New Kitchen (for Lucas, that is)

At the end of March, we decided to pack up a lot of Lucas's loose toys from the part of the first floor that has become his play area. Since that left a fairly large hole in the area, we replaced the toys with the kitchen set that he really enjoyed at cousin Megan's birthday party, seen here.

As you can see in the following pictures, it was a wise purchase. However, a word of warning to anyone planning to buy this. It's the single most frustrating thing I have put together in the last 5 years. The barbecue and every piece of furniture in his room was a breeze next to this infernal hell toy. If he hadn't liked it, I may very well have sacrificed it to pagan gods in the backyard. Suffice to say my relationship with Little Tikes has not improved since last year, when I dealt with the swing with the missing piece (which we eventually returned).




And finally, a video from right after he woke from his nap, where he sees the kitchen playset for the first time.

Quick picture update

It's amazing how clever kids are today when it comes to technology. Lucas watched me use my iPod Touch a few times, and now he has no problem unlocking it and getting in there and pushing the buttons. He doesn't really have any idea what he's doing, but he does know how to start it, which is pretty impressive considering he's not even 2 yet.


Just a happy picture of the little squirt.


Little Devil vs The Huggies Beast From Beyond.


Mistakes were made.

5 second update

Very busy week. I'll try and get some new pictures up tomorrow!

More March Madness

I just realized that this is my 401st entry on this blog. Man, that's a lot of drivel that I've written. Hope you've enjoyed the pictures. Now, on to more random photos from March.

Back toward the beginning of March, we were having problems getting Lucas to eat dinner, which led us to many different ideas in trying to get him to eat. This one worked for about 5 minutes before he realized his stuffed animal Cow was not, in fact, eating dinner with him.


Right in time for St Patrick's Day, Lucas made this shamrock hat at daycare.


Here's Lucas doing his impression of a pretentious Hollywood agent.


Yeah, not really a big fan of this photo.


Wow, that bring us up to March 20. Keep in mind all those photos a while back from Montreal and the Museum of Nature were in March as well, which helped us fly through the month. That's all I have for now since I'm tired as hell and need to go rest.

Onwards to March...only a month late!

Here are some random pictures from early March. In the first one, we see that sometimes a kid just has to kick back, relax, and toss back a cold one.


Trendsetter DJ 2 Small unveils what all the cool people will be wearing this fall.


We bought a new storage unit for Lucas's closet, and while I tried to put it together, he decided it made a better playset.


Does TV rot the brain? It sure does capture a kid's attention as we can see Lucas transfixed by whatever happens to be on (probably Madagascar 1 or 2, based on that timeframe).


Speaking of rotting brains, let's rot daddy's too! (I really like this picture of the two of us, by the way.)


Especially when you see what I was watching.

Easter 2009 Videos

In case you haven't seen it already, the post immediately before this one includes pictures from Easter 2009.

As promised in my last entry, here are a few videos of Lucas during his Easter egg hunt this morning, up to the point where he finds his basket. Cute stuff.

Happy Easter!

Last night, before we went to bed, Marilu and I placed a bunch of eggs around the house so when Lucas woke up this morning, he'd have something to look for. We weren't sure how much he'd be into it, or if he'd even notice, but it ended up turning out pretty well. Once he realized that the eggs contained something (Smarties, peanut free!), he was on the lookout for them. Here are some pictures from the hunt.





Eventually he wandered into his play area and found this waiting for him on his table.


Elmo lover that he is, he then proceeded to read the Elmo-themed Easter book that Marilu bought him.


This last picture has nothing to do with the events of the morning, but it happened today so I figured I'd include it. While Marilu and her mother were at church, I was in charge of watching the little man. I can't remember why, but I had to leave the room momentarily, maybe to use the bathroom. I was gone for maybe a minute and when I came back, Lucas had migrated to the kitchen and this was the scene.


For those of you without kids, as you can see, they can definitely be a handful. :)

I took a bunch of short videos during the Easter activities this morning, and if they look good (I haven't watched them yet), I'll include them in a follow-up entry to this post. That should be up sometime later tonight if they are decent.

Finally finishing February!

It's never too early to give your toddler a steak knife.


Not one of Lucas's best pictures, but I thought it was cute in context. This was taken at his cousin Megan's birthday party at the end of February. He loved this kitchen playset so much, we ended up buying one for him a few weeks back. Eventually, I'll catch up to March and you'll see those. Funny enough, last year we bought him a swing/slide set that we first saw at Megan's birthday party last year. I guess whatever they have new for her next year will be his next big gift.


Later that day, he hams it up for the camera while playing with Play-Doh with mom.

Lucas and his uncle

Back in late February, we got a visit from Marilu's brother Steven and his girlfriend, Katie. Here's a couple of pictures from that visit. The first one came out real well since Lucas actually decided to participate.


Playing in the living room with Uncle Steve.

Recipe for Disaster

Ingredients

• 1 curious toddler
• 2 parents who need to check something on the computer "real quick"
• 1 open door to the laundry room
• 1 open bag of flour

Doesn't matter how you mix the ingredients. The result remains the same.





FYI, this was from about 30 minutes ago. Interesting start to the weekend.

Dentist? We don't need no steekin' dentist!

You're never too young to floss. Someone might want to bring up the concept of moderation to him though.

Playing catch up...again

Since my last few posts have been on recent activity, I realized I'm starting to fall behind on older pictures. Gotta remedy that! To give you an idea of how bad it is, the oldest unposted pictures are from February 15. So let's get to those.

Feb 15 was a fairly busy day as we had a birthday party to go to in the morning and then we headed downtown in the afternoon to have dinner with Wes, Kelly, and Wes's family. The birthday party was #2 for Logan, son of Sherry and Adam. Man, it sounds like I'm writing a fantasy novel. "I am Uthgar, son of Lothor, King of the Mountain Tribe."

Anyway, we'll start off with a picture of Lucas and Thierry hanging out on the stairs. Feel free to relax, gentlemen.


One of the "commands" Lucas answers to pretty well is "hug." Here, we told him to hug Jetta while at the party. Since he loves dogs, this was a no-brainer for him.


Getting him to hug the right end is still a work in progress though.


We didn't take more than a couple of pictures from our dinner visit with Wes and Company. However, I think this one came out pretty well. As an added bonus, if you click on the picture to see the larger version, you can see the guy in the background is posing as well. Huzzah to you, good man!

More videos!

Here are a couple more videos from mid-February. First off, Lucas dances to his favorite show (at the time), Imagination Movers. He's much more interested in animated cartoons with animals now.



Later that day, we got a visit from Brody (as well as parents Wes and Kelly). Here, Lucas and Brody try their hand at playing the Rock Band 2 drums.

Mmm...videos

As promised, here's a couple of pictures of the wunderkind from yesterday. The first was taken at the Canadian Museum of Nature at one of the exhibits in the Fossil Gallery.



I think I'll just let you watch the second video and decided for yourself what the heck is wrong with our son. :)

Before and After - The Haircut

I took a picture of Lucas about 5 minutes ago to show off the new 'do. I'm also including a recent picture of him with a full head of hair to get the full "before and after" thing.

From March 6 (along with me looking like a dirtball).


Today.


Just like his previous 2 haircuts, I'm amazed at what a big difference cutting off some hair makes.

Canadian Museum of Nature

Today was a relatively busy day. We went to the Canadian Museum of Nature in the morning, ate lunch at the Elgin Street Diner (mmm, poutine), and then after Lucas's nap, we brought him to get the third haircut of his young life. Unfortunately, I only have pictures from the museum, but I'll try and take some of him tomorrow since he looks totally different with shorter hair.

This was the first trip for either of us to the Museum of Nature, not counting a wedding reception we attended back in 2003. I have to say that I was mighty impressed with the place. Some museums I've been to just seem to phone it in and put up half-assed displays. Not so with the Museum of Nature. Everything was first class, and I really enjoyed what I saw of it. If I hadn't been chasing Lucas around 75% of the time, I would have spent quite a but more time admiring the work they have put into it.

I think the highlight was the first floor, since that's the Fossil Gallery, and fossil = dinosaurs! I loved dinosaurs as a kid (still do), and Lucas appears to be following in my footsteps. You can't really see much of it here, but Lucas and Marilu are posing underneath the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton right at the entrance.


This next one is kind of dark, but I wanted to show off the Triceratops display.


Lucas gets up close with the Triceratops AND T Rex's.



Open up and say ah!


I love this picture of Lucas. He just has this patient, just-checking-things-out look to him, which completely masks the fact that he was a royal pain in the butt most of the trip. The terrible twos have definitely arrived early.


There was an area at the museum where kids could do crafts, and since they are currently hosting a primate exhibit--supposedly Jane Goodall will be in town for it at some point--the craft of the day were little monkey masks that kids could color. Lucas wasn't in the mood to color much so his remained mostly monochromatic, and he wasn't too keen on wearing the mask either. However, we did get lucky and get one halfway decent photo of it before he threw it on the floor.


One area he really enjoyed was a section on the last floor, the bird gallery, that was designed especially for kids. I think it was supposed to show what incubators are like for birds, but it looked a lot like a kitchen playset, and he was all over that.



There was also this kid-sized jeep, and he was happy to get behind the wheel. I'm not sure what the significance of it was, in relation to birds, but it kept the kids happy so I don't really care.


This last photo is from earlier this evening, after we got home from his haircut (and a thrilling trip to Costco). Unfortunately, you can't see the new hairdo since he was busy modeling a bike helmet. Tomorrow, I'm going to try and remember to post a related video of this since he was doing some amusing things with the helmet.