A few before we go

NEWS FLASH! Lucas took his first steps earlier today. I wouldn't exactly call it walking since he dropped almost immediately, but it's the first time he's actually taken a step rather than just look wistfully in a direction before reverting to hands and knees. His first time was 2 steps, which I missed, but after Marilu called me and I ran upstairs, I did see him take a single step. I doubt he'll be running marathons by the time we get back from the cruise, but it's good to know he's taken a step in the right direction (haha, I kill me with the puns).

Since we'll be heading out tomorrow morning, I wanted to post one last entry before I go. Like I said before, there will be entries that appear while we're gone--I've already done one for both July 1 and July 4--this will be last "real time" entry. Nothing terribly noteworthy, just some more random photos from early June.

I think I've mentioned it previously, but Lucas can now crawl up the stairs himself. Here's a photo and a video of the accomplishment from June 6.




Later on that day, I joined Lucas in the tub for his bath, hence the reason the water is up so high. Since no one really wants to see me in a tub, I've edited as much as me as possible out of the photo. :)


On June 7, the three of us, along with cousin Tanya, drove down to Syracuse to do some shopping, primarily for Lucas's birthday party the following weekend. Obviously, this didn't make for a lot of photo opportunities, but I still did sneak a couple in. For starters, how about these two from the Waterloo outlet mall?



The second photo makes him look a lot more scared of Buzz Lightyear than he actually was. Which, come to think of it, was not at all.

I took this last photo since he looked so content sleeping on the drive home. Can you all say, "Awwww"?


That's all for now. Keep an eye out for more entries over the next week and a half, and I'll talk to you again "live" when we get back on July 10. Later!

Vacation!

For those of you not in the loop, Marilu and I are headed off to a 9-day cruise to the Caribbean this week. We fly down to NYC tomorrow afternoon and leave on Tuesday. We're going to be on a Princess Cruise Lines ship, and our ports of call are San Juan, St Thomas, Tortola (which just changed this week from St Maarten), and Grand Turk. We'll get back to NYC next Thursday and will fly back to Ottawa the same day.

So what does this mean for the blog? Not a whole lot. One of its features is the ability to postdate entries so I'm going to create several of them today that will then appear at regular intervals over the next two weeks. Of particular interest should be the July 1 and 4 ones, in which Lucas will be dressed up appropriately for the day.

I'm also going to post another picture-filled entry today, but that will have to wait since Marilu just called me for lunch for the second time, and I'm not one to miss out on hamburgers. Ta-ta!

This and that

Just a smattering of random photos from early June. First, Lucas and his friend Tyler (son of our neighbors) stand at the window and watch the rain pour. It's been a VERY wet June as we've had rain at least 5 days out of each week, maybe even more than that.


Lucas takes the unconventional route of playing with his toys INSIDE their storage area.


Here he wonders why Thierry just won't leave his soother alone. (EDIT: Marilu pointed out to me that Lucas had grabbed Thierry's soother and the poor kid was just trying to get it back from my thieving son.)


And that'll do it for now. Check for more this weekend!

Creepy Crawlies

Yesterday morning, my mom and I brought Lucas to his weekly playgroup, and they had a guy from the local reptile farm do a presentation/show. It was a fun time, and the kids really seemed to enjoy it. Apparently it doesn't matter to Lucas if animals are cute and furry or slithering and scaly, he loves them all equally as you'll see in the pictures below.

The first animal shown was the last thing I'd ever want to see, a tarantula. For those of you who don't know, I HATE spiders. HATE them. I mean, really, really REALLY hate them. In fact, while I can kill them if I see them in the house, I'll be more than happy to let Marilu do it if she's nearby. That said, I figured we'd let Lucas touch the tarantula before he grew a few years, came to his senses, and realized how insane that is.


Next up is a video where he got to touch a lizard of some sort. I don't mind reptiles so he can play with those all he wants. Well, except poisonous ones or the types that eat you.





Sitting with Grammy and checking out a snake (I think it was a black racer.)


Yet another thing I wouldn't go near: a black Emperor scorpion. Oh, hell no.


Two-fisted petting of a caiman. Better get used to this type of reptile, Lucas, if you plan on visiting your Gramps in Florida very often.


This is probably my favorite picture from the show. Lucas is just plain enthralled with the tail of the reticulated python.


I also get a big kick out of this next video. Lucas had just finished touching the python and it slithered its way up the group of kids. All of a sudden, here comes Lucas, hauling ass across the floor after the giant snake. :)





And finally, this is what happens when someone takes the snake that could eat Lucas as an appetizer away from him. Don't worry, he got over it pretty quick.

Lucas and the calendar

The calendar we have on our first floor has pictures of animals on it. As you can imagine, whenever Lucas sees it, he wants to touch it.


Sometimes we're even so nice as to pull it off the wall and let him see it up close. Lucas enjoys these moments.





However, when you put him back on the ground and he attempts in vain to reach the calendar, well, as you can see, it's not a pretty thing. (I'd suggest clicking on the picture to see the bigger size since his face is priceless.)

May Photos

Just wanted to give everyone a head's up that all of the photos I've taken, from the day Lucas was born up until the end of May, are now online. So if you want to see the ones that didn't make the cut for the blog, check 'em out here.

Closing out May

It took a while, but we're finally at the end of the photos from May. Here are the highlights from the 31st, a day in which we took a surprising amount of pictures.

Lucas makes being cute look easy.


You've seen the smile below a few times previously in this blog. Lucas is doing it enough now that we've nicknamed it the "say cheese" smile since it originated with him doing it every time we went to take his picture. Nowadays, he does it randomly.


This one is a cross between his "say cheese" smile and his "give me the camera!" pout. If you ask me, he kind of looks like a Japanese cartoon character.


Kicking back and watching TV in his Elmo chair. Not that he actually stays in it for over 10 seconds, mind you.


We come to the video of the day, in which Lucas not only gets messy while eating at dinner, but he has the presence of mind to mug for the camera.





Finally, in case you forgot what his mom and dad look like, he's a self-shot of us.

Health Update

Since I didn't post yesterday, I realized I should probably give you an update on Lucas and his fever from Wednesday. He was up most of Wednesday night, though he seemed more restless than in pain. Nonetheless, we brought him in to see his doctor on Thursday morning. By the time we got there, he was acting normal and everything checked out at the doctor's office. No ear infections, normal temperature, etc. We kept an eye on him throughout the day, and he acted normally. Thankfully, he slept through last night without any issues so at this point, I'd say it looks like the fever is history.

For what it's worth, we probably could have gone without visiting the doctor, but it being his first fever and us being new to sick kids, we figured better safe than sorry.

Random photos

Unfortunately, Lucas appears to have his first fever. He's handling it pretty well, particularly throughout the afternoon and early evening, but he's having a little trouble sleeping. Marilu is currently in there giving him some water since she thinks he might be dehydrated from the fever. Keep your fingers crossed that it's a 24 hour thing and that he is feeling well again tomorrow.

And now, some random photos from the end of May.

Here we see Lucas preparing to climb, beg, plead, or whatever to get the magical camera in my hands. The kid is determined, I'll give him that.


Hanging out in his Elmo chair.


Thierry and Lucas playing at the Bayshore Mall.




Marilu and I both found the broccoli and potato (or chip or whatever it is) goatee here amusing.

Lucas - Year 1

As I mentioned earlier today, this post is devoted to taking a look at Lucas and how he's grown over the past year. Pictures truly do say a thousand words in this case so I'll keep my yammering to a minimum.

One note of interest. We bought our current camera just before Lucas was born so as I post these pictures, I'm going to post what number picture it was since the camera keeps track of that. It should be interesting to see how quickly that number increases

Day 1: June 16, 2007 (Picture #68)




One Month: July 16, 2007 (#653)


Two Months: August 16, 2007 (#1009)


Three Months: September 16, 2007 (#1424)


Four Months: October 16, 2007 (#1693)


Five Months: November 16, 2007 (#2089)


Six Months: December 16, 2007 (#2510)


Seven Months: January 16, 2008 (#2978)


Eight Months: February 16, 2008 (#3138)


Nine Months: March 16, 2008 (#3312)


Ten Months: April 16, 2008 (#3614)


Eleven Months: May 16, 2008 (#3898)


One Year Old: June 16, 2008 (#4444 and #4445)

Two for today's date, just because.

1 Year Old!

It's official. The little guy is 1 year old today. Well, technically he's 1 at 10:33 AM, about a half hour from this writing, but that's just semantics. So feel free to raise a toast of milk, coffee, or whatever it is you're drinking and send your best wishes his way. Tonight, I'm planning to post a retrospective in pictures of his first year so that should be a good way to see how far Lucas has come over these past 365 days.

Birthday Party Highlights

Since there are just WAY too many pictures from the party, I'm going to put up the highlights for now. Later, I'll probably post a few others, and I'll also be uploading all of them eventually to the photo album.

Lucas rips into his first birthday present early on in the party. It was an outdoor present (basketball set) so we decided to open it and let the bigger kids use it outside. There was an 80% chance of rain today, and it was overcast throughout the whole party, but the gods smiled upon Lucas today and held the rain back so we were able to do outside stuff. Good thing too since 30 some odd kids and adults don't fit all that well into the first floor of our townhouse.


Lucas's party was an Elmo-themed party. We drove down to Syracuse last weekend and bought over $100 worth of Elmo-related party decorations. In the picture below, Lucas's birthday cake is on the right, and his "smash cake" is on the left. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the smash cake is the cake given to the birthday boy (or girl). They can then proceed to destroy it as they see fit.


Speaking of cake destruction, here's a pictorial of that event. First, Lucas examines the victim as Marilu brings it before him.


This leads to a tentative desecration of Elmo's mouth.


And this is followed shortly thereafter by Lucas feeding on poor Elmo.


These next two pictures are priceless. Lucas flashes his "say cheese!" grin while annihilating the remains of Elmo.




I was going to show more, but that's taken longer than I expected. As such, enjoy for now, and I'll try to post more tomorrow. Ta-ta!

Wow

Yikes. I just uploaded the photos from Lucas's birthday party, and there were 162 of them. That's not even counting the 30-40 minutes from the video camera. Suffice to say, it may take me a while to get it all up. I will definitely put a few up tonight though, once he's gone to bed.

Experimental Farm

On May 24 (yeah, I'm WAY behind), we went to the Experimental Farm here in Ottawa. I'm not really sure about the origin of the name, but it's basically a farm that is open to the public with plenty of animals, exhibits, and other things to see. It's a really fun time for younger kids, from what I can tell. As you can imagine, I took LOTS of pictures. See below for some of the highlights.

The Deal Boys once again pose for a shot, this time in one of the barns at the Experimental Farm.


In this picture, Lucas can't decide whether to ogle the sheep or pose for the camera. Obviously, posing won out.


Outside, he actually got to pet one of the sheep. Suffice to say he was thrilled.


In the cow barn, Lucas and this cow take a liking to one another.



A few minutes later, Lucas laughs hysterically as a calf licks his feet. Have I mentioned he's very ticklish?



Gramps and Lucas posing some more at the museum section of the farm.



I decided to post this next video since I haven't got any other video of Lucas and my dad really interacting. To be honest, it doesn't look like there will be any interaction at first in this video, but then we finally distract my dad from reading one of the exhibits. Yeah, he's one of those dads who reads every last thing at museums. :)



In the same museum, Lucas got a chance to ride on a tractor simulator. As you can tell my his face, this was one of the highlights of the days for him.




Before we left, we spent a few minutes at the playground. Lucas seemed to enjoy this thing even if it was a tad bit too big for him. This was the second rocking type ride he tried, with the first being the rocking horse at the Museum of Civilization. We think we're going to buy him a rocking horse with some of the money he receives for his birthday since he hasn't had complaints about them so far.