January 31st, 2010

This is at Luca's birthday party. Loic is the son of Fabien's co-worker. Loic is 3 months younger than Luca but he's a big boy and is bigger than Luca! They had a blast together! Lot's of stealing toys from each other!

We went for a walk to the top of the mountain (Mont Royal). It was a really cold day, something like 15 below and we were worried about Luca with the windchill. He's tough! Behind us is a view of the city.

About an hour west of Montreal is a town called Oka. In the summer there's a little ferry across the water (not sure if it's a lake or a river!). In the winter it's an ice bridge!!! We saw lots of cars and trucks drive across. Fab was too scared to try though!

In the town of Oka was a little winter fair with all sorts of games for kids. Skating, a tobaggan run, face painting, the works! This is a snow sculpture of the character from the animation "Up!" (Jess I thought you might like it!)

The beginning of this video was taken a couple days after his birthday so you can see some of his first consecutive steps. The end was taken yesterday. He can really get around on foot now but he still prefers to crawl! Will post more soon . . .

Thursday Jan 7th, 1 year and 1 day!

That's a spoon in his mouth!

The toboggan run on top of Mount Royal. Great free family entertainment. Can't wait until Luca is old enough to do this!

My Walze of the Flowers costume!

My Party Scene costume. I couldn't get any pinker if I tried! My character was called the Pepto Bismal lady!

Luca had his first birthday yesterday! Snuck up on me pretty quickly. He also took a couple little steps by himself! He's been taking single steps, but the consecutive ones were new. Unfortunately he had a pretty lousy day with a nasty little cold and new a molar coming through soon. We had a tough time getting him to eat enough and sleep as much as he needed but after a long afternoon nap, he seemed much more like himself again. In the evening we ate Galette des Roix, which is a special cake for King's day, which is January 6th every year. It's a tasty flaky pastry with a custard like filling and there's a little toy in it. If you get the toy in your slice, you get to where a crown! A lot like our family Christmas pudding! Luca had a taste of the cake but was too full off the rest of dinner to want any more!

I finished my Nutcracker contract on December 30th. I really enjoyed dancing again. It was really a treat. Now I will start back at pilates on the 11th. Fabien has had this week off work also. It's been great to be together. We finally got the basement clean!!!

Happy New Year to everyone! And thanks for all the Birthday wishes to Luca! We're going to have a little party here on Saturday afternoon to celebrate this milestone!

This is a quick little video of Luca in the last couple days! Mix Master Luca!

This video is of Montreal's snow removal! I thought Diego might get a kick out of it. It took me a while to figure out that my camera had a hard time focusing through the plastic on our windows. Sorry for the shoddy cinematography! At the very beginning you can hear the funny horn of the tow trucks and just see one tow a car away. They will drop the car somewhere in the neighbourhood and the owner will have to look online to find out where their car is! Then a big plow and a couple little ones push all the snow to middle of the street. The little ones focus on the sidewalks. The plows go right to the curb. The rest is explained in the video! It's about a 6 1/2 minutes long.

This video I took of/for a couple of the girls in Nutcracker. The best show is backstage!