Christmas 2009

Real quick update with some highlight pictures from this morning. Tonight or tomorrow, I'll try and put up a few of the videos I took. Suffice to say, Lucas had a good time this morning though believe it or not, he appeared to get tired of opening presents after a while. That sets a good precedent for next year: less presents! To be honest, it was a little overboard this year as he probably had at least 30 gifts between us, grandparents, and other family members.

This was one of the very few where he was actually looking at the camera. Unlike days of old, Lucas doesn't much care for the camera anymore. Getting a "cheese!" moment out of him is a rarity as he is more often likely to turn his back or put up his hand and say, "No daddy!" So I guess we need to appreciate this type of photo more and more.


One of his presents was a Batman dress-up set, and he threw a fit, refusing to open up any more gifts until we let him put the mask on. Hence, this picture.


He cooperated with us for this gift since it was probably his most-wanted present, a pair of Spiderman roller skates. Actually, he's wanted hockey skates ever since trying out my roller blades several months ago, but he doesn't really know the difference between those and some plastic roller skates that attach over one's shoe so everyone wins! For the record, that was his lame ass attempt at saying cheese. I guess we should be thankful he didn't scowl or throw something at the camera.


A pretty good full-shot of the Batman costume. On the right side of the photo, you can see the edge of another of his "big" presents, an easel from Uncle Bub (Jonathan) and Aunt Chantal. I'm sure we'll be seeing more photos of him using that in the days to come. No doubt in the process of completely destroying our carpet. :)


Testing out the skates. Note the matching Spiderman elbow and knee pads.


Batman wasn't enough for costumes. We also needed to get him a fireman outfit. He's like our own living doll sometimes.


For the rest of the pics from this morning (mostly opening gifts), check out our Christmas 2009 photo album.

Dancing Fool

My dad sent Lucas a Christmas card that play "Jingle Bell Rock" when you open it, and Lucas used the occasion to dance up a storm, as you will see in the video below. Our favorite part is when he shakes his butt toward the end, and it's all we can do not to laugh out loud (as you may be able to hear).



I also love his gesture at about 13 seconds in, when he's trying to figure out what the heck happened to the music.

Happy kid

Quick picture of Lucas in one of his early Christmas presents: Batman PJs from Uncle Steve.

Mishmash from September

Man, when looking at the dates on these photos I've yet to post, I realize just how far behind I am. On the other hand, we haven't been taking nearly as many photos of Lucas as we used to--for instance, there was a 12 day stretch without a picture in November--so I guess if I were to catch up, there may be nothing to look forward to. Or maybe it would encourage me to take more photos? Eh, who knows?

The great bed experiment is still being played out. He hasn't taken to it that well. I should clarify here: he does sleep in it no problem, it's just getting him to sleep. Since he is able to get out of it on his own, as soon as we put him in bed, he's usually up and pounding on the door, calling for "Mommy!" within 5 minutes. I think Marilu has slept next to him on his twin bed more often this past week than in our much more comfortable king size bed. I suppose I shouldn't point out that this means I get to stretch out as much as I want. Hopefully, this is just a phase and he'll take to it sooner rather than later.

Since the rest of photos I have from September are pretty random, I'll just post each with a quick comment.

Sept 15: The latest photo of Lucas and his cousin Megan. We were over at their place to see Marilu's cousin Michael before his upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. On a side note, he makes the best chili I've had in a long time.


Sept 16: Unfortunately, I couldn't get him to look at the camera--the easy "cheese!" days are long gone--but I still found it amusing that Lucas was running around with a "hat" he fashioned from his diapers. A clean one, lest you think we live in squalor.


Sept 19: I'm not sure why pictures of toddlers drinking "beer" amuses me so, but they do. In this case, I put some water in a Dos Equis bottle after I drank it and let Lucas pretend to be a drunken frat boy.


Sept 20: Here is the logical conclusion to that last photo, in video form. This was from the next night while watching a football game. Marilu's Brady jersey is a tad large on the little guy.





Sept 21: Taking a break from watching a video on the iPod Touch to drink from a more kid-appropriate device.


Sept 22: I know we just had a Baby-themed post a few back, but here's another cute one of Lucas and baby relaxing in the living room.


And that wraps up September. To prove my point from earlier in the post, the next photos aren't until Oct 7, so hopefully I'll get to those soon (rather than January). Until next time...

A New Era Begins

Tonight marks the biggest "first" Lucas has had in quite some time. Tonight he will be sleeping in his own bed for the first time. We bought the frame at IKEA this past weekend, but the mattress wasn't available so it took us a few days to finally decide where to get it (Costco being the big winner of that choice). Earlier, I broke down his crib, and then Marilu and I put the bed together. At this very moment, Marilu is reading Lucas his bedtime stories and then the fun shall begin.

I think the most interesting thing will be to see if he wants to sleep with us at 3 or 4 in the morning. He's been in a real clingy phase with Marilu lately, which has led to him being in our bed by the end of the night for the last week or two. The alternative is him wailing like a banshee, and let's face it, at 4 in the morning, I'd let Hitler lie in bed if it would shut him up. I'm sure you'll hear how it went in the next post.

For your viewing pleasure, a couple of pictures as well as a video of Lucas (and Marilu) testing out the new bed.

Waving goodnight...


"Cheese!" in stereo...


Checking out the new bed...

September in December

Due to the mini-vacation to Massachusetts and training for my new job this past week, I haven't posted anything since November 26. As you might imagine, my mom made me aware of this fact earlier today, but I was indeed planning to post something before the end of the weekend (which gives me a little less than 2 hours to submit this...nothing like procrastination, my friends).

As it happens, today was quite likely one of Lucas's Top 5 worsts during his short life. He was just plain awful today. It wasn't so much as one singular event as just one little thing after another all freakin' day. You know it's bad when even Marilu looks like she wants to knock him upside the head (don't worry though, no annoying toddlers were harmed in the making of this post). I think I summed it up well on Facebook earlier when I said that this was one of those days where we jokingly wished we had used birth control a few years back. All in all though, the good days definitely outnumber the bad, and we just have to remember that when knee deep in toddler attitude.

So enough of that, let's take a look at some pictures from way back when. The first 2 are from back on September 12, when we brought Lucas to his friend Genevieve's birthday party. One is a close-up, and one is him playing with other kids since you don't see that often on here. He does have lots of interaction; it's just that most of it is at daycare, and I can't really hang out there with a camera.



The next day, I took a couple of pictures of him jumping on the guest bed, wearing his Halloween costume from last year. I'm not sure if it is good or bad that he still sort of fits in it. I think it just says I bought him something a tad large for Halloween 2008.


The second picture is amusing since it looks like he's just beat from all that jumping.


And let's wrap up this post with a video from said jumping session.

Baby!

Since I'm heading out of town for the next few days--20th high school reunion in Massachusetts on Friday--I wanted to post a few more pictures before I depart. This post started off with the intention of posting random photos, and then I realized 4 of the 5 pictures I picked included Baby, Lucas's all-time favorite stuffed companion. He's not quite as dependent on Baby as he once was, but he still sleeps with him every night. Earlier this year though, god help us if we forgot to bring Baby to daycare with him. (Note to Dad: this is the stuffed animal you bought him that we've been telling you about for months!)

If I recall correctly, Lucas wouldn't sit at the dinner table until we made room for Baby.


I'm not exactly sure what prompted this face, but in a video from the same timeframe, I was trying to get Lucas to howl so it's possible this is one of the contortions his face goes through when he does try and howl at the moon.


In this one, I had injured my eye somehow (damned if I can remember) and was holding a wet cloth on it on the couch while Lucas, blissfully ignorant of my pain, made tissue blankets for Baby.


And finally, a couple of pictures from the living room floor, where Lucas made a place for him and Baby to rest.

Friendly Neighborhood Dark Knight

As you may know, one of Lucas's favorite things in the world right now are superheroes. He just can't get enough of Spiderman, Batman, Hulk, Iron Man, etc. He's got shows that he watches, sticker books, action figures, and so on. You let him play with something superhero-themed, and he's happy.

A couple of weekends ago, Marilu went to Syracuse for a girls' weekend with some of her soccer team friends. When she got back, Lucas was thrilled to discover that she had bought him some superhero outfits. As you'll see below, he took very little time putting on the Spiderman mask and the Batman pajamas. A couple of weeks later, we don't let him wear the mask that much since it makes his head sweat, but he wears the PJs almost anytime they are clean. Check out the pics...

An eventful morning

This was an interesting morning. Around 4:30, we brought Lucas into our bed since he was crying for Marilu, and that was the only easy way to get him back to sleep, which he did, almost immediately after coming in there. Marilu then left for work somewhere between 6:30 and 7:00, leaving Lucas in bed next to me. Here's where it gets fun.

Every other time Lucas has been in bed with me, once he is ready to get up, he starts poking me or making noise until I wake up. Very annoying, but effective. However, this morning, he either didn't bother to wake me, or I was sleeping so heavily, I didn't notice him. I'm not really sure. All I know is that I woke up quite a while later, faintly hearing Lucas calling "Daddy! Daddy!" over and over again from afar.

Since I had slept through everything earlier, I just kind of assumed Marilu had put him back in his crib. I crawled out of bed and noticed it was 8:15, over an hour after we usually get up on weekdays. So I rushed to his room, afraid he might have overfilled his diaper, only to find out he wasn't in there. I had a flash of panic and then remembered that as I was running to his room, I noticed the bathroom door was closed but the light was on.

I threw open the door, and I found him standing in the middle of the bathroom holding a bottle of children's Tylenol (with child safety cap still securely fastened) in one hand and the dispenser cup for it in the other hand. Luckily, he hadn't tried to go under the sink since it wasn't locked, though his potty was in front of it and that can be hard to move from his level. I guess he was yelling since he had closed the door and couldn't get it back open. Suffice to say I was a little unnerved by the whole thing, thinking of what could have gone wrong, but after determining everything was okay, my heart stopped racing.

The moral of the story is that a little more child-proofing may be necessary before we get him his own bed since god only knows what he will get up to on his own.

Working Again

For those of you keeping track of such things, I am now gainfully employed again. I decided to go with my dark horse, Coldwell Banker. It'll still be a week or two before I receive my license and can officially do anything, but at least I can start laying the groundwork at the office.

Asked for a comment, Lucas just screamed and threw paint at the camera.

Our Future Construction Worker

For those of you who don't know, the developers of our subdivision have been working on our block since we moved in 4 years ago. The last few lots across the street are finally wrapping up with the last one closing sometime this month. A couple of months ago, while they were still being constructed, I brought Lucas over to look at some of the equipment that they left on-site at night. He was well into his trucks and tractors phase so he couldn't have been happier that they had left the thing you see in the picture below (I call everything a tractor or backhoe, due to my complete ignorance of heavy machinery). I think his face tells the whole story.


In other news, it's been a boys weekend since Marilu went down to Syracuse with some of her soccer teammates on Friday, returning Sunday evening. On top of that, I had Lucas all day Friday as well since his daycare provider was diagnosed with H1N1. I suspect I might have him on Monday or Tuesday if she can't shake it this weekend.

All in all, it's been a pretty good weekend with him. He slept through the night last night, and unbelievably, he slept in until after 8 this morning. Normally, when Marilu is home, he is up around 6, so I think this is all the proof I need that he loves me more. :) The only negative of the weekend so far was that my absent-mindedness kicked in, and I completely forgot about his swimming lessons this afternoon. I made it up to him by letting him watch the old school Batman with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson (fast-forwarding through any scenes in which Batman didn't appear or there was excessive hitting of criminals, of course).

And now I'm off to bed since a whole day with the little guy tends to wipe me out. Sheesh, in bed before 11 on a weekend night. What's happening to me?

Playing catch up

Some recent news before posting some older photos. Lucas and Marilu got vaccinated for H1N1 yesterday since they both fall into higher-risk groups: Lucas due to his age and Marilu due to her asthma. Since I'm the very picture of healthy living (as rated by Colonel Sanders), I was not able to get it yet so kiss my ass goodbye if pig fever comes to our house. Or not since it's just the freakin' flu. Anyway...

Also, this morning, I brought Lucas to Toddler Talk for the first time, which is an 8-week program designed to help kids with speech problems. For those of you who haven't seen Lucas live, he has no problem talking, however he does have a problem talking clearly. After you get used to the way he pronounces things, which we can do being around him 24/7, it's not that hard to understand about 60% of what he is saying. For anyone else though, it's gotta be hard.

His first three goals in this program are to 1) learn to say words with the h-sound since he drops it all the time; 2) add "-ing" to verbs, and 3) add x number of new words to his vocabulary. The last one will be easy since he picks up words fairly quickly. Like I said before though, when he actually speaks them, it only sounds vaguely like the word in question. He is getting better, and hopefully this program will move him along even further.

Now that the news is out of the way, let's look at some pictures from eons ago, or in this case, early to mid-August. The first three are from our last night in Massachusetts (I told you we were going way back in the time machine). We had dinner with family friends Nancy and Bobby at their son's restaurant Eighty Ates. I like the first one since it looks like the two of us are singing a rousing drinking tune or something. Nothing of the sort was happening, but it does look that way, doesn't it?


The second one is the requisite pose with the grandparents. You're welcome, Mom!


And we wrap up that night with Lucas flirting with the waitress.


We then jump ahead a couple of weeks to Saturday, August 14. It was a busy day as Lucas and Marilu first went to Valleyview Farm in the morning to meet up with Gwen (aka Lucas's first kiss) and her family. Here's a cute photo of them on the train. Well, Gwen is cute; Lucas looks like he wants to give a beat down to the photographer.


Later on that day, we headed across town to Orleans for a BBQ with our friends Brigitte and Casey, as well as the rest of the Orleans gang. Unlike 2-3 years ago when kids were sparse, now they were running all over the place as nearly everyone has at least one rugrat.

Lucas does his traditional hamming it up for the camera out in the backyard.


Later, Wes reads what appears to be Barney to the entire brood.


Lucas rarely sees cats since hardly anyone we know has them--not to mention I loathe the vile creatures--so he got some playtime in with this one. I believe he tried to feed it a marshmallow or something.


Completing that busy weekend, on Sunday, we drove even further east of Ottawa to attend the wedding of our friends Francis and Sara. I already posted a video of Lucas dancing in his Spider-Man pajamas at the reception WAY back when it happened, but here are a few more photos from that day.

Waiting for the ceremony to start. For those of you who know the area, the wedding was at the Beantown Ranch. It was the second wedding we attended there, and other than the distance outside of town, it's a fantastic place for a wedding.


Posing with his mommy at the reception.


I decided to take a cue from Lucas for this picture.


And finally, Lucas dancing with Gwen and Sara's niece. I may have already included this in the original dancing post, but oh well, you can never have too much dancing Spider-Man.


Hope you enjoyed!

Real Estate Update

Just a quick bit of non-Lucas news: earlier, I received the score for the last exam in my real estate courses. I needed a 75, and I got a whopping 98 so I'm good to go on my new career. The next step is to sign on with a brokerage. Unlike most normal jobs, with real estate, I pretty much pick where I want to work, not the other way around. Nice, eh?

I expect to make a decision by the end of the coming week, and then it'll take another week or two before all the paperwork is finished. At that point, I can then start working and becoming a useful member of society once again. Three cheers for that.

Ok, enough about me, more Lucas pictures on the way this weekend. Have a good one!

Halloween 2009

This year was the first year Lucas could really participate in Halloween. I think he helped out a little giving out candy last year--I assume, since I was in London at the time--but he got to do it all this year: help carve a pumpkin, wear a costume, go trick or treating...the whole shebang.

A couple of days before Halloween, I bought a couple of pumpkins, and then Lucas and I cut one open, emptied its guts, and carved a face on it. He really seemed to enjoy the whole process though he was a little weirded out by the gooey inside at first as you can see on his face here.

Marilu took the following video in the middle of de-gutting the pumpkin. Lucas wasn't sure whether he wanted to do the official job, eat the pumpkin, or get into a food fight of sorts.

Lucas poses with the finished creation. What a proud kid.

On Halloween night, we went out with a few of the neighbors and their kids so we had quite the little gang going. That only lasted about halfway down the street since the older kid (age 4) moved a lot quicker from house to house while Lucas and some of the other took their time or got distracted as you'll see in some of the photos below.

One of the houses was decorated really well with, among other things, this skeleton laying against a tree. Instead of being scared or tentative, Lucas went over and plopped down in its lap for a few minutes. He must have thought it looked too skinny as he also offered it some of his chips.


A few houses later, he and his friend Reid decided that lying in the middle of the grass and taking a rest would be a good idea. I pretty much carried him home from there since he grew tired of carrying his bag around at that point.


When we got home, he sat out on the porch and watched people come to our place for trick or treating. Turns out he loves lollipops.


We didn't get too crazy for Halloween this year since I was pretty busy with my real estate exam (which I took on Halloween morning, for the record) and didn't have the time to decorate much. That said, we still tried to go for the Halloween look, which you can see here.


Finally, I took a picture of Lucas and Marilu, who is dressed up in my old Army uniform. There's no way in heck I'll fit in it anymore so might as well make some use of it.

Trying out the Tigger costume

This is easily the best video we've taken of Lucas in a while. It starts out cute, but keep watching since the latter half is arguably the funniest stuff he's ever done on video.

Movie Night, Part 1

For your viewing pleasure, the next two posts will contain an assortment of movies from the last couple of months.

This is the first of three from our trip to Massachusetts earlier this summer. In this one, Lucas tries his hand at vacuuming. Now all I have to do is teach him snow shoveling and taking out the trash, and it's easy living for me here on out.



In Massachusetts video #2, Lucas tries his own unique method of feeding bread to the fish. No animals were harmed in the making of this video. A little uncomfortable maybe, but eh, they're fish. We put 'em back in the water.



To close out the Massachusetts trilogy, we return to the boat on the lake previously seen here.

Coming soon

I'm currently uploading a bunch of videos, which is a fairly time-consuming process. If they finish tonight, I'll post at least some of them. Otherwise, be on the lookout for them tomorrow.

Massachusetts: Almost Done!

Let's see, we didn't end up going away for the weekend, AND I didn't get around to updating until just now. Um, Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving, everyone! (hopefully that will make you forget my negligence)

While in Massachusetts, Lucas was playing around with some clothespins, and it gave me an idea. The end result follows...

This isn't Lucas related, but Marilu and I got a chance to leave Lucas with his grandparents, and then we spent a night at the MGM Grand Hotel at Foxwoods Casino. We took the following picture right after we ate dinner at this FANTASTIC Chinese restaurant. I ate way too much, but by now, my stomach is used to being distended.

Here's a view from our room the following morning. The ones I took at night weren't that impressive even though the "live" view was really something.

Going back to the lake theme from the last Massachusetts entry, one evening we took a ride around the lake on one of those patio boats (or pontoon boats or whatever the heck they are called). The weather was perfect that evening, and we all had a really good time just cruising around dusk.




With my mom by his side, Lucas attempts the grizzled sailor look.


The wind had its way with Marilu's hair.


We're doomed.


I love how this next picture came out.


Finally, a rare nature shot since it really was a beautiful view from the boat.


That's just about it for the Massachusetts trip. Tomorrow, I'll have a couple more pics from our dinner at Eighty Ates, and if I have the time (since I'm spending a LOT of time studying for the real estate course), I'll try and get a couple of the Massachusetts videos uploaded to YouTube.