March 9th, 2010

My neighbour and I went the butterfly exhibit at the botanical gardens. It was beautiful. So nice to be surrounded by tropical conditions.

It was hard to believe these were real! They looked too cool to be true.

Luca cared more about holding onto the stroller handles than the butterflies! There was one that was trying to land on his bum! You can kinda see it just right of his head in this picture.

My little olympian!

The lady and the tramp!

My beloved neighbours made this cake for me for my birthday. My car had a loose wheel prompting me to finally go out and get another vehical. I now have a Toyota Matrix, named Mateo, that we love. I had Big Red fixed up and she'll go to another owner as soon as I can find one. The mechanic said he'd never seen a car that old in such good shape!

This is a pretty uninteresting video. Mostly Luca has been trucking around the house enjoying himself. In the week after my birthday (thanks for the birthday wishes!) he got 4 new molars bringing his tooth count up to 12. They took a while to come in but he toughed it out pretty well. He and I have also been sick a lot since the new year with every cold the daycare can throw at us. Other than that things have been plugging along like normal! We really enjoyed the Olympics! Wish we could have been there.

February 10th, 2010

All my pictures of Luca are fuzzy. He's getting faster and faster!

We went for a walk downtown last weekend. We've had lots of sun but it's be 10-15 degrees bellow zero most days. I'm ready for spring already.

Long lashes!

You can't tell from this video, but Luca's main form of transportation is now walking. He's a lot better at it than he is at standing on the bed. It's pretty cool to see him wandering around now! A mini person! He loves to open drawers and climb in. We'll have to look into bolting all our furniture to the walls. The bath part of the video was filmed last night. A new little game he was playing! Very funny stuff! Pretty soon we'll have to keep the naked stuff for ourselves!

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!

December 26th

Thank you Gramma for the new sled! There's a cover for it too that we haven't tried yet.

After a full inspection, it definitely passed all tests!

We all had a wonderful Christmas! Thanks to everyone for the gifts! Luca got a couple wooden puzzles and a new water bottle! Fabien got an espresso machine and a an assortment of kitchen utensils! Luca gave him a fire extinguisher so he can play with matches! I got a wonderful new Lululemon outfit and some perfume and, of course, chocolate!

Happy holidays to all! Tons of love from all of us!

We took Luca for a little walk in his new sled. He couldn't resist the temptation to take a nap! He was pretty happy in it. Also in this video is Luca demonstrating his ability to eat really quickly! He didn't end up eating everything on his plate but I think he ate enough!!!

December 21st

Just after I performed as a Snowflake in The Nutcracker! Luca and his dad watched from back stage and I think they both were impressed!

He really wanted to pull all the sequins off my costume!

One of the best pictures I have of my boys.

Always after the camera!

I LOVE my amaryllis!

We've all been very busy lately. Luca has been trucking around the house, standing on his own more and more, though not attempting any steps yet. He's eating tons!!! Just about everything that comes within a two foot radius of his high chair gets eaten! He is - at the moment - responding to our commands of caution if he gets somewhere he shouldn't be. All around, he's getting more and more responsive and is always fun to be with.

Fabien is finishing a last couple days of work before he takes his vacation time. We haven't planned to go anywhere but if any last minute deals turn up, it would be hard to say no!

I've been performing tons in the Nutcracker. I'm really enjoying it, though I'm always sore! Sometimes I feel like I never get to see Luca too because I'm often at the theatre until 10pm.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! Big hugs and kisses from the three of us!

Cheers!

Friday December 4th

On a morning walk here in Quebec City.

Luca and his Gramma have a great time with clothes pegs!

A new Francais/Anglais toy! It's a huge hit! Thanks Gramma!

Bedroom renos before . . .

And after! Yippee! The other side of the door has a half sized closet as well. Fabien and I are so excited. The reno's are going as smoothly as we could hope for but they are still stressful. They also started just as I started my work which left little extra time to clean up the dust at the end of every day.

The Olympic Torch here in Quebec City. It's a little blurry but it was so exciting to see, and right outside our hotel!

Huge Happy Birthday to Luca's Unca Jesse! Happy 30th Jess!

Long time, no blog! I've been busy dancing. My contract with Les Grands Ballet Canadiens de Montreal started on November 16th. I had two weeks of rehearsals and now I'm in Quebec City in the first week of shows. Two shows down out of about 25. We will return to Montreal on Monday and finish the run there on December 30th. Ma is out helping baby sit Luca while I'm working. It's been going really well so far. I'm super happy to be back on stage, even if it's a little harder to dance than usual due to my 2 year hiatus!

Luca has taken to eating only solid foods in little pieces that he can feed himself. Everything gets carefully inspected first and on occasion something gets non-chalantly dropped over the shoulder. He just makes like he's going to scratch his head and he drops the food! Often if it is reintroduced it goes down the hatch though so we're not quite sure why things are getting disregarded like this! He eats everything and lots of it! Broccoli, cheese, bread and chicken are among the favourites and nothing really gets pushed away!

He's standing and walking holding onto things alot. Soon he will walk. He's getting close now!

Notice how he falls in the bathtub in this video and doesn't cry! He's pretty tough most of the time!