Sicko

I've been home the last two days with a sick kid. On Sunday night, Lucas came down with a fever that flirted with 104 F at times. Children's Advil helped bring it back down, as per usual, but we kept him home on Monday, and Marilu had me make an appointment to see the doctor. Normally, we'd let it play out, but with our upcoming cruise, we wanted to make sure that it got resolved in case it wasn't something that needed a prescription (such as an ear infection).

Our doctor didn't seem to concerned about it, but she had us bring Lucas to the children's hospital for a chest X-ray since he had a pretty nasty cough. Fortunately, no issues were found.

His cold is hanging on, and he stayed home from school again today. As of this evening, he's still got the fever in addition to the cold so there's a good chance I'll be hanging out at home with him tomorrow. It's times like this it's good to have a job in a real estate since even with a new listing on the other side of town, I'm able to do just about everything from my laptop.

For today's post, we once again return to August. I know I uploaded a lot of pictures from our Massachusetts trip late last year, but I ran across a folder that contained pictures from my mom's camera from that trip, and I wanted to show you the highlights. No comments this time around, just pictures. Enjoy!

New Hair

As evidenced in recent photos, Lucas's hair has been pretty wild. We took care of that today with a haircut at Goober's. Now we just need to fix that face.

August Videos

Here are a couple of videos taken last August. The first is from one of our visits to Saunders Farm. I can't recall if I've mentioned the Jumping Pillows before, but they are one of my favorite things to do there. Jumping on them is quite possibly the most fun exercise I've ever had.



This second video was taken during a phase Lucas went through where he liked to pretend he was a puppy. If I recall correctly, he typically went by the name Buster. Cute stuff.

Crazy Hair Day

Last week, Lucas's school had Spirit Week, which was made up of such days as Purple Day (school colors) and Pajamas Day. The highlight though was Crazy Hair Day. We specifically put off getting his wild mop cut so he could show it off, and he definitely did that. Take a look at these photos that Andrea (his daycare provider) took of him that morning before school.

This was the first try, but apparently he didn't care for this style.

This was the one he decided to go with, apparently.

This week, we really need to get his hair cut. :)

Winterlude 2012

My mom was in town for the weekend so we decided to keep Lucas home from school on Monday so they could get some quality time in before she left (or leaves, at the time of this writing) on Tuesday morning. As many times as my mom has visited us in February, she's never made it down to Winterlude (see here if you have no idea what that is). Well, we decided to rectify that situation on Monday when Lucas, my mom, and me headed downtown in the afternoon. We had originally planned to go on Saturday, but the temperature was roughly the same as on the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back so we postponed the trip.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that we went downtown and took some pictures. Here they are.

I'm pretty sure that if I went back and looked at my picture collection, I'd find I have pictures of me standing in front of ice sculptures from the last 5-6 Winterludes. Still, you gotta do it again each year. Sadly, the warm weather last week really took a toll on the sculptures this year.

Speaking of yearly pictures, I think I have a picture of me in front of the Winterlude logo ice wall from at least 3 different years. This year, we changed it up a bit and Lucas and my mom did the posing. One thing didn't change though. I still got nervous, thinking that massive wall could come tumbling over at any time.

Out on the canal. A nice older lady visiting from Nova Scotia offered to take a picture of the three of us.

I'm not exactly sure why someone decided to build "hockey trees," but they were kind of neat looking.

Next year, I hope to finally cross the river to Gatineau and see the Winterlude festivities over there. I really want to check out the ice slides. That sounds so cool! (pun not intended). Lucas ought to be old enough to appreciate them by then.

So that's that. Since my mom will likely be home in Massachusetts by the time she sees this, I just wanted to say thanks for coming. We were very happy to have you and will miss you. Can't wait to see you again!

Kids Say the Darndest Things

For those of you who didn't see this on Facebook...

Yesterday morning, Lucas asked me, "Daddy, you were in the Army?"

I said yes, and he responded, "Did you fight monsters?"

I tried to stifle a laugh before telling him that no, I never fought monsters, to which he then replied, "Then why did you have a gun?"

Gotta love children.

Highlights from August

Before I get into the pictures, I just wanted to update the bedwetting situation. The last 3-4 nights, Lucas has slept through the night without any incidents. And that's also without me taking him to the bathroom in the middle of the night. So we are keeping our fingers crossed that last week's accidents were little more than an aberration. (Update from the following morning: I jinxed him. He wet the bed again last night.)

Ok, onwards to August. I'm going to keep this short and sweet. The first picture is one that I thought was cute. Lucas decided to sleep on the floor of our room with his Spider-Man pillow and blanket.

Hmm, it seems like we were just at Saunders Farm. Oh well, here are some more from a trip where all three of us went.

For the record, this slide is pretty cool, even for adults.

An overhead look at some of the mazes at Saunders Farm. I should point out that Marilu took these photos. My fear of heights kept me from going past the second floor in the wooden structure from which the pictures were taken. I just didn't trust the damn thing.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but these things--called the Jumping Pillows--are ridiculously fun. Think back to those bouncy castles you jumped in as a kid at birthday parties and carnivals, and now imagine them  60 feet long and sturdy enough for adults. I would have jumped on this thing all day. It was that cool. Though I did accidentally launch Lucas off of it a couple of times. I'll try and remember to post the video of Marilu and Lucas jumping in the next entry or so.

And that's August in a nutshell. It may not seem like much, but keep in mind a good portion of August was spent in either Newfoundland or Massachusetts, and those pictures have already been posted. Speaking of which, I do have the ones my mom took while we were in Massachusetts so I may upload the highlights soon. But that's all for now. Excelsior!

Saunders Farm

This summer, we finally brought Lucas to Saunders Farm for the first time. For those of you not in Ottawa, Saunders Farm has a ton of hedge mazes, a splash pad area, a couple of playground areas, and lots of other things to keep kids entertained. It's almost like an amusement park without rides. We'd held off on bringing Lucas when he was younger since the admission is pricey, but we felt at 4, he was now ready to make the most of it. And make the most of it he did. We actually went back 2-3 more times this summer since Lucas loved the place. This year, we decided to buy a family season pass since it pays for itself in three visits. Odds are we'll be there more than three times, so I consider it a sound investment.

These pictures were taken during our first visit. It was in July, and it was a pretty hot day. I just looked up the temperature on Weather.ca, and the high was 31 C/88 F, and that's before the humidity was factored in. Nonetheless, Lucas and I had a good time (we left Marilu at home for some reason or another).

This first picture isn't a great one of Lucas since he has his eyes closed, but unfortunately it was the only one I took from within a maze, and I wanted to give you an idea of what those are like. I love hedge mazes and would probably do all of them every time I go there, but Lucas tired of them quickly. I would imagine the overwhelming heat had a lot to do with that.

Lucas's favorite thing on that first visit, by far, was the pirate ship. He probably spent almost an hour playing in, on, and around it. It was a slow day at Saunders Farm so except for the odd kid of two, he had the ship to himself most of the time. In our subsequent visits, the place was packed, and he was a bit shy of the bigger kids and so didn't spend as much time in that area. If you look closely in the last picture, you'll see he's up in the crow's nest.

Here are a few more random photos taken that day.

This last photo isn't from Saunders Farm, but it's the last one I have for July. Too often Lucas either makes crazy expressions or puts on his cheese smile, and while that doesn't necessarily ruin the photos, they could be better. This was one of those rare moments where I got a genuinely nice photo of him. I hope you enjoy.

For anyone that is interested in more info on Saunders Farm, you can view their website here.

Regression

Like many young kids, Lucas used to have a problem with bedwetting. We found that if we brought him to pee at about 10:30 at night, he would usually make it through the night without incident. Then, in late 2011, we gradually cut out that nighttime visit. It seemed to work as Lucas didn't have any accidents for a month or two. Unfortunately, it appears he might be in the middle of a regression as he has peed his bed the last two nights. We haven't done anything different to his schedule so I'm not exactly sure what caused this. I guess we'll return to the late night visits to the bathroom and see if that gets him back on track.

As mentioned a couple of posts ago, I want to start catching up so we're going to take a look at photos from last July that I haven't uploaded yet. These first few are from a visit to our friends' cottage. With Lucas in some of the pictures is their daughter Kayden.

A common activity for us during the summer is a trip to the pond near our house to feed the geese. Obviously, Lucas and Marilu were popular with our fowl friends.

I think eventually Lucas was creeped out, and he hightailed it out of there.

Lucas--King of the Jungle--on one of our nature walks.

And let's wrap it up with a little posing by the madman.

That's all for now. If all goes as planned, the next post will be a trip to Saunders Farm.

Lucas's First Hockey Game

Per my mom's request, I'm going to put off the July photos for at least one more entry and post some more pictures from Dec 5, when we all went to see the NHL game between the Senators and the Lightning. I've already written about it in detail here, but all I included in that post was an iPhone photo. Below, you'll see other photos that my mom took at the game.

It's not often I'm the one that ruins the photo by looking away from the camera, but in this case, Kevin, Lucas, and Spartacat were the ones on the ball.

Here's a few more from during the game.

Christmas Dinner

Great quote from Lucas earlier today while at his speech therapy session. I'm not sure how it came up, but he said, "My mommy is allergic to dogs and cats and coyotes." Good to know that Marilu will have to pack the EpiPen next time we travel through the Badlands.

Here's a couple more Christmas-themed pictures. This may be the last of them for a while since I want to start catching up on the older stuff again. For Christmas dinner, we went to the home of Marilu's cousin Michael and his wife Louise. They are the only family either of us have in Ottawa, and as luck would have it, their daughter Megan is the same age as Lucas. I know I've tried figuring it out here before, but I believe the two of them are second cousins (possibly with a "once removed" in there, whatever that means). Whatever their relation, the two of them are cute as hell together as you will see below.

If all goes as planned, we return to sunny and warm July 2011 in the next entry.

R.I.P. Fishy Fishy

It was a sad day today since I had to flush Lucas's betta fish down the toilet. It was his very first pet, which he got back in May 2010 and named Fishy Fishy. In the last couple of months, we'd noticed FF was unable to stay afloat, constantly sinking to the bottom of his bowl after eating and just sitting there for hours until the next time to eat. Basically, he looked dead most of the time, to the extent that Lucas's babysitter told me as much last week, but I reassured him that that's just how FF was lately.

We noticed FF's bowl was really smelly yesterday, and this afternoon, Marilu was almost wretching from the smell. FF was still alive and sitting on the bottom, but after talking about it, we decided that keeping him alive was just cruel. I brought him upstairs to the toilet and after putting him in it, I waited a bit, hoping he would make an effort to swim strong and stay afloat. I have to admit that I've grown fond of Fishy Fishy over the last 20 months since I'm the one who feeds him and cleans his bowl so this was actually pretty tough for me. He swam around for a couple of minutes, exploring his new environment but then slowly dropped to the bottom. I let out a pretty big sigh at that point and regretfully flushed him away. 

As sad as that was for me, here's where it gets worse. For some reason, once I came back downstairs, I opened up my laptop and Googled "betta fish unable to swim." When Google came back with several entries with that wording, I realized I might have just made a big mistake. After a few minutes of reading, I discovered that betta fish are prone to something called swim bladder disease. As nasty as that sounds, the most common cause is constipation from eating too much food, and it can usually be cured by fasting for 3 days.

Now I don't know for sure that this was Fishy Fishy's problem, but I felt absolutely horrible after reading that information. I was and still am extremely pissed at myself for not looking it up before the flush. It doesn't make any goddamn sense since I Google everything, but for some reason, it slipped my mind to do so this time. I know you're probably thinking "it's just a fish," but it's hard to see it that way from my point of view. The fact that he was Lucas's first pet doesn't help my state of mind.

Speaking of Lucas, this all happened while he was still at daycare. Initially, Marilu and I were going to tell Lucas that FF was sick and that we had brought him to the doctor. Then I would have gone out and bought another betta tomorrow, and he would be none the wiser. However, after talking about it, we decided to tell him the truth. Sort of. We left out the part where I more than likely murdered his fish for no reason.

As you can imagine, Lucas didn't take the news well. There was some crying (not just him), and Marilu told him all about fish heaven, and that helped a little. We were finally able to soothe his feelings a bit by promises of playing the Wii and eating some candy.

I thought Lucas would forget about it, but he came back to Fishy Fishy several times throughout the evening. In particular, at dinner he was asking Marilu over and over again why FF died. Then, out of nowhere, he said I fed him too much. He even made gestures with his hands about how much I had overfed his fish. Marilu and I looked at each other, almost stunned, since overfeeding is one of the things that leads to swim bladder disease. We deflected his comments somewhat, but I realized at that point that Lucas can be wise beyond his years sometimes.

What's done is done though, and there's no way I can go back and fix it now. However, we will be buying him a new betta this Saturday after his swim lessons. Hopefully, that will help him feel better. While reading to him in bed this evening, I paused for a moment and asked him what he was going to name his new fish. He said something that started with an 's' but I couldn't understand it exactly. I asked him, "Sam?" and he said more clearly, "No, Daddy, the same. Fishy Fishy." I smiled and told him that was a great name.

Rest in Peace, Fishy Fishy.

Christmas Eve 2011

As mentioned toward the end of my last post, we were at the house of our friends Andre and Tracey. It's actually become something of a tradition since we've been going there on Christmas Eve since 2006, excepting a year that we were out of town. I'm going to post a couple of pictures, but I recommend you take a look at the ones Tracey took. She's a better photographer, and her camera is far superior to our point and click. You can see those photos here (located at Flickr). The set contains all of her Christmas pictures, but if you do a little searching, you should be able to find several of Lucas in there.

As for the ones we took, this first one is a father-son moment. I was reading a Star Wars book to him before Marilu barged in for the photo opportunity. Way to go, mom!

Another good one of me and the boy.

Tracey took a LOT of pictures of this next photo op, and you will likely find a much better version on her page. However, this is the best we could do.

Earlier in the day, we let Lucas open up one of his presents. We picked the one from his Uncle Steven, knowing that it would keep him (and me) occupied throughout the afternoon. Look at that face. Think he liked it?