The Carnival

Back in May, we decided to go to Ottawa's Victoria Day Festival. It actually runs from May 13th to the 24th, so it's not really on a single day, but that's neither here nor there. Suffice to say there was a festival in Ottawa sometime in May and we went.

This marked Lucas's first trip to a carnival. We were going to go to the mega-huge Super EX carnival last fall, but for one reason or another, we decided not to. I know I was really looking forward to it since I was excited to see how he would like the rides. Marilu had brought him on a couple kiddie rides when they went to Marineland/Niagara Falls earlier this year, but this would be my first experience with him. So lots of firsts for everyone!

The first attraction he wanted to go on was a multi-level fun house type thing. Of course, he decides Dad has to go with him, which wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have an abject fear of heights. From three stories up, this thing looked and felt about as stable as you expect most midway rides and attractions to be, so my heart was hammering in my chest when I crossed the rope bridge. Lucas had a blast though so I guess that is all that matters. You can't see Lucas that well in the first picture below, but I wanted to give you an idea what the overall contraption looked like.


This was my favorite part. Taking the slide down and getting the hell off that deathtrap. For what it's worth, I think Marilu did a fantastic job taking these two pictures.



I think Lucas has been on a merry-go-round at some point in the past, but I can't for the life of me think of where. Maybe the pier in Santa Monica? I don't know. As a result, here's a picture of him on the carousel at the carnival, and we can all pretend it's his first time on one.


The one ride I did put my foot down as a "no way in hell" was the Ferris wheel. I'm sure they are as safe as can be, but I'll let others chance the odds, thank you very much. Here, we see Lucas and Marilu getting buckled in by the operator, no doubt an ex-biker gang member with a meth addiction who works the Ferris wheel in between week-long blackouts.


I'm pretty sure Lucas ended up in this pink dune buggy since it was one of the only cars remaining when he got on the ride. I don't believe it was an enthusiastic choice. Not that there's anything wrong with that.


More vehicle riding by the kid.


Self-portrait by the artists.

Mr. Rugged

What better way to experience the great outdoors--in this case, our fenced-in backyard--than in a pair of underwear? With one's t-shirt tucked into it, no less.


A real working man doesn't let a silly dress code keep him from shoveling.


For what it's worth, the area he is digging in is now the location of a brand new sandbox that I built for him while he was on vacation in Newfoundland. I'll have pictures of that up in a future post.

They're Back!

For those of you keeping track of such things, Marilu and Lucas are home safe and sound. Their flight was delayed nearly 2 hours, which made for a fun wait at the airport in Montreal, but since that's the worst thing that happened, it was a successful day.

Mother's Day

I already posted a Mother's Day picture of Lucas with my mom and Marilu way back in May, but there are some other good ones from that day that I wanted to let you see.

Looking out the window when I woke up on Mother's Day, I noticed we had been hit with an unexpected snowfall. Suffice to say I didn't wish Mother Nature a very happy Mother's Day. As you can see, though, Lucas was all over it.


A nice shot of the two moms.


We had a brunch buffet at Prime 360, a fantastic steak house located in downtown Ottawa. I would highly recommend the Mother's Day brunch to anyone in Ottawa since it isn't very pricey (relatively speaking), and the food is top-notch. I don't think Lucas was particularly angry in this photo; I just think the camera caught him in between expressions.


I'm not quite sure what the heck was going on here.


Lucas shows off his spiffy Spider-Man jacket.


Finally, exhibiting a trend that I figured wouldn't happen until he was in his teens, Lucas lets his pajama bottoms sag, showing off his Spider-Man underwear.

Follow-up to follow-up

I just realized that I explained the whole scooter vs pajamas thing back in this post: http://babydeal.blogspot.com/2010/05/musings-and-regrets.html. Oh well, redundancy makes you remember, or something like that.

Follow-up to scooter post

I just remembered what it was that my mom and Kevin brought up in May that Lucas REALLY liked: Spider-Man pajamas. Even though he was anticipating the scooter for the better part of a month, once he got it, he spent 5-10 minutes with it. However, as soon as he saw the pajamas, he couldn't put them on fast enough. In fact, the outfit he is wearing in the first half of the last post (blue top, red shorts) are the PJs. We told him he couldn't wear them outside, but he absolutely insisted. So there you go.

Scooter Time

Way back at the beginning of May, my mom and Kevin came up to visit. We had told Lucas several weeks before that they were bringing him a Spider-Man scooter, and I'm (not) ashamed to admit that we used it as blackmail (i.e., "if you don't go to sleep, we're calling Grammy and telling her not to bring the scooter"). It worked mostly so you do what ya gotta do.

Unfortunately, we didn't get any good pictures of him on the scooter. After all that waiting, he spent about 5 minutes with it, before becoming enthralled with something else they brought. I can't recall what at the moment, but it was something very simple, as is usually the case with kids. We probably could have just handed him a box with a sketch of Spider-Man on the side, and he would have been just as thrilled. Anyway, regarding scooter pics, here's the best of the worst.


To make up for it, here's a real cute picture of him and Kevin on the couch.


In other news, while Marilu and Lucas were over in Newfoundland, I spent some time building him a brand-new sandbox (between sleeping in, drinking many adult beverages, and eating a ridiculous amount of meat). It's not going to win any construction awards, but it's the first thing I can remember building by myself in recent memory so I'm kinda proud of it. When Lucas gets back, I'll be sure to get some pictures of him playing in it. Later!

(Whoops, just found a couple good scooter pictures from the next day. Check 'em out!)

Cold face

In my opinion, this is the funniest picture I've taken of Lucas in a long time. He's done his "cold" face in the past, and we may even have photos or video of it, but in this instance, I caught it at the exact right moment. Great stuff.


In the following video, you can see the process of trying to get him to make the face. I think he is playing with us since he keeps looking at Marilu as she makes stupid faces.

Grizzly Adams

Those of you who know me know that I am not an outdoorsman by any stretch of the imagination. I can't fathom why anyone would want to sleep in a tent if they have air conditioning and a king-sized bed. That said, I do want Lucas to have those experiences so I plan to bring him out from time to time. So far, we've only gone on a couple of short hikes in the woods near our subdivision, but down the line, I'll try and do more.

The pictures below are from a hike we had in April. He really seemed to enjoy it though I made the mistake of mentioning that we might see deer so he was fixated on deer for the majority of the hike. Alas, no deer showed their faces that day.


Relaxing on the trail with a cool drink.



Posing on the car at the end of the hike.


Finally, a video from the hike. Lucas found a dead tree and had quite a fun time tearing the bark off of it. Really cute stuff.

Relaxing

Nothing says "cool" like this picture.

New look

Just used Blogger's template designer to set up a new look for the blog. I'll probably tweak it a bit when I get a chance, but for now, let me know if you have any issues viewing the blog as a result of the changes.

Also, in case you didn't notice, the blog entry immediately below this one is new.

Anatomy of a Craft

At Lucas's daycare, they make a staggering number of crafts. For someone who considers coloring, painting, and Play-Doh about the limit of my crafting knowledge, I am constantly amazed at some of the things he comes home with. Case in point? A pirate ship made from a box, a cardboard tube, and a few other materials. I was actually quite impressed.

As with most crafts Lucas brings home, this one didn't last a considerable amount of time. For whatever reason, he delights in the destruction of his creations as much, if not more, than the actual building process. A benevolent god, he is not.

Unfortunately, he wasn't in the mood for a picture the day he brought the ship home so this is the best shot I have of him and the craft.


Skip to a mere three days later...the pirate ship is long gone, and the box has been repurposed to Lucas's needs.

Our little thug

Back in April, Lucas received a long-sleeve Spider-Man shirt from the 6 year-old son of his daycare provider's neighbor. Lucas happens to really like her son, and as a result, this shirt rocketed to the top of his favorite shirt list. If he sees it, he HAS to wear it. There's been times where he has worn it all day, kept it on for bed, and then fought with me when I tried to take it off of him the following morning. Being long-sleeve, we pretty much had to hide it once the warm weather arrived since he would likely prefer heat stroke to removing it.

One of the things I haven't mentioned about it yet is that is has a hood, which Lucas refuses to put down while he is wearing the shirt. The result is that we have a 3-year-old kid running around the house looking like a hoodlum on "long-sleeve Spider-Man shirt" days. See the pictures below to get an idea of what I am talking about.

Of course, nothing says "thug" like eating pancakes.



"But mom, I'm trying to look tough!"


I think Marilu is mocking him here.


I stand corrected, nothing says "thug" like eating pancakes while your mommy reads a Caillou book to you.



I wrap this post up with an extremely rare shot of Hoodlumus Toddlerus with his hood down. I guess he felt the backwards hat would keep his street cred intact.

The Dynamic Duo

One afternoon, I showed Lucas how you could tie a blanket around your neck and make a cape. Of course, that led to us dressing up as the least threatening superhero duo of all time. Though he DOES have a pretty fierce face right there so I wouldn't mess with Lil Critter.


Incidentally, I like this picture so much, it's been my Facebook profile pic since the day I took it back in April.

Yet more faces

Looking back on the pictures from late March/early April, it appears that Lucas was learning how to make faces. To clarify, he'd been making faces of one sort or another for awhile, but it was about that time that he could make several, particularly when we told him to. At least that is my theory, based on how many pictures we have of him from that time making one crazy face or another.

This post continues that theme as Lucas makes several more faces for the camera...while eating, as you'll see in the last photo. Enjoy!

Random Photos

As the title of this post indicates, here are some random pictures of our little hooligan.

Showing off his new bike/scooter helmet.


"Can't you see that I'm TRYING to read."


Just a cute picture of Lucas on the couch.


Truly stylin'.

Two Sides to Every Story

For the title of this post, I was going to use "Before and After," but I've apparently used that before. Not that I couldn't use it again, but I do try to be original. That's why you get the "Two Sides" entry name, which really doesn't have that much to do with the subject of today's post, beyond the first two words.

Sometime back in March, Lucas's friend Carter was over, and they decided to watch TV. Marilu had the presence of mind to take the following two pictures. I think it came out quite cute.



For what it's worth, I wasn't there so I have no idea what Carter is so peeved about in the first picture. And upon second glance at the next picture, it appears the TV is off, so to be honest, I'm not sure what the two of them were doing. Watching paint dry?

Dessert

Following the facial expression cavalcade that Lucas presented in the last post, I'd like to keep with that theme in this one. Big difference is this one is a video!

This clip came from after dinner sometime in mid-March while Lucas was eating ice cream. He'd already made the "cold face" on several occasions before so in this case, he's just hamming it up for the camera here. Still, I'm not sure what is more amusing: the face or the fact that he is acting.

The Many Faces of Play-Doh

You wouldn't think Play-Doh would elicit that many reactions, would you? Lucas would respectfully disagree.




Continuing with the "making faces" theme, a couple more from a few days later.