Update

Greetings, all! I just wanted to send out a quick update to let you know that despite what I said in my last entry, there will be no picture updates until we get back to Ottawa. Although Marilu's parents do have internet access, they don't have a wireless router so I can't easily get my laptop connected to upload pictures. That said, we are taking plenty of pictures so once we return (Jan 2), I will do my best to get all of them online as soon as possible.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas, and here's wishing you a happy New Year!

Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas, for those of you reading this in the hour we have left before the 26th. For the rest of you, hope you had a great Christmas. I'm going to make this quick since I took some night time cold medicine not too long ago and may be slipping toward unconsciousness soon.

The day Lucas has been waiting in excited anticipation for finally arrived, and he was raring to go as soon as he woke up at 7 something this morning. Considering the number of adult beverages I enjoyed at last night's Christmas Eve party, I would preferred a later wake-up call, but such is the price of being a parent.

It was a Herculean task getting him to pose as he opened up presents since he wanted to keep the unwrapping going strong, but I did manage a few good ones, as evidenced below.






We saved the best for last: the coveted Batman Cave. He has been wanting this for months, and as Christmas approached, it was a perfect tool for blackmail. "If you don't do , Santa will know and might not bring you the Batman Cave!" Ah, blackmail, a necessary tool of parenting. Here he is with his prize.


Playing with the Cave. Surprisingly, he played with just about every gift he got today. However, this took up the vast majority of his time, with the bucket of Play-Doh being a distant second.


Christmas dinner with Marilu and Lucas. If you look closely, you can see a scratch on Marilu's face where Lucas "accidentally" scratched her last night.


This is what I get nowadays when I ask for a cheese. In its own way, it's more amusing than the cheeseface.


We finish up with the bathtub. One of his new gifts was a Spiderman shaving kit with a plastic razor and real shaving cream. As you can see here, he doesn't totally understand the concept (unless he is metrosexual), but he sure had fun with it.


Just a reminder that we will be flying to St John's, Newfoundland, tomorrow morning. I'll be taking my laptop so I should be able to continue updating. We'll be there for a week, getting back next Sunday. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday week. Take care!

Oktoberfest

October started off well. We went to an Oktoberfest celebration, hosted by Beau's Brewery, about an hour east of Ottawa. I haven't been to any form of Oktoberfest since my first year in Atlanta (1998) so this was a welcome outing. There was a large selection of beers (for a fest), and I ended up passed out in the car on the drive home, so I would call the day a success!

Showing off the spiffy hats that came with the admission fee.


Lucas posing with Gracie, the daughter of the people we went with. Well, I'm not so sure it was posing as yelling at the camera, but six of one, half dozen of another...


Playing around in the children's area.


You can't really see it well (other than the stem), but I think he was trying to show off the painted pumpkin he made in the children's area.

Temptation

We put up our Christmas tree a couple of weeks ago, but we've been hesitant to put any presents under the tree since we weren't sure how Lucas was going to react. About a week ago, we received a wrapped present in the mail (from cousin Elise), and Marilu and I decided to put it under the tree after he went to bed that night to see what he would do the next day.

As with most weekday mornings, I'm the one that gets up with Lucas since Marilu is usually off to work at some unearthly hour. The two of us came downstairs, and I believe it took him a grand total of about 10 seconds to notice the new present. He immediately rushed over to it and asked questions ranging from "where did this come from?" to "can I open it?" The latter outnumbered the former about 20 to 1.

I found the whole thing really amusing since the temptation of Lucas to just tear the wrapping paper off in a frenzy, despite my warnings not to, was thick in the air. In the end, he did manage to control himself, but I got these pictures of him to record the proceedings.

From Let's Make a Deal!

Pride of Ownership

Last night, Lucas came into bed with us since he wasn't feeling well. He lay down, and we were about a foot apart, face-to-face. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing somewhat heavily. I lay there looking at him for several minutes when suddenly, he opened his eyes. He saw me watching him and immediately a huge smile appeared on his face. A couple of moments passed and then he leaned forward and gave me a kiss.

At that moment, all the trials and tribulations of being a parent flew out the window. At that moment, I was just so happy to be his dad.

The Hair: Before and After

If you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention to Lucas's more recent pictures, you've probably noticed that his hair was getting, well, big. Depending on how you view curly hair, genetics has either cursed or blessed him with my hair type. I try to keep mine on the short side since once it grows out a bit, it gets crazy. The same goes for Lucas.

We already realized it, but it wasn't until I took this picture of him as he woke up one morning last week that it really kicked in that he needed a haircut.


As a result, we finally made an appointment for a haircut, which lucky us, was yesterday morning in the freezing rain and hail. Marilu was kind enough to take a "before" picture (notwithstanding the stellar photo above).


And I took one of him as we had a post-haircut KFC lunch. Still a little wacky but under much more control.


Now we're good for another 6 months. :)

September Summarized

Whew, it's been a busy week. I spent the last few days working on an offer on a townhouse for some clients, but that fell through last night so we'll be back looking on Friday afternoon. I've also managed to get sick yet again as I've been dealing with a sore throat and stuffed-up head since yesterday morning. Ah, the joys of winter. Speaking of winter, or rather a time that WASN'T winter, let's see what was going on in Lucas's life back in September.

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but Lucas's hair is long. Really long. I don't think we've had it cut since March or April. It doesn't seem quite as long as a kid with straight hair, but the curls are getting more bouncy by the day. We really do need to get him a haircut soon, but I'd be lying if I didn't say the long, curly hair is cute. What does all of this have to do with September? Glad you asked! Although his hair wasn't as long as it is now, it was still getting pretty bouffant-ish, and I decided to comb his hair straight back and see what kind of volume I could get with it. The results follow:



Who knows what transpires in the minds of children? One evening, Lucas got it in his head that he wanted to make a trail of towels through the first floor. I'm not sure what the point of it was, but he seemed to enjoy it.


This was about a month and a half early, but Lucas tested out his Halloween costume. On Halloween night, he decided to go with a different mask since this one kept getting sucked into his mouth as he breathed.


If I recall correctly, I had him alone that night as Marilu had something or another she had to attend. As part of his bedtime bargaining (a.k.a. how can I stay up as late as possible), he asked if he could sleep in the hallway upstairs. I was skeptical about how well this would work, but not an hour later, voila!


Here are a few pictures from his friend Genevieve's birthday party. I wasn't able to make it so this will have to be one of those times where a picture will be worth a thousand words. All I know is that he wouldn't go on the pony ride, which is odd since he rode on a full-grown horse in Massachusetts this summer.




Finally, here are a couple of crappy photos (brought to you by the Apple iPhone) from our day at the Carp Fair as well as dinner at the fantastic Cheshire Cat.



And that's it for September, probably our most photo-phobic month since Lucas was born. Things have picked back up since then so expect lots of great photos in the weeks ahead. Night all!

Closing out August

A week after the trip to Massachusetts, we were off again. This time, a weekend trip to Niagara Falls and then the Toronto Zoo. We didn't really do much at the Falls since we were basically just there since it was conveniently located near our friends Wes and Kelly, who we were visiting the next day. As such, this is the only photo I took of the Falls themselves.

That's right. A crappy iPhone shot taken at night from about 6,000 miles away. You wouldn't even know what it was if I didn't tell you. Ah, the memories.


Here, Lucas and I pose in our hotel room. We stayed at the Hilton, which was pretty cool since the pool had a full-sized water slide. Though like everything else in Niagara, anything you bought there was ridiculously overpriced. Lunch for the 3 of us at a freakin' Macaroni Grill cost us nearly $80. What the hell?


I wish I could show you the pictures of Lucas checking himself out in the hotel room mirror when he was naked since they were funny as hell, but it's probably not wise to post that in a public location.

The next day, we went to see Wes and Kelly, who live in nearby Hamilton. Lucas had a good time playing with their sons, Brody and Carson.



On our last day, we went to the Toronto Zoo. It's a very nice zoo, but it's so humongous. This was our second time there, and both times, I felt physically exhausted by the end of the day.

Trying to catch the elephant in the background without cutting Marilu and Lucas out of the photo entirely.


Let's hear it for rhinos!


Cute picture of Lucas.


I'm not sure why, but I really like how this picture came out.


On the drive home, Lucas got a hold of the hotel parking pass and put it on the inside of his soother, thus leading to the situation below. I thought it was neat that he came up with that on his own.


And that ends August. Since there are only about 10 pictures from all of September, we should be at October in no time. And you were worried we were falling behind. Ha!

Onward to August

Ok, I really need to get my butt in gear here. I've finally caught up to August, but it's now December. You do the math. Granted, I've already posted the majority of the August photos after our trip to Massachusetts, and then we barely took any in September, but it's the principle of the whole thing. So I'm going to do my best to update at least 3 times a week from now until Christmas. Feel free to call me on this if I am failing in my endeavor (I say this knowing full well that my mom will).

No better place to start than on August 1. Between the Newfoundland and Massachusetts trips, we took time off one weekend to spend a couple days at our friends' cottage on a river northwest of Ottawa. It was a nice, very relaxing time, made all the better by the fact that they had an 11 or 12 year old daughter who helped watch the kids.





After we got back from Massachusetts, I gave Marilu a break from the little guy and brought him to the local sci/tech museum. Not the world's greatest museum (or even Ottawa's), but it kept him entertained for a couple of hours, which is all that really matters. Unfortunately, I don't have any quality pictures from that trip since I was using my iPhone, and unless you have more light than 100 blazing suns in a room, it tends to take crappy shots. However, you do get this decent one from home right before we left. :)


A few days later, Lucas played dress-up with his Batman costume. The picture is kind of blurry, but I had to post it so I could then have context for the next one, featuring his arch-nemesis, Batmom.



After a long day of battling the evil villains, a superhero doesn't care how he sleeps on the bed.


This seems as good a place to wrap the post up for today. Hopefully, I'll get another one up tomorrow since Saturday is going to be busy: a kids Christmas party in the morning, showing houses in the afternoon, and housewarming party at night for my first buyer clients.

Christmas in November

For those of you who were expecting this post last night, sorry about that. The last video got hung up while uploading (430 minutes? I think not) so I waited until this morning to re-upload it.

Anyway, let me give you a little background here. Like most boys (and probably some girls), Lucas loves the movie Cars. He's got a few of the vehicles from the movie, but one he has wanted for a while is Chick Hicks, the "bad guy." I have been looking for Chick in every store I can think of for a couple of months now to no avail. Toys R Us, 4 or 5 Walmarts, Zellers, Canadian Superstore, you name it, I've tried to find it. I've found just about every other character that was in the movie, to include ones that had one line or were freakin' background extras, but no Chick.

Luckily, my mom came to the rescue. She was able to find one in Massachusetts, and we received it yesterday. For a fleeting moment (very, very fleeting), I thought about waiting until Christmas since Lucas has asked for it for Christmas, alongside his holy grail, a Batman Cave (which we already have stored away), but then I thought better of it. Since it's just me and him for the next few days--Marilu is down in Syracuse, braving the Black Friday sales--I thought it would be a good way to keep him happy.

Because I knew it would be a good surprise, I had the camera ready for some pictures and videos. He didn't know immediately that Chick was the present since my mom boxed it with a knight and dragon that she bought him as well. Enough talking, a picture and a video are worth a thousand and a million words, respectively.











In addition to all that fun, Lucas got to watch a personalized video message from Santa. It's from a very cool site that I found last year, www.portablenorthpole.tv. If you're reading this and you have kids who are still into Santa, you have to check it out. The cutest thing about this video is Lucas responding when Santa asked him questions. He really seemed to like it. It's things like this that make being a parent fun, despite the less than splendid times.



If you want to see the Santa video, click here.

Finishing July

Tonight's post falls under the "catching up" category. Most of July was comprised of Lucas and Marilu's trip to Newfoundland. However, they were back in Ottawa for the last week of the month. Below you'll find the highlights.

Lucas and his buddy Logan hang out with a donkey (or is it a mule?) at the Canadian Agricultural Museum.


Taking a break on a hike through the woods near our subdivision.


Making faces on the couch with Gwen.


And that's it for July. Incidentally, it looks like we may be visiting the doctor yet again this week. Andrea (Lucas's daycare provider) believes he might have a sinus infection since a few of the kids have had one recently and his nose has been pretty nasty lately. Doesn't seem to be bothering him but probably something we'll follow up on.