in the next week or two. Speaking of which, my dad is visiting for just over a week this coming Friday so I'm sure that will cause an influx of "Lucas and his Gramps" photos as well.

Also, Jon gave me a head's up about how to shrink the size of videos for uploading. If I can find that software (or something similar) and figure it out, there will be a veritable avalanche of videos, because there are a lot of videos I've wanted to post over the last (almost) 11 months, but long download times have prevented me thus far. If this software works, watch out.

Have a good night!

Crazy kids

Since most of the pictures I've posted lately have been weeks old, today I figured I'd post the very latest picture of Lucas, taken earlier today while on a playdate with his friend Thierry and some other young'uns. This picture is a riot.



Hopefully, we'll get some more pictures this weekend since the official photographer (*cough*Marilu*cough*) has been remiss in her duties, taking photos on only 3 of the 11 days since April 27. There's a REALLY good video in there as well, but unfortunately, it's just a smidge over 100 MB so I don't think I can upload it to YouTube or Blogger. There's got to be a way to convert them since I've seen 10 minute long videos on YouTube, but I'll be damned if I know how just yet.

Ahoy, matey!

Lucas's latest milestone: he's now learned to point, and he's doing it with a vengeance. Anything that interests him in any way in the house (or outside of it) gets pointed at. It's really cute, and I usually assist him in getting to whatever has piqued his curiosity, much to his delight. I've been trying to get pointing on video but have thus far been unsuccessful. I SHALL persevere though and return with video goodies post haste.

In recent weeks, the weather has finally gotten warm again. Trust me when I say I won't be missing the 14 feet of snow we received this past winter. Now that we're able to get out and about, I brought Lucas out back and put him on our back lawn. He gets a kick out of the grass since the texture must be much different than what he is used to. The only downside is having to keep a constant eye on him since he's liable to put half the back yard in his mouth. Here's a picture of the little guy sitting back there. Try to ignore our lawn; it's just plain wretched.


And here's a better picture of him in his little sailor outfit, capped off with the Gilligan hat. Awwwww!


Unfortunately, that's all the pictures I have for now since I haven't downloaded any from the camera since April 27. I'll be sure to download all the latest tonight and have those available for tomorrow.

Family photos

This past weekend, I finally cooked Marilu a dinner from a bet I lost (something to do with our fantasy football teams) from last September. Eh, so it took me a while. Anyway, it was kind of an original creation: Mexican shepherd's pie. I know there's about a million variations of shepherd's pie out there, but this one had the normal potato topping and corn in the middle, and the bottom was ground beef that had been flavored with taco seasoning, garlic, and onions. Oh, and there was liberal amounts of cheese in there as well. Not the healthiest meal but damned tasty. What does this have to do with Lucas, you ask? Um, nothing, but I wanted to mention that meal since I was pretty proud of how it turned out.

For our first picture of the day, we see Jonathan and Chantal with Lucas, somewhere out behind the Parliament Building. I'll probably get smacked for this, but squint your eyes real hard, and you can almost see them with their own kid in the same pose in a couple of years, huh? No pressure, kids!


Apparently, Lucas is having a grand old time at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Ottawa.


On the day they left, we took some last-minute photos of the trio. This one would have been perfect if a certain little man looked at the camera.


Luckily, he posed well for this next shot, giving them a good going-away present.

Back from California

I know, I know, it's been a couple of days since I posted, I apologize. But ask yourself, of all the other people you know with kids, how many of THEM post pictures as frequently as I do, if at all? Not only that, you get the pictures with a heaping dose (pile?) of my trademark sense of wit. How many people can offer that, I ask you?

I rest my case.

Before I move on to the pictures, I just wanted to update everyone on Lucas's current health since I realized last night I never commented on it. Everything is back to normal: no more diarrhea, there haven't been any further vomiting episodes, and his butt is sore-free. So it looks like he just had a stomach bug or something.

When we returned from California (April 21), we immediately played host to Marilu's brother Jonathan and his girlfriend Chantal, who were in town to see Lucas, shop, and do all the other fun things that Ottawa offers (give me a few minutes and I'll try to think of some of those things). One of the things that makes Lucas giggle with delight is riding on people's heads, and Jonathan gave him an opportunity right off the bat.


Over the past couple of months, Lucas has amassed a sort of kiddie garage, with a full selection of cars. Here we see him posing in front of his fleet. From left to right, he's got his big red car from Marilu's parents, the green dune buggy in the middle is from one of Marilu's co-workers, and finally, the rocketship on the right is from his godfather. The kid can definitely travel in style, no matter what the occasion.


Everyone knows babies can be messy when eating, but Lucas went through a phase during the week Jonathan and Chantal were here where he just did not want to eat what we were giving him. He would throw the food, spit it out, or grab it and do god knows what with it. As a result, he had some very messy meals. Observe.


Only a baby can regularly end up with their dinner in their hair.

Next up, I wanted to get a picture of Lucas in a t-shirt I bought him during my Washington DC trip from a couple of months back. He was real squirmy, and it took many, many shots to get one of him in the right position so this is about as good as I could get of the next guitar hero.


Here, the second coming of Eddy Van Halen tears up his motel room (aka his portable play area/crib) in a drunken rage (aka post-formula blues).


In the next post, I'll wrap up the week of Jonathan and Chantal's visit.