Our little Foodie

There's no denying that our little guy LOVES food. Literally, this is just a mere 1/3 of all the photos we have of him eating. 
Pudding

Carrot

Corn on the Cob

Watermelon

1/4 of a loaf of fresh bread that he stole right off the table

Cupcake

Whipping Cream

Steak (at 6 months, with no teeth). He ate the whole thing!
Pickle (at Rocko's!!!!)

Slice of sausage

Smoothie

Dirt (his personal favorite)

Angel Food Cake

 Brand loyal at 3 months. Starbucks coffee!

Chicken Drumstick

Peas...or avocado. We're not sure.

Pizza..one of his first foods that he stole right from us while we were eating it.

Cheetos!

Baby carrot...not impressed.

There's no denying it. Our little man is a foodie!

Baby #2

Here's an updated picture of Fetus2McCrimmon at about 20 weeks. Take your own guess about whether its a boy or girl...it will be determined in another 20 weeks or so. And no, we don't know. We aren't hiding the gender....it is what it is. And we finally have come up with names for either a boy or girl.(nothing a little midnight chat can't fix.....and yes, one name was determined by trying to be funny and calling this child a yam). No, its name is not Yam. (please people, do not name your children after inanimate objects!)  But the names will remain secret until this baby comes forth into the world.

Its all Fun and Games....

...until somebody poops on the carpet!
             ...and then proceeds to walk in it and have poopy footprints all over the house. YUCK!

The upside of the whole situation (if there can be one) is that Joel's diaper rash cleared up (hence the diaper free time).

It's true!

Coming around the end of May 2012....

Little McCrimmon #2 is on the way!

We are super excited (especially Amanda, now that the nausea has subsided) to welcome our second baby into the world!

The Completed Tree

Here's a picture of our tree all decorated.  No complete family picture since Joel was sleeping at the time, and we didn't want to wake him. Maybe next year!

Christmas Tree

For the past five years, Dan and I have had the tradition of carrying our Christmas tree home over our shoulders. Last year, I was 9 months pregnant, ready to pop at any moment. This year, we have a one year old who we wanted to include in our tradition.

Joel added a bit of "stress" to the situation. We discussed various options for how to get both a Christmas tree and our little bubby home. Do we use the wrap? No, Amanda's back hurts too much. How about the backpack? Won't the tree stump or leaves be in his face? Okay...how about the stroller? Can we push it one handed and still carry a tree? Ultimately, the stroller won out!

Joel really enjoyed shopping for the tree. He would giggle every time I held up a tree and asked, "Is this the one?" That kid really loves nature...and especially pine needles.

Eventually, we chose our tree, put it up on our shoulders and proceeded to the local Starbucks for a hot drink (yet, another one of those wonderful traditions). By this time, it was past Joel's bedtime and he was starting to loose it. (Which may have had something to do with the creepy man outside who kept asking us questions and trying to touch Joel....which neither one of us liked.) Dan finally came outside with our drink (which spilled all over the stroller) and we proceeded to city hall for our annual photo shoot.

Joel basically screamed the whole time. We gave him a bottle, which we kept trying to pull out for photos. (He didn't like that!) Finally, we just gave up and walked home, where we put the boy to bed and the tree outside for a few days.

A few days later (after Joel's birthday party), we decided to put up the tree. Joel likes to touch the leaves, but isn't eating them (bonus for us!!!)

We let Joel put the star up on the tree. Okay, he didn't really put it on.He tried many times, but we just couldn't get him to get it up over the top of the tree. This picture is Joel taking the star off of the tree. But it still looks cool. Later that night we decorated the tree while Joel slept. Every day, Joel seems to take a decoration off the tree, walk over and hand it to us. He just hasn't grasped the concept of "don't touch." But its such a joy to see him stand by the tree, staring at the lights. Reminds me of when he was just born, and Dan was holding him. Joel lifted his head to look at the lights and he was just 20 minutes old.

How to Make a Shark Cake

Step #1: Spend two weeks worth of nap time scouring the Internet for images of shark cakes. Realize that this is the best one that you can find...even though its missing the second half of his tail and has a really large fin.

Step #2: Cut out the outline of the shark. Realize that it looks ridiculous and spend a few hours "fixing" the image. Basically, redraw the shark picture. Cut the outline of the shark out of the cake.

Step #3: Put the two pieces of shark cake together to form the shark.

Step #4: Ice the cake. And add additional cakes (seaweed and fish) out of the leftover cake pieces.

Step #5: Admire your finished cake.

Step #6: Add candle and allow birthday boy to "try" blow out candle. Blow out candle for him.

Step #7: Give piece of cake to birthday boy. Watch as he slowly pushes it away and melts down into tears. "Don't make me eat this bright blue thing!!!"

Step #8: Wait until following day. Give a piece of cake to birthday boy on a fork. Watch him eat it. Then watch him devour cake, piece by piece.

Step #9: Watch cake being eaten.

Step #10: Allow birthday boy to eat every last piece of cake. Or at least throw it on the floor until he's finished.

 

Christmas Baking

Our dear friends, Matt and Rachel came over a few weeks ago, so we could bake some delicious Christmas cookies.

In just over 3 hours, we had a TON of cookies baked, fudge cooling in the freezer, and some savoury treats to enjoy.


We each chose some of our favourite family recipes, and a few new ones to try out.

The evening was filled with wonderful smells, good memories and almost losing our treats to a vicious neighbourhood raccoon (Note to self: do not leave treats outside to cool, raccoons may abound). We thanked Rachel repeatedly for saving our treats!

We had a few good laughs while we assembled gingerbread men (and woman). By that time of night, we had eaten way too much sugar, and didn't have enough protein in our bodies. Things got a bit crazy....but were easily fixed by eating a few pigs in a blanket.

This is our half of the haul from the evening. Pigs in a blanket, quiche, sugar cookies, chocolate mint cookies, chocolate mints, butter tarts, shortbread cookies, gingerbread cookies. And missing from the photo, cookies and cream fudge and chocolate mint fudge. Yummy!

Our semi-annual Hospital Visit (around Christmas)

Last year, at the end of December, we took Joel to Abbotsford's newly finished hospital for an infected finger. This resulted in a 4 day stay.
This past Monday, it was Dan's turn. This would be his first hospital visit in 26 years. (Basically, he hasn't been back since he was born).

What necessitated the visit you ask? A lovely 1st degree burn to his arm (aka 1% of his body). You see, Dan decided that it would be a GOOD idea to catch a falling jug of hot water while at work. Please do not attempt EVER! This may result in a cloth diaper wrap (and wet bag) being put on your arm to keep the wet towel away from your bandage. (Basically, the wet bag started to leak, so we put a cloth diaper wrap around that to keep Dan dry, and the burn cool). As the doctor put it: "You have reflexes of a parent with a young child. Your first instinct is to catch anything that is falling."

Needless to say, Dan was sent home from the hospital all bandaged up with some nice pain killers to boot (they hand out morphine there like its candy! And tetanus shots.) The next night, we uncovered his arm and found a nice reddish/blackish burn staring back at us.

The pharmacist gave us some nice burn cream, a very expensive non-adhesive sheet to place over his burn and then some netting to cinch it all in place.

Fast forward two days and the blisters have started. Gross! A week (minimum) off work and Dan should be well on his way to recovery. Stay tuned for next week when Dan attempts to catch falling knives!

You know you're a parent of a young child when...

... you go looking for your pots and pans in the toy box, rather than the cupboard... sleeping in consists of 7:30am
... staying up late consists of any time after 10pm
... you know that the washing machine can remove stains, but crumbs are a whole other story
... everything you own that has any value is at least 4 feet off the ground and progressively climbing
... your vocabulary is reduced to derivatives of "no" or "stop" and the ever favorite "don't touch"
... the most used implement in your house is a broom, closely followed by a vacuum