Back on June 15, when my mom was visiting, we took Lucas for another trip to the Canadian Agriculture Museum. This was his 4th or 5th trip there, and he seemed to have just as much fun this time as the first.
One of Lucas's more amusing poses is the one you see below. I get a kick out of it since it looks like he is in deep concentration while observing whatever the heck it is he's staring at. In this case, cows.
On less frequent occasions, he'll take the kneeling approach.
No stop at the museum would be complete without the simulated ride on the tractor. At least this time, we weren't interrupted by a bunch of rude French kids (redundant, I know) trying to push him off and get on themselves.
Later that day, he made the most of the dirt area near the back of our yard, in which promptly made a mudhole and stomped it. That was definitely a bath night (or afternoon).
Finally, here is a perfect example of what it is like to try and take pictures of Lucas. In the first photo, he is doing a great job at looking at the camera while my mom is looking at him. In the second, she finally looks at the camera, but Lucas uses the occasion to make a face. Sigh...my job never gets any easier.
As promised, here are the remaining photos from our Labrador trip, taken in the days after the wedding.
Cute one of Lucas and Marilu from the gift opening.
No sharing here! Lucas takes the entire bowl of chips.
He may still be a toddler himself, but man, does he love babies.
Kicking back on the bed with Uncle Bub and Aunt Chantal.
I don't think "giddy-up" is gonna do it here, buddy.
"Why won't you let me ride you?"
"Seriously, dad, what's up with this dog?"
This one kills me. Just look at that face. Someone's been a bad boy.
I suspect he was screaming to be let down here, but let's pretend he was overjoyed to be taking pictures with his Nan.
Sharing drinks at Mike's Restaurant on the way home in Baie-Comeau, Quebec. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, apparently.
And that about wraps up the trip. If that's not enough, the rest of the Labrador pics can be found on my photo album page in the folder "July 2009 - Labrador Trip." Just click the photo album link over on the right side of the page, or if you are feeling lazy, click here.
We're off again on Thursday for a week--to Massachusetts, this time--so I'll try and post some older stuff every over the next couple of days to try and back some futile attempt at catching up. Hope you enjoy!
Highlights from our trip to Labrador City in early July.
Lucas mugs for the camera with soon-to-be Aunt Chantal and Lily.
When in Rome, do as the Romans so Lucas lay on the floor with Darla and Lily. Man, he enjoyed being around those dogs, and I think they miss him as well.
More mugging for the camera, this time with Uncle John, though Lucas calls him Uncle Bub.
We finally found the best way to manage Lucas on those afternoons when he is totally out of control.
Over in Fermont, a town near Lab City, they had one of the mining trucks on display. As you can partially see here, these are not small trucks. Lucas enjoyed his time in the wheelwell.
On the other hand, he didn't like it when Marilu got in his picture. What's the male version of a diva? He was literally pushing her, trying to get her out of there.
Those are the pre-wedding day highlights from Lab City. In the next post (tonight, I PROMISE), I'll put up the post-wedding day highlights from the trip.
This will be easier than I thought. Since Marilu was in the wedding party, and I was trying to keep Lucas from running all over the place, I didn't take many pictures of the wedding and/or reception. In fact, looking at my photo folder, there are a whopping six pictures, only four of which are any good.
The first one is the only non-Lucas picture. If you ever wanted to see Marilu dressed to the nines, squint and you can see her on the left, alongside the rest of the bridesmaids. You can't really see it that well, but her hair was really well done. It reminded me of our own wedding day 6 years past.
Most of the groomsmen took a shine to Lucas at the rehearsal dinner so at the reception I took a couple of pictures of him hanging out with the boys. I think Darnell was his best friend since he kept giving Lucas little packets of milk, which he wolfed down. Also, in the second picture, you can get a better idea of what Marilu's hair looked like.
Finally, a picture of Lucas with the bride and groom. Somehow the stars aligned since he was acting like a wildman before and after this photo, but miraculously, he gave a big cheese and produced one of the better pictures I've taken of him in a while.
That's it for the wedding photos. I'll probably post the highlights from the rest of the trip over the next couple of entries before returning to the backlog of photos from June and early July.
My mom, ever alert, informed me that I said I would post pictures from the trip this weekend. Whoops. Between starting the second course of my real estate program, having guests this weekend (Marilu's brother John and his new wife Chantal), and just keeping track of Lucas, who is getting more crazy by the day, updating completely slipped my mind.
However, Marilu and Lucas are going with John and Chantal to Niagara Falls tomorrow for 2 days, which gives me plenty of time alone to finally spend some time updating. I'll try not to shout "blessed freedom!" too loud. :)
That said, I PROMISE to post new pictures by tomorrow afternoon. There, now I can't procrastinate.
Since I'm on vacation, this blog seemed to be the ideal way to get out the news that I passed my first real estate exam with a resounding 100%! If nothing else, I sure know how to take a test. Anyway, next up is Course 2, which should last about a month and a half. Let's hope for the same results.
Also, the fact that I am writing this now means we did make it to Labrador without any problems. Lucas was a gem, as he behaved pretty much the entire trip, even when we had him at a restaurant until after 9 on the first night of the trip.
Here's the last pictures I'll be posting before our trip to Lab City. We leave tomorrow morning (so, about 6 hours from now...I really should be in bed), and we'll likely be back Tuesday or Wednesday next week. I may try and update from the road, but don't be surprised if there are no updates this week.
First off, this picture was taken at the same time as the video where Marilu was tickling Lucas with her hair. Tell me that is not one happy kid.
I can't remember if I posted this one or not already. No one ever accused the Deal men of being normal.
Here's a picture of Lucas and my mom from his birthday party. This came from my mom's camera, which I uploaded a week after the ones from mine.
Also from my mom's camera, here's Lucas doing what looks like a T Rex impression at the party.
You can't really see his face too well, but I still like this photo. Hugging the dog, the sunglasses, the camo onesie. It's just too cute.
Kicking back on the patio after a weekend lunch. Tough life you have, kid.
Alright, that catches us up to June 14. I seriously have to go to bed since we'll be on the road to Lab City in about 6-7 hours. Sure, Marilu will be doing most of the driving, but I should at least make an attempt to stay awake. See you all next week! (if I don't post again sooner)
This one is too good to wait until we get back. As you may know, we are going to Labrador City for Marilu's brother's wedding. Lucas is going to be involved as the ringbearer so, of course, we had to get him an appropriate outift. Well, it took a while to get the picture below since he didn't want to wear the outfit and when it WAS on, he wasn't too happy, but I think I caught him well with this shot. What do you think? I love the "relaxing at the bar at the end of the day" look.
I was able to pose with him in this next one solely due to the TV being on. As you can see, he could care less that we are trying to take a photo.
The first installment of "boatload of pictures," my attempt to catch up somewhat on the backlog of photos before we leave for a week on Sunday. See the previous post if you have no idea what I am talking about.
May 24 was the date I unofficially designated "first day of summer." Why? Because it was the first day I could fill up Lucas's pool without worrying he would get hypothermia.
I think I've made it pretty clear in past entries that Lucas loves berries. As you can see here, he's taken his berry love to a new level, scooping blueberries out of the bowl with an ice cream scoop. Rawr!
This has accident written all over it.
Cute one of mom and son.
Remember the video a while back of Lucas running around the island in the kitchen with a bucket on his head. Well, here we see the star performer posing for a close-up.
I'm starting to think I could start a whole series on "recipe for disaster" pictures we have of Lucas. In this one, he's using the bucket from the previous picture as a stepping stool to try and get god knows what off the kitchen counter.
On May 29, there was a community garage sale and we got a bunch of stuff for Lucas for really cheap. One of those things was the remote-controlled car below. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for as I ended up throwing it out after about a week since it went through batteries like water and it defaulted to reverse. Lucas had fun with it while it lasted though, and that's all that counts.
Finally, no one likes to see a sad Spider-Man.
The "boatload of pictures" bonanza continues tomorrow. See you then!
1) Lucas now knows how to apologize. We put him in time out earlier, and when I went over to check on him (after, like, 20 seconds), he looked at me with those little Disney doe eyes and said, "Rorry." It actually sounded a little like Scooby-Doo. It's so cute, but the thing that gets me is that you can tell he totally knows what he is doing. Later on, when he was in a different time out (he likes to throw stuff at the dinner table, which typically earns him one), he almost immediately said sorry (or rorry). Even though he's just going through the motions, it's just too cute.
2) Before dinner, I took out the game board from Operation and let him play with that. Man, he was transfixed by that game for nearly an hour. He has no idea what the rules are or what he's supposed to do with the "bones"--he had more fun putting them back in the holes--but does he ever love touching the tweezers (or whatever they are called) to the metal and making the buzzing sound and lighting up the red nose. Once again, very cute stuff. He also tried Jenga but that didn't hold his attention for very long. He just likes knocking the whole tower over.
I didn't get any pictures of him playing Operation (though I will next time), but I did catch his apologizing during a time out on video. Unfortunately, I haven't uploaded that yet so it'll have to wait.
For those of you who didn't know, we're packing up and heading to Labrador City for about a week. Marilu's brother is getting married, and we'll also make a mini-vacation out of it. The only negative part of the whole trip is the ridiculously long drive (approx 16 hours, so I'm told) each way. Suffice to say I'm making sure Lucas has PLENTY of toys and videos and games and whatever else in order to keep him entertained.
Since we'll be gone for so long, I'm going to post a lot of pictures over the next few days, before we leave on Sunday. Mostly to help me catch up since I'm falling pretty far behind. Expect the first batch within the hour.
With all of Lucas's birthday pictures lately, everything I have posted has been timely. However, I still have plenty of stuff from May waiting to be seen. So without any further adieu, let's take a look at some of those older photos.
What better way to have a drink than to look down your nose snootily at the camera while naked from the waist down. Yeah, you can't really see it, but he took off his diaper and the onesie is unsnapped. Nothing but class in the Deal household.
Kind of a weird face.
Here, he's playing hockey behind the curtain in his very unconventional hockey uniform. They really need to add hats like that to the NHL.
Ok, so this next one is not nearly as bad as it looks...
Sorry about the delay in pictures. My mom's visit threw me off since I'm used to her letting me know from afar when I haven't posted recently. I'll have a lot of new pictures up by tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon.
Yesterday, Tuesday, June 16, was Lucas's 2nd birthday. At 10:33 AM, to be precise. He went to daycare since they had a party for him (our daycare provider ROCKS!), and then he came home to a couple new presents that we saved from his birthday party so he'd have something to open on the real day. Not that he knows one way or the other, but it made the adults happy.
In our first video (of two), Lucas discovers his first big present of the day, a new sand and water table. We all felt kind of bad since he only got to play with it for about 10 minutes before we dragged him off to dinner. His shrieking as we carried him off attested to his approval of this gift.
A photo of Lucas at the aforementioned sand and water table.
For his birthday, we brought him to Baton Rouge, a restaurant in Kanata that has some of the best BBQ ribs I've ever had. For his second birthday, we decided it was about time Lucas had his first taste of ribs and why not start with some of the best? This first photo is taken prior to getting the ribs. Lucas was eating anything we put in front of him, particularly chips and spinach dip. Heck, at one point, he dipped an orange slice into sour cream. Wacky child.
Years from now, when Lucas is a glutton like me, he can look back at this photo and see where his love affair with ribs began. Gotta love technology.
It probably shouldn't come as a surprise, given his love for fruit, but he enjoyed the cinnamon apples as well. Here, he tries to cram the entire bowl into his mouth at once.
I'm not sure why, but I also took this video of him eating said apples. Not the world's most thrilling video.
When we got home, we gave him the GeoTrax Grand Central Station that my mom had brought up from the States (so much cheaper down there). Apparently, he loved this thing at a friend's house, so we decided to get it for him. If last night's enthusiasm with the remote controlled train was any indication, this present was a major winner. On a sidenote, I'd just like to thank Fisher Price for making a product for kids that goes together easily. That thing you see in the picture? Took me about 10 minutes total to put together. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Little Tikes, who I would love to see go out of business (and quite possibly be cast into the bowels of hell). Putting together a Little Tikes product is a masochistic ordeal since they typically either leave out a piece or use the most insanely difficuly building processes they can think of. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have many competitors up here so I'm stuck buying their junk. Okay, rant over. Here's the train.
The neat thing about the GeoTrax set is that it expands so you can buy other sets or just more track pieces and make that thing as big as you want. I think Lucas is going to have a blast with that over the next few years.
Lastly, a picture of the birthday boy in his birthday shirt (enjoying his train, as you can tell). Happy 2nd birthday, Lucas!
Here are a few videos from Lucas's 2nd birthday party on Saturday. Admittedly, none of them are earth-shaking or fall-down funny, but it helps complete the experience.
The first one was taken while Lucas blew out his birthday candles. We "practiced" with him a couple of times the last week or so, just so he wasn't one of those 2-year-olds who stares at their cake uncomprehendingly. He picked up on it pretty quick, and it would appear our "hard work" paid off.
The second one is Lucas and friends waiting for their pieces of cake. Lucas flirts with disaster toward the end of the video.
Finally, Lucas eats his cake. I get a kick out of the fact that he is responsible enough to ask for his hat while out under the sun.
Up next, pictures from Tuesday, his actual birthday.
