Happy Meme-er's Day!

Hey baby,

I had a really hard time trying to decide what to get you for Mother’s Day. You’re not really into surprise gifts, jewelry or spending money on anything other than extravagant vacations and groceries. J So I thought I’d finally contribute to the 3^rd love of your life – your blog.

As I suspect most mothers do, you often fail to give yourself credit for your extraordinary mother-skills. But if you take a step back you’ll see there is so much proof of what an incredible mother you really are.

*Admittedly this picture has nothing to do with Motherhood, but that doesn't make it any less true. 

See you really are an amazing mother! And why shouldn’t you be? You’re an amazing person and have two of the best examples of mothers anyone could hope for – your mom and my mom.

Thank you for making my life more full of love and happiness. Happy Mother’s Day!

Love,

Neil & Barrett

P.S. Get it? Meme-er's Day = Mother's Day. I know, it was a bit of a stretch. 

One of THOSE Days

The other day, Barrett proved to me that he's really turning into a toddler by making mess after mess after mess...

The first mess started when I put him to bed for a nap.  We're in the middle of transitioning down to 1 nap and it's not going very well!  He still needs 2 naps but only wants to take 1- it's really stressing me out.  

ANYWAYS... He decided he didn't want to nap so he played in his crib for a while and then gagged himself until he threw up.  He's done this before and it drives me CRAZY!   So mess number 1 was cleaning up Barrett, his outfit, his crib, his mattress, and his sheets.  (I didn't take any pictures of that.  You're welcome.)

While I'm in the bathroom rinsing and stain treating his clothes and sheets, Bear gets into the drawers and pulls out some little lotions and opens them.  He does this all the time actually, but when he gets the lid off, he says uh-oh and either puts the lid back on or hands me the bottle so I can put the lid back on. This time when he took the lid off, he started flinging the bottle around so lotion flew everywhere!  Don't worry, I got my camera to get some shots of this mess.

Here he is trying to dig out more lotion to make more messes.

Then he decided there needed to be lotion on the wood floor too.

Smearing it around.

This doesn't even show how messy he got himself.

I couldn't clean it up with him in the way and I didn't dare leave him out of my sight, so I trapped him in the tub.  He immediately tried to turn on the water and when I didn't let him, he tried to climb out. 

Next I had to get his clothes off (this was already his 2nd outfit for the day since he just puked on his 1st outfit) so I could stain treat them too.  He had to stay in the tub still.  

Even though I had to constantly watch him to make sure he didn't turn on the water or climb out/fall out of the tub, I was able to clean up the lotion mess.  The floor is still a little slippery though.  At least the lotion smelled really good and helped cover up the smell of his puke!

After everything else was cleaned up, Bear finally got to have a bath and get all the messes off of him!

Here's a little clip of him slipping/playing around in the lotion.  I've never put a video on here, so hopefully it works.

We also found ants in the house (how do ants get up to the 20th floor!?) AND discovered that our shower in leaking onto the floor in the closet.  Such a crazy day!

Weekend Update

We had some fun activities this weekend and some really nice weather!  They recently opened up the roof top patios at our apartment building so we played up there for a while.  The views are pretty great.

Behind Neil is the CN Tower, The Rogers Centre (where the Blue Jays play), and Lake Ontario, although you can't see the stadium or the lake very well.

We also went to Pawsitively Pets for a petting party.  Barrett got to see lots of new animals.  

I think this first one is a guinea pig or maybe a bunny, I didn't see it very well.

This is a hairless guinea pig.  I think it's gross.

They even had a lion cub you could see.  We just watched through the window since you couldn't pet him anyways.

We touched the cockatoo.

And watched the macaw eat an apple.

The lemur was the coolest thing we played with.  Here's Bear petting the lemur.

And then the lemur climbed on my shoulder!

We got to pet a 6 week old porcupine.

And a baby emu too (on the left).  The baby animal on the right was a cavy, he was really cute!

Neil put Bear on a pony for about 10 seconds and then he wanted to get off.

We could've played with a Kangaroo too, but the line was too long and we were getting HOT!

And lastly we discovered that behind Osgoode Hall was also interesting and beautiful.

Riverdale Farm

We went to Riverdale Farm this week with my friends Pian and Anna and their daughters, Saya and Claire.  It's kind of weird to have a farm right in the middle of this humongous city, but it was a great place!

Barrett, of course, went crazy for the animals!

He ran away from me a couple of times, which really surprised me since he generally stays glued to me.  He ran up this hill and when he tried to come down the hill, he totally crashed!  It broke my heart! He scraped his knees, hands, and lips :(

Here's Saya, Barrett, and Claire.

Waiting for me to walk with him (this is what he usually does as opposed to running away).

Clair and Bear.

Me and Bear looking at the baby lambs.  There were 4 or 5 babies and they were so cute!~

He got pretty worn out from all the running around and the warm weather!

The whole area was super pretty.  This is a really nice looking cemetery across the street.

We will definitely be going back to Riverdale Farm before we leave here!

We've had a pretty busy week so far and that's the way I like it!  We went back to Sky Zone with some friends and Barrett had more fun this time than last time, I think!  I should've videoed him because he was bouncing and running around so much!  He even got a few trampoline burns on his face, but it didn't slow him down at all!

We also discovered a library close to our house and it does a weekly story time!  We loved doing that in Texas, so I was glad to finally find one here.  We were the first ones there but it got packed!  There were probably 20 kids!

Bear Bum

It suddenly got warm here in Toronto (like 70 degrees!) which is so nice to be outside in.  The crappy part is that the apartment complex hasn't turned on the a/c yet and we have been dying of heat!  We've decided that the best way to beat the heat is to be as naked as possible as often as possible!

And Bear looks good doing it!

Most of the day I made him wear a diaper (obviously!)- and he did wear clothes when we went out of the house because we're not completely nuts!