Lucas is 3!

For those of you not keeping track of such things, Lucas turns 3 today! I know people say this all the time, but it really does feel like only yesterday that he was born. Time has just flown by. Now feel free to insert your own "time passing" cliche. Best one wins a cup of assorted screws, nuts, and bolts.

Lucas's birthday party is on Saturday so it'll still be a few days until I take the good pictures, but I plan to get some tonight when he gets home from daycare. I'll try and have those posted by tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the one below from this morning. I let him pick his breakfast so, of course, he went with 2 hotdogs, a chocolate-chip cookie, and a slice of cheddar cheese.

#500!

Here it is, post 500 of Lucas's little blog! I'm not surprised the blog is still going since, despite the fact that I don't update as often as I did in Year 1, I have every intention of continuing this until he is old enough to tell me to stop ("you're embarrassing me, dad!") or they shut down the Internet. That said, actually saying the number 500 makes me realize just how much time I've spent chronicling his development, and I'm glad I stuck with it.

I don't have anything super special planned for this entry, but as it so happens, the next pictures I was going to post ARE pretty amusing so let's just pretend that was a calculated decision. Maybe post 1000 will get something more elaborate.

Lucas is finally old enough that he has started making faces and associates labels to the faces he makes. For example, when we tell him to make his "happy face" or "sad face," we'll get a response from him. So what we did here is have him go through all the different faces he can make (or could make, since this is from back on March 1). Hope you enjoy!

Our little actor sits in his chair and prepares for the performance.


Somewhat surprised.


"Are ya kiddin' me?"


No idea what we call this face. Feel free to add your own label.


Sad panda face.


Our little stoner.


And finally, the "Hey, I'm only a day old" face.


Thanks to everyone who has been with us for the first 500 posts. Hope you stay along for the ride as we shoot for 1000!

Onward, we March (excuse the pun)

Going back to the beginning of March (the 1st, actually), here are some pictures of our trip to the Children's Museum at the Museum of Civilization across the river in Gatineau, Quebec. If I remember correctly, it was me, Lucas, and my mom.

As safe as we all know Indian buses are, with that kind of expression on the driver's face, I don't think I'd get on that one.


Riding the fake camel with a random French-Canadian kid thrown in for effect.


This was hilarious. There's a replica of a cargo ship in the museum and kids can use a control panel to raise and lower a hook to pick up "cargo" and then move it onto the ship. A whole bunch of kids were fighting over who was going to control the crane while Lucas ignored them and just started loading and unloading the cargo. We're so proud of our future manual laborer. He also had a yellow construction hat to go with his gloves and safety vest but that disappeared at some point.


As we were leaving, we stopped into the little theater and Lucas got dressed up backstage...


...for his starring performance. I get the impression he's not drawn to the theater. Oh well, there's always working the Newfie shipyards.


Believe it or not, the next post will be the 500th one for Lucas's blog. Not too bad as we approach his third birthday in just 8 days. Thank god I posted so often during year 1 since it makes my average posts per month look a lot better than my current anemic production. That said, you should get a kick out of post 500. I already know what pictures I am going to use so expect that sometime tomorrow.

Real Estate News

My apologies once again for the lack of posts. It's been a pretty busy week for me, business-wise. Not only does it look like I got a new listing (I'll know for sure on Monday), but my buyers just bought a new home earlier tonight. So now I have my first sell and my first buy under my belt. I'm going to revel in the moment for now, but I'll update with some new pictures tomorrow.

Night, all!

Quick One

I'm trying to get this post done before Lucas gets home so it's going to be a quick one. Mostly pictures, but if I have time for text, well then...hip hip hooray.

One thing to speak of before the pictures. Lucas got his first pet this past weekend. We bought him a blue betta fish along with a fish bowl and all the necessary items. We asked him what he wanted to name it and got the wonderfully creative "Fish," so I guess that is what we are going with for now. I'll try and get a picture of the two of them together if Fish doesn't die anytime soon.

This picture was taken the same day we went to Winterlude. Lucas got it in his head that he was going to school so he put a backpack on his back, my backpack on one arm, Marilu's purse on the other arm, and topped it all off with an Atlanta Falcons hat. Quite the look.


This was taken in our driveway on February 28. Can you tell we had a mild winter?


We learned that if you give a 2 year old some action figures, a roll of tape, and a pair of kids scissors, they will stay occupied for a LONG time. In this case, about an hour and a half. Who needs videogames?


This picture was from right before the US-Canada Olympic hockey game. I was trying to get Lucas to root for the US since it he was uncannily accurate in his predictions. Unfortunately, when we asked him who would win between US and Canada, he would only answer "Germany!"


Not sure what made him so happy during the hockey game, but it's cute nonetheless.

Winterlude 2010, Part 2

It's been two and a half weeks coming, but here are the rest of our pictures from our trip to Winterlude back in February.

In the first one, Lucas poses with Marilu on yet another ice throne.


Standing in front of the massive sheet of ice with the festival's logo.


Ice skating on the canal with Marilu. In his case, though, it was more ice standing or ice shuffling, but we all gotta start somewhere, right?


Eventually, he just lay face-down in the sled and let Marilu pull him. Not the most regal pose.


A final picture of our future Gretzky.

Musings and Regrets

I don't think I mentioned it, but my mom and Kevin came up to visit this past Wednesday and stayed with us until this morning. While it's always a little sad to see family leave, this morning it hit harder than normal. When Lucas was younger, he liked it when new people were around, but he didn't really make the distinction that they were visiting and that they would eventually be leaving. However, now that he is nearly three, he's beginning to understand it more clearly.

In the days leading up to their visit, Lucas would ask every morning whether Grammy and Grampy were here yet. When we brought my mom along to pick him up from daycare on Wednesday, he had an ear-to-ear smile plastered on his face as he ran over for a huge hug. And then this morning, when we told him they were leaving, he kept repeating that "the planes are all gone!" I guess that was his way of telling them to stay.

As I thought about it on the ride home from the airport, I realized just how much I hate living so far from any family, whether its mine or Marilu's. Lucas has such a great time whenever someone visits and when they are gone, it's just the three of us. Yeah, there are his daycare friends and kids around the neighborhood, but I can't help but feel he is missing out on experiences that children with local grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc, get on a regular basis.

Part of my feelings are selfish--who doesn't want easy access to a babysitter?--but it goes beyond that. I watched how overjoyed he was to play with his Grammy and Grampy the past 5 days, and I just feel bad that these interactions are so few and far between.

Knowing that there is no easy solution due to the international situation of our living status doesn't help. Even if everyone wanted to live in one place, it's almost impossible from a logistical standpoint. So basically, the situation just plain sucks.

Enough feeling sorry for myself. In positive news, I conditionally sold my first house this past Friday so I'm actually bringing money into the home again. Let's hope that is followed by a torrent of additional business.

I know I said I was going to post a follow-up to the Winterlude pictures--and I am--but for now, I wanted to post some pictures from this past week. Thanks for the visit, Grammy and Grampy!

For weeks, Lucas has been anticipating the Spider-Man scooter than my mom and Kevin were bringing up for him. So much, in fact, that we were able to bribe a lot of good behavior out of him. "If you don't do X, you won't get your scooter!" Wednesday was the big day, and we put it together not long after he got home from daycare. I believe he rode it up and down the driveway once and then moved on to something else. Go figure. However, they also brought the outfit you see in this photo--which is actually Spider-Man pajamas--and he would wear almost nothing else this weekend. Except for when we had to go outside on cold days, he wore the PJs nearly 24/7. So at least one Spider-Man themed present was a massive hit, just not the one we expected.


Here's a better shot of the PJs.


Amazingly, we finally got him to cooperate on this photo with my mom and Kevin.


Neither Lucas nor Kevin were looking at the camera in this one, but I really like the way their looking at each other turned out.


And finally, one with Lucas and the moms for Mother's Day. Thanks for coming up, Grammy and Grampy!

Winterlude 2010, Part 1

The real estate world has been pretty busy for me lately so hopefully the lack of pictures this past week will soon be offset by an influx of money. Keeping my fingers crossed...

Last post saw me go through most of February, but one notable event I skipped was our trip downtown to Ottawa's Winterlude. For those of you unfamiliar with Winterlude, I believe Ottawa has a few things associated with it, but the main focus is the frozen canal. Also of interest are the ice sculptures. On the day in question, we got to experience both.

For some reason, Lucas got it in his head that Cow needed to make the trip with us. So Cow sat in the back seat with him.


Lucas posed with several of the ice sculptures. Just about all of them were really amazing.



In this case, he sits on the ice sculpture, a huge throne of sorts.


I had Marilu take this picture of Lucas and me since it suits my arachnophobia. Why not pose in front of a massive ice tarantula?


Sigh...this was going to be an all-inclusive post, but Blogger is not letting me upload any more pictures at the moment. As a result, more ice pictures as well as some of Lucas skating will have to wait until tomorrow. Until then...

Finally February!

Just to prove how far Lucas has come in his potty training, we were actually surprised tonight when he peed in his pants since that was the first time in weeks that he has had an accident. Heck, he now goes into the bathroom by himself when he has to poop and doesn't call for help until he is done. So we're yet one more step toward the rebellious teenager.

He's been a pretty good kid the last couple of weeks, though we have resorted to a combination of bribery and blackmail to maintain that behavior. You see, in a few weeks, his Grammy (my mom) is coming to visit, and we have already told him that she is bringing him a Spider-Man scooter. He couldn't be more thrilled about this and just about lost his voice when he saw it during a webcam conversation.

So, with that information in hand, here's what we've been doing. Whenever he starts being a pain in the butt, we grab the phone, tell him we're calling Grammy and telling her not to bring the scooter, and start dialing. In 95% of the cases, this gets him back on the straight and narrow REAL quick. Yes, some may say this is not the best parenting, but our biggest worry is what we're going to use for blackmail once he gets the scooter.

Onward to pictures from early February...

I believe this is the first picture taken of him on the new hardwood floor that Marilu's brother Jonathan installed during his visit back in late January. It also shows off his wonderfully chaotic hair. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention he was trying to wear my boxer shorts (which are straight out of the clean laundry basket).


I suspect Lucas doesn't have a career in the fashion industry (thank god) after seeing this ensemble: a raincoat and rainboots over his Superman pajama top.


This next picture was taken after we made an impromptu snowman. If you look closely, you can see Lucas has cannibalized the poor thing and is eating one of its blackberry eyes.


Lucas and some of the neighborhood kids make the most of a snow hill made in the yard of our neighbor across the street.


That's all for now. There aren't too many more February pictures--just some stuff from Winterlude and his latest haircut--so we may be able to hit March by week's end. I've also been better at taking new pictures of him so hopefully I can get some recent stuff up soon as well.

Easter 2010 Videos

I finally remembered to upload the two videos we took of Lucas Easter morning so check those out below. While handling that, I noticed that Marilu and I have been quite remiss in taking pictures of Lucas. Today is April 19th, and the last time the camera was used was on April 5. Yikes! Hopefully, with more warm weather on the way, we'll have more reasons to have the camera out, chronicling our demonchild.

The silver lining of that story is that less photos means it will take me less time to catch up on this blog since I'm still back around the beginning of February. So someone wins...me!

Anyway, enjoy the videos...

Cellophane Boy

Yet one more example of how weird Lucas can be. In this instance, from late January, he wanted to wrap tape around his head. I supervised insomuch as to make sure he didn't cover both his nose and mouth. Luckily, the tape didn't stick to his hair too badly and came off without any crying.

Easter 2010

This year's Easter started off the same way as last year's (which can be seen here). That is, with an egg hunt. Lucas was a lot better at it this year, and he really seemed to have a good time. He's surprisingly perceptive when it comes to locating eggs in non-obvious locations. Of the 18 eggs I hid, he only needed help finding a couple of them.





Yes, that's chocolate on his hands. In a follow-up post, you'll see the video that explains how his hands got that way.


Later that morning, I brought him to the Canadian Agriculture Museum in order to give Marilu a chance to work on some school stuff. We've been there several times since it's a great place for kids, what with all the animals, so this year we went ahead and bought an annual pass. That ought to pay for itself well before the end of the summer.





(For what it's worth, the next to last picture with the big cow lying behind him is one of my favorite pics of Lucas in a while)

In the evening, we had our next-door neighbors over with their kids (the older one, Tyler, is only a few months younger than Lucas) and had a tasty turkey dinner. No pictures of that part of the day, unfortunately. All in all, though, it was a good Easter.

On a related note to Tyler, earlier this weekend, we took down three of the boards in the fence that separates our two yards so now Lucas and Tyler can go back and forth between the two yards without having to go out front. It's been such a hit so far, I can't believe we didn't do it sooner.

For Poppy

Easter photos are coming soon, possibly tonight, but in the meantime, this post is for Poppy, Lucas's grandfather on Marilu's side. Quite some time ago, Lucas received this outfit from his Poppy, but only recently has he been able to fit into it. If you can't see the embroidery clearly, it says, "Poppy's Little Helper," and it has a picture of one of the trucks they use at the iron ore mine in Labrador City. Enjoy!



FYI, since I sometimes forget myself, this is the breakdown of grandparents and their nicknames:

• Marilu's dad Gerry: Poppy
• Marilu's mom Barbara: Nanny
• My dad George (aka Mark): Gramps
• My mom Elinor: Grammy
• Kevin, my mom's husband: Grampy

I think that covers everyone. It's like a quiz show trying to remember who is who sometimes.