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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
For those of you keeping track of such things, Lucas turns 1 on Monday. It's amazing how time flies. We'll be having a party for him tomorrow afternoon, and I hope to have plenty of pictures from it posted tomorrow evening or Sunday afternoon. Feel free to send your birthday wishes to the big guy in the comment section below.
One of the days I was at work, Marilu and my dad took Lucas to a nearby park. For some reason, I really like this next picture. Kind of a slice-of-life thing, I guess, as Lucas checks out the geese.
If you look close in the next one, there are some baby geese. I suppose I could look up the technical term (gander? or is that a female goose?), but that would require effort. :) As with just about any animal he sees, Lucas is visibly excited. Just wait until tomorrow's update where we go to the farm.
Our next stop finds us on May 19, which was the holiday Victoria Day up here in the Great White North. We decided to head down to the Museum of Civilization since it has a children's museum in it. That, and neither my dad nor I had ever been there.
Lucas tries out his acting chops by donning some headgear in the theater area.
Lucas tries out his first rocking horse. I suspect we'll be buying him one of his own soon enough based on his reaction.
Later on, Lucas and my dad check out one of the exhibits together. My dad likes to read all the items whereas Lucas is content to simply point out that the exhibit does indeed exist. :)
For those of you in the Ottawa area that haven't been (which is probably none of you), the Museum of Civilization is a pretty good museum. The children's area is a great place for the kids and I was amazed at some of the detail in the rest of the museum, particularly the re-creation of a street in early 1900s midwest Canada. I've now been to two Canadian museums, the War Museum being the other one, and I can't say enough good things about either one of them. Hopefully we'll get a chance to come back and see an IMAX movie with Lucas before too long.
I was looking at the blog this week and it occurred to me that when I initially set it up, I used a green background since we didn't know what the sex of our baby would be at the time. Well, a year later, I think we've pretty much got it figured out so I decided to change it to a blue motif. I'm not thrilled on some of the accent colors so this is subject to change.
He knows he shouldn't be in that drawer ripping out all the towels. But let's face it, how can you say no to that face?
Three generations of Deal boys during our second trip to the Tulip Festival. This was the same event I took that video of my dad running with Lucas in the stroller. So yeah, I'm a few weeks behind.
For you flower lovers out there, Marilu took a picture of the view at the Tulip Festival.
Don't worry, as interested as Lucas was in the tulip, we didn't let him tear it out of the ground.
And one last shot from the festival with Lucas and his Gramps.
I've been trying to go chronologicaly in order to catch up for May, but Lucas has been really adorable the last couple of days in the way he smiles. I could go into a long description of what it looks like, but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. I can only imagine what the exchange rate is for several pictures and a couple of videos.
Personally, I think he kind of looks like Popeye here.
This one isn't a smile picture, but he still looks cute trying to eat corn off the cob.
Another week, another birthday party. This time it was for Brody, son of our friends Wes and Kelly. This was also the first full day my dad was with us as part of a week and a half long visit so you may see him in quite a few of the pictures over the next couple of days.
Going against the whole "saving the best for last" mindset, I've decided to start off with the best thing I got with the camera, a short video with Lucas and Kayden, daughter of Brigitte and Casey. Kayden is slightly younger than Lucas, born about 2 weeks later than him on July 1. I happened to be taking a video of the two of them playing with the gift wrappings on the floor when they did something that was both surprising and hilarious. I don't want to give it away, but watch for it at about the 8 second mark in the following video.
Awesome, huh? They're totally hooking up when they are older. :)
This picture of Lucas and Brody is pretty funny too. It kind of looks like Brody is tormenting Lucas, based on their facial expressions, but I think Lucas was upset about something else entirely. Whatever the case, it was a fleeting feeling as none of the other photos taken at the window had him looking upset in the slightest.
Great photo of Marilu, but not so much for our little stoner.
I've found that when the kids get their first cake at these parties, they tear into it, and it's a messy, fun affair. In Brody's case, he seemed almost horrified by the experience. You can see here that he's not feeling too good about what just happened. For the rest of us, it was comedy gold.
Here we see the little man trying out the gift that we bought Brody, a big truck of some sort with lots of blocks inside.
Playing with the wrapping paper was likely the highlight of the party for all the under 2s.
Back with Brody, Kayden, and Lucas were only a month or two old, the three dads took a picture with the kids which can be seen here. Two months later, we took another similarly-themed picture though the dad-less one came our better (see here). Since it's been about 7 months since then, it only seemed appropriate to update with another Dads and tots photo. Thanks to Wes's overproductive loins, you'll notice he's carrying a brand new baby, in addition to the original.
My, how times have changed, huh? That's all for tonight, folks!
