Our Baby Size Life!

Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’

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!!!

Every parent does it. I am sure of it. It’s a weird situation, because people with no children see other parents do it and say:

“Poor kid, I’d never do that… It’s kind of tacky!”

Then, those same people have a kid and then a holiday rolls around and BAM! They buy the kid theme pyjamas.

Guilty as charged!

Continue reading here to check them pyjamas out!

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…

Sam and Mom, cheek to cheek

On with the rest of the Christmas pictures!  Melissa, Sam and I are lucky to have two great families to spend every Christmas with.  On the evening of the 24th, we had great fun with Melissa’s family for a traditional “réveillon” as you saw in my last post.   Sam had a great time and ended up fast asleep in his “mamienounes” bedroom, no doubt dreaming of what Santa would bring him in the morning… or maybe he was dreaming of whatever babies dream of… a bottle? Milk? Nipples? Toys? The birth canal? Who knows!

After we got home from Melissa’s parents at around 1 in the morning, Melissa and I put Sam to bed and we had our own little gift exchange… hehehe But seriously, we actually traded gifts so get yer mind out of the gutter (but just for a little while)!  We then hit the sack ourselves around 2:30 am  only to be up again at 7 am to pack the car and head over to my parents house, which is about an hour’s drive away.  I think we were the only car on the road.  It was dead.  We got there in just under 40 minutes. Sweet.

We had a great day full of good family fun, including our annual Toronto Vs. Montreal street hockey game, which Montreal won again, for the tenth year in a row… go HABS! Mom and Dad had all kinds of food out all day long, so we naturally stuffed our faces silly.  I took it upon myself to cook everyone our traditional “Big Christmas Breakfast”, which I did not mess up too badly, dishing out bacon, sausage, eggs, ham, etc. In the early afternoon, we had our secret Santa gift exchange that brought us some good laughs and plenty of picture opportunities.  Then came supper with a gorgeous and scrumptious turkey with all the fixings. Mom and Dad have really mastered the Christmas dinner, it was beyond excellent and they are to be commended in the efforts! Sam, however, did not taste the turkey as he was busy puking up his own meal… Poor little guy, we’re guessing there was a little too much excitment for him, so he projectile vomited all over his high chair!  He was fine after, even managing to score some nice fruit puray for dessert.

Following dinner, we had our “5 dollar just for laughs” mini gift exchange, which is always full of suspense and “gotcha” type moments.  The only rule that applies is that the gift you buy has to be of a 5$ value.  So it can be anything… and that may not be a good thing if your left standing with a crappy gift!  This year, I actually stole my Godson’s gift: a giant universal remote control.  I’m a geek. It was cool. It was mine. Then we had some dessert (Mom baked four types of pies!!!! Pumpkin, coconut, chocolate and lemon! They were filthy good folks… F-I-L-T-H-Y G-O-O-D!

Mom giving it a shot

My bro hitting the tough part

We then polished the evening off with a fun little tradition we started last year, which consists of wrapping a gift 50 times with all sorts of boxes and paper.  The letting people have a chance at trying to unwrap it with oven mitts!  This game rocks people! The rules are that you must put the gift in the middle of the floor and all the players must sit around it.  One person takes a pair of dice and throws them. If they roll a pair, they can put the mitts on and start to unwrap the gift. If no pair is rolled, the dice are given to the next player and the gift remains unharmed. The next player then rolls for a pair as well… and so on and so forth.  Whom ever successfully and completely unwraps the gift gets to keep it.  It’s nothing but fun and hectic times ahead if you try this game, as the pace quickens as the gift is unwrapped.

As you can see, it was a busy Christmas on my end, and I am thankful for every moment.  Sam had a blast playing with his aunt and uncles, grand-parents… and, of course, his cousins!  Here are some pics from the day, as I am out of words… and tired of writing!

Our family on our first Christmas together

The family tree with the gifts being guarded by my nephews	My bro and his daughter, a proud irish girl
My nephew with Sam	My godson after he won the oven mitt gift game!
My sis and niece take a quick picture break from the frantic oven mitt game	My bro-in-law sweating with the effort... he really gave it his all!
Next it was my brothers turn, he hit the duct tape!	My sis taking care of Sam as she always does when she's in town!
The frantic family dinner table	Sam and his uncle sharing a ribbon
Me in my new Irish colors...	... and my niece in hers!!!
Grand-parents with the grand-kids!	Three generations... I've waited a long time to take this picture!
Sammy rockin' it with his cousins... he later beat them up!	The grand-parents fightin' over Sam... like usual!
Sam makin' a move for a tree ornament!	Nanny with Colby, my sis's dog.
Me acting stupid... what else is new

As always, thanks for reading!

…out of our Christmas decorations!  It’s like he considers their sudden appearance as an infringement on his turf or something.  Take this incident that happened this past weekend! Sam roughed Ted Teddington up pretty bad, even stomped on his holly berries! I can tell you the teddy bear survived, but he’s eating his stuffing through a straw and doctors say he may never be able to have cubs of his own! Here’s hoping he pulls through OK.

Hope you enjoy the comic!  It’s a first here on the blog and I had quite some fun putting it together, so I might throw more up here from time to time… If response is good of course!

That’s it for now, take ‘er easy folks!

This past Friday, I took the day off work to get a great many things done around the house, but one important item on our list wasn’t anywhere near our home. We headed for the North Pole! That was our destination on that mild, end of November afternoon. We were headed for Santa’s hideout… or house… or castle… or Elf sweatshop or whatever you want to call it. We were going there to get Sam some of his first face to beard time with the jolly fat guy. Hopefully, this being THE Santa, there would not be too much of a long line up to see him. I mean considering I’ve been an angel all my life we should get in pronto!

Well, it being the beginning of the season and the fact that it was an early Friday afternoon, there was only 2 little brats ahead of us in line! Good for Sammy-boy and good for us as those horror stories of long waits and fussy, whiny kids with their mal-odorant, numb-headed parents would pass us by for this year. When I saw that puny excuse for a line, I kicked Sam’s stroller into a two wheeled, accelerating arrow of death! I blew through the crowd of wandering, credit strapped consumers, making a B-line right for spot #3 in the line. I’m pleased to say my driving skills may just be unmatched in the stroller controller department. Got there with minor casualties: I hit two emo teens, the lady behind the information booth and an old guy with a walker. I admit to some degree of discrimination in this matter, however, as I did hit one of those three on purpose, but I’ll let you figure out who.

I park Sam’ stroller and peel, yes peel (I stroll fast remember?!) Sam from the seal into his mother’s arms as I reach to get the video camera ready. Just doing these simple tasks has dwindled the line down by one. Second place! Not bad for eight second of waiting! Just then, we turn around and an elf lets us scrutinize the photo package “deals” they were “happy” to provide us with. We ended up choosing the 8 picture for 30$ “deal”. It seemed like the lesser of the five evils, but I’m sure my pooch got screwed on that decision anyways.

Finally, after the wallet raping had ceased, it was Sam’s turn on Santa’s ever-richer-by-the-photo lap. At least we knew Sam would have a comfortable seat, cause Santa had just finished stuffing his pockets with a thick roll of twenties from the lunch crowd photo sessions. You saw the pic above, but check out the video below for the whole story… Samuel’s quadruple take is classic…

Enjoy & thanks for reading!

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!