Our Baby Size Life!

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Yes that’s a McCain cake pan on his head… He’d just finished scraping every little morsel out of the thing and he decided the only logical remaining course was to wear it like a hat… Which is normal for an almost-two-year-old. Right?? Hey! He was high on icing sugar at the time!!! This Saturday is Sam 2nd birthday and the gang is coming over to have some fun! Will it be a wacky and wild as this dessert session?  Either way, I bet there will be some icing everywhere, a few loose diapers and, definitely, a couple tired parents… We’ll be back soon to fill you in on all the crazy eating details!!!

We try and be the best parents we can, which means that we do some things right and other, well wrong. But Sammy boys toy management is something we do pretty good. Sam has a lot of toys and that’s not due to us buying him any… He’s got a family that spoils him something fierce.  So we’ve implemented a toy rotation system that encompasses the whole house.  The basement, living room and Sam’s bedroom are his play areas and as the toys cycle down to the basement, they are slowly moved into boxes and out of circulation.  This keeps the amount of toys available to him at a reasonable level, and ensures he’s got new things to play with every now and then.  This time we whipped out the Thomas train set my brother gave Sam. Let me tell you, every night after we pick Sam up from daycare, its “Choo-Choo?”.  Sam just can’t wait to bust through the front door and get at the train set. He doesn’t even wait for us to take his boots or winter coat off...

The Thomas toy train is battery powered that is activated by a big button on the top.  When Sam discovered this, we no longer had to play with him while prepping supper. He just loves this train. He loves breaking up the track that Dad took 20 minutes to figure out… And putting it back together again. We have to tear him away from this thing when leaving for work in the morning. He even places the Thomas engine in the tunnel and says “Dodo choo-choo”… Priceless folks.  So, I guess we owe Mike a big “thank you” for the train set!!!

This kid is one of a kind! Not even two years old and he’s helping Mom and Dad out around the house. I guess we’d better take advantage of it while we can, cause the day is coming when he’ll discover that cleaning ain’t fun.  But for now, it’s as cute as can be to see our little guy running over to help empty the dishwasher, or steal a rag off the counter to go wipe the edges of the kitchen table… All on his own, without any parental guidance. Crazy. It’s like I’m living in some kind of Bizzaro world were everything is backwards! Next up, Melissa is gonna let me sleep in on the weekends while making me her famous french toast with blueberries… Man, I hope she’s reading this Anyways, the pic below shows you to what lengths Sam will go to… He’s actually cleaning the wall behind of stove! That has got to be one of the stickiest places in the house… hehehe… minds out of the gutters people!  But seriously, check out his dedication!

Really! Giving up his Saturday morning cartoons (Bugs Bunny and Tweety) to help out his folks. Let me tell you, I was never around when cleaning was on the menu with my parents. Holy crap, I did everything but buy a plane ticket,change my name and get a hair transplant to get as far away as possible.  I would got play Chess or read instead of putting a rag in my hand.  For a young sports-playing kid like I was, doing anything involving sitting down, without a video game controller in my hands, was murder.  But I did it to get away from the cleaning. Ah memories!

I’ve actually been pretty lazy about posting on Sam’s cleaning habits, because the next pic was him passing the vacuum 6 months ago!

6 months ago, Sam was suckin' up dust bunnies.

One thing is for sure, if this blog is still around when Sam is older, I’ll be sure to let you know when our little boy stops helping out around the house. We’re taking bets if anyone is interested… He’ll start ducking out like his Dad did when he’s about 5 years old… But that’s just me.

Take care and keep cleaning!

It’s taken me a little longer than last year to write a Christmas round up, well, mainly because the post Christmas-I’m-fed-up-with-anything-Christmas feeling I get lasted a little longer than usual.  Don’t get me wrong, we had a wonderful and happy Christmas with family and friends. Things couldn’t really have gone better, but I think the Xmas burn out is due to the fact that this year was Sam’s first real Christmas.  Last year, he was like a bump on a log, sitting and watching all the merriment and traditions happen around him. He barely touched some wrapping paper. This year was a completely different story. He’s almost two, and the hyper-active, ever inquisitive little guy was fully in the Christmas spirit: which burned us out!

Continue reading here to see what Sam got himself into…

OK, OK! I’ve been a little lazy in the posting department, but I have quite a few posts lined up and ready to go that need a little more tweaking. Until those start popping up next week, I have for you here a fun little vid of Sam and I doing a little improvised ballroom dancing. Trouble is, I can’t help be the clown, so I threw myself around a little bit more than required in traditional ballroom dance, but Sam loved it and that’s all that matters.

Before playing the vid below; however, I would like to warn viewers that the auditory content of the video might not be suitable for everyone. No it’s not hardcore gangsta rap, an excerpt of an Andrew Dice Clay stand-up routine, high pitch, whiny static or even Celine Dion… It’s me “singing” off key. So watch at your own risk as I guarantee that whatever discomfort you endure at my hands will surely disappear the moment you hear Sam’s reaction to my clowning around.

What can I say folks, being a Daddy to a giggle-pus of a kid has made me even goofier than before! Wow. Goofier than before.  What’s really cool is that even Melissa is getting on the goofy band wagon, so I’ll be sure to put some mildly embarrassing video of her doing something foolish up on the blog soon. MUHAHAHAHAHA!

Enjoy!

Hey everybody! No the blog is most definitely not dead! Yes everyone is doing just great! We were just away from our online lives a little bit for the holidays! And now that those depressing, dark and long January days are now here, it’s time to shut out the real world once again, and delve back into our digital persona’s to help make us forget the cold outside.

Since I didn’t do this before the holidays, Melissa, Sam and I hope you all had the best of holidays! We can, however, still wish you all a very happy, healthy, successful, sexy and rich New-Year!!!! You can re-arrange those characteristics in the order of  your preference

So, check back in soon, for some Holiday Hijinx as I am waiting on my bro to get me the pictures he took over the holidays! Come on brotha!!!

Until then, here’s a family pic we took in our pyjamas one night in front of the tree. Ahhh, cozy winter nights, snuggled with my loves! Nothin’ beats it folks! Nothin’ I tells ya!!!

Sammy loves to dance since he’s been training at his daycare for a Christmas show, which will be tomorrow. Melissa and I figured out something was up back in early November when Sam would start dancing to the music from his toys.  He would just bust out some moves we had never taught him or seen him do elsewhere. It was really fun to see him go and was a genuine surprise to us… One of those special moments you can’t plan for. Well, I finally managed to catch Sam in the act last weekend at my parents.  My Dad, a Christmas junkie, has a singing snowman that belts out Jingle Bells with accompaniment from his dog.  You start the thing by pressing the snowman’s hand and the good times start. Sam figured this out quickly enough, and once the power to command was in his hands, there was no stopping him! Dance Sammy dance!!!

You may have noticed the speakers on the singing toy start screeching some static, that’s because Sam played it so often, the speakers are starting to suffer some wear and tear! Go Sammy go! Wrecking Granpa’s Xmas toys!!! So Sam is told to put the toy back, which is where he brings it towards the end of the vid… right back where he found it! Also notice Sam almost losing control in his spinning and getting dangerously close to the village that took me six hours to set up!

Have a great weekend folks!

This past weekend, we packed up and headed to my parents house to spread a little Christmas cheer.  We were a whole 5 days into the month of December and my parents had not put up their Christmas tree or their Christmas village, which I look forward to every year.  Now folks, this is an injustice.  My family has been pretty adamant about putting up decorations for the season since my youth: I’ve been tempered in the tradition of kicking off the seasonal cheer as close to December 1st as possible. Now, It was our turn to step in and get their house ready as they have way too many decorations for two people to handle. We got the tree up pretty quick as we all chipped in and got it done. And folks, leaving your lights on the tree from the year before works. Saved us HUGE amounts of time, which let me be free to work on my favorite piece: the Xmas village.

A Christmas village doesn’t seems like a big deal, but my Dad was a pretty heavy collector of the Dickens Village, Heritage Collection by Department 56 back in the day… well most of the nineties.  Which means his collection has grown to the point of near insanity.  It took me a marathon 6 hours to set this puppy up, and that’s with some help from Melissa and my parents… Oh! And Sam’s occasional mad dash to grab a piece.  Some of these pieces are priced in the hundreds as the amount of hand painted detail is pretty crazy, so it was constant vigilance with Slippery Sam sneaking around! So check out the slideshow below and see if you can find what Melissa and Sam were doing while I was playing mayor in Christmas town at 11pm… All I can say is that they sure do look comfortable! ;)

My little Xmas Elf!

Well we are now in December and the season is upon us and so far, Sam has not disappointed.  Melissa and I really get into the spirit of things, as you can see on the left, and we love the goodwill that flows this time of year… Too bad it’s not year round eh? Now I realize that this isn’t the first Christmas we’ve had with Sam, but this year he is much more aware and active than his younger self was last year. This is a huge difference for us, not only the way it brings us back to our own childhoods and the innocent wonder of the season, but also on a level of parent alertness that was previously, seemingly, dormant. Take for instance, the Christmas tree…  Continue reading here…

The days and nights are getting chilly around here.  That means when we go out for our walks in the evening, we need to pack that little guy tight as to not freeze his bits off. Thus, I give you, the Elmer Fudd hat!

We’ve also acquired a pair of winter gloves that look like we ripped off a hazardous chemical suit. They look warm and they can stretch up to his shoulders if we wanted to… we don’t, but if we wanted to, they could… Not that I tried it on Sam…

Sam loves his walks, especially with all the Christmas lights going up around the neighborhood.  He just loves walking right up onto the people’s lawns, and blatantly stared at their lights… even if they happen to be changing in the window at that very moment! Yeah, then I look like the perv!

Keep warm folks!