Our Baby Size Life!

Archive for November, 2008

It may be a little early for some people, but Melissa and I love the holiday season, and poor Sammy has been dragged into it.  Until he can defend himself, he won’t have a choice but to submit to our month long festive mood.  This weekend, we are putting up the tree and whipping out the almost embarrassing amount of decorations we have.  And, yes, it takes about a whole weekend to get everything up.  We completely fall into the spirit of the season. which is great especially since this will be Sammy-boy’s first Christmas!  Which means he won’t remember squat about it… come to think about it, he won’t remember the first few Christmases.  But we will, so on with the festivities!

A good sign that the holiday mood is in the air, is that a local radio station starts playing wall to wall Christmas music.  Last year, they started three days after Halloween, which is a little nuts and wholly illegal if you ask me.  Drag the station manager into the street and shoot him… as Garfield would say.  This year, they started mid-November, which is borderline legal, no executions!  Melissa turned on the music tonight and we we dancing and singing along with the songs, with Sammy laughing and smiling all the while!  Totally in the moment, I ran downstairs and dug through the decoration boxes until I found my Santa hat.

Lets do the math here people: one Santa hat + one baby = good times! But it also equals one tough picture to take! Here’s our first efforts, but I’m sure we’ll get more opportunities as December rolls out…

Take it easy, and thanks for reading!

Sam’s nine months old now and that means he’s booting around the floor soldier style, giving his parents fits when we turn around a don’t immediately see where he is… or what he’s doing… or what he’s putting in his mouth! Now, in addition to said movement issues, Sam has taken a liking to climbing. Anything within range of his little chubby fingers will fall pray to their surprisingly tenacious grasp! And up he goes! Sam can pull himself vertical on almost anything. Not just to his knees mind you, all the way up to a standing position. A seemingly wobbly, but deceptively stable, standing position from which he is free to wreak havoc on a whole new paradigm of items he could only previously admire from the ground up.

When I think about how Sam gets himself vertical, it is quite an impressive feat. Can you pull yourself to a standing position from flat on your belly using only your arms? Several dozen times a day? I tell ya my boy is in shape! He’s got better abs than Dad. Having your ever curious baby crawling around touching everything at eye level was mildly stressful, but now that he’s discovered the possibilities of not only going forward, but up-up-up! It’s a little nerve racking! It funny though, because his face just lights up when he successfully climbs some chair or table or shelving unit, to discover what Mom and Dad had previous taken off the floor when he started crawling to begin with! But to remedy the situation and give Mom and Dad a stress free break, we can’t always keep him in his crib…umm right?!?

So here’s our, hardly original yet effective, little solution to contain the little explorer: the play pen. We used to only use it when sleeping out at someone’s house for Sammy’s bed. Then one day, I was looking for a way to safely contain Sam while I got some washing done. I smacked my forehead when I thought of it. So obvious! Using the pen helps out big time, especially during the day when Melissa needs a little Sam-free time to get something done. Sam likes it too. He’s got some toys set up in there that he can manage at will. Basically it’s HIS area and he’s the bully. It might be his first case of a power trip. I will start to get suspicious if tattoos of of an escape plan start to show up on his body! Because then I’ll know he’s been watching too much TV

Even though he’s in this little fabric jail, he still likes to climb up the wall… and smash his face into the side netting…

Yeah that’s my nutty kid! *sniff* I’m so proud!

Have a great weekend everybody!

Well, whomever said that parenting was an ever learning state of being hit the freakin’ nail on the head. Another little nugget of information concerning babies and their digestive systems has just acquired some real estate in my ever expanding parental brain. Here’s the situation: Sam has developed a little cough over the past couple days, and last night it got a little… well… wetter. You know what I mean, he’s got some snotty action going on in there now.

So, Melissa and I figure a cold has set in and we proceed to clean out his nose before giving him his pre-bedtime bottle, which is one of the favorite moments of my day. Sam and I settle into the comfy rocking chair in his room, I dim the lights, throw on a little sleepy-time music and plug the kid into his dairy fix. Bliss folks… pure bliss. That went well, the problem came afterward. Just as Sam was finishing his bottle and I was easing him off to La-La Land, Melissa sticks her head in the door way and reminds me to give him some Tempra infant cold medicine before he falls asleep. Ah Mommy to the rescue! Insensitive and uncaring Dad would’ve put little Sammy to bed all stuffed up and snorting boogers all night. Well, no, of course I would not have done that, but Mommy was right as it would help him sleep.

So up we get, away from the warm and friendly confines of the rocking chair to Sam’s crib where I lay him down. Sam immediately sits up, then stands up gripping the edge of the crib. Great! He’s more awake now and he’s vertical which should make giving him the medicine a little easier. Turns out, it just gave him greater range. Let me explain…

So I kneel in front of him and wrap one arm around his body as the other hand feeds him the meds. I had barely twisted the cap on the medicine bottle when some very warm fluid soaked my shirt. Puke! Not wanting to drop Sam, I call for Melissa to come and give me a hand, which turned out to be a good call, because Sammy-boy wasn’t done. The second and bigger projectile-like wave hit the crib railing, my left arm, his mattress, the crib bars and finally dripped down on his carpet. Super fun vomit party! Sam’s head didn’t spin, so we didn’t all a young priest and an old priest…

Sparing you some of the details (like pea and carrot chunks), everything was covered in a nice pinkish liquid, due to the fact that the milk and Tempra, a red colored cold medicine, had mixed… And the smell…whoo baby! I think I prefer the foul odor of a full diaper sitting in the hot sun. Melissa took Sam and cleaned him up as I worked on the room. After we got done, Sam fell asleep right away. Poor little guy was up way past his bedtime! Despite his rosé reflux, he slept great!

Dad, on the other hand, felt a little guilty about making his son behave like a super model on a diet, but now I know the rule not to mix red and white applies to kids too!

…and knowing is half the battle!

I know this post is long over due, but I figured I’d tell you about our Thanksgiving anyways, because we ended up in the hospital again!  Man, when it rains it pours!  I hadn’t been in a hospital in years, almost decades, and now it happens three times in a two month period!  So, with the American Thanksgiving right around the corner, I figured I’d sneak this post in now, while it’s got some relevance. My bro has some nice pics from that great Thanksgiving day, but I don’t have them with me now. It’s a bummer, but I’ll try and post ‘em later on.  We had some great family fun as my sis and her family made the drive up from Toronto.  My bro was there with his daughter and his new girlfriend and , of course, my parents were there… well we were all in their house.  So, yeah, it makes sense they be there…

Saturday was a busy day, we all had some fun on my Wii (Rock Band and Boom Blox), we played some street hockey in which my nephews once again felt the unforgiving wrath of their Uncle John as he totally and systematically destroyed their defense and piled on the goals without mercy.  I won (again) 53 to 38, and they were two on one! Yeah, I know I’m good, but what can I say… I’m a natural…  What? How old? Why they are 13 and 11… but that doesn’t mean anything! Have you seen kids nowadays?!?  They’re HUGE. My oldest nephew wears bigger sized shoes than I do! And you know what they say about a man with big feet… They wear BIG shoes! Let’s keep it clean folks!

So everything was going typically well, it was around 11 pm when things went south. My sis and brother-in-law were packing up the minivan to head back early the next day while everyone else was playing some cards and winding down after another great meal. Kudos to Mom and Dad who outdid themselves again! Check out some of the yummy food they laid out:

Mmmm... Look at that turkey. It was as good as it looks!	My plate...or I should say, one of my plates!
Apple, Cherry and Pumpkin pies!	Rollie-Pollies, a decadent recipe made of pie crust and brown sugar!

Colby, their dog, was out with my bro-in-law while he packed the car, when suddenly Colby bolts out towards the street after a couple strangers that were out taking a walk.  My bro-in-law reacted and spun to chase after the dog… but didn’t see the traveling bag he had placed on the ground.  He ended up landing hard on his left shoulder.  We walks into the kitchen, clutching his arm saying he can’t feel his fingers and arm, but his shoulder is in intense pain.

Luckily, my bro’s new girlfriend used to be a nurse and checked him out.  She thought we should get to a hospital to make sure everything was OK as she thought that his arm or shoulder could be broken!  So off we go, my Dad, my bro-in-law and me to the local hospital on Thanksgiving night, it being close to midnight.  We arrived at the hospital around 15 past midnight, and after a series of quick examinations followed by a couple hours waiting time, they recommended he get X-rays.  So we had to wait for the X-ray technician.  It was now 3 am. He got his X-rays and hobbled back to his waiting room for the doctor to give his diagnosis on the X-rays taken.  That took another 2 hours.  It was now 5 am.

Finally, the doctor came back and explained the situation to my bro-in-law:  his shoulder was broken… in two places!  No wonder he was in pain!  The doctor then advised him to go home and relax until they got into contact with a surgeon to evaluate how to proceed.  The problem was my bro-in-law had one clean fracture and another fracture that had detached a tendon.  They weren’t sure if the fracture would mend and the tendon would fuse back to the bone properly and needed the surgeons opinion.  My bro-in-law explained that he was leaving for Toronto in one hour and would have to pursue the matter when he got home.

And that’s what he did.  We drove home from the hospital and got back to my parents house around 6:30 am on the Sunday.  What an exhausting night.  My Dad and I were completely pooped out.  My bro-in-law, with his arm in a sling, climbed into his packed car with my sis and their two kids, and they left for Toronto.

Mind you, all this happened about a month ago now, so I can update you on his situation.  He was re-evaluated that Sunday afternoon in a Toronto area hospital and they ruled against surgery.  He was, and still is, under observation on a weekly basis.  Both fractures, and the tendon, seem to be healing OK, which is welcome news.  One thing I haven’t told you about my bro-in-law is that his job requires him to be on the road a large amount of the time.  And , yes folks, the day after they got home from the Thanksgiving trip, my crazy, yet dedicated, bro-in-law went on a road trip for his job!  He didn’t drive of course, but still, the guys got guts right?  Snaps his shoulder in two places and he’s out cutting deals with clients less than 48 hours later!

What a guy!  Hats off to you Mr. Bro-in-Law!  And that was our Thanksgiving 2008!

Thanks for reading.

It’s been a crazy busy week and I’ve been neglecting this blog!  I haven’t had much free time since Halloween, so I’m putting in a late night to post about one of the best Halloweens we’ve had here at our house!  What a night!  I took the afternoon off of work to get home early so I could set everything up and not be too rushed, which I seem to be every year! It was a simply gorgeous afternoon, a nice mild day with some sunshine.  Hardly a precursor to the death and carnage that would soon happen. By sundown, everything was set up, I had eaten supper and was in costume.  Melissa’s family soon arrived and not long after that, around 6 pm, the little kiddies started roaming the streets for some free candy.  And I was ready!

I do, however, give the little ones a scare free walk up the driveway.  I just can’t bring myself to scare the little lions, hippos, tigers that walk warily into my domain of death clutching their parents hand, saying they don’t want to go further.  As a haunter, that’s what I want to hear, but I won’t scare them out of pure malice.  When they leave their parents and head up to the door, and they are a good 20 feet away staring at my ghost in the window, THAT’S when I let the parents have it!  I jump towards them, scythe waving, eyes flashing red and screaming a ghastly yell!  They jump.  They scream! Oh yes they do!  Some parents even remembered me from last year and would not come up the driveway.  R.E.S.P.E.C.T.  I like it.  They do however, send their kids up all the while reassuring them “it’ll be OK, he’s not real”.  Then they get out the camera and wait for the pounce. Parents after my own heart!

I didn’t add much to the display this year as I focused more on atmospheric effects.  I bought a blue flood light and some orange lights I wrapped up in the cornstalks.  I also picked up a few more tombstones for the graveyard and got my fog machine working.  A nice little addition was this little ghoul that would fly from the house to a tree in my front yard.  He was sound activated and made noise as he flew.  So when I scared people, they screamed and set off the ghoul, which made them jump again!  Then my neighbor would pop out of the graveyard an give them another scare! Three good scares at one house. Nice.

We had all kinds of people taking video and pictures.  Lots of compliments on the decorations and the scares.  Especially my spider victim prop, whose hand moved when you got close.  Next year, I will have to set up a camera with night vision to capture some of the scares. The trick or treating lasted close to 9 pm, with me eventually grabbing a bowl of candy and walking the streets, giving out the last of our candy.  I would estimate we had well over 100 kids, maybe even 120.  It was a good year which just makes me even more eager for next year! Planning has started already. Oh what to do, what to do!

After the decorations were put away, I headed in for a little horror movie fest and ended up watching The Grudge, Halloween (the original) and Halloween 2 all back to back.  It’s my little Halloween tradition after a successful night of haunting and scaring other people: time to scare myself!

What a great Halloween!  I didn’t see the great pumpkin flying around this year, maybe next time!

Here are some pics of the evening: